#And making an rpg mode or something would require making an entirely new set of sprites different from the OG sprites and I'm struggling

[buttercupshands]

Sketch dump of month old sketches I forgot to post

[songoftrillium]

The release of Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition has evoked a sense of urgent inspiration in me. I found the news inspiring because it marks the launch of a new product that rings so close to the original game in which its new premises instantly evoke a lost-world setting perfect for new players to uncover through revelation. And with it, a sense of urgency that a large chunk of the game’s horror pathos and cultural representation will be lost in lieu of chronicles centered around direct action, high entertainment, and transactional resolution.

First and foremost, I applaud the efforts of anyone wanting to excise Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and it’s fandom, of it’s toxic player base that has festered far too long. Anyone taking that on isn’t blind to something that is both wonderful and incredibly problematic, and it requires a collaborative effort to address meaningfully. It means being willing to internalize hard and profoundly uncomfortable truths. 

When I look at the prior editions, I consider its inherent value and feel that the things that made the original editions of Werewolf so special to me don’t entirely align with a large portion of it’s old player base. This is not for those players. In some ways my aim with this is small, with the understanding my target audience is also small, and this space exists for them. 

Werewolf: the Essentials is a project culminating my 25 years of entertaining and horrifying players. This is a carefully curated gaming experience tailored to Queer tabletop audiences primarily, although I am confident it will resonate with many others as well. This started as something I was working on alone but quickly has grown to include a pack of other avid Players and Storytellers who have felt left behind by the current direction of the gameline. I am laying out every little trick, twist, and ounce of Storytelling experience I have acquired over the years. In many ways, this is the quintessence of my inclusive World of Darkness, and a passion project that I hope those who read this may too come to appreciate.

In the first and second editions of the various splats published across the World of Darkness, the Storytellers Handbook gave Storytellers the raw narrative tools to convey the world to their troupe of players. As time has progressed, the sourcebooks to follow have greatly expanded to include Garou society, their relationship to Gaia, and to each other. As the editions expanded what they made available to Storytellers and Players, some of the original content of earlier editions was left out. By the time the 20th Anniversary Edition was being written, many of the edits were made to cut back a bit on the roughage and “get to the meat and potatoes” of mechanics crunch. In that way, the edits were a complete success, but something important was lost.

The earlier ST guides laid out explicitly that the World of Darkness is first and foremost a horror game. Essays within their pages provide advice on using textural descriptions and different modes of storytelling to lure in players and make the hairs on the backs of their necks stand on end. These remarkable essays are now lost to those who don’t possess the older editions. They serve as a toolset that could be applied across any RPG, and not just Werewolf alone.

W20 fell short of delivering a fully serviceable RPG to it’s Storytellers, however well-intentioned. It had all of the main bones of the setting and stats but no guidance on how to turn it into a game for one’s players. Taking it a step further, some of the writing in this new edition only managed to alienate modern audiences. 

The use of in-character narration to express setting information in prior editions seems an attempt to convey the horror and pathos of the world that would be difficult to get across in stats alone. The information contained in that first-person text is among the most important parts of the setting, but it often fails to convey the true horror of the world of Garou. In many ways the World of Darkness was intended by those who created it to be a place of genuine terror and horror, and not merely “savagery” for its own sake. Horror is a very complex basal guttural emotion that sits in the ganglia, ready to tug the emergency brakes on your body in the presence of what it believes to be a tangible threat. There are many complex higher emotions, but when it comes to the lizard brain, it takes considerable effort to trick it into getting spooked. Invoking a sense of horror in a horror chronicle is a complex enough endeavor that, by and large, these efforts fell short of delivering that experience. 

Werewolf: the Essentials is to serve as a masterclass in using those old tools to introduce new players not just to Werewolf and the World of Darkness on the whole. It gives these important storytelling tools to new and future storytellers in any game, that they might continue genuinely terrifying their players for many more years to come. The passages found in this series can add narrative value to not just Werewolf, or even Vampire and other World of Darkness tables, but also horror writing on the whole. Furthermore, this project aims to streamline the availability of that information and provide guidelines for Storytellers wishing to conduct research using the labyrinthian older editions.

Every sourcebook in this series will grow with your tables, providing increasingly more powerful stats, guidelines for making more powerful NPCs and PCs, and serve as a continuation of the legacy games’ metaplot. Some elements you’ll be reading will, for older players, be surprising at times. Some historical events are shifted further in the past, and others eliminated entirely. This project aims to make the presentation of the game a little more timeless, so it’ll hold relevance to tables now, as much as it will 20 or 40 years from now.  The World of Darkness is now something far too large for any one person to fully comprehend while providing enough tools for one to explore deep lore that holds the most relevance to their tables.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse has a long history of problematic and exclusionary elements, both in it’s fandom and, sadly, often in it’s published work. Despite this, I see more value in this game than the literature would have you believe at face value. This project is an attempt to increase the inclusivity in this game I love while also helping introduce new players and Storytellers to this world. This is a glimpse of something absolutely beautiful, horrifying, and unique, contributed to by a group of equally passionate artists and writers. Even if the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the next best time is today. If you can listen critically, and take the lessons between these pages, then maybe you too can come to find the Glory, Honor, and Wisdom within the depths of our darkest fears.

Book 1: Cliath launches soon on Storyteller's Vault

[egoat]

REVISIT: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was a sort of “sleeper hit” game from 2020, an at-first perplexing release from studio Vanillaware, best known for their visually impressive beat-em-ups. At first brush, 13 Sentinels presents itself as two experiences; a science-fiction tactical RPG revolving around the piloting of mechs through combat scenarios, and a narrative adventure game revolving around the teenaged pilots of those mechs, laden with anime cliche. Doesn’t sound appealing? Think the title makes this game sound utterly broad, confusing, and generic? You might be relieved to know that 13 Sentinels is a lot more than what it says on the tin, and lying behind its thin facade is one of the greatest “mystery box” style works of science fiction there is.

For starters, the first “twist” you’ll encounter in 13 Sentinels is that the tactical RPG it marketed itself as barely exists. It exists, and is totally competent at offering a decent challenge when it sticks around, and does serve a pivotal role in the narrative, the climactic end point that all of 13 Sentinels’ plot threads work towards, but the reality is you’ll spend less than 10% of your time here, and the “core game” lies entirely in the narrative adventure. Sorry! But you should almost be glad to be tricked - what 13 Sentinels has in store in that narrative adventure mode is more than worth the price. It’s difficult to discuss, both for the reason that I don’t want to give away its many twists and tricks, but also for the reason that its sheer complexity would make the “plot” a difficult task to even put into a synopsis.

Like many great works of science fiction, 13 Sentinels revolves around conspiracy, its set of 13 playable characters working their way through a deluge of confusing and sometimes seemingly contradicting evidence to seek the answers to various mysteries, uncovering more and more of an understanding of “what’s really going on” as they do so. As you advance through 13 Sentinels, you’ll switch between playing chapters in its characters lives, which are independent but intertwined narratives where each digs into their own mysteries.

As you play through, your progress will be barred once you reach a certain point, requiring you to play other characters until you unlock the next step. This necessitates a nonlinear experience that plays into the “investigative” nature of 13 Sentinels - you’ll be left waiting for answers in one character’s arc like the cliffhanger ending of an episode of television, or you’ll pick up on something in another character’s arc that throws elements from another arc into a new light. It’s a unique and engaging style of play that breaks up what could essentially be a long visual novel, and almost functions similarly to a Sam Barlow interactive puzzler game - as a player, you’ll drift towards choosing and advancing whatever interests you more, and might have a different understanding of the “plot” because of that.

So, what “really is going on”? In short, 13 Sentinels is probably best understood as a send-up of all science fiction, because nothing is left off the list here. It plays with cliche constantly and effortlessly - mecha, time travel, alternate dimensions, cloning, artificial intelligence, deep space colonization, and even bizarrely magical girl anime is all either alluded to or directly used as narrative elements here. 13 Sentinels is a bit of a hay maze style narrative - you’ll think you have the answers to the puzzle box before realizing you’ve been going the wrong way for hours, having to turn around and start all over again. The game uses its structure expertly to keep you delving further and further into the depths of its questions, constantly searching for hints, daring you to try to stay ahead of the curve on what “twist” is coming next. Because it is so dense with “revelations”, the stakes can seem a bit too heightened and the circumstances too ridiculous at times - you have to meet it at its level, much like a science fiction B-movie. If you can come to terms with its wackiness, you can easily become immersed in it.

At times, however, the sheer amount of “concepts” can be understandably utterly frustrating, as you spend a great majority of your time with the game being strung along, waiting for the final act to finally clue you in on understanding just about anything that is “really” happening here. Still, I find that the way 13 Sentinels unveils itself in stages helps to assuage some of that frustration - you’ll feel accomplished completing a certain character’s plot even if you’re hours and hours away from the bigger picture.

Being a video game serves in its benefit - with the scale of hundreds of hours, countless lines of dialogue, so much can be buried within it. If you’ve ever known the joy of rewatching a film after knowing the “twist”, and seeing the innumerable clues scattered throughout helping lead you to the mystery, the same goes for 13 Sentinels but in bulk. There is just so much to sift through, and the game itself knows it. It presents an Analysis mode, allowing you to view a timeline of events, a lexicon of characters and concepts with the relevant information you’ve discovered alongside them, and just about everything you need to detective away, if you’re the type of player who isn’t content to be simply along for the ride.

Navigating that puzzle box with the player are the aforementioned “13 Sentinels”, the teen-aged characters that drive the narrative forward. The notion of such a large ensemble cast might seem a bit adventurous, but if you’ve played a similar VN-style game like Dangan Ronpa or Virtue’s Last Reward, you’ll recognize that the characters here are all grounded in recognizable anime archetype. In most cases, there’s unique twists or caveats to their personalities, but overall, the dialogue can be interchangeable with any shonen comedy. There’s exactly enough to them that I’d argue they would be “fandom-worthy”, and I could easily imagine a host of incorrect quotes style accounts assigning them dialogue based on which one is a dumbass and which one is more responsible, but thankfully, the game was too arcane and mysterious to take off with such a crowd. Still, there can be a surprising amount of depth or at least pathos to each of them, and as you spend so much time getting to know them, they can have one or two character moments that might really surprise you. Other times, characters won’t particularly surprise you at all, unfortunately, and the simplicity of some of these characterizations can at times be the weakest link in 13 Sentinels. There is also no shortage of, let’s call them, “odd” moments, revolving around the blushing nature of high school girls being sexually leered at - your comfort level with that will vary, particularly considering Vanillaware’s general history with objectification. I would argue, though, that on average, the writing tends toward capturing an essence to these characters, a very realistic humanity, lying beneath their shonen-personas, and the moments that their complexities shine through make them engaging to stick around with.

They also provide a very necessary humanity and lightness to the game. 13 Sentinels is very often funny, and probably more so than any similar work in its genre. The way these teenagers collide with a world of mysteries and high science fiction can be played dramatically, but is at times simply funny. One character, Hijiyama, raised in 1940s Japan, has so little frame of reference for the thing happening around him that his state of confusion and frustration with being exposed to the highest level of the game’s conspiracies generates the greatest amount of tension, which is finally relieved, hilariously, when the character storms away from his more plot-involved companion to eat three yakisoba-pan sandwiches in a row and pass out on a park bench.

13 Sentinels isn’t a perfect game, or a perfect story. In order to achieve what it achieves, it gets frequently messy, and I’m sure under a coldly analytic eye it’s rife with plot holes, confusing elements, and broad characterizations. But it offers a truly entertaining, and frankly unrivaled, sitdown mystery experience. This is all not to mention its stunning level of visual detail and polish, which shines not only in character and environment art but in the UI as well. It is a world that you’ll want to delve and delve into to get to the bottom of, and provides a singularly rewarding experience for those who choose to do so.

[jaybug-jabbers]

Pokemon Sword/Shield: A review of my experience

So, I’ve rung in the new year in style with a bad cold. Fortunately, I received a new Switch Lite for Christmas and a copy of Pokemon Sword, so at least I’ve had something to do while sitting about feeling miserble. I beat the game last night, and I figured I’d say a few words about what I thought of it. There are major spoilers ahead!

Graphics & Music

First of all, it looks absolutely beautiful. I’m used to using my 2DS, so the upgrade to the Switch Lite was quite the jump. When compared to previous Pokemon titles, the game is absolutely stunning to gaze upon. What’s more, the environments are varied, creative, colorful, and just lovely. They were such a delight that when I first started the game and had control of my character, the first thing I did was simply stand there for a solid five minutes just gazing on the dynamic, gorgeous countryside, butterfree flapping in the distance, Wooloo rolling around, people going about their day. It helps that I do love the UK and I’ve visited it in the past, and I have to say they did an excellent job evoking the feel of those landscapes. Exploring the towns and the environments was always a joy. Their layouts were natural, intuitive, and walking around or biking around was easy and fun. I was eager to explore every nook and cranny. Accompanying the environments was excellent music. All of the tracks were on-point. They set the feel of the location and they were all great to listen to.

UI & Battle Mechanics

Another thing you notice right away is the UI has been beautifully updated. It’s logically and appealingly organized, it’s very speedy, and there are a lot of quality-of-life tweaks and updates– such as accessing your pokemon PC from just about anywhere. (or easy access to Flying from the regular Map menu!) These tweaks have really helped smooth and streamline things and make for a better experience. It took some getting used to some of the tweaks, such as a forced Experience Share for the entire pokemon party. I’m still not sure what I think of that, but I kept reminding myself that full-party experience is standard in other RPGs, so it’s not so huge a jump for Pokemon to adopt it as well.

Characters

The game is also populated by many characters that I enjoyed. The character designs were well thought-out and appealing, and the characters themselves were fun. Hop may have a bit of a doofy haircut and be a bit of a dork, but he’s still an enjoyable rival. Professor Magnolia seems cool, as does her daughter Sonia. As we meet each of the gym leaders in turn, I generally liked them, as well. They did a good job adding little bits of personality to each of them. And yes, I even liked Leon, the over-the-top and bizarrely-dressed Champion. He was hammy and I think it worked well for him.

The Sport of Pokemon & Dynamaxing

Something else I found myself really enjoying was how much the game was emphasizing the sport aspect to Pokemon battling in the Galar region. This is something the game has always had to a certain extent, but never to the degree it has here. Pokemon battling was a huge spectacle here in Galar, done in massive statiums to huge, roaring crowds. This is a world of difference when compared to the solemn, trial-like, solitary experience of the Elite Four. It just brings and entirely different energy to the experience. And I found I really liked that. During the first few gym battles, I wasn’t entirely into it at first, largely because the first few gym fights were incredibly easy. But after they got a little harder, I started to get into the feel of things.

Naturally, the whole huge emphasis on the electric thrill of competition and of huge, bombastic spectacle was tied into the gimmick of this particular game: Dynamaxing. And as lukewarm as I was about Dynamaxing when I first heard it announced (I’m pretty tired of these gimmicks– Z-Moves, Mega Evolutions and the likes), I have to give credit where credit’s due: it was at least tied very thoroughly into the plot and into the fabric of the game. It didn’t feel tacked on, and I wasn’t resentful about actually using Dynamaxing. It may have been a silly gimmick, but it was still enjoyable to use, because it made sense to help entertain the crowds with oversized spectacle, and because there was a certain amount of enjoyment in the added strategy it required. I’m glad I was able to get into it.

I think the highest point for me about the gym challenge experience was when I was facing off Raihan. Here’s the chap they’ve been hyping for a while about facing up against, because he’s the last gym leader standing before you move onto the Semi Finals and the Finals. When you walk through the dark corridor out into the pitch, you can feel the electric atmosphere; you can hear people cheering your name as their new favorite trainer hopeful; and then, Raihan, the man who always acted so casual and smooth and cool, suddenly shows his intense side on the field of battle. He flings out two pokeballs and brags about mixing things up for you with a doubles format and with the weather, and dares you to step up for the challenge.

My two front pokemon come out– Snowdrop, my Frosmoth, and Bazz, my Grapploct. After all that weather bragging, I decide to show him, and have my Frosmoth flip his sandstorm weather over to Hail. Surprised, my opponent acknowledges that was a pretty nice move on my part. I then Blizzard and Superpower his first pair of pokemon out of the picture.

I’m feeling pretty good, and then he sends out his second pair of pokemon. I have no idea what the heck the Duraludon is supposed to be. Then he Dynamaxes it, which takes me a little off guard, as I had expected it later, but of course this is doubles so there is no later. I stall for a little bit, trying to decide what to hit the Duraludon with, and my first few pokemon go down, and the sandstorm kicks back in.

I decide to send out my Corviknight out for Dynamaxing. But I’m still floundering over the best tactic for this unfamiliar pokemon. I try Max Airstream to see how much it does, but it’s not a very impressive chunk. Then his Sandaconda gets a Glare off on my Corviknight, which is a pain. I waste one of my Dynamax turns getting paralyzed. I’ve fainted several other pokemon in the process of things. I start to think I’m toast and I’ll need to replay the match. Then I realize this stupid-looking Duraludon is, of course, a Steel type. I’d just recently put Body Press onto my Corviknight for some move variety. On my final Dynamax turn, I use it. It utterly destroys the Duraludon, which had just lost its Dynamax.

My own Corviknight falls back down into its normal state. There’s only one pokemon left on either one of our teams; his damned Sandaconda and my half-health Corviknight. The sand is still up, but my Corviknight didn’t mind that at all. It did, however, mind the paralysis and the Fire Fang the snake kept using. Fortunately, Corviknight is still a tanky beast, and I blasted away with Drill Pecks. It was tense, really down to the wire. Would Corviknight tank enough hits to make it? Would he get paralyzed at an inopportune moment?

Fortunately, he makes it, finishing off Sandaconda and taking the match. As I cheer at the victory, my pokemon cheers too, amongst all the swirling sand. The crowd roars, and I feel a genuine respect for my opponent’s skill. It was a good fight. Afterwards, when I returned to the lobby, people were congratulating me on my victory, and it felt truly nice.

Moments like these are not common in pokemon games. At least, they aren’t for me. I had felt everything during that match– the magnificent spectacle of the dynamaxing, the tricks my opponent pulled, his keen desire to win, the crowd’s thirst for a good match, my desire to pull through somehow. As it turned out, after that, I didn’t have battle quite as good. The Semi-Finals and the Finals were a cakewalk for me. Even the Raihan rematch was ridiculously easy. He changed up his team and made it much worse, so that he had different weather-setters for each poke, lacking any team synergey at all. It was a shame. Perhaps the only reason that match was so close was because I had been briefly intimidated over the doubles format and confused over the  Duraludon, but I do wish those magical experiences happened more often.

Indeed, even my final battle with the Champion was a woeful disappointment. I got off one Dragon Dance with Dragapult and swept the whole team cleanly. That brings up another point, though: the difficulty level of this game. It is … well, not very high. It’s a shame. I realize it’s a tricky balance, since this game is aimed at a variety of age levels, and they don’t want it too difficult for the younger audience. Still, it would be nice for Pokemon to implement a ‘hard mode’ to help deal with this issue. Perhaps if they did, we could have more magical moments like the one I had with Raihan.

Character Development & Plot

The low difficulty wasn’t the only thing about Pokemon Sword/Shield that sometimes brought disappointment. At the end of the game, I also found the plot sort of ended up in a no-man’s land. Almost all of the plotlines felt unfinished. Marnie looked like a really cool character full of potential, but then nothing ever really happened with her character. Team Yell ended up being very different from all the other ‘teams’ of the pokemon universe, in that they were just very vocal and sometimes excessively involved fans of Marnie. I actually liked the idea of the ‘team’ not being a group of organized villians up to no good, but Team Yell���s plot ultimately petered out into nothing. The same could be said for other characters. Sonia was a cool-looking character design and again seemed to have a lot of potential as a character, but I never quite understood the point of her plot. She was … uninterested in research, maybe, but became interested? Or was overwhelemed with the work? Or … what, exactly? When she “earned” the lab coat, it didn’t feel like an accomplishment. There was no weight or clarity to her character arc in the slightest. She didn’t even ultimately contribute all that much, because she failed to even be the one to discover the Sword and Shield artifacts.

Again, we find this trend with others, such as Hop’s development. Hop is a cocky, confidant young lad who idolizes his older brother. Eventually he runs into a trainer who throws off his groove, gets into his head with some comments, claiming that he’s dragging his older brother’s name through the mud by being shite at pokemon battling. Then he starts to doubt and second-guess himself, reshuffle his team and his strategies endlessly, and so forth. Eventually, he seems to ‘get over it’ and gets his groove back, but we never are given a really firm reason as to why he gets his groove back. What brought about this change? We need to see why he’s learned and grown. And really, even when he does pull his shit together again, has he really learned much from the experience? I assumed his ultimate lesson would be to see his brother more as an equal, not as someone to idolize; as a human who can self-doubt and make mistakes just like him. But the writers passed up the opportunity to go that way with the plot. They just sort of … gave up halfway.

The most of a glimpse we get from that is something given to us from the animation itself, not the writers. Out on the pitch, during the final battle against Leon, when he’s just about to toss his pokemon out, there’s a moment when he pauses and taps both hands against his face. It’s a subtle little gesture, as if he’s trying to shake off any gnawing self-doubts and get his head into the game, and it echoes his younger brother, who we’ve seen do the same thing. It’s such a lovely little touch, such a human moment, and to me shows that both brothers have been vulnerable to self-doubt despite their swagger, but in the end can overcome it. I only wish the idea were explored further in the actual plot.

The ‘evil plot’ of this particular game also feels only half-baked and incomplete. The motivation behind Rose’s actions feels entirely absent to me, as does any logic whatsoever. What’s worse, the game leaves behind so many lingering questions. OK, so this slumbering Eternatus is the source of all Dynamax power, and he’s discovered the energy will run out in a thousand years or so. How is waking up Eternatus by feeding it Wishing Stars (which, as Magnolia later reports, are bits of Eternatus itself– so, what, feeding  Eternatus pieces of itself?) going to help with that? Will it produce more energy once awake? So he planned on capturing it and … sending it out whenever they needed more energy? Or just keeping it around as a power-giving pet of some sort? But at the end of the game, the player keeps Eternatus for themselves, so doesn’t that mean Galar is sort of screwed now? How can the power plant continue to function (and Dynamaxing) if the source of that power is now inside my pokeball? Also, how exactly did Rose wake up Eternatus to begin with/bring about the Darkest Day? Just release all the energy he had at once? There’s so much that’s confusing and unclear. Basically, the plotline felt very half-baked. I had the sense the writing for this game was frankly very rushed.

It doesn’t stop there. Oleana, the whole thing with Bede, and other characters are left with tons of lingering questions and unfinished plotthreads as well. I suspect the devs simply ran out of time. It’s a huge shame, because I enjoyed all of these characters and felt there was so much potential there, but that potential was never really realized.

Pokemon

This generation has a relatively low number of new pokemon, and you do feel that a little bit as you’re going along. The older pokemon that are mixed in were chosen well, in that they blend naturally with the environments they were placed in, and they’re spaced out nicely, so you encounter a mix of new and old at a nice clip, so they have that going for themselves. But even still, yes, you do start to wish there were a few more surprising faces. Still, there’s definitely fun to be had with new pokemon, especially for some of the cooler Galar regional variants. (I fully support regional variants and am happy they made a comeback in this generation.)

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, there’s also only a very limited set of old pokemon this game has access to. Any species not listed in the Galar dex simply cannot be transferred over. This has upset many people, but when I played the game, it did not feel lacking for that reason. The sheer number of pokemon in the overall franchise is now staggering. It makes complete sense to not include every species in every game now. They intend to include old pokemon on rotation in future games, and that seems like a fair compromise to me. Am I bummed that my favorite Parasect can’t be transferred to Galar? Of course. But I’m not too worked up over the fact. He’ll see another region someday.

To finish this section off, I’m going to do a rapid-fire list of my top 5 and bottom 5 of the new pokemon.

Top 5

Corviknight: An absolutely gorgeous design and easily the MPV of my team.

Wooloo/Dubwool: It’s an adorable ball sheep/ram. You simply can’t go wrong with that. One of the first to be revealed of the new pokes, but I can never get bored with it.

Dragapult: A very creative, lizardy Dragon/Ghost creature that adorably shoots its own babies as ammo. I love it.

Grappaloct: So beautiful. Love its design, its stance, the way one tentacle is a belt, love its colors and pattern, its eyes, its cry, everything. Such a badass and I love octopi in general, so a real winner. This is the octopus we’ve needed for a while.

Snom/Frosmoth: I mean, in some ways its design isn’t revolutionary, since we already have many moth pokemon. However, Snom is still adorable and Frosmoth is still beautiful, something you cannot deny. And it’s been long overdue to get an Ice/Bug. What’s more, Snom is based off real caterpillars (jewel caterpillars), which is wonderful.

Bottom 5

Inteleon: A very distinctive design style that doesn’t look like it belongs anywhere near a Pokemon game. Just feels very mismatched to me.

Alcremie: I hate sentient food. A massive pet peeve of mine.

Applin: See above.

Duraludon: Sorry, but I still think its design is ugly. I can’t get used to it.

Mr. Mime (Galar Variant): No. Mr. Mime is always horrible. Stay away from me. Keep your creepy variant, too.

The Wilds Area

Of course, a review of the game would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the Wild Area. This section of the game was really very lovely. I enjoyed exploring what was essentially Breath of the Wild: Pokemon, and I think it’s a wonderful direction for the game to take. Wandering around, finding goodies, rare pokemon, Dynamax dens and all the rest is very entertaining and it’s just beautiful. Really makes you feel like you’re out in nature exploring, and really encountering pokemon in their natural environment. I’ve read people predicting that Game Freak is using the Wild Area in this game as a test, and something they will probably expand upon in later games. If that’s what they are indeed doing, then I welcome the change. I can’t say I am super interested in fighting wild Dynamax pokemon with my friends, but I did enjoy everything else.

Summary

So, would I recommend this game to others? It would depend on who you are. If you’re a big pokemon fan, then yes, of course. You’ll enjoy the beautiful locations to explore, the new pokemon, and the excitement of the Galar sports arenas, as well as some colorful characters. However, you are going to find some flaws. The plot and character arcs are going to eventually end up a little lacking, and you’ll find there’s not as much new content as you’d have preferred. While some aspects of this game are very well polished and complete, others feel rushed. Overall, it’s going to be a mixed experience, but I think that if you like pokemon, you will still enjoy it.

This is a repost on a new blog. The original post was on Jan 1, 2020.

[lateviews]

Lateview: Absolver

If you've heard the expression, “Biting off more than you can chew”, then you'll understand how I feel about Absolver. Fans of third-person fighter games like “Dark Souls”, “Devil May Cry” and “God of War” know that these types of games require high levels of love and polish to do well. Despite the starved market, there’s a lot of room for mediocrity. Surprisingly, Absolver doesn't pull any punches and goes toe to toe with the best... until it runs out of steam.

Absolver is a third-person fighter game trying to set itself apart from the crowd using two unique mechanics: stances and the combo builder. The “build your own combo” system has been done before, most notably in “Remember Me” and “God Hand” but the way they combine it with the stances really sets it apart. Each move has a speed and damage rating as well as some of the moves having unique properties like breaking guard and interrupting attacks. There are 4 combat stances, visually corresponding to the direction your torso is facing. Changing stances will result in you turning your torso to face to the left or the right of your opponent while others will leave you with your back facing towards the enemy! Each stance can be assigned an escalating number of light attacks and a heavier “alternate attack”. Most attacks transition you from one stance to another; then, since you’re in another stance, you can immediately use that stances attacks. If you build your combos correctly, you can create loops where one attack will lead into one stance before an attack in that stance returns you to the same stance you started in. The end-result is a custom-built train of attacks that you've personally engineered to confuse opponents as you flow from stance to stance. Since you’re changes stances so often, your alternate attack changes over time. Predicting what move your opponent is currently planning on doing is daunting since there is so much they can do. Oh, and did I tell you that you can pull out a sword or gloves and doing so swaps you over to a brand new page of attacks that you need to customise and memorize?

The game has RPG elements to it as well. Gear will drop from mobs as you down them and you'll also find stashes of gear hidden within piles of rocks. Most interestingly though is how you acquire new attacks. You start the game with a reasonable number of attacks but soon you’ll run into people using 'new' attacks against you and if you block that attack, you'll start learning the move. Use your right thumb-stick ability against it and you'll learn it even faster. Story wise, this is a cool concept. Get punched in a particular way a certain number of times and you should be able to know how your opponent punches like that. Unfortunately, in practice, this just results in you actively not killing your opponents. You end up standing around as they are wailing on you while try to block/dodge/parry all their moves; grinding out all the moves before you move along. There is a risk/reward system at play here wherein all the learning you've done during a fight won't be saved until you kill the opponent and exit combat, but there is a lot of moves to learn from random grunts in the world and these don’t really pose a threat once you’ve got a handle on the game. This system gets even worse when you're trying to discover sword specific moves because swords are rare, and by the time you find someone wielding one, they are normally a very strong opponent and you can't afford to grind out these moves because you won’t survive unless you actively damage them.

That's pretty much the entire game. Fight, learn moves, earn gear, equip said moves and gear, repeat. Thankfully that's not as bad as it sounds because hey, it's a fighting game. You came here to fight. So why am I so disappointed in it? Well before I get to the big one, let me just rattle off a few smaller impressions the game left on me: ●       Falling off ledges is far too easy. Admittedly this is a designed mechanic; forcing someone up to a ledge and just pushing them off with attacks is a legitimate way to win a fight but it still felt like it was far too easy to just slip off. Even with nobody attacking you as you’re navigating the environment, one foot off the path might mean falling and most of the time falling is death, because when it's not instant, the insane fall damage will ensure you lose the fight that you just dropped into.

●       The environment is not easy to find your way around. The “map” you're given is essentially 3 circles, and you don't know where you are unless you sit at a bonfire an energy shard thingy or kill a boss as these are the only 2 markers on the map. Many times, vital paths that you NEED to go down are not highlighted or made evident in any way and are sometimes, out-rightly obscured. As a result of this, I completely missed an entire area of the game for a long period of time simply because I couldn’t find the path AND I thought I had already entered that area of the map… There's a time and a place to do-away with the hand holding evident in modern game design but this is too far the other way.

●       Maybe why the environment is so convoluted is to try to hammer in this sense of mystery that the game is so stubbornly trying to instil. The game makes a point of telling you NOTHING about where you are, who you are, what you're doing or why. Thankfully it does tell you what to do (fight people and open a door). It just comes across as entitled. There IS an interesting world here but by the end of the game, nothing is explained at all. Who am I? Why did I teleport when I put on this mask? Why do I need to kill these people? Did I travel through time? Who is this chick with a sword? Who were the people who were here before? The game makes a point in referring to the tesseract-looking particle effect that happens as you kill others, get killed yourself or even unsheathing your sword as “folding” which seems really cool! To sum up my feelings on the aesthetics and lore of the game, I have two words. Obnoxiously Mysterious

Finally, the big one. The game ends. It just ends. No big finish, no special reveal, no closure. Nothing. If you remember before, I mentioned the map being 3 circles? That's it. That's the whole game. I have FOUR HOURS in Absolver, and it's finished. The entire story-mode. That's a third of the I spent in DMC and less than a 10th of the time I spent in Sekiro. Now sure, those are AAA titles with massive budgets behind them, but I cannot help but feel starved of content, especially since the story does not wrap itself up. The game starts with you and a bunch of other initiates standing in an arctic wind before you are chosen, you don a mask and teleport to another world. You then traverse through 12 named areas (3 of which contain nothing) fighting 11 different bosses. There are probably below 50 enemies to fight in the entire game. And then you're done. After fighting the somehow important Risryn, you're teleported back to the place you started with, you graduate from being a “prospect” to become an “Absolver”, you get a neat cape and you get told, “Idk, wait around and grind a bit I guess?” before it teleports you back to the “hub”. To put this in perspective, if the game had 3 times as much content as it currently does, I would still probably call the game short. I have no idea why (besides development problems) the game ended when it felt like Act 2 should have begun.

The game tries to justify this by placing a big emphasis on PVP. There is a system to look up other players and have a tussle and the game is always online so you might find people in the world and decide to start smacking one another but if the game is dead (like it was when I got to it) then all the PVP is non-existent. That's not even mentioning the players who don't WANT to fight other people. As far as I can tell the “latest” addition to the game included the “downfall” mode. This mode (only available after you have graduated to be an absolver) is randomly generated rooms of goons to fight endlessly. The lore explanation for this area only adds questions to the already tall pile of unanswered ones. The game allows you to fight bosses again at a harder difficulty, but this is locked behind PVP progress…meaning that if you weren’t able to find a game like myself, then you just can’t

I hate having to be so negative. Other indie games cater themselves to a casual market and can have all the depth of a puddle and still receive high ratings but because the devs took on such a loved genre, all the depth they have added only makes people want more. I mean really, if my biggest complaint about the game is that I wanted more, there's got to be something good about it. In shooting for the stars, the devs came up short, but the time, skill and effort they put into trying to get there far exceeds a lot of other developers. I can say that the game was bug free and (until it ended) felt close to a AAA title and the sad thing is that it starts to get judged by those harsh standards. For a AAA title, this would be an insult; But for a fighting game? This is a worthwhile experiment; for an indie game? This is one heck of an accomplishment and for your time? This is worth it.

Overall, I'd look to pay $15 to $25 for Absolver, despite its $42 default price tag. It depends on how much you love the third person fighter genre; how much you enjoy PVP (and if you're lucky enough to be in a locale with players online) and how much you want to support the studio. If you can make a trio of yourselves, maybe you can get some mileage out of the co-op enabled Downfall mode, but I wouldn't want to pay much more for that.

[pixelgrotto]

A look at D&D’s Curse of Strahd

From about October 2018 to August 2019, I led a group of four friends through Curse of Strahd, the latest campaign book featuring a dive into the realm of Dungeon & Dragon’s most famous vampire, Strahd von Zarovich. It went well, and it was an interesting experience for me as a Dungeon Master, since this was my first time using one of Wizards of the Coast’s official modules. In the past I’ve always come up with my own homebrew adventures, and I still homebrewed a good chunk of Curse of Strahd, remixing characters and formulating story twists on the fly once I learned the ebb and flow of my group.

One of the things I love most about D&D, however, is that such behavior is encouraged, and pretty much all of the major 5th Edition releases outright tell DMs that they shouldn’t hesitate to make a campaign “their own” by only following the book when necessary. Thus, the version of Curse of Strahd that my players ran through was an experience specifically tailored to them - one where a motley crew known as the “Well-Doners” (like a well done steak...or a stake to the heart of a vampire!) were sucked into Strahd’s strange valley of Barovia and forced to ally together for the sake of survival...aided by a few key comrades, including a funny gnome mage who’d lost his magical mojo, the reincarnation of Strahd’s lost love, a grumpy monster hunter and a massive ranger and his dwarf wife. If I ever run Curse of Strahd again for another group, it’s very likely that many of these key comrades - as well as the general crux of the adventure - will turn out completely different.

To all enterprising DMs who might wish to run Curse of Strahd for their own groups, it’s worth first noting that this is very much a Ravenloft campaign. Ravenloft is the setting that sprouted from the 1983 module of the same name, originally devised by Tracy and Laura Hickman and then expanded upon during the heyday of D&D 2nd Edition. In a nutshell, it’s D&D’s horror setting, and the horror is very much steeped in the gothic tradition, with a heavy dollop of foes inspired by the Universal Monster Movies of the 1920s to 50s, sprinkles of Eastern European creepiness and a dash or two of dark romance to complete the mix. I quite like this combination because it reminds me of the melancholy yet deeply beautiful world of Mordavia in Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, one of the formative experiences of my youth and a game that has a great soundtrack for the backdrop of any Ravenloft campaign. (Interestingly, Quest for Glory creators Lori and Corey Cole were D&D players before they went on to design computer games, which means that the gothic realm of Mordavia surely is a clear descendant of Ravenloft.)

But horror of any variety isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, and certain parts of Curse of Strahd - if run straight from the book - can veer quite sinister, because Barovia is ultimately a crappy place presided over by a crappy undead warlord. The introductory adventure of the module, dubbed “Death House,” actually deals with ghostly children who’ve died of starvation in a haunted manor due to the cultist ways of their mad parents. It’s entirely possible to make these kids untrustworthy antagonists in order to emphasize that the Ravenloft setting simply does not mess around, but since I was running this campaign for a group of four new players whose prior experience with D&D ran the gamut from limited to absolutely zero, I decided to make them into a spooky but still likable duo who could “possess” the players’ characters and offer sassy running commentary on the monsters infiltrating the manor. Like Casper but with a tad more snark, in other words - and the endearing nature of the children made the moment where my players had to lay their corpses to rest and confront their sad origins all the more compelling.

This act of balance - between ensuring that players recognize this as a dark adventure but also making sure that just enough light and humor alleviates the depression - is one that I tried to perform during every session of our game, and I’d encourage future Curse of Strahd DMs to do the same. I’d also encourage enterprising Dungeon Masters to perform a similar balancing act on the monsters and scenarios that permeate the adventure - specifically on the ones in the Death House opener as well as Strahd himself.

Death House, more specifically, is described in the book as a means to help the party quickly progress from levels 1 to 3, but played as is, it’s quite possible for players to get absolutely curb-stomped by everything within the manor - particularly a “final boss” that they’re technically not supposed to engage with, at least in a fair manner. Veteran RPG fans might relish the challenge, which is more reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu than D&D, but newbies might not like having to re-roll a character because their first one got wrecked by a Shambling Mound after only a few hours of play. So, retool Death House to suit the needs of your party - in my case, I limited the encounters somewhat to prevent a steady drip of HP and also gave my players a few tips on how to beat tricky baddies via those aforementioned ghost kids.

The opposite strategy goes for Strahd von Zarovich himself, who might be the big bad of Barovia but is surprisingly squishy when confronted by a hardy group of level 8 or 9 players, especially if they’ve found all the fancy sunlight-shooting artifacts of the adventure that can limit his powers. I can’t count the number of posts I’ve seen on the D&D Reddit or a Curse of Strahd Facebook group I’m in where frustrated DMs have written something like “Strahd was killed by my players within two rounds, where did I go wrong” - and in order to circumvent this from happening in the last session of a shared storytelling experience that had nearly spanned a year, I took a heavy pair of tweezers to Strahd’s stats and gave him three forms, each with their own HP. The first was his regular vampiric self, the second was him riding on his Misty Steed-summoned horse Bucephalus, and the third was basically Strahd going into berserker mode with black angel wings bursting from his back. (I stole the concept art of Satan from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 for that. Worked perfectly!)

Speaking of Castlevania, I drew inspiration from the recent Netflix series - which I’ve written about here and here - when it came to developing Strahd’s actual personality, because even though the book updated his original Bela Lugosi-esque appearance into something more regal and fantasy-inspired, his essence is still something of a two dimensional bad guy, and the fact that one of his eternal missions in undeath is to make the reincarnation of his original lover fall for him is a problematic pill to swallow in 2019, even if it is meant as an ode to Dracula’s obsession with Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s original novel. And so I decided to make my version of Strahd similar to the depressed, weary-of-life Dracula in Netflix Castlevania, turning him into a vampire of complexities - a guy who’s been immortal for so long that he almost wants the players to kill him, a man who believes he’s entitled to the love of a woman yet somewhere deep down realizes the inherent selfishness of that belief, and a lord who’s grown bored with his kingdom yet can’t quite relinquish the power he’s held over it for centuries. My Strahd, in other words, was still a bad dude, but at least a somewhat deeper bad dude that the cardboard cutout as presented in the book, and one of my players even described him as “a little like Kylo Ren,” which I took as a compliment.

Before I wrap this up, I’d like to return to the concept of the balancing act with regards to the structure and scope of Curse of Strahd, which is a true sandbox adventure. Players are not required to visit half of the locations outlined in the book, and the replayability factor is high, because the various artifacts that you need to defeat Strahd, as well as the specific non-player characters likely to assist you along the way, are dependent on a tarot card reading that occurs near the start of the adventure. The locations that I found the most important for my players were the towns of Barovia and Vallaki, the Wizard of Wines Winery, Yester Hill, Van Richten’s Tower, the Ruins of Berez, and Castle Ravenloft itself. Other groups online swear by Krezk, a third town that my players never bothered to visit (though I would have urged them to go there if we’d had any clerics or paladins in the party, since Krezk is a town with a giant church), and the Amber Temple, the lair where Strahd obtained his undead powers (a place I feel is best suited for players of neutral or evil-leaning alignments). Your mileage may vary, but if you’re going to DM this module, one of the best bits of advice I can give would be to see which locations your players are naturally inquisitive about, and then focus on those. Exploring every nook and cranny of Barovia can quickly turn into a slog otherwise.

With all this in mind, I think it’s time for the so-called “Well-Doners” to leave the world of gothic horror behind for a bit. They’ve somehow managed to find their way back to their home plane and the city of Waterdeep, and only one of the party was infected with a seemingly fatal curse after their stay in Ravenloft. What further quests await, I wonder, and what new campaign book will I hack apart to suit my players’ tastes? That’s for me to know, for them to find out, and for another long blog post examination...sometime in 2020, hopefully!

All photographs taken by me.

[myfriendpokey]

GARBAGE DAY!

a bunch of scrappy shorter pieces to clean out my drafts folder for the new year!

***

A videogame will tend towards exhausting every possible variation of a design space whether anyone wants it to or not.

Videogames and duration - if something is good it should continue being good however long you extend it. You don't really encounter the idea that something can be good for a little while and then be evil.

***

Works of art are "in conversation" with their audience, with materials, with history, with each other. The aim of an artwork is to start, or add to, "the conversation". "Conversation" sort of edges out the older tic whereby art "examines" or "explores" something, which always made me think of a big magnifying glass being propped up for the benefit of some eerily calm 1950s scientist. But now that sounds too chilly, and perhaps sort of sketchy in the power dynamics it implies. "Conversation" is much warmer, informal and more fluid - "conversation" is the assurance that any given power dynamic can be dissolved away in the warm glow of basic, mutual humanity. Let's talk it through! My door is always open! Whenever there's a complaint over labour conditions or harassment it's nearly de rigueur to also quote the wounded-sounding HR lackey, upset that people didn't talk to them about it before going public. Why would anybody deny the friendly, outstretched hand of the respected opponent and their entirely in-good-faith quibbling about word meanings, personality and tone? Why don't we have an honest conversation about the "honest conversation", that numbing discourse cloud sprayed out like formic acid to neutralize a threat, to melt any unsettling edges or contraries back into the familiar gloop of the private and the personal.

***

One of the pleasures of videogames is that of an infinitely repeatable, always identical procedure. Pressing the button makes something happen, and by pressing it again it will happen again in the same way. So there's a kind of abundance or excess built into the system - like partaking of a fruit which will never be depleted, and in the process taking on in your own actions something of that same infinity. You can temporarily identify with the self-identical, eternally reproducing action that you are performing. I think one of the difficulties of videogames is that as you get (slightly!) older, that immortal quality becomes more visibly alien, harder to align to your sense of self. That these mechanics act like black holes, able to absorb any amount of your life without ever being satiated, becomes a terrible curse rather than an unexpected gift. That endlessness now seems eerie and artificial, a horrible parody of life rather than the highest version of it. 

The dadification of vgames has gone much remarked. But as well as a demographic shift I think this reflects a certain anxiety about the centrality of these immortal entities, these endless loops, within the culture. As reward for your fealty to the Mario brand you get even more Mario games, which by now you may not have time or energy to actually play. The VG dad (or even the buff, single pseudo-dads of the superhero movies) is eternally exhausted with the genre that he’s trapped in. We hear him groan and complain as he painfully slogs through the motions. The gratuitous loop is redeemed by the finite human suffering of the dad, as he manfully does what it takes to keep these things going forwards to the next generation, so that the next set of children may be able to actually take pleasure in them again. But the attempt to symbolically re-integrate these things into human life by casting them as a family drama never quite works: their ultimate indifference to that life shines through. A blind, eerie deathlessness is both their charm and their authority.

***

That saying that when all you have is a hammer everything else looks like a nail - similarly, when all you have is willpower, everything looks like an obstacle to be pounded into submission by that same willpower. 

Laziness is a good thing in that it means stepping back from this idiot insatiability of the will. If you're lazy you have to pay more attention, because you're more aware of both your own limits and the limits of your material. 

I think there can be value in suspending a formal problem rather than building an exhaustive system to solve it forever. That way it's still something you have to think about, something that still throws off and reroutes the normal workings of your awful private fantasy machine. Dropping text strings into the game as elements to spatially encounter is not ideal technically but does force you to be more responsive and exploratory with how you use that text. Robust systems can be cool, but can also really homogenize everything - now "text" is just the miscellaneous stuff within the all-purpose "textbox" at the bottom of the screen, cementing its role as filler content.

The funny thing about really systemic, open-world type games is that their very robustness tends to suffocate exprience before it happens. We know nothing will happen which will significantly impact this camera POV, this dialogue system.. anything can happen except for anything which would require a fundamental change to the underlying inventory system. But maybe the whole pleasure of the open world game is just being able to hold those experiences in suspense.

***

Mostly the characters voicing my own opinions in my videogames are explicitly malign and sinister - which is a corny device for me to vent without worrying as much about browbeating people with my opinions. But it's also a way of having those opinions without allowing them to overdetermine the rest of the game, or be fully in control over the more ambivalent and drifting work of "putting together different pieces on a screen to make interesting spaces". So in that sense my own ideas really are the enemies, and any plot role they serve in the game is a dramatisation of the effort to create a space where they lack controlling power.

***

RPG Maker is a collage machine, you get a set of pictures and start placing them around until they start to form some kind of charged and interesting space.

I think the collage aspect is a lot of what I enjoy about making these things, which is why games with more polished or consistent art styles frequently leave me cold. For me the greater the discrepancy between different objects on screen means a greater effect when they're combined. 

How does gameplay etc tie in? For me gameplay can divert the interest but never truly capture it. For decades games have had the problem of effectively being able to train you to do something, but having no idea what that thing should be or why it would matter. They effectively move your attention around without being able to settle it because their inner logic is basically always the same ahistorical, mechanistic void. But this can be a good thing - the permanently restless and unsettled nature of videogame attention can't illuminate itself, but can do so to other things in passing. 

Distraction becomes a way to examine surfaces, rather than being sucked into depths or settled to one fixed meaning. And the drift of unsettled consciousness is ultimately what animates game collages, the spaces that shift and react as attention plays across them, revealing or withholding. And so from this perspective, the answer to why I make videogames is: because I don't trust myself to look after an aquarium.

***

Design is managerial aesthetics - a mode of expertise framed as meta-expertise specifically because it scales up so well to systems of mass organisation and production. It's a universal discipline insofar as the task of removing any obstacles to the frictionless flow of attention and of capital is now also a universal chore. In this context a designer is like the MBA who can be dropped into any business to improve it, without ever having to know just what product they make – because the ultimate goal is always the same, the same tools can always be used. 

The cutesy books about the design of everyday life and so forth exist in the same vein as the ones that tell us there's nothing wrong with marketing because ultimately isn't all human discourse and activity some form of marketing? Isn't everything "design"? The strange top-heaviness with which these things outgrow their host categories parallels the unstoppable expansion of executive salaries within the businesses themselves. The task of managing other people's labour becomes ever more grandoise, ineffable, cosmic and well-paid as that labour in turn is framed as a kind of undifferentiated slop which exists for the sake of being shaped by creatives.

***

tragedy / comedy:

Generalizing hugely I feel like tragedy is about an event or experience so powerful it changes everything - for the characters involved, for the people in that world, for the audience watching - while conversely comedy is the idea that no event or experience can change anything. Oedipus dies and there's a big announcement and everyone has to sit through the awkward two-minute silence before getting back to work, while trying not to fart or itch too noticeably, and the next day somebody's selling Oedipus commemorative pens which run out of ink five minutes after opening, and the pen cap gets lost and the cat starts playing with it. 

In comedy the tragic can still happen, it’s just never strong enough to escape the constraints of the inert material universe which we find ourselves in – all that which remains so stubbornly intractable towards the higher instincts. I can talk about the dignity of man but there's still a risk that my pants will fall down or that someone will hit me with a ladder, causing my head to get stuck inside a bucket of paint, etc. Or my voice might be ridiculous or I might have a stutter (old comedy standbys!), or someone might hear part of my words out of context and assign them a different and unintended meaning. Comedy is consciousness imprisoned within a cumbersome matter which it can't completely do anything with, but also can't exist without. 

Taken as a worldview, this sort of risks congealing into the kneejerk reactionary things-can-never-change, whatever-moment-of-human-history-i-was-reared-in-is-eternal-and-inviolate radio DJ / South Park mindset. And of course somebody's view of what constitutes a tragic, life-changing event depends greatly on whether it's happening to them or someone else. But as exaggeration, in its neurotic overemphasis of the inescapable material, i think this approach still has interest and use. Many of my favourite writers have a kind of comic understanding of consciousness: consciousness becomes a churning material process with its own independent momentum which has to be examined and accounted for as part of any real reckoning with the world. In this light comedy becomes a way to think about opacity and limitation, both in physical matter and in our own selves.

I think many people have made the point that vgames are generally comic, intentionally or unintentionally. The rhetoric around them still tends towards the tragic: make the choice which changes everything! Deal with the consequences, accept your fate! But in practice those moments feel less visible than the clumsy material layer of GUIs, inputs, mechanics and representations that contain and constrain them. The opacity of the black box is one inhibition: was that meant to happen? Was it scripted or a glitch? Maybe I should reload my save and try again. Another is the inertia of the various game systems and loops themselves - [x] character may have died but you still need to collect those chocobo racing feathers if you want the Gold Sword. The numbers in a videogame "want" to keep going up, whatever happens: there's an affordance there which exists independently to any merely human wants and needs, and so tends to act as a gravity well for distracted consciousness as it wanders around. When people talk about tragedy in videogames it's usually with the implicit rider that it's within a game, or set of game conventions, which have become naturalised enough to become invisible. Which also tends to mean the naturalisation of a form, of inputs, of technology, of distribution mechanisms and assumptions, which however arty we can get are still inherently tied to the tech industry. Every art game is to some extent an invitation to spend more time internalising the vocab of your windows computer.

I've mentioned that the materialism of comedy can tend towards unthinking reaction. But the insistence on certain limits inherent to the human body – requirements like clean water and clean air, food and shelter, actual bathroom breaks and not piss jugs and also not having to live six feet beneath a rising sea level - can be helpful at a point when all these things are regarded as negotiable impediments to the pursuit of future profit. Maybe it’s a good thing that some materials can still be so insistent about refusing to be absorbed into the will.

***

I think what I most enjoy about art is the sense of a game with moveable stakes: where you never quite know the value of what you're playing for, which now appears absolutely trivial, and now appears to stand in judgement of the whole world, etc. I think this is also the Adorno idea of the aesthetic as really the extra-aesthetic, that which can step outside or threaten to step outside the limits of the merely aesthetic. It's why "just make a good game / pop song / comic / etc" never quite works, in rhetoric or in practice: the really good pop song is never that which just gives the enjoyable three minutes of listening we might consciously assign to be its remit, it's what overflows or undercuts that category, that which however briefly seems at risk of stepping outside it and into the realm of everyday life.

I grew up on pop culture so I don't have to feel positively towards it. Who am I meant to be defending it from? The handful of surviving WASPs reared on Brahms who get the ostentatiously-fussy-culture-review posts at print newspapers looking to pick up a slightly higher quality of margarine advertisement? The best thing pop culture ever gave me was its own critique: that of containing artists and moments which couldn't be squared with what the rest of it was saying, which seemed  to call the whole enterprise into question and in doing so broadened the sense of what was possible. Pop culture was never quite identified with itself, the value it has is in containing elements which make that self-identification impossible. So it always throws me off to see people celebrating "pop culture", like it's a self-produced totality, when that totality was only ever good for kicking.

Pop culture survives through a negativity it can never properly acknowledge.

[images: Tower of Druaga, Detana!! TwinBee, True Golf Classics: Wicked 18, Microsurgeon, Dark Edge]

[ryanmeft]

What We Want from The Elder Scrolls VI

Because I am now old and need comfort food, I decided to get the remaster of Skyrim, which isn’t really all that remastered. And it’s still fun. But after the better part of a decade and numerous advancements made, both by Bethesda and others, it’s lost a little something.

Since the sixth Elder Scrolls game is still a giant question mark all around and is at least several years out, this seems like a good time to highlight what we, and by we I mean I but really we because I’m always right, would like to see in the next installment. While Bethesda hopefully has some all-new tricks up their sleeves, this list is mostly ideas from games released since that should make their way into Tamriel.

Construction

Minecraft originally released only one week after Skyrim. You might be aware that it has since gone on to dominate all life in the universe. It has left traditional games scrambling to catch up with the world of user-created content, which Bethesda attempted to do in Fallout 4 by letting you tinker with settlements. This more or less dominated my time in that world. When I did tear myself away to do a mission, I fretted over whether my settlers were safe. Still, it was a work in progress: you couldn’t build a whole new settlement from scratch, and your control over them was limited. In TES6, I want to see this taken to the extreme. I want an entire region of the world, perhaps one previously devastated by war, which I can reshape into my image as though I were like unto a god. I want to be able to make Ryanistan the newest province of Tamriel. Being able to buy a house isn’t enough. I want to birth a world. Business-wise, surely the prospect of selling new materials as micro-transactions is enough to get the bean-counters on board with this. 

Deeper Relationship Mechanics

Fallout 4 had better and more interesting companions to follow you around the wasteland than previous Bethesda games, but your interactions with them were only marginally more varied than those in Skyrim. Gameplay-wise, they still functioned as a bullet sponge and a place to store your crap. In a time when people are expecting less and less of the Uncanny Valley to show in their games, this is probably already a priority of Bethesda’s. Some suggestions: make them fully customizable and upgradeable. Make them essentially their own character, perhaps with unique skills and perks only they can learn. Being able to switch control between them and your avatar (and possibly have the way people interact with you change accordingly) would be, like, boss and stuff. The ability to have more than one recruited permanently, doing stuff around town as they did in Fallout when not adventuring with you, would make them feel like actual friends and not just A.I. And of course, having friendship and romantic options with them that change based on your behavior would seal the deal. Basically, I’d like to see the kind of cool, varied characters present in Fallout 4 mixed with the depth of interaction of a Bioware game.

Actually Affecting the World

If there’s one big thing that feels missing in Skyrim after having spent time with games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect and Fallout 4, it’s the idea that you as the main character have an actual impact on the world. In DA:I, you became a ruler and could pass judgement, and your actions all fed back into the overall war. In Fallout 4, it was actually impossible to complete all the quests, because at some point you had to choose between multiple antagonistic factions, and there was no going back. By comparison, the only decision of any significance you have to make in Skyrim is who to side with in a Civil War, and not only does it have no bearing on the outcome of the main story, but the effects on the world are minimal. No matter what you do, it’s still the same old Skyrim. Having to choose between multiple factions, and having that choice bear real consequences for the world, would make you feel like you had some agency and weren’t just a pair of arms for hire to whoever wants you. One possibility is to give you greater impact in the world the more influential you become. For example, instead of climbing the ranks at the Mages Guild yielding only some gameplay rewards and dialogue changes, have it grant your character a say in the politics of the world, one that shows in the ending.

Multiple Regions

This one is pretty simple. Skyrim is a beautiful vision of a viking wonderland, but after bopping around in the multi-cultural Elder Scrolls Online for a while, it’s hard to go back to one type of place. A single player game probably wouldn’t support the dozen-plus regions the online version can offer, but having a few choices would be nice.

Cooler Abilities

A big part of the appeal of RPGs is that they let you do cool stuff with weapons, magic and armor. In this regard, TES has always been kind of lacking when stacked up against its peers; I doubt anyone would tell you combat is their favorite part of the series. In addition to oft-requested improvements like a third-person mode that isn’t f’ed in the A and encounters that actually require strategy, a wider variety of abilities that are easier to integrate into combat would be great. I want to be able, with enough effort, to summon fists of stone and make my character levitate, or customize my sword to shoot lightning when I swing it. I want enemies to have a brain among them so that these new powers are actually useful. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is great inspiration to look to for this. Basically, I want combat to be something I look forward to, and not something I begrudgingly put up with to see what’s on top of that mountain.

Survival Mode

This isn’t something I actually use myself, but it’s a feature I know has a pretty serious following in Fallout and the brutal Roguelike genre, as well as the Dark Souls series. Even Zelda got in on the action a bit with the last entry, factoring the environment into your exploration. One way to advance this beyond the way it’s now done would be to give us a sliding scale instead of simply two options. That way, people who want a little risk in their exploration could get it, as could people who want none at all or the whole always-about-to-die experience.

Quick Hits:

More Varied Voices: I forgot just how many re-used voices there are in Skyrim. It’s a bit of an immersion breaker.

Better Inventory System: Including manually sorting stored items and a “store all” option.

Clothes Not Tied To Your Armor: For the fashionistas among us.

A Good Story: I understand the whole “choices” angle, but the low-fantasy theme seems a bit outdated now.

Oblivion and Skyrim were two of the greatest games of their generation, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Skyrim perfected the formula rather than significantly evolving it. At the time, the five-year wait felt like an eternity. It’s already been longer than that since Skyrim hit, and all indications are that at least a decade and likely two console generations will pass before we actually get to play TES6. With even the Zelda franchise embracing radical changes, we can only hope that in addition to the things we want from already existing games, Bethesda is set to give us something that’s worth the wait.

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

Day is a vestigial mode of time measurement

Prelude and definitions

There are a lot of ways to play tabletop RPGs.

Somebody out there is nodding their head, thinking about D&D 3.5 and 5e and Pathfinder and maybe even E6, but we can go broader. Some tables run entirely oneshots, games with no recurring characters from week to week. Some tables stick with one ruleset the entire time they’re together, others swap rules after each campaign, still others swap rules half a dozen times in a single story arc. Some tables are comprised of close friends and family, others of strangers who don’t interact apart from the game. Lately though, I’ve been thinking about one style of play in particular that I know a lot of people highly value: Indefinite duration, bounded, high-context campaigns in tables with low to negligible turnover and frequent regular sessions.

I just threw out a lot of jargon there and frankly half of that jargon are terms I’ve only really seen myself use, so what do I mean?

Indefinite duration games don’t know how long they’re going to last. They can’t tell you they’ll be done by June 16th, or after fifteen sessions.

Bounded games do actually (hypothetically) have a planned end. Some bounded games never actually reach their intended end, and all games eventually stop even if they’re unbounded. This is easiest to see in the shape of the arcs- take Avatar: The Last Airbender, which (from practically the first episode!) sets up a clear goal for the protagonists and has a discernible beginning, middle and end. If AtLA had gotten canceled after the first season, there would be a clear sense of something missing. Buffy The Vampire Slayer on the other hand could probably have run indefinitely, and Supernatural looks like it plans to.

High Context games are hard to explain to an outsider, as each session interrelates to the next. Marvel Netflix shows and the webserial Worm are high context- a random episode of Jessica Jones, shown to someone who hasn’t seen any others, makes relatively little sense because its character arcs are built up over many prior episodes. The TV show The Twilight Zone and the Redwall books are low context: sit down to any individual example of those, and you’ll be able to understand what’s going on just fine as there’s no connecting thread between them. High context games almost always require...

Low Turnover tables, where the same faces are there every session, and when a player joins that player is usually in for the long haul. Introducing new characters usually takes a few sessions or more to integrate into the group, and there’s almost always a unique story reason for them to join. A player leaving a low turnover table is usually given a grand sendoff if the departure can be predicted in advance, or becomes a strange plot hole if the departure is sudden.

Frequent sessions is a somewhat fuzzy term. Here, I’m using it to mean sessions that happen every week.

Regular sessions happen at the same time and day, like every friday night or every sunday morning.

Advantages

There are a lot of advantages to this setup. Bounded and indefinite games grant the GM a grand canvas on which to write their story; the tabletop versions of Lord of the Rings, Worm, and the Wheel of Time are all expansive tales that would not work if their length was constrained or their endings neutered. (A game can be long but still have a definite duration- I could design a campaign to run for exactly five hundred sessions- but I don’t think J. R. R. Tolkien could have told you from the start how many pages he would need for the Lord of the Rings. The tale, as they say, grew in the telling.) Characters can undergo great changes, and corruption or redemption can be woven into the story subtly.

High context and low turnover means that you can drop details into the early parts of the game and pay them off later in ways that would be blatant and obvious if done over the course of a single session. It is a strange experience to look back from Mount Doom and realize how far we are from the shire, and it is strange to return to Brockton Bay as Gold Morning rises.

Frequent sessions are needed both to keep the events of the story fresh in your player’s minds and to allow reaching the end of such a story- I would roughly estimate that the Exalted game that I was part of involved around three hundred sessions, played over the course of seven years! If it was once a month instead of once a week, we would have taken twenty five years to cover the same ground. Finally, if you are going to play every week, then it can be convenient to pick a day and time then stick to it, rather than renegotiating four or five schedules every week.

Disadvantages

The primary disadvantage is that this is an incredibly fragile setup.

When you are planning games over the course of nearly a decade, you will find the lives of the people involved change. The Exalted game of this form I was in started in the early years of my bachelor’s degree; we all graduated and scattered across four or five different states. Gaming online helps with distance, but people get married (granted, that one’s less of a problem if players marry each other or the GM) or change jobs (we lost a player to exhausting manual labor) or just change tastes. In sufficiently high context games, these changes are really hard on the game: A reveal near the end may be unintelligible or worse, unimportant to players who weren’t there in that college apartment five years ago when this all started. Missteps and gaps are hard to recover from.

You will also find the vagarencies of system will be a problem. In a long enough run, all outliers will happen eventually. Even if no players drop out, a string of terrible rolls can kill important characters. You may even come to find that every single original character has fallen and been replaced. Can the system even handle that much play and advancement? (D&D has a few shift changes between level 1 and level twenty, and then it just starts getting weird. A level 60 Wizard is essentially an incoherent concept in 3.5.) Errata will be released for your game: do you adopt it? What if an entire new edition of the system is released? Updating Dresden Files to Fate Core is perhaps sensible, Exalted 2e to 3e is a judgement call, but would D&D 4e to 5e make any sense?

Stories (at least in the western tradition) have beginnings, middles, and ends. Sub arcs of such a campaign can be longer than entire storylines in a shorter game, providing valuable opportunities to practice, but the fact remains that I’ve run more complete games of Paranoia than I’ve run complete games of Exalted. Practice is valuable, and long form games are hard for a GM to practice and perfect. Players also gain experience, and may find that a character has resolved their story or that they wish to make a new, more complex character.

This is hard, is what I’m saying.

Solutions

I’ve finished (. . .ish) one game like this where I was a player, and am moving into the end steps of another I’m running. I’m contemplating starting a new one once the game I’m running finishes. One of the greatest GMs I know swears by this format, and doesn’t want to do anything else. As hard a problem as this is, I would like to find solutions. Some issues can be solved by relaxing one of the requirements, but we’ll assume for now that these are ironclad.

Where do you get your players? Perhaps one of the more valuable things I get from occasionally running one-shots or short-throw games is finding new players, who I can evaluate and then consider for future longer games. It’s not just what they’re like while playing, but how often they show up to games or how they interact with other players. Crosstalk can also be a sneaky way to onboard players: Players talk about the games they’re in, and my S.O.’s Monsterhearts table has heard plenty of details about our Exalted and D&D games. That can be a place to draw new players who are excited about your game and who are already informed as to what’s been going on in your campaign.

Gaps and missed sessions are probably going to happen, but you can minimize the damage they do. Consider: what do you do if a single player can’t make it? If you shrug your shoulders and cancel for that week, you preserve the expectation and pressure on each player- but you also leave everyone else with an empty saturday night, one that perhaps they wish the could have made plans for. This can compound: Someone has a wedding to attend this week, and then next week you’re not in the right headspace to GM, then the next week someone’s power is out, and the week after that you find that a player has a date because “I didn’t think we’d wind up gaming that night.” The question isn’t “do I want to do this other thing or attend the game this week” it’s “how much do I value the other thing times the odds it actually happens, vs how much do I value the game times the odds it actually happens.” If the odds get bad enough, your game can be the highlight of your player’s week and still lose out.

Letting everyone know as early as possible is good, but you can also mitigate this by having something else to do that night; run a oneshot or a side campaign, play a videogame together or some Settlers of Catan, or even a social night where you sit around and shoot the breeze. Anything to prevent the train of thought that goes “oh, I guess Bob isn’t around so we aren’t gaming. Darn. Well, I guess I’ll spend the night alone- kinda wish I’d said yes to that cute date. Next time, maybe!” If you do this well enough, you can actually add people: In high school my table ate pizza and played Halo friday night if we didn’t have the numbers to play RPGs, and we wound up inviting a guy in the neighborhood over when we did. We found that he actually penciled in gaming at my place to his schedule every friday, and as long as he had that time set aside anyway did he want to learn to roll some dice? (He did, and still does, and is part of my monday night table.)

On that subject, how do you handle it when someone cancels? It’s best to give everyone as much information as you can as early as you can, because it lets them take advantage of the gap and prevents them feeling like they’re “losing” a night. (This is especially important if you game on a hotly contested timeslot: most people don’t have a lot competing for their Tuesday evenings, but a Friday Night is the centre of a lot of people’s social lives.) If you want that though, I think you need to be kind and understanding when you get that cancellation: if you get angry at people for missing, then they delay longer and longer to tell you (either in case circumstances change, or just putting off that anger) and you can’t give other people early warning. You probably don’t want people to come to view your game as an obligation, but feeling punished for lack of attendance can cause that to happen.

So, you’ve arranged things so that whether there’s a game or not, everyone looks forward to Sunday Night every week, and people tell you a couple of weeks in advance when they aren’t going to be able to be there. Why are your players hoping your game does run? In writing, there’s an idea of “the page turner” where each situation leads to a question of what happens next, and the reader can get sucked into wanting “one more chapter!” This effect can also be recognized in videogames (“one more turn!” *birdsong outside* “Gah, it’s morning!”) and even TV shows. I think it’s possible to make this happen in tabletop games. If you’ve got a tight plot full of twists and intrigue, you can get it the same way you do in writing. If you’ve got a mechanical system that’s genuinely *fun* to engage in, that can be a great too. (My Blades in the Dark table would often ask for a second heist right after we finished the ‘session’, because they wanted that next piece of Turf they’d just unlocked access to or because c’mon, we just need two more Rep to go up a Tier!)

We can do better than that though. I think a seriously underrecognized source of danger in long-running campaigns is a weak middle, where you spend a couple of sessions in a row building up or setting tone and it’s only afterwards that players look back and see the unfolding tale as compelling. A question I ask myself after each night as part of my usual evaluation is “what made this session great?” The kinds of answers vary depending on the group and the system, but if there isn’t an answer then that’s the sort of thing I try very hard to fix! When I sit down to plan a session, I think about something cool that I can make sure is in there. Don’t get me wrong, ‘filler’ episodes do have an important purpose sometimes- they connect with the day to day parts of your character’s lives, they let you sneak in setup and Chekov’s Guns, they give a chance to roleplay and let characters bounce off each other, heck Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish Granting Engine is basically a game built around filler episodes- but keep your eye on the ball. What do your players love doing, or love telling stories about afterwards? Is there a reason you can’t do more of that next session?

I know when the long Exalted game that closed up recently was shifting into endgame, a big reveal came that. . . well, it landed, and we noticed, but it took far longer to percolate and had to be spelled out more than I know our GM wanted. The pacing of tabletop games, even played every week, is different than the pacing of a book. I read Worm (a simply enormous web serial) over the course of years as each week a couple of chapters were released, and the twist caught me by surprise. I know someone who read it over the course of a month or so, because they got into it once it had already concluded and they saw it coming a mile ahead of time. If a player gets blindsided by something that was telegraphed and set up, pause, and consider whether it was set up four years ago. Something I’ve taken to doing to combat this is writing down, at the end of each session, a paragraph about what happened. 

I’ve found this is helpful for me as a GM, but also really helpful for the players as we resume after a break. (Plus, it’s cool to read!) Even if you have a full log of what’s happened (a text log because you play via chat, or a video archive because you record sessions) people can scan the summary faster than they can look through an entire log. This helps catch new people up, this is a good tool for clarifying my thoughts as a GM, this is a neat place to screw with your players (someday, I am going to run a Cosmic Horror long form game, and my players are going to trust the summaries I’ve written, and I am going to weave an elegant lie into that record, and this is going to work even though I said I was going to do this right here.) and hey, you can even end each summary with a question that hypes up what happens next.

Compromises

If your vision of how you want to run your game is absolutely how your games must be run- Indefinite duration, bounded, high-context campaigns in tables with low to negligible turnover and frequent regular sessions- then this is where we part ways for a bit. Do a search for “concluding thoughts” and we’ll catch back up below. If you think you could budge a bit on those requirements though, or if you just want to see me go through the exercise, so be it, and fall on. I think there are tremendous gains to be made by removing even one of these requirements.

Finite Duration. I’ve been dating my S.O. for six years now. We’ve been asked more times than I can count “so, when is he going to pop the question?” and I’ve been deflecting the question with less and less grace and good humour as things go on. The truth is, I think about swearing a holy vow to be with them “til death do us part” and I think about value drift, and I think about how I am actually deeply transhumanist and how I plan to live to see the last star go out, and I think about the fact that sweet light there are seven billion people on this planet and I find around a billion of them to be hot, and about how zero and one are not probabilities, and I can’t bring myself to do it. And then I think about how I do want to be with them in five years, and in ten, and how I do want to settle down and find a house that fits us both and raise children and see them off and still love each other, and how I could swear to be with them for that many years.

My saturday night D&D group just fell apart, and for a moment towards the end I thought about swearing, with all the force of an oath, to be there and ready every single saturday until it concluded in an attempt to forestall this. And I thought, very clearly, “that could mean never having a weekend vacation or a saturday night date for the rest of my life, you know how this GM likes long stories.” So I didn’t commit, and maybe I should have. But if I could have looked and seen an end date, I would have felt much better about making that commitment. A finite duration campaign can draw a stronger and more reasoned commitment than an indefinite one.

Unbounded. You know what’s a great book series? Redwall. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a sucker for castles and badass swords. (Though ya know, those are both great.) One of the great things about Redwall is it could have kept going forever. A Redwall campaign could go arc after arc, and have clean places to step out or step back in, and still come together. Someday I want to run a game with the progression like Redwall-> Mossflower -> Martin the Warrior -> The Legend of Luke and it will be awesome. You know what else is great? Mythbusters. I mean, every episode works all on its own, and that makes it really tempting to binge watch. That feeling of no commitment that works out to being stronger than any promise of a sixteen season masterpiece.

An Unbounded game provides a real bulwark against mid-act duldroms. If every session or every arc is going to be basically like this, then everyone involved can get their acts together about making “basically like this” be awesome. One of my greater lightbulb moments came from discussing Star Wars, when someone pointed out that you can in fact kill Darth Maul one night, General Grievous the night after, and Count Dooku after that and there’s nothing stopping you from lining up another kickass saber dual and sith lord every session after that. We don’t need to spend a whole session talking about how much we hate sand.

Low-Context. I wanted to come up with something for everything on this list, but honestly, just swapping to low-context and not changing anything else doesn’t seem to give you any benefit that I can see. It might be prefered by some people, but more often high-context is an advantage you get from the other components being in place.

High Turnover. If you have solutions in place for maintaining the high-context capabilities of your players even with high turnover, then high turnover (or even the capacity for it!) can help ameliorate the issues of this general form of campaign marvelously. If it is straightforward and not at all unexpected for a player to drop out for a few months and then resume, or for a new player to join for a while before leaving, then you can give each player the benefits of a finite campaign while still reaping the benefits of having long timescales or ongoing plots. Taken to the extreme, a game like Blades in the Dark can operate with a completely new roster of players every single night and still work, the adventures of the crew as a whole only glimpsed in part by each player but still represented in the tapestry of stories they tell. It offers a way for a table to mix and match expectations- perhaps two players are always there every night, and the other two seats are filled by a rotating array of sidekicks and accomplices. (This is fitting for the superhero genre, but of course the same format can be used by anything from pirates to westerns to a dungeon crawl.)

Infrequent Sessions. Momentum in storytelling is important, but so are the many other demands on most of our time. A full time job, chores and appointments and exercise and socializing outside of gaming and any number of things eat into our free time. Heck, sometimes even if you love the table and love the game you want a break for a week. Longer gaps between games give more space to the other things in our lives, and they also make sharing high priority timeslots much easier. Friday Night Magic has a lot of overlap with the D&D crowd and a schedule that suggested playing every Friday might eventually compete with that- but offer every other Friday, and suddenly people can have both the things they want in their lives. Just by alternating weeks, you can take the pressure off by opening up that timeslot for other things some of the time to things that can’t or won’t move.

And you know what? I think there’s a lot of unexplored design space around very infrequent sessions. I got into a brief discussion last year around an important ritual I attend exactly once a year, where someone pointed out that part of its special feeling came from scarcity and a once-a-week event wouldn’t be able to capture that. They were right, and I agreed at the time that an RPG wouldn’t be capable of replicating an emotional space. Having thought about it more, I find I want to test that. About once a month me and my significant other go out on a nice date, dressed up just a little, and luxuriate in each other’s company- you know, the company that is lying around on the couch watching TV or reading a book the other twenty nine days of the month. If we went out on the town every weekend, it would stop being special. 

In my scheming ambition, I think about what a once-a-year game of Ten Candles would feel like, or how about setting aside a weekend twice a year to get together with my polycule and play through Emily Boss’s Romance Trilogy? Those aren’t high context games and they lack the kind of continuity that these games treasure I suppose, so how about a campaign of Nobilis, played only every Autumn and Spring Solstice? Even on a more mundane atmosphere, Ars Magica is mildly infamous for the most relevant timescale being Seasons- I think I would enjoy a game of Ars that met once a Season, and that advanced in step with the passing of real years.

Momentum is important. So is gravitas.

Irregular sessions. “Every tuesday night” can actually be hard to schedule around. It’s great on paper, and it has the virtue of simplicity, but it turns out sometimes dear old aunt Maude is visiting for the first time in years and she’ll be arriving Tuesday evening, or it’s Tuesday and you really want to game but your boss is hounding you about getting that report filed by tomorrow morning’s meeting or else.  Holidays wreck gaming schedules for that exact reason- a whole avalanche of important arrivals and departures and preparations. I think Irregular sessions actually aren’t as hard to arrange as the reputation suggests. Google Calendar, Doodle.com, and old fashioned spreadsheets can make picking a day relatively painless if you do it at the start of the week. Maybe you’ll settle on the same day week after week- but this gives a built in place to check in with the rest of the group if something comes up and you’ll be out of town that day, without feeling like you’re dislodging everyone’s expectations. Or you can be even less formal, and whenever the GM is in the mood they can ping everyone via a group text or a messaging app with a simple question: “Hey, I wanna game tonight, who’s free at six tonight?” Who knows, maybe you’ll find you can actually play more often than you thought!

Concluding Thoughts

There it is. A detailed description of a particular approach to games, some thoughts on issues that I have with that approach, and some plausible alterations that could be made. All along with waaay more words than any reasonable person would probably use on the subject.

There have to be a thousand variations on this hobby, and I believe all of them have something interesting to learn from. For those who love that big, sprawling game and can make it work, more power to you. As for me, I’m going to tinker, and I’m going to study, and maybe I’ll someday settle on that- but I doubt it.

I want to make it clear that I don’t think this kind of game is bad, but I think it might be incompatible with where I’m at these days. Maybe someday, when I have everything else settled and secured, I could return to it- but even then, I think I’d want to be at least one step away from it in a direction that gave an option for more freedom. For those who love this style, if you can, can you tell me what it is you love about it that wouldn’t survive a modification? What is it at the heart of your gaming style?

[gascon-en-exil]

A Not Actually Definitive Ranking of Fire Emblem Games

So after a lot of deliberation I’ve decided not to revisit last year’s Zelda ranking project on a full scale for FE, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something I really wanted to do. 2018 is the year we’re going to get alternatively hyped for and disappointed by FE16, after all. With that in mind have an abbreviated list that will end up being one very long post. I’ve got games to gush over and an anon or two (and very likely actual followers…eep) to piss off, so here we go.

The “personal favorites of the series, love revisiting them” Tier - FE10, FE2/15, FE4

I’m never going to argue that Radiant Dawn is a perfect game or even just a perfect FE game, but damned if it doesn’t manage to do so much right all at once. An extremely ambitious story that builds off its mostly conventional predecessor in a variety of interesting ways, deconstructing a bunch of series narrative standards (life in a defeated country kind of sucks and there are people that don’t warm that quickly to young and inexperienced rulers, go figure) and taking an eleventh hour hard right at Nietzchean atheism as read by a Pride parade. Kind of falls on its ass by the end, but every experimental FE story does the same thing so I can’t fault this one. I love the army switching as motivation to try different units almost as much as I love the oh-so-exploitable growth and BEXP mechanics. Its Easy mode also hits a sweet spot for me of being challenging enough to not be a complete snore while also allowing the freedom for all manner of weird self-imposed challenges that don’t even require grinding. By all accounts Hard mode is one lazy design choice after another, but I don’t play at that level so no complaints here.

Never played Gaiden, but to its credit around half of the unique gameplay mechanics I like in Shadows of Valentia were also in the original: the modest army size, the novel approaches to inventory management and magic, the pretty basic class system with just a hint of nuance. The remake threw in some hit-or-miss questing, dungeon exploration, and achievements, but all the rest was either a solid addition or a continuation of NES-era annoyances that I could live with. And the story…SoV makes me dislike the DS games even more just because this game does so much with so little. Even leaving aside the mostly great voice acting there’s a bunch of new content that characterizes almost everybody and makes half of them (the men, anyway, because this is a remake of a Kaga-era game and therefore misogynistic as can be) gay because why the hell not, and then some development that constitutes the only solid attempt at worldbuilding Archanea-Valentia-Ylisse has ever really gotten and also retcons some stuff from Awakening into making sense. It’s even got some solid DLC with lots of character stuff for the Deliverance, the least sucky grinding of the 3DS games, and probably the only context in which I’ll ever be able to comment on anything from Cipher.

No remake needed for Genealogy of the Holy War to make it competitive with the rest of the top tier - just an excellent translation patch and the standard features of an emulator. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones and probably don’t plan on it, but I gather that this game provides the same essential experience with less blood and female nudity and marginally more egalitarianism for all. I can forgive it for being the original Het Baby Fest since you’d be hard-pressed to find a single entirely healthy and well-adjusted individual anywhere on Jugdral and I relate to that just as much. Screwed up family dynamics for everyone! It’s also arguably got a more fun breeding meta than either of the 3DS games, lacking Awakening’s optimization around a single postgame map with very specific parameters or Fates’s high level of balance that ironically stymies analysis. This is another game for interesting inventory management and unit leveling that isn’t too obnoxious, which mostly makes up for the maps taking an eon to play through even with an emulator speeding through those enemy phases. This would be a strange game to remake, but if it got a localized one of the same caliber as SoV I fully acknowledge that this could climb to the #2 spot. SoV would probably have the queer edge though unless they do some strange things to the plot or just make Gen 2 really gay…but then again Gen 2 is the part that’s more in need of fleshing out as it is. (Also, this game has So. Much. Incest. That’s not even really a kink of mine especially as it’s all straight incest, but I just find that hilarious in light of how Tumblr’s purity culture speaks of such things.)

The “good games, but don’t come back to them as much” Tier - FE7, FE9, FE8

Blazing Sword is not here for nostalgia purposes, especially since when I first played the game at 14 years old most of what I like about it didn’t really register. It was just that game with RPG elements that I liked and permadeath that I didn’t, and it took a few games after that for me to become an established fan of the franchise. Massive props for putting such an unconventional spin on a prequel to a textbook FE; this is a game in a series about war in which no war is fought, how crazy is that? We actually get to see the backstory of FE6′s tragic antagonist, even as it’s completely tangential to the plot of this game and so just feels like random Jugdral-esque family drama without context, and on top of that we get the first hints of interdimensional travel and kinky human/shapeshifter sex several years before either of those became controversial talking points about how they were ruining the series. I am so there. Lyn doesn’t matter to the saga, but her character arc is distinct and self-contained and also she picked up a disproportionately large fanbase while being bisexual and biracial so go her. Eliwood is sympathetic and homosocially-inclined even if his growths frequently make me want to cry (at least he gets a horse unlike his similarly-challenged son), and I can live with Hector even if I could have done without his lordly legacy. Throw in some average-for-the-time gameplay with just enough variety across the two routes and even more good character work *waves at Sonia and Renault and Priscilla -> Raven/Lucius and Serra and…* and it’s all in all a solid experience. The ranking system can go die in a fire though, which funnily enough it did after this game. Yay!

Like most early 3D games - except on Gamecube so it’s even more embarrassing - Path of Radiance has aged terribly by every aesthetic measure aside from the soundtrack. It’s also painfully slow, and my computer can’t run Dolphin apparently so an emulator’s not going to fix that for me. Those obvious flaws aside, it’s still an entertaining game, and more importantly it’s the prologue that had the crucial task of setting up all the pins RD knocked over in stellar fashion, whether we’re talking about the basic storyline that actually isn’t or the many het relationship fake-outs (more so in localization…I guess we’ll never know if NoA was actively planning that when they pushed Ike/Elincia like they did). PoR is also a love letter to Jugdral in both gameplay and themes, albeit an occasionally critical one. The jury’s still out on whether Jugdral or Tellius succeeds the most (fails the least?) of the FE settings at developing a complete world with a nuanced and resonant saga narrative, but that Tellius manages to be competitive while being kind of clumsy overall with racism and shifting the series’s overarching motif of dragon-blooded superhumans to one of kinky interracial sex is pretty impressive. The less I say about Ike the better since it’s only his endings in RD that save him for me; suffice it to point out that his worldview and general personality were clearly designed to appeal to a demographic that does not include me.

And finally comes The Sacred Stones, truly my average benchmark FE as I like it but struggle to have any particularly strong feelings on it one way or the other. The story is standard but has a few intriguing quirks, like the light vs. dark magic meta, surprise necrophilia, and how the main antagonist’s sexuality sort of depends on which route you take (except he’s still never getting laid so does it really matter?). It also seems to have been the first game to have made a legitimate effort toward the kind of replayability that’s normal for RPGs, what with the branched promotions, the route split, and the actual postgame. That’s all much more engaging than just filling up a support log. The gameplay is also more polished and (I think?) more balanced than the other GBA games, if one is willing to overlook the minor issue of Seth. Let’s see…something something twincest that’s now an IS running gag, something something guys talking intimately about their lances, something something SoV did the whole dungeon crawling with monsters bit better but I can forgive SS for not taking it that far. Moving on….

The “they have Problems” Tier - FE14, FE13

Probably qualifies as a fandom heresy, but yes I’m putting Fates first of these two. Fates is in every conceivable way for me the “You Tried” game, because I had such high hopes for it from the moment we got the earliest promotional content. I was expecting a World of Warcraft-style conflict between two morally grey factions with myriad convoluted grievances against each other messily resolving themselves one way or the other according to player choice (though note that this is already somewhat damning with faint praise as no one’s going to call WoW a storytelling masterpiece), with Conquest in particular a true villain campaign that I imagined might play out as European Imperialism: The Game. What we actually got was…not that, not at all, but amid all the complaints about plot holes and idiot balls and moral myopia most fans seem to have forgotten just how much there is to this game. It’s three full stories that together average out to be just about passable, with possibly the biggest gameplay variety in the series that fixed most of Awakening’s more broken elements (pair-up, children being unquestionably superior to the first generation) while also adding in new features that undoubtedly appealed to someone or other like Phoenix mode and the castle-building aspect. I can even mostly forgive the obvious growing pains Fates exhibits in terms of queer content, as they were pretty much inevitable once the developers realized that (almost) everyone was picking up on the subtext and that that approach just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Again, they tried, and if the results included face-touching fanservice and plot contrivances left and right and two-way cultural posturing that inevitably crosses over into real world racism at some point I can still step back for a moment and acknowledge that Fates began as a distinctive, high-concept setting on par with Tellius and Jugdral that was willing to do something different with the narrative norm (for two of its routes at least, and even so I’m not begrudging Birthright its conventionality because that grounding is important overall). And who knows? Maybe a later game will come along and retroactively make this setting coherent.

Fates might have more sexual fanservice, but if there’s any FE that I feel ends up a slave to fanservice in a broader sense it would be Awakening. Yeah, I get that when it was in development everyone thought this would be the final game, so it makes sense that the finished product turned out to be a nostalgia-laden greatest hits piece. It’s still hard to forgive Awakening for feeling so insubstantial, doubly so since it ended up revitalizing the franchise and now it and Fates are everywhere. It’s got a plot that only makes some sense in light of SoV and possibly on a meta level (following my theory that the plot structure is meant to mirror FE1-3 in sequence), the first iteration of an Avatar dating game heavily coloring the characterization and support system, and a queasily feel-good atmosphere that allows almost no character to actually remain dead and centers everything around the self-insert and the power of friendship. So much for the series’s traditionally dim view of human nature and recurring theme of the inevitability of conflict. What’s more, in spite of its theoretically broad scope (including a criminally under-explored time travel plot with a bad future) and numerous call-backs to older games Awakening does surprisingly little for developing the series’s most frequently-visited setting. I think it was in large part how generic this game has always felt to me even before release that I never got very hyped for it and as a consequence was never very disappointed by it. It’s just….there, with its nostalgia and its chronic “no homo” and its host of hilariously broken mechanics. I wonder if we’d have ended up viewing Awakening more favorably if it really had been the last game? Eh, probably not.

The “needs a remake or needs a better remake” Tier - FE5, FE6, FE3/12, FE1/11

I don’t have a specific order for these, except that FE1/11 is almost certainly the bottom since 5 and 6 have remake potential and, lack of localization aside, New Mystery was a better remake than Shadow Dragon.

I still haven’t fully played Thracia 776, but I’ve watched and read through Let’s Plays and have read more than enough analysis and meta on the game to where I can definitively say that I wouldn’t enjoy playing it too much and don’t feel all that emotionally connected to the story except insofar as it relates to the overall Jugdral saga. The concept of a standard FE plot that ends with the playable cast losing is an intriguing one, though they really could have done better than the weird non-ending that is this game’s final boss. I’m also not as invested in Leif the fallen aristocrat as I usually am those types of characters, possibly because it’s a foregone conclusion that he eventually gets his kingship anyway. I would like a remake, hopefully one that smooths over some of the original’s mechanical roughness and also makes a bunch of characters gay because the material’s certainly there in places, but I also admit that I’d rather have a remake of Genealogy first. Or, for that matter….

Binding Blade doesn’t have the potential for an amazing story-driven remake that Thracia does; after all, it’s basically a soft reboot of FE1 with an equally bland lord saved by his Super Smash Bros. fanbase and possibly his weirdly large harem. That said, there’s a fair amount of character potential and worldbuilding opportunities what with the series’s first true support system and the content of its unorthodox prequel. Even by itself I feel like BB does more to sell Elibe as its own distinctive world than any of Marth’s games ever did for Archanea, and that’s even with the reality that like the Archanea games this playable cast is inflated with some really forgettable characters (that seem to have followed a semi-rigid numerical quota by class in this instance. It’s weird.). This game never really stuck in my mind as a good playable experience either, not helped by the fact that it feels simple and antiquated compared not only to the GBA games that followed it but to the Jugdral games that preceded it. Good on them for throwing out some of Thracia’s more unwieldy mechanics, but did they have to throw out skills, hybrid classes, and varied chapter objectives too? The space limitations of the GBA couldn’t have been that severe.

While I’ve been spending much of this post ragging on Archanea, I will say that (New) Mystery of the Emblem has some interesting character beats, like the resolution of the Camus/Nyna/Hardin tragedy, Rickard and the situationally bisexual(?) Julian, and some of the antics of Marth’s retainers. I did like bits of the remake’s new assassin plot even if most of it is cribbed from the Black Fang; Eremiya’s no Sonia, but Clarisse and Katarina have their moments. Also, Kris isn’t that offensive to me since I was never all that engaged in Marth’s inconsistent personality and from what I’ve seen his/her supports don’t all devolve into a dating sim. New Mystery has a broader array of characters than either the original or the previous remake, without requiring the player to kill off characters just to get some of the new ones. That said, the reclassing in the DS games is still broken and allows the player to strip even more character out of their personality-deprived units. I’m getting to the point where I’m having trouble separating the two actually, so I’ll just go ahead and remark that I think everyone can agree that Shadow Dragon is the worst of the three remakes so far, with no supports, the aforementioned killing of units, a prologue that adds to the story but only exists on Normal mode and also requires you to kill someone off (seriously, what is it with this game? Is it commentary on the necessary sacrifices of war that they tried forcing on the player for one game until they realized it was a terrible idea?), the needless removal of features from earlier games like rescuing even as others like weapon ranks and forging were left in, that first clumsy iteration of reclassing, and little to nothing that I can see as elevating the story above the standard fantasy adventure fare of Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light that might have been good in 1990 but didn’t look so hot in 2008. Archanea just feels so lifeless overall compared to every other setting in the franchise, to the point where I don’t even feel that guilty about putting the first game in the series way down at the bottom when over in the Zelda ranking I raised the NES games above ones I found more fun to play solely because of their historical significance. Isn’t FE1 arguably the first tactical RPG? I feel like I should appreciate it more, but I just can’t. *shrugs*

[xseedgames]

2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza Blog! #5

It’s time for our last Q&A blog of the year. It’s been a fun time answering all these questions--you guys had some seriously good ones!--but now it is time for us to chill out and celebrate 2018. Hopefully we can give you guys good reasons to celebrate 2018, too!

For our final Q&A blog, we have answers from:

Ken Berry, Executive Vice President / Team Leader John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager Ryan Graff, Localization Lead Liz Rita, QA Tester Nick Colucci, Localization Editor Brittany Avery, Localization Producer Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

Question: Does working on a game affect your enjoyment of it in any way? Do you anticipate playing the full package after it is done or do you play through it beforehand anyway? Have you ever been spoiled on a game through work and if yes how severe was it? - @MizuUnNamed

Brittany: It definitely does. It's like the difference between babysitting a kid over the summer vs. giving birth to that kid and raising them till they leave the house. Even the most frustrating things about a game will somehow become something you love in a weird way, because it’s your kid and it's your responsibility to raise it right. When you're localizing a game, you're choosing every single word, and every single decision you make for that game will shape the experience for the thousands of people who play it. Characters I'd normally hate as a player become characters I love because figuring out their dialogue is a joy, and stuff I never thought about in localization are now very particular to me because I want my kid to go out into the world looking its best.

I will always play the games I work on. Sometimes I play them in Japanese beforehand, but there are days where I edit a file while playing line-by-line just so I can look at a character's expression and match the line written to the face. Then I replay it a few time as the English builds come in, tweaking it bit by bit, because it feels different to see the English on a sheet compared to seeing it in-game. It takes a ton of time, but I'd rather have a final product I can be proud of than to give up because something requires extra work.

Liz: When I started working here the first thing I tested was Corpse Party PC. I played it for like 200 hours and that game is much shorter than that haha. I loved every second of it, and recently got to test it again for the Linux + SteamOS release. Oh boy, that was a treat <3 I also got to work on Cold Steel II and at the time I didn't have the consoles the first released for, so I just watched playthroughs online... bless Cold Steel PC! I don't think I've ever been spoiled on a game through work before.... except maybe for Book of Shadows? But I don't even remember that spoiler so does it really count?

Nick: This is going to vary widely from person to person. For me...admittedly yes, working on a game does impact the enjoyment I’m able to derive from that game as a finished product. I understand, going in, that simply by virtue of working on a game, I will know its plot from beginning to end, see all the character development (including optional stuff that you might not even be able to view in a single playthrough), and in general become a subject matter expert on its world and lore. I’ll have knowledge of all the optional events and the items it’s possible to get – and sometimes, even a few that exist but were never implemented.

Working on a game is usually a months-long endeavor, during which we often end up playing the game in various stages of beta (or even alpha) readiness. We experience bugs we hope you never will; all the times text isn’t displaying correctly, voice or music isn’t playing right, or the battle system is falling over foaming at the mouth. By the time a game is ready to be sold, we’ve spent more time with it than would probably be considered healthy from a consumer perspective.

Outside of post-launch support/tweaking I’ve done for games like Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, I’ve never picked up a game I’ve worked on here after it launched. They’re good games, and I’ve been proud of each project I’ve worked on so far – it’s just that I’m someone with a low tolerance for repetition. You know – the sort who would get sick of even my favorite movies if I watched them every day for a week straight. As cool a game as Trails of Cold Steel might be, I’m in no hurry to sink 80 hours into an RPG that I focused all my attention on for the better part of an entire year.

While it IS perhaps a bit regrettable that I “ruin” my ability to enjoy a game in a normal-player context by working on them, I feel it’s a small price to pay if I can help deliver something that players will really enjoy their time with.

Question: When you brought over Rune Factory 4 to Europe, what difficulties did you encounter? How was the process? - @Marower

Brittany: Hey! This is perfect for me! We really wanted to bring RF4 to Europe, but with the developer now shut down, it wasn't possible. We spent ages looking for a programming team who would be willing to help us that also had Marvelous Japan’s blessing, and then it became my little pet project. I had zero experience with the process, so it was a lot of learning and guidance from my boss, Ken. We were able to update the text a bit to fix typos, but because we would never be as familiar with it as the original team, we wanted to touch the game's code as little as possible since we didn't want to risk breaking the game.

I tried to reproduce this one rare bug that causes the game to crash at the end of arc 2 (this is present in the Japanese, too, so it wasn't introduced in English), but it was impossible. I started the EU version from scratch and went up to that point. There were rumors that soft resetting the game caused the issue since it really wasn't programmed to handle soft resets too much, so I did that as often as I could. Nothing. Oh, man... I wish I could've found the pattern that caused such a weird crash. It's rare, but no one wants a crash in their game.

NA only has one rating, but Europe requires several different ratings, so that's an interesting process. The store pages all require various languages, too, depending on the region. I learned that because you could palette-swap character models to simulate gay marriage that the game had to be 18+ in Russia. 18+! For a Rune Factory game! All of the processes take a bit longer, but it was mostly a lot of communication, paperwork, confirmations and such. All worth it to finally get that game out there!

Question: What process leads to additional content in localized releases? Things like additional voices for Trails of Cold Steel on PC. How do you decide which titles get "a little bit extra"? - @Baust528

Brittany:

Me (messaging programmer on Skype: hey are you up Sara (programmer): Yeah. What's up? Me: lmao wouldn't it be awesome if we could put x in the game Sara (ten minutes later): It's in the game.

That happens a lot. As a more serious answer, since we try to localize games we're personally passionate about, it's easy for us to see what we'd want as a fan, too. So we'll sit around and go, "Wouldn't this feature be nice?", and we'll see if it's doable. If it is, we'll do it.

The extra voice acting in Cold Steel PC came about because we wanted to do it for PS3/Vita, but it wasn't possible. I asked if we could put the games on PC one day, the boss worked out the numbers, and we realized that avenue was perfectly possible. We thought adding new voices would be great, because the English cast was very well received in English. Turbo Mode and ultra widescreen were both Durante, though. Those were awesome.

Generally, if our programmers have an idea they'd like to add to the game, we allow it. They're programmers! They know if it's possible, and if it makes the game better, who are we to say no? That's how the Sky games have gotten so many improvements over the years, too. We're incredibly fortunate to have Sara as a programmer, because she takes each project very personally and still finds ways to improve them years after launch.

Tom: There are a lot of factors that go into things like this, but one that's come up a couple times now has definitely been our inability to license the Japanese voices. We figured, if we can't offer dual voice to players, why not use whatever budget we may have set aside for that to give them something a little extra? It may not be exactly what they want, but it's at least something we can offer them to show that we truly did put our best foot forward with this release

Nick: As weird as it may sound, it starts with just someone asking, “Hey, could we do this?” Sometimes, what we’ll want to do is evident due to what’s perceived as a shortcoming in a game. Trails of Cold Steel had a lot of voice acting, but weirdly left protagonist Rean silent in a number of scenes where all the other characters were voiced. That was the initial impetus for us wanting to get back into the studio for the PC release and record all the voicework we couldn’t for the PS3 release (in which we could only supply voices for lines that were voiced in the Japanese version).

Similarly, when I was planning out the recording for Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, I thought, “We’re having people in to record these battle voices and we’re gonna pay them a minimum session fee anyway, so...why not add some story scenes onto that?” So in the end, we managed to include a solid amount of voice acting in there for a game that, in its original version, had very little.

Question: Have you ever considered localizing otome games? It would be nice if you can bring us some handsome boys. （*＾＾*) - @NymphNayade

Brittany: Hmm.

Question: Can you comment on the difficulty in trying to get Japanese developers to support same-sex couples/marriage in games like Story of Season or Rune Factory? - @atelier_michi

Brittany: XSEED's always been very openly supportive of adding that. I don't know what difficulties there would be in Japan, but I try to think of how much progress we've made to be able to openly ask for same-sex couples/marriage in games. It wasn't long ago that the idea was ludicrous. I remember when Ellen DeGeneres came out in the '90s and it affected me very strongly, especially since my parents would actively tell me, “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” So even if it's not in the current SoS games, I'll ask for the feature every time I visit Japan, because I think being open about it is an important factor to making progress on that front. Nothing will happen if you don’t fight for it.

I'd really like a whole variety of relationships in the SoS. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, or even a unique relationship outside of sexuality like dating a single parent or supporting your partner as they transition. It's that sort of variety that makes life interesting and great, and I think introducing these concepts in a series as darling as SoS normalizes them and helps children to perceive them as innocently as heterosexual relationships and concepts. It's very educational. Normalizing it more would teach people to ask more questions, too, instead of rejecting any type of orientation or relationship that seems foreign to them.

I remember for the first SoS game we published, Hashimoto-san said he had animals die in the game because he wanted children to be introduced to the natural process of life and death. It wasn't meant to be a bad thing, but something we should be comfortable with because that's part of what it means to be alive. Something to that, lol. Anyway, I'd like for just as much heart to be taken to represent more kinds of people in life, too.

Question: A rumor is going around that you guys are avoiding publishing fanservicey games outside of Senran Kagura. This came in wake of you guys seemingly passing on Valkyrie Drive. Is there any validity to this rumor, and if so, why? - @WaywardChili11

Brittany: did people forget we did a game with literal strawberries and a banana as a costume

That's a weird rumor. It’s also dumb. We've done fanservice games in the past, and we'll decide on whether or not to do them on a game-by-game basis. We're not necessarily passing on them because of fanservice, but I also don't think fanservice is core to the XSEED brand, so it shouldn't be a given for us to do fanservice titles just because we’ve done them in the past. Many of us enjoyed Onechanbara and we have some SENRAN KAGURA fans in the office, so we published those because we originally liked them as games that happened to contain fanservice.

We’re also not big on censoring games, so I’d rather pass on a game than work on it after it’s been censored. If I were to localize a title and actually choose to censor it, I’d piss of people who don’t like the fanservice content, I’d piss off the people who want that content, and then I’d be pissed off because if I felt something was so horrible that it needed to be censored, then I probably didn’t want to work on the game.

That doesn’t mean every fanservice game is off the table for me, but I would need to evaluate it to see if the game is for me, as I would any other genre. Like, Lord of Magna is overall a super-cute game, but it also has an out-of-nowhere hot springs scene. I felt that scene detracted from the game because the rest of the game was adorable and innocent. That said, I didn’t remove the scene, and I still loved working the game. It’s a game with fanservice I would still happily play again. 

Meanwhile, SENRAN KAGURA sells on fanservice, but the gameplay is pretty good. I admit that I prefer the older titles for DS/3DS which were more ridiculous titillation with a good story than the more overt modern titles, but again, that just means the series is no longer for me, and that’s fine. We still have SK fans in the office, and they enjoy working on the series. 

Another factor is gaming trends and our overall rep as a company. Fanservice games weren’t always as hot as they are now, and XSEED started off with a variety of genres, with our niche eventually falling to RPGs and such. Every trend has a rise and fall, and if we pick up every fanservice game regardless of quality just because it’s hot now, we’re alienating the audiences that love us for action, RPGs, and so on. We may even alienate retailers or future marketing opportunities for the games we license outside of that genre. We’ll have shot ourselves in the foot if the fanservice trend falls when we made it our bread and butter. I like having a job.

Tom: We certainly don't have any problems with fanservice, as I think we've proven quite thoroughly at this point. But we also don't ever back a game simply BECAUSE of its fanservice. When we release a game, we do so because (1) we like it, and/or (2) we see some really good potential in it. If it happens to have fanservice, great! If not, also great.

On the flipside, we also turn down games for a variety of reasons. Maybe we hated the story. Maybe we hated the gameplay. Maybe we felt it took its themes a bit too far, or that it had a lot of wasted potential that it never quite lived up to. Maybe we put in an offer on it but were outbid, or the developer appended unusual terms to the license that we weren't willing or able to accept. Maybe the developer simply didn't want to work with us for some reason, or we didn't want to work with them. Maybe we didn't have time to work on that title, or maybe we simply felt someone else would be able to do a better job with it. Tl;dr version, there are a LOT of factors that go into licensing decisions!

Our reasons for turning down a game aren't really something we can ever outright tell you guys, due to the NDAs we all signed when we got hired. But suffice it to say, it's never simply because of fanservice. Fanservice may potentially contribute to a larger tapestry of reasons for passing on a title in extreme cases (though they'd have to be pretty extreme!), but rest assured, we'll never say no to a game simply because it shows a lot of skin. Good games are more than skin deep, after all!

Nick: Here’s the Nick take: Most of us here don’t mind fanservice. It’s fun, it’s saucy, and folks can have a good time with it. If you look at our lineup, you can see we don’t shy away from games that have fanservice (Oneechanbara!), and games that push the boundaries, as Senran Kagura sometimes does, certainly aren’t out of the realm of consideration. A boob, a bulge; it’s all fair game here.

But here’s the thing. The games a company releases become part of their oeuvre. We have a reputation for quirky Japanese games because we’ve released enough of them that it’s a noticeable trend. The same would happen if we opened our gates to every fanservice-laden game that came knocking. Speaking personally, I don’t want us to have a reputation as a publisher whose stock in trade is mainly cheesecakey fanservice or smutty games. That kind of pigeonholing doesn’t help us as a company, and at worst, might even preclude some future licensing opportunities.

I think a lot of people get the impression that we turn down fanservice-laden games for some sort of censorious or moral reason, but that’s not especially true. There ARE cases where we might think, “If we licensed this, the ESRB wouldn’t let it through without forcing us to censor enough that the primary audience we were licensing it for in the first place would be upset,” and there are times when a game might simply be in bad taste and we decide we don’t like how it handles sexuality.

Sometimes, iffy material gets through in spite of all that. The SENRAN KAGURA series has done well for us, so we continue to publish those games even though a number of us in the office have concerns about how each new game seems to push the boundaries further and further in terms of what’s allowable (either by the ESRB or by common decency). We keep a close watch on that, and we’ve communicated our feelings to Takaki-san and his team. We strongly dislike having to alter content in this way, so if a game is so stridently sexual that we think we’d probably be forced to do so by the ESRB (as was a going concern with Valkyrie Drive, iirc), that factors into our decision-making process.

More often, the mundane truth is that we’ll turn down a game of this type because our evaluation play-tests show it to not be very fun to play. It’s not uncommon for games in this vein to just focus on piquing prurient interests or trading in tawdry titillation while the actual game underneath feels janky to play, or has no depth once you get past ogling your favorite waifu. That’s something that can’t be conveyed through a screenshot or even game video, which leaves hopeful players confusedly thinking we passed on a game for reasons more related to its content.

There’s a solid balance to be struck between acknowledging and publishing content for a mature audience and turning down projects that don’t jive with us, and I want you guys to know that we DO put a lot of thought into keeping this balance healthy.

Ken: When we first published SENRAN KAGURA Burst in late 2013, it was a much stricter retail environment so we had to approach the title with caution. We needed to see if there was a market for the series in the West, and even if there was the absolute worst thing that could happen would be to start manufacturing only to hear that retailers suddenly don't want them or want to return their units because of a complaint they got. Due to the success of the digital-only release of SENRAN KAGURA Burst we were able to release the next few games in the series physically at retail (so the "no physical no buy" people really need to thank their digital-buying colleagues), but that doesn't mean that we get a free pass to release anything in the future. As each new iteration seems to push the envelope further and further, we need to be careful exactly how far we push - at some point if we push too far and the whole levee breaks, it could have repercussions for games that have already previously been released.

Question: Who is best girl and boy? - @MizuUnNamed

Brittany: Can I get Crow Armbrust and Crow Armbrust for $500?

Tom: Narcia and Pietro, of course. But only for each other.

 Liz: Rottytops and Ludus! What did we do to deserve them?

That’s all, folks! It’s been a wild ride, but hopefully we answered your questions well enough. 

[aion-rsa]

25 Best Games of the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch Generation

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It may be harder to name a defining feature of the eighth generation of consoles than in previous generations. You could argue that this is the 4K generation, as it was the first to boost visuals to that resolution, but that feature only popped up midway through the generation in enhanced versions of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Even now many current-gen releases don’t support 4K just yet.

This generation could also be remembered as the one where a reliable, high-speed internet connection became more important than ever, not only for innovative new experiments with online connectivity and the burgeoning battle royal genre, but just to download the hefty updates most AAA games require today. Still, some of the best games of the last few years have been single-player only affairs.

Perhaps this is the console generation that embraced the idea that gamers should be able to play what they want, how they want. Whether you wanted to play a big-budget new release in glorious 4K on the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro, or relax with an on-the-go port of an old favorite for the Nintendo Switch, these consoles had your back. Best of all, cross-platform play, cloud gaming, and subscription services like Xbox Game Pass made it easier than ever to play some of the most popular games on the device of your choosing.

Regardless of how we ultimately remember this generation, one thing is for sure: there have been plenty of great games across the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. As we look forward to the impending launches of the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5, these are the very best games we played on the current generation of consoles…

25. Fortnite

2017 | Epic Games

It’s no secret that there are still plenty of legitimate criticisms lodged at Fortnite, even three years after its release. New updates often leave it feeling incredibly unbalanced, it unapologetically targets its core audience of young gamers with microtransactions, and it really sucks when those kids handily beat you in solos and start screaming into their microphones. But Epic deserves a lot of credit for popularizing many of the staples of the once-niche battle royal genre, from parachuting unarmed into a remote island to the closing circle pushing players toward each other. In the years since its release, those ideas have been co-opted into everything from platformers to racing games.

Yes, PUBG came first, but the hardcore nature of Fortnite‘s predecessor turned off more casual players. With its bright, inviting graphics and forgiving gunplay, Fortnite made the battle royal accessible to the masses, while also spearheading the genre’s push to mobile devices and adoption of cross-platform play in an effort to get the game in as many hands as possible. Fortnite isn’t for everyone, but even if it’s not your cup of tea, it’s hard to escape the profound influence that Fortnite has had on this generation of gaming. 

24. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 

2019 | FromSoftware

Many gamers rank Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice as not just one of the best games of this generation but among the greatest action games of all time. This is a deeply rewarding game that emphasizes intricate, precise combat and meticulously planned stealth, while also boasting a faster pace than its classic FromSoftware predecessors. With its mix of historical and fantastical elements, Sekiro is the shinobi game that many players have spent years fantasizing about. 

Sekiro’s biggest flaw is what others will say is its greatest strength: mercilessly unforgiving difficulty. FromSoftware’s previous titles were difficult, but Sekiro can be a downright masochistic experience, demanding not just skill, but absolute perfection to defeat its bosses. If you’re not perfect, you will die. A lot. Some gamers welcome that kind of challenge, but for the more easily frustrated among us, there are plenty of other games that offer just as much enjoyment with a lot less frustration. Still, you can’t deny this game its place as one of FromSoftware’s very best.

23. Inside

2016 | Playdead

Inside is a master class in minimalism. The visuals are simple and monochrome. Sound and music are used sparingly. And the story is largely open to interpretation. But all of that is used expertly as way to entice the player fill in the gaps and project their own beliefs into the experience. Does the Boy you control have free will or is he under the control of some other force? Do you even have the control over him that you think you do?

For most of its brief runtime, Inside plays like a fairly traditional puzzle platformer but then the last half hour or so turns into something very, very different. If you haven’t experienced it yet, we won’t spoil it here, but it’s well worth taking the time to play before moving on to the next generation of consoles.

22. Persona 5 Royal 

2020 | Atlus

Many of us would have liked high school better if it had been more like Persona 5. Atlus has been working on this high school-set RPG saga for years and Persona 5 might be its masterpiece. The game doubles as both an incredibly well-written day-in-the-life simulation of the life of a student — with all of the social interactions, stresses, and crushes that go with it — and an intense dungeon crawler to rival the best in the genre. There’s a lot to do in Persona 5, but the story and gameplay are so engrossing that even the 100 hours it takes to complete the game feel like they fly by.

Even the original 2017 release of Persona 5 would have made this list, but the addition of a new playable character, new palace, and a third semester make Persona 5 Royal the definitive version of the game to pick up if you’re digging into it for the first time.

21. Death Stranding

2019 | Kojima Productions

When Death Stranding was first announced in 2016, there were a lot of questions about what exactly it was about. A year after release, it’s still hard to fully explain a plot that intertwines magic babies, whale ghosts, strategic urination, a complete misunderstanding of how the federal government works, and the potential extinction of mankind. Also, Conan O’Brien shows up and everyone drinks Monster Energy for some reason.

There’s a lot going on here, but Hideo Kojima’s overly-complex storytelling is ultimately much less important than the point he’s trying to make: though technology is making us drift apart, and we might feel lonely and separated from each other at time, we are all inextricably connected and stronger when we realize it. And Kojima does a fantastic job of making players feel the weight of Sam’s mission to connect with others across the game’s beautiful and haunting environments.

Death Stranding’s story of a porter who keeps America together by delivering packages to people stuck in their homes due to an invisible danger overtaking the outside world seemed rather silly when it was released, but the Covid-19 pandemic quickly made the game feel much more poignant. You might not get what’s happening from one moment to the next but it’s clear that Kojima’s latest is a prescient work of art.

20. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey 

2018 | Ubisoft

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey really doesn’t care about the Assassin’s Creed franchise. In fact, you don’t even play as an actual assassin once you enter the animus and select to play as either the male or female protagonist. There are no Templars to fight, no creed to follow, and not even a hidden blade. Instead, Odyssey lunges head first into its Ancient Greece setting to just tell the best (mostly) self-contained story possible. There are kings to topple, famous battles to fight, legendary philosophers to argue with, and even a few mythical creatures to discover late into the game.

If Odyssey has one flaw, it’s that it’s too big. Even after 80 hours, it’s unlikely that you’ll have seen everything that the game has to offer or unlocked all of the upgrades for your character and their ship. But for such a lengthy game, Odyssey remains surprisingly enjoyable dozens of hours in, which just speaks to the strength of its gameplay systems.

19. Rocket League

2015 | Psyonix

“Soccer, but with vehicles,” is such a simple but brilliant concept that it’s amazing that it didn’t catch on sooner. Of course, any idea is only as good as its execution, which is why Rocket League has been so successful, especially when compared to its little-known predecessor, the 2008 PS3-exclusive Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars.

But Rocket League hasn’t achieved greater popularity just because it has a better name. The secret to its success is in the physics. The way that the cars and trucks move and boost and fly through the air to hit the giant soccer ball just feels like the perfect mix of skill and luck..

The version of the game that Psyonix put out in 2015 was great before any changes, but the constant flow of updates, including new cosmetics, skins, arenas, and game modes solidify Rocket League’s place among the best games of the generation. At this rate, there’s a very good chance that we’ll still be playing it years from now, even when the successors to the PS5 and XSX come around. 

18. Undertale 

2015 | Toby Fox

Undertale is proof that groundbreaking 3D graphics and a huge team of developers aren’t necessary to create a classic title in the modern gaming landscape. Developed almost entirely by one man over the course of 32 months, the beauty of Undertale is in its simplicity, the clear inspiration it takes from so many classic games of the 16-bit era, and the way it turns so many of those retro conventions on their heads.

Undertale might look like a typical old-school RPG at first, but once you dig into it, the fantastic writing and turn-based/bullet hell hybrid battle system reveal a much more innovative game. Undertale is proof that the indie game development scene is still alive and well. 

17. Animal Crossing: New Horizons 

2020 | Nintendo

Playing AAA games can sometimes be stressful: tough new enemies around every corner, the constant threat of death or failure, the burden of resource management, mind bending puzzles, and unending list of quests and collectibles to find. But Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t like those games. New Horizons is about chilling on your own personal island with friends, living life at your own pace, and creating your own little slice of paradise. Go fishing, collect fruit, redecorate your house, or just ignore all of those things and talk with your friends. It sounds really boring to a lot of people who have never experienced the magic of an Animal Crossing game, but it’s hard to deny how incredibly cathartic the experience is after just a few minutes.

Part of New Horizons appeal can be attributed to the timing of its release. The game came out just as Covid-19 lockdowns were being instituted across the globe, and it gave us all a nice, pleasant distraction from the chaos of the outside world. But even without the pandemic, it’s impossible to deny just how relaxing New Horizons is as a sort of anti-game free from the stresses caused by so many other games.

16. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 

2015 | Kojima Productions

Even before his high-profile departure from Konam in 2015, Kojima warned us for years that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain would be his last installment in the series. After his contentious exit, it seems that he has truly closed the door on the series, but at least he went out on top in his final adventure with Snake. Sure, the storyline is as convoluted as ever, but The Phantom Pain is easily the best Metal Gear Solid from a gameplay perspective.

After years of required linear stealth gameplay, The Phantom Pain opened up the world and gave Snake way more tools and options that ever before, making a full-on assault just as viable a plan as sneaking around. Sure, other games took similar approaches years before The Phantom Pain’s release, but the trademark Kojima quirkiness, including equipment like Snake’s customizable prosthetic arm and the ability to recruit goats to your home base via giant balloon, puts it a step above the titles that influenced it.

15. Doom 

2016 | id Software

It’s difficult to innovate in a genre as well-worn as first-person shooters, but with Doom, id proved that there’s still new ground to cover. The genius of Doom is its incorporation of risk-reward gameplay to encourage a faster, more aggressive style of play. If you hide behind cover, don’t move much, and play more conservatively, the hordes of hell are going to tear you to pieces. You need to constantly jump into the fray and go for glory kills to gain more health if you want to progress and live to fight another day. Add in superb level and creature design and you have the recipe for what’s easily the best first-person shooter of this generation.

And yes, the sequel Doom Eternal is quite good as well, but the gameplay additions never click quite as well as in its predecessor, and the additional platforming sections feel out of place. Doom 2016 remains the undisputed king of fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat running and gunning. 

14. Bloodborne

2015 | FromSoftware

What if the best Dark Souls game isn’t technically a Souls game at all? Yes, Bloodborne is built on the foundation of that classic series, but by tweaking the combat to focus more on offense than a carefully timed defense, Bloodborne is a faster, and frankly, more enjoyable game. Plus, the Gothic, Lovecraft-inspired world is just a lot cooler than Dark Souls’ fantasy setting. And while all of FromSoftware’s Souls titles have garnered a hardcore fanbase that continues to play these games years after release, Bloodborne’s randomly generated Chalice Dungeons gives it a staying power that few other RPGs and even the Dark Souls trilogy can compete with.

Rumors of a Bloodborne sequel have swirled online basically since the game’s release. Given its overwhelmingly positive reception, its curious that Sony (which owns the IP) hasn’t officially commissioned a sequel yet, but maybe the release of the PS5 will be just the motivator the publisher needs to make another Bloodborne game.

13. Overwatch

2016 | Blizzard Entertainment

Of all the games released this generation, Overwatch may have inspired the most imitators, but more than four years after release, still nothing comes close in terms of quality or popularity. Part of that success is thanks to developer Blizzard, which has spent years perfecting multiplayer modes and has put in the work to keep Overwatch fresh with everything from minor balance tweaks to new characters, maps, and modes.

But another part of Overwatch’s appeal is its accessibility. If you’ve barely played a shooter, you can hop into a game with a hero like Soldier 76 who plays like a traditional FPS character and have a ton of fun. Or, you can put the time in to master a more complicated melee hero like Doomfist for a much more unique experience. Prefer more of a supporting role? Heal and revive your teammates just in the nick of time to turn the tide of battle as fan-favorite Mercy. The ways to play in Overwatch are essentially endless, easily making it the best multiplayer experience of the generation. 

12. Marvel’s Spider-Man

2018 | Insomniac Games

There have been plenty of Spider-Man games over the years, but few developers have nailed the superhero and his world as well as Insomniac. This isn’t the first game to let you swing freely around New York City as Spider-Man, but it may be the best designed, thanks to the intuitive controls and brilliant map design that encourages and facilitates high-flying maneuvers. And the combo-based combat system makes each fight a joy right up until the credits roll.

But what really makes Marvel’s Spider-Man great is that it never forgets the man behind the mask. Like the best Spider-Man comics and movies, Insomniac’s game smartly weaves between the struggles of Peter Parker’s daily life and his duties as a hero to create one of the best Spider-Man stories ever, regardless of the medium.

11. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

2016 | Naughty Dog

To be fair, we didn’t really need another Uncharted game. The trilogy was tied up neatly on the PS3. But Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is certainly a welcome finale to Nathan Drake’s story and arguably the best of the series. For one thing, it’s absolutely gorgeous and still has some of the best graphics of the generation, even though it was released midway through. Uncharted 4 isn’t an open world game, but its levels are so large that it might as well be. And with locations that span the entire globe, it’s impressive just how much detail Naughty Dog was able to include in each level.

But A Thief’s End is also one the best told video game stories of the last few years, featuring both the big, explosive set pieces that we’ve come to expect from the series, as well as quieter, more introspective moments that tie the story together. This was a proper send-off for this all-time great action-adventure franchise.

10. Nier: Automata

2017 | PlatinumGames

After abought eight hours of hacking and slashing through hundreds of robotic enemies in Nier: Automata’s post-apocalyptic setting, you’ll reach the ending. But it’s just the first of several endings you’ll encounter, as you tumble deeper down this rabbit hole. Dozens of hours of gameplay await you after that. And right up until the end, Nier: Automata will keep surprising you, not just with its somewhat convoluted plot, but by constantly throwing new styles of gameplay at you. Sometimes it’s more of a shooter. Other times, it’s a brawler. There are even a few text adventure segments.

Then there’s the sprawling chorus-filled soundtrack, which is among the best of the generation. It’s the type of music you’ll be listening to long after you beat the game. Well, beat it for real. 

9. Outer Wilds 

2019 | Mobius Digital

Outer Wilds is perhaps the most unique and innovative game of this generation. You play as an unnamed alien astronaut preparing to launch a decrepit spaceship into your solar system 22 minutes before the sun goes supernova. Your goal is to explore the different planets, solve puzzles, and figure out just why the solar system keeps exploding every 22 minutes, only for you to end up right back where you started in a sort of Groundhog Day-style time loop.

Outer Wilds emphasizes discovery above all else, enticing you to explore every last corner of its unique environments. The new worlds and the game’s surprising storyline will keep you entertained until the very end(s). 

8. Horizon Zero Dawn 

2017 | Guerilla Games

So much of Horizon Zero Dawn‘s gameplay is obviously inspired by other titles, but it emulates those games so well and its setting is so strong that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. At its core, Horizon Zero Dawn is an open-world sandbox with combat and missions similar to other titles in the genre like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Far Cry. But what separates it from the pack is its post-post-apocalyptic setting.

Horizon Zero Dawn takes place in a world so far in the future that it resembles the prehistoric past, except the towering monstrosities that dot its landscape are made of metal and circuits instead of flesh and blood. You might have tracked a beast through the wilderness using nothing but a bow and arrow in other games, but only Horizon Zero Dawn will let you use shock arrows to take down a giant robot dinosaur. 

7. The Last of Us Part II

2020 | Naughty Dog

While its predecessor was one of the most widely acclaimed games of the previous generation, The Last of Us Part II has the distinction of being one of the more divisive games of this generation. That mostly comes down to the story. The Last of Us Part II is a hard game to get through, not so much because of its difficulty, but because of the emotions it invokes. This is a lonely, brutal, and tragic game, and it leaves Ellie changed in ways that turned off many hardcore fans of the original. The Last of Us Part II pulls no punches in how it handles some difficult issues.

With so many sequels going the iterative route, The Last of Us Part II’s bold narrative choices are a breath of fresh air. Making Ellie a more nimble character who can jump, swing, and avoid combat also added some interesting twists to the strong gameplay foundation that was laid down in the original. The Last of Us Part II may not quite surpass the first game, but it stands out as a prime example of a fantastic and daring sequel.

6. Super Mario Odyssey

2017 | Nintendo

The gaming landscape today is nearly unrecognizable from what it was like in the ‘80s, and yet after all that time, Nintendo’s plucky Italian plumber still stands tall as one of the biggest stars in the industry. Super Mario Odyssey is impressive for the way it embraces the entire history of Mario, with fun throwbacks to his original adventures on the NES and the timeless platforming mechanics from his first forays into 3D, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. It says a lot about the quality of those games that the basic gameplay fundamentals still hold up so well.

But then Super Mario Odyssey improves on those ideas with the addition of Cappy, Mario’s new sentient hat who he can use to take control of other characters and objects in the environment. This mechanic leads to some of Odyssey’s very best moments. And while it’s debatable whether Odyssey is the very best of Mario’s many outstanding adventures, it’s a testament to his staying power that after all these years, we’re still talking about him.

5. Control  

2019 | Remedy Entertainment

Even if you’re not typically a completionist, Control will get you searching every last nook and cranny of the constantly-shifting The Oldest House for files detailing the paranormal phenomena investigated by the Bureau of Control. It’s not that these collectibles unlock anything that great or that they have a ton of achievement points attached to them, it’s just that the writing is that good. Control expertly weaves so many threads about the occult, paranormal, and government conspiracies that you’ll just want to keep learning more about the world as you take down the monsters.

While Control seems to be a fairly typical third-person shooter at first, it quickly opens itself up to reveal a whole host of psychokinetic powers that make each combat encounter feel unique. With all your combat powers unlocked, it’s a real thrill to launch debris at a group of Hiss or turn them against each other with mind control.

Control is constantly surprising, unapologetically weird in the best possible ways, and always fun to play. While it may not have received as much mainstream attention as many of the other games on this list, it is absolutely worth checking out now, especially with a confirmed next-gen upgrade on the way.

4. Red Dead Redemption II

2018 | Rockstar Games

Red Dead Redemption II is the pinnacle of what this console generation is capable of in terms of game design, and a prime example of what some of the best developers in the world can do when given near limitless time and money to complete their vision. Arthur Morgan’s journey of redemption in the final days of the Wild West is told with the skill of an Oscar-worthy film. And much of that comes down to the details. Everything, from the dust covered trails to the signs you encounter in the game’s lively towns, is artfully constructed to give this land a special, lived-in feel.

For a massive game that demands 50 hours of play just to complete the main story, there’s remarkably little repetition from mission-to-mission. Red Dead Redemption II evokes a living, breathing place and in a way few other games have. It’s likely as close to Westworld as any of us will see in our lifetime.

Red Dead Redemption II isn’t perfect, of course. The increased focus on realism, requiring things like dressing properly for inclement weather and keeping your horse fed and groomed, annoyed some players. And for all of the successes of the single-player campaign, the multiplayer mode has remained unusually glitchy and underdeveloped two years after release. Yet, few other games even come close to its standout world development and story.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

2017 | Nintendo 

The Legend of Zelda games have been consistently great throughout the franchise’s long history, but let’s face it: the series was getting stale after cruising on the formula established by Ocarina of Time for almost two decades. Luckily, Breath of the Wild was exactly what Nintendo needed to reinvigorate Hyrule.

The genius of Breath of the Wild is how it uses fairly simple gameplay mechanics to explore the world in a multitude of ways. Unlike previous games, which would regularly introduce a dozen or more new weapons and tools, the Link in Breath of the Wild really just relies on four abilities: bombs, stopping time, ice blocks, and magnetizing metal. All four of these powers are introduced within the first hour or so, and then you’re off to explore the world however you see fit. You can even try to fight Ganon immediately, though that’s almost certain to end in a quick death.

Breath of the Wild successfully reimagined The Legend of Zelda by stripping it down and remembering that above all else this is a series about exploration, experimentation, and the thrill of discovery. And by returning to that foundation, Nintendo create a game that arguably surpasses Ocarina of Time.

2. God of War

2018 | SIE Santa Monica Studio

The adventures of Kratos have always been well regarded, but 2018’s reboot/sequel solidified God of War’s place among the greatest series of all time. Much of the credit goes to the revamped combat system. Kratos’ new axe, Leviathan, feels revolutionary. There’s a real impact each time it hits an enemy, but the true innovation is in being able to throw it and call it back at will, much like how Marvel’s Thor wields his hammer. It’s a simple mechanic, but no game had ever pulled it off quite this well.

The other thing that separates God of War from other games is the cinematography, something that seemingly gets little attention in most games. Putting the camera closer to Kratos is one of the design decisions that makes the combat feel much more visceral, but the real accomplishment is that the entire game, from brutal combat to introspective cinematics, is told in one continuous shot, creating one of the most immersive and innovative experiences in gaming history.

1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

2015 | CD Projekt Red

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is now five years old, having come out relatively early in the console cycle, but it still holds up as the very best example of what gaming has had to offer over the last generation. The Witcher 3 tops this list for its outstanding world building and storytelling. Sure, it’s a fantasy game at heart, but every inch of the map, from Skellige to Toussaint, feels like an actual place. And characters like elves and trolls have backstories and emotions that make them feel just as real as any living, breathing human.

The world building in Wild Hunt is second to none, and that extends far beyond the main questline or even books and notes scattered around the world. While many open-world games cut corners with simple side quests that recycle locales and goals, some of the side quests in The Witcher 3 are actually among its best content, with stories and missions that rival some full games. The level of detail is absolutely astounding, and that’s before even mentioning the deep combat system which lets you fully customize Geralt of Rivia’s weapons, armor, spells, and traps. There is a ridiculous amount of quality content in The Witcher 3 and no shortage of ways to complete it.

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Had CD Projekt Red just shipped Wild Hunt in 2015 and called it a day, it very likely would have topped this list, but the support the developer has shown in the years since has just further solidified its place in gaming history. Two expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, essentially added two full games-worth of content while still maintaining the high quality of the base title. Updates for the PC, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One X added 4K support, making an already stunning game a contender for best graphics of the generation. And if you’ve seen everything in those versions of the game, a shockingly good Switch port has now made the entire adventure playable on-the-go. Looking ahead, a free next-gen upgrade for the PS5 and Xbox Series X is already in development. With that many options to play, there’s really no excuse to have missed out on Wild Hunt at this point.

The post 25 Best Games of the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch Generation appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[zydrateacademy]

Review: Horizon Zero Dawn

I had posted a brief first impressions on Steam just to help the review score a bit, considering literally every negative review is about the crashes and nothing else. While unplayable for some, in my forty hours I’ve experienced maybe 6-7 crashes. Slightly more than one crash every ten hours of gameplay which is bearable. I also get the occasional graphical glitch since I refuse to update my drivers because according to some sources, that would make the game more unstable. Still, the game looks damn fine on mostly high settings and I can live with a crash every ten hours, and the autosaves are plentiful so I’ve yet to lose much progress. With that out of the way, let’s talk about the game. It’s three years old so you probably know the general story. You play as Aloy, a shunned outcast due to the nature of her birth in a world that takes place roughly nine hundred years after the fall modern civilization, implied to be the fault of the machines that graze the fields like animals in their own right. Aloy sets out to find the truth of her birth and finds out that she’s a lot more relevant to humankind’s plight than she initially thought, and I’ll leave it at that.

The game gave me a lot of general Monster Hunter vibes with a sprinkling of the new Tomb Raider revival. Every machine has various parts you can shoot off that can weaken or disable attacks, and you can strategize every approach depending on what angle you’re able to hit it from. The Bellowback for example is usually an elemental spewing thing with a giant tank it carries around. Blow that out, and it will resort to melee charging you. Shoot out a Thunderjaw’s missle launchers, and not only does it no longer have access to that weaponry... you can also pick it up and finish it off. I think this is a clever approach to gameplay, and it serves as a very interesting integration of story and mechanics. Most of the humans you meet are tribal in nature, and most of them utilize machine hunting as a major part of their dogma in some capacity. Aloy’s ability to strip useful parts actually comes into play in the occasional quest. The game is very stealth reliant, though it takes some getting used to. The machines are both intelligent and not. The “silent strike” ability, for example, isn’t silent at all. You can lure mobs to the grass you’re hiding in and strike them, but they explode in sparks and screaming, it’s a wonder how the nearby mobs don’t hear this at all except to save you from nearly impossible or infuriating gameplay. Still, it takes some getting used to. Forty hours and a couple into a New Game Plus, there’s still moments where a single missed arrow more or less alerts an entire bandit camp, despite hiding in the proper brush.

That is essentially the gameplay loop. Stealth and snipe machines for their parts and the usual Far Cry-esque fare of shooting rabbits to upgrade your carry capacities. Eventually working through a small tree of increasingly more powerful weapons that all function identically, they just simple hit harder as you progress. Even in Hard Mode, I’ve found very little reason to use the elemental bomb-slinger, or the tie-down ropecaster. The combo of tripwires, whistling, and just some well placed double-arrow shots does most of the work for me. The real treat here is in the story. Ashly Burch probably does some of her best voice acting in her career, which has been quite pronounced in recent years. Aloy has this sort of, subdued stoic wonderment when interacting with the world around her. In the beginning, her naivety is clear but as the game progresses she gets more confident and knowledgeable. There are a few hiccups, like in some dialog she’ll claim to know what a Rockbreaker was long before I ever actually faced one myself. A minor gripe at worst, and easy to forgive. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time in photo mode (something that should be required in all open world games by law - The sun wills it!) and it very much serves to highlight the beauty and work put into this game and that just cannot be understated.

Of course the game is not without some flaws. Some of which have been known for years, but are still new to me as a PC player. First, the facial animations can be rather wonky and wooden. This is in most reviews that I’ve read or watched. The faces look great on their own, and even on Aloy this is barely noticeable because she speaks so calmly most of the time. However, on other NPC’s their mouth movements don’t always match with the emotions they’re trying to convey. This is not a “sync” issue, like a movie dub. More like, a character could be speaking calmly but their cheeks contort into a major grimace as if they’re in severe pain or very angry. Go to a mirror and start over-enunciating every single word and syllable and you’ll get an idea of what most characters seem to do in this game. 

Funny enough, this problem smooths out a bit during the Frozen Wilds expansion. I assume the animators had more time to work on it, as this problem was not nearly as prominent during that storyline. Aratak, the resident Banuk chieftain looks and speaks amazing, and it was very refreshing to see a character that moved and spoke like an actual human being. Another problem I had was something that has poisoned open world RPG’s in recent years; all the god damn item collecting. Not just in the sense of collectibles (but those irritate me, too), but the medicine pouch is an example. I will freely admit that after thirty hours of gameplay running around collecting tiny red berries... I got tired of it an activated a mod that keeps the medicine pouch full at all times. They don’t work like potions as it’s not instant so it’s not always a lifesaver when you’re fighting some Thunderjaws, but it’s just one less hindrance to deal with. When you’re trying to push the story or farm for some very rare modifications for your gear... It’s a bit annoying to think “Oh, I’m low on my medicine” and spend ten minutes picking up a couple dozen red things. I’ve also outright bought out some wood from vendors so I don’t have to pick at them every time I run by them. In forty hours I’m still not maxed on certain ammunition capacities because chasing raccoons is not my idea of fun. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey suffered from this too, a game which I adore. Toss that into the comparison pile.

With excellent visuals, great voice acting, a decently entertaining gameplay loop, there’s a reason this game won some awards. I won’t blame people for waiting on sales or patches, but for me this game has been a wonderful experience. One I’ll be taking more time on during a new game plus. Good work.

[tfwiki]

In TRANSFORMERS: Forged to Fight, Transformers fans and gamers everywhere can build a team of Transformers characters and battle with the most iconic Autobots and Decepticons from nearly every era of the storied franchise’s 30-plus year history, including fan-favorite bots from previous and current animated Transformers TV series, Paramount’s blockbuster films, Transformers comic books and Hasbro's line of iconic action figures. Players explore an epic new universe where multiple realities collide to form a massive planetary battlefield while assembling a team of Autobots and Decepticons from across time and space to fight against a world of corrupted Transformers robots and their villainous overlords. The game features amazing visuals, intense one-on-one battles, meaningful robot to vehicle converting action and deep RPG elements.

Hot Rod made quite the splash when he debuted in Transformers: The Last Knight and he’s looking to do the same when he enters the fray in Forged To Fight. Let’s get the scoop on the undercover protector. NOTE: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, there may be some spoilers below so continue at your own risk

AUTOBOT HOT ROD has joined the fight! Long undercover on Earth with his brother in arms, Bumblebee, Hot Rod is a powerful and agile warrior with a unique Time Bubble Cannon that definitely packs a serious punch!

Nick Warps Hot Rod’s Reality

Cuz: Early on in development, Hasbro shared that Hot Rod was rocking a new “Time Bubble” cannon.  Tell us a) were you pumped on this b) how you created the effect and c) how would things be different if it was a “Time Bubble” chainsaw as some fans had predicted?

Nick: I was absolutely pumped about Hot Rod’s “Time Bubble”. It’s an effect that really shines  on the higher end devices (to witness all of the bells and whistles).

For this effect I needed to communicate that not only the character was in suspended animation, but that reality itself was suspended. I started with a sphere as my bubble shape to encompass the character and then added a warp ripple that distorts the entire game view as it flows along the bubble shape. I then added some lightning that flows along the sphere which also gets distorted by the warp. This helps to break up the sphere shape by giving the appearance of flowing energy waves. I then added some lighting bolts that shoot outside of the sphere to show that the energy can hardly be contained within the time bubble. Lastly there is a soft outer blue glow to enhance the sphere shape and some tiny dust specs on the outer edges. These last two additions help give the sphere a real “space/time” bubble look. I was really happy with the final look.

A time bubble chainsaw could also have been cool! I would have added lots of grinding sparks and energon sprays for the chainsaw.

Piero Reveals The Secrets of The Rod

Cuz: Tangent time, bear with me. Piero, your name means “clown” in French.  And, some have said Hot Rod’s French accent in Last Knight bordered on being clownish. You must have been psyched. Did you try to incorporate clown skills or attributes into Hot Rod’s design? Does he have any rad seltzer bottle or pie in the face skills?

Piero: Nothing clown-ish in Hot Rod’s ability design! He is definitely one of the strongest damage dealers in the game with the help of his Time Bubble Gun. Hot Rod is able to “Decelerate” opponents when hitting with his Ranged Attacks. This supports all the other abilities in his kit.

Ranged -> Dash -> Melee Hitting opponents is his specialty since he gains Critical Rate Buffs when punching opponents. Using a Heavy Attack at the end of a combo is going to have a high chance to inflict a Critical Hit and Stun opponents.

Cuz: In the movie, Hot Rod spends some time speaking with a suspect French accent, perhaps to amuse or confuse his fellow Autobots.  Is there any chance we get a sweet confusion or amusement attribute?  If not, then how about telling what mod works best with him.

Piero: Hot Rod’s Signature Ability “Acceleration” will allow him to get Power really, really fast. Because of this increased Power Rate, he will be extremely effective on modules that provide even extra Power like the “ Robot Resources”, and the Superconductors.

Moreover, Hot Rod’s Deceleration Debuff activates when he hits with his Ranged Attacks, a module that will help with that will be the Laser Guidance module. The laser Guidance module increases the defender’s Projectile Speed, making it harder for opponents to Sidestep it.

Louie lays Down The Laws of Animation For Hot Rod

Cuz: I’ve gotta start with the Hotness. In HR’s special 1 move he exhibits serious breakdancing skills. Hand on ground, spin, kick, twisting kicks inverted in the air...we’re talking Electric Boogaloo stuff.  So, who inspired you more...Ozone or Turbo?

Louie: I was aiming for a combination of smooth, smooth, smooth with a finish of power.  So I think Turbo, haha.

Cuz: Cool, but maybe next time you could have him throw down some cardboard so he doesn’t scuff up his paint job. Onwards. Having seen the movie now, it seems he could have a new ranged attack.  Were you tempted to have him transform into car mode, haul ass at opponent, then transform and eject a human projectile like he did the woman in the movie?  If not, what was your focus for making Hot Rod stand out?

Louie: Haha, that's right.  This is a completely new and different version of Hot Rod that no one on the team was familiar with.  Coming up with the fighting style for this Hot Rod was very challenging, even after deploying our Kabam ninjas for something juicy.  We were able to get a hint but still required a lot of back and forth within the character team.  The team did agree on making Hot Rod a very gymnastic style ninja where he was doing a lot of handstand and aerial attacks.  We really wanted to make him different from his brother in arms Bumblebee.  Hope we were able to capture that for our game.

Hot Rod Specs

SIGNATURE ABILITY – ACCELERATION

§  Special Attacks: Overclocks Hot Rod’s engines, increasing his Power Flow on attacks by 60~120% for 7 seconds. Additionally, while Acceleration is active, Hot Rod has a 30% chance to Evade Ranged Attacks.

SPECIAL ATTACKS:

Special 1 – Punishing Pirouette: A flurry of aerial kicks to knockdown the opponent.

Special 2 – Time Tampering: Series of acrobatic kicks that ends with a taste of the Time Bubble Gun.

§  A powerful blast from his Time Gun inflicts Deceleration for 9 seconds.

Special 3 – Time Bubble Blast A temporal coup de grâce. Hot Rod’s uses the most powerful setting on his Time Gun, inflicting Deceleration for 20 seconds.

Download Transformers: Forged to Fight Today: http://www.bit.ly/PlayTransformersFTF

[jaidentykt039-blog]

17 Superstars We'd Love to Recruit for Our mario kart 64 rom Team

To start with, that for very funny money, you get their hands on an unbiased game that does not require the existence of the previous parts and accessories. This also includes six playable races, and killing with a variety of multiplayer settings. Chic fitting for many enthusiasts Wahi, who not only uncovers the plot, but it also provides series a breath of renewed power to attract some new supporters.

The key attractive aspect of the game are mentioned six playable races. Who are you most impressed with? Imperial Guard, Eldar, Space Marine Chaos, Tyranids, Space Marines or Orks nice? Select - do not want to! But over the breadth of preference lies just a little trick - the single player advertising campaign though and applies to any of the races, but that appears quite definitely monotonous. That's all great, each new objective is unique in conditions of storyline and fully disclose the selected small percentage, only here the terrain is almost always the same. Total we have about 12 missions for each of the parties. But in truth - 12 credit cards, which run different people. Nevertheless, given the enormous difference between the groups, all 12 levels is "a great success, and at the first passing (again - to earn all achivki) you hardly notice the technique. Not very tactful Orcs like to pounce on enemies and damage their superior push, but the smart Eldar will cover the villains waves of magic and fireplace intermittently from behind cover, sometimes holding the front lines of the most powerful character.

In the case of the battles Retribution is slightly not the same as its predecessors. If you have relied completely on the power of their few wards, and they had a clear department of functions (a la MMO: tank, healer, DPS etc), you will have the opportunity to seize the building and to hire new military! Obviously, they can not be weighed against a superstrong storyline characters, but let the battle cheap cannon fodder is much easier than to condemn certain loss of life of character types, past several mission. But the simple hiring of new thugs is situated a little reward - they're not only an effective fighting device, but also a kind of guardian angels, with the capacity of creating a variety of boosts, improving overall fight readiness of the team. Plyusuem here to use the surrounding area as a shelter and the power of your beneficiaries barricade oneself in the structures and received excellent tactical play, daruyuschuyu opportunity to use your brain to the maximum.

Changed and the people. Now there is no need to think about how exactly to distribute a portion of the received experience factors. This atavism eliminated into oblivion of chaos. All you need assumed it is a choice of different skills in the skill tree specific hero. There are not many, however they are helpful and useful in combat, so that after every mission must break a mind and select the desired skill.

But let their eyes to the world itself and the plot Retribution . As opposed to their prior brethren and sisters Dawn of War II , Retribution only nominally contains pathetic tale of what's taking place. Why? More on this later. Inside our case, ten years has elapsed because the events of Chaos Rising and we are in the subsector Aurelius, where a fierce fight between the aforementioned races. But okay to fight, there is another factor that spurred your chosen faction to survive. The complete colony can be demolished eksterminatusom, and this is a serious bid for the purchase of the ticket on the distant planet. on this, Actually and ends with narration.

The main reason for such a short opening scene - the presence of multiplayer. Game entirely predicated on the conversation and confrontation of real players. Most likely reason for the abrupt change of course was the networking facet of the transition from Windows Live on Steam. The result is an extremely deep integration of multiplayer fits and comfortable, where you will grab the item of the foe.

The first & most uninteresting probability - co-op campaign. We've already transferred in many genres, so that concentrate on this isn't necessary. But well worth a glance at the mode of Last Stand. Everything is infinitely simple, but extremely exciting. Three players form a team and begin to fight back from impinging villains. In addition to more experience, murders give points to the entire treasury team can devote to the acquisition of useful shmotok. Hint for the future. Assemble a good team that will continue to work together. Otherwise it will be merged in each circular.

Others multiplayer modes reduce to fully capture control factors or complete damage of the enemy. All can play jointly, four or even six players. Probably the most "ridiculous" setting - Victory Point. The main idea is to seize a spot on the map. The more factors you control, the fewer factors from the enemy. If you play one on one, then your match can be a tremendous amount of your time, constantly running from point to point in an attempt to overtake the foe. Recursion doing his thing. No less.

As for the visual and musical component, then you can say one thing - it's still the same Dawn of Battle II . No, the overall game licked, somewhere teksturki pulled a resolution higher, but normally, everything remained as before. Comprehensive but monotonous marketing campaign, six races, sit back on the needle and multiplayer Warhammer world. What more do you want? Working in the stim until it's purchased!

The Grand Exchange is Runescape's super trading center. As of this locale, even the newest player can get wealthy by selling easy to acquire items. Also, if you are looking for something special to buy either for quests, skill leveling, or simply to resell for profit, the Grand Exchange is the spot to go!

Addressing the Grand ExchangeBefore you can begin trading on the Grand Exchange (also called the GE), you need to be able to get there. This massive trading market is positioned in Varrock just western of the Palace and east of Edgeville. Furthermore to Grand Exchange clerks, there's also a number of bankers at the Exchange. This means that you don't need to get worried about picking right up the things you want to sell before heading to the market - you can draw them out of the bank directly on the spot.

At the GE, members can trade (buy or sell) up to six items at a time. Free-to-play players are limited by two trading slot machine games at the same time, but if you're buying or selling a heavily traded item, this won't make much of a difference since the trade will most likely occur within moments to be offered. Also, you can buy or sell as much of one item at the same time as you prefer. For instance, if you are a new player trying to get wealthy offering polar kebbit fur and you have 500 furs to market, all of these furs will only take up one slot in your trading menu.

Selling Items on the Grand ExchangeOne of things that makes the Grand Exchange such a great place to make money is that you don't have to have a higher level character to acquire items which are saturated in demand. Actually, there are numerous items that require no skill whatsoever to obtain that will fetch a decent price on the market. An example of this is swamp tar - something that you can just grab off the bottom in the Lumbridge Swamp. Swamp tar can sell for anywhere between 200 and 250 gp (sometimes more) on the GE. That may be a fairly nice score for a brand new player who wants to get a join making money in Runescape.

To sell an item on the Grand Exchange in Runescape, first speak to one of the bankers and withdraw that item as a note. You can change to note withdrawal mode by simply clicking the icon in the center of underneath of the lender home window as shown in the screenshot below. (Click any image for a larger view.)

Withdrawing items as a note means you can withdraw as much as you like and not have to get worried about inventory space since records stack in your inventory. Note that items that already are stackable cannot be withdrawn as records.

Once you have the item in your inventory, talk to a GE clerk and gain access to your offers. Click on the Sell icon in one of the empty slot machine games.

Next, go through the item that you want to sell in your inventory and it will appear in the Sell Offer window.

Now, you can change the price that you would like to require the item within 5% of the existing selling price. When you, click on the Confirm Offer icon and done'll be returned to your set of Grand Exchange offers.

If the item is in heavy demand, it may sell immediately, but it might take longer. However, you don't need to worry about ready at the Grand Exchange for your money when it can sell. Once someone has bought the item, you'll be notified in the game text messages area that one of your offers has been updated. Then, all you need to do is go to any bank in Runescape and gather your money.

Buying Items on the Grand ExchangeThe process for buying items is nearly the same as offering on the Grand Exchange. First gain access to your Grand Exchange offer display screen, and then go through the Buy icon in one of the empty slot machines.

You'll next see a Buy Offer window that appears a lot like the Sell Offer window from the prior section. Also, a Grand Exchange Item Search container can look in the overall game message area in the low left corner of your screen. Here, you can enter the name or the partial name of the item you want to buy and the overall game will seek out all possible matches to that name. For example, if we type in talisman, we get a list of all possible items that contain the term talisman that can be traded through the GE.

Once you've located that you need it in the search container, select it and it'll come in the Buy Offer window. As with selling items, you can adapt the purchase price, depending http://rpg-rom.com/mario-kart-64-rom on how much you are willing to pay, to within 5% below or above the current market price. Prior to trying to buy an item, you'll want the gp needed to make the deal in your inventory. That money will automatically be deducted from you and used to cover the product if it's available. In the event that you happen to offer more for an item than what another person is selling it for, you'll get that extra gp when the trade is completed.

When you're ready to make the buying offer, click on the Confirm Offer icon. If you think the item is too expensive or if you have just changed your brain about making the purchase, you can exit the display screen by simply clicking the X in the top right part or the white back arrow in the lower left corner.

Exactly like with selling items, you don't have to hold out for the trade to be finalized. In fact, if you're trying to buy rare items, it might take quite a little of time because of this transaction that occurs. Instead, you can continue steadily to go about your business and you'll be notified whenever your offer has been up to date. Then you collect your purchase and any leftover gp from the original offer at any loan provider in Runescape.

[kinsie]

So, I'm going to kick out an update for MetaDoom in a couple of days. This makes a few sizeable changes under the hood, but most of it (barring some nice cosmetic tweaks and one or two balance changes) should be invisible to players outside of maybe running a little better. Now I have to start thinking seriously about what the future holds, both for MetaDoom and for my Doom modding in general.

Nevander's about to kick out his Doom 64 conversion, so odds are I'll take a little time off from MetaDoom to "vanilla-fy" it and make it gameplay mod-compliant, like I did with PSX Doom TC a while back. After that, though, there are a few things I want to tackle with MetaDoom in the future:

THE BFG: On the surface, if you only play in single-player, the BFG is fine. That's a pretty big if, however - while GZDoom's netcode situation could be politely described as "butt", it very likely won't stay that way forever. And in multiplayer, the BFG is a mess - the beams don't shoot out at hostile players, and the points rewarded by the beam attacks killing monsters are only rewarded to player one. A lot of the code for this attack was "borrowed" from Xaser's Argent mod before it underwent its ZScript-ification, so if I want to get to the root of the problem, I'll have to rewrite - and rethink - large swathes of it.

Also, the altfire is kind of crap, too, but that's all on me. I can handle that.

THE SPIDER DEMON: The Spider Demon is a difficult monster to work with and design for. I have a design written up for new moves and abilities intended to make it more appropriate as a final boss, and a big pile of sounds taken from Doom 4 and ready for additional manipulation... but this leaves a big, art-shaped hole in my plans. The Spider Demon doesn't have a lot of good alternate sprite sets out there, partly due to it not appearing in as many games as the other bosses, but mostly because of it being so fucking enormous, and that size makes it difficult to hit up artists to help me with a new sprite set. In addition, the new moves I have planned will require new frames, increasing the load.

There are a number of ways to go ahead with this, and few of them are ideal. Currently I'm leaning towards cutting down my plans and working with what I have, focusing on delivering the core of the idea using some loose-n-crappy modifications of the default Doom sprites... it'd be a bit disappointing, but I can extend and improve it further later.

Alternatively, I could poorly resize and recolour the Doom 64 Arachnotron and glue a skull to its face... ehhh, actually, nevermind.

TRITES: Trites are an interesting challenge. They're iconic to the Doom 3 experience, but they don't really fit well into Doom 2's bestiary anywhere, and their Headcrab-esque gameplay design is a trope that I've personally never been huge on. I'd like to redesign their gameplay to use the ceiling-walking trick from Strife's spider-bot, which will be a lot easier now that ZScript is a thing! As to what they'd replace, I'm learning towards making them weak and having a Spectre spawn generate 3-4, which will have its own problems with spawning inside walls etc. that will need to be dealt with.

I might also make them togglable, just for the arachnophobia peeps out there. I mean, why not, right?

MORE MONSTER VARIANTS: Clearly, my job here is not finished. I'd like to address a couple that have been on my mind recently...

Arch-Vile: Obviously, the key "get" here is the Doom 4 Summoner. I have a gameplay design hashed out for this guy, involving the Imp Lord's teleportation trick and summoning hordes of weak melee Zombies, but I've yet to piece together sprites for it. I have a very clear idea in my head of what I want to do, I just haven't gotten around to properly executing it yet.

Mancubus: There are two key variants I want to do here - the Doom 64 Manc (which I will probably name the Druj after one of the Doom 2 RPG variants) and the Doom 4 Cyber-Manc. These two monsters have the polar opposite problems - the Druj has sprites but no gameplay design, and the Cyber has gameplay design but no sprites. I'll have to talk to people and see what I can figure out.

PLAYER GENDER: This is something a friend of mine has requested, and with the presence of Crash in Q3A and Major Morgan from Doom 2 RPG, it's totally canon. I have some ideas on how to do this, at least as far as player sounds and HUD face (which may or may not take some inventory item hackery depending on what Graf's ZScript status bars can do). Changing anything else would probably require Gross Hacks™, or at least, way more art editing than I'm prepared to do.

If I do this though, I'd at least like to also accommodate the "other" gender option in player info, just for consistency's sake. Quake 2 (and parts of the ZDoom source code) accommodate this with a bulky-ass cyborg option - a HUD face for this mode would be tricky, but sound effects will be cake. As to what resources to use, I'll probably try and get permission to use Xaser's female hud face from Psychic (sans shades, of course), since it's in the same visual style as the standard Doomguy face and would require minimal massaging to look right. For the cyborg HUD face... I dunno, Hayden's head from Doom 4, maybe?

THE FUTURE: At least on the surface, at a noise-being-made level, MetaDoom is probably one of the less successful of my Big Mods, as you could probably tell by my complete failure to hide how disgruntled I am about it. I think, ultimately, it's due to the mod being comparatively straight-faced and adhering to the standard Doom gameplay in comparison to Reelism's arcade crazytown. Releasing in the wake of the D4D juggernaut probably didn't help much, either.

This isn't to say I'm disappointed with the mod - far from it, I'm super-proud of what I've accomplished - but as a creature that thrives off feedback, it's kind of difficult to shake the feeling of shouting into the void. And with that feeling comes thoughts of veering off and working on a different mod concept I've been massaging for a while. Something akin to a modern take on Cory Whittle's community-defining work blended with the casual insanity of the BUILD engine's games. However, while an attitude and feel is clearly present, the entire rest of the mod concept is still very nebulous, and ultimately all I have to show for it right now is a catchy name and an elevator pitch that changes every other week.

GZDoom has changed dramatically since MetaDoom was first announced last July, and it's continuing to evolve and expand and grow hair in gross places. Ultimately, I'm going to keep The Next Thing on hold as the next generation engine feature set formulates, and continue to work on MetaDoom, using it as something of an R&D lab for new features of possible relevance. We're entering a strange new world, and I want to make sure I'm well-equipped for it. Or at least, so I know just how fucked I am without actual programmers backing my illiterate ass up. Either/Or, really.