crowmagus

[crowmagus]

Modern Effigies: Grave

Contents: Two sticks, some rocks, a discarded piece of fabric.

Reaction: Destroyed / Scattered (6 Days)

[crowmagus]

Modern Effigies: Corpus

Contents: A piece of concrete, 1 Angel Coin.

Reaction: Taken / Missing (1 Day)

What is Modern Effigies?

Modern Effigies is when I put some stupid bullshit in a place people will come across it naturally. Any man made additive items (IE things brought by me, and not just found outside) must be small, preferably made of non-plastic materials.

This project has no goal except to see how people react to slightly strange things. You can make your own if you're so inclined.

[crowmagus]

I really like Cult of the Lamb - but I wanted to like it a lot more.

[crowmagus]

Ritual Sacrifice Works

It’s blood magic 101, you kill something - you get power out of it equivalent to its value. 

But, the thing about ritual sacrifice is that people overestimate the value of a soul really - I mean particularly animal souls. Human souls are a whole different thing and are not the focus of this class. And frankly, you’re not going to find anyone teaching that sort of stuff with the current political climate. 

Anyways, what really trips people up is “value”. What is the sacrifice of a goat really worth? Now, I’ve been pushing for this university to start teaching rudimentary economics - but they keep turning me down. So unfortunately I’ve got to teach you all economics instead of getting right into the blood magic. 

A metaphor I always like to use is think about a protein bar. 

Y’know right now for a good protein bar you can get it at the store for $2.00. Honestly I even balk at that price but I do pay it because I like to have some protein bars at home for a quick snack if I’m on the go. 

But imagine now that you’re trapped in the Appalachian Frostwoods, and you’re starving. Now how much would you pay for that Protein bar? How much value does it have? 

Ask a starving person and they’d pay any price for that food. 

Value is subjective - this is not just a matter of our modern markets, it is a matter of reality. Now, I know the average person going to study magic doesn’t like talking about the financial market. 

It sucks, I get that - but you really need to start thinking about supply, demand, effort, labor, cost benefit analysis, all that boring shit. 

I hate to break it to you, but magic isn’t exciting most of the time. You’re going to have to transmute some very esoteric experiences into numbers, and you’re going to have to check and double check those numbers to make sure your ritual actually works. 

You want to know what the #1 cause of death for magicians? It’s not demonic interference, despite what the tabloids will tell you. It’s not arcane feedback, it’s not overdraw, it’s none of these fancy things you learn about in your stories. 

No, it’s overconfidence. You’ll have amateur - hell even experienced magicians. You’ll have them using their “gut” feeling to cast spells. They’ll feel like they’re invincible - they sacrificed 100 chickens to build their water breathing spell. 

They get overconfident and then they’ll act all surprised when 5 minutes into a submerged megastructure they suddenly can’t breathe anymore. 

So let’s talk about this, let’s talk about value. 

Blood sacrifice is huge right now. Nearly 30% of the world’s chickens and rats are now being sold to magicians for blood sacrifice or other magical rituals. You can buy one hundred chickens for around 200 bucks. 

Ten years ago, that cost would have been at least triple. Now imagine how much a chicken would be worth before factory farming, imagine how much work goes into raising a chicken in ancient egypt.

Let’s say you’re working off of a spell written one thousand years ago, and it asks for 10 chickens to protect you from bad luck and ward off foul smells for two years. Well, I got bad news for you buddy. If you try to cast that spell with ten chickens - you’re lucky if you get half a day of warding from that thing. 

But what if I told you that another person had that spell work for a year with just one chicken? Some of you seem interested in that. If there’s one thing every magic student loves, it's a loophole. 

Well sorry to disappoint you but this isn’t the loophole you’re looking for. We’re back at subjectivity, we’re back to the protein bar in the middle of the freezing woods. 

Instead of being a well off magic student with your tuition paid by mommy’s money, imagine you’re destitute. You’re living in the middle of a corn field, you can’t afford a tent, and your body is withered from malnutrition. 

For some reason, you’re trying to cast this spell. The two bucks you’d pay for a chicken is suddenly worth a lot more isn’t it? I’m willing to bet you’d be able to get that spell to work for YEARS off of just one chicken. 

Now imagine you couldn’t buy a chicken, but instead had to catch one in the wild? Imagine working yourself to exhaustion catching one. 

That chicken's value has gone up even more. 

But you have to remember - the value of that chicken that you just caught, it’s subjective. It can change, it works both ways.

If some big industrial magic company comes by you and offers you ten bucks for that chicken that you nearly died catching, it’s not going to really be that much more effective for /them/ than a farm-raised chicken. 

Because for them - for the people buying it, the amount of labor for them specifically is not really higher. They’re paying such a low cost for this chicken. You might think paying 10 bucks for a 2 dollar chicken is going to give you five times the value - but that’s only the case if 10 dollars is worth 5 times as much to you as 2 dollars. 

I see some of you are scratching your head, and I get that. But you have to remember that for a multi-million dollar corporation, such small numbers are basically the same. 

If I ask one of you for two cents, you’re going to have about the same reaction as if I asked for one cent. You have roughly similar emotional attachment to such small values. 

These facts about subjective value are why it’s so hard to scale up magic on an industrial scale. It devalues itself. 

The only way these massive corporations really work is by employing tons of grunts with subjectively high value of their sacrifices. And even then it’s tricky, very tricky. 

You can’t game magic, trust me - we’ve been trying for thousands of years. Over the course of your time at this university, you’ll be developing a sense of honesty. You’ll learn to quantify the true value of things from your perspective. 

If you have any doubts - hell even if you’re confident. I implore you to run the numbers. 

Now with that out of the way, I’d like all of you to turn to page 87 in your textbooks and start reading about the “Butcher’s Principle”. I’m going to head over next door and bring some pigs in for our next demonstration.

[crowmagus]

I like the oblivion face game

[crowmagus]

Blue Prince has an RNG Problem (no spoilers)

Full transcript below.

 At only five hours into this game - it became clear to me that this was going to be my game of the year, and it would easily take its place among one of my favorite games of all time.

The Blue Prince is a game that’s best played blind. This video contains no major spoilers, and all the footage you see is going to be of the first few days. 

I will be discussing some of the rooms that show up in the mansion - none of which I believe will be a significant spoiler. 

But nevertheless, if you wanted to play this game with no knowledge at all - you should probably wait to watch this video. 

With that out of the way - let's get into the critique. 

So, 

The Core Game Loop of the Blue Prince focuses around building a house room by room. Every time  you go through a closed door - you get to choose between three rooms to enter  - gradually building the house like a big jigsaw puzzle. 

If you run out of steps, or if you box yourself into a dead end . You’ll have to call it a day. And since this game is a roguelite, starting a new day means you lose all of your items, and have to start building the house from scratch again the next day.

Your primary goal in Blue Prince is to reach the elusive “room 46” a goal which seems daunting at first, but will become more and more feasible as you start to understand how the rooms work - and begin to unravel the overarching mystery of the game. 

Now - At first, this game loop is phenomenal. Even if you have a bad run, you probably still learned something - either about a puzzle, or just about the House works.  For the first 10-15 hours, I was completely enthralled by this game. I had completed the main objective, and was starting to unravel the larger mysteries lurking beneath the game's surface. 

This is, unfortunately,  where the cracks started to show for me. The problem with the Blue Prince is not a complicated one - it’s all about randomness or -  RNG if you’re a gamer. 

RNG

Now don’t get me wrong - I think RNG is a good thing in this type of game. A roguelike without randomness is like a pizza without cheese. It’s an essential aspect of the genre and without it the game wouldn’t work. 

The randomness of this game is part of what makes it so fun to play. When I talk to my friends about their playthroughs - I’m always shocked to learn what things they discovered - and in what order. Each player is provided a truly unique game experience - which is exceptionally rare for what is essentially a puzzle game. 

But with that in mind, what the game really needs are more mechanics to control that randomness. 

As it stands, there are some pretty good items and rooms which help with this but -  the issue is, that a lot of those things are also dependent on randomness - which means if you run into some bad luck - you can have a very frustrating experience with this game.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

So, there’s this room in the House called the Boiler Room - it’s a big steam engine which provides power to adjacent rooms. There are a handful of puzzles in this game that require you to connect the Boiler room to other rooms - and these are puzzles which you become aware of  really early on.

I personally was not able to successfully connect the Boiler Room to anywhere else until nearly 10 hours into my playthrough - and that was for only ONE of the required combinations. Even now, over 20 hours into my playthrough, I am still trying to connect the Boiler Room to a particular location in order to solve a puzzle. At one point I spent five hours straight just trying to connect these two rooms - and just didn’t draw things in the right order. 

Another example of RNG dependent progression has to do with items.So,  There are physical items in this game such as the magnifying glass or shovel, which are required to solve a number of puzzles. Now in the early game, it’s not terribly hard to get these items so no big deal. However - later on in the game, you eventually have to combine items in a room called the Workshop. 

The Workshop is not guaranteed to appear - and likewise the items you will need to combine in the workshop aren’t guaranteed either. These two factors combine in such a way where you can completely lack the tools to solve puzzles unless you get a VERY specific combination of items. 

This alone wouldn’t be too bad - except that you lose all of your items at the start of every day. 

So, let’s make up a hypothetical situation to demonstrate how frustrating this can be. 

Let’s say you need to Combine a Shovel and a Sledgehammer to make a “Shovehammer”

In order to make the Shovehammer, you need to pick up both of these items, which are dependent on RNG. 

If you manage to get the Shovel and the Hammer - you’ll then need to draft the Workshop, which also requires RNG. 

For context, Over the course of my first 50 days, I had drafted the Workshop only 5 times.

Now, With that in mind - let’s say you get the Shovel, the Sledgehammer, and the workshop. You finally craft the Shovehammer. 

Now, since you’ve been doing a great job of keeping a journal and looking out for clues. - you know you need to bring the Shovehammer to the Gymnasium to break open the Basketball so you can find  ~A Special Key. ~

Unfortunately,  you spent all your time getting the shovel, sledgehammer, workshop, and gymnasium.  And now you don’t have enough steps left to even MAKE it to the Gymnasium. You desperately try to think of some way to make it there -but you  run out of steps. You are forced to end the day, you lose all of your items and progress, and you have to pray you get lucky enough again. 

Early in the game, this is a little frustrating - but usually you’re at least making progress on other things so it's not as big of a deal. Later in the game, however,  your list of things you can work on is getting smaller and smaller - and you are more and more just PRAYING to get the right combination of things in the right order so you can make progress. 

Now that I’ve Illustrated these problems with RNG - let me propose some solutions. 

RNG Fixes

1. Pity Timers

So - For certain puzzles such as room combinations like I mentioned with the boiler room. I think if you haven’t drafted those two required rooms by a certain day, the game should ramp up the odds of drawing them consecutively.  

If you haven’t gotten the boiler room, and the laboratory by day 60 - it should be more or less guaranteed you’ll get them on a given run. 

I think Pity Timers like this would especially be useful for rooms or upgrades that help alleviate the games inherent RNG. 

Or using our previous example -  if you  haven’t gotten the shovel, hammer, workshop, and gymnasium all at once - start increasing the odds of them appearing in any given  run. 

2. A Permanent Coat Check

In Blue Prince there’s this cool room called the Coat Check that lets you deposit an item from your current run, and next time you draft it the item will be there. 

This is a good room - but it’s severely kneecapped by RNG. You’re not guaranteed to draw the Coat Check. There’s been many, many times where I’ve needed an item from the Coat Check, or I wanted to store an item -  and I just didn’t get lucky enough to draft it. 

I think at a certain point in the game - you should unlock the ability either to have a permanent coat check near the entrance hall - or some way to more reliably draft it so that when you get lucky combining items together - you can bring them into another day with you to avoid any frustration. 

I think this would best be placed as a late game permanent upgrade. Because early on I think it would be too overpowered. 

3. Permanent Item Unlocks

This one is a bit out there, but I think in the late game, and I mean the really late game.  It would be great if you could make certain items permanent. 

It would be something that’s hard to do, maybe it costs 200 gold or something crazy . That way when you’re on day 100 or something, you’re not still getting your run ruined because you can’t find a shovel. 

Now with those suggestions out there - I want to stress that the randomness of this game is part of what makes it so fun and addictive. But as a fan of roguelites I know all too well that the fun of randomness does begin to wear off - especially when you know what you need but just can’t get it. 

Anything added to the game which reduces its randomness needs to be carefully paced. Too soon, and you risk neutering the game loop. Too late, and you risk players being so frustrated that they stopped playing entirely. 

Now with all that in mind - I think all of these issues I brought up would be less aggravating if not for a secondary problem the Blue Prince has.

Now, I know I said RNG was the only real problem with the game - and -  I do think that is the fundamental issue. But there is a secondary factor at work here which amplifies the frustration of bad RNG and that factor is Tempo. 

Tempo

Tempo is a musical term which essentially means speed, but I think it’s particularly relevant here as we think about the rhythm of this game.

 In most pieces of music, the tempo is consistent - the song is going to remain the same speed all the way through. If it slows down or speeds up - it has to be for the right reason, and at the right time. Otherwise you risk interrupting the flow of the song, and taking the listener out of it.

Games work the same way - you need to establish a consistent pace to keep the player engaged. You need to keep them in a flow state. 

The Blue Prince is full of changes in Tempo. The vast majority of them come in the form of puzzles and clues. 

This game is packed full of layers upon layers of puzzles - early on you’re going to be finding clues for puzzles in just about every room you walk into. 

The game expects you to keep a thorough journal of anything that might be a clue - so you’re going to have to frequently stop to take notes. 

Now for the most part I don’t have a problem with the tempo of puzzles. Most puzzles you only need to take notes on once and then you can ignore them in later runs. The only exception I would make about journaling would be that I think anytime you pick up a book, or piece of paper - it should be permanently added to some menu that you can access through the escape menu. Taking pictures of every piece of paper you come across and making notes on where you found it really quickly becomes annoying, and seems unnecessary. 

Puzzles aside, my main issues with Tempo has to do with interactables, and backtracking.

When you get into the late game - you’re going to be moving through runs a lot more quickly. You’re not going to be walking carefully through every room - you’re going to be beelining to the door hoping you get that lucky combination of rooms you’ve been waiting for. 

Now when you’re moving quickly like this - anything that slows you down causes a lot of friction. Unfortunately, there are a lot of interactable objects such as safes and computers which take an unbearably long time to work with when you’re trying to move quickly. 

The slow interface of the computer is cool and immersive at first - but when it’s your 50th time in the security room, and you have to navigate that interface, it slows your run to a crawl. It breaks up the tempo for no reason - which is extremely frustrating. 

The first time you open a safe - it’s thrilling. But the 30th time you start wondering why you have to stop and enter the code manually again. 

This is further aggravated by the fact that this game requires a lot of backtracking. And unfortunately - your little boy legs do not move very fast even when you’re sprinting. 

Again, at first the slow pace is helpful for noticing clues - but it very quickly feels inappropriate for how much you need to move from one room to another. 

And again - if this was a game where you could get all of the content done in 30 or so in game days, then this wouldn’t be such a big deal - but if you’re going to be doing 100 or more runs, you NEED to speed things up. 

Tempo Fixes

The solution here is simple. 

First, Anything you have to manually interact with every time you’re in a run should be sped up, such as in the case of the computer terminals. Or if it’s something like a safe - just have it spawn open  every run after you’ve unlocked it the first time. There’s no reason to waste the player's time with repetitive tasks or animations.

Hell I think even the introductory cutscene where you slowly zoom into the house should be sped up or even removed entirely after a certain point. 

As a general rule - if it happens once, you can make it slow. But if it happens over and over again, you need to speed it up or skip it entirely. 

My second solution is to increase the sprinting speed. Either add an unlock that permanently increases the speed of the player - or  let the player manually set the speed of their walking and sprinting states. 

Personally - I would have my walking speed be the current sprint speed, and make my sprinting speed at least twice as fast as it is now. 

Wrapping Up 

The Problems with Tempo I’ve described are secondary to RNG. If the game’s RNG wasn’t so brutal - you wouldn’t have nearly as much frustration with tempo problems. I didn’t even realize how slow things were taking until I was constantly repeating runs because of bad RNG. 

To return to the music metaphor - even the best song in the world can be tarnished by too many loops

If the Blue Prince could implement these solutions. If the RNG could be reigned in, and the Tempo could be made more consistent - then I truly believe it could be a perfect game. 

But as a final disclaimer: I haven’t fully completed this game yet. I’m well past the main objective, and pretty damn far in. But… I haven’t solved all the puzzles yet. 

Maybe some of my complaints do get addressed. 

Maybe I just haven’t unlocked the right things.

 Maybe I just need to have the right item, in the right room, at the right time.  

But if that is the case - then there’s nothing I can blame but my luck. And unfortunately - the more I play Blue Prince, the less lucky I feel. 

EXIT: 

That’s the video! I am absolutely in love with this game, I’ve got like 20 pages of handwritten notes and I'm still learning new stuff. But enough about me, what do you think?

Do you think the RNG is unfair? Am I missing something? Let me know in the comments.

and If you liked the video, please leave a like or subscribe to the channel. It really means a lot to me. 

Regardless, thanks for watching all the way through. I look forward to seeing you again on the next video. 

Bye bye!

[crowmagus]

Here's a video I made on Obsidian's newest release (if you're into that sorta thing).

Full transcript below:

Avowed is a fun game, and that's why I hate it

Avowed is a pretty fun game. The combat is responsive, and crisp. The world is full of little secrets to explore, and it's  bursting with beauty and danger.

The story doesn’t waste your time, and it doesn’t talk down to you, it's all very clear. It waits for you to follow it without any pressure.

But despite those, Avowed lets me down in a lot of ways.

I don't hate Avowed -  that's a lie that I made up for a more compelling title - but I don't love it, and I *do* I hate that. I don’t hate when a game is bad, but I do hate when it has so much potential and falls short. 

I could nitpick lots of small things about this game, and trust me it has a lot of minor  issues, but I’m going to talk about the things that I come to an Obsidian game for.  Which are Quest Writing, Reactivity, and Roleplay. 

These three things are by no means terrible, but they are underwhelming - and when you try to sink your teeth into this game - they are the unpleasant gristle that makes you reach for a napkin. 

Number 1: Quest Writing:

I’m mostly going to gripe about side quests here. In part, because side quests are the bulk of this game. There aren’t faction quests, or any other quest chains - it's all side quest and main quest here. Additionally, some side quests directly affect your ending - so there's an argument that the game demands you complete all of its side quests.

So, in a lot of Quests in this game you are presented with two decisions - with room for interpretation as to which of these decisions is actually the /best/ option. This is a good thing, lots of my favorite games deal with these morally grey decisions.

The issue with Avowed, is that you are pushed into these decisions VERY quickly - and with very little opportunity to discover WHY these decisions are so messy to begin with. I understand that you need to have yes / no decisions to make a sane video game - but Avowed seems profoundly disinterested in giving you anything to inform these decisions. 

To make matters worse, many quests present you with the YES / NO decision with no room for “I’ll think on this and decide later”. Oftentimes you’ll follow a sidequest, and then end up in a room with a person and you are quickly given the option “okay you’re the good guy I’m on your side” or [Attack] Die Villain!. 

these decisions happen way too soon, and they often give you next to no opportunity to talk to the person to figure out what decision you should make - or even to understand why those two options are the only ones.

What a lot of these quests needed, was to take their time to make the player understand what was at stake, why are we forced to make this hard decision. Why can’t a compromise be reached, why can’t I gather more information and come back to this, why am I making this decision for you?

If this happened once or twice, I wouldn’t be upset, but it happened very, very often to me. Each quest I finished like this left me with a bad taste in my mouth - not because I wasn’t sure I made the right decision, but because I felt like I might as well be flipping a coin for all the information I was given. 

Number 2 Reactivity: 

NPCs don’t react to enemies for the most part - you can’t find two factions or creatures fighting almost anywhere in the world. Though I did eventually find a couple examples of scripted NPC fights in the third act.

The world is VERY dense, its what makes it so pleasing on the brain to explore. There’s always a pack of enemies, or a ruin to explore, or a couple of NPCs chatting to set up a quest. 

The issue is, that these things are all very close together. There were multiple times where I would encounter NPCs having a pleasant picnic together mere feet away from a pack of murderous ghosts, mushrooms, or bandits. Now when I originally started playing, I assumed this was because they couldn’t figure out how to make NPCs fight, but I later discovered that they DID know how to do that, which makes it even more head scratching. 

Another thing along similar lines

This game has a stealth system, but it doesn’t have a stealing system or any crime for that matter. You can take whatever you want, even when it would very clearly be stealing. A very small handful of NPCs will say “hey that's mine” but they won’t do anything about it. You don’t even get pulled into dialogue, they let you go after unleashing their half-hearted quip.

I get that having to add guards, jail, and penalties for stealing isn’t a small ask. I totally understand. But they could have been smarter about how they did this. They could have had more instances of people reacting poorly to your theft, even if they can’t call the guards on you (you ARE the envoy, after all). They could have had SOME people go hostile. Stealing from rebels? Yeah, they’ll attack you. 

Also - none of the NPCs move, they all stand in place. It seems like dynamic NPCs of any type were a big no-go in the studio, and informed a lot of these decisions.

These things made the world feel VERY static. It did not make me feel like part of the world, it made me feel like I lived in another world entirely from the other characters - that I was the only one who was capable of interacting with enemies, or with anything really.

Number 3 Roleplaying:

This is my largest section, and I’m breaking into the three subsections which are Premise, Backstory, and Attributes

a. PREMISE: The Emperor’s Envoy

Upon reflection, this one crept up a lot in other sections.  

The game starts with telling you that you are the Imperial Envoy - you are an impressive fellow who commands lots of respect and has a Very Serious role as a living emissary of one of the most influential  in the world. 

Starting out, it seems like this is important - people react strongly to you as being the envoy. 

They bring it up a lot, reference how important your role is and all that good stuff. This was good, this got me thinking “oh hell yeah, I’m not just a scruffy adventurer chosen one, I’ve got an important tie to society, and to this place as a whole. I like this, I can’t wait to see how the story treats this.” 

The story doesn’t /ignore/ that you’re the envoy. Most of the main story hinges on it, but you are almost instantly rendered inert - free of any real authority. You quickly become a Thing That Goes Places For People. 

I’m very surprised at how few dialogue options there are for “I represent the will of an Empire, and I’m Not Interested in A Fetch Quest”. It’s definitely a dick move, and not something I’m eager to roleplay, but it does seem extremely likely as something my character might feel given their role and history. 

Being an envoy quickly becomes irrelevant. despite the implications of authority, you aren’t even allowed to attempt to use it for anything. 

Maybe this is meant to show you that the empire doesn't mean anything out here in the wilderness. Unfortunately the game very often refers to its importance, but never has that importance be relevant.

There’s a lot of dissonance. Everywhere you go, especially in the first area - you see the presence of your empire, people you definitely have authority over and yet you feel like you have no influence with them, not even the opportunity to TRY to influence them.

This is especially egregious in a lot of the side quests, where your role as Envoy serves only as a name people call you, while ignoring any of the implications of what being the Envoy means. 

Again, I understand why we have so many filler quests with bounty hunting, or give this item to that person in the game

 But I felt like I needed more incentive as to why my character would even do that besides a metagame need for gear and experience. 

Obsidian actually made a game about the implications of being the Envoy of a powerful nation and its called Tyranny and its really good. 

They’ve done it great before, but this game just isn’t interested in letting you be that person. Which is a bummer.

Letter B. Backstory!

So in character creation you choose a backstory. There’s a handful of them, they cover all the usual bases war guy, magic guy, noble guy, scout guy you know the drill. 

I chose the “Court Augur” a sort of future prophesying mystic, it sounded the most interesting. 

Now - to Avowed’s credit, my backstory came up a lot in conversation. Hell it came up a lot more than I ever thought it would. The issue is that it actually… doesn’t really do anything most of the time. You get maybe 1 extra line of dialogue from the NPC, but very rarely does your background actually change the outcome of anything. It’s kinda just a “click here for flavor” button. Which is disappointing. 

Now, this wouldn’t be an issue if there were /Other/ options for influencing dialogue. Which brings me to…

Letter C. Your Attributes! 

Avowed doesn’t have a designated social stat. All of your stats contribute to combat in one way or another, but all of your stats can also be used in social situations for the most part too. 

Intelligence can show your knowledge of the world, or general critical thinking. Perception lets you notice hidden things and so on and so forth. 

The issue is, that these “checks” also don’t really do much. While there are a couple of moments that they get utilized for meaningful change - they just don’t happen enough to really make me feel like they matter. 

Roleplay: Closing Out

To close out this section. 

Because your premise, backstory and attributes don’t really change how you exercise your agency in the world.

 it really makes it feel like who your character is doesn’t matter. You can’t be the envoy, you can’t really be a smooth talker, you can barely be a court augur or other background. You are just a doll that gets to say a couple flavored quips before being funneled to the same end goal. 

And I get that it’s nearly impossible to make a game with definitive control over the narrative based on your background - but at the very least give me the illusion that the reason I completed a quest is because of my skills - and not because I either have to concede or [Attack]. 

I don’t think a game needs to have the premise, backstory, and attributes of your character to all matter in order for it to be good. But one of them NEEDS to feel consistently meaningful or you begin to feel detached from both your character and the story. That's how I felt with this game.

The Excuse

Before I get to my conclusion, I want to say that I understand that all of this happens for a reason. I don’t think anyone wanted the game to come out as decently fun, but ultimately underwhelming and uncompelling. 

There are issues with funding, development time, the fact that they were acquired by microsoft not so long ago. 

There are pressures to make safe games that appeal to wider demographics than other games Obsidian have made. 

Unlike a Studio like Bioware - that has almost none of its original staff from when it made good games, Obsidian still has a lot of great talent in their studio. So I’m not keen to blame a lack of talent for Avowed’s problems, I think more likely there are issues behind the scenes - either with development timelines or with management that are to blame. 

But, the fact is that even with that excuse - it doesn’t change that this game let me down. 

Avowed is a Fun Game: 

(add something about how avowed is a definite improvement from The Outer Worlds)

I should wrap this up, but I have to say despite my negativity - Avowed is actually a pretty decent game. The combat feels nice, the exploration is satisfying, and the world is lovingly rendered. I don’t play most games, let alone beat them - but I did play Avowed and I played it all the way through. It’s a well made game, and it’s easy to pick up and put down. Things happen at a quick pace.  it's easy to play for an hour and check a couple of quests off.  

It’s a game packed with things to find, things to admire - the score is great and the graphics are beautiful. The environment design is masterful - The game always knows how to nudge you into the direction of interesting stuff, or give you a route to clamber higher up. The core story is.. okay, maybe a bit lacking in nuance., But there are rare moments where you can really feel the magic come together.

In a lot of ways, I feel like Avowed is a successful version of what Dragon Age: The Veilguard wanted to be. A well crafted, but approachable title continuing a complex and sometimes opaque franchise. 

It’s because of who made this game that I am so critical of it. Maybe that's unfair, but it's the sad reality of making great games - you’ll always be compared to them.

I love Obsidian. Sure, I can point to Fallout: New Vegas and say “why not just do that again!” but I know it's not that simple. But I also played Tyranny, and Pentiment. Recent games. Great games. I know Obsidian can make a good story that really feels like you have agency, that makes you really feel like you’re Roleplaying. 

But for some reason, whenever they make a first person RPG like The Outer Worlds, or Avowed - they forget what RPG stands for. They focus too much on portraying a world, rather than letting you really inhabit it, and that honestly breaks my heart. 

If the action and fighting of this game was amazing, I could forgive these issues - but unfortunately that part of the game has a lot of problems too. It’s pretty good - definitely the best combat Obsidian has been able to put out - but it’s not good enough to compete in the action game space.

The fact is, If anyone else had made this game, I wouldn’t have even picked it up. And while I got some brainless entertainment from it, that isn’t what I wanted from it in the first place.]

It is a game that could have been great with a little more love, time, and thoughtfulness, but unfortunately, as is often the case, we do not live in that world.

Avowed is a pretty fun game, but that’s the best thing I can say about it, and that is truly disappointing.

[crowmagus]

the city was still

its vast concrete towers crumbled

in the streets billions of dead - massed and unthinking

the asphalt weeps blood

a forgetful sun shines coldly

elsewhere,

a teenage girl does a cartwheel

[crowmagus]

What dose it mean to be a psychic? can it be trained or are you just born like that?

Excellent question! So basically it's just kinda like this

Hope that helps! Thanks for writing in.

[crowmagus]

Listen to our show, it’s great!

What are the inspirations for the show? I get a lot of Gundam vibes

Gundam is absolutely a huge inspiration for ATYK. Specifically Gundam Thunderbolt (which was the 'required watching' for everyone on the show).

Armored Core, even though it came out mid-production definitely pulled us back into the mech genre - perfect timing there.

Believe or or not System Shock 2, which I finished playing right when I started writing the show in earnest played a big part in the tone I wanted to take with the 'horror' segments.

Star Trek Deep Space 9: Particularly its depiction of how remote outposts of a larger "good" government can be neglected, and in turn begin to form their own moral judgements in the field.

But the biggest inspiration, and the spark for the whole show and it's yet-to-happen climax is this song by Justice.

I listened to this song in ~2016 and imagined *something happening*. The entire campaign is essentially working back from there. Of course, there's no guarantee it will happen. But at this point, some things feel inevitable. That's as much as I can say!

EXTRA SHOUTOUTS WITH NO EXPLANATION: Dead Space, Citizen Sleeper, Disco Elysium, Signalis, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Prey, Warhammer 40:000, Pathologic 2, Factorio, Risk of Rain, SYNTHETIK, SOMA, Space Station 13, and most importantly you the listener.

(Okay I'm done going through my steam library and listing everything that ever resonated with me)

[crowmagus]

RANGER, Chapter 13

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Did she die again? Does it matter? Of course not. All that matters now are the forces animating her, driving her forward, her *animus* if you will. 

Now before we switch from our narrative space to the view of the protagonist there is a problem we must address. 

So far, we’ve had both Foggy and Aphid take control of the story - each in their own way with their own methods. But now that they are together, the question of control is muddied. 

Foggy, on one hand, has a powerful - almost divine ignorance of the spider's web she is entrapped in. Or at most she is unaware that she herself is the Spider’s leg. Yet, she thrashes, desperate for control.

Aphid, on the other hand, is cursed with a preternatural awareness of his role, and is all too willing to cede the stage to another. The danger in this, which I do hope he understands, is that this increases his likelihood of being killed or worse in order to develop other characters in our little story.

There’s something tantalizing about both of them - about Foggy’s optimistic foolishness - and about Aphid’s reluctance to take the reins. 

For the time being, let’s choose Foggy. After all, nothing makes a better scene transition than someone waking up.

And so, she did just that. She awoke at the fireside, the heifer who was slaughtered yet lived. Her senses returned to her slowly - starting with a deep aching pain from the hole which stretched from just below her sternum leading all the way through the back of her body. The pain developed slowly into an awareness of the rest of her body via the sweet alchemy of the nervous system. 

Without moving, she examined her surroundings. She was outside, underneath an oak tree. Tall shoots of mustard grass surrounded the tree, creating a surreal circle of yellow locked in a vibrant conversation with the colors of the fire. 

On the other side of the fire, partially obscured by the smoke and flame was the man from the billboard. He was staring at her, or something within her, or around her. 

She sat up painfully, and spoke her first words. “I need to get to the Contrition’s Heart Memorial Ranch and Beefery, I think it’s somewhere nearby. How do I get there? What’s your name? Why did you shoot me? Why did you heal me?” 

He remained still for 14 seconds, then moved over 2 feet so that the fire was no longer between them. 

He spoke for the first time in longer than he cared to remember.  

“The ranch is a three day journey northeast in the hidden valley. You will get there if I take you.

I am Aphid.

I thought you were a hostile entity. 

I did not heal you.” 

Foggy ran her hands over her chest and back, putting a finger through the bullet hole in her overalls. Sure enough, it continued through her still at both sides. It felt cold, like a thoroughly refrigerated steak. 

There was a surprising lack of blood, and though she was no expert on human anatomy it was safe to say that an equivalent wound on a bull would have not been survivable - not to mention it would have fouled the meat. More questions stampeded into her head, threatening to overwhelm her. One by one she culled them, until the only one that mattered remained.

“Will you take me?” she asked.

He looked up at the ever-violet sky between the gaps in the oak leaves. 

“Yes.”

[crowmagus]

More writing from my project Calamity Cascade. Check us out if you're interested in some cool sci-fi shit. @calamitycascade

Do any aliens live in the Sol Union? or is it all humans and dolphins?

Great question! 

There are some aliens that live in the Sol Union but they are an extreme minority.  For the most part - alien species are exceptionally different from each other, and have difficulty co-existing, especially in a society that is technologically quite far behind most other species.

The most common that has appeared in the Sol Union are the 'Vested' (our word, not theirs). They are a parasitic species, not too unlike the fungi of earth. In the past they would eject themselves through space on large bio-ships, crash landing into habitable planets and releasing vast clouds of spores. These spores would come in contact with other living organisms, and then embed themselves within them.

The spores could lay dormant for many years, before making their ultimate decision. Either they would

A: Kill the creature, and turn it into a large, violent spore cloud, typically by bursting out of any available orifice. 

B: Take over the creature's nervous system, and merge with its mind to turn it into a carrier - often finding other carriers on the same planet and creating a new bio-ship to go find a new planet to inhabit.

Visual depictions of three vested.

Typically, the brain of the creature (or whatever served the purpose of the creature's brain) would be overtaken by the fungus, usually bursting out of it and forming these diverse brilliant, geometric, fungal bodies.  

(more art below)

Nowadays, the Vested know not to colonize planets with any advanced life on them, and have engineered themselves such that they only release spores if they intend to (for instance if they find an interested host).

Those Vested in the Sol Union (as far as we are aware) have had their hosts consent for the merging, and claim they are quite happy with their new forms - and new state of being. The new form retains all of the memories of their hosts, and many but not all of the mannerisms, habits, and tastes.

It is a philosophical question of if that person is still the same being, or just a simulacra created by the Vesting process. 

In terms of rarity, most humans go their entire lives without meeting a Vested - only learning about them in schooling. They very, very rarely hold high-visibility positions despite their aptitudes. 

Showing more of one of the Vested.

As far as their acceptance in society, it’s a mixed bag as with any cultural minority. Some love them, some hate them, most are unsure of what to make of them given their lack of exposure. 

Nevertheless, they do a decent job of co-existing with the rest of humanity, and are quite sought after for their increased resilience, and impressive intuition. 

(thanks to Sunlith’s player @aurosoulart for the awesome depiction of the Vested)

I hope that answers most of it! Thanks for writing in.

[crowmagus]

how do people communicate with aliens is there translater technology

Great Question

There is technology for translation but not created by humans. Essentially, species that are interested in interacting with humans have technology for it, though it's worth noting that many, many of the species in the galaxy view humans (rightfully) as meaningless to communicate with.

It would be very much like if humans developed a translator for ants. You can only interpret 'following scent trail to food' , 'investigating danger scent' so many times before you realize there's not a lot worth tuning into.

In a similar vein, these translation technologies simply cannot communicate the concepts of higher-level species.

An Ouro might try to describe to a human the purpose of a device that they use, but because our knowledge of the world and relation to technology is so different, the best we can get is. "Device for [moving?] diagonally across [concept of gravity]"

This description is not very useful or meaningful to a human. How can you move across a concept of something diagonally? Why is moving only a lose interpretation? If you're not moving, but you're still moving, what does that mean?

Even I, the author, can't explain it - because in my mind that's what it means to write impossible technology. I have to struggle alongside humanity just as much.

I've gone on a bit of a tangent - but yes there are translators designed by aliens if they want to talk to us. They can communicate what they need from us, but are generally lackluster at communicating more alien concepts.

The exception to this, of course, is Unambiguous Psychic Communication - but this is avoided because it's generally very bad for humans at this point in time.

[crowmagus]

Brief Hiatus for RANGER

Hi Everyone, the monthly update's for RANGER are going to be temporarily (I promise) suspended.

I'm currently working on an actual play project that's been eating up most of my creativity juice, but if you've enjoyed RANGER you may enjoy the podcast as well.

It's a science fiction + mech story about an unpopular war, and the typed of warped people who would fight in them. Currently we're playing beamsaber - an offshoot of Blades in the Dark.

You can listen to it in any podcast app, or on youtube (links below)

Link to Youtube Podcast

I may post some RANGER updates from time to time, but I just wanted to give all a heads up.

Thanks a ton!

[crowmagus]

RANGER, Chapter 12

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As Foggy walked south along the oceanside highway, the mist began to recede. There was a certain, strange rhythm to the change.

She’d walk ten steps, her eleventh step would sound muffled - almost like a pillow being struck by a hand, then the mist would pulse - briefly brightening and drawing closer to her, then it would pull back.

step, step, step, step ,step, 

step, step, step, step, step

pomf, pulse, then recede

Though the sign promised a one mile march, Foggy arrived far sooner than she planned, to her it felt only minutes had passed. She chalked this up to being distracted by the strange pulsating mist around her, and instead busied herself with inspecting the commercial area she had arrived at.

With the fog fully withdrawn to her, she could see everything clearly. There was an outdoor recreation supply store, promising supplies for beachside camping, surfing, and hiking. Beside it, was a small restaurant ‘Cafe Doom’, and on the far side of the parking lot was a large billboard.

The billboard shined brilliantly,, its appearance bright, unfaded, and even appearing to be animated using some optical illusion. It depicted an advertisement for a film “Tales from the Park”. On it were two figures, one - presumably a woman, sat beside a campfire, staring into the flames with a dull expression. 

The other figure was a tall man wearing a tattered military uniform, he held a rifle and aimed it out from the advertisement. From this angle, his rifle seemed to follow her even as she moved. 

Foggy couldn’t help but stare at the impressive advertisement, and wondered at how it had stayed so pristine in this long abandoned place. Perhaps, she thought, there were people here who maintained the billboard. 

Or perhaps maybe - she began to think, before her train of thought was interrupted by a bullet tearing through her body and throwing her onto the cold asphalt of the parking lot. 

Her body froze in shock and panic, and suddenly it seemed that the mist was pressing in on her. The clarity of moments before vanished, and she was overcome with fear and regret. What had she been thinking? Did she really believe she could walk through this place without a care in the world? 

Her body wouldn’t respond to any commands, no matter how much she tried to get her arms or legs to move, they sat limply. Everything felt cold and far away, except for a wet,  burning point at the back of her torso. 

Blood spilled freely from her, and she could do nothing but watch as tendrils of mist - like shy, hungry calves, crept towards her, and as they reached the banks of her personal sea, they took their first taste of her life. 

With their first sip, however, the tendrils recoiled. The mist spasmed and churned in on itself, it shuddered and screamed - a sound that Foggy felt deep within, as she herself began to scream in pain and horror. The melodies of Foggy and the Fog reached a terrible harmony, and as the mist receded, a merciful darkness rushed in, relieving her of her pain, her consciousness, and her fear.

[crowmagus]

RANGER, Chapter 11

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Aphid had walked this strip of California’s Pacific Coast Highway many times. To him, it was the ideal route - few travelers knew how to traverse the fog without being predated upon, and even fewer knew its true nature. 

Even with the fog neutralized, the route was not perfect. Though no humans walked here, the new residents of the park were all either adapted or immune to the hungry gray mass which slithered out of the sea and up the mountainsides. Most of these creatures would be happy to tear Aphid limb from limb or scoop his mind out of his skull through his mouth, but fortunately few of them were immune to the formidable stopping power of his .30-06 ‘Bullhorn’ rifle. 

Those that were immune to such a caliber of firearm were typically slow or imperceptive enough that he could escape them unharmed. Exceptions did exist of course, as evidenced by the fractal scars which stretched over his neck and collarbone. 

Now nearing the commercial plaza, Aphid shrugged off his bag and placed it at the base of a long-faded billboard, which he then began to climb. The Point Doom Commercial Plaza had been witness to more than a handful of Aphid’s close calls with the fauna of the Park, and as such he never approached it without scoping it out from this very billboard. 

He unslung his bolt-action rifle and peered through his cracked scope at the plaza. The details were indistinct - the fog only allowing for gray-black impressions of buildings. He took his time, making sure every shape had an explanation and that none of them moved when he looked away… or otherwise animated.

Just as he was finishing his sweep he noticed something unexpected: A humanoid shape was approaching the plaza. He couldn’t make out the details of the shape, but it was abundantly clear it was not human. It walked with an unnaturally straight posture, it didn’t turn its head to look at its surroundings like a human should, and most concerningly - the fog seemed to be completely ignoring it. 

As the crosshair of his scope passed over it, it turned towards him. His heart started beating erratically. The shape was looking right at him, he knew it. His nostrils stung with adrenaline, his hair stood on end, his eyes became dry and focused, his finger crawled onto the trigger of the rifle. 

He stayed frozen, looking through the shaking scope at the terrible being as it stared through him. Despite his training, and despite his experience, Aphid’s panic grew and grew as he wrestled with trying to understand the entity. Fight and Flight entered into a battle to the death inside his addled mind, and with some luck and dirty tricks, Fight won out.

Aphid pulled the trigger, and his rifle discharged. 

[crowmagus]

RANGER, Chapter 10

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Algeria had experienced annihilation at a level second only to the United States, and those first weeks after starfall were indescribable. The terminology surrounding the warped reality of the star did not exist yet, and the poor soldiers could only guess at how they could provide any assistance to their countrymen.  We’ll skip over this particular timeframe to avoid upsetting dear Aphid.

It was about two months in, when the foreigners arrived... there was no handing off of power, or explanation from the Algerian Government; the Europeans simply appeared and took control.

Suddenly, Aphid was part of a unit that belonged to a foreign power - and he was expected to follow their orders. The foreigners brought with them enough stability and funding that nobody asked any questions. 

His handler was a French woman who spoke in hypnotizing bursts of dispassionate excitement. She was paradoxical in almost all her behaviors. She walked with a stumbling gait, but never, ever tripped. She was beautiful, yet repulsive. She never made eye-contact with anyone, but you could always feel her staring right at you. 

She insisted on being called either Doctor, or Damage, but never Dr. Damage. 

Aphid’s training was a well crafted regimen of both physical and mental training, which seemed bizarre to everyone except for those who had designed it. 

In the mornings, he was introduced to the basics of Neo-Causiology - one of the many fields of science which had burst into existence after starfall. Neo-Causiology (or neo-causality) is not something you should bother trying to internalize besides for the following phrase, hammered into the heads of every trained Ranger:

“Everything happens for a reason, except when it does not.”

In the afternoons, “Materia Theos 101”. 

This class described those impossible anomalous materials and effects found in the wake of Starfall.  Early researchers named them Materia Theos - “God Material”. It had started out as an informal, mocking name, but like most temporary things it became permanent. 

Materia Theos, MTs, or ‘Empties’ as Rangers would call them, came in a wide array of shapes and sizes. At this time, they outlined a few of the common ones they had encountered - a fraction of what we would discover in the coming years.

‘Goo’

Goo was, and is, the most common MT by volume. It’s often found on the surface in puddles or ponds of thick gray liquid. It is never initially found in direct sunlight, always in shade. It is a room temperature superconductor, and is used in all new technologies utilizing MT power sources, as it is the only material that can handle their power output.

‘Sparkler’

Sparklers are thumb sized gray-blue octahedrons covered in a prism-like fractal pattern in which a number of other octahedrons can be seen. They contain energy which can power a small city for up to 5 years, though this time estimate is growing as the field of MT Technologies evolves. There is no known method by which they can be recharged..

‘Halo Beads’

Marble sized golden spheres. Each sphere, when not in contact with organic matter, spins in a one-inch diameter circle aligned relative to gravity, generating enough force to move aside 3.6 kilograms / 8 pounds of matter. The beads connect to each other with a sort of magnetism - though they are easily unpaired. Each connected bead increases the diameter of the circle twofold, as well as the force they output. 

‘Gleam’

A sort of tangible light which dances a few feet above the ground - similar in appearance to the Auroras. Gleam has a warm, stringy feeling to it. It has a wide array of medical uses, and is often paired with non-anomalous medicine to increase its effect. 

There were more, but we’ll save them for later in that narrative so as to not bore you. 

In the evenings, Aphid underwent ‘therapy’ with Damage. The therapy was exceedingly unusual, and took anywhere from 5 minutes to 6 hours. 

The first time he met with her, he was asked to sit on the concrete floor with his legs crossed while she laid on a lounge couch across from him. 

“What is your favorite food?” she asked. 

After a few moments of consideration, and knowing better than to question her, he answered “Shakshouka”.  

Half a second later, she shot back. “What if it was plain basmati rice? What kind of human would you be then?” 

She then got up off of the couch, walked out of the door behind Aphid, and locked him inside. 

He waited patiently like a good little soldier for 30 minutes, before standing up and attempting to leave the room. The door, of course, was locked, and not wanting to cause any problems he began wandering around the room.  Besides for a plain gray carpet, and the lounge couch there was nothing, not even a window. 

He laid down on the couch and stared at the drop ceiling. His initial reaction to Damage’s question had been, of course, confusion. However, after this confusion had passed, he had answered privately to himself that he would probably be a rather boring man if his most favorite food in the whole world was plain rice. 

Then again, he thought, there’s something inherently unique about having plain rice be your favorite food. It would be a conversation starter for one thing, and anyone you told would surely want you to elaborate. No doubt it would be hard to forget the man who likes plain basmati more than anything else.

Not only that, but you could easily (and cheaply) make your favorite food. Hell, he could make a week's worth of food in minutes. It would be easy to pair the rice with meat, or vegetables to make it more nutritious.

No doubt that the Aphid-of-Basmati would be healthier, happier, and more popular with his peers. 

With this conclusion, he heard the door unlock. But by the time he got up and opened it, there was nobody on the other side.