Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
I ended my replay of Fallout 4 prematurely (grew tired, but still finished the main quest and many other things — and had a good time — just not all I had planned), and turned to the next in line: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
I like it. It’s my third AC game, the first two being 1 and 2, way back. Needless to say, many things have improved since then, even as the core gameplay remains the same.
The game flows well, and is enjoyable both moment-to-moment and along the progression. The various elements blend perfectly. I enjoy flying with the raven, sailing, riding, the beauty of the world and the graphics that convey it. Fighting feels fluid and fun, the raids fittingly brutal, and both character and settlement development feel rewarding. And so on. Both the individual parts and how they blend work well. As for the story and characters, they are fine, serviceable to move the game along.
Oh, and I really enjoy the music and the general theme of the game, and I am using the opportunity to learn about the Vikings and that era in general, exploring and listening to Nordic neofolk music like Wardruna and Heilung, and even picked up a little set of rune stones to play around with.
All in all, while not on my top ten, still a great game, even a little better than expected.
And the timing is perfect, I get to play this game until Kingdom Come: Deliverence 2 releases in early February, which I’ll dive into alongside Crusader Kings 3.
Character Creation Fail in The Outer Worlds
Started playing The Outer Worlds (by Obsidian) recently, and I like it, though not as much as I had hoped. This post, though, is about a relatively minor design problem I uncovered, regarding the character creation process. Might be relevant for some other games as well.
Right at the beginning you’re asked to make permanent decisions about your character, and mostly there’s no problem, but in regard to one thing in particular they leave out vital information that one requires to make an informed decision. Specifically, certain attributes have an impact on both combat and dialog (passing speech checks), but the dialog part is left out of the description completely. They don’t just leave out details (which would be fine), but omit the mention the link entirely. This is further obscured by the fact that there are options in the skills section that clearly are made for improving the character’s dialog ability.
I want my character to be good at passing speech checks, and not knowing the info outlined above, I created a character that was regularly locked out of interesting-looking dialog options. Found a station on the ship that allows for respecifying the character stats, but it only applies to skills and perks, not attributes. Attributes are forever, apparently.
Didn’t take long to realize that this state of affairs would continuously annoy me and impede my enjoyment of the game, so I figured it would be worth restarting the whole damn thing, despite losing hours of progress.
(Yes, consumables can temporarily raise attributes, but that’s not a good solution. It’s a real hassle as it will require you to either save and reload the game regularly, or to always keep at hand and eat consumables before every conversation just in case, because some speech checks won’t appear a second time. No thanks.)
In conclusion, I’m perfectly fine with having to make permanent character decisions early on, and fine with not knowing the all implications and the full impact of each decision (that’s part of the fun, making decisions with incomplete information), but I think it’s untenable to completely neglect to mention that a certain choice will impact dialog options. Unless they’re rare and insignificant, I suppose, but that didn’t seem to be the case here.
Fallout 76
Several weeks ago Bethesda started running a livestream teasing an upcoming Fallout related reveal. Much speculation ensued. I was myself expecting a remaster or two, something I’ve wanted for a long time.
Turns out they got a brand new Fallout game, for which we got a teaser trailer a day or so later. Fallout 76. Not many saw that coming, especially not before the livestream.
A brand new game, but other than that the trailer didn’t reveal much, we would have to wait for E3. So more speculation ensued, and there were also some (supposed) leaks and rumors going around, including that of Fallout 76 being a multiplayer game, which was also subtly hinted at by the trailer itself.
Then E3 arrived, and we learned that the game is in late stage development and that it’s indeed a multiplayer game of sorts, though not an mmorpg, and not a typical multiplayer shooter. They say it’s its own kind of multiplayer.
You can play solo if you want [1], but the experience may not be what you expect from a Fallout game, since it is built around multiplayer. They’ve removed and downgraded some traditional Fallout single player elements, most noticeably removed the human NPCs. All humans in the game are now real people. Previous games in the series all have plenty of human NPCs to interact with [2], indeed one might argue that that’s a core part of the series and a core driver of the storytelling. There will be some non-human NPCs (eg robots), but all in all NPC interaction will likely not feature as prominently this time around. In an interview Todd Howard has stated flat out that there will be no NPCs in the game (points for not trying to mislead us or conceal this gap), which strictly speaking is false (those robots) but still telling.
Filling this gap is the aforementioned multiplayer; you get to interact with other players instead of NPCs. If you go solo you’ll have to live with the gap and enjoy whatever else the game will offer.
It’s uncharted territory for a Fallout game, quite a change actually. Permissible experiment or a train wreck in the making? We’ll see, but from the looks of it, it’s hard not to conclude that it’s a significant step back for those looking for a single player experience, even though some of classic elements are there, such as quests, character development and exploration, and the Fallout world itself with its history and lore and everything.
But it might be a fun game in its own right, especially if played as intended, providing some new engaging experiences that the old Fallout games cannot. If you’re into that sort of thing. The setting does look compelling and beautiful — and the territory is apparently four times the size of Fallout 4 — and I do like base building (except… this time the settlements might be a bit desolate? In Fallout 4 they had people living in them.) Despite everything I just can’t help getting at least a little bit excited about getting to be in the Fallout universe again, with everything that (still) entails. Hopefully they have a surprise or two in store for us as well. And hopefully Inon Zur will return to create another awesome soundtrack — that alone would be something to look forward to. But conversely, if they don’t go with Inon Zur (or Mark Morgan, for that matter), and if they screw up the soundtrack somehow, that would be a huge blow to the game, as far as I’m concerned. A stellar soundtrack has been integral to Fallout since day one, and it’s a big deal.
In conclusion, I say this: I would much rather have a more traditional Fallout game, a single player game with lots of NPCs and so on, but I’ll likely give Fallout 76 a chance at some point, for old times’ sake if nothing else. Not sure really what to expect.
It will be released November 14.
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1. Todd Howard’s term. It doesn’t mean playing on a map without other players — they will always be there — but apparently there will be substantial anti-griefing measures available for those who want to go about it alone.
2. No I’ve never heard of Tactics or the console BoS game, go away.
Blogging and the Window of Opportunity
A meta-post and a look behind the scenes. Allow me to indulge.
While I do try to play video games fairly regularly, and all in all I wouldn’t say it’s a huge amount, and I’m also usually a pretty slow player. Given this, one would think my blogging could keep up, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Partly because I generate a lot of thoughts (i.e. potential blog posts) even from relatively little gaming, but mostly because I procrastinate too much. For various reasons, one of which I will outline below.
I’m still in the process of learning the craft, ever the fledgling blogger, which entails meta-elements like getting started when one doesn’t particularly feel like it. I tend to lag behind so much on doing my blog duty that many planned or even half-written posts become obsolete.
Not obsolete in terms of interest to the community (hah) — all these posts may be obsolete in that regard for all I know (not really a consideration at this point) — but obsolete in terms of my own interest.
Because my interest is an ever-changing landscape, at least as far as specific games are concerned. When I’m in the middle of a game, rumination and contemplation on that particular adventure come easy, whether for a blog post or otherwise. That remains the case for a time after the game is concluded, assuming the game is compelling enough. But then the interest starts to wane in most cases, especially as I start engaging with new games, making them my focus.
Eventually I lose the interest entirely, possibly forever.
That period of active interest is the window of opportunity to write the blog post, at least if I want to have a shot at making the process enjoyable and relatively fast, rather than a slow and painful chore. Not to mention the increased risk of inadvertently falling into the pit of procrastination.
(Occasionally, when the stars align perfectly, I’m able to capitalize on and drum up some residual interest even when the critical period has passed, but it’s not yet something I can generate at will or count on.)
Planescape: Torment
Having that window closing on me is pretty much what has happened with my planned post(s) on Planescape: Torment. I finished the game some time ago, and was excited to organize my thoughts into a few posts, but I was too slow to get started, and now the inspiration and motivation are long gone. Instead, my mind is on the Bioshock trilogy, which is what I’m currently playing.
(For the record, I didn’t love Planescape. It’s good, but none the less a disappointment, though still an interesting game both to play and to think about. Maybe I’ll get around to write those posts anyway, maybe not. Actually, maybe I’ll even play the game again, which would surely reignite the inspiration.)
Final Words
The strange thing is that one can remain determined to write a post even though it has become obsolete. That’s one of many failure modes of blogging: being attached to write certain posts one has long lost actual interest and inspiration in writing. It’s an inner conflict that risk putting the kibosh on the entire enterprise, the blog grinding to a halt until the conflict is addressed and resolved.
That is a good time to channel the Buddha and relinquish the post’s hold on you. To release the attachment. What if the post is half-finished and you’ve already put to use some clever turn of phrase and a few elucidatory and eloquent examples? It’s a judgement call, either bite the bullet and just finish the damn thing, or accept the sunk cost (and the defeat) and ditch the post. For me, it’s usually the latter. Just ditch it. Then move on.
Status update
I had planned to write at least one more post on Skyrim, possibly several, but enough is enough. Haven’t been in that world in a good while, so it has not been on my mind for some time. I feel no inspiration.
So instead I’ll post a minor status update.
Andromeda: Been on hold for a while, but I’ll get back to it soon.
Started playing around with Civilization VI a bit, but only the free and rather restricted version, which, among other things allows for only 60 turns. It’s on the iPad, but it’s the complete game and no flimsy downgraded tablet port, which is great, but also means it’s currently being sold at full price (it was released recently), so I think I’ll wait for a discount before making a purchase. (Edit: it’s now temporarily sold at half price, think I’ll go for it!) (Edit 2: I did.)
In the last few days I’ve been playing a small tablet puzzle game that’s kind of amusing and engaging but not really that special. Much of the enjoyment and meaning lie in figuring out a methodic way to beat the challenges, how to think. Not quite all the down to the level of a step by step algorithm, though that’s certainly would be possible if required (e.g. for making a computer program do the work), but more like identifying a set of useful principles, questions and ideas, a system of sorts.
For the most part, so far, this way of going about it is probably more time consuming than figuring out the solution by trying things by semi-random intuition, but it’s also a lot more meaningful and less amorphous and intractable. And later on, when I expect the puzzles to become significantly harder — too hard for semi-random method — it’ll probably pay off in terms of time and energy as well. Either way, the more interesting and fun challenge is figuring out the approach.
And that’s it for now.
Skyrim #6, Quest Soup
Another post that’s nominally about Skyrim, but actually about a broader topic related to game design, using Skyrim as an example and as a springboard. Here we go.
So there you are in Skyrim, going about your business, stealing, killing, saving the world. Maybe on a mission, maybe just wandering about. Maybe new in town, talking to people trying to get a sense of the place, excited by the prospect of making some profit, ehhh I mean helping the poor.
You’re an offbeat outlander wearing a ghastly mask and a blood soaked armor, but they deem you worthy all the same, their very own watershed moment, and they tell it all within seconds. About family feuds and curses, about private messages to be delivered, some by word and some by the sword, about stolen heirlooms and dark secrets of sadness and cruelty; they tell it all, because they need your help, urgently. You are the perfect stranger, a strand of silver hanging through the sky.
So now you get another quest. They stack up, time passes, attention goes elsewhere many times over. Naturally the details start to blur or get lost entirely in the fog of fading memories, especially since many of the quests aren’t that interesting or relevant to begin with, and since it might have been tens of hours since you got some of them.
As the quest list grows longer, a curious phenomenon emerges: you start to accidentally make progress on, even completing, quests.
You talk to some random guy, and suddenly you’re unexpectedly informed that you’ve taken the next step in a quest you’ve long forgotten. Turns out some women gave you a quest 27 hours ago to inform her brother about some herbs or something, and now you’re unknowingly talking to that brother for some other unrelated reason, maybe trying to get a sense of a new town, and in the course of the conversation delivered the message and made that old forgotten quest progress.
Well, that was easy, but, needless to say, advancing a quest in this manner doesn’t feel very meaningful. Completion still gets you the in-game reward, and to the person you’re helping you may very well be a savior, but you clearly aren’t immersed in the quest narrative.
Heck, even deliberately trying to get engaged in these (to you) small and sometimes rather pointless quests is often a challenge, and you run the risk of completing them by simply going through the motions following the quest arrow, rather than actually caring.
And this, all of it and more, is quest soup, bon appétit. A chaotic unwieldy mess of many forgettable and forgotten quests that are being stacked up in a ten mile long list and completed without immersion, by accident or otherwise. (Which is not to say that Skyrim doesn’t also have some quests that are more interesting and more inherently immersive, but they’re not central enough to the experince as a whole to dissolve the soup.)
I’d like to think quest soup isn’t inevitible in a game like this (Mass Effect compares favorably, for one thing), neither in terms of game design or playing style, but that’s a topic for another day.
Meanwhile, ponder the fact that I’ve said quest more than one hundred times in this short post. I just don’t feel “mission”. And “investigation”? Are you kidding me, what is this, a detective game?
End captain’s log.