#lotr is the knitting series idk what to tell you

[queerlyloud]

1000000/10, definitely recommend knitting while listening to the Dwelves of Gothlorien's podfic of Sansûkh. The very best way to spend a sleepy, rainy weekend 💕

[ravel-puzzlewell]

why is everyone complaining that Mass Effect Andromeda is "big"? how is that a problem when there's more game to play?

The size is not a problem in itself. The problem is that bioware doesn’t know how to work with “Big”. Hear me out.

So bioware obviously tries to move into the open world direction, with DAI and now comparing MEA to DAI in terms of “BIGGER!!!1”, and I think it’s such a shame, because bioware sucks at open world\sandboxes. I don’t even mean it as an insult, it’s just a plain fact - bioware are it’s best at contained, story-driven, linear structure. Their best games have distinctly different locations each with a gimmick and with a linear plotline that starts at the entry point, motivates your exploration of the location so you can pick up the side quests, ideally has a theme and involves one of your companions and culminates in the final decision. After that, the location is finished. You report the side quests and that’s it, you’ve exhausted all your options, you leave the location and never look back. Well, maybe you return once for plot reasons for 5 minutes, but you don’t engage with it meaningfully. And it’s not a bad thing! This is “40 min TV show episode” kind of structure that can work great and it does in the entire Mass Effect series. The story is simple, usually with one or two twists, but it keeps you engaged because it’s tightly knit and clearly presented, the involvement of your crew members gives you emotional stakes, the distinctly ~weird~ location and NPCs there make you feel like you’re actually seeing different places and seeing different cultures. It’s *fun* and that’s what matters.

But if you take out the location-based plotline and add a lot of empty space\padding to the mix, it all starts falling apart. Because bioware only writes superficial weirdness, this weirdness becomes bland real quick, the gimmick wears off and becomes annoying, NPCs blend in into the endless background, and you go “oh thank GOD it’s over” when you leave the location. Imagine if in ME3 Tuchanka had the size and structure of Hinterlands. The hardcore severe planet would turn into a boring wasteland, instead of epic badasses that represent the spirit of a planet Thresher Maws would turn into a boss fight grind (like dragons in DAI), without your friendship with Wrex the stakes are low, without the linear plot creating AND keeping up dramatic tension, you’d just wander around and randomly stumble onto the cut-scenes.

Bioware thinks that you can just make locations big and take out linear structure and boom, you’ve got yourself a sandbox. But it’s wrong. You can’t just take away the scripted plot-line and NOT replace it with anything. Good open world RPG requires you to make locations not just distinct, but layered, interesting to explore, it adds ties between locations that are meaningful, the quests start in one location and run through multiple of others organically, so you have to travel back and forth and when you revisit them, it doesn’t feel like backtracking. Not everything is played out at the moment you enter the location, some NPCs only become important when you get new quests in other places, so the exploration is dynamic, layered in time. You keep re-discovering things, adding new layers to the context. Bioware just cannot write things like that. They can’t make differences between locations subtle, but meaningful, which is why I literally cannot tell any forest locations in DAI apart, they don’t know how to make quest-lines span between places and be layered in time, they don’t know how to keep players’ attention without a strict narrative tunnel. The only distinct thing between locations is visual design, but even that can’t take you far. There’s a location in DAI that is very visually striking - white snow, red lyrium, black rocks. Beautiful, unusual, interesting. But I wouldn’t be able to remember what happened there with a gun to my head. What was my quest? Idk. There was a dragon I think? And for other locations that don’t have such striking visuals, the situation is even worse.

Take the location with Civil War in DAI (I think it’s Dales? But not sure) I literally cannot remember what were the differences between the sides there. Hell, I can barely remember the sides! It’s the Orlesians and… other Orlesians? But they are called “Free”-something. Why, idk. And there are also the Dalish clan hanging out nearby, but they don’t have anything to do with the Orlesians. Why was I in this location in the first place? I have no idea. To be clear, it’s not because I have shit memory. I have great memory, I can remember meaningful details from the games I played once ten years ago. It’s just DAI didn’t give me anything meaningful to remember. The conflict is not set up, they just let you wander around aimlessly, the sides are both boring and bland, the location is just kind of an open field littered with undead and wolves. When you let players discover different factions just by stumbling onto them without a straightforward narrative, you better fucking make sure they are a) very distinct b)very clear about what their deal is. Show me anyone who can mix up the Legion, NCR and House in FN:V.

Imagine the same location done in a traditional for bioware linear structure. You enter the location and immediately see two groups arguing. Each side has a charismatic leader and these guys are yelling at each other, which gives you exposition. One of them is, like, a well-groomed Orlesian noble and the other one is a rude peasant Robin Hood. You enter a conversation and get more exposition, what their deal is and how they are in conflict. One of your companions support one faction and the other one - another. (idk, Vivienne and Dorian vs Blackwall and Sera, frex) Then both of them invite you to their camps and leave. You have a narrative already. You visit their camps, get to know them. Get some sidequests from both sides. While exploring you meet the Dalish, who are bitter because the Dales were THEIR land and now shems are fighting over it. You do some quests for Dalish. At the mid-point the game makes you choose a side and the last plot-arc is about breaking the resistance of the other side and deciding what to do with them. If you do some side quest for Dalish and pass a Paragon speech check, you can find some holy scripture that Andraste made about Dalish owning the land and you can grant the place to Dalish. That’s it. Yeah, it’s cliched and yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s clear and it has narrative and stakes. It gives you basic framework for roleplay. Bioware never could write complicated plots, but they don’t need to. The plot doesn’t need to be complicated, it needs to function in the chosen form. If it doesn’t function, then big locations turn into empty spaces with fetch-quests.

Also, being “BIG” was never Mass Effect’s appeal in the first place. People loved it for the tight Star Trek-episode structure with a new planet every hour, weird gimmicky aliens and meaningful interactions with the crew. Not for LotR-style of “3 hours of walking through an empty field”.