#on the other hand I could get original mass effect 3 for the multiplayer for cheap as well

[death-rebirth-senshi]

Browsing mass effect legendary edition mods like a clown in case I do end up buying that bioware bundle...

[jackdawyt]

ICYMI: As my last video/post for 2019, I figured we should have a reflection on Dragon Age 4’s major news updates and uncover what we know about Dragon Age 4 throughout this year and beyond!  So, we can go into 2020 with the right expectations and understanding of the game’s development!

The Dread Wolf Rises:

To boot of this year - we had the most exciting announcement from The Game Awards in December - the official confirmation of the next Dragon Age project with the current given title: #TheDreadWolfRises.

The trailer, while enigmatic, showcased the next Dragon Age centring on the Solas’s plan to rise up and destroy the veil, fulfilling the Dread Wolf’s prophecy. At least that’s one interpretation of it.

The trailer seemingly was made for the fanbase of Dragon Age with the given title, because if you didn’t know what Dragon Age was, or anything about The Dread Wolf, you could totally pass up that trailer as a different game entirely. So, it was more of an ode to the fans that the next Dragon Age game is in the works.

Alongside the release of the trailer, the Dragon Age website was updated for #TheDreadWolfRises with Mark Darrah, Executive Producer & Matthew Goldman, Creative Director sharing a few words on the production of the next Dragon Age.

TLDR: Mark is excited to show more and Matthew states that this is the strongest team yet and they’re venturing forth on the most epic quest ever.

In a September blog post, Casey Hudson wrote that ‘I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises,’ alluding to the narrative and production of Dragon Age 4. Before we delve into the current development of Dragon Age 4, we’ve got to talk about the two initial iterations of Dragon Age 4.

Project Joplin:

Based on Jason Schreier’s expose’ into the past and present developments of Dragon Age 4 - the previous iteration of Dragon Age 4 was known as ‘Joplin’, like Janis Joplin.

Janis Joplin was one of the biggest female rock stars of her era, she revolutionized her genre of music for the next generation – clearly, this is something the devs were going for with the original Dragon Age 4 project – to revolutionize the Role-Playing Game genre.

The developers on Joplin were committed to avoiding the mistakes they’d made on Dragon Age: Inquisition. Veteran Mike Laidlaw was the creative director of ‘Joplin’ until the project was canned and reworked so ‘live service elements’ could be added. After the decided rework of Dragon Age 4, Mike left the studio in late 2017.

Project Joplin’s initial concept followed the next protagonist ‘playing as a group of spies in Tevinter, a large chunk of the narrative centred on heists. The goal was to focus as much as possible on choice and consequence.’

There was an emphasis on this ‘hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth.’

The developers talked about building systemic narrative mechanics, allowing the player to perform actions like persuading or extorting guards without the writers having to hand-craft every scene.

It was very ambitious and plenty of the developers were excited, stating that they put some of their best work into this project.

However, Anthem was in real trouble, and there was a concern that it might never be finished unless the studio did something drastic. EA and BioWare took that drastic action, cancelling Joplin and moving the bulk of its staff, including executive producer Mark Darrah, onto Anthem.

Project Joplin was reworked into Project Morrison with a skeleton team building the very foundations of the next Dragon Age.

Project Morrison:

The latest iteration of Dragon Age 4 that is currently in the works is known as ‘Morrison’, like ‘James Morrison’ – the lead singer of the rock band ‘The Doors’.

Jim Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock history. (Wikipedia).

Morrison is being built on Anthem’s tools and codebase of the Frostbite Engine, this will save time as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Anthem were each built from scratch. With a pre-set already there, Morrison’s development can save a lot of time.

This new version of the fourth Dragon Age is planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue. It’s not clear how much of Joplin’s vision will shape Morrison.

Matt Goldman, art director on Dragon Age: Inquisition and then Joplin, took over as creative director for Morrison.

Many of the BioWare developers “know it’s going to change like five times in the next two years.”

Morrison will change its shape multiple times. However, “Dragon Age games shift more than other games.” So, it’s not uncanny for a Dragon Age project to undergo drastic changes in its development.

Live Service/Multiplayer:

It has been confirmed on LinkedIn that BioWare has hired a software engineer to work on a multiplayer component for Dragon Age 4, however, it’s unsure what exactly this multiplayer could look like.

Jason Schreier stated that “he heard some ideas for Morrison’s multiplayer include companions that can be controlled by multiple players via drop-in/drop-out co-op, similar to old-school BioWare RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, and quests that could change based not just on one player’s decisions, but on the choices of players across the globe.”

In 2018, Casey Hudson tweeted a statement on live service: “Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on,” he wrote on Twitter. “Story & character-focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about ‘live’ it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.”

It’s still unclear how much of this game will focus on live-service elements and multiplayer, it could follow something as simple as Dragon Age: Inquisition’s separate multiplayer mode, or it could transform the game completely. Take note that Morrison is still early in the works and it will change multiple times until release. That is for sure.

Production:

Now we get to the tea - The past and present developments of Dragon Age 4’s new iteration.

So, Project Joplin was canned in late 2017, with Project Morrison rebooting sometime after that with an essential, small team. The rest of the Dragon Age team that worked on Joplin, went to fix Anthem during its troubled development. Even Mark Darrah, the Executive Producer of Dragon Age was shuffled to Anthem’s production. All the while, Morrison lay low in very early pre-production stages.

In 2018, the majority of the news we got on Dragon Age 4 came out in January, with Joplin’s initial codename and Anthem’s reshuffling. However, with Morrison in deep pre-production, nothing substantial - production-wise - was heard on this project until The Dread Wolf Rises teaser launched at The Game Awards eleven months later in December. Of course, this trailer was hype hype hype!

In early 2019, BioWare resumed their focus on Anthem and its release date. After Anthem was released in February 2019 - according to comicbook.com - the core Edmonton team working on Anthem, returned to work on Dragon Age 4 in full-scale development following the reworks of Morrison.

Built on Anthem’s codebase and its pre-sets of the Frostbite engine, following a very enigmatic live service model – Dragon Age 4 entered its pre-production stages with a full-team. As Casey Hudson later confirmed in September:

“We have several other big projects in the works.  I wish I could tell you more about them, but they’re mostly super-secret right now.  I can say however that one of our projects has a large and growing team in Edmonton working through pre-production, and based on the progress I’m seeing, I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises.”

Key processes during the pre-production stages include:

Concept Art

Storyboarding

Level Design

Mechanic Design

Around June, an IGN Greece article resurfaced again, according to said article ‘an anonymous BioWare employee had given clues Dragon Age 4. Stating that the game will be released in 2020 and that the voices of the characters are already being recorded, which indicates an advanced stage of development.’

This article initially launched in 2018 and has many rebuttals, the first being the release date.

This 2020 expected release date has been debunked because according to EA’s 2019 earnings call, the new release window for Dragon Age 4 is at least April 2022, and any time after that. Perhaps Joplin’s initial release window was 2020, and the developer may have shared that, but as far as Morrison is concerned, the project is 3 years away.

However, voice work being in the works could be plausible at this stage. Alix Wilton Reagan has teased a few seasons of her in full mocap mentioning NDA’s and #dragonage and #inquisitor, this could just Alix teasing us, or using social media to its full advantage, or it could be something Dragon Age-related.

Surely the Inquisitor will make a cameo appearance and that could justify why Alix could be doing VO?

On top of both Alix’s tease and IGN Greece’s article, very recently Jo Berry, a writer at BioWare tweeted about voice over work coming in and it being fantastic, however, they have to remove the goofy robot text to speech which is awkward and funny to listen to.  

“When VO is coming in and it’s fan-tastic, but it means saying goodbye to that goofy robot text-to-speech that makes you all laugh.”

So, indeed voice work does seem to be going on for Dragon Age 4’s development at this stage.

In jest, BioWare hasn’t replied to my request for voice acting a character in Dragon Age 4, so I think because of that, we can assume that they haven’t started the majority of the main character’s voice work just yet, right?

Moving on…Throughout the months of August and September, BioWare moved to a new office space in downtown Edmonton. Once they had settled in, a few very interesting Dragon Age 4 titbits came to light.

Emily (Domino) Taylor posted a picture on Twitter, showcasing a post artboard for Dragon Age 4, as we can assume it’s Dragon Age! There’s a Grey Warden and their Griffon-friend showcased in the picture.

Griffons and Grey Warden’s confirmed for Dragon Age 4? It’s not too much of a stretch considering the drama at Weisshaupt and Last Flight’s ending, but alas, as we can see BioWare’s art division are getting ready to line up concept artwork for further production and development. Probably for 3D model creation and animation stages.

Regardless, it’s very exciting to see the start of official artwork developing for Dragon Age 4, I’ll be keeping an eye out to see how this board develops further.  

Another huge titbit that was revealed with BioWare’s office move, was when the mayor of Edmonton decided to visit and congratulate BioWare at their new offices. On one of the photos the mayor and his team took, there was a shot of an HD version of Solas on a TV Screen.

I personally believe that this is a shot from Dragon Age 4 or the prototype version of Morrison showing off Solas. There’s been no confirmation of where this shot comes from, and I’ve spent an entire video dissecting it. However, my point is, I don’t think this comes from Dragon Age: Inquisition, it’s way to HD, look at his face, the fur on his outfit, the outside environment. It’s very distinct, and I believe it’s the first shot of Dragon Age 4 revealed.

I’ve not seen any rebuttals to this, and I’ve openly asked multiple times online, however, no one has come up with anything. So, even towards the end of 2019, it remains a mystery. I think this is a Dragon Age 4 shot, let me know if you think otherwise!

Around the same time, Matt Rhodes, an Art Director, posted a short story on his Instagram stating that he’s “more excited working on Dragon Age 4 than any other project so far.”

Just after BioWare moved offices, Fernando Melo, a senior producer on The Dread Wolf Rises left the studio after 12 years.

As stated on his LinkedIn profile, a lot of Fernando’s job on Dragon Age 4 surrounded “help[ing] establish the vision for the game. Guid[ing] the team through EA’s concept and early production phases. Prov[ing] out the core concept and key innovations of the game”.

He signed off with an email sent to everyone on the Dragon Age team, stating that he left at the “least disruptive timing as it would likely get.”

Considering that Fernando’s job was ensuring the pre-production stages were completed efficiently, and with his departure being at a time where it’d be least hectic for the development of Dragon Age 4, it’s safe to say that the pre-production processes are wrapping up and the team can begin to enter full production.

Fernando said that “with a great game leadership team in place, a fantastic creative vision, and some of the best devs in the world. Morrison is well underway to becoming the definitive Dragon Age experience - and I’m incredibly proud and honored to have played a part in that. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the opportunity to experience the next DA as a fan this time around.”

So, with Fernando’s send off via email, the entire Dragon Age team has moved on from the initial pre-production stages to the main development of the project with an estimated release window of any time after April 2022.

Mark Darrah Major Hints & Teases:

Now we get to the most divisive news topics - the teases from Executive Producer Mark Darrah!

Mark has actually been teasing us since the beginning of 2017, when he dropped a video of an artbook that collated a plethora of Dragon Age concept characters, with many mysterious and ominous photos showcasing potential concept art and character designs.

A logo of a wolf, on fire encased in a tower, was all we had on Dragon Age 4 at the time. However, considering Project Joplin was canned at the end of that same year, I think it’s safe to assume this work went alongside that project, whether it will remain, we’ll uncover in-time.

At E3 2018, in a video interview with Game Informer, Mark Darrah said that Dragon Age 4 was going ‘swell’ with a cheeky grin.

At Pax West 2018, Dragon Age 4 was officially confirmed again since it’s reboot in development, the Triforce Quartet played Dragon Age: Inquisition’s theme as Mark Darrah confirmed that the next instalment is in the works… again.

Towards the end of November, Mark Darrah teased the entirety of Twitter with his Dragon Age remarks. Having tweeted the single words “Dragon Age”, he had PC Gamer and many other onion articles writing up on his huge Dragon Age 4 tease.

However, to be fair, Mark dropped an image that resembles Dragon Age, only we’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

Midnight snow, rocks, forests, a completely different landscape to any of the maps in Dragon Age: Inquisition, yet very familiar with its Frostbite Engine aesthetic… is this a shot of Tevinter, more than likely taken on Mark Darrah’s phone?

Well, I think so. It doesn’t resemble any location I can recall in Dragon Age: Inquisition… But you might say “there’s snow in Tevinter, which is the opposite end of Thedas’s Equator, that doesn’t make sense lore-wise.”  

Well, Mark Darrah replied to someone questioning if and why there would be snow in Tevinter, he sent them a link to this article that explains how there can be snow on the equator, meaning that Tevinter can have snow.

So, is this our second or first look of Dragon Age 4? Well, depending on if the Solas shot is viable, I’d say definitely, but I’ll let you make your own mind up on that. Speaking of Tevinter, Mark Darrah also teased that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is titled “Tevinter of Our Discontent”, which is a huge story reference that I’ll touch upon in a separate category.

However, back to the picture teases, and Mark Darrah also posted another photo…

A sun blinding a knight, very ominous, I don’t even know where to start with this one… I mean it could have some subliminal message about how Solas may destroy the veil, or it could have a rather obscure context that fits to Dragon Age 4’s narrative, but I honestly just don’t even know what this is…

On Dragon Age Day, Again, Mark Darrah posted another screenshot of Dragon Age 4 with everything redacted other than a pixel in the corner.

And, erm, yep. That’s super. Thanks for that, Mark.

If you’d like to see more Dragon Age 4 teases that may or may not make sense and will most likely leave you frustrated and clueless, why not give Mark Darrah a follow-on Twitter. He’s one to keep an eye out.

Story:

The next narrative surrounds the Dread Wolf rising and attempting to destroy the veil, it’ll most likely be our next protagonist’s goal to stop Solas from achieving this.

We will have a new protagonist, like every other Dragon Age game. It’s been confirmed copious times by many developers old and new that the Hero of Ferelden will never return in the future, so stop asking. And even if they did return, Patrick Weekes is in charge now.

Dragon Age 4 will be set in the Tevinter Imperium, if Trespasser’s ending wasn’t a good enough clue for you, Project Joplin was also set in Tevinter. Alternatively, according to PC Gamer, it was the newly announced Tevinter Nights book that confirmed Tevinter to be Dragon Age 4’s setting.

Mark Darrah confirmed and teased on Twitter that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is Tevinter of our Discontent, derived from Shakespeare’s “The Winter of our Discontent” which is the opening lines from the play - Richard III (3rd).

As a TLDR: the words lay the groundwork for the portrayal of Richard as a discontented man who is unhappy in a world that hates him. However, since his family were victorious in the war, they reign the nation once more, and so as winter dies, glorious summer is upon them.

There are plenty of references we can make to Solas and his scheme to destroy the veil, he’s woken up to a world that despises his name and people that revoke his actions as evil. He wants to correct this world and restore his ‘family’ so to speak. Perhaps, like Richard the 3rd, Solas’s glorious summer is what awaits him in the next game.

So, we have plenty of plot potential with this given title and I do have a separate video for even more thorough speculation on this topic. However, based on Shakespeare’s work being the main inspiration for Dragon Age 4’s narrative, we should expect tragedy to be one of the main themes of the plot.

According to Video Gamer, in 2017, Alexis Kennedy was writing freelance for BioWare, ‘working on a whole chunk of lore and backstory for the faction in the game that you would think of if you were thinking big old goth. You know, if you were interested in death.’

Instantly what comes to mind is Nevarra’s Mortalitasi – Death Mages that’s responsible for the mummification process of the dead in Nevarran culture. However, we’re not sure how much of his work went into the cancelled Joplin, considering the timing at which he worked on Dragon Age 4.  

According to Alexis’s LinkedIn page, he worked freelance at BioWare from February – August 2017. The end of 2017 was the same time Joplin was canned, and Mike Laidlaw left the company, so there’s a huge possibility that Alexis’s work has been shelved.

Even if Alexis’s work wasn’t shelved at the time, given his recent allegations and controversy, Mark Darrah confirmed on Twitter that BioWare no longer has a working relationship with him, so his work seemingly has been scrapped.

According to Dark Horse writers Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir who’re creating the comics. In a comicbook.com interview, they shared the collaboration with the BioWare writers, it’s a case of sharing notes on where the narrative is going, and how the comics can help reach that point for Dragon Age 4’s narrative.

So, if you want to see where Dragon Age 4’s narrative may go, or which characters could turn up, read the comics as they’re pushing the narrative forward.

According to Chelsea Fariello, Assistant Animator at BioWare, it seems we could have a Mabari War Hound companion, or at least NPC in Dragon Age 4, as she stated on Twitter that she was interested in what interactions people would want to see for a dog-like creature in a video game. With the hashtag Dragon Age. Perhaps Mabari War Hound, or even a Griffon? “What interactions would people want to be able to do with a dog like creature in a video game? I need to know…for reasons… #DragonAge “

The “creature” part in that tweet is what makes me think it could be a small griffon? If it’s a Mabari then it’s just a dog, however, if it’s a small griffon then that could make sense. That’s just my hot take.

On Dragon Age Day, Arby’s expressed their interest in opening a new branch in Thedas, could we see a new type of cuisine in Tevinter? It’s hard to say, other than the fact that John Epler loves Arby’s, not Wendy’s though. Don’t mention Wendy’s!

Weekes’s Tweets:

Adding to the story category, we have plenty of tweets by Patrick Weekes that hint at future elements for Dragon Age 4.

Patrick Weekes responded to Autumn Witch when asked on Twitter ‘to pick one character from Dragon Age that has never been a companion or advisor that you would like to see as a companion in DA-4? (For the sake of this post, Lace Harding is also not available.)’

Patrick said: “Oh that’s obvious, I’d go with (Reads parenthetical) THIS IS RIGGED.”

So, Scout Harding as a Dragon Age 4 Companion teased? I freaking hope so.

Patrick Weekes posted on Twitter that they just teared up reading a scene, so unless they’re cutting onions while writing, we should expect tears to be shed in Dragon Age 4. If I were to guess, I mean Solas is walking the Din’anshiral. Which means there is only death on this journey…

Weekes was asked about non-binary lingo & representation and if the players would have the option to not identify as a male or female in the next Dragon Age. They replied saying:

“No guarantees (it’s something that is very difficult in romance languages we get translated into), but our team is always looking for better ways to let players see themselves in our games.”

Other Dragon Age Projects:

According to EA’s 2019 Earnings Call, “there are plans for not only Dragon Age 4, but other Dragon Age products too.”

At a guess, this ‘other product’ could simply be a mobile companion app to coincide with Dragon Age 4’s launch. Or it could be the rumoured tactics game that we haven’t heard about since Mark Darrah’s tease in 2017.

On top of that, at a guess, it could also be an extension to the Dragon Age Keep.

Expectations:

There’s still a couple of years yet with an expected release window at any point after April 2022. However, that doesn’t mean the news will not be coming, just look at all the tidbits I’ve uncovered from developer tweets on the side.

Not to mention that BioWare generally start the marketing phases of their upcoming games two years prior to release, so if Dragon Age 4 were to release in 2022, we could actually see something in 2020. I’m not banking on that, but just for the doubters out there, we’ll easily hear something regarding this game in 2020, whether that’s a trailer or small tweet trials of news, we’ll be sure to get something, and I’ll be sure to stay on track of that.

if you have anyone saying there’s no news for Dragon Age 4, just gently send them my way and share this video in their dm’s!

[gamesception]

Sception’s Switch Port Wish List:

Dragon Age, first game only.  Fun game, even on console.  Best of the series easily - the second game’s rushed dev time forced so many cut corners that there’s hardly a game left over, and the third game is so bloated with tedium that every time I try to play it my eyes glass over and I slip into a boredom coma before I can get a quarter of the way into it.  But the first game?  Way better on PC with mods and keyboard/mouse controls, but even so I’d jump at the chance to play it again on switch. Chances of it happening?  Low.  EA doesn’t want to remind people of when Bioware made good games, and they aren’t interested in releasing anything on the switch that isn’t an exploitative microtransaction store.

Mass Effect Trilogy: First game was good, second game was better, and, yeah, ok, the series didn’t finish on the best foot, the third game suffering from tone problems and a final ending that just flat out sucked, but Mass Effect 3 has a several key moments that stand out as among the best in the overall series, and while the ending is kind of bad, at least the series *has* an ending - something Dragon Age fans will probably never get to see. Chances of it happening?  Again, low, for the same reason as Dragon Age.

Arkham Asylum.  Just Asylum, not the rest.  City’s not bad, but the loss of focus costs the experience more than the larger world and better boss encounters can win back, imo.  The rest of the series, though?  Bleh. Chance of it happening?  I don’t know.  Bunch of Warner Bros games on switch, of varying port quality.  Asylum was developed by Rocksteady, not sure if that would introduce rights issues.  Better chance of this than of most other games on this list.

FF6.  Sure, Square has ported over PS and PS2 titles, but what about earlier ones?  FF6 is the best game in the series, imo.  Sure, it’s way too easy, like most JRPGs are, but the engaging story with a huge ensemble cast of likable characters is amazing.  I’ve never seen a game with so many playable characters where I liked all of them this much, and the couple of multi-party dungeons reward you for spending time building up all of them.  You also don’t frequently see this kind of story heavy jrpg game with a real ensemble cast, with no obvious ‘main character’, letting the player engage with whichever characters they like rather than forcing you into the shoes of a Chrono or a Cloud or some other default Hero, characters who are sometimes good but rarely the most interesting or engaging member of their respective games’ playable casts.  So yeah, FF6 is great, but good portable versions aren’t easy to come by.  The GBA version is amazing, but good luck getting your hands on it.  The mobile port is trash.  Phone emulators have to deal with awkward phone controls.  A switch port - whether of the original snes version, or the PS1 port with additional pre-rendered video bits, or the GBA version with it’s not-terrible extra postgame dungeon and bosses, would be great. Chance of it happening?  Frankly, I’m confused why it hasn’t happened already.  Square has ported a bunch of old final fantasy games to switch, I have no idea why they cut those games off at the PS1 era.  I would say the chances should be good that FF6 will come to switch, but it’s such an obvious port that the fact that it hasn’t happened already implies to me that there’s maybe some behind the scenes bullshit ruling it out.  And if it does come over, it might be a port of the ios version, which would be terrible.

FFTactics.  I will buy this on any platform it’s released on.  But if we could get a port of the PSP version, with post game multiplayer dungeons intact?  Maybe with online multiplayer support - the turn based nature of the game letting it bypass some of the lousiness of switch online?  Please. Chance of it happening?  Again, I’m confused why it hasn’t happened already.  FF7, 8, and 9 are ported over, but not Tactics?  As with FF6, it seems like an obvious and very likely port, except that it’s so obvious and so likely that the fact it hasn’t happened already maybe implies that there’s something specifically preventing it from happening.  At least if they do port the ios version it wouldn’t be a tragedy here, though I would still lament the lack of the post game content from the PSP version.

Fallout 3 / New Vegas.  Really Loved 3, and loved New Vegas too, though I never did get around to finishing it.  Would love to see these games on the switch, provided Bethesda didn’t use the opportunity to stuff them full of microtransactions.  New Vegas, despite bugs and some cut corners, remains probably the best 3d fallout game, and 3, despite the not-undeserved hate it gets for its main story, is still probably the most fun I’ve had just randomly exploring a world in a bethesda game. Chance of it happening?  You’d think the chances would be ok, Bethesda’s had a bunch of games ported to switch - Skyrim, Doom, Wolvenstein, etc.  That said, Fallout 3′s reputation among the Fallout fan community has plummeted in the last few years so Bethesda might not think a port would be worthwhile.  And as they’re still trying to push 76, I can’t imagine their eager to remind people that their Fallout games weren’t always the hottest of garbage.  So... better odds here than of Mass Effect or Dragon Age, but I’m not holding my breath.  As for New Vegas, I doubt Bethesda has any interest in reminding people that the best Fallout game to be released since they picked up the license was developed by someone else.

Morrowind - Still probably the greatest Bethesda game, though I understand it was already showing the trend towards streamlining and loss of depth coming off of Daggerfall that would eventually lead us to the likes of 76 and Blades.  But yeah, another classic I never got around to beating, that it would probably take a switch port to get me to try again. Chance of it happening?  Some but not great, largely for similar reasons to Fallout 3.  Skyrim sold quite well on Switch, IIRC, so you’d think other Elder Scrolls ports would have been a natural choice, but years later and nothing but Blades means it probably isn’t going to happen.

Mother Series, especially Earthbound - which like tactics I’ll buy and replay on any platform it’s released on - and Mother 3, which seems fantastic, but the only time I’ve tried it I didn’t make it very far due to the SNES emulator I had at the time ruining the rhythm based combat minigame.  So yeah, an official port would be great. Chance of it happening?  Actually good for once, for the first time on this list.  As with FF6/Tactics I’m kind of surprised that it hasn’t happened already, but Nintendo being Nintendo I’m more inclined to blame that on them either just not getting around to it yet or trying to hold off on a cult classic to use it to spike excitement in a dull release window later down the line.

Demon’s Souls - Great game.  Sadly my play through was killed by a hacking incident, but yeah, a classic, laid down the souls game fundamentals while pulling of some aspects better than any of the games that followed it.  And a remake has officially been announced for release on PS5, would be a great opportunity to release a port of the original to the Switch market... Chance of it happening?  Unfortunately, Sony owns the rights, so I just don’t see it happening... not unless Sony really plans to abandon the mobile market and instead push interaction with switch.  They did include that “would you be interested in PS4 remote play on other devices - including Switch” question in a survey a while back.  Still doesn’t strike me as likely, though.

Dark Souls 2 - like Fallout 3, Dark Souls 2 has become the black sheep of its series in fandom eyes.  Not entirely without reason, but there’s some interesting and novel design choices that get overlooked and unappreciated as a result.  I’ve never made time to play it myself, despite it sitting in my Steam library never downloaded, but would absolutely play it on the switch. Chance of it happening?  Without the fan crowd clamoring for a re-release, an updated port seems unlikely.

[vagabondanon]

For posterity; Grand Summoners X KLK Collaboration Limited Time Side Story

Spoilers ahead for Kill La Kill itself, the Side story in GS, and shockingly Kill La Kill: If. An overview of a story only available for a limited time.

It may be surprising to many, if not practically all fans of the show, that Kill la Kill: if was not the first video game story to star a certain pair of scissor crossed sisters (that I might care too much about and will continue to obsess over any and all content for, which led me to downloading a gacha game and grinding for days to level them and their equipment for no other reason than it was them.), and a handful of their closest compatriots/equipment options. Kill La Kill was featured in a (relatively) short crossover story in Good Smile’s mobile game “Grand Summoners”. In it you could (eventually when the event was rerun and all content was put out on the NA version) spend Gems/”alchemy stones” to “summon” Ryuko, Satsuki, and Mako as units. Senketsu, Junketsu, Guts, Mako’s two star fight club uniform, Mako’s brass knuckle, Ryuko’s scissor blade, Bakuzan, Mako’s fight club baseball bat, and the completed Rending Scissors (titled “The Snippity Snips” for some as yet unknown, but probably awful, reasons) as support “Equips” that can be carried by any unit with compatible sized/typed slots. Sukuyo Mankanshoku’s croquettes also featured as a consumable item that dropped as mission loot for minor stat buffs if consumed by your four unit squad before any mission. (Equipment refresh 2% faster, base skill refresh 2% faster).

While the stats themselves are interesting as they provide direct numerical valuation of everything listed above in terms of what they can do Offensively, Defensively, etc the story itself is the focus of this post. Because it turns out that out of everybody that knew about it nobody else cared enough to preserve it in whole. (And as I have learned from experience, if you like something save it. Before you wake up one morning and find 1/3 of it has been deleted off the face of the earth) And it could only be accessed for a limited time before it was removed, and again basically nobody seems to either know or care that it actually had more than just pixelated cameos at all. (KLK game marketing tho, for real. Twice now.)

So I present a record for the Library, Grand summoners X KLK, a “too long, I can’t read it anymore anyway, so tell me what happened”; I got you.

(”Stickers” were given for log in streaks that you can post as the only form of communication in multiplayer modes/lobbys.)

The story opens with two of the GS main characters, Rayas and his possible love interest(?, that is at times vague) Mira, out hunting a monster that purportedly had a vitality so high it was unkillable. Upon finally finding the thing the monster hunters as a group had corralled into a forest they are interrupted by a flash of white light. That drops Ryuko, Satsuki, and Mako in full combat readiness between them and the monster.

(Lower right stickers are Rayas and Mira. Our characters on this wild ride.) 

Confusion ensues all around.

The monster runs off to escape, but not before Senketsu (and Satsuki somehow) could "feel” the monster was empowered by Life Fibers. Ryuko blames Satsuki and becomes suspicious of her involvement because of their presence there. (Ryuko constantly tries to pick up the fight they, per Mako, had been having before they got dragged in. What fight? No idea. Fight club Mako is there, but the post fight club Ryuko and Satsuki are not. Except Ryuko can be upgraded to full Kisaragi. How? No idea.) Satsuki refutes being responsible. She also talks down to everyone. (For reasons somewhat unknown.) In KLK fashion the conversations that follow dip into the absurd. Satsuki's text font is so large at times her lines broke the speech box (though this seems to have been fixed in the cutscenes that can be downloaded today as record provided for beating it while the event was on), before going off in search of answers/on the hunt. Ryuko insults the kinda gary-stu mc by calling him “a geezer” (He claims to only be 25 in shocked response), demands he not gawk at her by minding his own business, and ran off after Satsuki. Mako follows Ryuko to keep from being left behind.

Leaving the GS MCs to give confused ellipses laden speech not sure what just happened, and this continues throughout the story.

(Interesting line from them though, the girls officially have 0 magic in full Kamui. So life fibers confirmed as entirely nature/science/organic based/origin? If this story has any weight.)

Also apparently Satsuki is so in tune with/knowledgeable of Fibers she can sense them. Or maybe Junketsu could. It isn’t specified how Satsuki is picking up what Senketsu is without being able to hear him. The “Life Fiber resonance” as it is called guides them either way. The chase leads deep into a forest/jungle full of dense vegetation (which in the missions slows them down leading to loads of fights against mobs of fiber altered orcs, monsters, and human bandits that get stronger the further they go. All controlled by life fibers.)

Ryuko doesn't know what the word vegetation means.

Mako took a nap as they waited for the GS MCs to catch up so they could get some answers as to where they were, and what they could be facing, after Satsuki points out they are not on Earth.

Between remarks during the missions themselves and in the cutscenes the cast attempts to figure what the Fibers are doing when they link up again. They figure life fibers can't break space or time (when weak, or not an OLF, as we learn in KLK: if) so no teleporting or time travel without magic at that time. So chase is deemed possible, but “so long as a single cell of a randomly infused organism exists the whole can regenerate” leading to more grueling fights the deeper they go toward the “source”. Over the same missions Ryuko butts heads with Mira, pointing to a dislike of tsunderes, as she hates when people are not upfront with her. Cast notes that they have similar voices as they argue eventually, but over time they find common ground to drop hostilities after the discussion.

When they reach the big monster again the GS MCs offer to fight it first, they are obliged. Ryuko actually wants to fight Kaiju though to the point she is actively looking forward to fighting giant monsters. Mako from the beginning thinks “Monster Land” is a theme park as she roots everyone on (she is a support character with buffs/healing equipment). Satsuki wishes to see how “magic” works, and if its effective. During the missions leading up to and including the boss fight Ryuko is confronted on if she would do “what it takes” as things ramp up in seriousness, to which she confirms that she has no issues killing targets to win if necessary. As you go through missions which involve mowing humanoids down by the dozen.

(Did not expect that, but given her life it's reasonable to expect that no Kiryuins have truly clean hands. I don’t suspect she has actually killed anyone before. Though that might not be for lack of trying, or simply lack of caring for opponents after any particularly nasty beat downs that may or may not have been shown to us when she reached high school in flashback.)

The first main boss (of two) is a giant quadrupedal demon like monster (”Betelgeuse” model in game colored differently) with spines on its body, altered seemingly loosely based on Senketsu. They share Yellow Orange “eyes”, some shapes, majority body coloration, and it possesses red clawed feet/hands/spines. Guarded by three dire wolves. (battle oddly enough took place in a desert canyon map, not forest as the cutscenes show they should have been in. Probably just a copy paste of the boss's regular arena.)

Once it is weakened/dropped Ryuko uses Sen'i Sōshitsu, but Senketsu fails to absorb the life fibers in it. The cast notes they see strings beyond the edge of the screen (which we can’t) and corpse though, which (likely) led from it to the true final boss that appears from there shortly afterword.

The final boss was a giant green bipedal monster with a vertical mouth that splits its face, which is based on a bright red boss in the main story (Beta-3), which was artificially created by one of the in game story factions through magi-tech. So one of those surviving living war machines likely got picked by Life fibers as a host in this new world they found themselves. It was powered by “Magically enhanced Life fibers” of some sort. (The battle itself was particularly difficult because the character's “top” ability, “Arts”, are powered by a substance called “Battle Ether” that is generated while in combat by using base moves. In this battle there was a substantial decrees in Battle ether production, likely trying to mimic the monster absorbing all free energy around it. Both Bio, or magically.)

This was also another boss fight that took place in an arena that shouldn't be there as it was inside a lab like structure full of green circuit looking lines over all the surfaces. Again likely because that was the “original” boss's arena. Once it is defeated it drops to the forest floor and reverts into a pile of fibers like the OLF in the show when its core got cut, just red instead of orange.

Mira and Ryuko have a moment ribbing “Ms. President”. Rayas just wants to know what is going on. (He won’t really understand it all.)

Satsuki can somehow read/anticipate people's wills, and life fibers exhibit a will through “vibrations in their strings” (Banshi vibrate? Wut.). She reads the vibrations by stabbing her sword down into the mass and holding the hilt.

Satsuki proclaims the life fibers were made to “fix seams” and somehow activates the monster's magic-infused life-fiber corpse to repair a hole in space and time itself. The monster was figured to be what likely dragged them all there in the first place through that hole to provide fibers from their Kamui it wanted. The hole in reality is propped open until they all passed through back to their own world where it is fixed permanently. After which the GS characters proclaim them immensely brave for literally running into a hole in reality without any hesitation.

Thus ended the Side Story.

Not sure who who wrote the script so its hard to tell how much of their given words are “true to cannon”. But it was credited as involving Nakashima who was directly on hand to make the first long explanation promo video on the JP YT channel. Who honestly knows at this point. But time wise it must have been made during production of KLK: if, which leads back to some very interesting consistent points.

Per KLK if: Life Fibers can in fact fuck with space, time, and reality itself. Though this is a power Satsuki was unaware of, (consistent with GS side story) even if she was the catalyst for initiating it in IF’s case through Junketsu's link to the OLF. Junketsu being Ragyo’s original “final” Kamui this was likely a function Ragyo prepared for her life after Earth. It would explain why she was so willing to give up the planet and everyone on it instead of seeking to rule it at least, she could literally just create her own reality and be its true god. Per how KLK: if ends by dumping “existences/minds” back to true reality at different times through the flashes of white light, with only the faintest of memories in the strongest of minds involved, they also very likely explained how this GS story can both feature fight club Mako and not change official “canon”. Or at least I thought it couldn't, before If once again set down that Life Fibers are the most powerful force in existence basically making up the “fabric of reality” itself on a whim.

Is the GS story retroactively canon if IF is canon?

Did Nakashima use the GS story as a test bed for KLK:IF ideas he had in the works?

Will we see more reality hopping for even more spin off stories?

Can these two finally have a happy reality as a couple?

:Shrug:

If you want to see all almost 30 minutes of prerendered cutscenes that remains for yourself in all their limited animation, and honestly somewhat questionably translated/proofread, glory I recorded them and threw that here: https://youtu.be/s3FneXNL8eQ

(Apologies for any sounds on top of the game’s already exceptionally loud music. I have never recorded from android before, I have no idea how to mute mics in the Google games app thing, and it picked up some air con being funky near the middle for a sec.)

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games - Unreal Tournament 3 (Epic Games, 2007)

Unreal Tournament 3 is nothing short of an utter embarrassment, incompetent at nearly every level, and a gross misunderstanding of a playerbase that was, at the time, nearly a decade old.  I wish I could just leave it at that, but this is the first game I ever felt wronged by.  

This was a franchise killer.  UT3 flopped so hard that it took fans desperate for any sign of a new game ten years to make Epic even consider adding a new entry to the series, and even then it is, as of time of writing, on indefinite hiatus so the handful of developers assigned to it can make more Fortnite dances.  But that comes later.  Unreal Tournament 3 comes first.

The Unreal series was hardly a stranger to hard knocks.  Return to Na Pali was a dull-at-best expansion pack while the much-maligned Unreal 2 missed the point entirely and has since slipped into laughable obscurity, and even the original Unreal Championship on Xbox had to be redeemed with a well-received followup.  I played neither of those, by the way, it's just my understanding that the first one was bad and the second was good.

So what made UT3 the last chance?  What about it was bad enough to kill the franchise that had gone toe-to-toe with Quake and lived to tell the tale?  The real question is what the hell Epic was thinking.

Unreal Tournament 3 lacks a great many things.  At launch, it boasted a meager six gamemodes, and even then only by virtue of splitting 1v1 deathmatch maps off of Deathmatch and into a new category called Duel.  So, our gametypes are: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Duel, Capture the Flag, Vehicle CTF, and Warfare.  That's it.  No Bombing Run, no Mutant, no Invasion, no Domination (double or otherwise), and yet again, for some ungodly reason, no Assault.

I feel like I've done this before.  What else did UT3 leave out?  Facing Worlds!  Yep, it's out again, and this time without a replacement.  That's right, no Face 4 to make up for it.  A new Curse map, a staple of the series since the original Unreal multiplayer, is also missing.  Most of the character factions introduced in UT2003 and 2004 are gone, like the Nightmares, the Robots, the Juggernauts, the Mercenaries, the Gen Mo’kai, the Egyptians, and the Skaarj.  You know, the Skaarj, literally the most important faction to the series at large.  They're gone.  Xan Kriegor, the Big Bad of every Tournament since 1999, the final champ who uses an AI setting above Godlike, who has his own spaceship where the ultimate match is duked out 1v1 in a truly brutal and awesome deathmatch?  Gone.

But that's not the worst of it.  Sure, they stripped out almost everything they'd spent so much time building up throughout character and map descriptions for three games, but even that wasn't enough.  There has to be something else they could take away to really strip the game of its identity.  The Flak Cannon?  No, too easy.  The Shock Rifle?  Almost.  Malcolm, the veteran of all the in-universe Tournaments and arguably the (human) mascot of the series?  I'll do you one better.

They took away the Tournament.

They took away the Tournament.

They took away.

The Tournament.

Unreal Tournament 3 has no Tournament.  

What do we have instead, in Unreal Tournament 3, if not a Tournament?  Calling it Gears of War 1.5 is a good place to start.  

Unreal Tournament never really had a defining artstyle to call its own, but it was still recognizable.  UT99 had its harsh shadows and pockets of bright light on largely cool-colored maps, a very neo-industrial/tech vibe with a smattering of ancient temples thrown in there to call back to Unreal.  UT2003 and 4 turned their tech maps into something a bit shinier overall, left a bit of industrial grunge in, had their fun with future space techno Egypt, and splashed a bit of East Asian architecture in one or two maps for good measure.  Colors were bright, each map had an identifiable pallette, and it's hard to confuse one for the other.

UT3 came out after Gears of War, which means it looked like this:

Not helping matters is the new direction character design was taken, which basically boils down to taking Gears character out of their usual armor and putting them in UT styled suits.  Malcolm’s there and he's put on about 200 pounds of muscle.

Man, just look at all those graphics.  And it's a good thing there are so many, because otherwise how would we know what we're looking at when the dramatic cutscenes play?

Because since we have no Tournament in our Unreal Tournament game, we of course have to have a very dramatic story about a Krall invasion and this guy named Ronin’s quest to get revenge.  

Let's unpack that.

The Krall invaded.  The Krall, the mercenary/slave race kept on retainer by the Skaarj, are the primary antagonists, but not the Skaarj themselves.  Ronin, an entirely new character made for this game, is the primary focus when actual series (human) mascot Malcolm is right there.  And the whole thing is a heroic revenge story, not a Tournament.

I hate this game.

So UT3 forces a series of ladder matches across all of three gametypes into a narrative nobody asked for.  If it had had anything to with the series’ history, it probably could have been acceptable, but it doesn't mean anything as it is.  Matches are now short gameplay segments in between an overproduced narrative about revenge and retribution, and they're given wholly unnecessary context.  Deathmatch is no longer literal bloodsport to entertain the masses but a gritty, brutal battle of attrition until one side wears down the other side’s respawner charges.  Capture the Flag isn't a game, it's you taking a daring and gritty shot at capturing your ugly, inhuman enemy’s Field LAttice Generator to turn off their respawner.  Warfare/Onslaught isn't a fun territory control match, it's a gritty and unrelentingly brutal comment on how war is hell, as you capture territory to destroy the Core that powers your gritty enemy’s respawner.

Do you get it.  Respawners.  Real war.  Not a game anymore.  No fun allowed.

Sigh.

This game came out when I was late into highschool, and was one of the first games I was super excited about.  Back then I didn't actually play all that many games, tending instead to stick to a smallish library of my favorites.  So when UT3 was announced, originally as Unreal Tournament 2007, I was hyped.  It would be one of the first games on the brand-new Unreal Engine 3, and the handful of prerelease screenshots kept my attention for months with their unparalleled lighting and detail.  Blurbs about the changes they were making excited me, talking about how they were putting a bit more speed back into the game to win over the holdouts who thought UT2004 was too slow.  An entirely new roster of vehicles was going to sit alongside the existing ones, and a whole host of changes was coming to merge the best of UT99 with UT2004.

That's what they promised.  What was actually delivered was an anemic blend of half-baked executions.  People don't like double jumping and think UT2004 is too floaty, others like double jumping and think UT99 is missing critical movement options?  UT3 keeps double jumping but makes the total jump height of both equal to a single jump in UT99, removes wall and air dodging, and adds a noticeable recovery delay after dodging from the ground.  Cool, great.

People didn't like the weapon balance changes and replacements?  Toss out the Assault Rifle, bring back the Enforcer, but make it just as inaccurate as the AR!  Make the spread on the Flak Cannon’s primary tighter, but have its alt fire shell fall off even faster than UT99’s!  

That's not to say all of the changes were bad.  Believe it or not, Unreal Tournament 3 actually does have a handful of things I really like, which makes their presence in an overall worse game all the more painful.  Vehicle physics are greatly improved, the new vehicles are amazing, Adrenaline is gone, the Rocket Launcher has its grenades back, a lot of the new weapon designs are superb, powerups are back on the map, you get a hoverboard on Warfare and VCtF maps, and I'm all out of nice things to say.  

The game, visually, is a mess (see above).  A new graphics engine means new effects to play with, but those effects here are bloom and more bloom.  Players get lost in overstuffed scenery because the artstyle inherited from Gears of War is red on brown on gray.  A more grounded overall concept strips a lot of identity from returning maps, taking them from space or exotic locales and putting them in a generic futuristic cityscape.

That's a small complaint, and totally worth dismissing, but it shows a certain lack of respect to the history of the series, to me.  These are maps that have been iconic as a whole that have been repurposed to show off how many pixels can be crammed into a skybox.  When Facing Worlds was eventually re-added in UT3’s first and only content update, it was transplanted from two opposing towers on an asteroid spinning above Earth and just set in the mountains somewhere in China.  

If you're looking at it from a pure gameplay perspective then there's nothing wrong with the change.  But it's just part of an inherent ignorance as to what players wanted from this game.  We didn't want a weird storyline where we watch Epic mush per-pixel lit action figures into each other before graciously being allowed to capture the enemy’s Field Lattice Generator three times, we wanted to mush those action figures together ourselves as we climbed higher up the ladder towards facing the Tournament champion.  We wanted to thunder across whatever alien landscapes the map designer thought up that day and add another piece to the expansive puzzle of the Unreal universe, not spend two-thirds of the game puttering around China or the generic scifi city. 

Also, in going back to get those above screenshots, I discovered something I’d entirely forgotten: there are no map descriptions.  The strongest part of that good old fashioned world building is just gone.  No more short tales of a skyscraper built by a hubris-devoured crazy person, no more small insights into the shipping lines around this or that outpost, no more glimpses at all into the world beyond the game.  For them to suddenly make such a big deal about the story, Epic sure didn’t care about anything beyond their cutscenes.

But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself.  What else is in UT3?

Not a whole lot.  With a lack of gamemodes came a lack of maps, though I suppose 41 maps was still more than you could expect at the time.  The bonus pack that turned UT3 into the “Black Edition” (I have no idea) added 19 more and did, as previously mentioned, re-add Facing Worlds.  Mutators are also lacking, with a fair chunk appearing just as basic gameplay tweaks - no hoverboard, no Orb (we'll talk about the stupid Orb), no powerups, the Arena mainstay, no Translocator (just a game setting in all previous titles), friendly fire (also a previous game setting), game speed adjustments (yep, was a setting before), and your basic Instagib/big head/super berserk mutators like you always get.  

Gone are fun things like quad jump, vampire, big wheels, slow motion corpses, all the “other UT” mutators (UT Classic and UT 2003 Style if you recall), and vehicle arena.  Remember, no fun allowed.

And I sure do wish there was fun allowed, because some things almost are.  Warfare is the star here, or at least it should have been.  Imagine:  a map five times as large as the largest Onslaught map, still joined by paths of dozens of capture nodes linked together to create distinct fronts, laced in between guided objectives reminiscent of Assault scenarios.  Completing these objectives grants you unique bonuses on your path to the enemy Core, if you can make it past the army of players and vehicles ahead…

That's what Warfare was billed as, but that's not what Warfare ended up being.  What did it turn out as?  Literally Onslaught again, but with an Orb now.  

The Orb is a game-breakingly frustrating mechanic.  Here's how it goes:  the Orb spawns at a node you control.  Someone can pick up the Orb and carry it around, shooting a giant pillar of light into the sky wherever they go.  The Orb will instantly destroy and capture any enemy node it's brought to, and will be destroyed in doing so.  The player carrying the Orb can't use any vehicle except their personal hoverboard.  

The Orb either wins games outright or does stone nothing.  See, both teams get an Orb, so what happens most of the time is that one guy uses the Orb to capture a node, then the other Orb is used to take it back.  It's not like you can use it to get a sneaky capture, because of the giant pillar of light shooting into the sky and an icon on the minimap.  The Orb is stupid, and proper control of the map makes sure that absolutely nothing comes from its presence.  So good work Epic, you added another layer to a gamemode you already stripped back to exactly what we'd gotten before, and all that comes of it is absolutely nothing.

The new vehicles are cool though.  Everything from UT2004 makes a comeback with a tweaked design, and new Necris vehicles are added as well.  They're usually just an analog of an existing vehicle except with wiggly scifi tentacles, so you get a single-person hoverthingy and a VTOL jet with lasers and missiles, but they really outdid themselves with some of the other ones.  Filling the spot of the main battle tank for the new vehicles is a giant War of the Worlds style tripod that can clamber over most obstacles and terrain.  The light attack jeep spot is a laser-toting mini-walker that can retract its tendrils and roll around as a ball, squishing people on its merry way.  Like I said, not all bad.  Oh, but only one team gets them, and not all maps support their inclusion.  So only mostly bad.

But they are all that's left of a much larger gamemode that had more and more stripped from it until they were left with literally just Onslaught but with the Orb.  

And the bad things just kept coming, this time in regards to the music.  New composers were brought in again, in the form of Jesper Kyd and Rom DiPrisco, and they make a total mess of the place.  There are a good number of “remixes” present on the soundtrack, but where the musical genius Kevin Reipl took GoDown and made Hyperblast Redux, whichever of the duo made the UT3 remix of GoDown just added some modulation and a breakbeat.  Or maybe the classic Foregone Destruction, where the UT3 version just adds some modulation and a breakbeat.  Mechanism Eight?  Modulation and a breakbeat.  Skyward Fire?  Modulation and a breakbeat.  The classic Unreal Tournament theme itself?  Modulation and a breakbeat.  The instantly recognizable stage music for UT2004’s Torlan, SDG-ONS1?  Surprisingly, a mold-breaker here: no modulation, only an added breakbeat.  And someone wailing over it.  I get that it's supposed to have a vaguely Middle Eastern or whatever sort of vibe, ‘cause the original did and Torlan itself was set in a dusty oasis sort of thing, but they changed the setting for UT3 to be more temperate so I really have no idea.

My point is that the music in UT3 sucks.  Even past the embarrassing quality of the remixes, none of the original compositions are memorable.  There's no energy, there's nothing that plays to the idea of the game, and there's no bombast.  The music probably has its fans out there, but I'm about as far from one of them as you can get.

I’m also about as far from a fan of the game itself as you can get.  When this came out, I was mainly confused as to how it could be so bad.  It’s not like it was the first time I ever didn’t like a videogame, but for Unreal Tournament of all things to turn out so bad, I just didn’t really know what I was experiencing.  UT3 was so bad that within a month I was looking up tutorials on how to use UT2004’s editor.  A year or so later Epic put UT3 on Steam and added a content pack that turned it into Unreal Tournament 3: Black Edition (I still don’t know), but that added so little that it barely made a difference.  Two new gamemodes that just amounted to new types of Deathmatch, a handful of maps, and that was it.  

People made their own maps, sure, and I’m sure if I looked now I could find mods that make it a more bearable experience.  But at the same time, I’m not really sure.  Because see, UT3 didn’t just release on PC this time around, it also came out on PS3 and the Xbox 360.  Epic wanted to bring the award-winning modding scene to those platforms as well, which means the entire process of modding and the number of things that could be modded was cut way down to adhere to guidelines from both companies as well as the much more limited space available on the console’s hard drives.  I only ever looked into mods back around when the Black Edition dropped, and the most popular mods I remember from back then is just adding a Master Chief character model.

To say that Unreal Tournament 3 was a disappointment is perhaps the biggest understatement of this entire essay.  I’m not going to rant on about how it was a betrayal of brand integrity or something, because I’m not entirely that naive, but the failure of this game to do as much right as its predecessors or even impress on any great scale meant a lot for the arena shooter genre.  Id Software had bowed out and wouldn’t reappear with Rage until years later.  Halo was wrapping up its trilogy to critical acclaim.  Call of Duty was rapidly changing the face of shooters with Call of Duty 4.  Fallout 3 was near, Bioshock had come out a year or so prior, and Gears of War 2 would cement Epic’s new direction.  

There was no redeeming followup to Unreal Tournament 3.  Nothing came out to add Assault or Domination or Bombing Run back in.  It came out, bellyflopped, and Epic let it sit in the lovingly-rendered mud full of bloom and speculars that it landed in.  

In the decade-plus since then, the face of shooters has changed again and again.  CoD4 ushered in an unrelenting push towards modern-day settings, a small subset of shooters with RPG elements grew larger, Bungie made more Halo games and then Destiny, a whole indie subgenre popped up to try to let us relive the days of Doom and Quake, then a fantastic new Doom came out, and now everyone has a battle royale.  Even Epic.  

A few years ago on the official Unreal Tournament forums on Epic’s website, a group of fans formed a plan to make their own Unreal Tournament entry under a different name.  Work started, schedules were made, and it caught Epic’s attention as so many remake projects do.  But rather than end with a Cease & Desist like just about every other one out there, a few people from Epic expressed surprise that there was such a massive push and actually pledged their own support to the project.  Unreal Tournament 4 was suddenly an official project.  

It was a strange relationship, of course - Epic’s people gave it a place in their launcher and let it use their official servers, they signed off on all major updates and made everything nice and official, but the weapon, map, and character design was going to be on the community.  We can get into the ethics of that some other time, but the point was this:  Before all that long, there was a playable Unreal Tournament 4.  Maps were using placeholder art and geometry, most of the weapons were just the UT3 models, there was one character model, and all you could play was Deathmatch, but it was coming along.  And it did come along.  The Enforcer, Link Gun, Flak Cannon, Rocket Launcher, and Sniper Rifle were all finalized and modeled, a few maps were finished entirely and look gorgeous (and play really well!), and more character models were added.  

And then Fortnite got big.  

Fortnite, a weird little Orcs Must Die-alike with building and survival elements, wasn’t much of a big name until Epic added a battle royale mode of their own, not too long after Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds swept across the Steam Early Access scene.  What that meant for the UT4 project is that the handful of official Epic people who were getting paid to curate this giant mod endeavor were suddenly reassigned to work on something a little more immediate, namely Fortnite.  

The long and short of it is that Epic killed Unreal Tournament twice in a row.  There are still arena shooters out there.  Toxikk is basically just UT2004 deathmatch with a shiny coat of paint (I played a bit, it’s okay but lacks a lot in comparison); Quake Champions is a perfectly fine hero shooter with a lot of balance problems and way too few maps, plus it’s Quake which means all the problems I have remain; Tribes: Ascend came and went just as fast as players in it moved thanks to a suddenly overaggressive monetization model; and lately I guess Dusk has its multiplayer which I hear is pretty healthy.  

The arena shooter isn’t dead; no genre really can be, and I have firsthand experience with how much work can be done to keep individual games alive, but it’s certainly not a popular choice these days.  If so much has happened to the shooter genre at large since Wolfenstein 3D came out, that much and more can happen again.  More people are playing videogames than ever, technology marches onward, and maybe one day someone in the right position with the right resources will create something that finally puts the public eye back on the most classic of multiplayer shooters.

But until then, the decade of languishing that arena shooters have been the subject of is entirely Epic Games’ fault.

[leftwriteb]

E3 2018 Predictions: EA & Ubisoft

While the winter and fall might give gamers a sweet array of games to dig into, summer brings us to the week of craziness that is E3. With publishers and console power houses hosting events to showcase their biggest and best games on the way, we break down what we’d imagine we will see from this years event, this time from EA and Ubisoft. Here’s what to expect as well as what we hope to see.

-ELECTRONIC ARTS-

Electronic Arts has found themselves in a precarious situation the past few years, having fallen from grace and instead being seen by many as the boogeyman of publishing studios. With the entire landscape of the industry having shifted following the launch of Star Wars Battlefront II, both in regard to industry practice and the patience of gamers, EA needs to exercise some restraint and earn back the trust of many. The focus for them this year will likely be quality over quantity.

Battlefield V

One thing we know we will see more of is this years rendition of Battlefield. As mentioned already, with EA and Dice having received huge backlash from their efforts to uphold micro transactions in Star Wars Battlefront II last year, they have to approach this game with caution and show that they've learned from their mistakes.

With Call of Duty having already returned to the frontlines of WWII, the reveal that Battlefield V is doing the same means EA will also have to do what it can to show what BFV has to offer over it’s longterm rival. What’s more, the focus for EA here will likely be on multiplayer, instead showcasing an array of maps, modes and content to keep people interested. While they may show a little of the campaign, EA will want to focus on showing they can earn your trust back in multiplayer games and will instead be showcasing what's new for the series.

Given the uproar Dice and EA have faced previously, and with the continued ridiculous outcry about representation and historical accuracy that we’ve discussed further on here, a particular focus will be on the customisation and levelling systems within the game and how much variety there is for players. Microtransactions will undoubtedly return but EA will tread carefully and stress they’re only cosmetic and can be earned through regular gameplay anyway. What we will see from Battlefield V will be familiar but with as much positive spin as they can muster.

STAR WARS FROM RESPAWN ENTERTAINMENT?

That isn't the only big IP we might see this year, with the next game from Respawn Entertainment potentially showing up too, the project announced way back on Star Wars Day 2016. Not much has been revealed about the project so far, so it's about time we get a few details. Following the heartbreaking news that Star Wars: 1313 was cancelled, and that Visceral Games closure meant their mid-development Star Wars game was being refocused under other studios, news from Respawn is a nice counterwieght.

As mentioned already, caution will be key as any Star Wars game coming from EA will likely be under incredible scrutiny. Coming from the same team that brought us the great but underappreciated Titanfall series, the game is supposedly a 3rd person action game. Either way, with the trepidation it could face, we will likely only get a small tease for the game, at best a trailer. What's more important though is that they'll be more focused on providing small but tantilising details for the game, helping to set it up for a more positive response when it does surface properly

NEW Dead Space?

With Respawn offering us a more light-hearted space adventure, it could well be time for something at the other end of the spectrum with perhaps a new Dead Space game and I think this year we may see this once glorious sci-if horror return. EA has shown, albeit with Mass Effect Andromeda, that they’re willing to push strong series in new (but maybe questionable) directions and may well do the same with Dead Space.

As mentioned above, EA caught further flak for the closure of the series original developers Visceral Games - so we know that team won't be working on a Dead Space game. But could we see them revive the series and put it in the hands of a new studio? This could be a chance for them to offer something a little different from their focus on multiplayer games and equally offer something that stands out amongst the jam-packed slate of games coming over the next 18 months.

It's been a long time since the release of Dead Space 3 back in February 2013, so now seems like a good time to bring the series back, especially given the rise of horror games in recent years. With the genre for the most part being pushed by smaller developers, a larger "AAA" title like Dead Space 4 would provide something meatier and show that EA hasn't given up entirely on singleplayer games.

ANTHEM

That's not all we can expect from sci-fi games though, with huge excitement tailing Anthem, the next game from BioWare. With the game being created by a majority of the team behind the original Mass Effect trilogy, there's lofty expectations from the game, especially after the extended look at gameplay we've seen that promises huge potential and scale.

With the game due to be with us by March 2019, the release is fast approaching so EA will be focusing heavily on the title in order to peak interest as much as possible. Extended gameplay will be on show and, just as with Battlefield V, the key will be showing players that Anthem will have everything players want without repeating the mistakes of the past that have shaken and soured EA so much.

With a huge fanbase having been built around Mass Effect, EA will be hoping for a similar effect for Anthem; with the game offering what could be insanely fun multiplayer, we might well get some fun but awfully scripted co-op voice chat in the demo, but customisation and variety will be front and centre. This section will likely end with a story focused trailer, reaffirming that BioWare can and will deliver a great sci-fi story next March.

PLANTS VS ZOMBIES 3?

Of course, EA has a far reaching grasp and will want to offer something for slightly different audiences. One established IP they can rely on is that of Plants VS Zombies, with a new game in the series not out of the question. The previous two games received a surprisingly sizeable following after the series moved to consoles and became more of a wave-defence game.

It's not likely that we'll see anything surprising from the game, with the core mechanics and gameplay likely receiving little more than some fine tuning and expansion to offer something familiar but new. Plants VS Zombies will be where EA can offer splitscreen multiplayer in an age where online seems to be the focus, and further still can offer something for the younger gamers too.

SPORTS, SPORTS, SPORTS - AND MAYBE SKATE 4?

Naturally though, EA showcases wouldn't be complete without their fair share of sports, sports and more sports. While we could cover this, it's an element that's easily predictable and something we don't massively care for... but there is one sort-of-sport game that we could see from EA this year that might turn some heads: what if Skate 4 is revealed?

Skate was a series that saw some incredible traction in the past but that has now been absent, along with skateboarding games as a whole, for some time. With the Tony Hawk's games having fallen to the wayside and with Skate 3 seeing a small but considerable resurgence after its inclusion in Xbox backwards compatibility, now seems like a great time to reveal a new game in the series and fill that deck-shaped gap in the market.

-UBISOFT-

Ubisoft are often seen as creatures of habit, usually announcing sequels or DLC plans for existing game and series. The key for Ubisoft is to show some restraint and double-down on their strengths. While a host of new announcements is good, Ubisoft need to show that they're investing sufficient time into their projects to ensure they're worth investment from players on day one. They've shown with games like The Division, Rainbow Six: Siege and For Honor that they're willing to put in the effort to reshape and improve games long after their release, but increasingly solid foundations is what they need to get right.

ASSASSINS CREED: ODYSSEY

One game we know will surface during the Ubisoft presentation is Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, something that was announced recently as we reported here. In years past, Ubisoft spaced out the releases of the games to give it a little breathing room and to improve the quality following the disastrous launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity. With the new game looking like a follow-up to last years Origins, and with the game likely releasing so soon, Ubisoft has to be cautious.

They will want to take their time with this new title and show that, despite the shortened development time, it will be well worth players time. With Origins having introduced stronger RPG mechanics to the series, Odyssey is likely to strengthen and expand on these mechanics and introduce even more, with rumours circulating that dialogue options will be added too.

Ubisoft will try to show a little of everything for Odyssey and reaffirm that the series is back and better than ever, the coverage ending with release date. When this will be is hard to say given how busy the next months will be for releases, but it likely wont be too far away.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 2

What's going to be more tricky for Ubisoft than keeping Creed in good stead is to meet the expectations of fans for Beyond Good & Evil 2, the title having been shown only a little since the reveal at E3 last year. With the introduction of "The Space Monkey Program" for the game, a system that offers select fans the chance to play it early and offer feedback, it's clear the title is a long time from release but given the sizeable following, it's a game that will be drip-fed to fans to keep them interested.

We probably won't see an awful lot from the game this year either, with even the platforms for release having not been confirmed. That said, a slightly closer look at the gameplay will probably given while stressing that development is still going strong. If we are lucky we may get a tentative year of release, though if we do I'd expect that to be subject to change.

THE DIVISION 2

Of course, there's another series that will surface during Ubisoft's show: The Division 2.  Officially announced back in March, the original game saw success both critically and commercially and is one of the big titles that saw extensive support and reworking after launch. With the game having proven its longevity, a new entry in the series has a great foundation to build on.

Unlike the original, the timeframe between reveal and release will be considerably less. What's more, with some criticism being given due to the difference between the original Divisions gameplay presentation and the final product, the gameplay we will undoubtedly see will be far more representative of the final game. An emphasis on enhanced gameplay and customisation will be made, showing how the game has grown over time and how existing mechanics will be expanded and improved.

That said, thanks to the previous work of EA, a point will be made of how lootboxes will likely only be cosmetic (though this was a policy that was applied to the original until that  changed later in its life cycle), as well as how there will be a greater wealth of content in the game at launch that the predecessor.

NEW SPLINTER CELL TITLE?

The Divison won't be the only Tom Clancy property to surface at E3 though, with all signs pointing to a new Splinter Cell game potentially being in the works. Interest in the idea peaked back in April when a new mission was added to Ghost Recon: Wildlands that saw a surprise visit from none other than Sam Fisher himself, voiced once again by veteran voice actor Michael Ironside.

It's been a long time since Fisher has graced our screens, with Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist having now released back in 2013. While the small amount of evidence above seems circumstantial, the likelihood that Ubisoft would have included the crossover just for fun is unlikely, especially when you consider they went out their way to get Ironside back. With the series having been abscent for some time and with other stealth games having adopted open-world mechanics that push stealth slightly aside, a game that truly focuses on stealth once again is perhaps what players need and the return of Same Fisher may be what fulfils that.

NEW TRIALS TITLE?

But offering something a little more tempered and casual is the potential return of the Trials series, the last main series game, Trials Fusion, having released back in 2014. While Trials of the Blood Dragon, a Far Cry 3 spin-off based spin-off (of all things) released in 2016, it's been considerable time since a full game itself has released.

Ubisoft needs to supply a little balance in their titles in order to pull in sales from all corners of the gaming glob and a new Trials games could do just that. With a new game able to release during potentially dry spells in their release slate, and with appeal to gamers of all ages, it's the perfect complimentary title to their more time-consuming and action-packed games.

INDIE SUPPORT

That said, Ubisoft can further offer variety with continued support of smaller indie titles as it has done in the past with games like Valiant Hearts, Grow Home and Child of Light. It provides Ubisoft a chance to invest in promising but smaller titles; small risk but potentially great reward.

As mentioned before, this also means that Ubisoft can release a number of smaller titles between their larger IP's and could mean we see a number of great new titles surface. What's more, a lot of these titles will probably show up across multiple platforms, particularly the Switch now that Ubisoft have strengthened their relationship with Nintendo particularly in the last few years. Whether the smaller titles show up here or elsewhere first though is hard to say.

So, that's what we might well see from EA and Ubisoft this year at E3. There's only a few days to go until the event begins so time will tell what's shown but, as always, it'll be an amazing time to be a gamer. So, let us know what you're hoping for, or what you think of our predictions, in the comments below and enjoy this years show!

��[EA's showcase will begin on Saturday 9th of June, 7pm UK time. Ubisoft's showcase will begin on Monday 11th of June, 9pm UK time.]

[thegnasticious]

Cyberpunk: 2077 Review

(SPOILER ALERT!)

To start I’ve been following Cyberpunk: 2077 since its 2012 debut. It has went through many different developmental decisions and teams to reach the point it is at today. That being said, I believe the public should be happy they got anything at all, considering the cop out that 2020 has proven to be so forth.

I’ll start with my criticisms. I feel that development was rushed to meet an unrealistic deadline, that also placed during COVID was near unreachable in the way the game should have been perceived. I find this all the more evident, as I hoped for flying cars and futuristic flying vehicles (as shown in the intro of the game). As far as I know, no flying vehicles exist within Cyberpunk (did Rockstar slip you some good times?).

For my run-through, things finally got moving as soon as the game ended. Albeit I progress quicker than most other gamers, it’s still strange that I beat the game with a level 40, by mistake. I entered the Nocturne mission thinking I was about halfway through, and as the mission closed with credits, I felt for the first time, Cyberpunk’d, myself. I waited for some sort of end scene after the miles and miles of names of people who had worked on it. No end game plus, no post credit scene. Just an option to reload my save before I accidentally completed the game (something which should not be possible).

Now onto the positives, I was floored by the level of immersion outside of the campaign. If the campaign went longer and allowed other areas to have arcs, the game can serve as something else entirely. Stepping back to my criticisms, I feel that the game’s main flaw is that it seems, to me at least, incomplete.

I have my fingers crossed that CDPR is planning on easing these things, and expansions will remove the Mass Effect 3 approach of three different colored muffins, all that are the same flavor. It is beyond deterministic to resolve multiple choices to one conclusion, and since I’m not a determinist I find that approach to be ambiguous in a developmentally lazy, and challenged way. If the developers handle it alike to The Witcher’s development I am sure it will reach the level of success it deserves.

Whether you play it last or next-gen seems to be a breaker. I plan on doing another run-through when I finally get my hands on the much coveted and scalped Xbox Series X. Nonetheless I found an upconverted 4K, last-gen runthrough to look very pretty. Loading got annoying, and some environments chugged, but nothing worse bug-wise than what I’ve seen in a typical Bethesda launch.

I’ve read much criticism surrounding Cyberpunk’s release and few have noted the irratic difficulty, amping from easy to really hard depending on the area you are traversing. Little things warn the character of this and besides minor roadblocks you can access the higher difficulty parts earlier, likely by accident.

I began my game as a Nomad, traveling from the wastes to the city in hopes of escaping apparently, some pesky Sheriff. My main concern right off the bat was to find a futuristic motorcycle. I wanted to drive it really fast and check out the lay of the digital city. My hopes were answered by a Tokyo type bike gang deliberating by their cycles in a Night City alleyway. I left my junker car nearby, came up with a Double barreled shotgun I found, and let the three of them have it. I got a cycle out of the alleyway, and started riding into the bloom of Night City. The visuals you see riding around the city, in terms of definition and size are wonderfully distracting. I found I would crash into something gazing at some overhead zeppelin or flying car traffic. Something always seemed to be happening somewhere in the coding of Night City.

This being said, the things I enjoyed most about Cyberpunk, were the unscripted elements. I expected a much more sandbox’d experience with some sort of single/multiplayer connectivity, akin to a Dark Souls 3 story PVP. These things have obviously been yet to be developed and might not ever be in this entry, come decision of a sequel.

The main plot-line dances from linearity, to an appearance of player guided decision. I expected this element to be much more open-ended, with a more dominant faction system guiding the endgame. Instead it seems most of the endgame boils down to a few decisions that don’t always seem to lead one to the other. I don’t understand why Panaam’s ‘romance’ ending was the only good one. I never returned her request for a date.

RDR2 is another game that fell victim to a deterministic endgame, locking the player into the Writer’s trap, instead of allowing them to find a way to make the game’s avatar, quote en quote, live on in the virtual world. It also pits players with trying to save other NPCs, which there is never a positive an outcome to, and maybe there should be a more challenging route introduced that allows a secret arc. Neither game seemed to address this, letting the NPCs that die, die, and giving you no real way to change that coding.

Johnny Silverhand is both interesting and sort of annoying. His memories are pretty ridiculous, and his blanket statements only keep his own ego warm at night. His character intrigued me because it reminded me slightly at times of someone I knew. But it borderline copped out every other minute as well.

Overall upon my first completion, I felt slightly dissatisfied. Not because it was by any means bad, but because I wanted more. I had visions of robotic giants and spacecrafts. I also thought that CDPR would include a sort of technomamcer class, working strange magic through technology.

I also feel that there should be another way to reach the endgame through sidequests, that would be completely unassociated to Arasaka tower.

My original idea of the perfect run-through, was that when induced it would continue a new arc where Johnny Silverhand is not a ghost but a still living character who you mount the final mission with.

Overall the game both appeased my expectations and left some others unfulfilled. If you have a curiousity towards Cyberpunk, I would say to give it a try. It seems it runs best in 4K. It is by no means a dissapointment. From participating in an early build where you could skate around the city with your shoes on rollercoaster-like rails, I’ve seen this concept come a long ways.

Graphics: 9/10

Sound: 9/10

Replayability: 8/10

Story-line: 7.5/10

Gameplay: 8.5/10

End thoughts:

-Try punching The Woodman to death

-Don’t like Night City radio? Try putting Justice’s Cross on in the bachground

-If Blade Runner, GTA, and The Witcher (don’t forget Keanu!) had a baby, you’d likely get Cyberpunk: 2077

[greatfay]

(I'm the one who asked about Blackwall): what do you hope to see return in da4 from dai and what do you hope is changed or cut out?

Ok just to make sure I got this right, what I liked in DA:I and would like to see more of and what I didn’t like in DA:I and would prefer they cut or altered? Cuz I have a lot tbh. More under the cut.

More Please:

Crafting system. I really liked it, love how you can change your companions’ armor (unlike in DA2 or ME:A) but it still has their “look.”

Banter. Memorable characters are a staple of the Bioware games, but unlike in Dragon Age II, I rarely triggered dialogue between companions in DA:I. Hopefully that changes in DA4.

Soundtrack. Trevor Morris was amazing… too bad most players don’t know this since the devs thought the game would be “more realistic” if the music barely plays. Even combat wouldn’t trigger music for me, all you’d hear is grunting and swords clashing. Ambience just made me feel empty in this game (which doesn’t help the large empty regions).

Pretty places. This game is really bright and colorful compared to the first two. I hope that if DA4 is indeed taking place in Tevinter, we get to see variety in landscape and regions the way we did with Ferelden and Orlais. Just fill it with some damn cities/villages! I hate empty worlds.

Clear cut story. I’ve heard criticisms that Inquisition’s story is oversimplified and pretty cut and dry compared to DA2 and some hail this as a drop in narrative quality in the franchise (psh, they should aim that criticism at the damn fetch quests). However, the game has a straightforward, classic hero’s journey plot that is overall very grand and enjoyable, and that makes it actually similar to Origins. I like that the story can be summed up in 4/5 big moments, with smaller plot points and subplots in between.

Face creator. Honestly there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to the hot OCs you can make in this game and I’m here for it, I have now saved Thedas with an Angela Bassett look-alike (if she were an elf), a Rami Malek look-alike, and a much more idealized version of myself. 

Could Be Better:

Specializations. First two games let you get two specializations, DA:I only gives you one. And I’m cool with that tbh, just wish they were a little more expansive and interesting. Also, companions used to get their own unique specializations and/or abilities, and in DA:I, this led to some questionable creative choices. Giving the big healing ability to Knight-Enchanter instead of Necromancer for example, then giving the time power to Necromancer instead of Knight-Enchanter (when the rest of the abilities support the other).

Also jumping into DA:I right after finishing DA2, I was disappointed to find that this new special Rift Mage tree just recycled the abilities of the Force Mage + firestorm.

Armor/Weapons. I actually liked most of the gear in this game (except the helmets, which looked ridiculous in design for the most part). Wish there were more! I feel like it should be possible to get every armor part and weapon that you can see in-game; it used to be a staple of the genre that when you defeat a boss, you get their stuff, but not every boss in this game drops their gear; some who do don’t even drop the same thing *cough, Alexius*. I remember searching for the Venatori Mage helmet for hours before finding out it’s not in the game (though you can get the regular infantry helm for some reason, and it’s ugly soooo).

Supporting characters. In DA:O and DA2, you’d see recurring characters pop up in other quests and you could get attached to some of them. In DA:I, most of the people you get quests from are forgettable and one-offs.

Enemy encounters. In DA:O and DA2, enemies come in hordes, making crowd control pivotal to survival. In DA:I, you get small parties of enemies (3 - 6) with high health and defense, making overall DPS more important. I think they did this to be more realistic, but this is Dragon Age. Zombies dig up the corpses of dragons out of the ground to raise their gods and elves are part-spirit and a trickster god stole a piece of the sky and horned gray-skinned humanoids go to sex doctors to pop their corks under an oppressive religious order. There’s no room for heavy realism in Dragon Age, let’s be real.

Narrative-based quests. I miss when quests would start with a character actually talking to me! With actual cutscenes and dialogue! In Inquisition, quests either start with a brief chat with an unremarkable NPC, or by reading a fucking note someone left on a table. This is so lazy and boring. Maybe Bioware didn’t have the funds to do proper quests, but I’d prefer a handful of real ones than the dozens of “Oh look, I found a letter on this door that says this person left treasure somewhere” quest.

Party AI. I’d love to have more control like in past games; I want to set it like the gambit system in FFXII, where you can say “If ally uses this ability, character A will use this ability on targeted by ally.”

No Thank You:

Fetch quests! “Collect x amount of these and return for XP” is so boring. What happened to more narrative-heavy side quests?

Inventory limits. I’m so over this, lemme hoard like the junk rat I am, gdi.

War Table operations. If you don’t follow guides on the wiki, you’ll have no idea what the results of these operations will be. There’s no riddle or clue left in the descriptions that suggest that choosing a particular advisor will result in the mass genocide of your Inquisitor’s clan (yeah, fuck that, do NOT choose Josephine for the Protect Clan Lavellan operation).

Miscommunication. The devs and the writers don’t seem to be on the same page. In cutscenes and dialogue, Cassandra will say “We should give mages a chance to prove they don’t need chaperones” and then you’ll give mages some freedom and she’s like “CASSANDRA GREATLY DISAPPROVES.” Happens with a lot of other characters, too.

Requisitions. They’re a waste of resources and I never do them as they have zero effect on my gameplay experience. Don’t even need them in the beginning, just finish 4 quests to get the power needed in the Hinterlands.

Some Ideas:

Integrate side quests into the main story. They’re already sort of mandatory; getting XP in this game is impossible without doing the side quests and you end up under-leveled for the main quests, so might as well write them to be more story-related and use them as opportunities to introduce recurring minor characters. The DLC for DA:I was great tbh, all tightly made stories that didn’t pussyfoot around. I finished Prey recently and that game did a great job with side missions; all of them felt personal, and having voiced characters in your ear as you finish objectives makes them feel more active.

The character classes you can pick in the multiplayer should actually be in the game. I think some of them are mentioned by name, but you don’t otherwise see them.

Loyalty missions. Mass Effect 2 did this best and there’s something like this in Inquisition, but not all of them are equal tbh, they don’t involve scripted events and cutscenes and plot lines that reveal more about your companions. Pretty much Dorian, Solas, Sera, and Iron Bull are the only ones that get it. ME2 gave us: returning to the facility where Jack was tortured as a child so she can blow it up, Garrus hunting down the former protege who betrayed his squad, Jacob locating his presumedly dead father crash-landed on a planet whose flora fucks with everyone’s mind, Miranda relocating her little sister (and her adopted family) to keep her creepy-ass father away from her, Samara hunting down her wayward serial killer daughter (the whole investigation + seduction scenes were dope), Thane trying to rebuild his relationship with his son who is trying to follow in his father’s bloody footprints—I could go on. Those weren’t just “Pop in here and beat an enemy and then leave” kind of quests, they were involved and offered the player choices and were super emotional.

[pixelrender]

My 5 genres of video games

I used to spend my time on a variety of games from AAA open world titles to small flash tower defense games. I’m still quite fond of many of these games and Kingdom Rush in particular has a special place in my heart as the smoothest tower defense game I’ve ever played. I got obsessed over niche genres from time to time too. I had a short period, in which I read many articles on hg101. Naturally, I got super interested in shmups back then. I still like to play a simple free shmup from time to time, but I avoid more difficult entries these days and I can’t call myself a hardcore fan of the genre.

For the longest time I was big on RPGs and Boiware in particular. I loved Dragon Age and I still plan getting my hands on Inquisition one day. I need to replay Mass Effect 2 and finally finish the trilogy. Baldur’s Gate is still on my shortlist of games to finish and Jade Empire is one of my favourite underrated games to recommend. There were other RPGs than those from Bioware too. Gothic 3 probably qualifies for the game I spent most time with as completing it took me half a year. I still like low fiction of Gothic series and admire compact worlds of the first two games and Risen. Oblivion is my favourite roaming game. The best part about it was bumping into a small settlement in the middle of nature and just be there. The last not least I should mention RPG Maker.  I developed few small games in it and I still sometimes work on three more. 2 of them are actual RPGs. I played and enjoyed many RM games, some of them epic fantasies. So, why is this genre only a honorable mention? I don’t find myself as attracted to it and its power fantasies as I used to. I don’t have time for sprawling epic and there are certain strategy games fulfilling my lust for medieval and characters better. The two basic premises of RPGs aren’t as interesting for me as they used to be. I don’t really care about hero’s journey narrative and I’m little bored with basic mechanics. For example leveling up can be such a chore.

Now my choices are way narrower than they used to be. I still play other games and especially hobbyist and micro RPGs, which might enter my top 5 one day. These are the five genres I purposely follow, build up libraries or knowledge of their game design and talk about on Discord the most.

1. Non-linear platformers

I enjoy myself a good metroidvania. There’s only one thing, which makes a foggy, rainy better. It’s not alcohol. Also, I used term non-linear platformers on purpose. I enjoy sideview platforming and not every metroidvania’s that. There are many different movements and some of them are less fun and there are 3d games, which use Metroid inspired progression. Also, I haven’t played a single Metroid or Castlevania proper. I don’t have any excuse for the travesty. Ok, not being a console guy might give you an explanation of my situation. And with so many likes and clones on steam, I have enough to eat through without touching emulators.

I enjoy the genre’s level design in particular. I think that adding multiple layers and making souls inspired timing based combat or adding too many rpg elements rarely helps. Movement’s still the core. Upgrades/progression is at its best, when focused on obtaining new ways of movement and not stronger weapons. Clever boss fights are always important, but I prefer them to be a puzzle rather than an endurance competition. I have a huge, almost endless list of metroidvanias to play and to base my own one on.

2. Walking simulators

Sometimes I just need to turn off. Games in general are a good resting activity, walking sims and ambient games take it little further. And I usually feel enriched by playing them. I don’t feel like an overgrown child. Walking around studying original aesthetic of their creators. It’s a dialogue, in which I confront and reflect their approach to architecture and aesthetics They are definitely better enjoyed on a big screen with proper audio and smooth performance. They’re quite power hungry as even low poly ones are usually 3d. That’s a problem with my current hardware and software. In general I enjoy low poly and minimalist walking sims the most. They tend to focus more on composition.

Almost walking sims present you with a sense of wonder. You explore unknown and often massive lands. They should let you find your own way, but some of there are more focused and lead. Even if the land’s strange, it’s for the better when it rings a sense of familiar. Going cheap surreal isn’t the way. Landscapes in walking sims can be way weirder than Dali, but they should have their own nature. Walking sims are usually very slow. There’s no activity besides walking, maybe you can pick up an item. Sometimes, you follow a story. It’s hard to define a hard border, where walking sims end and other genres start. Gone Home is about something completely else than pure walking sims, but I still enjoy it for its pacing and ambiance. That brings it very close. Curtain certainly isn’t a walking sim, but the way you move around the apartment and then walk through a corridor to bend time is very much close to timeless scenes of walking sims.

3. Art games - game art

This is a difficult category to define. Art games are usually aiming for more than entertainment. They’re deeper with references to other media or filled with social critique. Having fun sometimes feels bad in them. Game art is even more difficult to define. To put it simply, it’s usually a piece of art using games as its medium. It can have a form of an interactive executable or weird modification of an existing game but the artistic concept is more important than it being a working game. In terms of mechanics, this is a diverse group and vague one, when it comes to game design. Here I can learn from areas more relevant in the real world. They often take on philosophy, ethics, politics, aesthetics and other fields I’m interested in more than in violence and loot.

Some game are clear art games. An easy example is Kentucky Route Zero, which despite it’s artsy nature is clearly defined by its mechanics and sense of progress. The other example from my favourite games would be Little Party. This one’s lighter on mechanics, but it tells a very subtle and civil story and it uses art and creativity more than being a product of it. Proteus would be my personal borderline example. The game’s about complementing and its island are small art pieces. This is actually very close to an ambient video installation and could be considered game art. 

4. Turn based strategy games 

Games my brain enjoys the most. I get satisfaction from solving. Solving concrete situations of strategy games is closer to me than abstract puzzles and logic games in general. Into the Breach is close to the latter in terms of mechanics but I love it, because it’s not cold, it makes me feel and every time I fail and an enemy hits one of the cities, I stop breathing for a moment. It makes me feel heroic to put one of my mechs in front of houses and almost sacrifice its pilot to save those lives.

There’s a huge influence of Heroes of Might and Magic. That game has many flaws, but its pace is perfect. Battles are usually either swift of epic. Heroes were my first love and I still fondly return to them from time to time. They’re not as challenging or complex as most tactics/strategy games, but they’re perfect rewarding fun. I only left them as my default turn based strategy to branch out. Series like Civilization and Warlock are building more consistent worlds. Especially in Civ its super fast turns and ties to the real world’s history make it a captivating game, in which you need to strategize on several fronts at once. Tactics are the second path I currently follow. There are closer to RPGs, but for reason your characters becoming stronger makes more sense here. It’s often because you can lose them and losing a level 10 character hurts more. I enjoy the small scale of tactics games too. The smaller the better. Again it’s a game design challenge of going further without sacrificing complexity.

5. Grand strategy games

I wonder how longer this one sticks. I love engrossing myself in Paradox games, losing track of real for weeks and becoming weirdo obsessed with my own history of the world. But it’s weird and disconnecting and you can’t talk about it with your friends, because explaining it is impossible. You can share some stories with fellow grand strategy players, but it’s not difficult to realize the weird nerdness of the company.

So, what’s so good about them? They simulate politics on a world-wide level with an amount of realism, which just feels right. You can change history, but only within borders set up by Paradox. For example you can conquer France as an Aztec, but it stays France. Shapes are the same, systems too. This shade of reality makes fiction in Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and other games much more easy to engage with. That’s also why I find Stellaris boring. Leaving reality, there’s nothing to compare your fiction with. It renders my choices irrelevant and different developments have same impact on me. Multiplayer probably changes this.

Civilization is far less complex than grand strategy games. It’s simple and easy to explain and to change. Yet it keeps certain connection to the real world and it has great modding scene. There isn’t an infinite number of expansions for it, which would make it bloated with features. And one run lasts a lot less. Civ isn’t a simulation, it’s still a very long puzzle. One day, I will only stick with one of the two. Now It looks better for Sid Mayer than Paradox.

Pictures are from following games: Caged Bird Dont Fly Caught in a Wire Sing Like a Good Canary Come When Called, Gunmetal Arcadia, Mura Toka (1 and 2), Morphblade, Victoria 2

[exilesofembermark]

Game Dev Update | 7.20.17

The Forge... FORGES! We just recently brought that system online, so crafting is afoot at Gunslinger HQ! Welcome back to the Dev Update, wherein we examine everything going on in the production of Exiles of Embermark.

Last Update, we encountered the Narrator and got a little of his background, met the Bandit NPC, showed how battle environments are setup and the progress on loot. This time around, you should strap in. Besides the Forge coming online, we’re covering progression in the game, the evolution of combat mechanics, UI design, animations from THREE different NPCs, the new avatar system and so much moar. 

As always, let’s dig into it together in live Discord chat or on the forums!

GAMEPLAY UPDATES 

We’ve been sharing updates on the gameplay evolution we’ve been experimenting with over time, including the additions of more varied Abilities and gameplay modes to increase the in-battle options that players have to adapt to certain situations. Here’s the story:

In the beginning, we designed a very simple Wego-style combat, where each combatant had 4 Abilities to choose from during battle (if you haven’t already, read the original rant for the game). We knew we wanted deep character development and tried to let the combination of lots of build choices for your character couple with super-simple gameplay to deliver on the game’s promise of 1-minute multiplayer. The problem with that was that there wasn’t enough strategic choice when you were stuck with 4 Abilities that may or may not suit the situation you found yourself in-- particularly in PvP.

So we tinkered with more Abilities, trading out Abilities during battle and a “Deck” mode where you drew in new Abilities as you used others. Each of these creeped toward deliciousness but didn’t quite get us there. And then this last milestone began.

We’ve developed what we hope is going to give you gaming goodness for generations. It’s a more malleable system of combat, summed up as follows:

Each player has 8 Abilities at their fingertips

Each Ability is assigned to a Stance: Martial, Magick* or Mystic

Using an Ability changes the player’s Stance to the Ability’s stance

Martial does increased DAM to Mystic, Mystic does increased DAM to Magick and Magick does increased DAM to Martial

Abilities have various cooldowns to avoid spam-o-rama

What we’ve learned from early testing on this system is that it creates depth without a ton of increased complexity, cat-and-mouse tactics via stance-dancing and most importantly, dramatic fun. We’ll now hold our enthusiasm for those of you who have signed up for closed testing and let you tell us what you think (if you’re interested in testing, PM TheWizard in the forums with your device type-- preferably phone)!

*please note that I am, sadly, the only Gunslinger dev who wants to spell magic “magick.” I believe it is way more fun to write (and read) “magick.” Thus, these Updates are my only outpost of protest. Thank you for your patronage.

PROGRESSION UNLOCKS

The ambition of the world for the game (and the continent of Embermark specifically) is for it to be a living, breathing world. But it’s not a 3D world-- it functions more like a Google Map. To populate that world with Quests, NPCs and events, we’ve been working on our Progression Unlock system during this milestone, and I’m excited to report that it’s coming along as planned-- any trackable piece of data in the game, from your Character’s level, Quests complete, wins, losses, # of dwarves slain, etc can be used as a trigger in the game. 

What this unlocks for us as game masters is the ability to give players agency over the world itself. Naturally, you’ll have several Quest lines that open for everyone, or for your Class, or for your House. But other, more secretive or hidden things will emerge as the game progresses and you (or your House) accomplish things within the game world. One day, the massive port of Sezunan may welcome great half-men from across the sea. The next day, it may be laid waste, with refugees pouring north to escape the devastation brought on by the uprising of the Queviel elves who are simply done with the nonstop raids from-- who else-- the players of House Revenge! 

That’s one example of the power of this system-- we’ll be diving more into detail on this as we get into testing and start seeing what works, is fun and balances out the happenings on Embermark. 

BATTLE UI REDESIGN

While Exiles hasn’t gotten to outside testing just yet, we’ve been doing plenty live, either at the studio, on a show floor or on the fly. And we’ve identified some of the early indicators for redesign needs. As you know, one of the aims of the game is to provide one-hand, one-thumb control for easy access (whether or not you’re a leftie), and we noticed some thumb-placement issues with the old interface (you can see the old one here) as well as some feedback clarity needed for things like Effects Over Time (EOT) and HP and Ability descriptions. 

This led us to the exercise we’re in the middle of, and we’re excited to get feedback on the increase in clarity and control, but also the aesthetic (work-in-progress):

Coupled with the gameplay development mentioned above (which is not represented here), and the avatar system you’ll read about below, there will be much to discuss! 

TONS OF NEW LOOT

The loot train continues to roll down the tracks and shows no signs of stopping. In fact, it’s speeding up. So without belaboring that fact, check out a bit of the mass quantity of tasty items (at varying levels of finish) coming your way:

Axes, warhammers, staves, light & heavy armor, blunts, boots, wizardy whatnots & everything that fits in the 13 slots for your gear is underway. Moar soon!

BANDITS... WITH GUNS

We’re learning quite a bit about how we’ll deal with the Rogue Class design from this cretin, but don’t get excited about what’s in his left hand just yet. All work-in-progress... (but check this out!):

AUDIO FROM THE EXILES BOUND DEBUT

I asked our friends at Bound, the app for episodic fiction, audio and visuals for all sorts of interesting properties, if we could debut a snippet of Episode 1 from Tales of Embermark, the series we’re doing together to reveal a little bit of history before players start directing it themselves. They graciously agreed. 

Thus, here’s an audio snippet from our Narrator (who you met in the last Update), a haggard soul who was there back when the Collapse unfolded. He’s just encountering a farmer on his way to investigate what’s going on with House Resolute. So, without further ado, the debut! EPISODE 1 END.

(and download Bound from the iOS App Store here) 

ASKALA

There’s so much continent to concept, sometimes it gives us pause.

THAT’S A LIE.

We’re rolling through each Zone of Embermark with evil delight, adding towns, ruins and caves to fight things in all over the place. The next one for us to share is Askala-- and here are the notes from our design doc about it:

“Temperate and slightly southern, Askala is one of the richest Zones in terms of natural resources. Farmland is abundant (though it’s not flat), and the fishing trade is huge, given Askala’s largest coastline of any Zone. In the middle of the Zone is a mountain range of steep peaks. There’s a long archipelago along the southern end, with sporadic civilization and ruins along them. House Revenge HQ located along the Eastern part of the Zone.”

Like most of the continent, even the civilized portions are tucked away for protection and under constant threat of decimation, both from Others From Over There (beyond the Breaches) and from neighbors. Here’s a rough of Pactu, a farming village nestled among the conifers below the nearby range:

As you read from the design doc, House Revenge is here, an amalgam of architecture from the once-proud elves and the men and half-men who have come to reside there:

We’re also working on Dokkul, a fishing capital right at the start of the Askalan Archipelago. Its seemingly haphazard and spread-out makeup has allowed it to regroup and restart after countless raids and invasions on its rich resources:

AND NOW, THE FORGE ONLINE

yes, Yes, YES, YES! The Forge works, people! I can’t tell you how happy this makes me (I am, admittedly, an easily delighted wizard, but indulge me)... 

“Craft items of enormous power” is said in many game descriptions, so I will outline:

Forge Recipes - You will find, earn and win Recipes throughout your journeys in Embermark, and these will allow you to forge items needed and some not available in Chests or Quests. A few crafting materials (also available in drops) plus a Unique Material (which can literally be anything) and BOOM - you’ve got a unique item or a banana or what-have-you.

Forge Random - Pick one of the 13 slots available on your character, and as long as you have the crafting materials, you can forge a random piece of loot for that slot. The higher the Forge level, the better the loot!

Salvage - 1-800-GOT-JUNK has nothing on Exiles. Not only does the game take away your junk, it gives you crafting materials (and sometimes, even Ember Essence) in return!

Upgrade - Got a Legendary, except it’s Level 3 and you’ve gotten way beyond that? Throw in your mats and bring that item with you on your journey to Paragon!

(oh and you can of course Level Up your Forge, unlocking treasures untold)

DWARVES FIGHTING

In this Update’s Dwarf section, we have some animations to share, not the least of which is this Shield Slam, which will likely cause you to lose your feet (or some other awful effect-over-time) during battle:

And who says dwarves aren’t spry? Try making this type of leap at home:

WINNERS OF THE PCGC

All hail the mighty SecretOwl, winner of the 1st Player-Created Gear Contest! It was a heated competition, with entries as varied as weapons, to offhands to armor pieces, but a shield won the day!

Jakallen’s Aegis, a singular shield combining epic-level resistances for the bearer with an impressive side effect, won “The Paragon” and will be created, given Lore and made available in the game after launch. In addition, prizes were given for the “Loose Cannon” (craziest) and The Fisherman’s Boot (funniest). Check The Scroll of Exaltation for the winners and details on upcoming contests.

If your entries didn’t make the finals this time, fear not-- there will be many more PCGCs in the future, and your creativity just may see its way into the game along with the Aegis.

RINGS & BELTS!

There are 13 slots on your Character’s person in Exiles, and 8 of those slots for gear are visible. Given that the creation of visible items (like helms and chest pieces and boots) are more work, we did those first. Thus, rings and belts have languished in the dark for a long time, waiting to be introduced into the game.

This milestone, those items made their way in, and the Bard is hard at work on the Ring of Whateversinhishead.

ETHEREALS IN EMBERMARK

Ethereals aren’t supposed to be here. 

Another race from Otherworld, these beings are intelligent and highly sophisticated but non-humanoid. Their physical forms are up to them, both in shape and in solidity. They communicate with each other entirely mind-to-mind, with no sound or vibration emitting from them. To anyone on the outside, they must communicate by the assuming of form. Assuming form and substance makes them vulnerable, but this is also how they must attack a physical foe or charm them or lull them into a stupor. Thus, a battle with an Ethereal is a dance of prepare-and-attack as they tend to buff themselves in prep and then unload on an enemy.

They move in life cycle from Wisp to Shine to Ascended to Superior, and their forms and powers and even limitations progress as well. 

Here we take a look at an Ascended, chosen to form of human and fire:

Despite their ever-increasing power, they can be defeated-- and as you can see, they don’t take their possessions into the next life...

Plan on seeing more on this enemy, as we introduce their multiple forms (and multiple power structures alongside).

THE AVATAR SYSTEM

For a while-- in fact, a great loooong while, you’ve been looking at this guy as a placeholder player avatar in every screenshot ever:

Thus, thank you for your patience and huzzah! You don’t have to look the same as everyone else anymore. In fact, Exiles will only sometimes use faces. Instead, we’re developing an avatar system that gives players some agency over their representation to the world while playing the game. It’s a combination of options, whereby you have default choices for the various parts of your avatar as well as earn or find parts as you go through the game experience. 

First, you’ll choose your avatar frame, beginning with lowly, shameful materials and progressing into fantastic borders that make your opponent go “whoa, that Character won the Hoozitwhatsit Tourney-- I’d better just quit right now...”

Then you’ll combine with a number of backgrounds for the avatar, same story:

And finally, you will add an icon as well the icon’s color for full badassery:

Banana icons, anyone?

NOW REMEMBER

We’ll keep sharing details as we head into testing (remember to PM TheWizard on the Exiles forums with your device type if you want in on closed testing & beta later), and you can count on early impressions from the testers throughout our various channels.

If you haven’t already, follow along with the Exiles development on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven’t, I’ll find you. And SMITE you.

THERE’S CHAT CHATTER EVERYDAY AS WE READY TO BATTLE

If you want to hear about the game, ask questions or connect with others who are helping the development team think about features, design and narrative, hop into the Discord Channel for live chat and say hi– it’s a friendly lot with plenty of daily shenanigans (there’s even-- still-- a Shenaniganizer).

BONUS: VFX ARE COMING!

We’re just starting to dive into our VFX plan (you may have noticed a lack of them in previous GIFs or screenshots), but rest assured, Exiles shall have them, and our bonus image this month is a WIP concept for the Ability “Armor Up,” which would appear on you or your opponent upon Ability use:

BONUS X2: THE DWARF... SHIMMY

As we prepared the dwarf model for animations, a very strange thing happened, which has turned into a GIF that you can find here. Take a look, then try and look away...

[jackdawyt]

As my last video/post for 2019, I figured we should have a reflection on Dragon Age 4's major news updates and uncover what we know about Dragon Age 4 throughout this year and beyond!  So, we can go into 2020 with the right expectations and understanding of the game's development!

The Dread Wolf Rises:

To boot of this year - we had the most exciting announcement from The Game Awards in December - the official confirmation of the next Dragon Age project with the current given title: #TheDreadWolfRises.

The trailer, while enigmatic, showcased the next Dragon Age centring on the Solas’s plan to rise up and destroy the veil, fulfilling the Dread Wolf’s prophecy. At least that’s one interpretation of it.

The trailer seemingly was made for the fanbase of Dragon Age with the given title, because if you didn’t know what Dragon Age was, or anything about The Dread Wolf, you could totally pass up that trailer as a different game entirely. So, it was more of an ode to the fans that the next Dragon Age game is in the works.

Alongside the release of the trailer, the Dragon Age website was updated for #TheDreadWolfRises with Mark Darrah, Executive Producer & Matthew Goldman, Creative Director sharing a few words on the production of the next Dragon Age.

TLDR: Mark is excited to show more and Matthew states that this is the strongest team yet and they’re venturing forth on the most epic quest ever.

In a September blog post, Casey Hudson wrote that ‘I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises,’ alluding to the narrative and production of Dragon Age 4. Before we delve into the current development of Dragon Age 4, we’ve got to talk about the two initial iterations of Dragon Age 4.

Project Joplin:

Based on Jason Schreier’s expose’ into the past and present developments of Dragon Age 4 - the previous iteration of Dragon Age 4 was known as ‘Joplin’, like Janis Joplin.

Janis Joplin was one of the biggest female rock stars of her era, she revolutionized her genre of music for the next generation – clearly, this is something the devs were going for with the original Dragon Age 4 project – to revolutionize the Role-Playing Game genre.

The developers on Joplin were committed to avoiding the mistakes they’d made on Dragon Age: Inquisition. Veteran Mike Laidlaw was the creative director of ‘Joplin’ until the project was canned and reworked so ‘live service elements’ could be added. After the decided rework of Dragon Age 4, Mike left the studio in late 2017.

Project Joplin’s initial concept followed the next protagonist ‘playing as a group of spies in Tevinter, a large chunk of the narrative centred on heists. The goal was to focus as much as possible on choice and consequence.’

There was an emphasis on this ‘hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth.’

The developers talked about building systemic narrative mechanics, allowing the player to perform actions like persuading or extorting guards without the writers having to hand-craft every scene.

It was very ambitious and plenty of the developers were excited, stating that they put some of their best work into this project.

However, Anthem was in real trouble, and there was a concern that it might never be finished unless the studio did something drastic. EA and BioWare took that drastic action, cancelling Joplin and moving the bulk of its staff, including executive producer Mark Darrah, onto Anthem.

Project Joplin was reworked into Project Morrison with a skeleton team building the very foundations of the next Dragon Age.

Project Morrison:

The latest iteration of Dragon Age 4 that is currently in the works is known as ‘Morrison’, like ‘James Morrison’ – the lead singer of the rock band ‘The Doors’.

Jim Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock history. (Wikipedia).

Morrison is being built on Anthem’s tools and codebase of the Frostbite Engine, this will save time as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Anthem were each built from scratch. With a pre-set already there, Morrison’s development can save a lot of time.

This new version of the fourth Dragon Age is planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue. It’s not clear how much of Joplin’s vision will shape Morrison.

Matt Goldman, art director on Dragon Age: Inquisition and then Joplin, took over as creative director for Morrison.

Many of the BioWare developers “know it’s going to change like five times in the next two years.”

Morrison will change its shape multiple times. However, “Dragon Age games shift more than other games.” So, it’s not uncanny for a Dragon Age project to undergo drastic changes in its development.

Live Service/Multiplayer:

It has been confirmed on LinkedIn that BioWare has hired a software engineer to work on a multiplayer component for Dragon Age 4, however, it’s unsure what exactly this multiplayer could look like.

Jason Schreier stated that “he heard some ideas for Morrison’s multiplayer include companions that can be controlled by multiple players via drop-in/drop-out co-op, similar to old-school BioWare RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, and quests that could change based not just on one player’s decisions, but on the choices of players across the globe.”

In 2018, Casey Hudson tweeted a statement on live service: “Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on,” he wrote on Twitter. “Story & character-focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about ‘live’ it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.”

It’s still unclear how much of this game will focus on live-service elements and multiplayer, it could follow something as simple as Dragon Age: Inquisition’s separate multiplayer mode, or it could transform the game completely. Take note that Morrison is still early in the works and it will change multiple times until release. That is for sure.

Production:

Now we get to the tea - The past and present developments of Dragon Age 4’s new iteration.

So, Project Joplin was canned in late 2017, with Project Morrison rebooting sometime after that with an essential, small team. The rest of the Dragon Age team that worked on Joplin, went to fix Anthem during its troubled development. Even Mark Darrah, the Executive Producer of Dragon Age was shuffled to Anthem’s production. All the while, Morrison lay low in very early pre-production stages.

In 2018, the majority of the news we got on Dragon Age 4 came out in January, with Joplin’s initial codename and Anthem’s reshuffling. However, with Morrison in deep pre-production, nothing substantial - production-wise - was heard on this project until The Dread Wolf Rises teaser launched at The Game Awards eleven months later in December. Of course, this trailer was hype hype hype!

In early 2019, BioWare resumed their focus on Anthem and its release date. After Anthem was released in February 2019 - according to comicbook.com - the core Edmonton team working on Anthem, returned to work on Dragon Age 4 in full-scale development following the reworks of Morrison.

Built on Anthem’s codebase and its pre-sets of the Frostbite engine, following a very enigmatic live service model – Dragon Age 4 entered its pre-production stages with a full-team. As Casey Hudson later confirmed in September:

"We have several other big projects in the works.  I wish I could tell you more about them, but they’re mostly super-secret right now.  I can say however that one of our projects has a large and growing team in Edmonton working through pre-production, and based on the progress I’m seeing, I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises."

Key processes during the pre-production stages include:

Concept Art

Storyboarding

Level Design

Mechanic Design

Around June, an IGN Greece article resurfaced again, according to said article ‘an anonymous BioWare employee had given clues Dragon Age 4. Stating that the game will be released in 2020 and that the voices of the characters are already being recorded, which indicates an advanced stage of development.’

This article initially launched in 2018 and has many rebuttals, the first being the release date.

This 2020 expected release date has been debunked because according to EA’s 2019 earnings call, the new release window for Dragon Age 4 is at least April 2022, and any time after that. Perhaps Joplin’s initial release window was 2020, and the developer may have shared that, but as far as Morrison is concerned, the project is 3 years away.

However, voice work being in the works could be plausible at this stage. Alix Wilton Reagan has teased a few seasons of her in full mocap mentioning NDA’s and #dragonage and #inquisitor, this could just Alix teasing us, or using social media to its full advantage, or it could be something Dragon Age-related.

Surely the Inquisitor will make a cameo appearance and that could justify why Alix could be doing VO?

On top of both Alix’s tease and IGN Greece’s article, very recently Jo Berry, a writer at BioWare tweeted about voice over work coming in and it being fantastic, however, they have to remove the goofy robot text to speech which is awkward and funny to listen to.  

"When VO is coming in and it's fan-tastic, but it means saying goodbye to that goofy robot text-to-speech that makes you all laugh."

So, indeed voice work does seem to be going on for Dragon Age 4’s development at this stage.

In jest, BioWare hasn’t replied to my request for voice acting a character in Dragon Age 4, so I think because of that, we can assume that they haven’t started the majority of the main character’s voice work just yet, right?

Moving on…Throughout the months of August and September, BioWare moved to a new office space in downtown Edmonton. Once they had settled in, a few very interesting Dragon Age 4 titbits came to light.

Emily (Domino) Taylor posted a picture on Twitter, showcasing a post artboard for Dragon Age 4, as we can assume it’s Dragon Age! There’s a Grey Warden and their Griffon-friend showcased in the picture.

Griffons and Grey Warden’s confirmed for Dragon Age 4? It’s not too much of a stretch considering the drama at Weisshaupt and Last Flight’s ending, but alas, as we can see BioWare’s art division are getting ready to line up concept artwork for further production and development. Probably for 3D model creation and animation stages.

Regardless, it’s very exciting to see the start of official artwork developing for Dragon Age 4, I’ll be keeping an eye out to see how this board develops further.  

Another huge titbit that was revealed with BioWare’s office move, was when the mayor of Edmonton decided to visit and congratulate BioWare at their new offices. On one of the photos the mayor and his team took, there was a shot of an HD version of Solas on a TV Screen.

I personally believe that this is a shot from Dragon Age 4 or the prototype version of Morrison showing off Solas. There’s been no confirmation of where this shot comes from, and I’ve spent an entire video dissecting it. However, my point is, I don’t think this comes from Dragon Age: Inquisition, it’s way to HD, look at his face, the fur on his outfit, the outside environment. It’s very distinct, and I believe it’s the first shot of Dragon Age 4 revealed.

I’ve not seen any rebuttals to this, and I’ve openly asked multiple times online, however, no one has come up with anything. So, even towards the end of 2019, it remains a mystery. I think this is a Dragon Age 4 shot, let me know if you think otherwise!

Around the same time, Matt Rhodes, an Art Director, posted a short story on his Instagram stating that he’s “more excited working on Dragon Age 4 than any other project so far.”

Just after BioWare moved offices, Fernando Melo, a senior producer on The Dread Wolf Rises left the studio after 12 years.

As stated on his LinkedIn profile, a lot of Fernando’s job on Dragon Age 4 surrounded “help[ing] establish the vision for the game. Guid[ing] the team through EA’s concept and early production phases. Prov[ing] out the core concept and key innovations of the game”.

He signed off with an email sent to everyone on the Dragon Age team, stating that he left at the “least disruptive timing as it would likely get.”

Considering that Fernando’s job was ensuring the pre-production stages were completed efficiently, and with his departure being at a time where it’d be least hectic for the development of Dragon Age 4, it’s safe to say that the pre-production processes are wrapping up and the team can begin to enter full production.

Fernando said that “with a great game leadership team in place, a fantastic creative vision, and some of the best devs in the world. Morrison is well underway to becoming the definitive Dragon Age experience - and I'm incredibly proud and honored to have played a part in that. I'll be eagerly awaiting the opportunity to experience the next DA as a fan this time around.”

So, with Fernando’s send off via email, the entire Dragon Age team has moved on from the initial pre-production stages to the main development of the project with an estimated release window of any time after April 2022.

Mark Darrah Major Hints & Teases:

Now we get to the most divisive news topics - the teases from Executive Producer Mark Darrah!

Mark has actually been teasing us since the beginning of 2017, when he dropped a video of an artbook that collated a plethora of Dragon Age concept characters, with many mysterious and ominous photos showcasing potential concept art and character designs.

A logo of a wolf, on fire encased in a tower, was all we had on Dragon Age 4 at the time. However, considering Project Joplin was canned at the end of that same year, I think it’s safe to assume this work went alongside that project, whether it will remain, we’ll uncover in-time.

At E3 2018, in a video interview with Game Informer, Mark Darrah said that Dragon Age 4 was going ‘swell’ with a cheeky grin.

At Pax West 2018, Dragon Age 4 was officially confirmed again since it’s reboot in development, the Triforce Quartet played Dragon Age: Inquisition’s theme as Mark Darrah confirmed that the next instalment is in the works… again.

Towards the end of November, Mark Darrah teased the entirety of Twitter with his Dragon Age remarks. Having tweeted the single words “Dragon Age”, he had PC Gamer and many other onion articles writing up on his huge Dragon Age 4 tease.

However, to be fair, Mark dropped an image that resembles Dragon Age, only we’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

Midnight snow, rocks, forests, a completely different landscape to any of the maps in Dragon Age: Inquisition, yet very familiar with its Frostbite Engine aesthetic… is this a shot of Tevinter, more than likely taken on Mark Darrah’s phone?

Well, I think so. It doesn’t resemble any location I can recall in Dragon Age: Inquisition… But you might say “there’s snow in Tevinter, which is the opposite end of Thedas’s Equator, that doesn’t make sense lore-wise.”  

Well, Mark Darrah replied to someone questioning if and why there would be snow in Tevinter, he sent them a link to this article that explains how there can be snow on the equator, meaning that Tevinter can have snow.

So, is this our second or first look of Dragon Age 4? Well, depending on if the Solas shot is viable, I’d say definitely, but I’ll let you make your own mind up on that. Speaking of Tevinter, Mark Darrah also teased that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is titled “Tevinter of Our Discontent”, which is a huge story reference that I’ll touch upon in a separate category.

However, back to the picture teases, and Mark Darrah also posted another photo…

A sun blinding a knight, very ominous, I don’t even know where to start with this one… I mean it could have some subliminal message about how Solas may destroy the veil, or it could have a rather obscure context that fits to Dragon Age 4’s narrative, but I honestly just don’t even know what this is…

On Dragon Age Day, Again, Mark Darrah posted another screenshot of Dragon Age 4 with everything redacted other than a pixel in the corner.

And, erm, yep. That’s super. Thanks for that, Mark.

If you’d like to see more Dragon Age 4 teases that may or may not make sense and will most likely leave you frustrated and clueless, why not give Mark Darrah a follow-on Twitter. He’s one to keep an eye out.

Story:

The next narrative surrounds the Dread Wolf rising and attempting to destroy the veil, it’ll most likely be our next protagonist’s goal to stop Solas from achieving this.

We will have a new protagonist, like every other Dragon Age game. It’s been confirmed copious times by many developers old and new that the Hero of Ferelden will never return in the future, so stop asking. And even if they did return, Patrick Weekes is in charge now.

Dragon Age 4 will be set in the Tevinter Imperium, if Trespasser’s ending wasn’t a good enough clue for you, Project Joplin was also set in Tevinter. Alternatively, according to PC Gamer, it was the newly announced Tevinter Nights book that confirmed Tevinter to be Dragon Age 4’s setting.

Mark Darrah confirmed and teased on Twitter that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is Tevinter of our Discontent, derived from Shakespeare’s “The Winter of our Discontent” which is the opening lines from the play - Richard III (3rd).

As a TLDR: the words lay the groundwork for the portrayal of Richard as a discontented man who is unhappy in a world that hates him. However, since his family were victorious in the war, they reign the nation once more, and so as winter dies, glorious summer is upon them.

There are plenty of references we can make to Solas and his scheme to destroy the veil, he’s woken up to a world that despises his name and people that revoke his actions as evil. He wants to correct this world and restore his ‘family’ so to speak. Perhaps, like Richard the 3rd, Solas’s glorious summer is what awaits him in the next game.

So, we have plenty of plot potential with this given title and I do have a separate video for even more thorough speculation on this topic. However, based on Shakespeare’s work being the main inspiration for Dragon Age 4’s narrative, we should expect tragedy to be one of the main themes of the plot.

According to Video Gamer, in 2017, Alexis Kennedy was writing freelance for BioWare, ‘working on a whole chunk of lore and backstory for the faction in the game that you would think of if you were thinking big old goth. You know, if you were interested in death.'

Instantly what comes to mind is Nevarra's Mortalitasi – Death Mages that's responsible for the mummification process of the dead in Nevarran culture. However, we’re not sure how much of his work went into the cancelled Joplin, considering the timing at which he worked on Dragon Age 4.  

According to Alexis’s LinkedIn page, he worked freelance at BioWare from February – August 2017. The end of 2017 was the same time Joplin was canned, and Mike Laidlaw left the company, so there’s a huge possibility that Alexis’s work has been shelved.

Even if Alexis’s work wasn’t shelved at the time, given his recent allegations and controversy, Mark Darrah confirmed on Twitter that BioWare no longer has a working relationship with him, so his work seemingly has been scrapped.

According to Dark Horse writers Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir who’re creating the comics. In a comicbook.com interview, they shared the collaboration with the BioWare writers, it’s a case of sharing notes on where the narrative is going, and how the comics can help reach that point for Dragon Age 4’s narrative.

So, if you want to see where Dragon Age 4’s narrative may go, or which characters could turn up, read the comics as they’re pushing the narrative forward.

According to Chelsea Fariello, Assistant Animator at BioWare, it seems we could have a Mabari War Hound companion, or at least NPC in Dragon Age 4, as she stated on Twitter that she was interested in what interactions people would want to see for a dog-like creature in a video game. With the hashtag Dragon Age. Perhaps Mabari War Hound, or even a Griffon? “What interactions would people want to be able to do with a dog like creature in a video game? I need to know...for reasons... #DragonAge “

The “creature” part in that tweet is what makes me think it could be a small griffon? If it’s a Mabari then it’s just a dog, however, if it’s a small griffon then that could make sense. That’s just my hot take.

On Dragon Age Day, Arby’s expressed their interest in opening a new branch in Thedas, could we see a new type of cuisine in Tevinter? It’s hard to say, other than the fact that John Epler loves Arby’s, not Wendy’s though. Don’t mention Wendy’s!

Weekes’s Tweets:

Adding to the story category, we have plenty of tweets by Patrick Weekes that hint at future elements for Dragon Age 4.

Patrick Weekes responded to Autumn Witch when asked on Twitter ‘to pick one character from Dragon Age that has never been a companion or advisor that you would like to see as a companion in DA-4? (For the sake of this post, Lace Harding is also not available.)’

Patrick said: “Oh that’s obvious, I’d go with (Reads parenthetical) THIS IS RIGGED.”

So, Scout Harding as a Dragon Age 4 Companion teased? I freaking hope so.

Patrick Weekes posted on Twitter that they just teared up reading a scene, so unless they’re cutting onions while writing, we should expect tears to be shed in Dragon Age 4. If I were to guess, I mean Solas is walking the Din’anshiral. Which means there is only death on this journey…

Weekes was asked about non-binary lingo & representation and if the players would have the option to not identify as a male or female in the next Dragon Age. They replied saying:

“No guarantees (it's something that is very difficult in romance languages we get translated into), but our team is always looking for better ways to let players see themselves in our games.”

Other Dragon Age Projects:

According to EA’s 2019 Earnings Call, “there are plans for not only Dragon Age 4, but other Dragon Age products too.”

At a guess, this ‘other product’ could simply be a mobile companion app to coincide with Dragon Age 4’s launch. Or it could be the rumoured tactics game that we haven’t heard about since Mark Darrah’s tease in 2017.

On top of that, at a guess, it could also be an extension to the Dragon Age Keep.

Expectations:

There’s still a couple of years yet with an expected release window at any point after April 2022. However, that doesn’t mean the news will not be coming, just look at all the tidbits I’ve uncovered from developer tweets on the side.

Not to mention that BioWare generally start the marketing phases of their upcoming games two years prior to release, so if Dragon Age 4 were to release in 2022, we could actually see something in 2020. I’m not banking on that, but just for the doubters out there, we’ll easily hear something regarding this game in 2020, whether that’s a trailer or small tweet trials of news, we’ll be sure to get something, and I’ll be sure to stay on track of that.

if you have anyone saying there’s no news for Dragon Age 4, just gently send them my way and share this video in their dm’s!

[illusivegore]

Eight to Consider: Games of Last Generation – Part Two

Well, I guess it’s finally time to lay the previous generation of games to rest. If you missed the first part of my list, you can check it out here. In it I discussed the first 10 of my top 20 favorite PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games.  So for what could be the final time I discuss them, I give to you 10 more games from last generation for your consideration.

10. Plants vs. Zombies

Platforms: PSN, XBLA, Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS, Google Chrome, Nintendo DS, DSiWare, Bada, Android, Windows Phone, PlayStation Vita, BlackBerry Table OS, BlackBerry 10

Plants vs. Zombies is the perfect take on the tower defense game and the best game I’ve ever played in the genre. If you asked me to, I’d be hard pressed to find a flaw within it. Everything from level design and progression to the art and music is on point. It also features some of the most addictive gameplay I’ve ever had the joy of experiencing.  I’ve played Plants vs. Zombies to completion (multiple times) on no less than five different platforms and would gladly add to that list should another opportunity arise.

9. Mass Effect 3

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Wii U

Mass Effect 3 is a fantastic game that gets a lot of flack thanks to its lackluster ending.  While I agree that it wasn’t the best way to end such an amazing trilogy, it’s not nearly as bad as some people would lead you to believe.  It is still a great entry in the trilogy and has the best gameplay of the three games. It also introduced multiplayer for the first time in the series which, after my initial skepticism, I fell in love with. I spent somewhere around 165 hours with the multiplayer alone and had some great times with a couple of my friends playing.  While Mass Effect 3 isn’t the best game in the series, it’s still better than a vast majority of the games released last generation.

8. Borderlands

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, OS X

In a world where so many shooters are trying to implement RPG elements and RPGs are trying to pander to shooter fans, Borderlands is one of the few games that actually gets both aspects right. The shooter gameplay feels great and the progression, skill trees, and loot system are some of the most satisfying of this past generation. On top of all of that, Borderlands is a genuinely funny, entertaining game that never takes itself too seriously. Whether you’re playing solo or with friends, there are hours and hours of enjoyment to be had here.

Honorable Mentions Fez | Gears of War II | Geometry Wars 2 | Guitar Hero III | A Kingdom for Keflings | Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers (Series) | Mark of the Ninja | Mortal Kombat (2009) | Ratchet & Clank Future (Series) | Rogue Legacy | Thomas was Alone | Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1

7. Spelunky

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita

If you’ve been a reader of the site for a while, you may already be aware of the love I have for Spelunky. It has quickly become one of my favorite games of all time. Much like Super Meat Boy, I’d consider it a modern day masterpiece. It’s not an easy game, by any means, so the first time I ever completed Hell I actually felt like I had accomplished something. It remains one of my proudest video game moments and thanks to that Spelunky is one of the few games I can actually claim to be at least decent at.

6. BioShock

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

BioShock was the first game I ever played on the Xbox 360 and after being away from games for a few years, it completely blew me away. I remember seeing the water for the first time; I almost lost my mind with how good it looked. After getting over the initial awe I felt, I soon found that not only was BioShock a beautiful game, but it was also a fantastic experience with a great story. I’ll also never forget my first encounter with a Big Daddy. Very few moments in my gaming career were that intense and horrifying.

5. Mass Effect 2

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows

Mass Effect 2 might be the perfect game. This is something I’ve been saying for years and I still stand by it. Mass Effect 2’s gameplay improvements over the original game are night and day. The combat is better so many times over and I would put it up against some of the best 3rd person action games. The skill system is streamlined and just felt much more user friendly. The various tech and biotic powers also all actually felt unique, as compared to the original game where many abilities felt a little too similar. Outside of gameplay, the story structure felt precise and was about as well paced as you can get. Mass Effect 2, also boasts the largest assortment of squad mates and introduced some of my personal favorites like Grunt, Jack, and Kasumi. If you played the original game and couldn’t get past its technical issues and never tried the sequel, you owe it to yourself to at least give Mass Effect 2 a try.

4. The Last of Us

Platforms: PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4

I was late to the party when it came to The Last of Us. I didn’t get to play it until well over a year after it was released, but boy was is worth the wait. I’ve never been a big fan of Naughty Dog’s other games, but The Last of Us was always a game that seemed to click with me from the first time I saw it. What’s even better is that it actually clicked with me when I played it. Right from the beginning and to the very end, it kept me interested and engaged. Very few games can live up to the type of hype that The Last of Us had, but it did and in some ways even surpassed my expectations.

Great, Underrated Games of Last Generation BioShock 2 | Bulletstorm | Dante’s Inferno | The Darkness II | Ghostbusters Prince of Persia (2008) | Remember Me | X-Men Origins: Wolverine

3. Dead Space

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows

Dead Space completely took me by surprise. I remember seeing it during E3 2008 and writing it off, but then the reviews started pouring in. After seeing the positive buzz surrounding it, I had to play it and it didn’t take long for me to completely fall in love with it. Well as much as you can fall in love with a game about blasting the limbs off of bizarre, deformed alien creatures. It remains the best survival horror game I’ve played in the last decade. Fantastic gameplay, wonderfully disturbing enemies, environments that make you dread what’s around the next corner, terrific sound design, great boss fights, and a sweet arsenal of unique weapons all combine to make Dead Space one of the best games you can play on Xbox 360 or PS3.

2. Fallout 3

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows

Fallout 3 was my first experience with the Fallout series and it was one hell of a place to start. Fallout 3 really lets you play in any way you want, from both a tactical and moral standpoint. Prefer to sneak around and kill creatures with your bare hands? You can do that. Feel like making your presence known by destroying an entire city with a nuclear bomb? Go for it. Want to be a complete dick and murder all the innocent people in a small settlement? You’re a demented bastard, but you can do that too. It’s a game all about choice and while the main story isn’t anything to write home about, the vast wasteland can offer you hundreds of hours of exploration. Set off in any one direction and you never know what you might find.

1. Mass Effect

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows

That’s right, all three Mass Effect games in my top 10. I was originally going to include them all together, but I decided to differentiate between the three. The original Mass Effect has more than its fair share of issues and as a whole isn’t nearly the best game in the series, but it remains my favorite and I still play through it at least once a year. This is where it all began. This is where we were introduced to this incredible galaxy, where we got to know some of the best characters ever to grace a video game, and where we learned that the Reapers were real and were coming to wreak havoc. Mass Effect’s story is phenomenal and it was the first game I played that really felt like the choices I made had a long lasting impact. It’s also one of the few games that has connected with me on a personal level and actually made me care for the characters within it. It’s for those reasons that Mass Effect is my favorite game of last generation and one of my favorite games of all time.

[fakesam]

Stopped Procrastinating just in time for “Games of 2017” List

The worst year most of us could’ve imagined wouldn’t have been much worse than 2017. This year gave us the following: dystopian nightmares brought into reality by sycophants and cowards. Capitalistic greed reaching its inevitable, destructive conclusion. A bigoted baby as a president and given free reign by people who chose money and power over morals. Despair is constant. Hope is scarce. Next year might be worse. But at least we had good video games?

Referring to this year’s crop of games as simply “good” is like describing Ajit Pai’s face as “slightly punchable”. This was an all-time year for the medium, with a full catalog of memorable games that will be talking about for years to come. Every type of gamer was satiated. You could explore open worlds with diverse environments and secrets to discover. You could play tiny, affecting indie games that helped the expand the notion of what games are capable of. You could play games that leave you exasperated and angry at the depths publishers will steep to in order to extract maximum profits. There were more games than anyone could ever keep up with. At this time, I’ve only played seven games released in 2017, so rather than scoop the diamonds out of the muck, I decided to just rank the games I had the chance to play over the course of the year. Overall, these games are a good mix of brilliance and profound disappointment, which is a pretty good description for 2017 as a whole. If your favorite game isn’t on my list, It’s simply because that game sucks and you have bad taste. Here's to 2018!

8. Danger Zone

I wiped this game from my memory until I wrote most of this list. I reviewed the game when it was released over the summer. Go read that if you want more detailed exploration of my disappointment. There was a rumor floating around a couple weeks back about a remastered version of Burnout: Paradise. I will pray to whatever deity makes that happen.

7. Battlefront 2

Star Wars was the first thing I chose to love. My earliest childhood memory is watching the remastered original trilogy tapes. I convinced my mom to fake a doctor’s appointment to see Episode three on release day. My first viewing of The Force Awakens is the best theater experience I’ve ever had. Star Wars means a lot to me. This backstory is why I feel Battlefront 2’s total failure so heavily. It’s almost impressive how thoroughly EA managed to poison the well for three giant franchises (Mass Effect, Need For Speed, and Star Wars). But Battlefront 2 is the Mount Everest of completely preventable fuck-ups. Enough’s been written about the predatory design of the multiplayer and the various ways that segment of the game is awful. But the single-player is even more of a letdown.

Viewing the end of Return of the Jedi from the Empire’s perspective should be fascinating, the writing ruins the plot before it has a chance. The premise collapses under the simplest questioning. It’s taken as a given that Iden Versio’s reversal is inherently meaningful, but Battlefront 2 does little to justify this. Why does the destruction of her home planet upset her to the point of defection? What was her life like there? How is this the first time Iden has seen evidence of the Empire engaging in nefarious tactics? She goes from diehard Empire defender to joining their sworn enemy in the span of about ninety minutes. The gameplay is just as dull. Sometimes a space battle gets thrown in and those are enjoyable, but those sequences aren’t prevalent enough to elevate the dreck that surrounds them.

Rather than tell an original story that earns its own space in the canon, the campaign becomes an edition of Star Wars Madlibs. Heroes from the original trilogy show up constantly, for little rhyme or reason other than EA wanted to give players the chance to demo each character before, in an ideal world, you move on to the multiplayer you don’t want to play. This overwrought deference to the past is put into even more stark relief by what Rian Johnson did with The Last Jedi. The thing that makes that movie so great is the number of chances it takes to add to the universe in surprising ways, such as the casino planet full of war profiteers, or the quad-boobed slug seal monster that provides Luke Skywalker with delicious space milk (These points are equally important in my mind). Battlefront 2 had the opportunity to really show what it’s like to be indoctrinated in the ways of the Empire from the moment a person is born, and it chooses to do the exact opposite. Bummer.

6. Nier Automata

There’s a chasm of quality between Nier and Battlefront 2, but many people might be surprised to see Nier this low on my list. I really wanted to like Nier more than I currently do. Let me explain: I loved the way the game’s experiments with form and storytelling, treating each playthrough like a season of television. The commitment to world building all the way down to the mechanics of how you save the game is impressive. The list of side characters I’ve ever met who have affected me as much as Pascal is short. Every encounter with him left me wanting more. He’s the robot stepdad of your dreams.

But after playing through the game three times, the idea of roaming through the world destroying generic machine enemies for the 800th time fills me with dread. Nier Automata needs to be open world to get its ideas across. But the environments are very drab and crossing this overly vast expanse became very tiresome very quickly. You should’ve seen my face when I unlocked the ability to fast travel. Christmas presents don’t give me that much joy. The combat would’ve been described as uninspired ten years ago. My completionist streak is urging me to see the two endings I have yet to see, but the dozens of enemy mobs I have to shoot and slash to see it through actively impede me from doing so.

And it’s all in service of a story that, while filled with cool images and presented incredibly well, isn’t really tailored to my tastes. The way the machines and androids reckon with their autonomy is fascinating at times - some of the context given to boss battles in later playthroughs is heartbreaking, but Nier is ultimately another “robots discovering they have feelings” tale. The future horror stories that interest me the most - Black Mirror, Twilight Zone, The Fallout series - are more focused on how humanity reacts to such calamities. When you remove humans from the picture altogether, it becomes more of a science experiment, and I struggle to invest in that. Sorry!

5. Portal Quest

If you’ve never heard of this game, it’s a free-to-play mobile action-RPG. Its art style could accurately be described as ‘Tearaway on a lesser budget’. There are a lot of modes, most of which use timers and daily limits to control how you play them. One of these modes comes attached with a story, but it never calls attention to itself. The gameplay mostly resembles strategy games, in the sense that the player has very little control once combat actually starts. Portal Quest is deceptively simple enough to worm its way into the slivers of boredom that accent everyday life, where mobile games are at their most seductive. I play it in line at the grocery store. I played it while waiting for my screening of The Last Jedi to start. I play it when I’m avoiding hard/meaningful work during my small time on Earth. There are guilds you can join which add a substantial multiplayer component that plays on my deep-seated displeasure at letting other people down. I’m currently in a guild named after the devil. My old guild kicked me for reasons unknown and I was sincerely annoyed when I found out. I’m not making this game sound very good, am I?It’s probably because I’m so confused by it. Mobile games tend to be non-starters for me (I actually tried to look at my phone way less this year), and the only reason I downloaded this game at the suggestion of an app that claimed that credits I earned for using certain apps could eventually be used as currency for many online marketplaces. I didn’t stick with that very long. And now we’re here. Is Portal Quest’s standing on this list a mediocre joke from an unfunny man? It might be. Did I place this above Nier Automata just to mess with that game’s passionate fanbase? Possibly. Do I feel good about placing a mobile game this high on a game of the year list? Not especially. I dunno man. It’s the one app that keeps me checking my phone more than any other. It’s free on the Android store (I assume it’s playable on iPhones, but I also don’t feel like checking?). Go check it out.

4. Fifa 18

When it comes to sports games, I don’t ask for much. The FIFA franchise has reached a baseline level of good that means that EA would have to seismically screw up to keep me from playing the newest rendition for forty hours at the minimum. Career mode dominates my time in this genre, and FIFA 18 was the year that this mode finally got the overhaul that’s been needed for years.The AI tactics still aren’t where I want them to be, and their version of Jordan Henderson continues to look more “Vegas wax figure” than man. But these details are small in the grand scheme. It’s the only reality where I can see Liverpool not shoot themselves in the feet, hands, and superfluous third nipple to win the Premier League. The Journey is also the best story in a sports game, and it’s not even close. That’s worth something.

3. Persona 5

Following Persona 4 is basically an impossible job. That game was a comet across the sky that dropped from the heavens and into my heart. I’ve watched the endurance run multiple times, played through the game twice on my PS2, and played through most of the game again on my Vita (Rest in peace.). Whatever Atlus followed that with would be a comedown. It’s definitely colored how some of the characters and the story affected me. The crew in Persona 4 was a much cooler hang than the Phantom Thieves were, and I missed some of the small-town intimacy of Inaba. But when taken on its own merits, Persona 5 is a spectacular RPG. It just plays so well. Every annoying quirk from Persona 4 was dealt with in a way that kept dungeon crawling from feeling too stale. Coercing enemies to become your persona was a surprisingly engrossing tactic. Being able to switch out team members on the fly is a game changer. I was able to capture hearts in a couple in-game days and focus on the social interactions that make this series so special. I eventually grew to love this version of Tokyo, and realized its sense of big city culture shock was a feature, not a bug. And no discussion of Persona 5 would be complete without commending the game for its impeccable style. It’s not quite Persona 4, but it never could be.

2. Horizon: Zero Dawn

Robot Dinosaurs! Is there a more attractive combination of words in the English language? No one expected Guerrilla Games, a developer who had previously been such purveyors of sludgy monochrome shooters with the Killzone franchise, to suddenly discover the entirety of the color spectrum and create a universe that pulls from the earliest parts of human civilization and far-flung science fiction pontifications. Fewer expected that such a fusion would be so successful. It’s been a while since I fell for an open world this hard. I had to see everything this world had to offer, and document it via Horizon’s photo mode. Watching these machines go through the motions of real animal behaviors became a regular past time (Although it still frustrates me that I couldn’t make the machines fight each other more easily).

Horizon is iterative more than innovative, but I enjoyed playing it much more than the recent Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed. I usually hate bow and arrows, but I loved how the weapons felt in this game. The moment to moment story about the three tribes was just okay, but uncovering the mysteries of the world and how it became this way kept me going until the end. They even made audio logs a powerful storytelling device again. One of 2017’s few pleasant surprises.

1.Super Mario Odyssey

Nintendo is a company defined by reinvention. Their consoles and games refuse to follow market trends and exist in their own world, for better or worse. The last couple years had skewed towards the worse end of that dichotomy.  I’ll die on “The Wii U wasn’t actually that bad” island, but the system was still a commercial disaster. Nintendo’s genius is singular and vital to the industry, but, outside of Splatoon, there had been few examples of their creativity delivering on its potential. It was fair to question whether the company could make their increasingly fleeting moments of brilliance slightly less fleeting. But Nintendo tends to show out when their backs are against the wall, and this year proved that axiom true yet again. The Switch is the great console the Wii U should’ve been, and the games released for it are good and interesting in surprising ways. I was excited for Super Mario Odyssey by the time I heard the phrase “New Donk City”, but by the time I started playing it, I was feeling full up on open-ended sandbox games with dozens of hours of side content and an overarching story that only unfolds at my pace. Over 200 hours of Persona 5, Nier, and Horizon will change a man. Nintendo showed why that sentiment was false. It wasn’t the genre. It was the imagination.

Each kingdom is an intricately designed diorama that constantly throws new things at you while continuing to be a peerless platformer we’ve come to know and love an indulging fan nostalgia along the way. There doesn’t seem to be any idea that wasn’t met with anything less than an affirmative “hell yes!” The childish exuberance that courses through most of Nintendo’s best work somehow becomes more surreal and gleefully discordant as Mario explores more and more worlds that are completely alien to him. Super Mario Odyssey has so many moments that make me smile involuntarily, from the hundreds of moons I’ve found due to blind faith in Nintendo’s design process to the NES-style levels that somehow exist in the world without a loading screen, to the objectively perfect festival scene in New Donk City. How many other games would reward you for sitting with a lonely man on a bench? This game is so damn weird, I love it. I’m not usually inclined to obsessively mine every bit of minutiae out of a game, but I definitely plan on finding every moon and purple coin that’s evaded me so far. I’m 600 moons in, and I’m still nowhere close to being sick of Super Mario Odyssey. This game is special.

[truetgirl]

Kelly’s Top 10  Video Games of the Decade

I’ve seen a bunch of gifsets going around of people’s favorite games from the last decade. I’ve got no talent for making gifs or many other creative endeavors, but I can write. So I’m making a top 10 with a little blurb summing up what I love about each of the games on the list.

10: Splatoon 2 (2017)

No other games really bring together everything that Splatoon 2 does for me. It gives me a multiplayer experience I actually enjoy, it gives me a pleasant and colorful world to relax in, and it gives me one of my pet loves in gaming: a highly flexible and fun character and outfit customization system. This one isn’t among those that I would say everyone ever should play, but it’s a nice, solid, and downright fun game that I really enjoy. No better way to start the list.

9: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

I debated for a while whether or not to include this game but after considering how many hours I’ve played it across dozens of characters and two platforms, the fire it lit in me for high fantasy, and the sheer impact it had on me in terms of how I thought about video games? Yeah, yeah it makes the list. It’s not perfect, but it’s more than good enough to make the list. And it’s a bit of a backdoor way to mention my more recent love of Dungeons and Dragons which I might not have gotten into without skyrim awakening my inner high fantasy nerd.

8: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)

This and the next entry form the core of “games/series that made me realize I really like turn based strategy” from this decade. XCOM is wonderfully well designed, phenomenally paced, and a masterclass in the use of organic tension and release through mechanics. The entry carries an honorable mention for XCOM 2, which I’ve put more overall time into, but the original I think is still a superior game on the whole.

7: Civilization VI (2016)

And the other turn based strategy epiphany. Where XCOM is nitty gritty tactical simulation and the strategic questions one faces in a war against an alien threat, Civ is a sprawling representation of the great march of history across hundreds of worlds from the ancient dawn of society to the interconnected world of today. I’m a historian with a thing for turn based strategy. How could I not love it? THis one carries an honorable mention for its predecessor, Civ V, which was my first game in the series. Between the two I have played CIvilization for 1044 hours (roughly a month and a half) over the course of the last 5 years. No other game has ever come near that sheer time investment, and I don’t even really regret it which surprises me.

6: Smite (2014)

And it’s the farthest a multiplayer focused game is gonna get on this list. Smite is a pleasing mixture between the team play and strategic thinking of MOBAs and the raw power fantasy appeal of getting to take hands-on control of gods, monsters, and heroes from real world myths. The game is nicely laid out in such a way that allows pretty much anyone to play on whatever level of personal and/or financial investment suits them. It’s a great way to bond with people too, in my experience.

5: Pokemon Shield (2019)

Take this as being the representative of pretty much the entire series in the 2010s. Ever since Black and White way back at the start of the decade Pokemon has been evolving and modernizing and this game continues a trend of my loving every main series Pokemon game more than the last that began with Black and White 2. I could go into specifics, but it all boils down to: it’s Pokemon but even better than last time. It’s a comfortable and nice place to be and while that might not be enough for everyone, it means something to me.

4: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)

This was my first Zelda game. I went in basically knowing nothing about Zelda games outside of what has come to me through cultural osmosis. And I’m sad, because I don’t think I can ever go play any Zelda game that came before it now. This is the game that made me understand the phrase “nintendo polish.” The game that made me remember what a truly satisfying single player game felt like. The game that made me feel like a kid again in a way no other pretty much ever has outside of plucking at nostalgia. I love this game, and I believe it deserves to go down in history as one of the greats of all time.

3: Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)

And now the series that took my new love of turn based strategy and said “ok that, but make it more anime.” This entry is also packing an honorable mention for Fates and Awakening (and to a lesser extent echoes), but Three Houses is the one. It’s bigger, the character interactions and hub world that started their evolution on the 3DS burst into life on the switch like never before with full voice acting and a full hub area to explore and do stuff in, and it strikes this perfect balance of gameplay and narrative focus that the other games had a bit of trouble with by incorporating the exploration into the narrative heavy parts. Combine that with my favorite cast of characters yet and multiple story paths that come together to form one whole and you’ve got yourself a winner.

2: Life is Strange (2015)

It is honestly difficult to overstate the impact Life is Strange had on me. This game starting premiering episodes right before I started questioning and it’s really hard to explain but the overall atmosphere just hit me so hard and yet also comforted me as I started to explore for the first time who I really was. To this day it’s one of those stories that has stuck with me in the bedrock of my soul both on its own merits and on its timing coming into my life. This is one of a select few games I would tell people to play if they wanted to understand me better as a person.

1: Mass Effect 2 (2010)

It barely scrapes into the decade with a release in January of 2010, but here it is. My favorite video game of all time. It’s a dozen character focused dramas, it’s an epic tale of heroic daring, it’s a deeply human (and many other species) experience among the stars, it’s a fist-pumping power fantasy, it’s a story of love and loss and triumph. It’s all of that and more. It is my golden standard of gaming, it is the narrative focused game I have played from start to finish more times than any other and whatever second place is it’s not even close. It is the apotheosis of all the things I love most in games with interactive and character focused drama, fucking sweet superpowers, a grandiose story of a hero’s great deeds, and a hero made all the more compelling by the fact that everything they do they do by choice, your choice. If I had to choose one game to play for the rest of my life, this would be it. I cannot sing its praises loudly enough or for long enough, I really can’t.

[fmservers]

Bioware’s high-flying ‘Anthem’ falls flat

Anthem is the first attempt by Bioware (of Mass Effect and Dragon Age fame) to tap into the well of cash supposedly to be found in the “game as platform” trend that has grown over the last few years, with Destiny, Warframe and Fortnite as preeminent exemplars. After a botched demo weekend dampened fan expectations, the final game is here — and while it’s a lot better than the broken mess we saw a few weeks ago, it’s still very hard to recommend.

I delayed my review to evaluate the game’s progress after an enormous day-one patch. While it is always premature to judge a game meant to grow and evolve by how it is immediately after launch, there are serious problems here that anyone thinking of dropping the $60 or more on it should be aware of. Perhaps they’ll all be fixed eventually, but you better believe it’s going to take a while.

I’d estimate this is about half the game it’s clearly intended to be; it seems to me we must soon find out that most of Anthem, supposedly in development for five years or more, was scrapped not long ago and this shell substituted on short notice.

The basic idea of Anthem is that you, a “freelancer” who pilots a mechanized suit called a “javelin,” fly around a big, beautiful world and blast the hell out of anything with a red hostility indicator over its head, which in practice is damn near everything. Once you’re done, you collect your new guns and gadgets and head back to base to improve your javelin, take on new missions, and so on.

If it sounds familiar, it’s basically an extremely shiny version of Diablo, which established this gameplay loop more than 20 years ago; its sequels and the innumerable imitators it spawned have refined the concept, bolstering it with MMO-style online integration, “seasons” of gameplay, and of course the inevitable microtransactions. People play them simply because it’s fun to kill monsters and see your character grow more powerful.

So Anthem is in good company, though of course for every success there are probably two or three failures and mediocre titles. Destiny has thrived in a way only because of its fluid and satisfying gunplay, while a game like Path of Exile leans on bulk, with skill trees and content one may never reach the ends of.

Anthem, on the other hand, lacks the charms of either. It is wildly short on content and its moment-to-moment gameplay, while competent and in some ways unique, rarely has you on the edge of your seat. It’s a very mixed bag of interesting concepts and disappointing execution, coupled with some truly baffling user experience issues.

I’ll cover the good parts first: the basics of flying around and shooting guys are for the most part solid. There’s a good variety of weapons, from hand cannons to shotguns and sniper rifles, with meaningful variations within those groups (though they usually boil down to rate of fire). You feel very cool during engagements, picking off enemies, dodging behind cover, flying to a new vantage point, and so on.

Each of the four javelins has a good pile of themed special abilities that significantly affect how you play; for instance, the Storm starts out with (basically) non-damaging ice shards that freeze enemies, setting them up for a damaging combo from its lightning strike — but soon you can swap those out for fiery explosions and a charge-up blast of cold, and so on. The synergies are somewhat limited in that some abilities clearly only work with some others, but there’s fun to be had experimenting. I played with three of the four javelins available (more to come, apparently) and they were all very distinct styles.

Damn.

The graphics really are lovely, from the future-past desert chic of Fort Tarsis to the lush jungle cliffs of the world you’ll be exploring. The light and landscapes are beautiful, and the character models are, too. Firefights look chaotic and splashy, which they are. There are also lots of customization options, in terms of colors and materials anyway — there’s a puzzling lack of cosmetics to buy with in-game or real currency, only two or three available right now.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the extent of what Anthem gets right — and to be clear, it really can be fun when you’re actually in the middle of a firefight, blasting away, doing combos with friends, taking on hordes of bad guys. The rest is pretty much a mess. Here’s the greatest hits of how Anthem fails to operate, to respect the player’s time, and to generally speaking be a good game.

First and perhaps most egregious, the load screens are frequent and long. I timed it at more than 5 minutes from launch, and at least 3 or 4 different load screens, before I could actually play the game.

Get ready for a lot of this! And incidentally, many fire attacks don’t actually set up combos.

A long load time to bring up a huge world like Anthem’s I can understand. But load times to enter the screen where you change your gear? Load screens when you enter a small cave from the map? A load screen when you stray too far from your teammates and have to be teleported to them? A load screen when you finish a mission, then another before you can return to base — and another before you can equip your new gun? Oh my god!

This is compounded by a sluggish and over-complicated UI that somehow manages to show both too much and not enough, while inconsistent keys and interaction elements keep you guessing as to whether you need to press F or space or escape to go forward, hit or hold escape to go back, use Q or E to go through submenus or if you have to escape out to find what you’re looking for.

Equipment and abilities are mystifyingly under-explained: no terms like “+15% gear speed” or “+/-10% shield time” are explained anywhere, in the tutorial, documentation, or character screen. Because there is no character screen! For a game that depends hugely on stats and getting an overall feel for your build and gear, you have to visit five or six screens to get a sense of what you have equipped, its bonuses (if comprehensible), and whether you have anything better to use. Even core game systems like the “primer” and “detonator” abilities are only cursorily referred to, by cryptic icons or throwaway text. The original Diablo did it better, to say nothing of Anthem’s competition at the AAA level.

Navigating these menus and systems is doubly hard because you must do so not by just hitting a key, but by traveling at walking speed through the beautiful but impractical Fort Tarsis. It took a full 30 seconds for me to walk from my suit (the only place where you can launch missions) to a quest giver. And when you start the game, you start in a basement from which you have to walk 20 seconds to get to your suit! Are you kidding me?

A common sight.

Even when you’re doing what the game does best, zooming around and getting in firefights, there’s a disturbing lack of mission variety. Almost without exception you’ll fly to a little arena — some ruins or a base of some kind — and are immediately alerted of enemies in the area. They warp in at a convenient distance, often while you watch, and attack while you stand near a gadget (to advance a progress bar) or collect pieces to bring back. Some more powerful guys warp in and you shoot them. Fly to next arena, rinse and repeat.

Sure, you could say “well it’s a shooter, what do you expect?” I expect more than that! Where are the aerial chases the intro leads you to believe exist? Enemies all either stand on the ground or hover just above it. They don’t clamber on the walls, get to the top of towers, shoot down on you from cliffs, climb trees, build gun emplacements. You don’t defend a moving target like the “Striders” (obviously AT-ATs) you supposedly travel in; bridges and buildings don’t crumble or explode; you don’t chase a bad guy into a big cave (or if you do, there’s a loading screen); the “boss” type enemies are often just regular guys with more life or shields that recharge in the time it takes you to reload. Where are the enemy javelins? The enemy Striders? 90 percent of what you kill will be groundbound grunts taken down in a flash. For a game in which movement is emphasized and enjoyable, combat involves very little of it.

The campaign, which is surprisingly well acted but forgettable, seems like it was tacked on in a hurry. Amazingly, a major cutscene details a much more interesting story, in which a major city is overrun and destroyed and only a few survive. It struck me at the time that this might have been the original campaign and starting mission, after which you are logically relegated to the nearby Fort Tarsis and forced to fight for scraps. Instead you have a series of samey missions with voice-overs telling you what’s happening while you stand there and watch progress bars fill up.

At one point you are presented with four ancient tombs to track down, only to find that these amazing tombs aren’t missions but simply checklists of basic game activities like opening 15 treasure chests, killing 50 enemies with melee, and so on. At a point increasing these numbers was literally the only “mission” I had available in the game. And when I tried to join other people’s missions to accomplish these chores, half the time they were broken or already finished. Even trying to quit these missions rarely worked! (Some of these bugs and issues have been mitigated by patches, but not all.)

Spoiler warning! What do you think is in the tombs? A taxing dungeon full of traps, monsters, and ancient treasure? Nope! Literally just a tiny, empty room. And yes, there’s a loading screen — both in and out.

Oh, and because many of the missions are difficult or tedious to do solo, you’ll want to team up — except if you’re slow to load, the mission will commence without you and you’ll miss the VO. Whoops! And by the way, if you just want to test out a new gun or power, you’ll have to join a multiplayer “freeplay” session to do it, which is another handful of loading screens. I’m not even going to get into the failings of the multiplayer. Since you can’t communicate it’s basically like playing with bots. By the way, there’s no PvP so forget about skirmishing with your friends or randoms.

Even the loot you get is frustratingly low quality and unimaginative. Every gun or component is a standard model almost always with just slightly better damage than the last one you found, and perhaps a stat bonus. But the stat bonuses are boring and often nonsensical: do I really want an assault rifle that gives me 10 percent better damage with heavy pistols?

Where’s the fun? For comparison when I was playing Diablo III recently I found a pair of leg armor early on that produced a powerful poison cloud whenever I was touching 3 or more enemies. Suddenly I played differently, rushing into crowds of monsters and leaping out, then immobilizing them while their life ticked down. I changed out my weapons, focused on physical defense, poison buffs… all because of a pair of pants!

I’ve encountered nothing like that in 25 hours of Anthem. Every new power and gun is the same as the old one but with a higher number. Where’s the lightning bolt that also sets people on fire, or the plasma blast that always knocks down flying guys? The pistol that does double damage against one class of enemy, the sniper rifle that automatically chambers a new round instantly in one out of five shots?

You do eventually find some “Masterwork” items that have unique qualities, but even these are compromised by the fact that their stats are completely random (such as a bonus to the wrong damage type), necessitating a grind to make or find them over and over until you get one with bonuses that make sense.

So much of Anthem seems like it’s just missing. The campaign is half there; the controls and UI are half there; the loot is half there. The multiplayer is half there. Everything lacks a critical piece that makes it more than basically functional, and considering the game’s highly polished competition, this is inexplicable and inexcusable. I find it hard to believe this was in the works for five years when such elementary aspects like a character screen and working item descriptions aren’t included at launch.

It’s more than possible that with perhaps half a year of work the Bioware team — which seems to be painfully aware of the game’s shortcomings, if their responses to detailed litanies of complaints on the game’s subreddit are any indication — could make this game worth the price of entry. But right now I couldn’t recommend it to anybody in conscience, and I’m disappointed that a developer that’s created some of my favorite games dropped the ball so badly.

It’s too bad, because I feel the pull of the game, the basic chaotic fun at the heart of any good looter-shooter, because I feel like this can’t really be it. This can’t really be all my abilities, right? This can’t be every weapon? I liked Anthem when it was at its best, but that was so very little of the time I spent in it, and it took so much effort and patience on my part to even make those moments a possibility. I’ll be checking back in with the game in the hopes that it makes a Destiny-esque turnaround, but for now I have to say Anthem suffers from a failure to launch.

Via Devin Coldewey https://techcrunch.com

[ajabarber86779-blog]

Police_cars. zip.

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