Author: Julian

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Psychology to the rescue

Here’s a simple solution to curb the inevitable overpopulation of Jedi characters in SW:TOR. We’re already expanding on the lore as it is with those weird new classes, so what’s one more spot on the leopard anyway? Just add this bit:

“The venerable Jedi knights search far and wide throughout the galaxy in a constant search for force-sensitive individuals. Those with the ability are brought in to be tutored and trained in the ways of the force, and are able to wield impressive powers that put them above most other living beings in the galaxy. Training, however, is grueling and in order to safeguard the purity of the force and keep their numbers manageable, all new Jedi initiates undergo a cleansing ritual in which their testicles are removed.”

Let’s see how many go for that once it’s made canon.

Why lore matters

No, don’t run away. Really. I know I’m coming across as the nerd in the corner who insists on some stupid technicality, but I object. I am a nerd, and I might be cornered, but this is no technicality.

Lore matters because we are human and, as such, we ask questions. Some of these questions (most, in fact) we ask to ourselves. We keep them in our heads and rarely ever ask them out loud, lest we are cast with the lot of cornered nerds. In the context of our games, the questions are plain, but powerful; Why is this here? Where did it come from? What does it do? What does it mean? How does it relate to what I’ve seen before and what I’ve yet to see? What happens when it’s used? Why are they fighting? Why are they friends? Where do they want to go with this?

There are more, but that’s basically the genesis of lore right there. Sure, it’s easy to dismiss or underestimate the importance of lore depending on one’s focus. After all if one goes through an encounter with the sole goal of acquiring a particular reward, those questions do not matter. Item acquired, goal completed, move on to the next.

Continue reading Why lore matters

Concerning Failcake

Dragon Age’s story is the condensation, in yummy game form, of the old proverb about wanting to have cake and eat it too. You can’t. It’s quite refreshing to see how at several points in the storyline your actions and choices not only do matter, but also to come across situations that are not built around success or failure, but rather just what kind of failure you prefer and how many levels you want of it.

It’s not unfair. It makes perfect sense. Sometimes stuff just doesn’t work out and if this is true right here and now in our comfortable, padded real world existence, then it’s even more so in the dark times of a land torn by internal strife, a demonic invasion, magic and politics running rampant. You will lose. At many junctures. The choices are basically about what you’re more keen on losing.

So far, story wise, it’s been a rewarding change of pace from what we’re so used to; stories that go out of their way to please everyone and written around the ideas of success and reward. When all choices point towards success, they are soft and you’re only choosing what flavor of success you want. Being served failure on a plate, several times during the game, not only makes for this nice change of pace, but also go a long way into reinforcing how believable that world is.

One of the biggest pitfalls in your common, garden variety vanilla fantasy setting is not how can we rationalize the existence of magic, how can our characters travel hundreds of miles in minutes, how much stuff can that single backpack really hold or how can you work in space goats with dimensional ships; it’s instead how everything tends to success, including the actions of the so-called heroes populating that world.

Dragon Age’s story, which is not without its holes by the way, is not an equation that tries to balance success on one side with failure on the other. It’s more like walking a tightrope with failure at both sides. Success is straight ahead, but the choice steps have to be careful. And that makes it all the more refreshing. If Dragon Age had been an MMO we would already be talking about the death of the softcore fantasy setting.

Easy with the talky, guys

Introduced my wife to Dragon Age: Origins last night. Here I was hoping for something that would impress Ms. “I’ve got books by Tennessee Williams and Dylan Thomas in my collection and you don’t”, but it didn’t go so well.

She really disliked the talking intermissions. Or rather, she disliked how frequent and long they were. Also disliked the interaction via multiple possible answers, I imagine because she couldn’t completely gauge the result of the choices before selecting a response. And I can’t say I blame her too much. On the length issue, I mean. There is such a thing as too much sometimes, particularly when the player actually wants to get down to, you know, adventuring, and not having to listen to merchants say their 5-10 second peace every damn time you want to access their goods.

Now, I understand this is story-driven, and the vehicle chosen to deliver that story is voiced NPCs. That much is fine, and actually experiencing the level of narrative in DA:O fills my geeky heart with a joy I cannot explain. You don’t get this kind of steak often, and the voice acting sauce it comes with is supreme. But, that said, the inconvenient truth behind this is that there is a ton of it, whether you like it or not. Voiced NPCs work great but only up to a point where they start becoming an annoyance for many players. I think future titles *coughstarwarscough* have to be mindful of this and teach their NPCs how brevity really is the soul of wit.

Much ado about not a damn thing

So, as you might have heard, the almighty Blizz is selling cosmetic, non-combat, just fluff pets via their game store. Wow.com has the lowdown. I’m reading people up in arms about this already. I don’t see the problem. I actually think it’s a pretty good move. We talked about this a while back.

As usual, I wanna learn, so if you don’t support this move, I’m all ears. Tell me why. Just to provide some framework, here’s how I see it: I don’t care how much money Blizzard has, they’re still well within their rights to want more of it. There’s little debate there in my book. If they had put these stupid pets as .001% drop rate loot from $NASTYBOSS at the end of $LONGASSINSTANCE, people would have complained. If they had put it as acquirable rewards from a $KILOMETRICREPGRIND, people would’ve complained. It’s cosmetic. It doesn’t affect gameplay. It’s just a bunch of pixels next to the other bunch of pixels you call your avatar. Can’t offer it for free. Work must be compensated, so there you go.

Not even the fact that half of the proceeds from each sale of that despicable pandaren goes to a charity seems to quell the sentiment. Too expensive? Don’t buy it. Don’t like it? Don’t buy it. You think the pets are silly (I do)? Don’t buy them. Simple as that, folks.

There’s a ton of things to grill Blizzard for. This ain’t one of them. I applaud their move let the masses eat cake fluff.

First < day with Torchlight

(yes, the Lesdanaday -is- a unit of measurement)

It’s got tons of little things, some more little than others, that make it utterly impossible to go back to Diablo II (or any other dungeon crawl isometricky cRPG) with any sense of satisfaction. Wouldn’t be surprised if D3 ends up lifting some of this stuff from Torchlight. In no order of importance:

Continue reading First < day with Torchlight

So, what am I missing?

I have to conclude I’m either missing things, or doing them terribly wrong. Just to give it a fairer shake (and to keep Psychochild from hitting me below the belt) I went ahead and grabbed a trial key for Fallen Earth. I didn’t think it twice when I saw them available because, one, that was one of my original semi-complaints -the lack of a trial- and two, it wouldn’t be the first time I had to eat crow about a game I originally disliked for whatever reason and ended up winning me over big time. I don’t mind being proven wrong if I end up with a good game.

Problem is, it’s not really clicking. In fact, something funny happened; my original complaints about the visuals, while not entirely invalidated after judging the game “the way it’s meant to be judged”(tm), have been lessened. While the rest of the stuff in the game, which I had no way of experiencing from mere screenshots and which I had assumed to be good because of comments from a lot people whose opinion I value, ended up being quite the disappointment.

Let’s go piece by piece, like Jack the Ripper:

Continue reading So, what am I missing?