#i played too much disco elysium everything i read feel like its from the game | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

youredreamingofroo · 4 months

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Goodbye? I don't think so. I hope not. A very, very long rant about storage (🙄), simblr and whatever the fuck else I go on about for a few paragraphs. Skip to the end at the gold text for a more.... "definitive" answer. Especially if you want to skip the nitty gritty and sappy wappy.

i dont know what to do anymore, I freed up 18 GBs of space it all managed to go down the drain in literally an hour, Im moving my blender things to my external HDD, because that alone is 20 GBs (because of Scene sizes), I just hate to free up the space because I dont want it to go right back down. This all sucks cuz I really really enjoy being on Simblr, but sims 4 just continues to be a nuisance, whether its actual problems or its storage problems, it just always finds a way, every year, to get me to suddenly decide that im retiring until my next bout of Sims 4 hyperfixation. I love all of you guys and I love seeing how you all enjoy my work, and what I do, and I love seeing your stuff, you all make such amazing creations, granted if I stopped playing TS4, it wouldnt mean I have to stop interacting on simblr, it just wouldnt be the same. A pattern I notice anytime I start a social media platform, is that something always finds its way into completely demotivating me from posting, whether it's just literal lack of motivation, depression, realizing a project is too vast for me, storage problems, it's always something and it's always when I finally get comfortable or happy on a platform, especially after making friends, not that im saying my friends are one of the reasons I leave, thats far from it. I REALLY dont wanna take a break from Sims 4, I really really genuinely wanna start posting my story (W.A.S), but I'm not like a Sims 4 youtuber, I can't remain dedicated to one game, I play other games, I wanna play the Witcher games (or at least try to play them, I kinda suck rn), I wanna finish Detroit become human, I want to 100% Beyond two souls (and DBH), I wanna finish Disco elysium (started and never fucking finished 💀), I want to play Baldur's Gate 3, I mean, I purchased it at full price and I can't even play the game??... 😮‍💨 You get the point. At this point I wouldn't consider this a "goodbye," note, not... necessarily? I just get so frustrated having no storage, not to mention the fact that I need storage to literally do the stuff I do, like make edits, make poses, make renders, so the fact that I can't even do that, is just like... what's the point of even having Sims 4 anymore at that point? But I don't wanna leave simblr, I don't want to stop creating. It's funny, as I write this, I continue to give myself more and more of a reason to leave, the only real thing that's stopping me is just the fact that there's so many nice people here, I know that if I stopped playing the sims 4, I'd probably move onto another game (BG3................,,,,,..) and leave tumblr, or, at least leave Simblr. Which as I (think) said before, that's sad, I'd be sad, I'd miss people like Lori (groovetrys) and Lauren (miralure), June (circusjuney), Jade (gamyrmaiden), Anna (holocene-sims), butter (buttertrait), Fae (acuar-io), Verco (vercosims) and god, so many others, and sorry to break the atmosphere suddenly, but as I'm writing this, I'm listening to "In another life," from Everything everywhere all at once and it's making this very emotional for me, so if it gets sappy I apologize.

And I guess to be... insanely honest, as much as I want to release my story (trust me, I REALLY want to), I'm slowly beginning to realize more and more how not-easy it's gonna be to make scenes, writing it is fine for me, its just setting up the scenes feels like i'm forbidden to a life of staring at a bunch of words (pose names) trying to figure out what's what, where is what, what to do, where is where, who is who, who is what, how is what, how and why, need I continue. Storytelling is so insanely important to me, I believe that despite how little I read and despite how terrible of a student I have been, and despite how poor my literature skills are, that storytelling is still so important, fuck it, poetry has been such an inspiration for me, but I don't fucking know how to write poetry?? I can barely understand poetry at times, but it's still all so beautiful to me, the concept and the fact that people use metaphors so meticulously to create an allegory for something beautiful, or traumatic or sad, like in not so berry, the concept of an ocean being alexanders "love," and cataleya drowning in it, and her realizing she's drowning in his "love," but when she wants to leave, she really wonders if she actually wants to leave, to conceptualize and create this awful relationship in the means of an ocean is so... well, not beautiful in a reality sense, but in a technical/literary sense, it's beautiful, it's expression, and THATS what im passionate about. Remember what I said about getting sappy? Yea, sorry about that. After a while, I wonder what good repeating myself does, I've said about 5 or 6 times that I don't want to leave, yet here I am, with the mouse over the uninstall button like an idiot about to press the big "DON'T TOUCH" button, perhaps it's the idea that after repeating myself over and over again, that maybe I'll make up my mind, do I do a coin flip? I never listen anyways, I always continue to flip until it lands on what I like. So... why am I still writing? To be honest, I should've stopped by now, but you can only stop a dam so much before it all comes out. I do this with my friends, when I'm sad, I pour my heart out until it's a repetitive and overcooked version of "I'm sad." I write paragraph after paragraph and I literally could've just said "I don't have storage. Considering leaving simblr," and the same message would've gotten across, and I apologize, if you're still reading this, for making such a lengthy post, but I couldn't quite help spilling a bit of water everywhere, although I guess now my little puddle of water has become a flood. I use metaphors a lot, I apologize... again.

So what does all this bullshit that I typed out mean?

I don't know. I wonder the same myself, I'm fighting a battle more fierce than the one I had with my period last week, "Do I uninstall Sims 4 so I can have more freedom, and enjoy more content? or do I continue this rigorous battle of needing storage for the sake of a tumblr page, my enjoyment for writing and other shit I do in the sims 4?" I cannot say I will take a hiatus, because I will procrastinate, and I will forget completely about posting, and tumblr in general. I do still, at the very least, want to release my Official Teaser for my story, whether it be my last post or not, and at the very least, I want to introduce you to the characters, whether it be my last post(s) or not. Not to mention the fact that I want to continue sharing about Roo even if it's not about sims 4 anymore, I mean hell, I haven't even finished off the Leo and Roo part of his timeline.

For an INCREDIBLY watered down answer on whether or not this is goodbye, I say to you, not in this moment, not definitive enough for you yeah? Well, that's the thing, I don't have a definitive answer, you could fucking tear apart this entire college essay mat-pat style, and still not have a definitive fucking answer, and that's because I don't, sorry to all the people who don't want to listen to me rant or who want a clear answer, but I just don't have one. I've been known to make impulsive and on the whim (when I'm really emotional) decisions, and this is a situation where I don't want to do that, because I care about what I have here with ya'll.

If this ends up being one of my last posts, I bid you all adieu, I love you all, and I thank you so so so much for the laughs, and for the mutual connection we may or may not have had, I do not know if I'll make any actual posts for the next few days as I consider my decision, I will float around of course and continue reblogging this and that, and commenting and liking, etc etc. There's also a chance I may wake up tomorrow and look at this and think I was just being overly emotional about this stuff, and that now I look like an idiot, which is the case 9 times out of 10.

#If you read all of this. Thank you #if you read a little bit of this. Thank you #if you read only the gold text. Thank you #terrible time to mention this but I can't believe I'm leaving right before I hit 100 followers. A milestone I've been waiting to hit.#what a... sort of cruel joke my mind and laptop has done to me yeah?#I should've spent this time playing the Witcher but now it's 1 AM and I'm tired #Once again. Thank you.#yapping

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x-cl-br · 5 months

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I'm back to talk about ttrpg stuff!!!

soooooo a while back (before last semester's classes devoured all my free time) i was doing weekly posts about my custom ttrpg system, and i REALLY want to start doing that again...

so here's a lil refresher on what i made and why i did that!

so whats the system

basically, the group i play with is super into immersive roleplay and not too fond of the whole turn-based tactics battle system that dnd has. just, too much math and way too many options... just a big time sink because everyone's more interested in building a narrative together through rp

so, i slapped together a new system based on a fork of a fork of Call of Cthulhu, and then i heavily modified it to strip down everything to be as simple as possible.

"Something In The Dark" <- new name!!!!

yes, official name now!!! suggested by one of my players, he was spot on because it so perfectly describes the vibe of the game.

basically, you're looking at 6 basic stats, called traits:

Physique, Motorics, Stealth, Mind, Rhetoric, Shivers

these line up pretty intuitively with the usual Strength, Dex, Stealth, and Intelligence stats, but the last ones get a bit weird.

Rhetoric is focused on giving you guidance on how to reach an interpersonal goal, like getting someone to calm down or trust you (as well as detecting lying and all that). that way, players can still roleplay- no rolling for deception, they actually have to lie- but they get a bit of guidance when they roll Rhetoric. like, reading people's tells, basically.

Shivers is so obviously inspired by Disco Elysium, and is the catch all for intuition, vibes, and also spooky ghosts luring you to dark rooms. it's really flexible with flavoring, i've used it for muscle memory, fortune telling, and when players want to have gut feelings about stuff. basically, when players want to get info that there's no way they could logically get, it's a shivers roll.

theming

obviously all the stat names are changed (except for stealth, i couldnt figure out a good alternate name for that one), but i hope the names evoke a kind of clinical, detached vibe, like an autopsy report.

in fact, i tried to make all the names, descriptions, and theming feel a little off and too sterile in order to build an uncomfortable vibe. the goal is to make players think of their characters

and as you can probably tell already, its heavily influenced by disco elysium and the way that game makes your stats feel so alien and weird, and the player's guide i made basically looks like the text interface from that game

i really want to share the player's guide on here, and i will at some point, but i'm constantly editing it and playtesting new stuff so that might be a ways off.

anyways, yeah! thats a refresher on what the system's deal is, i want to go and do more in depth analysis of it and talk about more mechanics, but for this week i just want to get back into the swing of posting on here with some simple overview stuff

in general, i'm gonna post a bunch more on here now that my hardest college semester is in the rearview mirror, but theres for sure gonna be a lot of ttrpg design stuff!!!

#whiskeysays #somethinginthedark #ttrpg design #ttrpg #dnd dm #dnd #game design

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vvindication · 1 month

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I’ve never played fallout but Everyone is going insane abt the new show should I was it yes/no ?🎤

what the hell Ghost did you read my mind. I was literally thinking of asking if you were interested in watching !! okay lets see if I can list some fun pros and cons off the top of my head but personally overall - Id recommend it giving it a go !

my list of praise, basically -

surprisingly good writing for fallout content, but in general, good writing! the main story is beautifully cohesive, plenty of foreshadowing, really fun side plots that all link up with the main one. excellent pacing, too

gets much more into the nitty gritty of the politics surrounding the events and their consequences than any fallout game dared to

focus on morality and community in the face of dire circumstances and what those things really mean

fantastic characters. every one of them is memorable, including minor ones. they feel real, which is always impressive

excellently diverse cast of characters for that matter. like, surprisingly so. genuinely chock full of really cool actors. not once did I feel like it was some attempt to get some sort of recognition (one of my favorite points to this actually is that two of the important minor characters have the BIGGEST height difference that its comical)

SUCH good actors. very talented people. lots of smaller, lesser known actors too! (there IS a guy from Lost in there I recognized tho. that startled me)

superb set design, lighting, props, costuming. cgi is done really fucking well. feels like an actual apocalyptic nuclear wasteland with funky tech as intended. absolutely beautiful to watch

no huge dependence on references! you dont need to play the games to get everything, the main story is perfectly intact without any experience in the series. its just fun extra stuff for those who have :]

if you like disco elysium, you will like this show methinks

forewarnings -

lots of (not very realistic) gore. some pretty realistic gore at points. I can be squeamish about that shit so it wouldve gotten me pretty bad without forewarning. off-screen decapitation, some eye trauma that icked me, fairly brief birth horror that isnt all that visible

some truly gross cannibalism (or it could just be me. eeww gory) thankfully brief

CULT SHIT. heavy cult shit. manipulation, chanting, lighting candles, branding, so on so forth. it can be hard to watch, but I think its better knowing the characters arent fully falling for it within the context (no spoilers!)

dog is seemingly killed but turns out to be okay. that did really upset me at first

decent amount of drug use but nothing super graphic, emphasis on medical. dudes be drinking some weird shit

couple TV typical sex scenes that look pretty graphic but dont show anything. dont watch with parents 👍 casual nudity as well

just generally very heavy in topic. if you can truck through disco elysium, you should be able to make it through this

#vvin babbles #vintageghoststories #lee #THAT GOT REALLY LONG. wanted to explain for any others that might be curious too #I literally woke up thinkign about this damn show #im sure theres stuff I missed but I watched every episode back to back while staying awake for 24 hrs

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caramujotan · 4 years

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disco elysium text-form #thots:

i finished my first run last friday because i went stupid and played the game for nearly 24h straight. i could literally not drop it. i called it a 10/10 when i was about 2h away from finishing it, finished it and kept that score. it’s a real good game and you can stop here with my endorsement but if you want some more in-depth spoiler-free thoughts on it you can read the rest of this post. it’s big.

due to the content of the game, i talk about mental health topics, suicide, drug use and - obviously - cops 🐷

in a way calling this by numbers feels reductive (scalding hot review take, i know). a 10/10 score doesn’t reflect the awe i felt when gilding through the end-game. it doesn’t say a thing about how viscerally my body reacted to a few pixels and lines of text. it can’t tell you that i spent 2h in bed trying to sleep but couldn’t keep my brain off of it and got up at 8AM to finish it; or how much i’ve been replaying the game in my head, curious about how certain quests or events would have gone if i’d tried a different approach or character build.

i have this funky little medical condition that goes with my autism that makes it difficult for me to identify and process most emotions that i feel. but i can tell you how my body reacted. this game went into my gut. it felt like a leaded fist burrowed through my throat into the pit of my stomach and shredded my insides. it got me fucked up, is what i’m saying.

obviously i can’t go into what caused me to react like that without spoiling the shit out of this game, and since i wish i could gently lobotomize myself in order to experience it again for the first time, i heavily recommend you go through it knowing as little as possible. what i can do, however, is talk about the technical elements of it.

the art is beautiful. the art direction is top-notch and it was definitely of the things that drew me to this game first. the oil painting aesthetic is sublime - gritty and ethereal in equal parts whenever each purpose is called for. finding out that the art team was spearheaded by painting majors from russian fine-art schools made perfect sense - it shows, and the game made peak use of it. the philosophy behind their visual approach is woven into the fabric of the game itself - it’s a perfect compliment to the writing and storytelling, and i’d struggle to imagine this game without it. it permeates and elevates every environment, every interaction, every character build choice - from the character portraits, to the UI, to certain skills and game events. real art cop hours all my homies kin the art cop.

the music by british sea power is subsided and haunting and gives the game that british/european post-industrial melancholic flavor. i’m no music critic sadly. it fits the mood and it stands out beautifully in a few key scenes, but that’s as much as i can say.

the biggest turn off for me was in the voice acting. if you’re interested in playing this game i’m going to assume with 75% certainty you’re in your early 20s to 30s and are politically located to the left side of liberal at a minimum - so i’ll just come out and say it plainly: every second NPC (especially in the late game) is voiced by a leftist podcaster. i’m sure this is a plus for some, and it’s not the kind of thing you’d immediately notice anyway unless you’re a quote unquote dirtbag leftist with terminal irony poisoning twitter brainrot. most of them do competent work, but the sound mixing and general performance is weaker in comparison to the NPCs voiced by actual voice actors.

it’s not that bad, but it’s there - and the fact that this is probably my biggest complaint about the game should say enough of my opinion on it. either way i was cringing with recognition every time it happened and it took me out on more than one occasion because i kept hearing felix chapotraphouse in one of the game’s big tense climatic scenes.

‘but caramujo!’ you say ‘this doesn’t tell me what this game is about’. hold on, i’m about to blow the ‘i can’t do literary analysis unless things are explained to me in clear cut absolute terms’ gang out of a career and spell the themes of this game out for you in detail:

it’s about loss, and renewal - both personal and interpersonal. it’s about rising from the ruins of something that’s been in motion long before you were even thought of, having little power over it, and soldiering on. it’s about heartbreak and the end of a relationship and how that can warp your mind and infect everything around you. and you won’t get better right away - the end game doesn’t wrap everything up with a little bow and lets you cause systematic upheaval. you can’t revolutionize your way out of this one. shit will, for the time being, continue to suck.

it’s about waking up in a body that’s fucked up with a heart that aches in a world that’s been torn apart - and still making the decision to try to make it better - because you’re alive, and your heart beats, and there’s other beings in the world that are tethered to you and we all owe it to ourselves to make it better. communism hasn’t worked, baby - but so hasn’t love - and we’re not gonna give up on that. that’s what it’s all about.

it should be pretty clear right now that i did my first run as a bisexual/questioning communist feminist hobo who kinned karl marx. but i can assure you there’s other ways to play this game, and there’s more to it than that because of it.

the quests (both side quests and a main story) are varied and had me laughing and dropping into existential despair on different occasions. other than trying to be the biggest communism builder, this game is also about:

- having a heart attack because a chair is too uncomfortable, but it’s OK because your buddy cop holds you in his arms like in the buddy cop movies.

- doing copious amounts of drugs and turning on, tuning in and dropping out, maaaaan.

- going on an x-files monster of the week episode to track down a curse that’s dooming the local businesses.

- shilling for the free market to come fix it all with its beatific invisible hand while standing in a town so fucked over by economic embargoes and poverty that the local union leader is a corrupt toad with a plan to revitalize the region by gathering the work force into a nationalized worker owned drug enterprise of the legal and illegal varieties - and it still comes off as one of the more levelheaded economic decisions one could make in that situation.

- trying not to fucking kill yourself even though you have to live with that thought every single day.

- winning the trust of a 12 year old crackhead with a deadbeat dad by becoming a positive masculine role model.

- turning into a fascist you so can get buffs from drinking alcohol, and therefore becoming a raging alcoholic and having to walk up to important story events carrying half a liquor store in your inventory so you don’t have a mental breakdown or kill yourself from lack of morale whenever someone calls you out on your ethnonationalist bullshit.

it’s also - and i cannot stress this enough - about making sure you can find a tape to sing karaoke and make kim kitsuragi smile. it slaps. it’s real good writing.

i don’t know what else can say. pretty sure the game is on sale on steam now. anyway please play this absolute masterpiece and stan studio za/um for clear skin. ACAB.

#disco elysium #.txt #not sure if this is done yet i might add more thots later specifically about the world building

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innuendostudios · 4 years

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Thoughts on Outer Wilds

[no real spoilers but this is a game you want to approach knowing as little as possible]

Sometimes I don’t know what to say about a game.

I’m finding that having something to say about a game is not correlated to how good I think it is. Sometimes a game is wonderful in ways I can gush about. Some games are awful, sometimes in uninteresting ways, sometimes in ways that could provoke hours-long rants that I choose to keep to myself. My most interesting opinions are often on games where my opinion is hard to fit into a good/bad spectrum.

But sometimes a game is just wonderful, and finding it wonderful does not translate to having a take on it.

Outer Wilds is one of the best, most consistently delightful, genuine awe-provoking, brilliantly-designed, narratively rich, thematically deep, inspiring, melancholic, hopeful, and nihilistic games I’ve ever played. And I don’t know how much more I can tell you about it.

It’s not that there is little to say. Austin Walker said a lot and then Chris Franklin said some more. They covered most of what I could say; in fact, they said more. Austin’s observations about how we relate to the end of the world, and Chris’ about searching for meaning as not only justified but morally imperative are true things that did not occur to me while I played. I don’t have anything as substantial to add.

What keeps coming to me, as I sit here trying to think of something to say about what is unequivocally one of my new favorite games, is the line from Leonard Cohen: “everybody knows the good guys lost.”

Call it a character flaw, but when I don’t know what to say about a single game, sometimes I talk about it in contrast with others like it. And I’ve played Outer Wilds a few months after playing the final act of Kentucky Route Zero and a few days before playing Disco Elysium, and all three are, in their way, about it being too late. Too late to save your friend, too late to save the world, to late to save society from itself. We end KR0 with a town that has collapsed under capitalism, we begin Disco Elysium fifty years after the revolution failed, and we spend all of Outer Wilds trying, desperately and repeatedly, to outrun a supernova that will kill everyone we know and destroy everything we’ve seen.

All are about how we live on when the war was lost before we were born.

A little brain virus Elizabeth Sandifer put in my head when I read the titular essay of her collection Neoreaction a Basilisk is, what if we’re just not going to save the world? Not that we can’t, but what if we’re just not going to? We know what the problems are, it’s not too late to fix them, and the people we’ve entrusted simply aren’t going to save us and there aren’t enough of us who care to save ourselves.

It’s not that I agree with El (I haven’t decided), it’s that this is the one thought we so often deny ourselves. We consider the end to motivate ourselves to avert it. We don’t accept it. We consider it for as long as it takes to reject it. And there is a terror in entertaining the idea, and also a comfort. A shifting of focus. We fought bravely. We did not go quietly. But the blast has already happened. Nothing left but to brace for the shockwave.

Thinking about how to prevent the end can mean never learning to live with it.

Outer Wilds is about the beauty of the world we are about to lose. It also captures, perhaps better than any game I’ve played, the sense of space as sublime. Someone asked me on Curious Cat what my favorite planet was, and I realized... every single one of them is terrifying. They’re all incredible, but you’re always getting crushed by volcanic eruptions, suffocated by sand, tumbling into a black hole, getting hurled into space, or being consumed by horrors. This mix of incredible beauty and incredible danger is the stuff of art movements. To watch a pillar of sand plummet through the sky from one planet to another, feeling a genuine awe while also knowing it will, sometime in the next 22 minutes, likely kill you is everything I want space travel to feel like.

Its themes are perhaps best captured in how it’s played. It is a game where the only key to victory is knowledge. You play until the sun explodes - or until something else kills you - and then restart, and the only thing you take with you is what you learned on the last run. Which means you can never play the game again, not really. You can revisit, but you can’t remove that knowledge from your head. You can replay Metroid Prime and you’ll start without all your powerups. And you can replay Riven already knowing all the puzzle solutions but you can experience the story again. But in Outer Wilds, the unlocks are the story. The way the game is played, the way it feels, cannot be recreated. It is ephemeral. And the game itself being about ephemera, moments of beauty that you watch blink out of existence again and again... well, it’s about as thematically coherent as design and theme can be.

I know I’m talking around what the game actually is. It’s because I’m assuming you’ve already played it. If you haven’t, you shouldn’t be reading this. Get outta here!

Maybe the greatest respect we can pay to something powerful is to not always have to render it in words, to convert it into rhetoric or philosophy or #content. Outer Wilds is beautiful, and helped me through a rough time, holed up in my house during a disaster, feeling like catching a life-threatening disease is a matter of when, not if. Watching people normalize my country’s continued slide towards authoritarianism. Watching the economy shudder before it potentially collapses. Bracing for the shockwave.

It gave me something beautiful to appreciate. There is still wonder, worth fighting for, yes, but also worth admiring just in case the fight is already over.

#capsule review #Adventure Games #outer wilds

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lost-in-zembla · 4 years

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Disco Elysium or: How I learned to Stop Wallowing and Love the Game

I will now review a videogame. No real spoilers. Just very vague descriptions below.

My writing this is uncharacteristic of me. I find most writing surrounding the video game industry to be repugnant. The industry (including the media surrounding that industry) relies upon the subsumption of subcultures on the fringe into the very center of the infernal machine where the dedicated and nostalgic nature of its fanbase can be exploited for capital. It’s the same process that produces Iron Man Funko Pops. Call me a jaded and pretentious pseudointellectual poseur, but in the case of Marvel the idea that this fucking billion dollar franchise with the biggest actors in the world somehow retains this guise of this ‘geek’ subculture is disturbing to me.

(If you have played the game Disco Elysium, then you can probably already see part of why I enjoy it so goddamn much.)

I don’t mean we should gatekeep. My point is the media attached to these quote-geek-unquote industries wants to milk the same cash cow (e.g. 10 AWESOME THINGS IN THE LAST OF US 2!) Coming from an academic environment of criticism, I crave at least the appearance of an honest and thorough critique of art. In my experience, you really need to go past the surface to find any reliable ‘takes’ on contemporary videogames. That being said, there’s a lot of good work being done in the form of video essays.

In any case, I play videogames relatively often. Competitive shooters, mostly. But I suffer no story in videogames. Why would I? I read the most *genius* pieces of literature in the English language. I’m too *good* for that. So when I heard all the buzz about Disco Elysium last fall, it fell on deaf ears. Detectives? Disco? Isometry? Story-heavy. Ugh. I’m interested in none of that. But about a week ago, a friend of mine bought the game. Unlike me, he is a real adult with a real job so it was just a whim on his part, I believe. I looked at the game and, with Steam’s lax refund policy in mind, I bought it. In the past week I have put approximately thirty hours into this game. This review is a way for me to explore my own thoughts surrounding the game, thoughts that I didn’t include in my steam review (See below.)

So it was devastating, sure. And this devastation was somehow positive. One thing that I would like to make clear about me talking about this game is that it is fucking useless. Disco Elysium possesses that quality that exists in all great art; it is irreducible. When I try to explain this game to my friends, I find that my words fail to describe what’s so great about the game. Let me give you the elevator review I’ve come up with. *This game has allowed me to explore the breadth of human experience*. It’s an absolutely insane thing to say about a game. The writing, the art style, the story, the world, the RPG gameplay, they all work together to create a kind of experience that I have never encountered in a piece of art before aside from those few, fleeting moments when you feel as though you truly *get* an encyclopedic novel you’re reading (and in my case I usually don’t get it.)

I will not delve too deeply into the mechanics of the game. There are probably plenty of articles and videos that describe the game already. Put simply, the game is about choices. You can choose to solve the murder however you want. You can say absolutely batshit things to people. You can say mildly bemusing things. You can speak apocalyptic prophesies, espouse communism, conservatism, Moralism. race science.. There are moments when you genuinely *feel* like you can say anything, which is quite a feat when you really only have a few dialogue options at any given moment.

As you’ve noticed, this is not a review of the videogame. Playing this game after a tough breakup was sort of earth-shattering. I mean, not only am I navigating through a strange virtual world with its own history and culture and cosmological makeup, I’m diegetically grieving over being left by my *divinely* beautiful ex while I, the player, undergo a similar process and find similar coping mechanisms. Playing this game was like knowing the funniest clown in the world, a clown so funny that you thank him when he occasionally punches you in the chest to make you *feel things*.

The plan wasn’t to make a character whose qualities reflected my own. I just wanted to play the game. I wanted to win. It just so happened that because *I* was the one playing the game, the character essentially turned into me. It doesn’t help that I, too, have had my issues with alcohol, drugs, commitment, and mental health (in no particular order). The character ended up becoming *me* in a way that I’d never experienced before. I faced ethical dilemmas. My ideology was shaken. This game achieves unbelievable mimesis.

Here’s the wild thing: this game has changed me. I feel like a thirteen-year-old white boy who just watched The Boondock Saints and got a pretty okay over-the-pants handjob at the same time. I’m thinking about my life in terms of choices. The game enforces a kind of perspective of the world that highlights its contingency and the permanence of choices. You can, of course, save your progress in the game and reload whenever, but I found myself just sort of riding out the bad choices I made unless they were game-ruiningly catastrophic. (E.g. I had a “thought” equipped that made me fail every unrepeatable *red* check during a pivotal firefight; it was a hilarious disaster. We were essentially mowed down.) I stood by most of my bad choices. After all, I made the choice using the information I had at the time.

I am not good at this game. I absolutely bungled the investigation. I was just a pawn for forces far greater than myself. Seven people died, and I know that I could’ve saved a few of those people, if not all of them. I think about it sometimes. I think about what I could have done, how I could have gone deeper to find out what’s *really* going on, how I could take control of the investigation rather than be taken control of. Maybe I’ll play the game through again, but the first playthrough is kind of magical if you know absolutely nothing about the game like I did. If not for an absolute deus ex machina at the end, I would have been taken to the madhouse. It would have been an unbelievable failure.

During that deus ex machina moment, by the way, a goddamn tear rolled down my cheek. Yeah, I’m in a rough place, personally. But I don’t *cry* over characters in art. They’re not real. But damn if that changed. I tell you it’s changed *me*. I care more for characters. I know they’re not real but they represent something that I can relate to, no matter who they are. This game has made me think about empathy more. Maybe it’s because I dumped all my points in the emotional skills. Maybe I’d be more violent if I rolled with the physical skills. Maybe I’d feel like a superstar if that’s what I chose to pursue in the game. Disco Elysium feels open-ended enough that if you sign up for the story, the aesthetic, and the investigation itself, then you can get whatever you want out of the experience. The game, again, achieves incredible mimesis.

The mimesis is so convincing in Disco Elysium that it feels as open-ended as reality, with one caveat: you *know* it's a game. You, as a player, know that the experience of Disco Elysium is a designed one, that it was created as a sort of origami structure, that there is narrative and, god help us, *meaning*. What this game-knowledge afforded me during my playthrough was the constant sensation of synchronicity. I found myself saying “I don’t know how this element will fold into the grand structure of the game, and it almost seems impossible that it should become part of the investigation narrative.” But because I know it’s a game, I am graced with the confidence of the highly religious. Everything will come together in the end.

This is not a review for a videogame. This is a confession. I am deeply flawed and I want to change that. My worldview has been shaken because of a videogame. I don’t want to be that kind of animal anymore.

I’m trying to empower myself, to become more aware that my choices do indeed matter, have always mattered. I’m trying to be more pragmatic, to consider the things I want to do in terms of their result rather than the momentary pleasure I will derive from doing them. Now *that’s* a change for me.

I’m trying to be more empathetic, more willing to imagine the perspectives of others.

I am trying to give the world around me the benefit of the doubt. It is easy for me to think of the world as a random coincidence of matter, but if you look at the world with totality in mind everything seems to take on this Spinozan glow of divinity. The human mind is a meaning-making machine, I think. If I look at the world as fundamentally devoid of meaning, then that is still meaning. It is nihil-ism. It’s still an -ism. But if I ascribe to the world a kind of glowing potential, as though meaning were to be found in every speck of matter, then I feel invited to participate in this massive dance that we’re all a part of.

I’m trying to be more adventurous, because beneath the surface of things there seems to be a vast network of relationships, causation, possibility and, god help me, *story*. Or maybe it’s not beneath the surface of things, maybe there is no Deleuzian schizophrenic depth beneath the surface, perhaps the world is a homogenous and ever-developing surface upon which I constellate meaning and, thereby, create it. I’m trying to create a story for myself that will hold a candle to my experience playing Disco Elysium. I didn’t ask for this; it was just what I needed. It was, in a word, unforgettable.

#disco elysium #criticism #game review #videogame #video games #hire me zaum #I dont want to be this kind of animal anymore #essay

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twiststreet · 5 years

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I'm curious: a bit ago you referred to Disco Elysium as being a "Child-of-Kentucky-Route-Zero game." I think I get what you mean, but could you elaborate on that a bit?

Well, Kentucky Route Zero kind of looms large in my head, for a lot of reasons (moreso than something like Gone Home which may have been equally influential but which I just didn’t really like much):

1) It was an adventure game that really abandoned the puzzles. I’m not gamer enough to tell you the historical antecedents for that-- I was aware of things like Gravity Bone or Jason Rohrer’s Passage before it, the Stanley Parable, that game where you’re an old person walking around a cemetary, etc. I had been kind of lay-person aware of indie games (but not like Japanese games like you sometimes post where it’s ... a kid having magical summer or whatever, Boku no Natsuyasumi). But it was the first one in that sort of graphical adventure space that really clicked in my head, where a lot of ideas I think finally came together and got amplified or put together into a bigger whole, a bigger story that those ideas felt organic to...

Unlike puzzle-era graphical adventures, KR0 was just really confident about the story it’s telling being enough. It gives you a level of control but it doesn’t come to a dead halt if you don’t know what to do with that control. It’s sort just happy to let you walk around in its narrative space, but it’s not trying to “create the Holodeck.” Even if you didn’t read about the behind-the-scenes, you can tell the creators are more interested in theater than in simulation, which I think the older generation of game designers were more into-- there’s a classic designer who talks about his dream game being one where you perfectly simulate a single neighborhood corner, whereas I don’t see that as being a goal for the current generation the same way. (Though I thought of that designer a lot too playing Elysium because so much is set in a small place of people colliding with one another, but in a more D&D way...).

Disco Elysium skews back the other way more in a way-- I think the creators talk about it having more of a classic D&D influence in terms of player choice. But they’re emphasizing choice instead of puzzles, which I think is different. There’s ways of failing but you’re not going to just come to a complete halt the same way with Elysium, I don’t think. It’s going to tell a story to you rather ... kneel at some altar of “gameplay” that doesn’t really make a ton of sense. Because those puzzle games have their time and place, but I don’t think they were even as fun to play as KR0 has been, even when your character’s like... slow and limping... KR0 just sort of gets that the game tools are there to create an emotion in the player rather than to be some “challenge” to be surmounted or conflict defeated.

But yeah: how much interactivity is “enough”? Like, KR0 I think asks that questions in a more interesting way than other people did.

2) But yeah, KR0′s de-emphasis of the player-- it really from the get-go was unapologetic about de-centering the player. Who you even play as changes moment to moment sometimes (which is kind of a move I’m always into, e.g. MGS-2), but also on a more molecular level... You’re not there to “save Kentucky.” You have a minimal mission in the game, making some deliveries, but it’s hardly a mission game. That world exists before you, and the stories that have happened there have already happened, and you’re just sort of there to explore that narrative and react to it, rather than try to control it.

Which I think is just healthier in ways, too-- would a game environment that deemphasized “heroic fantasy” ideas would produce the same kind of “They targeted gamers... gamers!” mania? There’s a pretty great game designer (I’ve read all this stuff in the last few years-- it’s horrible) Chris Avellone, who did a lot of Fallout New Vegas and stuff, who talks about how with people playing traditional role-playing games, they don’t care about their decisions unless those decisions are couched in “How will this effect your character” and “will it make your character more powerful?” (I forget his exact phrasing so I might be mis-remembering). Whereas KR0′s powered just by empathy and curiosity and metaphor.

(New Vegas is an interesting comparison point as Elysium where New Vegas has the same “trying to be D&D quality” of emphasizing choice but the combat is more traditional games and... while the very best parts of New Vegas, which is to say the casino for foodies, resemble Elysium, it’s mostly... It defines the role-playing completely differently. KR0, there’s this variety of choices that are about deciding things that may not matter but that you want to decide, maybe deciding who people are and how they feel and who they were, rather than just what they do. And I get the feeling that’s a big part of paper-pen role playing, whereas New Vegas and those games try to create a “blank slate” which you can then define by your actions and see that as being the appeal of RPG’s, the ... character definition through action functions. Elysium, it’s about really deeply exploring this single character and deciding who you want your character to be, down to deciding whether they think of themselves as being a HoboCop or a superstar cop...)

(I don’t know-- I’m rambling and within parentheses at that, but I think the difference in those approaches can be understated... I think that’s 90% of the ballgame, but it’s like... You know, it’s hard to talk about without getting into “power fantasies” and heroic fiction and the sometimes-troubling relationship between those, which KR0 really completely eschews...)(Though again, see Metal Gear Solid 2, for the alternate move which is just ... taunting and belittling the player for wanting a power fantasy, which I kind of admire more but...)(I’m really loving Death Stranding so far, but I think that sort of willingness to be just openly hostile to his audience is a huge part of what I admire with Kojima-- he made an open world game where you *fall over a lot*).

3) Plus, and I don’t know how much this is just me overstating it, but: KR0 has that thing comics people used to talk about, to no effect, of being a “container” for other art. (In comics, they just meant they wanted pie charts about how Cyclops is into cuckoldry...? But perhaps predictably). My memories of games back then aren’t reliable but... It has art direction. It has visual storytelling. It approaches the 2d plane of the viewing screen as a proscenium so then you have those moments of that coming apart in the first game and I found that pretty thrilling. I just don’t remember the level of that being as high before KR0-- certainly the abandonment of AAA photorealistic values in the indie space was inevitable, but it doesn’t just do, you know, that cute ultraflat “lowpoly” stuff-- it has a look to it. Style! Like, Elysium gets compared to Planescape Torment a lot, which I never played, but Elysium just looks really gorgeous by comparison... Just designed.

But it’s to a thematic effect that I think the games after it have really adopted of ... contemplating people within an environment, and that relationship. Games are really amazing at creating environments to explore-- it’s like the easiest thing to do in a game engine-- you can download Unity and in about 5 minutes create a whole little world to walk around in with mountains and trees and clouds and everything. (Doing anything else is a little tricky, it turns out but). Kr0 kind of shifted the focus onto the environment more and thinking about how that environment was shaped by and in turn shapes the people within it.

This invariably turns out to be a “political” consideration, so KR0 and Elysium and Night in the Woods all have a certain amount of political content. (I think KR0 most successfully because I don’t think any game after it has their sense of the poetic, but. Or KR0′s not interested in explicit political messaging so much as ... the humanity of the situation, but). And I think that’s really cool, personally, as it opens up a space to think about what games are for... that I don’t think was a part of the conversation otherwise.

I mean, by comparison, the New Vegas folks when they were promoting their new thing Outer Worlds (which I’m going to play! I like those guys!)... they’re out there talking about how their game is “political” but not “politically charged.” What the hell does that even mean? Whereas Night in the Woods, say, I mean that one’s to the left of me. Night in the Woods is pretty much a game about how cats should join a union... I don’t want cats unionize! Imagine the amount of yarn the NLRB will have to buy... (This is where I think Oxenfree falls down where... Oxenfree had a lot of KR0′s surface qualities, but didn’t really get at anything more, I don’t know, “thematically mult-valent” or whatever, I don’t think... Oxenfree was more a surface experience for me...)

I don’t know. There’s probably more to talk about. (Other people are bigger fans of those side-games than I am-- I appreciate those but haven’t delved as deep into those as other folks). Or there are things KR0′s doing that I don’t think the games after it have caught up with yet-- KR0 has a meta level to it, where it’s in conversation with adventure game history, in ways I might not fully appreciate, and if that’s true of Elysium, say, I don’t see that. For me, I think another thing about all those games though is they have a sense of the tragic, but then don’t wallow in that space. KR0 has some sad shit going on it, ruined lives, broken places, but I think if the only way KR0 was influential was just the Junebug scene, and her song in it, it’d still be the game of the decade, you know? Elysium and Night in the Woods both have that same mentality of ... It’s not about the misery, it’s how people find meaning past that point. Which isn’t to say there’s not a quality sometimes to contemplating the misery and really acknowledging the terror and anxiety of that. I think you can do interesting work that isn’t “hopeful”, if that’s not your honest orientation. But what I think is interesting is how KR0 and its progeny carve out this space for sadness and anxiety and a feeling of the spookiness of a post-collapse space that isn’t just a “horror” game, that isn’t just jump-scares or whatever (though I remember getting pretty anxious playing some KR0 bits, even knowing it’s not a horror game, e.g. that contract scene)... I think that’s really interesting, that it’s not as easily categorized as that...

Sorry to ramble.

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stalwartignoramus · 4 years

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Disco Elysium (Review)

Gameplay (8/10) Monsters out, dialogues in

(+2) Innovative take on the RPG genre. The gameplay, skill tree, and level progression of DE is a very fresh take on the classic RPG formula. Instead of traditional combat where you reduce an enemy’s hit points to 0, you need to pass skill checks that are based on your invested skill levels. Instead of gaining exp and leveling up by fighting monsters in an action RPG, you converse with the citizens of Martinaise and interact with the objects scattered around the district. You gain skillpoints when you level up and you invest them in different areas in order to represent what kind of detective you want Harry to portray: The thinker, the psychic, the muscle, or the specialist. It doesn’t play like your standard RPG, but it is built on the same foundations of character customization (you can even dress up Harry in whatever way you want.)

(+1) Failure is part of the game. To my knowledge, you’re not gonna be able to max out all skills so you have to focus on one area of expertise and leave out the rest. If you play as a logic-based detective you’ll probably be on the bottom end when it comes to physical prowess and hence fail a lot of the physical-based tasks. This however doesn’t necessarily mean a game over, as the game gives you many avenues to tackle a problem, some even require you to fail to get the more desirable outcome.

(=) There’s a lot of reading. A LOT. Disco Elysium is basically a more interactive version of a visual novel so 90% of the gameplay would be reading the many dialogues thrown your way. It’s the core gameplay loop of DE and the extensive amount of reading might turn people off or bore the people already playing it, while enticing the hardcore readers to get into it more.

Story (8/10) A journey of redemption or downward spiral

(+2) Decide Harry’s fate. You hold in your hands how Harry will deal with his situation. Will he become sober or stay an alcoholic? Will he solve the case or fail horribly? Will he do drugs or remain clean? Will you sleep in the inn or out on the street? Will you even remember your own name or how you look like or will it disappear into oblivion? All these different options mean that every playthrough of DE will be a unique experience depending on how you built Harry and the choices you make during interactions. If you’re not careful (or if you’re just purposefully diabolical), Harry may meet one of the game’s many game over screens depicted as newspaper headlines, or you may not see one at all throughout your playthrough if you’re really careful.

(+1) Lieutenant Kitsuragi. Enough said. The straight man to your crazy antics, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi is the down-to-earth partner you need to keep you grounded when your mind floats to strange dimensions. He almost feels like a character being played by another player online. He is patient and understanding when it comes to dealing with Harry’s personal problems, but also knows when to be strict when Harry is going too far with his unorthodox methods.

(+1) Intricate world-building. The world is wonderfully laid out to the player through dialogues and environment design. You can see the extensive damage Martinaise has sustained and you can realize that it was a previous warzone even without asking any of the townsfolk. Conversations with different people reveal all the political struggles Martinaise underwent and the world beyond and how the pale is consuming everything. You can choose to know more about the world at large or just let it slip by you and go on with your investigation. Regardless of which you choose, you’ll still come across very obvious signs of political unrest, corruption, drug trade, and general poverty all over the district which tells you that this is not just the generic town littered with NPCs and interactions, this is a town inhabited and shaped by the people living in it.

(=) Heavy political undertones. As mentioned in the previous statement, there’s a lot of political unrest going on in Martinaise aside from the Union’s strike. If you’re like me and don’t care that much about heavy political jargon, you might find this piece of the game quite undesirable. Nevertheless, you can choose to opt out of most political conversations and avoid all the confusing words they throw around here and there.

(-1) Underwhelming resolution. The ending was very lackluster to say the least. It all culminates in a final showdown with your police investigation unit where you present everything you’ve done throughout the game and depending on how you acted Lieutenant Kitsuragi will vouch for your actions. There’s no resolution as the game just ends after the conversation without knowing how it all went down for the characters after they’ve reported the case to their respective superiors. Not even a cliffhanger hint of a sequel. Arguably, this might tie into one of the game’s themes of not having closure but as a player it didn’t leave the best impression on me.

Visuals (9/10) Flamboyantly grotesque

(+3) Magnificent artwork. The crowning glory of Disco Elysium is the artwork. The drab watercolor-like aesthetic of the game reflects the game’s colorful and creative world plastered with grim filters of reality. It’s something that I think cannot be achieved by going for a hyperrealistic look where things appear as close as possible to real life counterparts, but rather through the lens of a rough and distorted perspective of an alcoholic detective with an abundance of internal struggles. It reminds you that there’s beauty in destruction, and destruction in beauty; as alluded to by one of the quotes found in-game. On top of that, the portraits for the thoughts are overwhelming in a mesmerizing way. Similar to how you just can’t understand what’s going on in an intricate stained glass art, or the thick black strokes of the inkwork on a tarot card, there’s just so much going on and it’s a lot to take in but you still get captivated by the imagery. You can take any still from any moment in the game and present it as a renaissance painting and I’d believe you just because the game’s artwork is that wonderfully made. Truly a testament to the talent of this generation’s artists.

(+1) War-torn Martinaise. This district has lots of stories to tell without even having a mouth to speak. The way Martinaise is presented is very organic. You can still see bullet holes and mortar damage from the war fought over the district many years ago, old arcade machines from a forgotten time litter the establishments, entire buildings with abandoned equipment of their former establishments, and repurposed infrastructures. This wasn’t just built as a place the player has to explore during their playthrough, this was a place with history and has lived way before the player step foot within its bounds.

Audio (7/10) It’s all in the voice

(+2) Superb voice acting. The voice acting gives life to the characters in Martinaise and it comes in all shapes and sizes. Every character has at least one voiced line so you can have an idea of how they sound like. Some of the more important characters have more than one voiced line, which reiterates their importance in the overall narrative. The character’s personalities and idiosyncrasies come alive in the voice acting, from the way they say certain words and their inflections, letting you know that Martinaise is home to more than one group of people as a result of the district’s history.

Final Score (8) Excellent This is Disco, baby

Disco Elysium is more than just a game, it is art first, a visual novel second, and an RPG third. The game accomplishes something more than to entertain you for the few hours you’ll pick it up. It also attempts to educate you on political discourse and warn you on the adverse effects of drug and alcohol abuse, all while being enveloped by the game’s captivating art style. You’ll find yourself appreciating the scenery more than a few times while you scour Martinaise looking for any sort of lead that’ll help you with your case.

(1-2) Terrible (3-4) Bad (5) Average (6-7) Good (8-9) Excellent (10) Masterpiece

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st33d · 3 years

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All These Worlds Are Yours (Except Europa)

It’s been a while since my last CRPG report and I have played quite a lot of CRPGs in the meantime. I’m going to keep it brief. It’s by no means all the games I played over the past year or so, but it is all the games that are worth playing in some fashion or another.

Yet again I didn’t really bother to get decent screenshots so you’ll have to endure some tangentially related Shutterstock photos.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

It’s like Etrian Odyssey but made by horny 14 year olds. Monsters take the form of purple-black eyes that move only when you do. Colliding with them triggers a JRPG battle with your team. You must conquer around a dozen or so dungeons to defeat a mysterious evil whilst learning about your protagonist’s horny hubris.

I like how it automatically fills in the in-game map, only drawing tiles you have stepped in. Stairways also connect perfectly on most dungeons, leading to some detective work to solve them. The combat is passable. The story is PG13 with random suggestions of poop and sex without really showing any. It’s… a good game with a lot of simple mechanics that it layers up over time to make something quite complex. I really enjoyed solving the dungeons but it’s such a multilayered ball of weirdness that I hesitate recommending it.

Dragon’s Dogma

It’s like Skyrim but with less items, less map, and decent fights. Like, really decent fights. You can climb on the back of beasts and hack pieces off of them or shoot magic arrows that do a host of cool things. The story is pretty anime - I can’t get into why without some major spoilers. Safe to say that after the first (and honestly entertaining) chunk of the game you get an overlay of falling ash pinned to your screen and the monsters become hit point sponges. That’s around when I stopped playing because it felt like I’d reached “an” ending and the rest was about beating as many dead horses with whatever sticks I could upgrade enough to hit them with. Last time I fired it up I got in an hour long fight with an off-brand beholder that basically respawned all its limbs eight times because of its egregious hit points.

You’re joined by some enthusiastic AI companions called pawns who have no story and just kinda throw themselves at enemies whilst repeating the same phrases over and over. I’m not really sure if they’re a blessing or curse. The game overall is pretty jank with terrible traversal (don’t explore, the quests will send you to every corner of the map anyway - twice). Despite all my complaints it’s a lot of fun - at least until the 1st ending. It’s cheap and I recommend it.

Sky Rogue

It’s like a lot of aircraft dogfight games but a bit random. I’ve played this a bit on single player and it’s alright. However I have played many, many, missions in the 2 player mode with a coworker. It’s just very satisfying doing the whole Top Gun team thing taking on a bunch of enemy planes whilst working on upgrades.

Disco Elysium

It’s like Planescape Torment but without the tedious combat or problematic writer behind it. There’s a video of one of the devs explaining how the dialogue is laid out like Twitter in tabloid format for easy reading. This is revolutionary. I want every computer text game to use this format from now on.

I cannot stress how important it is to enter Disco Elysium unprepared. To have no grasp on just how far you will be allowed to explore, who you will meet, who you will travel with, or what you are expected to do. It is a game about amnesia and becoming someone new - if that is at all possible.

I have two pieces of advice however:

Don’t start with Psyche or Physique stats below 2, they’re both your health and the game will surprise you with damage to either in the most unexpected places.

Do every quest. Explore every nook and cranny. Not knowing is the very essence of the game. You’ll have lost that feeling after the ending.

I don’t need to tell you how good the game is. Just look at most reviews.

Everspace

It’s like Descent (that 1st person spacecraft game on the PSX) but in space and it’s a roguelike. Everspace has you mine, salvage, fight, trade, and quest - but you do it all from the comfort of a spaceship that has responsive controls and interesting weaponry. I had a lot of fun skulking round wrecks to salvage parts whilst avoiding patrols of hostiles until I had enough kit to take them on.

It has a substandard storyline but great meta-progression, asking you to grind cash from each run to unlock parts for a better ship on the next. I put in a great deal of hours into this game and I’m looking forward to what the studio does with the sequel.

Horizon Zero Dawn

It’s like Shadow of Mordor but good. My only major complaint was how constant use of the bow had the camera staying uncomfortably close to Aloy’s arse and burying itself in grass during frenetic combat. When the camera wasn’t trying to kill me the combat was astoundingly good. You fight lumbering robo-dinosaurs with special weak spots and various attacks. The quests are also good with a surprising amount of cutscenes and dialogue for a lot of completely optional content.

I was also amazed at how they managed to pull off an almost believable backstory for a world full of robot dinosaurs. Despite some frustrating combat encounters I had a good time exploring its large and very pretty world.

Pathfinder Kingmaker

It’s like Baldurs Gate but not as good. Only on my 3rd attempt at playing the game with the newly patched in turn based mechanics did it start to make sense. It uses Pathfinder’s rules which are deep and tactical - as tactical rules go they’re pretty good. However when those rules fly by at real time speed you don’t learn how opportunity attacks work (they’re more complex than modern D&D) or how to utilise charge and positioning.

The story is pretty forgettable and the encounter design is relentlessly dull. A lot of areas are just simply fight after fight after fight. In turn based mode the fights are pretty good but too many of them are identical. The ones that weren’t I found inscrutable and impossible to pass. If you like min-max fighting and little else then have at it - but I warn you that the UI is lagging behind most popular CRPGs. You can’t even check the world map whilst in a town.

Metal Gear Solid V

It’s like an RPG. Despite not having a main character with stats, in this open world game of hide and seek you kidnap soldiers who in turn become your stats. Through them you gain access to new abilities. Through them you are drip-fed the resources you steal, only becoming able to spend all that you’ve stolen by having enough accountants to do your taxes. It is a brilliant work of roleplaying economics and a thoroughly enjoyable open world game. One where I can completely ruin a mission yet chuckle at my attempts to save what’s left of my dignity.

It also fails to stick the landing. At around the 20th mission the game starts committing to its plot and the rot sets in. Bit by bit it becomes worse to play. There was trouble at Konami when the game was made and it feels like the end of the game was hit the hardest. This was the part that was tested the least and had the worst ideas thrown into it. Metal Gear Solid V is still worth it for the 1st half of the game.

Final Fantasy 8

It’s like the other Final Fantasy games but poorly paced and balanced. The junction system is incredibly interesting in that it tries to sidestep the whole issue of items by gluing your characters to guardian angels. It’s built in card game Triple Triad is simple and engaging. The story is kinda interesting with some time travel shenanigans going on...

But it’s pacing is dreadful with endlessly copypasted rooms. The magic draw system is miserable (and yes I know you can get GFs to convert items to magic but then it’s more tedious busy work to upscale all the magic into something work attaching). The world map is shockingly empty. And the characters are just yawn, yawn, yawn.

Pick it up on sale.

Torchlight 2

It’s like Diablo 2 but not quite as good. Still worth playing though. I got it on the Switch and found that playing it with a gamepad was a pleasant experience.

It has a few balance problems with the Engineer class being ridiculously overpowered compared to any of the others (and way more fun). And there’s some annoying bugs that prompted a few reloads. Still pretty entertaining however.

Pokemon Shield

It’s like every other Pokemon game (surprise surprise) but easier. As much as I like how they’ve removed a lot of busywork from this entry, it makes it feel like the only challenge in the previous titles was the busywork. When really it was the busywork that held you back from just kerb-stomping everything in your path.

It’s not until the final DLC that you’re given some pokemon that are needlessly tedious to catch and some group battles using randomly selected pokemon that test your knowledge of the game’s systems. The only real challenge in the game is in the online multiplayer against humans where your pokemon level is normalised and encyclopedic knowledge of the title’s history is required.

My internet is terrible so the online gameplay is dead to me. It’s a very fun game, but also a very disappointing one.

Burnout Paradise

It’s like a sandbox game for cars. Except that you’re not really driving a car, it’s more like you’re driving a bobsleigh with a rocket attached to it. Unlike most driving games you aren’t given terrain that slows you down. Even if you hit a wall you’ll skate off it so long as you collide sideways. The game just wants you to drive like an arsehole and go faster and faster - to the tune of Epic by Faith No More (literally).

I mean yeah, it’s not an RPG by any stretch but it’s one of the best sandbox games I’ve played. Even when you’re not doing a “mission” you can just drive around the city finding back alleys and ramps to fly off of. It’s just a massive playground with very little negative feedback.

Cyberpunk 2077

It’s like a bunch of different games you’ve played before but not quite as good. The story is the best bit. I really liked the characters I got to hang out with. I guess I would have enjoyed the gun fights if I hadn’t been playing Doom 1 before I played it. And I would have enjoyed the stealth if I hadn’t already played Metal Gear Solid V with its superior A.I. It has cool Obra Dinn style brain movies to explore for detective work but I enjoyed the spectacle of them more than the execution (though I did enjoy them more than Obra Dinn which I found tedious to navigate or understand).

I saw one review say it was the most backwards view of the future. Not imagining what could be but endlessly paying homage to cyberpunk stories of the past.

I see other reviews say play it when it’s fixed. When the myriad of bugs (and I experienced enough to impact gameplay) are solved.

I say play the sequel. It’s worth experiencing but there’s too much going on that’s playing catch up to other titles.

Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

It’s like Rogue. I first played Shiren 2 on the Nintendo DS and was amazed by its deep systems and story meta progression - various tales progressing in the game only after each death and subsequent replay.

This entry is technically Shiren 5. Holy shit the content in this thing. There are 15 optional dungeons with different rules. Over a hundred block pushing puzzles using various mechanics of the game that you can just walk up and play in the 2nd village you enter. A minesweeper minigame. Loads of tutorial levels. All of these give you rewards which you can take on your main adventure which is a wholly different set of dungeons. I’ve unlocked several companions to adventure with and the game is hinting there are even more later on. It is obscene the amount of value there is packed into this title. And it’s fun. A little unfair at times, but as with all roguelikes the later depths require knowledge and a lot of caution. Strong recommendation for roguelikers.

Dicey Dungeons

It’s like Dream Quest but with dice. I played the prototype of this at the 7DRL after party. Terry was quite bashful about his creation and didn’t want to submit it. I honestly didn’t see why he shouldn’t as many of us had made far worse in the past.

I put off playing this until it finally landed on the Switch as complete as any roguelike can hope to be. It’s quite different to Dream Quest in that it requires a bit of math to do well in. If you’re not prepared to do basic sums then it’s hard to make progress. Also unlike Dream Quest it’s very balanced. There’s definitely some cheesy tactics you can pull off to get cheap victories but not without some thought and planning.

In a sea of deck building roguelikes, Dicey Dungeons is quite simply refreshing. There’s a lot of good ideas in here you won’t see elsewhere - give it a go.

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ddarker-dreams · 2 years

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i have such Strong feelings about what we’ve seen from sumeru’s story so far that i wanted to take a second and ramble about it before i internally combust. because man. maybe my expectations were very low (they were), but i loved how everything turned out. it only feels fair to give credit where credit is due after i ripped into the inazuma archon quest for over a year.

i think the main thing this region has is... cohesiveness? narratively, it makes sense why inazuma lacked this; it’s an archipelago that’s divided by war. but it felt like sumeru trimmed a lot of the fat off its story and we got a more fulfilling experience as a result. characters have very clear motivations that are easy to empathize with/understand. one of the conflicts that we’re introduced to immediately grabbed my attention, that being the total apathy toward kusanali by the nation of sumeru’s people. in the prior three nations, we saw such total reverence from the people toward their current archon... so this deviation from the norm helps give sumeru a unique identity.

the second part of sumeru’s archon quest has got to be one of my favorites thus far. there was suspense that felt well-earned and i wasn’t constantly asking myself ‘why would anyone do that???’ like i was during the inazuma storyline. unraveling the mystery was a real joy. they gave just enough information to keep your interested piqued, but didn’t tip their hand to reveal too much. i’m trying to keep my expectations in check because i was immensely disappointed by part III of inazuma’s archon quest, but i feel part III for sumeru will be something special.

then we get to the aranyaka world quest................. which is a new favorite of mine too.

i got attached to those little suckers so fast. i really have to give mihoyo props for their design because i mean...

LOOK AT THIS FELLA!!! I LOVE THEM ALL!!!

i saw some complaints that the aranara’s dialogue was too dense, so this might be more of a personal preference, but i absolutely found it a joy to read everything they said . as a person who has played multiple CRPGs (i’m looking at You disco elysium), i’m always down to read pages after pages in my video games. i can see how it isn’t for everyone though. from a video game design standpoint, i also liked how playing through the quest gave us a more clear cut way to explore the massive region. one of the things i feel iffy about when it comes to Super Massive open world RPGs is that i just... get overwhelmed and worry i’m missing out? i feel the developers are able to make the experience more special when they have a better guess of what routes players might take. anyway. that’s a bit of an unrelated tangent.

to conclude this massive word soup that you get a gold star if you read any amount of, i think this shows genshin’s main story is headed in a solid direction. i was not so sure about that after inazuma’s main storyline finished (not counting limited time events, which did a good job). of course there’s the major issue of orientalism being prevalent in the character design/lack of skin tone diversity in a region deriving its inspiration from SWANA countries/history, although i hardly feel qualified to give my two cents on that. it’s such a shame that this region excelled in so many areas just. didn’t in this one. we could’ve had it all 😔............

#lock plays genshin

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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25 Best RPGs Ever Made

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It’s almost cruel to talk about the best RPGs ever made. Not only is it the kind of topic that inspires especially heated debates, but even a shortlist of the greatest RPGs ever may leave you desperately trying to find the time to somehow play them all.

Then again, the thing that separates the best RPGs from the rest is that they never really make you feel like you’re in a rush to “beat” them or move on to the next thing. They grab you by the hand and take you on a journey defined by character building, storytelling, world design, and, most importantly, the very convincing idea that you are no longer simply yourself but rather have the chance to truly become the kind of legendary figure you used to only be able to daydream about.

Whether they’re JRPGs, CRPGs, Tactical RPGs, or ARPGs, the best RPGs ever made are united by their ability to ease the escape from your burdens, your worries, and your world by taking you on an adventure the likes of which you simply won’t find in any other game.

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25. Disco Elysium

It may be the newest game on this list, but in less than two years, Disco Elysium has changed the way some of the industry’s best creators approach the art of video game writing and RPG design.

Though it lacks a proper combat system, this hard-boiled detective adventure is never lacking in intensity. With its fascinating moral dilemmas and incredible writing, Disco Elysium raised the bar in terms of challenging us to define who we are in its intoxicating world. If that isn’t role-playing, what is?

24. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Tactical RPGs don’t always get the love some of their genre cohorts enjoy, but it’s nearly impossible to not respect everything that Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance does so well.

Fire Emblem’s “rock, paper, scissors” style combat shines brighter than ever in this 2005 GameCube classic, but it’s the way this RPG’s incredible plot highlights the thrills of Fire Emblem’s high-risk permadeath system that puts it over the top. This is a simply brilliant blend of tactics and raw emotion that few games in this genre have come close to besting.

23. Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar

There’s a healthy debate to be had about the best Ultima game ever, but Ultima 4 gets the nod here by virtue of this sequel’s sheer audacity.

Free of nearly every overused role-playing trope, Ultima 4 tasks you with finding yourself in an age of enlightenment rather than battling some great evil during a dark time. Ultima 4 deserves more credit than it typically receives for its plot that focuses on internal struggles in a time of peace, but it’s this game’s Virtues system, unusual character-building mechanics, and truly open nature that make it special to this day.

22. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Look, Vampire: The Masquerade was a tragically broken game upon its release and is only really playable today thanks to fan updates. However, so many of Masquerade’s problems can be attributed to its incredible ambition.

Some of the best tabletop-style RPG mechanics ever perfectly complement a truly unique RPG world where vampire clans battle for control of an extensive underground society. At its best, Vampire: The Masquerade is even better than that premise makes it sound.

21. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey Of The Cursed King

Ranking the Dragon Quest games is a tall enough task in and of itself, but there’s something to be said for how Dragon Quest 8 so perfectly captures most of the things that make this series great while adding a few necessary improvements.

Here’s a Dragon Quest game that offers a 100 hour+ journey packed with the incredible settings and memorable characters this series is known for that still manages to make the whole thing just accessible enough to encourage even the timid to participate in a truly epic adventure.

20. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

What is there left to say about KOTOR? After all, you probably know about its all-time great Star Wars story, its memorable morality system, and certainly its incredible twist.

Instead, let’s focus on how BioWare managed to break down the wall that divided PC and console RPGs by releasing one of the most well-crafted, best-written, and surprisingly deep PC-style RPGs ever exclusively for a console. It’s as if millions of gamers cried out in joy at the collective realization that it suddenly felt like anything was possible no matter what platform you owned.

19. Secret of Mana

It’s really a testament to the quality of the SNES’ JRPG library that Secret of Mana isn’t even the first SquareSoft RPG that people usually think of when they think of that console.

Still, Secret of Mana is something close to a video game design miracle. Few other games have come this close to packing this much depth and heart into such a substantial RPG experience that never feels like a slog and even allows you to play with a friend. This is one of the most entertaining RPGs ever made.

18. Earthbound

For years, Earthbound fans had to beg and plead for gamers to go out of their way to give this initially overlooked RPG the chance it deserved. I even spent quite a few years preaching that same gospel.

Now, though, many gamers know that Earthbound is one of the weirdest, most creative, and most surprisingly emotional JRPGs ever made. From its bizarre story to its soundtrack that refuses to stick to a genre for more than a song, Earthbound is a truly unique creative vision the likes of which many weren’t prepared for at that time and likely won’t see again.

17. Vagrant Story

Vagrant Story is another one of those games that were initially overlooked by many of the people who may have enjoyed it most. Even positive reviews said that Vagrant Story was too complicated, too dry, and maybe too much of an investment.

Years later, some of those criticisms remain, but they’re often quickly drowned out by praise for Vagrant Story’s unique take on the dungeon crawler genre and the ways that it juggled a pleasantly deep combat system with a dark, subtle, and mature narrative. There’s a world in which Vagrant Story achieved Dark Souls levels of fame, but it’s still rightfully remembered as one of the best dungeon crawlers ever.

16. Persona 5

There are very few misses in the Persona franchise, but Persona 5’s story and style arguably elevate it over the other Persona titles that could have easily appeared on this list.

Alright, if I’m being very honest, Persona 5 gets the nod here for its style alone. This title’s design team took no piece of on-screen real estate for granted and managed to turn even the most mundane piece of UI into art. The worst part about this game is spending almost 100 hours with your jaw on the floor.

15. Final Fantasy 9

You’ll soon discover that Final Fantasy 9 essentially “beat” Final Fantasy 7 for a spot on this list. They’re obviously both great games, but there are just so many little things that separate Final Fantasy 9 from the series’ revolutionary 7th (numbered) installment.

Final Fantasy 9’s characters, story, world, and music are simply among the best in franchise history. While it certainly doesn’t hurt that Final Fantasy 9 returned to a wonderful medieval setting, this incredible swan song for the original PlayStation ultimately gets the nod for the ways that it so perfectly utilizes and improves on so many of the things the FF franchise does so well.

14. Deus Ex

Deus Ex may owe a lot to the System Shock series, but when it comes to executing the ambitious concept of a narrative-driven first-person RPG series that emphasizes environmental storytelling and character building, the original Deus Ex arguably stands alone.

While Deus Ex’ bionic implant system and the way it offered multiple solutions to almost every situation are just brilliant bits of roleplay excellence, the game is arguably best remembered for its conspiracy theory narrative and how it sent you across the globe in search of something close to the truth.

13. Suikoden 2

While many RPGs (including an especially famous one we’ll be talking about in a bit) are built around assembling a party, few do it better than Suikoden 2 and its cast of 108 “collectible” characters with unique personalities, abilities, and stories.

That large cast of character is understandably the game’s highlight feature, but what’s easy to forget about Suikoden 2 is how its incredible political storyline, castle building minigame, and surprisingly enjoyable combat system so easily ensnare you even if you aren’t especially interested in finding every available party member.

12. Planescape: Torment

For years, I’ve heard Planescape Torment fans argue that it features the best story in RPG history. Well, you know what? They…might actually be right.

Planescape: Torment’s story of the “Nameless One” quickly evolved into a philosophical meditation on the nature of existence that never feels as pretentious as that description may make it sound. This masterpiece expertly forces you to confront the implications and impact of every decision you make in a way that feels pleasantly organic. This is a nearly unrivaled example of choice-driven storytelling.

11. Baldur’s Gate 2

There’s a strong case to be made that Baldur’s Gate 2 is the best “pure” D&D style RPG ever, but what’s really so impressive about this title is how it translated D&D’s most complicated concepts to a digital medium so easily that you’ll likely find yourself wondering why other games haven’t been able to pull that feat off with such apparent ease.

Of course, there’s nothing easy about Baldur’s Gate 2‘s design. Its choice and consequence-based storytelling and stunningly deep character-building systems have often been replicated, but it’s hard to top one of the best RPG developers ever working at the top of their game.

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10. Dark Souls

It’s always a little controversial to label Dark Souls as an RPG, but the two things that this game does better than most in terms of classic RPG genre conventions are class distinction and character building.

To survive in the world of Dark Souls, you have to understand your character and your own abilities in a way that goes beyond knowing which button to hit. The bond you form with your character by the time that you finish Dark Souls is something that the best RPGs strive for but rarely achieve. You truly feel like you have become your in-game persona and belong in this game’s wonderful yet horrifying world.

9. Pokémon Red and Blue

In case you’re wondering, this spot nearly went to Pokémon Gold and Silver based on quality alone. Ultimately, though, the cultural impact of Red and Blue was too great to ignore.

There’s a very good chance Pokémon was the first RPG that many people lost themselves in, which is all the more impressive when you consider that it’s a shockingly deep RPG in its own right rather than a simple “introduction” to the genre. Adventures are supposed to feel magical rather than cumbersome, and few RPG adventures are as consistently magical as this one.

8. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind

Look, I know Skyrim is the blockbuster best-seller, and I’ve even argued that Oblivion is the best Elder Scrolls game ever, but much like Pokemon Red and Blue, it’s hard to argue against the impact of Morrowind and how it forever changed our expectations for the scope of an RPG.

Morrowind‘s status as one of the first modern open-world RPGs (at least based on how we use usually that term today) is impressive enough, but what’s so shocking about this game is that few RPGs that followed in its footsteps have come close to topping Morrowind‘s visual creativity and lore. It’s so easy to forgive so many of the ways that Morrowind hasn’t aged especially well once you’ve fallen down the shockingly deep rabbit hole of its character-building possibilities and world-building.

7. Fallout: New Vegas

The debate over the best Fallout game will go on, but for the moment, let’s put down our swords and talk about all of the things that make Fallout: New Vegas so unbelievably brilliant.

Rarely have we ever seen an “open-world” RPG that puts this much attention into its side quests, out-of-the-way locales, and minor characters. Most open-world games try to sell you on the idea that you can go anywhere and do anything, but Fallout: New Vegas is one of the few that will encourage even the most focused gamers to see it all. More importantly, it manages to offer a variety of potential paths forward that only reveal themselves based on how you navigate its complex web of choices. It’s the kind of game that makes you want to stand up and take a bow.

6. Mass Effect 2

There are some who will say that Mass Effect’s core promise of a galaxy that’s fate will be impacted by most of your choices was always too ambitious. There are others who will argue, “It wasn’t. Just look at Mass Effect 2.”

Mass Effect 2 is arguably the closest BioWare came to realizing their most ambitious design ideas. Despite working with (often against) a scope that would make most studios weep in the corner, BioWare packed this sequel with a legion of memorable characters with their own complicated arcs that slowly reveal themselves as you brazenly explore a galaxy that feels ready to open up or crumble at your feet at any time. Mass Effect 2 does all of that and still manages to be a blast to play throughout.

5. The Witcher 3

The first two Witcher games are incredible, but if you find that most people don’t seem to be able to put The Witcher 3’s impact into words, that’s probably because even the first two games couldn’t quite prepare them for this masterpiece.

The Witcher 3 has side stories that would be worthy of campaigns in lesser games. I honestly still can’t quite explain how this game remains so fresh and exciting even after dozens of hours of play. Many of us grew up dreaming of being thrown in an elaborate medieval fantasy world where we truly felt like the hero that could shape the fortunes of all, and The Witcher 3 might just be the ultimate piece of sword and sorcery fantasy wish fulfillment.

4. Final Fantasy 6

Look, I could sit here all day and talk about the virtues of Final Fantasy 6 or even how its best moments are still capable of reducing gamers to tears. I could tell you about the heroes, the villains, the plot beats, and all the other things that make this game the classic that few will debate that it is.

Instead, I want to talk about how Final Fantasy 6 changed how so many of us look at gaming. This title’s prestigious nature was so prominent that it almost feels like developer Squaresoft traveled into the future and brought something back with them. This was the kind of game you begged people to play and it was the kind of game that made you pledge your allegiance to the very concept of gaming.

3. Diablo 2

In an earlier article, I talked about how Diablo turned RPGs into an addiction. Somehow, that brilliant game managed to retain all the deep qualities of the greatest D&D adventures and wrap them around a simplified combat system that had many of us playing until the wee hours of the morning completely unaware of what was happening in our own world.

Well, Diablo 2 did all of that and made the whole thing so much better that you rarely even hear people talk about the original Diablo anymore. If the highlight of an RPG is that moment when you so completely lose yourself in its world that the troubles of your own existence leave your mind, Diablo 2 arguably reaches that point faster than almost any other RPG ever made.

2. World of Warcraft

I often wonder how I would explain to a child of the ‘80s or early ‘90s that a game like WoW exists. I suppose I’d just say “See, there’s this persistent world filled with wonders that you and your friends can spend thousands of hours exploring as you work together to defeat overwhelming threats and write your own adventures.” They’d probably understand the appeal of that idea but may not be able to comprehend how such a thing could be possible.

WoW may require one hell of a commitment to get the most out of it, and the game has had some ups and downs over the years, but the fact of the matter is that there is really no other RPG that can offer what the best moments in WoW history have to offer. It’s a truly magical experience that you’ll willingly sacrifice your free time to for the simple fact that it offers experiences you could only previously dream of.

1. Chrono Trigger

Maybe this is an oddly appropriate statement for a game about time travel, but I’m fairly certain that Chrono Trigger will forever remain a timeless masterpiece.

Chrono Trigger is an almost flawless game that not only combines so many of the things that we love about RPGs but arguably perfects them. Assembled by a dream team of some of the best JRPG creators ever, Chrono Trigger makes even the most seemingly mundane elements of its adventure feel absolutely joyful. When this game wants to go big, though, it does it in a way that few other games could ever dream of topping. Here’s a game with over 10 endings and a multi-layered time travel plot that moves with the effortless pace of a game of Tetris.

Chrono Trigger is simply one of the best examples of curated RPG design that has ever or will ever be crafted.

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Outer Wilds and the Beauty of Emergent Gameplay Design

February 4, 2020 10:00 AM EST

Sometimes, discovering what your objective is can be your objective in and of itself, which makes the gameplay of Outer Wilds so compelling.

Editor’s Note: mild spoilers for Outer Wilds concepts are present in this editorial. Specific details and plot elements are kept as vague as possible, but but this is a game best experienced blind. Exercise caution before reading, but do play the game first and come back to this editorial after. It’s worth your time.

Had I played Outer Wilds in 2019, it would inevitably have been in my recent Top 10 list. A safe estimate would probably be that it would be #4, since it didn’t impact me quite as much as Disco Elysium, but I digress. What I’m saying is that Outer Wilds is an excellent video game, and I’m glad that I got the chance to tackle it recently.

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Now, I would absolutely like to spend the rest of this article gushing about specific parts of Outer Wilds that I liked, including hugely interesting moments or revelations…but I won’t. Much of the charm and fascination that I had with Outer Wilds came from solving its mysteries entirely on my own. It might not be like that for others, but figuring things out entirely from a smattering of clues or acting on unspoken cues was a huge highlight for me.

You begin Outer Wilds by waking up on your home planet of Timber Hearth, staring up at the stars. You’re about to launch on your first space flight, and the opening section serves as a tutorial for many elements of the game you’ll come to experience. One big story beat happens, and then you will launch into space. At this point, freedom is yours! Anywhere you’d like to go in the solar system is completely open to you, once you’ve come to grips with the flight systems. You’ll never get any more tools or permanent upgrades beyond what you start with: the Scout Launcher, Signalscope, jetpack, and your spaceship.

The NPCs will offer a couple of basic suggestions: take a practice trip to the nearby moon? Or perhaps you’d like to meet up with the other explorers from Timber Hearth for tips and advice? The choice of actions you take is yours…up until the Sun promptly goes supernova after 22 minutes, ending all life in the solar system. Yes, that includes yours. After that, you begin once again on Timber Hearth, waking up and staring at the stars. Your ship computer carries over any points of interest or notes that you discovered, but that’s it. Time to do it again…and again…until you start figuring out what is happening and if this abrupt ending to the universe could possibly be prevented.

A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma

What follows for the duration of Outer Wilds is a rhythm of learning the workings of the solar system. Each planet offers a set of unique challenges, and solving them will reveal more parts of a bigger mystery. A precursor race left behind traces of many interlinked science projects, and their notes will frequently reference other places or experiments taking place on wholly different planets.

It struck me fairly early on that the only thing I was doing to progress was simply furthering my understanding of the game’s mechanics and setting. This is hardly a unique case, but Outer Wilds is extremely hands-off in letting the player solve this system-sized puzzle. You can’t make the puzzles easier by upgrading your jetpack or oxygen tanks. Ship upgrades to withstand hazards don’t exist. There’s no weapons, and any hazards you find just have to be navigated around.

From beginning to end, I was driving the entire experience forward. A mystery laid before me, expertly crafted and divided into several different information clusters that organically flowed between each other. It became a massive web of science fiction intrigue, and I just had to keep going and see it through to the end. There was always that timer in the back of my mind, yet death by supernova or other hazard was but an inconvenience…and other times, a hasty reset was exactly what I needed to catch a window of opportunity.

A single loop was rarely the same. Sometimes I’d try to act on a hint I’d picked up along the way, only to be missing something crucial to aid my understanding. I’d hurtle into the side of cliffs by accident, park my ship in a place that saw it ejected into space without me, or overestimated distances and run out of oxygen in a cave somewhere. Perhaps I’d uncover a clue about a timed event that would happen ten minutes earlier in a loop, so I’d close out the remaining time by attempting to jetpack to the next planet over. Sometimes, the music would start to signal the end of the loop, and I’d just wait it out by watching the end.

And in some loops…I’d just explore, or try different things without aim. How close could I skirt to the sun to gravity slingshot away? How far out of the system could I make it? Outer Wilds would sometimes possess the atmosphere of a horror game, leaving me tense as I raced against the clock to accomplish some objective I had set. But on other loops I was far more relaxed, just taking in the environment or experimenting with the mechanics further. Having the fear of death and significant consequences removed was relaxing; I could just enjoy and find the unspoken objectives at my own leisurely pace.

Closing the Loop

There is an ending to Outer Wilds, mind you. The mystery does eventually unfold, and a conclusion is reached. I overcame one final loop, fraught with danger and even the threat of permanent consequences this time around. But eventually, all the puzzle pieces were in place, I watched the ending, and I was able to roast a marshmallow one more time before the credits rolled. The sensation was…bittersweet. Finishing the game was an accomplishment, and I’m proud that I managed to reach it. But there’s a pervasive knowledge now that will forever color any attempts that I have to play Outer Wilds again. You can never go back to the first time…we can never experience those same sensations again.

The pervading knowledge is mechanical, also. All the tools and trinkets available from the start will carry you through to the end; what changes is simply the understanding of what you can accomplish with them. Some clues are less about the game’s core mystery, and more hints as to entire laws of physics. One simple sentence in the game — which I won’t spoil — absolutely blew my mind once I processed the practical implications. Subsequent “Ah-hah!” moments of the game felt like major triumphs the likes of which I so rarely experience in games nowadays.

This brings us neatly to the core element of what works so well in Outer Wilds: emergent gameplay design. At no point did the game do anything more than nudge me out into the solar system. I could go anywhere, do anything, and act purely on self-motivation and curiosity. Everything I needed was right in front of me from the outset, but my willingness to play with the systems and explore lead to massive revelations and ramifications. Even stumbling through the tutorial has a looseness to its structure. Hell, revisiting that opening section later in the game made me really just how many future clues had been hinted at there, hiding in plain sight.

I play a significant amount of RPGs; grinding experience, gathering stronger equipment, and attaining incremental upgrades to overall power is familiar territory to me. There’s objectives to complete, requests to answer, rewards to attain, achievements to grind…as much as I quite enjoy these gameplay loops, it can truly start to become a little too structured. Some games end up feeling too much like busywork and maintenance.

“You can never go back to the first time…we can never experience those same sensations again.”

But without that kind of gameplay hook, many players might feel lost or overwhelmed. What’s our next step? What must we do from here? If I can’t best this challenge, what can I do to ease future attempts? Abandoning these essential questions and leaving it up to the player to craft answers is a bold move. It’s to the absolute credit of Mobius Digital that Outer Wilds managed to pull this off with such aplomb. The preservation of the ship log, the marker within if there’s a remaining clue, and a handful of audio cues are all the guidance you’ll be receiving. There’s no mechanical benefit to completing anything; your reward is writing to read, and knowledge for future loops.

Even games of an exploratory, free-form nature tend to fall back on markers and progression systems. Minecraft has a progression system through various equipment tiers, assuming you don’t just take to Creative Mode and build things. Breath of the Wild is large and rewards exploration with unique vistas, but also tangible rewards of shrines or Korok seeds.

Unspoken Player Guidance

Strangely, the game that I most liken to Outer Wilds is Super Metroid. Landing on planet Zebes in Super Metroid, Samus is isolated. The atmosphere is oppressive, despite your weapons and abilities. But the opening sections of the game are a masterclass of game design. Super Metroid subtly guides the player to their first handful of upgrades, encouraging them to figure out what they can do with subtle prompts, and then set the tone and stakes as its once dead world starts to come alive around you.

From landing on the planet to the first boss, the only instruction or line of text given is how to swap weapons to missiles. Everything else is inferred by the player as they descend and then return from that quick expedition. This trend holds throughout all of Super Metroid, keeping guidance and lessons vague as you navigate the planet. But always, there’s cues in how the levels are designed or laid out that encourage you onward. Even the most advanced concepts like wall jumps and Shinesparking is conferred not by text, but by seeing friendly creatures do something similar, and then mimicking their actions.

It’s this kind of non-vocal discovery and guidance that both Outer Wilds and Super Metroid excel at. Laying out a world and systems at the player’s feet, the onus is on you to explore it. Objectives must be uncovered first, and then achieved. Allowing the player to come to grips with gameplay systems, but not explicitly telling them? That creates massively impactful moments once they’re discovered. This subtle, unspoken game design is far more difficult to accomplish, but the fact that Outer Wilds managed it continues to impress.

“Subtle, unspoken game design is far more difficult to accomplish, but the fact that Outer Wilds managed it continues to impress.”

Now, I don’t intend to conclude this write-up by saying that all direction or explicit instruction in games is bad. I like RPGs too much to champion eschewing all progression systems. Nonetheless, Outer Wilds took a chance with its design: here’s a ship and basic tools, now go forth into this solar system! Live, die, repeat, over and over and over again…no progression systems, checklists, or clearly delineated objectives; just a solar system filled with curiosities and a mystery at the centre of it. Knowledge and understanding is all you’ll take with you on your next attempt, and it’s all you truly need to make it through.

Player-driven emergent design is a rare thing to behold in a game as well-curated and constructed as Outer Wilds. I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did, yet I’ve only come to appreciate it more as I wrote this. Once I watched the recent Noclip documentary on the game’s development, I was even more impressed with the design principles that went into it. Games that demand your time and constant attention are increasingly prevalent, so something hands-off and indirect was a breath of fresh air that I didn’t know I’d need. Any confusion generated by Obsidian’s similarly-titled game are unfortunate, but Outer Wilds is surely worth your time for a player-driven experience. Also, you should go play Super Metroid. It’s real good.

February 4, 2020 10:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/outer-wilds-and-the-beauty-of-emergent-gameplay-design/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=outer-wilds-and-the-beauty-of-emergent-gameplay-design

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Iyane’s Top 10

December 31, 2019 12:00 PM EST

2019 had a lot of cool mecha related games, but a lot of other great games from other genres too. Here are my top 10 from this year.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

I assume anyone who clicked on this wishes to read me talking about myself and my Unneeded Opinions (one of my favorite sentences of 2019), so I’ll do just that. 2019 was another year that went by in a flash. I’ve reached my first anniversary writing on DualShockers in September, and I’ve been pretty busy overall. As such, there are multiple games on this list I actually didn’t finish yet.

There are many games released in 2019 that I was really hyped about but didn’t have the time to try out yet either, and I’d like to start by listing some of them:

We first have games I’d consider mainstream, such as Devil May Cry 5, Judgment (I actually bought it in Japanese) Astral Chain. Then you’ve got more niche things, like Daemon X Machina (I’m waiting just in case a PC port gets announced), the Grandia remasters, SaGa Scarlet Grace, and Friends of Mineral Town Remake.

Lastly, we’ve got some visual novel games: Berubara Gakuen, Gnosia (Japanese outlets hyped up this game in a similar fashion that what happened with Disco Elysium in the US and Europe), Ciconia Phase 1 (the thing I was actually hyped for the most in 2019), Eve Rebirth Terror (idem), and the Yu-No remake.

I’m on a quest to play everything that Hiroyuki Kanno wrote after getting my mind blown by Eve Burst Error. Yu-No is one of these things, but the character design in the remake is bland as hell. Ryou Nagi is a great artist, and you can see that with Heavy Object or Ar Tonelico, but for some reason, everything remake-related he touches turn into the blandest thing ever. The same thing happened for the newest Langrisser I&II remake; it’s like some huge conspiracy. As such, I’ll probably grab the Yu-No remake in Japanese, as that version includes a port of the original.

Anyway, that was just a small intro to show my tastes and what to expect in this ranking. Here are the games I’ve enjoyed the most in 2019, and note that it’s not only games released in 2019. Also, note that the top 5 are all pretty much my top 1.

10. Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Masterpiece 1995-2001

I suck at Virtual-On. But I love it, especially Oratorio Tangram, and being able to play it remastered on PS4 is nice. The only thing these ports of the three Virtual-On games sadly lack is local multiplayer split-screen. Virtual-On is the originator of Gundam Vs like games and all the anime 3D arena battlers of varying quality releasing each year, and it’s the best one there is.

Other games I considered for this position were Destiny Connect, Shenmue 3 (which I didn’t play myself and watched an online friend’s playthrough), and Zanki Zero (I was supposed to review that but ended up never finding the time to finish said review). I picked Virtual-On because it didn’t require me to write 2000 words to explain my mixed feelings about it.

9. Space Engineers

According to Steam, I’ve played 47 hours of Space Engineers with my online friends. I’m pretty sure at least 20 hours of that was us trying to figure out how the game works and being annoyed and how counter-intuitive many elements are. This includes reading wikis and only to realize it’s outdated info, looking for Uranium only to realize you can’t find any on planets, or trying to design vehicles, copying blueprints and recreating them block by block. And a lot of other dumb stuff.

Besides all these frustrations, Space Engineers is my favorite multiplayer game I’ve tried out this year and I’ve made some great memories with it, as an online friend streamed some of our adventures too. I’ve tried making the Senegalese flag with wind turbines (too long to explain): we managed a trip to a moon and putting the Algerian flag on it (a French joke too long to explain) and we did a MASK opening sequence parody with a vehicle parade.

8. Ocarina of Time Randomizer Version 5.0

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I actually put this on my list last year as well, but seeing that the game’s meta has changed since then, this is fine. Again, I don’t have the time to play this myself and enjoy watching races instead, This year, ZeldaSpeedRuns held the OoT Randomizer Season 2 tournament, which ended in June with the victory of Marco against WTHH.

Now, the Season 3 tournament bracket matches just started in early December, with the version 5.0 0f the mod, changing the meta. We’ve already got a surprising upset, with first tournament winner and 2nd qualifier ATZ losing against 31 qualifier Killerapp23. Getting into detail would take too long and be incomprehensible if you’re not already into OoT rando, so I’m just gonna say this is the most interesting esports thing to watch ever. And like I said last year, it’s incredibly fun.

7. Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

Wing Commander IV is one of the many games I’ve played in my childhood which left me with a huge impression. Along with things like Shenmue 1 & 2, this is one of the games I used to regularly quote until my high school years or so. I’ve finally got the time to rediscover the game this year. I didn’t end up replaying it myself though and watched a full playthrough of it. It was really interesting; I remembered many iconic scenes from the game and some characters, but I had no idea what the overall story was about anymore.

It’s surprising how anime space opera the story is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something Japanese inspired the story. It all comes to Japan. This also made me realize, in a sense, that Wing Commander IV is pretty much one of the first visual novels I played and what made me enjoy well-written stories and choices. This is also what made me both love and hate draconian choices, multiple routes and characters’ deaths. I hate not being able to save characters.

6. Romancing SaGa 3 Remaster

Back in my childhood I tried playing Romancing SaGa 3, as it was among the various SNES roms I had at disposal. I quickly realized that it’s completely different than most RPGs and unlike many games in Japanese such as Super Robot Wars 4: I couldn’t trial and error my way through.

Around 18 years later, Romancing SaGa 2 Remaster comes out in 2017; it’s awesome, and a masterpiece. And then in 2019, Romancing SaGa 3 Remaster is finally out and it’s even more awesome. I’m currently in the final area of the game after playing as Sarah, because she has a fluffy afro ponytail. I just wish the game had a turbo button.

Tie-in 6. Persona 5 Royal

This is a tie-in as that’s an enhanced version of a really recent game, which was my 2016 favorite. I purposely played through Persona 5 only once, only maxing the coops and not doing much of the other side content, in case such an enhanced version ever released.

Even then, and even considering how much of a masterpiece that Persona 5 is, clearing such a long game again is annoying. Most of the new scenes I’ve seen so far, most notably Kasumi’s and Takuto’s scenes, are all incredibly nice though. The renewed dungeons and bosses’ designs are fun, and Joker is even more Lupin The Third-like with the wire hook, but there’s nothing groundbreaking either. I’m far from reaching the new part at the original’s ending, as I’m just about to reach the Hawaii part. Hopefully, it’ll be a nice ride.

The five games below are all my actual number one.

5. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

I’ve been waiting for 13 Sentinels since when it got announced in 2015. I could even say since 2013, as I hoped a game related to the Vanillaware Happy New Year 2013 Geroge Kamitani artwork above would come out someday. I had incredibly high expectations for it and none of it were betrayed as of now.

It’s awesome. It’s fully-voiced. It’s got giant robots. It’s the most beautiful (2D) game since forever. It’s like if an old Japanese adventure game got made with current technology. It’s a shame the game bombed in Japan. If you’re interested, I’ve written more about the game, and I’m recording myself translating the game as I’m playing through it.

4. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is amazing on all points. I’ve rarely had so much fun walking around and exploring a city in a game. I think what makes the game the most amazing is how it’s pretty much the culmination of the Ys series since it switched to the party system, and as if one of the first versions of the first Ys games were transposed to 3D. The verticality of the environments is used so well you can still feel lost despite having a map. Falcom might pretty much be one of the smallest, penniless studios in Japan despite its longevity; they still make the best action RPGs ever. What I’ve seen of the story so far is particularly amazing too, and Toshihiro Kondo is a good writer along with being a good company president.

I’m currently taking a break from the game after reaching what I guess is around 1/3 of it. I was so hyped I had to play it at launch, but I want to do all the other Ys games I didn’t do yet first, even if it’s absolutely not necessary to understand the story. I like being able to understand every single reference in a series like this. I’m the kind of person who wishes to know exactly how many times Kazuya and Heihachi threw each other out of a volcano/mountain.

3. Super Robot Wars T

I didn’t play Super Robot Wars V nor SRW X as they initially didn’t release on Switch. If we don’t count SRW OG Moon Dwellers, which was on my top ten 2018 list, SRW T is my first SRW game since the SRW Z3 finale on PS3 in April 2015. It’s pretty great, be it the story, its cast list, or the animations. Everything about it is nice. Having things like Cowboy Bebop, Gunbuster, Rayearth, Gun x Sword, and Captain Harlock together feels incredible. It’s extremely sad that Captain Harlock’s seiyuu Makio Inoue passed away right after he finally got in SRW.

A new OG anime directed by Obari and a new OG game would be nice. I’m happy the series seemingly won’t get a new game in 2020, so the development teams can take their time.

2. Fire Emblem Fuukasetsugetsu / Three Houses

This game has my favorite cast of characters in a Fire Emblem game, along with Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu/Genealogy of the Holy War, and I could write a 1000 word article on every single character on this picture (if I was paid adequately for it). This is only one of the many reasons why I like this game. In a nutshell, I’d say I love the fact that I find it very innovative and yet similar to the other Fire Emblem games I’ve played and liked so far, and how it’s true for every aspect of the game.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

1. Project Sakura Wars/ Shin Sakura Taisen

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This opening sequence has over 1.7 million views, and half of these are all me. While I’m not done with Shin Sakura Taisen yet, I fail to imagine how the game could even disappoint me so far, seeing how amazing it is. Before the game launched, I wasn’t concerned about the battle system change, but whether the new cast would be interesting or not. If there was a world Guinness record for most baseless worry of 2019, this would get it. This game got everything that makes Sakura Taisen so awesome. The strong female characters, the cool mecha, the great worldbuilding, the comedy. It’s a great new start in the series and I hope we’ll get more. I shared a few impressions on the game and just like 13 Sentinels, I’m recording myself playing the game, translating at the same time.

That’s it for my top ten.

If you’re wondering about my expectations for 2020, the game I’m looking forward to the most so far is the Seiken Densetsu 3 remake: Trials of Mana. Then we also have things like FF7R, Rune Factory 5, Space Channel 5 VR, Brigandine…I’m also eager to see KOF XV even if I won’t play it. Lastly, 2020 will also mark the tenth anniversary of the Pretty Series franchise. The Pretty Rhythm anime seasons and its King of Prism sequels were my favorite anime of the decade, so I’m looking forward to what Avex and Takara Tomy have in store for the anniversary, and if we might get some games other than arcade games out of it.

I’m planning to stay on DualShockers and keep writing about Japanese games in the new year. I don’t have the time nor the paycheck to cover every single news as fast as possible, but I always try to bring to the table as much info as I can, along with relevant translations and observations. Hoping you’ll keep reading us in 2020.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 31, 2019 12:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-iyanes-top-10/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-iyanes-top-10

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