Author Archives: Kevin McFadyen

About Kevin McFadyen

Kevin McFadyen is a world traveller, a poor eater, a happy napper and occasional writer. When not typing frivolously on a keyboard, he is forcing Kait to jump endlessly on her bum knees or attempting to sabotage Derek in the latest boardgame. He prefers Earl Gray to English Breakfast but has been considering whether or not he should adopt a crippling addiction to coffee instead. Happy now, Derek?

Please Excuse My Oversight

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Well no review of video games in 2016 would be complete without touching on Overwatch. Like them or hate them, Blizzard seem adept in grooming a loyal purchasing base that will buy into every release so that it recoups development costs and then some. Overwatch – by nearly all metrics – is a success. It makes money hand over fist. It won numerous game industry accolades. It sports an enormous player base. It is, presumably, the shot in the arm for the company that has been mired in some bad press of whatever the hell is going on with World of Warcraft nowadays. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, while financially great, were critically floundering.

Overwatch and all associated images and media belong to Blizzard Entertainment and its associated artists and whatnot. But hey, at least they’ve finally expanded beyond their three rip-off IP into a sorta, maybe original but still somewhat rip-off IP!

Course, you could argue that Hearthstone was the financial and critical shot in the arm but I don’t follow Hearthstone at all. I mean, I tried it since Jeremy threw a beta invite to me. And I played it enough with its free pack until I came up against opponents which I simply could no longer beat without investing money in the game. It’s a digital collectable card game which mostly means whoever has the most disposable cash to pump into it will likely be the winner. There’s a reason I don’t play Magic (which you can dig through the archives to read) and that reason holds for why I don’t play Hearthstone.

Now, if you’ve been following the blog, Overwatch not getting my Game of the Year will come as no surprise. I’ve gone into great details about its shortcomings. But it’s been half a year and I’ve “beaten” it insofar as one can beat and endless online team-based shooter. So after half a year, where do we stand on the game?

Well, honestly, it’s still fun. And it’s still frustrating. The underlying issues are ever present. My misanthropy makes the game more of a slog when playing alone. There’s still the issue where a very small select of heroes are essentially required if you want to win matches (and often you’re hoping the enemy team is also full of selfish players that don’t want to be forced into the necessary heroes). We still have the issue of being held hostage to Blizzard’s random map choices (also rather important since as of this writing there’s a large bug that makes one hero nearly impossible to play on KOTH maps). And, of course, the window dressing of the game is still largely embarrassing. Though, I suppose Blizzard has officially made their mascot a lesbian so there’s that feather for their cap.

Blizzard as a company is pretty unapologetically evil Social Justice Warriors. They’ve done a very good job of providing lots of varied presentation in their character design and level locations lending the game a very smart, global appeal.

On the flip side, I’m still playing the game. So that’s a boon to Blizzard. It’s not the best game in its genre but it’s good enough. And more to Blizzard’s credit, they’ve been very good about supporting the game post launch. Overwatch has received two new heroes and two new maps not to mention celebrating four holiday events. The Overwatch development team stated they wanted to have “something” new released for the game every month and they’ve been pretty consistent in delivering on that goal.

Even better, the team has gone back to some original heroes and reworked their numbers and their kits. The most prominent of these changes was to a hero named Symmetra. She is basically the left over bits from Team Fortress’ Engineer character after Blizzard finished designing Torbjorn. Unfortunately for Symmetra, she was simply not good on release. I played her a bit (more than was certainly healthy) and could have written a very lengthy post covering in detail her failings. In large part, I think she was designed around her ultimate ability: the Engineer’s teleporter. Unfortunately, the way that Blizzard has implemented the teleporter has made it near universally a bum choice. So, in their rework, they gave Symmetra a choice of ultimates. She can either lay down the limited use teleporter or place a shield generator that is both more powerful than the weak personal shields she initially provided in terms of amount of health it covers and is useful in far more situations than the first point defence on hybrid maps where Symmetra had carved a very narrow niche.

And, outside of a few quality of life improvements, Symmetra was given a new ability. She can project a barrier with one thousand health that her team can hide behind. This has been a simple but fantastic ability and quite unexpected. Prior to Symmetra’s rework, Blizzard had shown no interest in actually overhauling abilities. Their usual tweaks were generally number adjustments in an attempt to push a hero into viability through sheer mathematics alone. Projected barrier not only showed that Blizzard was quite willing to simply throw out a bad idea but it ended up being a quite strong ability in its own right. Granted, projected shield is mostly great because Symmetra’s gun is a terror for the time being, but I’ve enjoyed frying witless enemies for weeks now and I hope that this continues on to the future.

The new heroes have been interesting as well. It shows an evolution in terms of Blizzard’s design capabilities. And while Sombra and Ana both come with ability kits packed with tons of utility, they’ve both also been really enjoyable to play. The earliest hero designs were a bit one note and bland so having these more unique characters in the game makes me eager to see what they’ll be trying next. And they’ve already announced that a third new hero is in the works with speculation swirling around it being a new tank. If they release a tank hero that is as enjoyable as Sombra, I’ll be over the moon (largely because no one in pubs wants to play tanks for some baffling reason).

The holiday events have been fun too. I mean, they’re mostly awful. I think only the Halloween Mann versus Machine-esque mode was worth playing. I know I only played the Mei’s Snowball Nightmare until I got my free chest and never loaded it again. But for those seeking a bit of gameplay variety it can be nice. And they released an update to allow separate queues for the Arcade modes which is some rules variations to the standard format of Overwatch’s games.

Credit where it’s due, Overwatch is a very visually appealing game. I would say their environmental artists really knock the level presentation out of the park even as the actual design leaves so much to be desired.

And, of course, there are the hats. Everyone wants the newest hats and some people are willing to drop way too much money on buying them. I won’t. I bought the game and absolutely refuse to spend an additional dime on it. Especially since it’s steep initial cost still hasn’t been quite met even with these additional content updates. But thankfully Blizzard has an in-game currency which can be used to buy whatever you like. And play long enough and most of your loot boxes from leveling will just be dupes that give you a slow trickle of Blizzard coins to save for these events.

Overall, Overwatch is ok. It’s fun but marred by some rather horrible design decisions. However, Blizzard is committed to supporting the scarred baby and for that I’m appreciative. I’ll probably still load it up all through 2017 since its short rounds is the perfect antidote to the scarce hours of evening play available to me. Whether I continue to play into 2018 is questionable. But there are worse things one could do in their spare time.

Starry Eyed but Not Star Struck

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Continuing our exploration of 2016, there’s another game I wish to discuss. Unlike Xcom 2, however, this title is a little more difficult. At least with Xcom 2 I could gush incoherently for two thousand words, recommend people pick it up then go back to making custom soldiers in the hopes of one day having a pool so large I wouldn’t require any randomly generated fools to show up in my fight against the aliens.

But while this one has aliens, murder, customization and a strong core design which it is attempting to refine, I can’t quite hold it to the same esteem. This game wasn’t going to win my Game of the Year accolade. In fact, I’d be surprised if it won anyone’s Game of the Year title. It’s a troubled little game, filled with good ideas and intentions but hampered by poor execution and mismanaged resources.

Starbound and all associated images belong to Chucklefish Games.

It’s made all the more pointed by the fact that the game was the in-house development for the company that published Stardew Valley. I am, of course, talking about Starbound – the Terraria (but not Terraria) science fiction game of exploration, resource gathering, dwelling building and boss killing by a Terraria designer (but not the Terraria designer).

I think it’s noteworthy that Stardew Valley is my Game of the Year and this is not. They share a number of similarities: 2D pixel graphics, retro game style, quirky aesthetic and casual gameplay. Unfortunately for Starbound, the game never really comes together like Stardew Valley does. And, alas, this is going to be a recurring theme throughout my review: not that Starbound isn’t as good as Stardew Valley but that Starbound is constantly compared to other games and routinely comes up short.

It’s impossible to discuss Starbound without mentioning Terraria. Least of which is because the lead designer Tiy honed his teeth on Terraria. However, I’ve played that game and actually loved it despite my hesitations. It was multiplayer so Derek dragged me into its murderous depths. Which was likely the only way I would pick up Terraria because it is not a pretty game by any measure. Its visuals are functional which is about the greatest compliment one can offer Terraria. So if there is one thing Starbound does better than its competitors, is that it really hits that visual charm.

However, Terraria really sucks you in through a very clever and well executed game mechanic loop. You’re initially thrown into a flat plain world with little direction save that you can go left, right or (as you soon discover) down. There’s a fun element of exploration as you are trying to figure out how to survive in Terraria’s strange little world that’s procedural generated so no two games are ever exactly the same. Once you figure out how to dig you begin to discover ores and with them recipes for crafting better tools, workstations and armour to protect yourself against the denizens of the world. As your base camp grows, so too does your ability to survive further afield. You’re soon learning that there are different biomes filled with their own hazards, monsters and rewards. In time, the player will discover certain boss monsters that will, invariably, murder them on first encounter. But then you learn the tactics to fight them, are elated at the great rewards you get for their murder and then start hunting for the next boss. In the meanwhile, you’re constantly looking to improve and expand your home with all the goodies and decorations you find and learn throughout your adventure.

It’s a fantastic loop where exploration leads to new challenge which requires the next tier of item improvements and advancement to overcome which rewards items that unlock the next step in exploration and the next challenge. Progress is clearly noted through the specific improvement in equipment and territory explored. You never once feel set back because even on death you know that you’re facing a more difficult adversary.

And it still includes the block building that made Minecraft popular. However, the building is but a single component of a greater cohesive whole. You want to build up your base because then you can attract different villagers who will provide you with new services or resources you wouldn’t have otherwise. And random events help to keep the players on their toes without resting too much on their success and shaking up predictability.

It’s very successful. It gives you the satisfaction of progression combined with the eagerness to see what’s next to come.

And it’s this simple feedback loop that Starbound entirely flubs.

I think part of the problem with Starbound was its early announcement and lengthy development in Early Access. Coupled with a poor initial design structure it languished in a troubled four year development cycle that doesn’t show that much time in its final product.

I understand why Starbound staggers in his department. It didn’t want to be a Terraria clone but wanted to fly on its own merits. Sadly, its very introduction is going to make any Terraria veteran leery about that premise. Outside of a stock opening that does the bare minimum to introduce the player to the world and mechanics, Starbound mostly thrusts you into a procedural generated world where you can only explore left, right or down. You must collect enough ores in order to craft armour and weapons that allow you to beat the first boss that then gives you access to new biomes with new ores that you use to improve your items in order to fight harder bosses that open up new areas to explore.

It’s Terraria but its done a whole lot worse. For one, while Terraria gives the illusion of freedom, you are pretty assured to progress down a very similar route as other players simply due to the structure of the game and the availability of certain resources. Starbound attempted to eschew this directed progression and expand further on a small element of Terraria: exploration. Once you’ve repaired your ship, the universe is yours to command. Unfortunately, true freedom in movement would ruin any sense of progression so areas are “scaled” and “locked” behind certain item requirements. Specific planet types are classified based on an unspecified “threat level” that gives an indication of how deadly its surface is. This accounts for the monster level and the environment effects. And while Starbound really wanted to give the illusion of a vast and special universe, it somehow manages to come across as more bland and generic than Terraria despite having way more locales to explore.

Part of this is through the poorly implemented procedural generation. Monsters are randomly generated for a number of planets but they mostly recycle the same small collection of body parts. It’s a cute idea that – in theory – would create a staggering amount of variation. In practice, you’ll see a lot of very familiar creatures that are the exact same as two star systems over, they might just have an eyeball on their tail instead. Furthermore, there are a number of pre-generated monsters that possess more complex behaviour and attack patterns (in an attempt to reach a more complex combat mechanic that’s closer to Terraria). However, there’s no real restriction on these pre-made monster spawn locations. Visit one garden planet and you’ll have essentially visited them all – not to mention have seen probably half or more of what a jungle, bog or Eden planet has to offer. The variety between planets isn’t as important as the variety between planet types so you’re basically better off exploring one of each than visiting multiple of a similar kind. This drastically reduces the sense of wonder and exploration of the universe as you’re mostly scouring through a small niche of different stars now, looking specifically for the one or two planet types you haven’t seen yet then setting down at any place that sounds interesting. And this isn’t even touching the random dungeons and points of interest which are equally recycled. I’ve lost count of the number of underground greenhouses I’ve discovered growing plastic plants and nothing of interest.

So, instead of needing a vast universe of cookie cutter planets, you could have simply had a single solar system with the six or so different planet types present in a row that you could hop across. In this way, you’d certainly feel a greater sense of progress as you moved from the interior of the system to the exterior (or vice versa). As Starbound is now, you don’t really feel any sense of progress. You’re simply coasting from one system to another, searching for different planet types and passing over all the ones you’ve already seen hours before. You might stumble across a planet that’s well out of your league early on then, depending on the direction you take, you might end up in a whole cluster of low level star systems. There’s nothing engaging about the slow crawl through the universe map and – least of all – any sense of accomplishment for pushing its boundaries out further and further.

I feel like the developers realized at some point that they were creating too much of a sandbox without enough direction to focus the game within it. To combat this, there is the Ark. This operates as a central hub, accessed through your ship’s teleporter or any ancient gateway you find on starter planets. This location is the same for every game, filled with the necessary merchants to see certain game elements can function. Unfortunately, there isn’t anywhere near the engagement with the Ark as there is with your home in Terraria. You don’t really accumulate important NPCs at the Ark like you do in Terraria. There are characters you pick up as the game progresses but they aren’t vital as the ones who already start there and mostly offer tangential tasks barely indistinguishable from those offered by the quest system. Furthermore, the Ark is a “protected” area which means you’re unable to affect the blocks there. This was, of course, designed so players couldn’t accidentally destroy a vital shop or something. It also means that they can’t add on to it either.

This isn’t to mean that the base building component is absent from the game. But it’s so incredibly incidental to the actual game play itself. In Starbound, you can form colonies by purchasing multiple colony deeds at one of the vendors in the Ark. When these are posted in a legal “dwelling” then a tenant will teleport in and take up residence. This individual will offer you rent (often in the form of useless items but every now and then they’ll remember to pay you in actual cash) and different tenants can provide different services. They are even tied into the procedural quest generation system. However, these quests are as simple as you would imagine. Typically, they’ll direct you to the nearest spawned point of interest and require that you either escort a randomly generated NPC back to them or that you trade with a randomly generated merchant for some boring knickknack. Complete enough quests for a tenant and they may offer to join your crew. Likewise, you can come across randomly generated villages and complete quests for those residences to get crew members.

The races of Starbound are cute but beyond the initial charm of a juxtaposition between an animal and human culture, there isn’t really much else going for them. We have Japanese fish, Fascist apes, Generic humans, Cowboy gas people, Carnivorous plants, Aztec birds and Medieval robots.

And more than anything, this is the strongest sense of progression in the game. The more crew you have join with you, the larger your ship will grow. Unfortunately, to expand your ship you also need to find enough upgrade modules which are simple loot spawned randomly in random dungeons. So even if you don’t want to, you’ll find yourself beaming down to boring planets you’ve already seen to search through dungeons you’ve already explored hoping that crates you’ve already opened will spawn modules you’ve already collected.

It’s a game of repetition and its excitement loses its lustre really quick.

Once again, I feel the developers realized the problem they were facing and thus the Ark provides the final core pillar of game play – a main quest. Terraria doesn’t possess a story of any kind. I mean, there might be lore if you cared but really the only impetus to move forward is the player’s own innate curiosity and desire to see the next step in the game. Starbound, however, introduces the player to the most uninspired and cliched plot a human could possibly devise in 2016 – there is some tentacled eldritch monster thing that’s broken out of prison and is trying to eat the universe and it’s up to you as the sole survivor of a special Earth task force to stop it. If this doesn’t sound familiar then you haven’t played: Mass Effect, Borderlands, Half-life, Halo, Crono Cross, Xcom, Starcraft, Metroid, Spore, Prototype, Day of the Tentacle, Alien Swarm, Doom, Dead Space… I mean just pick up a science fiction story and you’ve got a good chance that the core idea was already covered and done so in a manner far more compelling than Starbound.

Granted, I should a make a full disclosure here: I haven’t actually beaten Starbound yet. Instead, I’ve run into a rather game breaking bug that prevents me from loading my save. Because – more full disclosure – I’m running a massive overhaul mod for the game. Anyway, I’ve sunk around 130 hours into the game so I feel qualified enough to review it despite having not finished the main quest. And, get this, the main quest is about six missions long. That’s how disengaging it is. I’ve spent 130 hours actively avoiding the main quest because of how dry and dull this element was. Which, ironically, should have been the strongest element of the game.

You see, main missions are run in separated instances of the game world. They take place on “protected” maps which mean the player can’t place or remove blocks. It’s entirely based on the game play elements outside of the base building. Unfortunately, despite the variability in options, the combat and movement portions of the game are both incredibly shallow and really poorly done. This is the starkest contrast between Terraria and Starbound. I actually enjoyed fighting bosses in Terraria. I wanted to see what the next challenge was. I wanted to explore the newest biome.

Starbound’s bosses are really easy. Especially if you’ve accidentally crafted more advanced armour than the level of the boss. Which is incredibly easy to do since, in order to unlock the boss, Chucklefish have developed the most boneheaded mission type. Since the levels are removed from the universe, they can only be loaded by a specific panel on your ship once you’ve found the coordinates for the mission. In order to learn the mission’s coordinates, you have to find an unspecified number of alien artefacts related to one of the major races in the Starbound universe.

This translates into scouring random planets hoping for a random but specific village spawn. I happened to run into a lot of Apex and Avian villages at the start of the game so ended up exploring and progressing down the planet difficulties long before I stumbled across the required Floran village that I needed (and wasn’t even on the recommended planet type either) to unlock the second mission. I mean, I understood that certain stars are more likely to spawn certain villages but it’s not a guarantee. And after getting bored on three gentle stars that are all basically the same, I wanted to see something else. I’ve done four main missions now and have breezed through them all (barring the first which is actually properly paced entirely because it preceded the stupid scanning requirements). Even worse, despite these missions being hand crafted, the levels aren’t even that interesting. I’ve seen random dungeons that are more engaging that these mission levels. And this isn’t even touching the fact that most of the platforming in these levels is almost entirely negated by the tech upgrades you can pick up.

And tech upgrades are available once you’ve randomly looted enough tech chips that spawn in random chests like upgrade modules but far more frequently so you’ll have the best tech well before you’re anywhere close to having a full size ship. So the levels aren’t challenging, the bosses aren’t challenging and the story connecting them together is about as threadbare and banal as one could possibly imagine.

I could go into great detail about how the plot and themes of Starbound could easily be addressed or how they should have put more focus into their story elements instead of having them seemingly slapped on. But then it would feel like I was putting in more effort than Chucklefish on the matter and it’s simply not worth it. Suffice to say, for a game called Starbound, they should have given players motivation to bound towards the stars instead of having a main quest and game play which actively discourages it.

So, this is a lot of bad but what about the good?

As I mentioned prior, Starbound allows modding. I specifically loaded up three mods: one to correct the Avian so they have scaled hands (feathered hands make no damn sense); one to make the death animation of characters a bit more dynamic than just a disco flash of light; and one to actually correct this horrible progression issue in the game.

Specifically I run Frackin Universe which has expanded the content in the game astronomically. I know I wouldn’t have put in nearly as much time if I hadn’t used FU. FU tries to gateway some of the content behind equipment requirements by making higher level planets too dangerous to explore due to environmental effects if you haven’t built the proper protections for them. These protections are crafted from ores found on the prior tier planet so you have a logical focus of working your way through planet types in order to open up more worlds. And you want to progress into the more dangerous worlds because the resources you can find allow you to craft unique items and equipment. Now, the progression isn’t perfect since it’s still working in Starbound’s haphazard universe generation but it does make it more forceful in how you can proceed. Also, the amount of content makes discovery better since you’re apt to run into new things even sixty or seventy hours into playing.

Finally, we’re going to touch on Starbound’s greatest strength and the reason why I believe it has what popularity it has: aesthetic. There’s no denying that the artistic direction of the game is fantastic. It’s easily the best of the pixel 2D graphic games I’ve played. And the work the artists have done is actually awe-inspiring. The amount of different biomes and alien worlds, not to mention how weird some of them truly get, is a joy. You can wander amongst enormous plants or crunch across planets formed of eyeballs. Even better, the backgrounds change depending on the biome and solar system you are in. If there are different planets and stars in the system, you’ll see them rise in the horizon. This extends down into the blocks you can collect and the decorations you can build to place in your houses.

But you can make really pretty buildings. And find some too.

The building portion is, hands down, the most fun you’ll have with the game. You will explore solely to find new recipes and items that you can craft back home. You’ll find planets that you’ll want to establish weird farms or colonies upon. Upgrading and decorating your ship has been easily the most time consuming and most rewarding portion of the game. Here you can see through the accumulation of unique discoveries, expanding spaces and lively crew the fruits of your playing of the game.

The visual charm does all it can to excuse the horrible writing. And I’m not even being unnecessarily critical here. You’ll find grammar errors within the first ten minutes of the game. I can’t be bothered to read the lore snippets for how insipid their little tales are and for the number of mistakes contained within them. However, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief towards gasbag cowboys, cannibalistic space ork plants, medieval robots and Japanese fish people because they’re brought to life by the art department so well. Their villages and decorations bring a unity of design that the writing team absolutely fails to deliver and provides a better canvas for you to re-imagine a world with all its charm and quirk while ignoring the one Chucklefish cobbled together.

And, of course, there’s the music. I absolutely adore the soundtrack in the game. I rarely notice background music but when a favourite tune starts playing, I’m apt to stop exploring just to enjoy the medley. I’ve recently discovered (read: stolen) a music box from an Apex village and have enjoyed flicking through the tunes available on it when I placed it on the bar on my ship. The soundtrack is perhaps the only thing that has assuaged my guilt over pre-ordering the game because otherwise I would have been very angry with myself given the issues with its release and development.

Finally, Chucklefish have shown some much appreciated post launch love. It’s received a couple of content updates. Now, none of these have addressed my main concern. One was a fishing update (and I only recently learned how to fish at that!) and the other added post game content that – at this rate – I may never actually see because I really, really, really hate going through their main quest. But the more content they add, the more they can delay the boredom of repetitive content when slogging through their core game.

In the end, there’s some real talent in the Chucklefish house that’s hamstrung by incredibly awful decisions. The art and music side of Chucklefish is certainly propping up the game design side but, unfortunately, they can only carry them so far. I feel like Starbound was a game whose scope quickly blinded Chucklefish to what’s important to their vision. They seemingly learned no lessons in their predecessor’s success, charging headlong to address shortcomings in Terraria’s design but unaware that they were careening straight into pitfalls that the prior game was designed to circumvent. In the end, Starbound creates a game that is largely not worth playing. But if you dig through the mud far enough, you’ll find diamonds hidden beneath the surface. Its pull is in elements that should have supplemented a far more engaging core instead of accidentally copying engaging elements without even realizing why they were good in the first place. But if you like building, there’s some fun to be had here which is relaxing and bite-sized so you can pick away at your creations a little here and there before discovering just how much time has flown by.

New Year Old Ways

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What a year 2016 has been. It’s really hard to condense that time period down to just a few sentences. But perhaps upheaval is the closest word we can get. Well, it’s 2017 now and it’s time to start off the year – and the blog – on a fresh page.

Or is it? I mean, we’re already posting late but this was also a holiday season that had left all three of us profoundly busy. So we have a bit of a “two steps forward, one step back” situation. As such, today’s post isn’t truly going to be about a fresh start or any of that. Instead, we’ll do what most people are doing at the beginning of a new calendar year.

And that’s looking back at what we’ve covered.

Before the holiday break, I’d posted my Game of the Year. If you hadn’t seen it already… well… spoilers but I gave it to Stardew Valley. It was and continues to be my game of the year even if I spent most of my time sounding off a little harshly over its shortcomings. However, it was also the game that truly opened up my sister to the wonders of the medium and that alone I think is noteworthy.

But there were other notable releases and I want to spend the next couple of weeks discussing them. Partly because I have nothing of other substance to post. But largely 2016 had more than a few releases worthy of discussion and I’d rather they didn’t fade from the spotlight as we sweep out the dust of our recent past.

So let’s talk about Xcom 2.

Xcom 2 and all associated images belongs to Firaxis and 2k Games.

Xcom 2 is a sequel to Firaxis’ Xcom: Enemy Unknown released in 2012. It’s not to be confused with X-Com: UFO Defence developed by Mythos Games and MicroProse and released in 1994. You see, one has a dash in it and that makes it all the better.

I’ve never actually played the original X-Com series. I heard it was well loved. I understood that it was a cult classic. And I recall the vitriol generated when the rights were bought by 2k Games and the company announced they were rebooting the franchise as a first person shooter.

Well, thank all the earth’s deities that there was righteous Internet indignation since this brought to 2K Games’ attention that people actually like turned based strategy titles. For, they did release their rebooted Xcom shooter game to many a middling review and poor sales. But as an attempt to appease the riotous online community, they threw a few of their Civilization developers on making a cute little throwback to these crying adults’ childhood and released the critically and commercial acclaimed Enemy Unknown. Then, suddenly euphoric over praise and success, Firaxis and 2k Games followed up with the even more engrossing Enemy Within expansion pack in a world that was obsessed with nickle and dime DLC releases.

And though there continued to be diehard naysayers still clutching to their sprite 2D graphic pearls and bemoaning the decay of proper civilization, most people truly enjoyed this re-envisioning and revitalization of the series. I was amongst these new fans and put in far more hours than I dare admit. Even more impressive, a bunch of hobbyists got together and cobbled a masterstroke in amateur modding to release the Long War overhaul that added an even greater strategic and complexity layer to the game that people are still playing it even now.

There have already been several DLC releases for Xcom 2 much like there were for Xcom: Enemy Unknown. Just like the Slingshot DLC, these are largely unnecessary. The additional customization and missions are nice but there’s nothing really added by them that couldn’t be supplemented by mods. Hopefully a future expansion pack will really put a spin on the game to compete with the free modifications from the community.

Xcom: Enemy Unknown was essentially everything that’s great and wonderful about PC gaming coming together in a pitch perfect melody. The only sour note to the whole experience was a fairly clunky and unresponsive UI hampered by the fact the game was initially designed for a cross-platform release. And while this shouldn’t mean that design decisions are scaled more to console performance and navigation – it always means that the PC version is hampered by the weaker platform’s limitations. For one of the greatest victims in Firaxis’ revitalization and cross-platform development was procedural generated levels.

You see, Xcom is a game all about chance.

It’s part of the beauty and the frustration of the game. Anytime one of your soldiers takes aim at an enemy xeno-soldier, the game informs you of the percentage chance of your shot connecting. It’s easy to read into the numbers as a short hand for “hit” or “miss” but the game does a very good job of brutally reminding players how chance actually works. You will miss three 95% shots in a row. The enemy will achieve critical strikes on 30% shots. Your best laid plans will fail. Your soldiers will die. You learn that the strategy is all about minimizing loss and maximizing the chances in your favour. Then, above all, you learn how to deal with the inevitable setbacks.

To drive home this large element of the “unknown,” much of the game revolved around randomized elements. Your mission location and objective were random. The enemies and where they would spawn are random. Even the location of Meld canisters – essentially timed treasure chests – were random. The only thing that wasn’t was the map itself. So after one playthrough of the game, I personally found Xcom to get a little bit repetitive. You start to learn where aliens are likely to spawn. You know, despite the random starting position, the location you should move your squad and the important ground to capture in the early part of the mission. While this sort of repetition leads to mastery, it also detracted from that razor edge the game balanced upon in all of its other aspects.

Thus, when Xcom 2 was announced as a PC only release, I was ecstatic. When they stated that it was going to have procedural generated levels, I knew I was going to buy it on its first day of release. That the developers made the game even more fine-tuned and interesting beyond having newly created maps for each mission is just an incredible bonus.

Really, I couldn’t possibly gush about Xcom 2 more. It just hit every possible right note. Firaxis honed in on what made the first so entertaining and gripping and they simply pumped more of that out. There’s a staggering amount of customization available for your soldiers. Being able to fine tune their appearance really does improve the connection you have for the fumbling digital representation of your friends, family and favourite celebrities. Their failures are made even more pronounced when it’s your best friend that ends up vaporized by a towering Sectopod’s ion cannon. The survival of your aunt through every difficult mission truly earns her a special place in your heart. And, the ability to save your creations into a character pool so you don’t have to recreate your entire entourage with every disastrous mission that ends your campaign is a life saver.

Then, of course, there is the rebalancing of classes from the original game. While Firaxis has been tweaking the numbers since release, the number of customization options for levelling your soldiers was significantly improved. In Enemy Unknown, if I had a soldier of a specific class, I almost always took the same perks each time they levelled. But in Xcom 2, I found I’d often specialize me troops depending on different builds. I wanted both a medic specialist and a hacker specialist, often substituting them out in missions based on whether I expected to run into terminals or enemies that required hacking or not.

And, of course, there were the gameplay tweaks themselves that really changed the tone of the game. Meld was dropped for timed enemy loot. New missions were introduced to put your soldiers under the timer to force you into even harder choices and compromising positions instead of rely on the slow “crawl and overwatch” strategy that dominated the first. The new stealth mechanic was also interesting in that it gave some measure of control back to the player, allowing them to negotiate where and when the initial conflicts would occur.

Finally, as the candied cherry on top, Firaxis actually implemented a very accommodating mod system. While I mentioned the expansive Long War mod earlier for Xcom: Enemy Unknown, the truly impressive feature of that collaboration was in the designers creating such a large overhaul of the game without any real access to its tools. I don’t know how they worked their digital magic but I can only assume it was time consuming. Xcom 2 wholeheartedly embraced its enthusiastic audience and opened up the design tools so almost anyone could create and publish their own modifications all supported by Steam Workshop.

And I’m so glad they did. Not only did I eagerly snatch up the Long War Studio’s releases (and am really curious to see how they manage to apply their experience with the original mod in their new game) but there was a long list of tweaks, additions and changes that I gleefully installed for multiple playthroughs. New enemy soldiers, new tile blocks and maps and even new mission types are yours for the experiencing. Not to mention additional weapons and customization options if you wanted to really get a diverse group of soldiers battling together to save the world for tyranny. There’s so much up on offer that the only downside is I have no clue what Firaxis will pull out for an expansion – if they even feel the need to release one.

Even the writing is pretty good. Which is surprising because a) it’s a video game and b) there’s such a large reliance on procedural content. Firaxis, however, manages to use Xcom 2’s narrative to both justify gameplay elements as well as communicate theme. They really wanted a sort of guerrilla war feel where humanity was against the ropes and fighting back against an oppressive regime using any means necessary. Granted, it slides into cliched sci-fi tropes but they are able to make decent use of the writing to frame the greater elements of the game into a decent enough support to see the player to the final mission. I’m not certain why, and maybe this was due to playing the Xcom Boardgame prior to Xcom 2’s release, but I felt the game elements were just barely submerged beneath the surface this time. I remember hearing in interviews that Firaxis designs their game elements in a prototype boardgame before pushing them into the digital work and I could see where a lot of that was generated. The progression through the technology tree and balancing the avatar progress doomclock were quite reminiscent of other games I have played. If I had one major criticism of the writing (and I almost always have more than one) it’s that I felt the company really missed on extracting even more thematic elements from their gameplay to really drive home the tone. I’d have liked to see just how far Xcom would go to see the alien threat expelled as well as a greater balancing of the alien’s influence on earth. I mean, the technological and social development of the world would be (and was) massively thrown out of alignment due to an alien invasion but little was actually spent addressing these ramifications other than loosely lampshading the prior game’s narrative (which was humorously but effectively explained as a simulation) and given generic motivation for the player to kill the enemy.

However, drawing some moral element to the struggle would have made it a lot better. The aliens did introduce a number of positive changes to society. Advanced medical procedures and world peace are hardly things to be blindly dismissed and I thought Dr. Tygan could have presented a more nuanced perspective given his background as a renounced Advent scientist.

Course, with the soldier customization, I can write all the little background snippets I want to add a morally grey element to the Xcom resistance.

Really, in any other year, Xcom 2 would have been my Game of the Year. It’s such a strong game and really a perfect example of a sequel done right. Not only is it a refinement – gameplay wise – of its predecessor but it also explores its world, mechanics and narrative in a wholly unexpected and interesting direction. It was a bold move by Firaxis to set the sequel as a follow-up to a failed defence of the first game and helps to establish it as separate from the original series too.

All in all, Xcom 2 is a great hit and one I expect to be playing years from now even as other titles released in 2016 fade from play and memory.

The Farce Is With Me and I Am the Farce

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So in what is likely going to be a year tradition now, I have seen Disney’s new Star Wars’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Now I get to tell you all about it.

Only, I don’t think I will. I feel like most people will already have their minds made up about Rogue One, regardless of if they have seen it or not. We’re at a crossroads, if you will. Or perhaps it is a turning point. Maybe it is a precipice – hell if I can tell. All I know is that either you agree with me or not. I simply suspect that actually seeing the movie is irrelevant to the discussion.

In the name of simplicity, I’ll just give my feelings now in the first 200 words: I think Rogue One is an unfortunate mess of two conflicting tones and concepts that lurches between them through haphazard editing and an divisive vision. To throw it a bone, it’s better than the prequels. To put it in perspective, it’s worse than the originals.

Accessed from http://popwrapped.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/image153.jpg

Rogue One and Star Wars now belong to Disney, I suppose. All hail the almighty mouse.

And having seen two modern “modern Star Wars” I don’t think this refrain is apt to be changed at this point. I believe this comes down in large part due to intent. There was a real desire to create with the first Star Wars: to break molds and challenge conventions. The series now, however, has shuffled back to one of a position of enshrinement. People are trying to preserve like a crusty curator hoping to pass off old relics with a little bit of spit shine and dusting. But they’re still aged pieces, no matter how shiny and gilded you make their new frames. You might touch up a few cracks in the canvas. Maybe do a touch of restoration to bring back some of the faded colour. But you’re not creating anymore. You’re pining. Unfortunately, time moves on and for all the hard work done it is only so much futile resistance against the endless march. There’s a certain bit of sadness to it, I feel, if you get past all the agonising issues.

Not that my grumpy feelings on the matter amount to anything anyway. It’ll smash box offices. People will laud it’s achievements as being revolutionary. And then the next Star Wars will release next year and Rogue One will be pushed to the side. Just like that. I wonder if people will even remember it as simply a reproduction. I wonder if they’ll remember it at all.

I suspect they won’t.

And I find myself pausing and looking back at the state of affairs. How did we get here? I remember when I was a child and the original series was being re-released to theatres. Oh the furore over the special editions. I had seen the originals, of course. I wasn’t alive when they were released. I am not that ancient. But my parents had been and they’d enjoyed it. So they eagerly bundled me up, enthusiastic to relive the excitement with their child. Course, the special releases were quite special. There’s been far too many words devoted to what happened there. But they were successful and that bled into the prequel trilogy. And there’s definitely been far too many words devoted to sand for me to add to that discussion. But they too were successful. And now we’ve come to the third take as Disney hones in on what they love doing most: making money.

Perhaps if this phenomenon were devoted solely to Star Wars then I’d feel more inclined to rail against it. But it’s not. It’s simply another notch in a very long trend. We’re in the throes of the “cinematic universes.” I want to say this nonsense started with Lord of the Rings. It’s the very problem I’ve written about in the state of novels. Entertainment has morphed into this obsession with series – the content of the entertainment be damned. It’s less important than finding worthwhile stories, quality stories, than it is about making sure you squeeze out even more from your brand. We’re inundated with these throttling things. It’s the Stupid Hero Era where screen time is devoted more to how many laser beams you can fire per minute than on the characters being inordinately gunned down by them.

And frankly, I just can’t care. It’s not like the movies give me any reason to. The characters of Rogue One are about as interesting as any of the other endless faces propped up in these mindless flicks. In fact, the movie even goes so far as to resurrect old familiar faces in order to do the heavy lifting of emotional attachment since the work done for their new ones as as thread bare as ever. And there might be a number of wonders CGI can perform but bringing a person back from the dead still lies solely out of its purview. Though I applaud the effort nonetheless.

On some level, I can understand how we’ve come to this sorry state of affairs. We crave what we’ve previously enjoyed. We clutch to the fond memories, unwilling to give them up. But can you imagine the state of our entertainment if we had attached ourselves so fiercely to past productions as we have now? We’d be embroiled in the cinematic universe of Shakespeare, trying desperately to tie the madness of King Lear’s Fool and speculating whether he survived long enough to become Feste in the Twelfth Night XXII: Revenge of Maria Malvolio III.

And, perhaps, this is a symptom of our current copyright. At least with Shakespeare, since he lives in the public domain, revisiting the old work isn’t a problem. His plays are featured endlessly even now on stages both prestigious or pubescent. However, since anyone is allowed access to his work, there is less devotion to seeing it kept faithful. There’s been so many re-imaginings and retellings that what lies underneath is barely noticeable in the first place. 10 Things I Hate About You is about as recognizable as Taming of the Shrew as Clueless is of being Emma. Interest can still be mined from these concepts as they aren’t so much derivations but different visions. Their success or failure has no effect on the originals or their value. There exists no concern over a “brand” and maintaining the interest of said brand within the public consciousness.

Rogue One, however, is part of a brand. And it’s a very poor part indeed. It tries to maintain the same message and tone all the while directly contradicting and stumbling over the very toes of the piece it hopes to cash in on with your nostalgia. We’re not trying to see the themes and characters of Star Wars in a new light. We’re not seeing a poignant reinterpretation of a beloved story to reflect modern themes, struggles or problems. We’re seeing a tired horse trotted out with a new bridle, hopeful that most won’t see the emptiness of the act because this time it’ll hop a more colourful bar.

I don’t know if there had been an attempt to do otherwise. There are certainly moments that suggest Rogue One – at one time – existed as a darker war story to examine the more fearful elements of living beneath Star War’s fascist rule. But it’s mostly lost in drawn out action beats that are both poorly contextualized and rushed out one after the other so none have any particular weight. Much has been said about Star Wars revolutionizing the modern film by enforcing the standard of an action beat every ten minutes. What was originally conceived as a cinematic nod to the serialized adventure origins of these tales has turned into a cemented cinematic truth that has done more harm than good. I’ve made peace that any mainline Star Wars movie is going to hop from laser fight to laser fight with silly people in plastic costuming falling over. But Rogue One was their chance to get away from such empty conventions. Instead, it falls into them gleefully, hoping that the action itself will speak for the characters given so little screen time themselves. You don’t come to like Jyn and her merry band for who they are. You are meant to like them because you see them shoot lasers a lot or smack obvious space Nazis with sticks. They’re good. Their enemies are bad. It’s sad when they struggle. It’s happy when they succeed.

There’s little plot in order to tie it together. There’s little motivation for you to care. It’s a spectacle with as much flair as a fireworks display and as much meaning to it too.

So, in the end, if the latest Hollywood trend has left you feeling empty and longing for more – seeking something different to inject life into an industry more concerned with milking safe investments and enforcing tried and true structures – then you will be let down. If you solely want a spectacle to fill two hours then it’s fine. At this point it doesn’t seem to matter. Whether you like it or not will be determined long before you set foot into the theatre.

And either way we won’t care about it anywhere near as much as what it’s trying to ape in the first place.

A Dewdrop in the Valley

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Well, we’re back. And just in time for the holidays! So expect us to be gone just as quickly!

To be clear, I’m blaming Kait entirely for this. There’s no reason for her not to still be doing her book reviews. It’s not like she has anything better to do! I know this because I see her every evening doing her damn farming.

And that very farming is what I am going to discuss today.

It’s the end of the year and for many hobbies this means crowning a Product of the Year award! It’s an entirely arbitrary, consumerist endeavor used more for social signalling amongst fellow hobbists than to serve as some objective measure of quality and worth. But I’ll be damned if I don’t participate!

So we’re going to talk about the Games of the Year. Specifically, we’re going to talk about my Game of the Year! Because narcissism is next to godliness – or something. But this is a rather short discussion since I don’t actually purchase that many games in a year anymore. When I was younger and more carefree, I had the time to partake in multiple new releases and enjoy what the market had to offer. Now that I’m old, I simply don’t have the time. Thus, most of my purchases are well researched and games I’m pretty certain I’m going to like. This would mean that hidden gems have about zero chance of winning my nomination. And as a dyed in the wool RPG and strategy enthusiast, I have very refined and developed tastes in what I like. This year has had some very notable releases in those genres. We’re talking about the new Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Dark Souls III. It’s also been the year of Firaxis with such lauded titles as Xcom 2 and Civilization VI. And even with my brief forays into the shooting genre, it’s hard to ignore heavy contenders like the rebooted Doom or Blizzard’s Overwatch – which has the distinct of being the company’s newest intellectual property in 30 years!

Now, let’s talk about farming simulators!

Let’s give some context. I’ve never been interested in farming. Seems like a whole lot of sweating in dirt for a boring payoff. Has anyone ever gotten excited about pulling out a stalk of celery? Farming is one of those things you do because it needs to be done. It shares this glorious distinction along with garbage collecting and dispensing rectal suppositories. Course, if anything has become abundantly clear over time, what I like isn’t necessarily a shared, universal trait. My sister loves farming. It gives her a sense of accomplishment. She looks being sore, dirty and having all her efforts wither on vines, be eaten by bugs or just grow into mutant and misshapen lumps. She’s peered longingly at the hundreds of dollars listings for Farming Simulator on Steam. She’s dreamed about buying her own John Deer tractor.

In short, she is weird.

Stardew Valley and associated images belong to Eric Barone – Concerned Apge – and Chucklefish Games.

However, Derek is also weird. So when a little title called ~~Harvest Moon 2016: The Reharvesting~~ Stardew Valley released, I kept a finger to its pulse. Derek said it was amazing. Adam went ahead and purchased it. I dog sat for a weekend in Brantford. The conclusion amongst all of us was that Stardew Valley wasn’t that bad. So I pulled the trigger and bought it for Kait on her birthday because I’d just returned from glorious globetrotting and had no other idea what to get her to top a pair of sushi socks.

Kait was hesitant of course. Put anything new in front of her and she seizes and passes out like a fainting goat. Which, if you’re reading this Concerned Ape, then I just thought of a suggestion for new content in your next patch!

However, Stardew Valley was a gift and Kait couldn’t ignore it. She was obligated to give it a try. And then a second try. And a third. A week later she’d logged in 40 hours and was complaining about how far she’d fallen behind in her work. Well, that’s a lie. She wasn’t complaining. She was simply hoping no one would mention it while she was logging more hours into Stardew Valley. It appears my attempts to finally introduce my sister to the joys of the video game medium had finally paid off.

I was curious, naturally. You can’t have someone sequestered away in the corner of the house shut off from the world for so long without piquing some inherent interest. What was so glorious about this stupid farming game? I had naturally given it a try before purchase since my judgment of Kait’s interests are absolute. The (in game) week I played was fine. You inherit a little plot of land that’s overrun with weeds, seeds and harvest leaves. The game is pretty simple. In the full sense of the word. The villagers make clear that Stardew Valley is a laid back place. There aren’t any pressing concerns. You just take as long as you need to grow your crops and shove them in your magic box. Life will just take care of itself. You can, of course, engage in the little community. Some folk try to run their quaint little businesses that will sell you wallpaper or tool upgrades so you don’t tucker yourself out with watering by midday. They have their own little insipid greetings when you talk to them – which you will because there’s not a whole lot happening in the valley. And, as is with every game with shoehorned RPG mechanics, most villagers have their own little personal problems that require your gentle assistance.

But when I say little, I really mean little. Take Leah – perhaps the most appealing bachelorette in Pelican Town – for example. Besides being a starving artists (which we can quite sympathize with), she struggles with how to sell her art. You can suggest to her that she can sell it online or hold a gallery. And that’s it. Later, if you’ve given her enough radishes so she doesn’t starve in her little log cabin, then you’ll find out that she’s found some interested buyer that is purchasing every single one of her pieces and now she doesn’t have to worry about paying her electricity bill. Mind you, I hadn’t gotten around to being friends with Leah until the second year so it’s anyone’s guess how she was paying those bills earlier! But it’s Stardew Valley and you’re really encouraged to not stress about those things. Just go, pet your cows a little more so maybe tomorrow you can squeeze out some gold star milk from them.

And that’s really Stardew Valley’s modus operandi. It provides simple little distractions all along the way. Want to play an old arcade game! Head to the saloon in the evening and hone your skills on the straightforward but still adequately made Journey of the Prairie King. Or pop down into the mines which act as a simple dungeon crawler where you battle bouncing slimes and loot through periodic treasure chests for ores which you can smelt down to ingots and use in the simple crafting system. Then there’s a simple fishing game to tide you over on rainy days when you’re spared from tending your sprawling field of beets and can relax by the riverside getting more and more anxious that you’re not going to capture that damn catfish before the season runs out. And boy, would it be nice to catch that catfish so you can finish the aquarium in the community centre this year because why not have a simple collecting side quest to focus your efforts throughout the year?

This might sound a little condescending but while I had intended for Stardew Valley to operate as a gateway drug to the greater gaming medium, I started to get sucked into its systems myself. There is something relaxing about not worrying over failure. You can botch any of these smaller game systems and it isn’t really an issue. Gave a villager something they detest on their birthday? Don’t worry, you have two opportunities each week to find what they do love and just spam that until you’ve filled their heart meters. It’s not like you have to pay attention to those that already love you already. And even if those fish keep breaking your line you have the opportunity to straight out purchase them from the travelling merchant whenever she rolls through the woods – assuming you’re willing to pay her inflated prices of course.

Stardew Valley is no roguelike. You’re not expected to die over and over again and learn from your mistakes so you can come back to your farm on a new “life” with the knowledge gained from before to improve your output. You will try to improve, mind you, but that’s mostly because accumulating massive amounts of liquid capital is the capitalist dream rather than it being a necessary. The game devolves into the “can I do this?” question by the end rather than anything else.

And this is where I get to point out all the flaws of the game I’m holding up as being really awesome.

The idyllic fishing farm is composed of these adorable tiny islands. It’s actually awful and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Stardew Valley is shallow. It’s hard for it not to be seeing that it’s both Concerned Ape’s first game and designed specifically to be so. Personally, I’d like more stake in the game. I want there to be some pressure for my efforts. You’re told (if you find it) that the spirit of your dearly departed grandfather will come back after two years of work to judge your progress. And so I went through the game trying to accomplish the goals I thought I’d be judged on by this appraising poltergeist. Then, when my time was up, all I got was four lit candles on his tombstone and a crummy purple statue behind it. No breakdown of my performance. No evaluation on my progress. Just some silly decoration and a vague “sense” of having done better than my sister. To say it was a bit of a let down would be an understatement. Due to its laid back nature, there’s little feeling of accomplishment in Stardew Valley. And that’s simply because you don’t really overcome anything. You’re given the illusion of a time pressure – you have only so many hours in the day to do your work and you only have two years to do it – but in actuality it doesn’t really matter. If you don’t get things done today, there’s always tomorrow to get them. If you forget to water your plants they don’t start to die. They just sort of sit around in stasis until you do remember.

To follow on this, there’s not a whole lot that changes between years either. Which is a shame because the first year of Stardew Valley is actually quite gripping. You feel the (imagined) weight of your decisions as you plot out what you can do each day with your limited stamina and meager funds while also eager to rush out and participate with all the festivals and events held in town. You’re trying desperately to squeeze in gifts into your budgets hoping to win the hearts of some bachelor or bachelorette before the flower dance. You’re getting a grip on the different growth cycles of your plants. And you’re enjoying the developing plots of the villagers. Unfortunately, the second year kind of peels away the veil. Almost immediately you find that things are pretty much the same. The calendar has all the same birthdays and events. The price of seeds remains static. There’s a very marginal change in Pierre’s stock but that’s about it. One new villager comes to the town but that’s about it. And once you max out friendship bars you realize that there’s really nothing left to the villagers as their dialogue then loops.

Now, I have no problem that the game is essentially “endless.” Being able to play after the two year mark is quite fine and dandy with me. What I would have liked, though, is if the game had a better focus on that two year time period. Make grandpa’s judgmental a bit more impactful. Have a breakdown of your progress. Have some achievements to strive for on a second play through now that you’ve got an idea of how the systems work and can start following specific strategies. Also, expanding villager chatter at least for the second year’s festivals would go a long way to keeping the illusion that they’re people alive a little longer. Having some unexpected changes in the second year would be great too. A new village is a good idea if they actually shook up the valley in some way. And there’s lots of options you can take. The governor, for example, muses about building a cottage in the valley. It would be wonderful if that idea was realized in the second year. Have the governor move in and perhaps contest Mayor Lewis for his mayorship (or something) while living there. We get earthquakes and natural disasters in the first year to open up new portions of the map – why can’t these events extend to the second as well?

Finally, I’d really like if there were some sort of tax system put in place. The actual flow of the game is rather interesting once you’ve got a handle on the systems and can start looking at the design itself. Stardew Valley is arbitrarily broken into four “seasons” that each run 28 days each. This sort of abstraction for the passage of time is fine considering many crops grow in 4 days so simply viewing a single in game day as being four actual days makes things more believable. However, what you’ll find is that at the start of the month you have the most amount of work. The change in season is dramatically over night – so you have to retill your soil, plant new seeds, cut down new wild growth and find out the dates of new birthdays and events all in those first few days of the month. But the end of the month is relatively relaxed. If your crops don’t go to the final day then you’re left with spare time to simply wander about and harvest and stragglers remaining. What I would have liked to see instead is that at the end of each season you have a certain “tax” amount that Mayor Lewis will come to collect. This can be based on a percentage of expected earnings from the average player throughout the season. Thus, when you’re getting near the end of the month, you need to now budget your books and ensure you’ll have enough capital left to cover the payments coming due. This might require hurrying out to do some last minute fishing or mining in order to make up the difference if you spent the month fretting away most of your capital on gifts to woo your love.

Granted, to keep with Stardew Valley’s low punishment system, I wouldn’t have anything catastrophic occur if you fail to make these payments. Perhaps a one time warning in the first year for the first offence would suffice. After that, I’d have the penalty be a reduction in hearts for everyone in the village. You can even have some one off comments from them about how they see you as a freeloader or scammer unwilling to help keep the community afloat.

Get back to work Marnie! I swear to Yoba if you’re not in your shop tomorrow so I can buy a god damn cow for my barn that’s sat empty for three days now…

And I really think those two changes – the taxes and more indepth judgment from grandpa – would have gone a long way to making Stardew Valley really gripping. The writing criticism is more of a pipe dream since it’s clear the one man developer team already has a lot on his plate and writing isn’t particularly a strength of his nor a focus. But those game elements would really create a sense of accomplishment for the player.

Otherwise, there’s a reason that Stardew Valley beat out those other mentions I made earlier. Oeverwatch may be far more designed than Stardew Valley but the frustration of its team dependent gameplay and awful online infrastructure just don’t compete to the joys of a bountiful fall harvest. Darkest Dungeon’s end game grind is so long and tedious that being able to sit back in the evening and simply relax with a day of fishing is far more enticing. And let’s not downplay Stardew Valley’s fishing. This is perhaps the first time a video game has a fishing mechanic that not only do I not loathe it but actually chose the farm dedicated to it! And Xcom 2 is really fantastic. Top notch, even. But while I can spend hours customizing my soldiers and adding all the flair to them only to watch aghast as they’re reduced to little more than protoplasmic goo at the hands of an angry muton, I still think about my little stray cat – Masamewne – who I make sure to pet every morning before rolling up my sleeves and getting down in the dirt with my bare hands.

The Pillars of Good and Evil

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Well, it’s that time of year again. As November encroaches I’m staring down the throat of a rather consuming project. So my posts on this lovely little piece of cyberspace real-estate are going to be haphazard at best. With any luck my co-contributors will pick up the slack. That is the reason for co-contributors, is it not?

At the very least, I’d expect a rather surprising article from my sister in the near future. We should get a review but not a book review! I don’t want to spoil the surprise, however. That is, assuming she can tear herself away from the material long enough to scribble some words into cyber forms.

So while I do preliminary work on my novel in a month (for those unaware, November is official Write a Novel in a Month You Crazy Bastard), I’m just going to do a quick little ramble on something I’ve been working on. You see, I’ve finally gotten a hold of the new DLC for the video game Pillars of Eternity. It’s by my favourite developer, Obsidian Entertainment, who are renown for crafting interesting and enjoyable stories and characters in the interactive medium. I’d been meaning to get around to Pillars of Eternity for awhile now. You see, it was my first foray into the kickstarter experience (well, technically that’s a lie. Wasteland 2 was but my heart was always in it for Obsidian).

Pillars of Eternity belongs to Obsidian Entertainment, Paradox Interactive and all associated individuals therein.

Kickstarter, for those unawares, is an interesting little project that was started to utilize the power of the Internet to promote grassroots development on projects that have been disappearing in the growing corporatocracy of the modern era. For video games, this meant that traditional experiences which had been deemed “market unsustainable” could still see the light of day. There’s a fancy little role-playing game called Baldur’s Gate that I absolutely adore and to see more games in the same genre come to light was something I quite gleefully supported. Course, then I didn’t touch Pillars of Eternity after it’s release because the downside of public funding is that developers are beholden to deadlines even more stringently than when funded by publishers. This is code for bugs. And incomplete features. And not fully fleshed areas.

This is most apparent now that I have my hands on Pillars DLC and can see what Obsidian can do when their name isn’t riding on the fickle goodwill of the public. But this isn’t a review of Pillars of Eternity by any stretch of the imagination so we’ll have to save those words for when I finally get around to that. If you’re interested, I’m liking it.

No, this long intro is to touch upon something that I’ve really been impressed with in regards to Obsidian’s world creation. It’s a bit of a stickler issue when it comes to fiction in general and the fantasy genre specifically. Put bluntly, it took some time but I’m really happy with morality in Pillars of Eternity.

It’s not often you’ll have much of a conversation around morals in fantasy. Mostly because Dungeons and Dragons have dominated the conversation with their problematic Alignment System of which you can see a full diatribe on that by perusing our wonderful archives. It’s the nature of the beast. People flock to fantasy for simplistic – almost idealistic – escapism and so having stark “good guys” and “bad guys” easily recognizable and behaving in predictable patterns feeds into that childlike view of the world.

Unfortunately, any person who has lived long enough can tell you that the world doesn’t run on stark contrasts. Shades of gray (and not just fifty of them either) are kind of the rule of the world. There are few instances where we can really just point and say “that person is evil” and without invoking Godwin’s Law, the list gets humorously short. And yet, in fantasy, not only is “good” and “evil” simple things but they’re something an individual chooses at inception and then just presumably follows for the rest of their life.

But while we may have certain fundamental principles which guide our lives, determining what is “good” and what is “bad” is incredibly difficult in real life. Granted, we don’t have knights in shining armour and diabolical, princess kidnapping red dragons in real life either but there’s a comforting verisimilitude in having your fictional world reflect your knowledge of the actual world. Choosing an appropriate course of action is easier for us to accomplish when we can rely on our own experiences to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of our options.

It’s one of the things that makes a Planescape adventure so enthralling because it specifically sets out to undermine your own experiences without breaking the suspension of disbelief of the world. Alas, not every adventure can be Planescape and since the default seems to be that our lives are a reasonable measuring stick for wading through dilemmas, it makes sense then for those dilemmas to reflect events of our lives.

In short, Durance is a fantastic character but only once I started to realize that he was essentially a reskinning of Edwin.

For the forgetful or unknowledgeable, Edwin was an evil mage from Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. You knew he was evil because it said so on his sheet. Correspondingly, his personality was based around the accumulation of power and he only adventured with the player character because he foresaw the player as being a path to obtaining more power. Such a selfish character would normally be unmanageable in heroic fantasy if the designers hadn’t cleverly written Edwin as, essentially, a comedic sidekick. He got into petty arguments with other members of his party and his shortsightedness led him to discovering that the goal of his great ambitions was ultimately a belt that transmuted the wearer into the opposite gender. And here we had an interesting development where, for but the briefest glimmer, an evil character was forced through the powers of the world to actually confront the consequences of his actions.

Of course, Edwin doesn’t truly learn anything about misogyny or his poor treatment of women as a woman. When he gets turned back into his regular form he’s just as abrasive as ever but otherwise such an event would require a change in his alignment which the game simply wasn’t going to support for a sidequest to the player’s own journey. And that’s one issue with Dungeons and Dragon’s system is that it discourages and hampers the sort of personal growth that is quite common and encouraged in our actual lives.

But to get back to Pillars of Eternity, it took me quite a while before I realized the parallels in the new game. For one, Durance is not a mage but a priest of Magran. Since Pillars of Eternity is a new intellectual property, such a designation meant nothing to me. It took many hours for me – as a player – to learn that Magran is a rather cruel deity who delights in punishment and strength over community and charity. Not that she’s evil, per se, since few things in Pillars could be deemed as such but she is oppressive in her own way while also serving as the leading deity to a nation of freedom fighters and revolutionaries.

However, Durance doesn’t project himself with the cartoonish villainy that Edwin does. When you first meet him at the crossroads, he simply informs you that the two of you are meant to travel with each other for a time. He insists that there are trials which you as a character must undergo and that he is responsible for guiding – if not administering – several of those trials themselves. It’s the Old Wise Man of Jungian archetypes… until you start peeling away the surface.

The face of the troubled man himself.

Over time and through numerous conversations you learn that Durance isn’t quite the holy preacher he pretends to be. He was, instead, an architect of a great weapon utilized by the Magran church to obliterate the leader of an army rallied beneath another god’s banner. Ironically, this “god” which Durance helped explode was the god of rebirth, light and compassion. Not your stereotypical evil warlord figurehead by any means. Furthermore, the detonation of this device to end said god’s existence had many unintended consequences for those who participated in its use. For Durance, this was a complete spiritual crisis wherein his faith in his goddess was shattered to the core. Durance had lost touch with Magran and did not feel her favour despite having been one of her most blessed disciples. After the explosion of the bomb, he had participated in numerous inquisitions in service of his goddess much as he would have before. However, no matter what he did he could not regain that connection with her that had been severed.

Now, I’m not finished Durance’s story arc yet but it’s quite clear that he is hardly the wise teacher meant to guide the player on the hero’s journey. In fact, he’s perhaps more flawed than many of the other colourful characters I’ve met along the way. Here is a man silently struggling beneath the murders of children and civilians carried out solely by the fearful ordinances of a population desperate for revenge against a broken enemy and turning their ire on any that could potentially have allegiance with those foes. When you dig beneath the surface, Durance is more “evil” than Edwin and follows a path more closely wedded to the blind obtainment of power yet he is far more believable despite his extremes. Couching his morality in deeds and behaviour and justifying it due to the political and ideological landscape rather than an esoteric Linnaeus classification system made for a far more engaging tale. When you learn of Durance’s role in the Purges, the horror that he performed resonates on a level that simply declaring him as a “violent murderer” does not. Edwin killed Dynaheir but it carries so little investment and meaning to the player that it’s just a statement. Durance murdered unnamed and unseen individuals but your view of him is irrevocably changed because of it.

It’s so subtle and sublime that I’m just in love with the artistry of the execution. I’ve read numerous people complain about how drab and boring Pillars of Eternity is. But, honestly, I think those people had expectations for the bombast and ludicrousness of high fantasy. Pillars of Eternity delivers something far greater but requires more investment to unlock. It provides us with reasonable people living and reacting to a world that, ultimately, they simply don’t understand.

And I can’t think of a perfect representation of our reality than that.

I Typed a Thing Part 4

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Sorry for the absence last week. It was our crazy Thanksgiving and, alas, I was too busy to post. That’s on me and for that, I apologize. I would have said something sooner but then this weekend was the venerable birthday of our very own contributor, Kait, so I was busy getting ready for that, to varying degrees of success. What turned into a day celebration became a weekend celebration and now, here we are.

But I see that we got a book review up so it’s not like the week was a total waste. Just a partial one.

So let’s continue on with my first draft of the aforementioned untitled story.

I have a rather love/hate relationship with titles. Sometimes the inspiration for story will come from its name. Mary Creek’s Blood, for instance, was something I had to wring out from its label. Other stories, however, never get a proper title until I’ve wrapped the project mostly up. Then I languish forever trying to give it some moniker that befits it. Usually I fail. So for this little short, it’s a bit of an ill omen that I don’t have some snappy name to bestow it. I may never come up with one.

Bit of a tragedy, really. But then, so is the tale.

Chapter the Third

“I simply must apologise. We don’t get a lot of people passing through. Oh, here let me get your cloak for you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh. Yes. Well, come on in, come on in!”

Keirn waited for her to turn before stepping from the schlammraum. It was awkward walking with a bit of a stoop so his cloak dragged on the ground. He looked back at the discarded shoes and hoped that perhaps she wouldn’t notice he hadn’t added to the collection.

He followed the lady into the adjoining sitting room. A small fire crackled in its stone pit. A pot rested over it and the scent of cooked pork and turnip made both his mouth salivate and his stomach roll. The matron waved towards a chair around the fire and puttered into the kitchen.

“I simply must know what is happening in the world,” she called, a few dishes clattering. Keirn gave his arms another anxious examination but nothing about him seemed too peculiar. He fell into the seat with a long, well deserved exhalation. He let his cloak drape over the back of his chair as he rested his eyes and held his feet close to the flame. “We’re so reliant on foreigners in these parts to bring us the word. But with the cold winds blowing off Freyr’s spine, few make the journey. Can hardly blame them. We don’t have much to offer off the season and we’ve already sent the hertig our share of the tax. Ygrimm was rolling out the last we could put to market and without any good forest we can’t even grow moss like some other villages to supplement our season.”

“Perhaps for the best,” Keirn said. “I’ve heard those make hardly palatable dishes.”

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/art/f/friedric/1/102fried.jpg

Dolmen in the Snow by Caspar David Friedrich (1807).

The lady – Helbera by name which seemed a touch too fitting giving the encroaching season – returned with a small bowl balanced on the edge of a long, curved wooden plate. In her other hand she held a steaming cup and she presented both to Keirn in her calloused fingers. He licked lips at the sight of the dried meat and even drier bread beside the stew. But he took the cup, politely waving the rest off.

She looked at him with that practised motherly eye of reproach.

“Not right for a wanderer to turn down a warm meal. I swear with Freyra as my witness that it’s the best thing you’ll find within a thousand leagues of Skaneling’s Hollow.”

Keirn raised a brow. “And what’s in the Hollow?”

“Oh, a juniper and cranberry pie to die for!” Helbera sighed. She finally accepted Keirn’s neglect and sat across from him to eat the meal. “Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s rude to reject a host’s food?”

“She did. She was a wonderful caregiver. I’m afraid it will upset my stomach is all. I had a big meal before departing.”

“Thought there’d be nothing in the Hinterlands, eh? Get lots of folk like that,” Helbera said, dropping her bread in the broth and watching it sink. “Course, we also get the rare soul come out that’s been higher than Wotan’s watcher’s looking to find some Arrowcup mushrooms.”

The matron looked Keirn hard in the eye. It took a second for him to catch her meaning.

“Ah,” he said, adverting his yellow pupils to his drink. “I understand if you have no wish to entreat me.”

He stood but she clucked her tongue and motioned towards the chair. “So many folk think we are a bunch of know-nothings. Couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re just kindly souls. I noticed the signs the moment we spoke. I was willing to take you when you had no coin to your name, I’ll still accept you and your failings.”

“I appreciate that, Mum.”

“Oh, hush with that. You sleep off that dreadful haze as long as you want. And you get that pile of wood out back split and we’ll call ourselves even, you hear.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, what’s the word out there,” she asked, picking into her broth and fishing long, soggy strings of bread from its murky depths. She raised dripping pieces to her mouth and slurped them down.

“Truthfully, I haven’t spent much time in this land,” Keirn said.

“Good. We can get old Rangvaldrsun’s movements when Torben comes through selling his pots and bad advice. What this old caribou wants is word of the world. That alone is worth a night’s stay in the world’s emptiest inn!”

She cackled and wagged dripping fingers at the small feast room. Keirn couldn’t help but smile.

“If it’s the movement of the spheres and the petty dealings of the wider nations that interests then I have much to say but little flair with which to say it. I’m afraid I’m no bard, though I travelled with one for a spell.”

“You think I can afford a storyweaver out here?” Helbera laughed. “You could list off some petty lord’s tax collection and it’d be far more interesting than listening to Snolla recount to me one more time about her old sheep’s pregnancy with twins.”

“Well, I wouldn’t rightly know where to begin,” Keirn said. “Nations war. People suffer. And the gods play out their genocide beyond the wishes of us mere mortals.” He heard a snicker but not from the matron. “There’s crime and death and pain. But still people push on in their petty little plots with hope things will change though they fear any that truly comes.”

Helbera snorted. “You’re right. You do not have an entertainer’s spirit. If I wanted to hear about the world’s end, I’d listen to Geirren. And no one wants to listen to that cracked pot. From where did you come for surely you can share that even if you’re reluctant to say where you’re headed.”

“I… don’t rightly know,” Keirn confessed. He shifted awkwardly on his chair as such a truth was uncomfortable for him to bear. The implications were unsettling and he felt his nape tingle with unwanted glee. “I’ve been through New Vannin, walked the mountain paths of the mysterious Far Wa, delved the dungeons of Norigr and been lost along the streets of the City of Doors. I’ve wandered through untold petty counties and kingdoms and seen far more between.”

“Quite the treasure,” Helbera said. When Keirn shrugged, she gave him a light chuckle. “I too was a bit of a wanderer myself in my prime. Oh, don’t look so surprised. You are hardly the first soul to be unsatisfied with their tiny village prospects and struck out on their own. Truthfully, I miss it though the quiet life on this frozen teet of land has treated me well. And my knees would hardly support such travels anymore.

“But I know a thing or two about distant fortunes. I’ve tasted the succulent peaches of T’dm. I’ve carried the undying flames of the Malla between sanctuaries and wrapped myself up in the multicoloured weaves of the Parsa peoples.” Helbera’s eyes twinkled with memories. “I’ve looked upon a field of glittering diamonds and seen the fabled Caverns of Silver full of their brilliant wheat. You speak of misery and war while ignoring the beauty which balances it.”

“And here you are.”

“Here we both are,” Helbera corrected. “I’ve also seen my fair share of refugees. So which are you? Plunderer or exile?”

Keirn watched the cinders crackle. “Perhaps both.”

Helbera lifted the cup to her mouth and slurped at the broth. “I suppose we all are.” She finished the last of her bowl and pulled at her meat. “I fear the Hinterlands aren’t particularly welcoming to either. Been many that come out here to lose themselves. Can’t help but think that more are found than not.”

“Perhaps they simply aren’t trying hard enough.”

The matron laughed. “I like you.”

Keirn bowed his head but did not confiscate his smile.

“Let an old thief steal some of your secrets then. It’s hardly like I’ve a market to sell them here, regardless, and it would make an old timer happy to try her hand one last time at the trade.”

“I was not being coy when I said I know not from where I come,” Keirn replied. “Directly, I mean. You cross enough roads and they all blur together. You stumble into inns typically in worse wear than not. After awhile, the uncomfortable beds are indistinguishable. There is little meaning in distinguishing between languages when all seem meaningless. Faces are unrecognisable. I rest my head in Dzakar and I awake in Ys. I speak to the shades of people no longer here or others I have yet to meet. I’m lost on the road that I mapped. Any one of those lands I may have set out from to come here. Or perhaps I have yet to leave them in the first place.”

“It’s the arrowcup,” Helbera clucked. Keirn was silent. “If these memories are a plague upon you then surely exorcising them would be the cure.”

“They are not a plague,” Keirn said. “They are my stolen treasure. But how typical is it for plundered loot to be cursed?”

“Far too common.”

“Had it not, however, I wouldn’t be here now,” Keirn said. “I had… friends, at a time. They were with me for many of my travels. They are not now. They had their fun and quit while they were ahead. Not unlike you, I’d imagine.”

I Typed a Thing Part 3

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Part of the reason I enjoy my little D&D series is the enjoyment of crafting an expansive narrative of events and developments that occur “off page.” The stories revolve around a rather core group of individuals and follows them on their journeys. But quite frequently, the stories that are told are small personal affairs wedged between major occurrences. One technique I try and use to date and chronicle the narrative is through certain “key events.” I envision these as rather epic narratives that could encapsulate a full novel but ones that likely won’t ever happen because I don’t have the time to write them. Instead, they’re used as time landmarks to keep track of where a short story occurs in respect to others.

So, often when I start into one of these stories, the first question I ask myself is usually “When does this occur?” This particular piece I wanted to throw further in the future than anything else I’ve done. That’s why I was toying with all the comments on age in the first chapter. It also means that I typically need to establish quickly what has happened recently as well as lampshade any prominent absences.

And if the tone didn’t give it away in the first chapter, the D&D stories are usually aimed at being bittersweet.

The one thing that stuck out to me when envisioning this project as a realistic examination of fantasy tropes and structures was that all the fun elements of the heroic quest were simply unsustainable. There’s really no way an individual could commit to a life of an adventurer. The whole genre is predicated on an unsustainable lifestyle. Thus, the motivation for the adventurers to strike out on their quests was always one of selfishness and avoidance. They were looking to escape their problems rather than address them. But the problem with ignoring is a fire is that it doesn’t make it go away. So invariably the problems they wished to avoid would rear their ugly heads.

Course, even with this overarching idea of chronology I have no assurances that I’ll keep my original plans so things end up being vague anyway.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/a/abbati/abbati2.html

Country Road with Cypresses by Giuseppe Abbati (1860).

Chapter the Second

“Where do you see this heading?”

Keirn paused, taking a moment to look at his feet. Even with the coarse hair, they were turning a disquieting shade of blue. He took a moment to climb upon the face of the sheer slate jutting from the cracked earth like a nail of a buried giant. He bent his knee, inspecting the soles of his feet. The skin was cracked but leathery: not unlike the pad of a hound’s paw.

It was a little strange but, as he picked stones from the folds of his skin, he could hardly deny its usefulness now that he lacked good boots.

“I’d rather hoped to come across a helpful cobbler or peddler but that, mayhaps, was a tad optimistic.”

He leaned against the stone, exhaling a slow breath and taking a moment to drink in the scenery.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, I expect it’ll be at the Alfather’s Cradle. But there’s an intersection in Shorweld that we can’t miss.”

Keirn’s leg began to shake impatiently. He tried to hold it steady so rest could last a little longer.

“That’s not it either.”

“For being the Unquenchable Scholar, you don’t really seem to know much.”

Keirn felt a cold tingle run down his spine. He frowned at the weak attempt at showmanship.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do this.”

“If you’re looking to address any perceived concerns weighing my conscious, you’re about five years too late.”

Keirn’s leg dropped to the ground and tried to propel forward but he simply leaned back and kicked his feet into the air.

“I know you, Keirn of Gault. I have peered inside your mind and seen the doubts that fester in the darkest corners of your soul.”

“Oh? And they are?”

“Predominantly hunger.”

Keirn grinned. “And how does that make you feel?”

“It sickens me.”

Keirn’s body convulsed in protest and with a long sigh he finally slid of the rock. His feet were happy to return to the road, padding along the short grass. Keirn pulled the cloak tighter around him as he saw a small caravan rolling in the distance.

“But I have also seen your kin and colleagues. I know your straying thoughts. Even you must recognise this would be easier with them.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I never am.”

“You don’t know them,” Keirn said. “You know my perception of them. And that’s as flawed a judgment one can ever have.”

“Are you to say you don’t have a measured view of those closest to you?”

“They’re not here now, are they?” Keirn asked. His feet slowed as he turned his nose to the air. He closed his eyes, smelling scents invisible to all man. He craned his neck, looking over the shattered rock and clinging scrub. He bent to the ground, running a hand across the dirt. He couldn’t see it but it smelled as clear as a roasting hog.

He stepped from the path.

“So why are you?”

“You already know that answer,” Keirn said, tapping his temple. He needn’t travel far. The remains of the campfire were near suffocating in the air. He approach with such wary steps that he expected to find them still resting in their cots.

He rounded a small ridge of raised earth. It provided just enough cover from the road that a small party behind it could remain unseen. There wasn’t anything there. They had broken camp some time ago. But he could smell them. The heavy scent of sweat and alcohol lingered in the air and clung like a bad memory to the stones. As he sniffed, he caught more though. There was the hint of passion amongst the rock and he made a short circle of the overhang. With each step came a shift in odours and he leaned close, pressing the earthy aromas from his mind as he took in the rest.

A man and a woman had spent an intimate moment. But they were not the only lovers. That could serve his purpose should they meet. Sentimentality was always an easy wedge to drive between a group. Especially one that was clearly as clandestine as what he sensed here.

“But they have each other.”

“I am hardly alone,” Keirn said, adjusting his cloak. “I have you.”

“I’m touched.”

“And the Hound. And a half dozen others. Forgotten all and desperate for that which they barely recall. I know, oh Tattered King, how solitude can drive one mad. It can even turn a fearsome figure into… well… a dotting father.”

“Perhaps even a surrogate to one that was never had?”

Keirn laughed. “Feeble. I have no need for such misplaced sentiments.”

“You must have wondered. Even when your sister found hers.”

“The one thing you never understood was trust.” Keirn poked amongst the ashes of the camp. The cinders were long cooled. They likely left at daybreak. Only some charred bones of their meal remained. “And I trust my mother had good reason to never share the information.”

“I could learn it for you.”

“Ah, and now comes the bargaining? This is hardly my first dance at the ball and that shouldn’t surprise, Eventide Stranger, for very few attempt to look behind the pale mask anymore. Very few indeed.”

Keirn stood and turned towards the road.

“It must gnaw at you. Like worms.”

“Not especially.”

“Did you never once question why you stood out from others? Why you alone never felt like you belonged?”

“Terribly,” Keirn said. “Then I realised many felt that way. I can’t even be remarkable in my loneliness.”

“But yours was different.”

“Everyone’s is different.”

Keirn clutched the corners of his cloak as the waggon rolled near. He turned his face earthward, adverting his stark yellow pupils while making his misshapen appearance less obtrusive. This was hardly the worst he had to hide.

Unfortunately, he had forgotten his feet.

“Hold, traveller!”

Keirn kept walking until he was called again. Reluctantly he turned.

“How fare thee?”

“Adequately,” Keirn replied, still not meeting the driver with his eyes. He could hear the huskiness of the man’s voice. This was one of those weathered locals that had spent their entire life within a few safe, comfortable villages. He was one of those good, Aenir fearing men with a small home, unhappy wife and despondent children that wished to see the world but were instead locked into raising their own families a mere league or so away from where they were born.

His greatest trial was to keep food on the table and tend the crops as best he could during their growing season. He had seen his own hertig’s men but twice in his life. He always remembered how their metal had gleamed beneath their tunics and how he had filled with a sense of pride to see his hertig’s forces marching boldly through his village.

But more swam beneath those thoughts. Dark waters gathered even in the clearest ponds. But before Keirn could explore those, he shifted on his feet and turned to leave.

“Need you a lift, stranger? Don’t get many coming out this way so close to coming winter.”

“I shall manage,” Keirn replied, his legs twitching in protest to the thought of inactivity.

“Awful lot of road.”

“Wouldn’t wish to inconvenience.”

“It’s no bother.” The driver leaned in his seat. “Alfather’s mercy, where are your shoes?!”

Keirn tried to pull his cloak in the way. “I should really be going.”

“Now hold up…!”

Keirn hastened his steps as laughter rang in his ears. “It is useless.”

Keirn could hear the cart turning behind him. His heart beat and he could feel the muscles of his legs tighten. He had to consciously hold himself back and struggle against his body from entering full flight. He had no doubt that he could outrun the man in his waggon but leaving such a disturbance wasn’t his aim.

It was better to leave a story behind of a queer man with no shoes than one possessed.

He turned off the road, deftly scaling over the cracked land that the cart could not follow. Once he’d put good distance between him and the farmer, he found a patch of dirt to squat behind and wait for the man to give up.

“You could have dealt with him.”

Keirn frowned. “Not even once.”

“I’d be willing to indulge the Hound just this time.”

Keirn’s foot twitched. Obstinately, Keirn grabbed a fistful of dirt and shoved it in his mouth. His body shuddered in protest to the filth but he forced it down through sheer will. He was panting and sweating by the time he finished.

“How could you?!”

“Don’t forget who is in control here,” Keirn warned. “You are a guest and little else. Your time has passed.”

“This is why you have no friends,” the ground hissed.

“You would never be one,” Keirn replied. “Not that I’d expect you to understand the word anyway.”

“And you would?”

“I have friends.”

“While you fail to be one?”

“Yes,” Keirn said after a moment. “Perhaps you think I unwilling to acknowledge my flaws but I am a bare soul. There is nowhere for you to hide. It is why I won’t succumb like others before me. Go on with your whispers, they are nothing just like you.”

“Or you some day.”

“I have courted death long enough to know it does not want me,” Keirn said.

“Such hubris. If only you believed that.”

Keirn peeked from his cover. He did not see the waggon or its driver. He stood, brushing himself off as well as he could.

“Worrying over the Frozen Queen’s heralds is a futile past time. They will come when they are ready and no later. Even you with all your knowledge and sight do not know their passage. So what does that speak of your abilities… or obsession?”

Silence, for once, was Keirn’s companion and he relished it as he returned to the road. He knew, then, that darkness would be his friend. Its shadow would conceal him from eyes and ensure he wouldn’t have any further complications. He could rely on the Hound’s strength and easily cover the distance of his quarry in time that would make even the most wizened magus scratch his head. He needn’t worry so much about maintaining appearances or normalcy.

And Keirn shook his head.

“It won’t work.” When he received no response, Keirn continued. “I know full well that my prudence keeps the chains in place. One measure restraint can reel in twice its value.”

Still he walked in silence.

“Now you’re being childish,” Keirn chided. But when he was denied a response, he shrugged. “Have it your way. My loneliness is self enforced. Yours is not. I can at any time seek her out and reconnect. I could scamper back for that idyllic life with a squat farmstead and my own little patch of dirt constantly interrupted by the simple prodding of tired neighbours. But when our pact ends you will have nothing but long waiting with the ever gnawing doubt that no other will make contact. I did not struggle with the rites due to difficulty. Contrary to your belief, some things can be truly lost.”

Petulance persisted. So Keirn continued on his way, whistling a merry tune while contemplating all the lovely meals that his sister could cook.

Overwatch’s Oversights

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We interrupt our regularly scheduled story posting for a very important public service announcement.

Now that my life has calmed down a bit, I’ve been able to put more time into that little game I mentioned several months back. Apparently it’s been real popular or something. It’s hard to say. I missed a good two months following it’s launch due to being a traveller and international man of mystery (stealth brag, not sorry). At the time, I didn’t feel like doing a full review of the game because I felt I hadn’t put enough time in it to definitely say much on the matter.

Now I have.

Overwatch and all its associated media, characters and bad decisions belong to Blizzard Entertainment

Overwatch won’t last.

I should put up some disclaimers. First, I loved Team Fortress 2. It’s probably the game I’ve put the most time in and that’s saying something since I play Firaxis’ Civilization series. So comparisons to TF2 are not only happening but I can already tell you that Blizzard has remarkably fumbled the formula despite only needing to copy what’s already proven to work.

Second, I hate Widowmaker but thankfully she won’t feature in this little review.

Finally, I’m not a competitive player. I have other things to do in my life and that’s including a mild Steam backlog. I have no interest nor design to devote hours of my day to treating my past time like it’s a second job. The draw of TF2 was its casual atmosphere. After plugging tons of personal hours in it, I then felt like upgrading to a more competitive level to keep the game interesting. Starting in a highly competitive level while learning is merely stress and ego, neither of which are great ways to play a game that I haven’t mastered.

With that out of the way, let’s get into it.

I’ll start off by saying that Overwatch isn’t bad. It’s a fun little game that clearly has a lot of work put into it. I’ve discussed some of its design previously (and where it missteps) but there’s no denying that its visual, audio and mechanical components are solid. I think I’ve experienced one crash. It looks pretty. Too pretty for Derek to play. It sounds nice so long as you can tune out Reaper’s voice lines. Care has been taken to give each individual hero character to separate them from the others and Blizzard’s designs have been improving since launch. The maps are very colourful and detailed. And Blizzard has been prompt in address small bug fixes and balance changes.

Also, there’s a clear schedule to address one of the valid and critical negatives of the game at launch: it’s lack of content.

It’s the very lack of content that has led to this post today and to my proclamation that Overwatch will – despite checking all the right boxes to have a long lasting game like Team Fortress 2 – have very short legs in terms of replayability. Playing the same heroes and maps over and over again isn’t too bad for a multiplayer game, though certainly having a steady stream of content is great to keep retention rates high. But the glaring issues with Overwatch is built into the foundation of the game that ultimately cut these additional content additions off at the knees. And there appears to not only be no foreseeable effort to address these shortcomings but that Overwatch is, essentially, designed to fail.

For, you see, Overwatch is this odd blend of team based, competitive gameplay with casual and mainstream design philosophy. It hopes to capture the Dota/League of Legends/Heroes of Newerth crowd while also luring in the bulk of Team Fortress 2 players. It achieves neither a strong competitive environment nor a friendly, casual online community. In the end, it just ends up alienating both.

It’s the worst aspects of Dota and Team Fortress 2 while grossly under delivering on their best qualities.

How did this happen? Well, simply, it lacks one small yet critical element that kept bringing me back to Team Fortress 2: dedicated servers.

But first, what is a dedicated server? For these games, it’s a standalone server that does not require parent company to own in order to run the game. In TF2 when you logged on, in order to actually play with others you’d need to open a list of available servers and manually join them. Certainly, this is an additional step between the player and their play. I can see how it would be confusing or intimidating for new players to learn this system since it’s not just a matter of finding the server which offers you the best ping. Since these dedicated servers were run independent of Valve, they also had a tendency for operating under their own rules.

There were Valve dedicated servers too, of course. Depending on where you lived, however, you likely had moderate latency connecting to them at best. Every online game runs better when you reduce latency as much as possible. Team Fortress 2 shone when you also found great servers nearby.

Since the owner of the server could dictate the rules of the game, there were numerous factors of which to be wary. Some servers would offer benefits to the owner or his friends through the use of game cheats and the like. Some would give preferential treatment to donors or the like. Some preferred certain maps and play modes. As such, the players each server attracted were different and it was rather natural for communities to sprout up. Over the years, I’d cultivated a list of places that I especially enjoyed. These were usually friendly servers with a certain level of moderation to keep cheaters and trolls banned while also emphasising a certain average skill level. They mostly favoured capture point maps too, because that was my favourite game mode, but there were usually voting options to determine the next map and this function was found on most servers including Valve’s official ones.

And here we get into the crux of my issue with Overwatch.

Leaning more on the competitive angle, Overwatch tracks players skills to formulate a player skill score. Since the game is reduced to such a low team size (6 players), finding a good balance of skill between teams is more important than Team Fortress where one or two poor players can often get lost in the chaos of the game. Having one poor player in a team of twelve is less disadvantageous than one poor player in a team of six.

However, Overwatch couldn’t possibly develop a player skill rating from private dedicated servers especially since Blizzard wouldn’t be able to account for mods or cheating. Thus, everyone is forced onto Blizzard’s servers. This is similar to how Dota 2 works and for Dota 2 it is a system that serves the players best. Unfortunately, it’s led to some severe issues with Overwatch.

For one, there’s absolutely no control over the map selection in Overwatch. You hit the “Quick Play” option in the menu and then you wait for Blizzard to shuffle you around with the other players in the area before cramming you all into a server to duke it out. As such, you have no idea who you will be playing or where you’ll be playing going into a match. For Dota 2, this isn’t an issue because there’s only one map and one game mode. But in Overwatch there are four game modes (King of the Hill, Attack and Defend, Payload and a hybrid of Attack and Payload) and three different maps per mode. I say three because the fourth Hybrid map, Eichenwalde, was released on August 1st and in the two months since I’ve played it three times.

But, ho boy, have I played Ilios and Hanamura a lot in the meanwhile!

Overwatch basically makes it a gamble every evening as to what you want to play. If someone had introduced me to Team Fortress 2 and informed me that there would be a chance every time I logged in that I would have an entire evening filled with Arena type maps mixed with the odd 2 Fort rotation, I’d have given it up on the spot.

Seriously, Team Fortress 2 has amazing content because it’s received many years of updates but also because its design team have learned from their mistakes. I can happily enjoy TF2 without worry I’ll ever step on the stalemate prone and incredibly poorly laid out boards of 2 Fort. And even if against all my desires it happens to come up in a server rotation I could simply quit and find another server that wasn’t playing that map.

Course, Valve updated its server options so you could have a “Quick Play” option and then you simply pick which game mode you’d like and you’d be shunted into a Valve server that only played those maps. Of which you could still vote on what ones will load. Needless to say, I pick capture point every time.

But with Overwatch, I simply have to wait until the random number gods deem me worthy of playing a decent map all the while I pay my dues in the grindfest that is Hanamura. And I’m not certain entirely convinced the Overwatch hero gameplay is suitable for king of the hill. At the very least, Ilios Lijiang Tower and Nepal do not make compelling arguments for it. But we’ve seen with the Arena mode in TF2 that some game modes are not suitable for some shooting design. Thankfully, Valve was able to remove Arena (though still leave it for any masochists who may truly be devoted to it). I’m not certain Blizzard have that luxury with Overwatch. Most certainly they don’t now when there are so few map variations in rotation.

And this is the sort of problem that will only continue to compound as the game receives more content. If in two months I’ve only played Eichenwalde three times, how often can I expect to play a new release? What if they make a game mode that I really love? I could go a whole weeks without seeing it and must throw myself into the well of Ilios in the meanwhile. This is the exact opposite goal of releasing more content. You want the player to be excited for fresh gameplay, not annoyed that they’re held against their will in your old maps.

But even if Blizzard adds a queue option for only certain game modes (a highly dubious direction considering their player base is already split between Quick Play and Competitive Mode) there’s the other issue that irks me. Queue for matches. It happens way too often.

Once again, it has the Dota 2 system where, after every match, you’re returned to the title menu and await matchmaking to find you a new game. And yet again, for Dota 2, this works. But Dota 2 matches are anywhere from thirty minutes to an hours. Having a one to five minute wait between games is actually a much needed break. As such, when a match is found, there is a heavy incentive to stay in the game and harsh leaver penalties.

But Overwatch matches are closer in length to TF2. Rarely do these go over ten minutes. You can have them as short as two or three. In Quick Play, there is no punishment for leaving and you’ll be shunted back to the queue if teams become unbalanced. Typically this is from players leaving. Sometimes, you’ll have a few back and forth matches with the same teams (or even players rotating between teams) and you’ll be thrown back into the queue again anyway.

And my average wait for a match is at least forty five seconds. You can wait up to several minutes for a game. So, imagine sitting down for a night of Overwatch and your first match ends up as Lijiang Tower. You get steamrolled in the first match of the King of the Hill and it’s done in two minutes. Three members of your team quit from frustration. You’re thrown back to the queue. You wait a minute and are matched into Nepal. You stomp the first map, move to the second and manage to drag it out for five minutes. Your team gets frustrated when you lose and two drop so you’re down a player in the third map and it’s over immediately since you can’t contest the point and by the time you get a full team the enemy is already entrenched. You’re thrown back to the queue. You wait two more minutes for a map. You’re back filled into Lijiang Tower as the final members of a team getting beaten badly and don’t have the time or position to change things. You’re thrown back to the queue.

It can feel like a quarter of your time in Overwatch is waiting to play. And there’s no way for Blizzard to address this. Even if they make separate queues to address their map rotation problems, they’ll just be extending the wait time for the next match. You can’t get rid of the waiting for matches because the game only functions if you have two teams of six players each all of relatively same skill level.

In comparison, Team Fortress 2 you can have half empty servers and it’s fine. You can have maps repeat several times, put them on 20 minute timers, have map change votes in the middle of matches and be spending all this time fighting back and forth. And, funny enough, you still get the sense of progression that people love from competitive modes because you still have scoreboards at the end of the match. You can tell when you’re improving whether by taking down that really skilled server regular in a one versus one or by pulling obviously strong plays.

And as for Dota, waiting five minutes for a match is actually nice for a break if you’ve been playing for forty minutes in a tight back and forth game. You’re committed to a long game when you get in so waiting for an even match is that big of a problem.

This doesn’t even touch the benefit of seeing regular faces in the same place and forming friendships online. Your team in Overwatch, unless you are entering the queue with someone from your friend list from the start, are just faceless nobodies who mostly don’t communicate with you anyway. They’re little better than bots. And I can’t really argue with people being quiet. What’s the point in being friendly and interactive with individuals that you’re only going to see at most for ten minutes before the game forces you to shuffle up and play with others.

It’s funny, because I’d picked this game up because my friends were playing it. But as they slowly stop playing (and I keep at it because I’ve paid money and want to get my value’s worth) I dreaded going into solo queue. I’d done that in Dota and it’s absolutely dreadful. But solo queuing in Overwatch isn’t that bad since no one talks. Sure, you’ll get the odd asshole that you have to mute but then he’s shuffled away after five or so minutes replaced with another muted nobody with some lame battletag referencing a Blizzard product. It’s a rather soulless exercise that makes you feel you’re just running the hamster wheel in order to get better for no real gain.

You’re grinding but there aren’t any rewards to grind for. You’re mostly returning again and again for the chance that maybe, just maybe, you’ll load into Eichenwalde this time and be able to push to the third half and actually explore the castle for once.

But instead you launch into yet another Hanamura meat grinder.

I Typed a Thing Part 2

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I suppose this is part of the “fun” for seeing a first draft. I’m not particularly happy with this section. Nor the next chapter. In fact, considering what I’ve written so far, I’d probably cut most of it and tie it into the story later. But since I’m the type of person who doesn’t plan out the structure of my stories, I don’t really know what works or not until I’ve done it and seen it in the grander scheme of things.

So what don’t I like about this? Well, for one, I feel it’s a bit too much of a tonal shift from what I’d like the story to cover. I’ve got to great lengths before about magic systems in fantasy work and I wanted to relay that in the D&D shorts that I write, magic does work slightly differently than a high fantasy setting. In particular, wizards (or sorcerers) are far less prominent due to the inherent difficulty of working magic. See the Balls story for an indication of the work required to pull of a spell.

However, I knew I wanted to have a magical element and this gave rise to binding subset of magic. It’s based on demonology from the Lesser Key of Solomon of Christian mysticism because, really, all fantasy works are explorations of ideas and thoughts from our past given new spins. I kind of like the whole bargaining imagery of medieval sorcery where mystics were required to enter pacts and negotiations with otherworldly beings in order to obtain their power. Course, for this to work, the mystic would need something to bargain in my world. While souls work for a Christian based mysticism, the flavouring for my D&D world has always been unapologetically Norse. Thus, the actual body and reliving of life for these otherworldly entities seemed more appropriate.

Unfortunately, the nature of these pacts is bit too edgy for my tastes and while communicating how much is required to even obtain this “shortcut” to using sorcery, it wasn’t really the direction I wanted to roll the story. So, if I were to clean this up, I’m sure this entire portion would be hacked. Also, it does have a lot of passive voice which was done to keep the piece feeling mysterious but I’m sure it just comes across as annoying more than anything else.

But that’s the thing with writing. Sometimes you’ll just write whole sections that you need to ultimately sever for the good of the piece as a whole. It’ll be maintained here for posterity I suppose.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/a/altdorfe/2/03nativi.html

Nativity by Albrecht Altdorfer (1513).

He made for the stables. The horses were gone, naturally. The door hung loose on its rusty hinge. The heat wafting from its interior hinted at the bodies it once stored. He pulled the door wider, stepping into the dung and sweat choked shedding. The stones were still cold to his steps but they were a relief from the frigid ground outside. He proceeded past each stall. His steed was gone, naturally. Only the keeper’s old mare remained.

Keirn had a mind to take it.

“But you won’t.”

“I’m better than them.”

“You’re truly not.”

“I’m smarter than them.”

“That’s more likely.”

The creature stirred at his approach. She raised her head, nostrils flaring. Her large, almond eyes fell on him. For a moment, they were still like a rustic portrait for decorating the mantel.

Her nostrils flared again and she cried. Her hooves stamped the ground and she retreated from her door. Her rump butted against the wall as her head snapped in her building frenzy.

“She knows.”

He raised a hand and the horse kicked the stable wall. “They always do.”

He cracked the stall’s door. The horse pressed herself into the corner. Her eyes were unblinking and streaked with blood. Her nose was raised, the nostrils great gaping holes refusing to close. Fear trembled her flanks and her hooves beat a frightful cadence against the boards. He could see the way she stumbled upon her rear leg and how the muscles tensed to keep her upright.

“She’s lame.”

“You weren’t riding her anyway.”

The was a reason his steed was blind. He wondered how far the thieves would get before they made that realisation.

Fully in her stall now, Keirn closed the door behind him. He stared at her, placid, while the beast nearly threw herself through the wall to get away from him. It would make quite the sight. There, the tall, lanky man in garb that draped loose and heavy over his buckled shoulders and stooped form while she, the formidable animal more than twice his gaunt size, near injured herself to keep as much space from him as physically possible in the stall that could nary accommodate the pair.

It probably would have been comical had it not occurred in the stretching dark before daybreak. Or had his worn clothes and pale flesh not given him the horrible aspect of a Pale Herald come to collect the frigid queen her charges. It was always the same in these northern settlements. The icon of death was one of endless winter.

It was a fate that didn’t terrify Keirn. He’d never cared much for summer.

With methodical precision, he removed his hood. A thinning crop of dusky walnut hair clung to his scalp. He pulled the strap through the buckle, removing his belt and leaving it to clatter against the floor. His shoulders twisted like tight knots beneath his skin as he shucked his shirt and folded it neatly on the ground. In the dim lighting, steam rose from his bare flesh to give the skin stretched over taut muscles a truly spectral quality. Here the pink of the cuts and scars glowed with their own life. Lines crossed his trunk in chaotic patterns. A whole history of pain was charted in the flesh but the destination it mapped was unreadable to most.

And those who could identify the markings beneath the wounds would have recoiled from the sight and fled the small stable.

The mare was not afforded such mercy.

His trousers and loincloth joined the last of his belongings on the ground. For a moment he stared at the animal in his nakedness. The vaguely human form beneath all the wounds afforded the creature a fleeting sense of familiarity and she paused at this miraculous transformation.

In that moment of vulnerability he approached.

“What are you doing?”

The stables shook with the impact of the mare’s body. Her cries were deafening as she thrashed. Her hooves raised, kicking the air before her. But she dared not touch him. She dared not bring a limb against the thing that now stood with her blood crawling down its long fingers. She would not be aware of the wound on her flank. All she would know was the pain and fear.

And his nose widened to drink it in.

“Stop! You can’t do it!”

The man hunched over. His spine jutted grotesquely as though it would pop right from his body. He kept his sanguine hand in the air, the warm blood rolling down his forearm and dripping in thick drops from the crooked elbow. With his other arm, he brushed a patch of the floor clean of the hay and horse manure.

“You’ve made your contract!”

A red finger extended and scratched across the boards.

“You promised me!”

Slowly the symbols took wretched shape. They were twisted things completely alien to the runes in common use by the holy Gothi. They bore no semblance to the learned letters of the scholars in their secluded towers. They weren’t even the queer symbols of the secretive Oathstealers or even the coded language of the Forbearers from Kiga though none this far north would have heard of that latter group.

No, these perverted things were far more profane. Such were their loathsome curves that the mere sight of them caused the mare to shake before collapsing. She sprawled upon the ground, convulsing as he worked, pausing long enough to gently remove her leg from his circle.

“I shall not be denied!”

His flesh flared. He gritted teeth into lips, drawing his own ichor from darkly blue veins that pumped slow beneath his prickling skin. He pressed on, ignoring the brightening of his flesh. Beneath the curled lips of age old scars glimmered lines and shapes horrifyingly similar to those scratching themselves upon the floor.

Only once did he need to dabble in the mare’s fresh wound to complete his work but when he was finished, he stood. He panted short bursts of icy breath. His skin sweated despite the cold. But even the mare had grown silent now, her sides rising in the shallowest of breaths.

Feeble was the reply to the sight of the thing drawn on the floor. “The Hounds-master is gone.”

“But yet the Hound still bays.”

He stepped into the centre of the thing on the floor. He peered around uselessly for an implement. Drawing up short, he drew his cracked fingers to his chest. The nails turned inward, digging deep into the frail skin. He pulled across. Red ridges charted the path. It was hard work as the old scars were the most unyielding but finding flesh unmarred was near a treasure on its own. With enough of his own blood mixing with the mare’s, he held up a hand and squeezed what drops he could upon that most obscene construct.

There was a hiss but not from the ground. It circled around him, spitting hot venom and malice.

“Be still,” Keirn said, cracking a grin amongst that macabre scene. “You will not be upset from your post.”

“You don’t mean-“

The mare jolted at the howl which shook the very shingles of the roof. The creature stirred itself to consciousness amongst that otherworldly sound. She knew it as surely as any creature knew the sound of a predator on the hunt. It was the sound of impending finality. It was the sound of inevitability.

The stables shuddered upon their flimsy holdings. It was as though some unseen giant were attempting to wrestle the structure from its foundation. The mare stared wide-eyed at that which could not be there. She was paralysed by a grip far stronger than simple fear. Only instinct could make sense of the shadows that twisted in the corners of her stall. Only that primal spark could prickle at the presence which arrived unannounced and not through any door or window. But it was assuredly there just as much as that dreadful howl that clawed at the boards.

“You can’t bear two. It’s never been done?”

“Perhaps there is knowledge beyond even your ken,” Keirn said. “After all, yours has been a long exile.”

He smirked as he looked upon that bloody swathe across the floor. His pupils enlarged at the sight of the etchings that now bubbled and boiled. The howling grew louder, if such a thing were possible. In the gloom of the stables, the man nearly glowed with abyssal light.

And in that light, the mare could see another. It was as though it were transposed over the hunched form of the naked man with the maniac grin. There was something of tattered robes and a dented crown that took shape as though it and the man were in the same spot. The darkness seemed repulsed by this intruder, peeling from its faded glory and the crumbling tome clutched achingly in one hand. But for all its fearful fleetingness, this other recoiled at the scrawled iconography. It drew within itself, shrinking far smaller than that scarred man it had once towered. And, nipping at its tatters were hundreds of thousands of sharp teeth.

Heavy was the smell of carrion that welled from the stall, washing like a fetid wave over the only two living things in its midst. The man’s smile faltered as he turned, retching a meagre stream of bile upon the hay. Amongst his wracking coughs, sounds emerged but they were not the tongue of man. He raised a puffy and swollen wrist to wipe his mouth. When he turned, his eyes were not his own.

Bright and yellow were they. He raised his nose to the air, nostrils flaring. In that whiff, he smelled it all. He could smell the fear of the mare. He could smell the stench of her unkempt stall. He could even smell the growing tangle of rotted cells in her lungs that would claim her fading health.

Even more impossible was the seeming change to the man’s body. He seemed less pale. His skin was somehow less sickly. A more healthy red flush returned to his body and even his frame was a little fuller. It was as though he had turned and slipped on a mask but one that covered his whole body. The twist of muscles were grander, set like springs ready to uncoil. There was a frightfully muzzled energy to him now, tinged as it were by that old worn and faded skein that wrapped him prior. Even the hair on his head was thicker and the sprigs along his arms and legs were darker and longer.

He turned, stumbling from the stall. But he made hardly a few feet before stopping.

“Aren’t you… forgetting something…”

He turned, reaching for his clothes. His eyes fell upon the mare’s and a dreadful hunger filled them. His lips peeled back to reveal savage canines.

“No! I… forbid it!”

Nails scratched against the wood, leaving long and deep gouges. But at last the Hound was reined and the man turned, stumbling out of the stable into the cold morning.