Category Archives: Criticism

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Brighter Basements

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Alas, this will be my last video game review for 2016. Not because I feel like five weeks is a long time to be doing reviews (because I’d keep going if I could). But simply because I’ve run out of new games I played in 2016. Alas, as you get older, you end up with less and less time. But that’s ok. I’m sure I can find something else to review from 2016 until I get to April and then go silent as I go back to novel writing.

Darkest Dungeon and all associated media and gruesome art is the sole property of the twisted psyche and corrupted imaginings of the disturbed folks of Red Hook Studios.

Not to say that there weren’t other games worthy of discussion that released. Sadly, I won’t be hitting up Pillars of Eternity since I’m nowhere near finished with it. Plus, I’ve started Age of Decadence which I’m surely going to discuss on a future date.

But we came for a review and a review I shall deliver. Thus, I present to you my opinions of Darkest Dungeon!

Unlike the other games I’ve reviewed that I haven’t finished, Darkest Dungeon is different than the rest. For one, I’ve tried twice now to get through it. However, it’s greatest negatives keep holding me back from finally completing the game. However, following that first point I know I will finish it because in the end I like the game despite it’s horrible stumbling.

But let’s start with the positives.

Darkest Dungeon drips atmosphere. It’s a dungeon crawling game that set out to blend Lovecraftian horror with Dungeons and Dragons tropes. Visually and audibly it hits those notes perfectly. I adore the the heavy inked visual style the game adopts. Even more, I love their direction for a early gunpowder era and their reimagining staples of class based party gameplay. The healer of the game is the Vestal who is some type of angry battle nun. Other support classes include the Middle Eastern Occultist who directly channels Lovecraft’s fantastical orientalist who is steeped in otherworldly knowledge and spiritualism. Then we have the plague doctor to address poisons and maladies.

Each class is delightfully flavoured and visually striking with distinctive abilities that make coming up with party combinations an interesting mix of careful planning and delightful discovery. Unfortunately, while they do have a large range of abilities, I find that certain builds seem far more useful than others so you will specialize most of your classes in a similar manner. This was a recurrent problem in Xcom so it’s more an unfortunate expectation than a large disappointment.

The expert visual design isn’t reserved just for the classes, however. Both the town and the dungeons are perfectly captured. You get a real sense of progression as you turn your rotting hamlet into a veritable fortress through investments of your family heirlooms into its well-being. And reclaiming those goods from the four themed dungeons is very engrossing. Each dungeon not only places an emphasis on different game elements but are also themed with different types of horror motifs. You have the catacombs filled with undead monsters immune to bleeding but vulnerable to holy powers and just outright damage. The warrens, however, are body horror caverns choked with cannibalistic pigs with large health pools and ready to spread disease at every corner but can be overcome with stuns and bleeding. The weald has been taken over by coven of hags and their mushroom monsters that poison but are susceptible to bleed. And finally the cove is crawling with Lovecraftian pelagic terrors that melt beneath acid.

The developers clearly adore the game and have provided a number of interesting updates since its release. One of them added town events to make your return from dungeon delving even more interesting – and potentially perilous.

As you explore these locales, you will have to overcome ambushes and consider how to interact with curios while attempting to complete a random assignment within its halls. I love the curio system that forces you to prepare your expeditions and guess which equipment will overcome potential traps to reveal even greater treasures then you’d normally discover. It adds yet another concern when your readying a mission than just selecting the best men and women for the job: you need to make sure they’ve got the best tools for the areas too.

There is a certain amount of repetition to the game, however. I happened to really enjoy the base exploration and combat mechanics which was fortunate for me because you do a lot of it. Your immediate goal is to train your adventurers to level six while upgrading their equipment in order to prepare them for taking on the horrors that await beneath your family estate. Since the game adopts a number of Xcom elements and roguelike properties, you’ll invariably be setback while you’re training your troops. There are different bosses available in each dungeon to hone your skills and test your fortitude. And for the most part these bosses are really fun.

But this bleeds into the biggest problem of the game. There is no getting around that after awhile the whole system feels like a grind. Part of it is due to the imbalanced difficulty. Low level missions are stacked in your favour while high level missions very clearly put you at a disadvantage. I’m normally ok with this sort of challenge but each setback doesn’t push you towards a failed game state – it just eats up time. You can’t technically lose Darkest Dungeon since every week you receive new adventurers to toss against the grinder of the different locations. However, each adventurer that dies represents a loss of time more than anything else. Adventurers are easily replaceable, it just takes forever to do so.

And the further you progress in the game, the easier it is to lose your investments.

At the time of this writing, there is an update in the works to reduce the time and grind investment of the game. As I am already locked into the original format, this has no bearing on my criticism though, once again, great on Red Hook for addressing the game’s shortcomings.

Contrast this with Xcom where the initial months of the game are the hardest as you’re stuck with substandard gear and inexperienced rookies. You don’t have the skills or armour to really push through opposition and some bad turns can make it so you can’t keep up with the alien progression. However, if you manage to make it through four months, you’ll have progressed past the alien’s technical prowess and find that you’re just rolling over even the scariest enemies. The more time you invest in a soldier in Xcom, the less likely you are to lose them.

It’s a tough tightrope to balance and it’s unfortunate that neither Darkest Dungeon nor Xcom really found that sweet spot.

So everytime you lose a hero it’s demoralizing only because you know just how much time it’s going to take to build another character up. And it’s not like those first couple of levels are hard either, as mentioned. Furthermore, there’s little in the ways of variety to make repeated levelling of new adventurers interesting. Each dungeon has three assorted bosses that you can kill for improved rewards and to unlock the next level of missions in that dungeon. Unfortunately, those bosses return again and again only with improved damage and health. I was excited at first to see the variation between the bosses and how dramatically the can change the scope of battle. But by the third encounter, you knew exactly that you needed to fight them and it was, once again, more a chore to slay them than any feeling of achievement.

Combat in Darkest Dungeon is turn based with your forces aligned in ranked rows against the enemy. Attacks target specific locations which makes eliminating key targets as well as shuffling formations out of position the key to victory.

But perhaps the worst offence for Darkest Dungeon was it’s titular final level. It was clear that these final levels were design to be the most nerve wracking for the player as you’re warned even retreating from those missions will incur an automatic random hero death as a party member falls in the retreat. What you don’t know until you’ve succeeded on a mission is that every member of that expedition refuses to take on another Darkest Dungeon foray. Thus, assuming that you don’t lose any heroes whatsoever in the course of the game, you need at minimum sixteen heroes at max level and equipment to beat the game. And this is ignoring the inevitable setbacks that the system is designed to incur. Even worse in particular with the Darkest Dungeon is that you really need to have a party tailored to the particular challenges of that level if you want to succeed – something you won’t know until you embark. Which then means you’ll lose at least one hero automatically when you invariably have to retreat. That’s more heroes that require training and equipment. And this is ignoring that certain heroes are far better in the missions than others so some of the heroes you’re levelling end up not being that useful in the end after all.

Which means you’re back to grinding up low level adventurers to deal with the final mission. And then, of course, the real nail in the coffin is that adventurers refuse to do missions below their difficulty level so you need to keep enough adventurers at each difficulty step to train up the recruits you’ll need in the end.

It’s a long, grindy chore. And it’s really bad. I can see what the designers were attempting and I applaud their commitment to the challenge but I can’t help and feel like there must be a better way to implement those ideas. Personally, I would have liked to see the Darkest Dungeon restrictions scaled back. Either have automatic death on retreat or have party members refuse further expeditions – not both. That would ease a bit of the unnecessary grind in the end – which will be well over seventy hours if you wanted to go and kill all the different permutations of the different bosses before taking on the final missions.

As it stands now, there’s really no point in playing Darkest Dungeon without loading up an online guide or walkthrough to cut significantly down on the time you have to take to make up for mistakes. And that’s why I prefer Xcom’s execution over Darkest Dungeon. With Xcom, failure is less frustrating since your options for bouncing back are better. Or, in the worst case scenario, you can simply restart the entire Xcom campaign and still finish a second try without coming anywhere near Darkest Dungeon’s runtime. Darkest Dungeon straight up punishes you for experimenting and learning and it drains the enjoyment from the game.

Each class has specific barks within game which extends to when their will gets tested if they experience too much stress. Darkest Dungeon requires that you manage both your heroes physical and mental health if you wish for them to survive.

Which is a pity because otherwise it hits the rest of its notes pitch perfectly. The story is… well… adequate enough for what it’s trying to accomplish. I think it’s telling that I felt the four base dungeons were more engaging and interesting than the Darkest Dungeon itself which oddly enough seems less horrific despite its attempts to try and up the scale of cosmic horror. But it quickly becomes more over the top than anything else. That and coupled with the aforementioned frustration sucks what fun horror you could extract regardless.

But I know I’ll finish the game and for one reason alone:

The narration.

My goodness is the narrator in Darkest Dungeon amazing. Between the moody dialogue and the expert delivering, I could listen to the Darkest Dungeon soundbytes all day. And with such lines as “Prestigious size alone is of no intrinsic value unless inordinate ex-sanguination is to be considered a virtue” how can you not love it? The tale of the Ancestor’s fall isn’t one that has an inherent draw but the voice actor’s performance make you want to hear every single twisted turn in it over and over again.

Major kudos to the actor and writer for easily the best audio in a game all year. Which is good, because you’ll be hearing him warn about trapped halls and corridors for many, many hours as you retread your steps in the unending gruel that is…

The Darkest Dungeon.

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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.

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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.

December Bookshelf

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Well, as we cross into the New Year it is a time of reflection. So I thought I would look back on some of the books I read in December.

 

Book cover from the internet, not owned by me.

The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes

This was by far my favourite book of the season. It was different, new and high adventure. The story revolved around a thief out to procure a book from one of the heavily guarded vaults in the Republic. To accomplish this goal, she collects a varied group of individuals each with a unique skill set. But even that does not make the task much easier as her opponents are both crafty and ruthless.

It was reminiscent of Ocean’s Eleven, if the story was set in the most fantastical of fantasy worlds. This was a high fantasy landscape filled with floating cities, magic, monsters, fairies and gods – or at least their devoted and powerful worshipers.

It was exciting, engaging and so much fun. This is a story I would recommend for those in search of high adventure and some cleaver thieves. Yes, I do plan on reading any and all sequels to this book.

 

Dragon-Ridden by T.A. White

The dragon-ridden may be a fantasy blend of human and dragon souls, but what set this story apart was not the protagonist suffering from amnesia or the solidly crafted fantasy world. Rather, what has me reflecting back on this book was the surprising element of science-fiction; space travel and colonists from another world. There was just enough information shared with the audience for me to piece together the back story of the protagonist, who has woken from cryogenic sleep after a very long time. That she came from another planet, I don’t think is debatable. That she was part of the crew, a leader, who became the worshiped gods of old is rather intriguing.

While I approach the blending of space travel and a more historic fantasy world with caution, I do feel this author was able to pull off the blend of magic and genetic splicing. I would be interested to read a sequel if they were to write another.  Though, I would not rate this book as high as The Palace Job, there were some character actions and words that seemed too forced or awkwardly presented, there was much to interest me in this story that I would give the author another chance.

 

Book cover from the internet, not owned by me.

Cast in Flight by Michelle Sagara

Cast in Flight is book 8 or 9 in the series by Michelle Sagara. I hadn’t really enjoyed the previous book and was figuring I had pretty much finished with the series, even if the author hasn’t. Certainly the first couple of chapters had me wondering if I would just return this book to the library. But I kept at it (I didn’t have anything else out at the time) and in the end I really enjoyed this one. There was more talking, more relationship building and much less fighting. For me it was far more interesting. Funny as I would also say it was far more political in story than many of the other books in the series. Politics is something I usually shy away from. This time I was delighted to spend a book following the lives of Kaylin and her various friends. That said, I am not committed to reading the next novel. And still feel the best series as those in the 4 book range. This one is certainly very, very long.

 

Book cover from the internet, not owned by me.

The Bird and the Sword by Amy Harmon

Fairy tale in feel the Bird and the Sword started out more interestingly than it ended. It was filled with just enough magic and mystery to make it interesting, but it did start to lag as we progressed through it. Not based on any one fairy tale the story had many familiar elements.

The magic system was sort of interesting in the manner in which it was tied into religion. However, the cliché of burning all witches as mostly boring. I was interested in the way that the protagonist was mute. However, I still question the explanation that she could not communicate telepathically until she could read. The reason being that she didn’t have the words. But she was not deaf, so she still had the words, just not in written form. This a felt was a very weak explanation. And reflective of the whole. Mostly good, an easy read, but not as solid as it could have been. I still enjoyed it, just a little lower on the rating scale.

 

Smoke and Mirrors by Jess Haines

Okay, it has been a while since I read this book. What I remember was enjoying the story as frivolous fun. I recall a story about a young woman just finishing college for mages in New York (or some other large city) who decides she needs to find a dragon.

Unfortunately, the story suffered from weak writing. My biggest complaint was character inconsistency. One woman is introduced as a terror who hates the protagonist and tries to kill her on first sight. This same violent individual devises a plan of sharing information that leads yet another character to again try and kill the female protagonist. Only, when this attack does go down the violent woman is immediately and inexplicably regretful. She didn’t mean for this to happen even though she set it up.

The author spent way too much time trying to set up very tried and tired scenes. Characters do things because the messy plot dictates this to be so. The main character is supposed to be proud, strong and independent while simultaneously being poor and desperate. She runs hot and cold, weak and strong with the male lead. The tone changes because the scene requires that change, even if it doesn’t fit with the character development.

The author also plotted as many clichéd moments and stereotypical events as possible into one story. Adding more tropes does not make your story better. Sure I appreciate the take on poverty and agree that being poor does not mean that you don’t work hard. But really, you don’t need to lecture me. And if you are so poor, can you really afford to be stupidly stubborn?

The story was light, mostly fun, but poorly written.

 

Banquet of Lies by Michelle Diener

Of the books listed here, I think it was my most disappointing read. For a book that was taking a real event of political intrigue (a treaty between Britain and Russia if memory serves), the author did nothing with it. I loved the setup of a wealthy, well-traveled and unconventional woman hiding out as a chef in Regency London. It was different and the character’s background was devised in such a way to make this seem plausible. What followed after that was poor characterization and a pathetic attempt to play at spy. The characters were lackluster, the plot was rather silly in the end and overall it fell flat. Yes, I realize that it was categorized as a Regency Romance, but the romance was also very lame and poorly handled. Overall, this was a flop.

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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.

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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.

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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 Invisible Library

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Book cover for the Invisible Library - taken from the internet.

Book cover for the Invisible Library – taken from the internet.

When faced with the bleak reality of a desperate future, I retreat to the safety of the fantastically written word. While I tend to gravitate, during these dark times, to familiar books it is not always the case.

In contrast to the rest of the media and news, I will share something positive today. I read a good book: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman.

The book focuses on Librarian Irene as she sent out of the Interdimensional Library into an steampunk inspired Victorian-esq fantasy alternate world; complete with seductive fae, dashing dragons, famous detectives, air ships and of course magic. Irene is pitted against secret cults and Library bogeymen, as she tries to complete her book retrieval before being utterly destroyed by the chaos infecting the world and herself. It is a highly entertaining read.

Another book cover for the Invisible Library, taken from the internet.

Another book cover for the Invisible Library, taken from the internet.

So, what do I love about this book? Well, Irene is a strong, practical and extremely effective Librarian. Evidently good at her job and equally competent at training her new apprentice. I like her spirit, her efficiency and even her questionable moral standing on humans. Irene doesn’t crumple under the pressures of her job, she rises to the challenge with a mix of magic, strength and decisive intelligence.

Although, we the reader, get to spend little time in the mysterious Library, connected to all words yet existing apart from them. I was greatly interested in this intriguing location, filled with even more unique personalities of other ageless Librarians. I was pleased in the handling of all worlds being true, just alternates of each other. This gives the series so many options for future venues; any place, any time, any amount of magic or technology all fit without breaking the laws of the world. It is a great system for storytelling.

Book cover for the Masked City, the sequel of the Invisible Library.

Book cover for the Masked City, the sequel of the Invisible Library.

The supporting cast are similarly rich in their characterizations: Kai, Vale, Silver and Albrech all add a tremendous lot to the story telling with different views, goals and backstories. They compete, support and try to murder our intrepid heroine at different points.

Really, I recommend trying this book. In fact I enjoyed the Invisible Library so much I was quick to take out the sequel: The Masked City from my local Library. It was an equally good story, though it swapped most of the mystery of the first book for inter-world politics. Still, it was filled with adventure, imagination, and of course books!

Conclusion: in the face of so much depressing uncertainty, I recommend the security of a good read and the Invisible Library is an excellent place to start.

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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.

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.

pillars-of-eternity-art-1It’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.

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.

Beauty’s Beast

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Beauty and the Beast is one of my favourite fairy tales. I have certainly read any number of good, moderate and terrible iterations. I have also seen quite a few movie versions. And there is yet another live action remake of the classic Disney telling is set to come out in some near-ish future.

beauty-and-the-beast

Book cover for K.M. Shea’s Beauty and the Beast. I got this image from the internet, it is not mine.

Today, however, I want to comment on K.M. Shae’s novel simply entitled Beauty and the Beast. Like so many of my other amazon finds, I made the purchase when it was free – as trashy books hurt less to read when you haven’t actually paid for them. In this instance I was pleasantly surprised. It was a good book. It was a good, logical retelling with well-written characters and only a slightly silly ending.

Lots and lots of spoilers to follow – be warned.

The book starts with Beauty, called Elle of course, falling through the stained glass roof of the Beast’s chateau. She badly breaks her leg, thus explaining her presence in the place. It is not long before the reader discovers Elle was supposed to be there in secret. She was never meant to be seen. All too soon, we learn that the Beast is the bastard son of the current King and military advisor to the Heir. Contrary to many conventions the brothers are supposed to support and even like each other.

The castle is filled with cursed staff, their faces covered in part masks and their voices taken away by magic. While they might not have the flare of some animated versions, their presence is a positive in the telling of the story. They actively drive both Elle and the Beast together.

img_7796While it is left a little vague to start with, we know that Elle has a strong dislike for the Beast Prince she is co-habitating with. She thinks him selfishly arrogant and thoughtless when it comes to the lives of others. This perspective is changed over the course of the story that shows a Beastly shaped man who cares very deeply for his staff and his family. He has a protective personality.

Little bits of information, tiny twists in the way the story unfolds guides the reader to assume that Elle, with her worrisome secret, is a spy or assassin from another country there to harm the Beast, his household and his family. Thus the big twist at the end, revealing Elle to be one of two elite Rangers sent by the Heir to protect his brother, is both clever and refreshing. Looking back, I can enjoy the development of the relationship under this new light and it works. Yes there were hints to this end, so it was not truly surprising. But it was enjoyably done.

The weakest point for me is the post-assassination ending. When the arrogant Beast Prince, now turned back to human form by the power of love, turns against Elle for lying to him. It seemed a bit of stretch. It seemed even more frustrating when it is revealed that he effectively forced Ranger 78, Elle, into a longer service because she was effective.

img_7633Over all, I thought this was a great retelling of an old, familiar tale. For those fond of fairy tales, I would recommend giving this book a try. I have added more of K.M. Shae’s Timeless Fairy Tales series to my wishlist.