I’m not sure what it is about Summoner Wars that draws me in like few other board games. I like to imagine it’s the fact that Kait actually plays it. Maybe it’s because I unironically love Runebound. There’s a certain appeal to things which invoke the childhood fantasy that I voraciously consumed in my formative years. While I certainly avoid the genre now (a peculiarity since I write in it), I quite like the card/dice game of generic fantasy tropes smashing themselves rather comically against each other even if the system isn’t the most compelling or complex.
And I know you all have missed this conversation, so I’m glad to drag it up from the dead.
At any rate, here’s some Summoner Wars news! And I’m not talking about finally writing up my reviews of the last factions I own. Kait never finished the tournament we literally started over a year ago. I hold her solely responsible. However, given our progress in it, I can give a quick rundown of our findings to date:
Abua Shi: Long time favourite. Sadly outdated and outclassed.
Bolvi: Pet project and powerhouse if given the chance. Crazy strong with help but abysmal without.
Farrah Oathbreaker: Strong but complex. Unfortunately too wordy.
Frick: Low key very good while still feeling balanced and fun.
Jexik: Actually balanced
Mad Sirian: Fun idea with awful implementation. A victim of the early “better safe than sorry” design which he can’t shake.
Nikuya Na: Struggle bus is real.
Queen Maldaria: How are you winning?!
Rallul: How can you lose?!
Samuel: A+ for effort but outclassed with later releases. Still too safe of design for an aggression faction.
Saturos: Bonkers.
Torgan: Dark horse but the struggle is real. Sometimes you just need to rely on Lady Luck.
Now, with the tournament incomplete there’s a fair amount of ties and a significant amount of sway from outlier data points. I won’t deep dive this. At least not now. Maybe when I’m more bored.
No, what I wanted to discuss was that the artist for Summoner Wars 2.0 has been revealed! Well, he has been revealed for many months now. But I only recently stumbled across this news.
See!
All art obviously belongs to Martin Abel and Plaid Hat Games. I believe the company is independent now so it’s just them. And yes, this is shamelessly stolen from the Internet.
Ahem. Yes. Well. That was a choice.
Where do we begin? Well, this is my blog so let’s start with my feelings.
I hate it.
Thank you, that’s a wrap. See you next week.
No, of course I’m not going to end there. There’s actually a fair bit to unpack especially since I ragged on the original game’s horrendous art. The perceptive amongst you will notice something familiar about this new Summoner Wars. That’s right. It’s the exact same art style as Crystal Clans.
And therein lies my issue. I believe I applauded the art direction for Crystal Clans. Wait, let me go and double check if I did…
Yes, I did. I was upfront that the style isn’t my favourite. And it’s still not. Martin Abel is a talented artist, for sure. I can’t hold a candle to his skill. However, I don’t like these cartoon proportions and bright stylizations that are typically sold as children’s animation. It lacks a certain detailing that I prefer. Also, whenever discussing art, I’m more on the realism than stylized side in terms of my tastes anyway. However, they are my tastes. What I was really happy with in regards to the art for Crystal Clans was the design of the factions broke the stereotypical fantasy mold.
Day of the Dead necromancers that look like a fun Mexican fiesta? Yes please! Geomancy gypsies with a fondness for capoeira? Why not? It was its own thing and it was going to drum to its own damn beat. And I respected that.
Alas… this is not Crystal Clans 2.0.
The original Ret-Talus for comparison. He’s uh… certainly green.
Now I’ve hated the visual design for Summoner Wars for a long time. But, truthfully, I felt that within its own framework, they were improving. While there’s a certain lack of creativity when it came to factions (we are swamp orcs, we are green vs we are ice orcs, we are blue), overtime a certain style was emerging that was, by a bare minimum, tolerable.
However, taking the Crystal Clan design and just painting over the old Summoner Wars factions is literally grabbing the worst of both worlds. Now we have these exaggerated, simplified characters composing exaggerated, simplified armies. Boring undead necromancers look like squeaky dog chew toys. Generic white angels and blonde clerics look like the Saturday morning children’s tie-in for a 2001 Bratz Dolls collection.
Maybe I’ll be surprised that there’s been a huge rework to go along with the visual overhaul to the game but since the artist has already shown us Ret-Talus of the Fallen Kingdom and Sera Eldwin of the Vanguard, I suspect that won’t be the case.
Even worse, both Crystal Clans and Summoner Wars are fantasy IPs. By using the same artist and art style you make the products visually indistinguishable. Maybe that’s not a problem. Maybe Plaid Hat wants to be known as the child pastel board game company. I don’t know. I don’t sit in on their creative meetings.
Or, perhaps, the artist had a bulk sale on commissions and with Crystal Clans tanking they had all these leftover designs that had to be used for something.
And I want to reiterate – the original Summoner Wars art was bad. I am not hating on this new direction simply because it is a new direction. I know that drastic changes, especially to nostalgic pieces, can often face a lot of undue criticism by people who simply want to reignite the experiences of their old favourites. I think I would have not liked it if Crystal Clans never existed and this was the first time I saw it. But I wouldn’t hate it. And I’d most certainly be thankful it wasn’t anime.
Which, I guess I am thankful it’s not anime.
Given that the characters seem to all share the names of their original releases, I’m guessing this is going to be a hard reboot of the game? Like, everything we’ve seen we’ll be getting again?
I will say this. Plaid Hat must know that going for such a highly stylized design is going to provoke a strong reaction from interested players – whether that be adoration or derision. I can appreciate them being bold. I just don’t like how recycled it feels. I want Summoner Wars to have a more distinct identity whereas this is too muddying around with that other game.
Will I buy Summoner Wars 2.0? We’ll see. I won’t let the art hold me back, that’s for certain. I didn’t with its first release. So that won’t be the line in the sand for the second. However, after my experience with Crystal Clans, I’ll certainly be more hesitant about a purchase. If it keeps the spirit of its gameplay which I enjoyed from the original, I’ll certainly push past its new coat of paint.
So my review of Fallout 4 may be a bit on the wordy side. I blame quarantine for that. But I’ll see if I can’t keep this from spilling into a part three. Wish me luck!
Now, I might be feeling my oats a bit, but if there’s anything I feel qualified on criticizing, it’s writing. It’s certainly the aspect I give the most attention and thought to. Even if it sometimes feels like I’m the only one.
So while there are numerous technical issues plaguing Fallout 4, and not just the ones I covered in part 1 of this review, I can generally overlook design shortcomings if it’s compensated for with strong writing.
But as is often the case, poor design choices can negatively impact the writing.
For whatever reason, Bethesda decided to utilize the much maligned “dialogue wheel.” I have spent way too many articles complaining about how this system doesn’t work so I’m not going to repeat it here. However, Bethesda certainly has taken the crown for the worst implementation. There isn’t an illusion of choice with this one. The options legitimately boiled down to three different versions of “Yes” and a “Maybe later.” That is until I loaded up a mod which replaced the awful two word options with the full response.
All rights and images for Fallout 4 belong to Bethesda Software and its corresponding whatever.
However, the spirit of the problem is still there. Run into a beggar in the street who wants your help and you couldn’t tell them to kick rocks. You could only tell them “Let me think about it” or three almost indistinguishable ways of agreeing to their demands. I can’t tell you why this was implemented. I can only assume the much requested voiced protagonist was the impetus and then the slow realization that it’s way too expensive to voice meaningful choice in a game sank in. Except, prior Bethesda games still gave some semblance of choice and, of course, New Vegas had much more impactful dialogue options with every other character being voiced other than the player.
But the writing doesn’t just suffer from the lack of choice. Your ability to approach conversations was cobbled because there was no skill system to incorporate into it. In prior games, if you had a certain threshold of aptitude in a skill, you would unlock dialogue options associated with that knowledge. So, when speaking to a village about shoring up their defences against a raider attack, if you were skilled in Explosives, you could recommend setting a minefield. But, once again, Fallout 4 has no skills so there was no way to customize how your character responds to a situation differently than your friend’s. Now, they could have used perks, but the chances of people having the right perks available given how niche they were now, I’m guessing dissuaded them from incorporating that option. Finally, their entire “speech” mini-game was giving very sparse opportunities for persuasion based entirely on your Charisma. These persuasion “checks” would be colour coded depending on the difficulty. How this difficulty was calculated… I have no idea. The line would be coloured yellow, orange or red for increasingly harder checks but how your Charisma changed that, I don’t know. I maxed out my Charisma fairly early because I wanted to play someone with charm. But also, I needed a high Charisma because I wanted to play around their settlement feature and several important perks for building were tied to that. For reasons.
And… sigh. That brings us to settlement building.
I liked settlement building. But I like building in games. When Derek and I played Terraria, it was me who spent all the time making our village look… well I won’t say pretty but I will say less like a giant mud square. I spent hours in Starbound collecting different materials and terrain from multiple worlds to create little outposts throughout the galaxy. And my Stardew crew can attest that I skip out on farming in order to make my cottage look as good as I can make it.
As such I downloaded a lot of mods (and I mean A LOT of mods) to improve the building capabilities of Fallout 4. And I would say I sunk the majority of my playtime in building little settlements. This is where my positive gameplay loop developed. I would found an outpost at a spot that looked interesting. Then I would scour the nearby area for materials and items to bring back to my fledgling build. There I would build homes, shops and defences for my settlers. I would establish supply lines between them. I would try and decorate the homes to reflect who lived there. I dutifully tended their (painfully generic) settlement quests. I rushed across the game world (because I was dumb and played on survival mode which disabled fast travel) to defend them from monster attacks.
And I enjoyed it. For a good half of the game, once my settlement got large enough or my interest waned, I would set out to the next site and sprout up a new hamlet. In this way, I completely avoided the game’s main quest. It wasn’t until I decided that I was tired of my current character and wanted to try a different build (ha! As if character builds exist in this game!) that I decided to focus on the story of Fallout 4.
This was a decision I immediately regretted.
See, one of the areas where Fallout 4 truly, severely suffers compared to its predecessors is its main story. It’s skeleton is inescapably recycled from Fallout 3. I was… accepting of the premise. Being the parent searching for a missing child has the potential for interesting divergence from a story where you’re the child searching for your missing parent. Except, any opportunity which Fallout 4’s basic premise establishes is squandered. Often in spectacular fashion. But I’m proficient in Bethesda’s games enough to know that, while it establishes a rather pressing need for you to follow the main story (your child is kidnapped at the ripe age of like… one) I knew there was no actual game mechanic reason to rush after him. In fact, I made the rather obvious observation that in all likelihood my child was already an adult.
Though this was hardly a huge leap of logic. The game presents you, the main character, as a person out of time. See, as you escaped the incoming nuclear arsenal, you’re ushered into the underground Vault with a select few others from your neighbourhood. The facility’s staff reassured you that everything is fine and you’ll be safe while they ushered you quickly through processing. A doctor led you down some tunnels to a room full of podlike chambers where you underwent “decontamination.” No explanation is given before you and your family are separated into different pods and you’re “processed.”
The game then makes it abundantly clear that these pods then freeze you.
If you weren’t familiar with the series, it may come as a shock that the stories take place after this all encompassing nuclear winter. Furthermore, the makers of these Vaults (Vault-Tec) are consistently portrayed as immoral scientists who never had any intention of building shelters to protect people from nuclear fallout. Every shelter is, instead, some highly amoral and exaggerated social experiment. When your pod eventually malfunctions and you stumble out into an abandoned decrepit facility, it’s made plain that your Vault was one running experiments on cryogenics.
And considering that Bethesda was insistent on creating a rather rigid background for your character, diverging strongly from their prior design philosophies, it is immensely frustrating that they never once capitalized on the story of a survivor displaced into the future. They had a perfect opportunity to both give a focused lens into the past of the Fallout series while also reframing a lot of the series tropes through a more critical individual. They do none of these.
As for my “big brain” prediction, given the use of the cryogenics chamber, it seemed pretty clear that your son was kidnapped years before your release. Partly because it was pretty telegraphed but largely the model they had for the child was pretty basic and I already knew that Bethesda doesn’t put children in their games. So I was hardly surprised when you came face to face with your “adult” child.
I was, however, surprised by how poorly the writing team handled it.
This should not come as a surprise but storytelling is the art of communication. And yet, having played through Fallout 4, it’s abundantly clear that Bethesda had nothing to say. This basic premise would at least suggest that the story of Fallout 4 would be focused on upbringing, familial bonds and kinship. Is this person whom you’ve had no hand in raising but is, nevertheless, biologically your child a recognizable member of your family? Or is he a stranger with your face (which would dovetail neatly into their Synthetics plotline)? How far will you go to avenge the loss of your family? What will you give up to save your family?
Fallout 4 asks you none of these questions. In fact, I pressed through the latter half of the game, trying to have a brief, private conversation with my son. The game never allows you to have it. Not even with the hamfisted “I’m dying of cancer… now find me a battery!” conversation occurred. Instead, it whisks you away on a long series of unrelated, uninteresting, irrelevant tasks that the writers try to use as a substitute for high stakes decisions. They throw you, needlessly, into conflict with the game’s four major factions. However, none of these conflicts make any sense because their characters don’t make sense.
And there’s almost a perverse glee which Bethesda takes in highlighting their own incompetence.
As it turns out, the game is ostensibly about Synthetics. If you read my review of the worst quest in computer gaming, you’ll see how frustrated I am by Bethesda’s own contradictions. In there, they could hardly keep what the concept of a “ghoul” in the Fallout universe is straight despite it being fairly well established in prior games. However, they completely fail to provide a coherent idea about what a Synthetic is in Fallout 4 which is more egregious because these were made wholly by Bethesda almost entirely for this game.
What we get is some poorly conceived homage to Bladerunner. Synthetics are the creation of the major villain of the game, The Institute, and are robots. Robots that look like people. Which are meant to serve as some sort of shocking technological advancement by a highly technical scientific community. And yet, the game already has advanced AI. Your robot butler from the very start is a highly developed personality machine. Fallout 3 had the President Eden AI heading its Covenant faction. New Vegas both had incidental AI with Yes Man and highly complex cybernetics with Mr. House. So artificial intelligence is hardly something noteworthy. At least it didn’t warrant all the attention which the people of Fallout 4 spent on it.
So then they try to shift the focus on the fact that Synthetics have surpassed the uncanny valley and look indistinguishably human. And yet, the game fails a fundamental question.
Why? Why did the Institute build these machines?
Ostensibly it was for a worker force but the Mr. Handy and Protectron robots are literally littered throughout the countryside. You trip over them the moment you leave the vault. They go into great detail about Synths being used to infiltrate communities by replacing people with a perfect simulacrum. But yet when you ask your son, who developed these machines, why they do that, he literally has no idea. He tries to blame the Railroad for creating these infiltrators accidentally when they try to liberate Synths from Institute control. But then he simply shrugs away the question of why the Institute is so insistent on making perfect replicants of humans in the first place.
But let’s divert for a second to the Railroad. They’re a faction that believe Synths are intelligent life which should be afforded the freedoms and right to life as any other individual. They are, by name alone, making oblique references to slavery and emancipation. But with the very first quest with this faction, their main contact brings up an important contradiction and immediately dismisses it.
For, he explains, the Railroad recognizes that Synths are intelligent machines and deserve freedom and yet they don’t know what that means for literally every single other robot clogging up the streets of Boston. Should they be liberating your robot butler? Should they be seeking emancipation for your computer console?
And just as cavalier as he recognizes the contradiction at the core philosophy of his faction, he dismisses and encourages you to continue on murdering all the Synths in the current dungeon you’re delving without a hint of remorse.
This is endemic with the writing in Fallout 4. Bethesda has no idea what their characters are doing. They have no concept of motivation for the people that populate their stories. As such, pretty much everyone you encounter will act irrationally, contradictory and ultimately capriciously simply to push forward a narrative with no direction. They fail a very basic component of writing. As an author myself, here’s a free bit of advice.
The first thing you should consider whenever you’re about to write a scene with characters is to understand their motivation. This isn’t to say that every character is meant to be entirely logical and reasonable. We know from life that isn’t the case. But everyone wants something. They may behave in ways that ultimately undermine their desires and goals but, from their perspective, they should be striving for those goals. And that’s the issue with Fallout 4.
And it should be getting old by now, but all they had to do was follow Obsidian’s example.
New Vegas has a pretty simple story. The complexity comes from the interaction of its primary factions struggling against each other. But their motivations are simple. All three major players in New Vegas want to control Hoover Dam. That’s it. From that simple desire, we get a rich web of political intrigue. Their reasons, of course, vary too but largely each seek the power produced by the dam to further their own goals. Mr. House wishes to establish an independent city state and can enforce its sovereignty through the power provided by the dam to energize an enormous legion of military grade robots. The New California Republic wishes to fold Nevada into its political sphere of influence and the power from the dam is integral in providing energy for local farmers and businesses to turn the area into a productive economic hub. Caesar recognizes the resources the dam would provide for his invading forces, giving them a large well of water and production to keep his conquering legions steamrolling through the desert.
And then we have Fallout 4. The Institute wants to build Synths… because? The Railroad wishes to free Synths because they’re smart. But not smart like other robots. Or maybe they are. But the Institute is evil for making Synths so we’re going to kill Synths to free Synths for freedom. But only the Synths that look human. And even then, only the Synths that look human and don’t shoot you in some specific quests. The others are whatever. The Brotherhood of Steel wants to kill Synths because they’re abominations. Why are they abominations? We don’t know. Because they said so. They aren’t pure humans. Now take your super soldier serum and cybernetic implants without question. And then there’s the Minutemen.
And I hate the Minutemen.
The Minutemen are literally a neighbourhood watch without a neighbourhood (because for some reason there’s only a single city in the game) that decided dressing up like literal 1700s colonists would make people take them more seriously. Or something. They’re arbitrarily against the Institute because the Institute kidnaps people. But it doesn’t. But maybe sometimes they do. We don’t know. They’re scary so go kill them.
I mean, we could assign motivations to these factions but we would be doing Bethesda’s work clearly after they had finished their product. The Brotherhood wants to establish a military presence in the area. Why? Dunno. The Institute, as it turns out, wants a new furnace and all this Synth stuff is literally irrelevant to what they’re bopping around doing and not integral to any of their initiatives and just a couple of scientists’ pet project. The Minutemen want to establish laws and order though they seemingly have no interest in governance so hope that by scattering isolated communities imperialistically about the land without any support or help will maybe lead to… something?
And how does this all tie back to the personal story of you and your lost child?
Well, it doesn’t. And each major beat of the main story makes less and less sense until the grand finale which hits with all the power and force of a leaky whoopee cushion. Then the game ends in the most generic, unsatisfying little video that tells you nothing of the journey you’ve taken all so that when the credits would roll, you’re snapped back to your character to just… continue putzing around, I suppose.
Because, really, putzing is the only thing that Bethesda does well.
I would be remiss, however, to drop this review of the game without mentioning the best part I came across. Aside from the settlement building, however.
Far Harbour is one of the DLC for Fallout 4 and is clearly the best thing the team accomplished on this project. Ironically, it’s set in a far off harbour detached from the events of the main story and yet it addresses some of the themes far better that the main narrative stoically avoids. It starts with you and your hard-boiled private detective robot sailing off to distant shores in search of a missing girl. There, however, you come across a strange natural phenomenon plaguing the island and three very different measures that its principal factions take to address it. It actually has a decent narrative structure and coherent motivations for its groups. It’s far from brilliant but given the exceedingly low bar that Fallout 4 sets, it stands head and shoulders above the rest of the product.
Here you have a simple conflict between the native fishermen of the island battling a fanatical religious order that has come to the island to safeguard and worship a deadly fog spreading across the land. This fog has forced the original inhabitants to the furthest shores as they cling to the salty rocks trying to keep to their old homesteads and way of life. Pressing them further and further to the edge are the Children of Atom. They see this radioactive fog as divine providence of their god and came to worship the blight. They take umbrage at both the fishermen’s rejection of their tenets and their attempts to repel the holy mist. Caught in the middle is a reclusive sanctuary for escaped Synthetics, headed by your robot companion’s brother and an early prototype, Dima.
Course, standard Bethesda silliness is present. You very quickly discover your missing girl holed up in Dima’s sanctuary where she has convinced herself that she’s a Synth and doesn’t want to return home. The only way you can convince her to do otherwise is to literally fix all the problems on the island. Why? Ostensibly because she’s compassionate? But largely the missing girl serves as a MacGuffin to get you to the action and is otherwise irrelevant to everything else that happens. Furthermore, the direction of the story is less than satisfying. There’s a number of dangling threads that could have been woven into something more interesting. For example, I would have liked an option to reconcile the Harbourmen and Children of Atom by convincing dissenters to strive for peace while replacing the warlike religious head of the Children with the prior, peace-seeking leader they had before your arrival. Some measure of diplomacy and politicking would have added a much needed higher layer to the themes and message. As such, it loses its moral by having a hilariously tone deaf solution for bringing the two factions together if you desperately want both to cohabitate the island.
The story could certainly have been strengthened into something good with greatly impactful decisions. However, considering the original product that this expansion emerged from, it’s hard to be too upset. At least it took some important baby steps. That it also had unique enemies, actually integrated action beats and somewhat developed personalities is enough to laud it for achieving… the basics of most other games. Far Harbour as a location is interesting too, with the rugged coastline offering a nice change from Boston’s muddy brown vistas. And overall, the boneheaded elements are kept to a minimum while maintaining some of the cute wit of the Fallout series. It achieves a unique story, some interesting characters and varied locals that suggests competency on the team. It’s perhaps the best DLC that Bethesda has done for Fallout.
It’s possibly the best Fallout Bethesda has done. Though I admit I’ve skipped some of their other little offerings here and there. It’s a pity that Far Harbour serves as the exception rather than the rule.
Overall, I can’t fault the people who panned the game when it originally released. Their concerns remain valid. And while its clear that Bethesda is listening, as evident by stripping the hilariously two dimensional morality of the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3 away, it still remains they have a long way to go if they want to stand amongst the best of the genre.
On the other hand, these things sell like gangbusters so maybe they don’t need to be critically successful.
Well, it’s the new year. Which means a half-hearted attempt at a new me. Out with the old and all that. Largely, this means I’m going to have a burst of blogging before falling off the waggon much to my sister-publisher’s disappointment! Because at the very least, I’m good at pattern recognition.
Typically, most people get to navel gazing during this transitional period. And that typically results in examining where we came from and analyzing what got us where we are. Granted, I’m not sure there’s much to be said about 2020 that isn’t still raw in people’s minds. As a year, it was a pretty large shock to the collective unconsciousness and we don’t really need lots of words devoted to how much a global pandemic sucks. So let’s just skip right to the point.
I was pretty busy during the lockdown with my writing and nephews. Crowded into a household meant that my personal time was whittled down to a minimum. And with most things closed, it’s not like I was popping out to see movies. And with the television dominated by children, I saw little that wasn’t Peppa Pig. There were few games which I was able to finish and almost no boardgames that I could enjoy with everyone bolted inside their homes.
Thus, I don’t have much to cover for a year in review.
However, if you’ve been following my sporadic posting, this review shouldn’t come as a surprise. Derek and I finally got around to tackling the much derided Fallout 4. And it was only five years after its release! How fresh!
As such, I’m likely to repeat myself a little here while I recontextualize the game. If you read my early rant on it, you can probably skip a few paragraphs.
All rights and images for Fallout 4 belong to Bethesda Software and its corresponding whatever.
Fallout 4 was the latest main entry for the series made by Bethesda Software. I make no effort to hide my love for Fallout New Vegas, which really got me into the old CRPG franchise. My first game was Bethesda’s own Fallout 3 after they scooped up the intellectual property through Interplay’s bankruptcy. Derek, however, had enjoyed the original two and was thoroughly repulsed by Bethesda’s massive overhaul of the game and its mechanics. I enjoyed it as I was a fan of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls games. And, while a bit reductive, there was something to the criticism of Fallout 3 being Elder Scrolls with guns.
As such, New Vegas brought back the traditional complexity and narrative focus that old school roleplaying players expected. I found New Vegas excelled at its world building and interesting character writing – Bethesda’s two biggest weaknesses. Bethesda is great at evoking the excitement of exploration with their games but their worlds are a bathtub of soap bubbles. Each little sphere is fun in its own right but there’s a clear demarcation between their little bursts of fun. A dungeon filled with flesh-eating monsters and poison will be literally next door to a village inhabited only by children. Yeah, the village is neat and cute. And certainly the dungeon is challenging and unique. But taken together, there’s no rhyme or reason for the two to cohabitat within proximity to one and another. On the flip side, New Vegas is criticized for having a world that’s really boring punctuated by small moments of interest. But… that’s kind of how the world works. There’s long stretches of road with civilization gathering and centralizing around important hubs of trade and civilization.
Or, put simply, take a walk outside of any Canadian city and you’ll enter into stretching fields of farmland or sparse woods. Cities are fun. Farms not so much. Whether you want constant amusement from your video games or a sense of verisimilitude is ultimately the decider for style you enjoy.
Now, Fallout 4 was in a weird position. Critically, Fallout 3 did better. Sales wise, I believe Fallout New Vegas edged into the lead. Fan reception? New Vegas took the cake. Furthermore, Bethesda and Obsidian are two very different developers with very different critical successes. I knew, with the announcement of Fallout 4, we were going to get something closer to Bethesda’s earlier output. I lowered my expectations to meet the reality of the product. This wasn’t going to be a good roleplaying game. But it should be a fun little exploration game.
I furthermore had the advantage of listening to the community’s reception over the last five years and it has been… rather chilly. Thus, Fallout 4 became a threat between Derek and I. Once a Game of the Year version released, I was going to punish him with the darn thing. But as time went on, I sort of bought into the ironic glee for the game and was starting to look forward to it.
And, to be quite honest, for the first half of my run, I was actually surprised. I liked it. Now it’s been years and years since I’ve played Fallout 3 but I could still feel the improvements to the company’s general output. Were there issues? Of course. I was almost immediately frustrated with the game during its intro. The concept of its beginning was legitimately good. Fallout 4 opens with you in a place that the series has never explored:
The past.
You and your spouse are getting ready on the morning of the apocalypse. You’re introduced to your family unit. You’re given the opportunity to customize your spouse and yourself. And the game applies its horrific patented melding technology to smush your two people to spawn a melded child for your happy couple. It’s the inverse of what the company did for its prior game wherein you created the child and it teased out two parents and their appearance from there. Your little family unit is then rounded out with a dotting robot butler and the whole package is complete.
Then you’re treated to an idyllic family morning just moments before the horror of the nuclear apocalypse rains down on your head. You’re saved at the last minute by a sudden enrollment into the local underground shelter, called Vaults, that promises to provide you the facility to ride out the worst of the devastation.
And it’s not very long before this wonderful setup starts to fall down around itself.
First, there are some technical issues I had with this beginning. Primary amongst them, is that Bethesda stripped out almost all of the series’ rules systems. For those not in the know, almost all roleplaying games rely upon a system made popular by Dungeons and Dragons that involves various skills, characteristics and special characteristics to make unique adventurers. Fallouts utilized the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system which, outside of renaming a number of the stats, really didn’t deviate too much from the old D&D ruleset. You had various skills meant to represent… well… your skills and these were ranked on a scale of 1 to 100. Your stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) were on a 1 to 10 scale. Personalization came from deciding where your character’s strengths and weaknesses came from. Maybe you’d be a smart and strong athlete who relied on their brawn and smarts to compensate for a rather boorish attitude and the fact that the universe liked to kick the stuffing out of you with constant ill-fortune. Then you had to decide whether you wanted to use those wits and might of yours to sling heavy hammers to crush your opponents or lug around massive gatling guns to turn them into swiss cheese. Or maybe your smarts gave you the aptitude to hack computer terminals and robots while leaving you clueless on how to get through locked doors or the know-how to scrounge for food out in a world that no longer had stocked supermarkets.
It’s an immensely familiar system for anyone that has played any of the numerous roleplaying games out in the market. And I’m not adverse to creating new systems or exploring other mechanics. However, Fallout 4 completely guts this system and replaces it with… well… practically nothing. I learned, only after finishing the tutorial and progressing past the point of readjusting my character, that the system was entirely pared down to a “perk tree.” Your character was determined solely by a 7 by 10 table with abilities scattered haphazardly amongst them. Each one of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats had ten levels. And largely these levels opened access to a (generally) five level perk. When you levelled up, you literally got a single “perk point” which could then be placed into your stat column or used to unlock/upgrade a previously purchased perk.
And that was it. During my time with the game, there was no indication that the game had an upper boundary on how levelled you could be. So, given enough time, literally every character you play is going to be the same. Furthermore, there was such a staggeringly poor explanation of what certain game mechanics did, that I just ignored some stats because I had no idea what a “crit meter” was and I was baffled by which weapons to use because there were only a few weapon perks now split by how fast the weapon shot. Is this laser rifle an automatic weapon or a rifle class weapon? I don’t know. It’s not like the game tells you. Granted, it’s not like it’s that important either since these perks literally just increased damage as the game now incorporated a standard point targeting shooter system.
Which, give me a second to explain.
Fallout 1 and 2 were proper isometric RPGs where your character and their party were third person sprites running across your screen. Combat was determined by a turned based system where you would select a target for your character to attack, the type of attack they would perform and then the system would do all the necessary calculations for whether you hit or not and how much damage you would do. Then the next character or enemy would take their turn. It was simulated dice rolls.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas shifted to a first person perspective that let you run around and point your gun. Yet it still used this older “dice rolling” system where your proficiency with your chosen weapons determined your chance to hit and the damage you did. Which, I confess, would be confusing for new players who aren’t used to CRPGs but maybe have a background in shooters. And there were certainly entertaining moments in New Vegas where you may point your sniper rifle at the whites of your enemy’s eyes only for you to squeeze the trigger and have your shot fly out at a ninety degree angle into the sky.
So the “gun play” was certainly criticized. Considering Bethesda is a roleplaying game company, the updated gunplay in Fallout 4 is fine. Granted, it kind of makes redundant the series’ one unique mechanic: the VATS system. In the original Fallout games, you could choose how you wanted to attack your opponent when swinging/shooting them. You were able to use your Vault-Assisted Targeting System to choose whether to hit their head, arms, torso or whatever in order to inflict certain negative statuses to your enemy. Cripple a leg and the opponent’s movement would be hobbled. Shoot out an eye to make their accuracy plummet. Or simply blow up the grenade in their hand before they can throw it. This system made the reticle shooting in Fallout 3 and New Vegas kind of… superfluous. The one important element was using the VATS system required depleting your action point bar which is how the game determined the number of actions you would have in the regular turn based system of old. Outside of VATS, your action points were used to sprint. So going into combat in New Vegas was juggling using your action points for positioning and shooting.
And yet, though Fallout 4 only made some small adjustments to the system, they really just gutted its usefulness.
So now in Fallout 4 when you aim your gun, your shot flies down the centre of the reticle like a normal shooter. Yet when you enter VATS, your accuracy is now entirely determined by your agility statistic. Furthermore, VATS still sucks up your action point bar. But, unlike the prior games, entering and using VATS no longer “freezes time.” See, in New Vegas, when you activated VATS, the combat paused so you could (oftentimes clumsily) scroll through the various targets and the different limbs you could target before committing to your shots. Now, there was some measure of danger because, after queuing up your attack, the game resumed in a cinematic exchange of gunfire between you and your opponents. So you could be exploded by a rocket while the camera is panning around you as though you’re the last action hero.
Because I like playing on high difficulties, I found the best use of the VATS system was to determine the position of enemies, especially ones that you may not notice. I would often pop into VATS to get a lay of the land before popping out of it to relocate to better cover (minimizing sightlines) before re-entering VATS to queue up my attacks against isolated individuals.
However, in Fallout 4, just simply activating VATS put the game into slow motion. So while you’re busy fighting with the interface to choose the right arm of the super mutant in front of you instead of the dumb mutant dog behind a pile of cars to his side, that super mutant is wailing on your face with his nail board until you’re a bloody, slow-motion pulp. Combine this with the fact that your accuracy is also going to take a massive plunge since it is only determined by a skill which otherwise has no gameplay application and there is really no reason for using the VATS system. Thus, you’re only going to use your action points for running around in combat. So your agility really is only important for unlocking requirements for a few perks here or there and nothing else.
Thus, I had to restart to sort out my character’s “upgrade path” and go through that intro again.
Then the game crashed and I had to go through it again.
And this is the real story of Fallout 4. For every improvement Bethesda made to the game, they inexplicably made other aspects worse. I think I mentioned in my prior rant on Fallout 4 that writing wise, the game was massively improved on its companions. But Fallout 3 had some of the most generic companions in the world so anything was an improvement. Yet, the rest of the writing became far worse. But this review has already sprawled on long enough.
You’ll have to wait for the exciting part two to hear my opinions on the story.
Happy Holidays to all my gorgeous readers. And Happy Holidays to you too, Derek.
It’s been quite a year; I think we can all agree on that. November was particularly hectic for me. Partly because of Nano. Partly because of a pandemic. Partly for other reasons. I’m exhausted and needed a little recovery. Now I’m back into editing the third novel in the Red Sabre series. Though, I’ve been speaking to Kait, and we have some lovely ideas for the new year. Hopefully something will shake out for that.
Anyway, I want to get a couple of blog posts out before we wrap up 2020, put a little bow on it then shove the entire year in the attic and forget about the whole darn thing until we die and someone has to clear our junk out. They won’t necessarily be the most exciting blog posts but hey, at least I’m fulfilling my duties in writing them.
This one is actually going to be about Dota 2 content. So if you’re disinterested in all that jazz, feel free to pop back later in the month.
However, I wanted to discuss Valve’s most recent event because it has been rather interesting and I’ve been tossing some words around in my head about it. And where else am I going to share my useless thoughts on a little seasonal game mode in a free-to-play computer game that’s pretty niche in terms of computer games?
So, Dota 2 has been around for quite some time. Not only is it a sequel (of a mod) but it “officially” released in 2013 after a few years in closed beta. And while I wasn’t the first through the door, I have been enjoying the game as it’s passed through its many iterations. Now, it’s a Valve game, which is to say it’s really well made but took its time. For those who don’t know, Valve has an atypical corporate structure that encourages collaborative and self-directed work amongst its employees. While great for moral, it certainly leads to products that don’t follow your typical development arc from other companies.
Diretide and all associated whatnots belong to Valve
First, the enthusiasm for a game just about to release is off the charts. When Dota 2 was finalizing its beta cycle and approaching it’s grand opening, there were so many updates, communiques and tools released that it was positively staggering. For instance, to celebrate Halloween in 2012 (yes, before official release), Valve wanted to showcase their own modding tools in the game by releasing a fun event mode called Diretide. Dota 2 is a game of five versus five players running around and trying to be the first team to destroy the other’s base. In Diretide, bases were removed and instead players had little candy stashes. Players ran around the map trying to collect the most candy – either through stealing it off the corpses of neutral creatures or from the corpses of their enemies before they could deliver their candy back to their team’s bucket. And, of course, you could steal it from your enemy’s bucket as well.
All the while, players were hunted by Roshan. Roshan is a giant monster that normally sits in the middle of a Dota 2 map passively awaiting for a team to come and kill him for a unique item and lots of experience. The Diretide mode was billed as a sort of “Roshan Revenge” where now he stomped across the map demanding candy from teams. Those that failed to deliver were pummeled to death at the end of his enormous claws.
After two ten minute rounds, players then came together to fight the much stronger Roshan. I believe he was even stronger depending on how much candy teams accumulated. But it was a peculiar moment of cooperation at the end of a grueling duel between two opposing teams.
It was cute for a festive event especially for a game that hadn’t received official release yet. Bizarrely, however, it was a cult hit. I remember discussing the mode with my old team after it concluded. While we appreciated the break in the regular Dota 2 format, we largely stuck with the mode for one simple reason: free hats.
I still think the enduring popularity of Diretide rode solely on the fact that the game mode was very, very, very, very generous in its rewards. Winning a round provided the victorious team with a free cosmetic. Prior to Diretide, the only way to get these were to either buy them from the marketplace or the store. I’m not even certain raising your profile rank dropped items yet at this time. Thus, people threw themselves with avarice upon the mode, yelling and screaming at teammates that may have cost them the chance of getting the precious new chapeau. Not only that, but at twenty minute long matches with a very difficult fight at the end, the mode wasn’t really relaxing even though it had ostensibly ripped out most of Dota 2’s regular strategic elements. As a test of what the game could do, it was cute. But even at the time, people were quick to point out the structural issues.
However, when 2013 rolled around, the community became rabid when there was no sign of Diretide in sight.
It was perhaps one of the most ridiculous things I had ever witnessed online. The community forums were spammed in all discussion threads with “Gib Diretide” as the players demanded the return of the mode. The fevered pitch at which their anguished cries reached extended well beyond the Steam forums or subreddits. Players began to “review bomb” Dota 2 on review sites. They would submit mass single ranking reports to drive the game’s community ranking into the toilet. Not because they thought the base game was bad. Only because they felt this was the only way for Valve to “hear them.”
Perhaps the most ridiculous display was when a whole brigand of players showed up on Volvo’s Facebook page to spam the endless “Gib Diretide” demands on their social media website. Needless to say, Volvo was confused why they were being inundated with these messages. Especially since the only connection between Valve and Volvo is literally just the misspelling of two vowels.
As I said, it was the lowest I’ve seen an Internet community stoop. Was I disappointed that Diretide didn’t return the next year and there was no word of a replacement? Sure. But I’ll honestly say the only reason I wanted the mode was for the free items. Valve cobbled together a playable version of the event mode, which was probably harder to do than it would typically seem since somewhere along the line between beta and release they had changed the game’s engine. The new version of Diretide had no item drops. While I didn’t engage with it outside of a few novelty matches, I got the distinct impression that people were thoroughly unhappy with it. I felt that was the peak example that no one actually cared for the damn mode, they just wanted easy, free hats.
After 2013, Diretide thankfully never showed its face again. Every Halloween there would be some cheeky “Gib Diretide” call but thankfully these were restricted back to the Dota 2 online communities and usually in sad threads that longed for some idealized version of a game mode that never existed.
Seven years later, and there weren’t even any more mewlings for the damn thing.
And yet, Valve went ahead and released Diretide this year.
I want to add a little context in that the annual Dota 2 grand tournament, The International, was cancelled due to the pandemic. Valve still released the compendium for the tournament, however, generating a lot of money from sales for a tournament that still hasn’t occurred. With that compendium, however, we got an excellent new event mode called Aghanim’s Labyrinth. Kait and I played this quite a lot as it was a cooperative four person romp through a rather complex rogue-like dungeon. It was excellently crafted, with a ton of new voice lines, a unique boss and quite a lot of challenging rooms. Outside of the characters, there is very little that connects it to a normal Dota 2 game. Unfortunately, it released a little late in the compendium’s run and ended when The International would have ended had it gone through.
But it demonstrated just how far Valve had come in creating custom games.
And then, out of nowhere, they drop a little trailer for Diretide 2020. I don’t know who is in charge of doing the animations for these new trailers at Valve but they are fantastic.
While seven years is quite a long time for a return of a mode, I must say the wait was well worth it. Diretide 2020 is a culmination of all that Valve has learned in custom game mode design. It looks fantastic, with a custom ink cell shading that visually sets it apart. And I can’t say how much Valve has fixed this mode. Kait and I get drawn back to Dota 2 for the International hype and then usually finish off the year enjoying the game before forgetting it until the next grand tournament rolls around. However, Diretide has been incredible for us.
For one, it’s a silly little mode. This is still a competitive 5 versus 5 mode. However, rounds are only five minutes long! And it’s a best of five so are often much shorter than the twenty minute slog of the original version. Furthermore, there’s no big fight at the end with Roshan. This is strictly you playing the game mode to win the candy rush. And speaking of the mode…
Valve created a completely new map for the game. And it is fantastic. I can finally see the appeal of Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm game. HotS wanted to set itself apart from the other Dota 2 like games by having a variety of maps with unique objectives scattered about them. In Diretide 2020, you’re still trying to collect more candy than your enemy. However, there are only two lanes that circle around Roshan’s cell. At the top and bottom of the maps are spots were scarecrows spawn three times a round. These scarecrows drop ten candies and a neutral item for whoever kills them. Three secret shops mean that you can keep on the playing field to fight it out without having to retreat back to your base to heal. And your neutral creeps spawn around two candy wells – one in each lane. These are like towers in the regular game however they don’t attack and when destroyed also drop ten candy from their owner’s bucket to the enemy team. The candy wells are guarded by a strong, tethered monster allied with the team that offers some mild defence for your base.
And quite literally every change Valve made has turned Diretide into a frantic, brawling, violent romp over Halloween candies. Roshan still pursues teams while demanding candy tributes though he can’t be fought off. And his tithe increases the more ahead you get from your opponents. Fail to feed Roshan and he’ll kill his tributary while cursing the rest of the team with a wasting disease that will constantly sap your hero’s health until it expires. Kait and I have been playing this mode exclusively and, honestly, we’d probably be playing it even if it didn’t have item drops.
But it also has hats.
Recognizing that the only reason people played the original Diretide was for hats, Valve has a candy counter for rewards in playing Dota during the Diretide season. These rewards, smartly, apply to both regular Dota 2 matches and Diretide which allows those who are only interested in the hats to keep playing regular Dota while us pub stars stick with our stupid game mode. That was sorely needed and kudos to Valve for recognizing that. Everyone gains candy points for playing a match, regardless of winning or losing (also very smart to reduce toxicity from players). The bulk of your points are rewarded for how long the game goes. So five round, close matches will give more though short three round matches means you have time to queue up for another game so it balances out. There’s a single “First Win of the Day” bonus and then there’s very small bonuses for accomplishing certain things within the mode itself. These are worth two points and given for First Blood, First Scarecrow, First Candy Steal and the like. They’re nice to pursue but since a three round match gives everyone 9 points, we’re not talking about really vital goals to pursue.
Once your reward candy counter reaches 100, you are gifted a random item from a staggeringly large list of items. These include discontinued chests which I never expected to see since I don’t spend any more money on this game outside of International Compendiums. There’s also Diretide exclusive items and two chests that you can get this season too. One is just a normal item chest. These have spooky outfits for about nine of the heroes (and I was lucky enough to get two of these to drop and I didn’t even get the pudge set out of them too!). There’s a second Diretide chest which requires a paid key to open, reminiscent of the old Team Fortress 2 crate system. These chests can be sold on the market and include a lot more items from ambient sets, immortals to immortal sets worth several hundred dollars on the steam marketplace. Anything you want from these can also be sold on the marketplace so needless to say I haven’t opened any of these “money chests.” There are some ghostly item effects that drop as well, seasonally limited to the fall and can be applied to certain heroes and couriers.
I’ve been very happy being able to farm this mode to get new goodies. And I can’t imagine that Valve hasn’t made a bundle off these sale chests considering I’ve made around seven dollars on my own from people’s enthusiasm. There were some bugs and balance issues when this first dropped. Given that Dota 2 has over a hundred heroes with an enormous skill pool, certain heroes were considerably better than others. Valve had the foresight to allow each player a single ban at the start of the match and released a number of patches to the game mode post launch to bring certain heroes in line as well. I’ve enjoyed the evolving “meta-game” around the picks and bans of Diretide as well as finding my own list of heroes who everyone ignores at their peril.
Which is to say, Snapfire is OP. Wraithking as well. I think I lost maybe three times over the entire run with those two.
So, yeah, this has been an incredible surprise from Valve and I just wanted to share some positivity over a well constructed and launched custom game mode in Dota 2.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you are pleasantly full of turkey, turnip and appreciation for the wonderful things we have in these interesting times. I was fortunate to see some of my family bubble for the festivities and acknowledge the luck and fortune that I was able to spend it with them when others are still isolated or separated. With any luck, next year we’ll look back on just how crazy 2020 was.
So, I was going to do several blog posts detailing my preparation for NaNoWriMo but I have a different course to take today. I’ve been slowly chipping away at Fallout 4 with Derek and, because I like to be on the cutting edge of discussion, have decided to dedicate today’s blog to this five year old video game. Bare with me, this will be a rant.
I readily admit that I have a complicated relationship with Bethesda’s products. On the one hand, I haven’t played anything like their open world games and there is a unique niche in which they occupy. Bethesda crafts very interesting worlds to explore. I won’t necessarily say good. I won’t necessarily say skilled. But the maps and locations they fill their little game worlds do provide a sense of wonder and exploration I have yet to find in any other place. It’s certainly a love/hate relationship, mind you. Perhaps, it is the closest I’ve come to feeling legitimately ambivalent towards something.
You see, for everything that Bethesda does right, I always find two things that are frustratingly done wrong. I applaud, however, the commitment to changing formulas and trying new things even as they pump out franchise sequels year after year. However, if there’s one area I feel you can squeak away with flogging an intellectual property, it is perhaps best in the fantasy genre.
Bethesda is best known for their Elder Scrolls games. These are Dungeons and Dragons inspired fantasy jaunts through a bizarre fantasy land of their own creation which thankfully has cleaved itself from the traditional Tolkien mould. Sure, they have elves and orcs but there’s a lot quite different about the Elder Scrolls that makes each foray into a different section of Tamriel rather exciting. I started way back with Daggerfall which was both mind blowing for its freedom and also frustrating for its obtuseness. Granted, I was a kid when I played that game so I certainly had a hard time following even simple instructions and this was back in the day when design sensibilities didn’t include mini-maps, compasses, glowing faerie lines or what-have-you to lead the player by the hand to the next set piece. I absolutely adored Daggerfall and all its weird peculiarities even if I could not tell you a single portion of its story. I think I beat it on one of my numerous games. Probably playing the weird cat-people race because I was apparently a furry in my younger years. But I’ll be damned if I could tell you anything about it.
But I can tell you all my personal stories. I can tell you about the time I was an infamous burglar – climbing, jumping and somersaulting through the streets of Daggerfall’s cities stealing from wizards and merchants alike. I remember a character being infected with lycanthropy and worrying when the full moon approached and wondering where I would wake up next hoping I was not surrounded by the bodies of innocent farmers. And I can recall joining the mage’s guild, crafting my own spells and teleporting vast distances before dying at the hands of some horrific otherworldly demon. In those days, story didn’t mean much when I could simply tell my own.
As such, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim were all enjoyable experiences. Sure, it was nice that their narratives improved somewhat. However, I went into these games knowing they would be sandboxes for playing around in a fantasy world doing mundane things like property management and farming. It’s like Stardew Valley but every now and then a dragon shows up randomly to kill your horse. In theory, Bethesda Fallouts should be no different. It’s not like I was wedded to that series prior to its acquisition by Bethesda. I think I tried Fallout 2 when I was little but played very little of it. My first true exposure was Fallout 3 and yet, somehow, I came away feeling a little less enthused than if I had just played a Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls game.
Perhaps it is the setting of Fallout that sets it apart. Yes, it takes in an alternative retro-future where the United States fell into some fevered reality of a 1950’s vision of what the world would look like in 2077. But it’s also post-apocalyptic so you’re not actually living in this strange chrome and bulbous robot future. You’re picking through its wastes. I’m not sure what it is about this world but I find it more interesting on the surface and, consequently, more apt to being pulled apart. Perhaps it’s the lack of wizards.
Fallout 4 and all associated images and what not belong to Bethesda Softworks. Which, I suppose, now means it belongs to Microsoft.
I mean, fantasy as a genre flies by a lot given that it’s working in a world where people can wave their hands and a person turns into a toad. And certainly Fallout has never been a serious setting. New Vegas, my favourite of the franchise, has an entire area populated by talking video screens terrified of robot scorpions. But there’s a difference in tone that Bethesda seems to keep fumbling. And it’s not helped that it feels like they try and push their Fallout narratives more seriously than their Elder Scrolls.
For example, both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 hinge on a very personal connection the player has to the narrative. In both, they have a missing family member. In Fallout 3 it was Liam Neeson. And who wouldn’t want to be related to Liam Neeson? In Fallout 4 it is your actual son. So they design the game so your stakes are immediate and visceral. It applies a certain amount of incentive to picking through the canyons of discarded toasters as you search for your loved ones. Yet, Bethesda’s open world is less a world and more an amusement park. I’ve complained about this before, but there’s an incongruity in needing to find your father/son and constantly being pulled and distracted to ride each ghoster coaster you pass along the way.
Unfortunately, Bethesda’s writing just does not hold up when it’s meant to carry you through the experience. I will say there are some improvements. I’m certainly not done Fallout 4 so can’t really say how it’ll eventually shake out. I think their companions are a lot better. They are a lot more developed, probably getting up there to the worst of the New Vegas or old BioWare level of companion writing. Which is a huge improvement over their prior try where Fallout 3’s standout companion was the dog. And I think technically the Elder Scrolls games have companions but really they’re just AI decoys to pull monsters off as you scramble back and fire your spells.
However, I want to highlight where Bethesda’s writing still lags behind by committing far more words to analyzing a side quest than the quest has in itself. The titular Child in the fridge quest is easily the worst quest in the game. I’m tempted to say it’s one of the worst quests I’ve seen. And I found it absolutely baffling to stumble across it in this game that has at least tried to improve in the company’s prior deficiencies.
But first, some background. Child in the fridge is a quest that you stumble across randomly while poking around the ruins of south Boston. I received a muffled cry for help and a load knocking. Looking nearby, I found a fridge which, when approached, you could engage in conversation. Apparently, according to the fridge, a child crawled inside in order to escape the bombs but has become locked in due to there being no latch. You are requested to shoot the door off to free them.
I will take a small moment to sidebar an important conversation. I mentioned earlier that Bethesda is always trying new things with their game. This time they adopted the dreaded “conversation wheel” made popular (undeservedly) by BioWare with their Mass Effect game and has since seen widespread application. It is easily the worst system I have seen adopted into the RPG genre and significantly reduces player roleplaying opportunity. Granted, any video game is going to naturally be constrained by choices that the programmers write into it unlike a tabletop game that adjusts to your choices on the fly. However, the dialogue wheel shatters the flimsy illusion of choice in games by taking things one step further and obfuscating your choice by reducing responses to two or three words. Many times those words aren’t even found in the response and can be quite misleading to what you’re going to say. I would say this system was a natural consequence of having a fully voiced character. Nut after installing a mod that simply lists the full responses in a menu, I can honestly say that it is bad just to be annoying. I hope that it gets dropped in future releases.
Anyway, once you shoot the door, a child tumbles out and looks up at you. The child is hairless and covered in scars – identifying them as a “ghoul.” In the Fallout universe, excessive exposure to radiation can transform some people into a wrinkly, unaging mass. There’s some manner of secondary themes surrounding ghouls and their discrimination at the hands of “normal” survivors in the world. Part of it stems from the fact that, many ghouls that live for an extended period of time start to lose any semblance of higher cognitive functioning. They revert into a more genre typical “ghoul” that is a mindless monster trying to kill anything that comes near it.
So, this child who claims to have escaped the nuclear holocaust by crawling into a fridge could very well be telling the truth. However, there’s one rub. The nuclear war that destroyed the world happened 200 years ago. This is a salient point to the narrative since the main character also survived the war by being cryogenically frozen in a lab. The protagonist’s time displacement is an important detail in the narrative. Well, as important as any details are in a Bethesda game. The protagonist barely survived this lengthy internment even as all the other subjects perished in their cryo-pods. How a child in a fridge survived 200 years, presumably without oxygen and most definitely without food, is a wonder. However, things get even more bizarre.
See, the child wants to go home and see his parents. He asks you to escort him. In Fallout 4’s wonderful dialogue system your options are literally “Yes, of course” or “No but maybe later.” Regardless, you walk maybe twenty feet before a mercenary named Bullet comes up to you and asks to buy the ghoul child from you. That’s it. No explanation why he wants to buy the ghoul. No reason for why he’s literally standing several yards from the fridge in the first place. And certainly no reason why he’s low-balling the offer for the child either. This “moment” represents really the only choice in the entire quest chain. You can hand the kid over for a measly 250 bottle caps or tell Bullet to pound sand. Taking the latter, I then had to escort the ghoul kid carefully around the nearby ruins of Quincy so as to avoid an entire stronghold of mercenaries before arriving him at home.
Which comes to another problem. Not only did this child survive for 200 years in a fridge. But they were stuck in this fridge, literally on the side of the road, right beside a settlement that is explicitly looking for people like him to purchase into… possibly slavery? Maybe a circus sideshow, it’s hard to say. Bullet certainly wouldn’t.
How was it possible that this kid locked in a fridge went unnoticed for so long? Once again without food, water and likely oxygen?
And yet, strangely enough, when you arrive at his former house, you find his mother and father patiently waiting in the hollowed our ruins of a rotting two story building wearing their Sunday bests and acting like literally nothing was different. Granted they too are ghouls and both actually have the “twelve packs a day” smoker’s voice unlike the child. But it seems highly suspect when they cry out that they thought their kid was dead. Well, no shit. It’s been two hundred years and apparently you couldn’t leave your empty house to walk twenty minutes down the road to find him in a fridge.
At this point, Bullet arrives to restate his desire to purchase the child. I guess he doesn’t care for adult ghouls. Also, Momma and Poppa Fridge offered you the exact 250 dollars for returning their child. So outside of being pointlessly cruel, you have no reason to hand Icecube over to the two bit ringmaster. A short firefight later and congratulations, your quest is done!
That’s it. That’s the entire thing. It is… maybe ten minutes long and that’s because I took a wide circle around Quincy. So, not only is there really only one choice, and a shallow one at that, in this quest. It’s all over a meager amount of money and some good feels. Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t annoying me. However, the game’s other minor quests are at least a little more involved. I mean, there’s one where you’re literally asked to go and mix paint to decorate a wall that has at least one more step involved.
But it isn’t just the brevity of the quest that irks me. I can get over a minor, throwaway task. Obviously, or I wouldn’t play video games. No, what really grabs my lion by the tail is the fact that it’s so… insipid. It’s so stupid. There was really no time put into this miniature story. The entire tale is “mercenary bad. family good. fridge thick.” And yet, there’s not a single step in this three step dance that follows any internal logic. I know that pointing out plotholes is out of fashion in these times, but there was zero effort or thought put into this chain. And I can’t even say that the effort in writing matches the effort in production. I mean, all these awful lines of dialogue had to be voiced by four separate actors. And sure the sequence is quick to program but it probably took several weeks or possibly months for it to see full implementation (granted accounting for the voice acting delay). And yet, I have to wonder over the reason for it.
I can’t imagine anyone buying a kid surviving locked in a fridge for 200 years beside a busy road. I don’t care how much radiation magic you throw at it to justify it. And then having the parents magically survive all this time without even looking for the child is even crazier. And Fallout 4 actually has some decent set pieces so I know they can write something bombastic at the very least. It’s not so much laziness that gets me as there’s a fair bit of work involved in creating video games. No, it’s the thoughtlessness that sticks out more than ever. You could have literally replaced the kid with a dog stuck in a bear trap or whatever and told the same exact story while keeping it rooted within the setting. We’ve already seen enough raiders with dogs to know they want them as pets. It stuck in a trap would give the necessary impression that you stumbled across the creature by happenstance and not include this ludicrous timeframe. And you can even save some money by not getting a child voice actor to sound off on some really bland lines.
You do lose those sweet references to Indiana Jones and Ladybug, Ladybug but considering that New Vegas already did it better, I’m not sure that’s worth it.
And then, of course, there’s some really weird implications which I can one hundred percent say Bethesda did not consider when they wrote this quest. First, not only does turning into a ghoul extend one’s life for an indefinite amount of time (certainly a point that comes up often in Fallout games) but it also halts all manner of aging. Icecube has been a child for 200 years. Two hundred years of isolation in a fridge, never growing, never interacting with anyone. Stuck forever in this perpetual nightmare of cramped darkness. Icecube has spent over two hundred times his non-ghoul life not knowing anything more than a five by three foot space. How he isn’t blinded the moment that door comes flying off must certainly be more radiation magic. But it also means that, barring being eaten by a bear, Icecube is going to exist in perpetuity as an approximately nine year old kid. Assuming he doesn’t go feral like the hordes of ghouls you murder throughout the game.
But there’s even more. Icecube is the only ghoul child that you encounter. Which does leave one wondering why there aren’t more. It’s not even a matter of programing – the developers created a model for Icecube – so they specifically chose not to have feral ghoul children anywhere else. There are no ghoul children with any of the mentally stable ghouls. There are none spawning with the ferals in dungeons. Prior games explained this by saying ghouls are infertile so they aren’t making any more. They left what happens to a child exposed to excessive amounts of radiation to the imagination. Perhaps a kid does turn into a ghoul but continues to grow. Perhaps children simply cannot survive that amount of radiation poisoning.
Now, however, Bethesda has no excuse. They have a single ghoul child. The fact there aren’t more falls into the standard Bethesda writing excuse of “Don’t think too much about it, we certainly didn’t.” And I get that children are a touchy subject in open world games. Having a game allow you to kill children is basically a non-starter in this day and age.
Dying Light has left the conversation
But Bethesda normally skirts it by having a handful of immortal children immune to all damage. They normally get around pesky programming issues by making a number of people unkillable regardless of what happens. Which, you know, I get. This is not a tabletop game, some concessions are expected in this creative contract between storyteller and audience. However, why then bring attention to so many incongruities on a bloody sidequest which easily sidesteps all these issues by just using a damn dog?
This is classic Bethesda. Here’s a simple story that is too simple to be enjoyable and yet somehow manages to contradict so much about all their other stories that it detracts exponentially from the whole. And there’s no excuse for this. It’s not due to low effort because a lot of effort went into making it happen. It’s not due to not knowing better because they have contradictory statements elsewhere in their own worlds. It just simply exists. Right there. Like a buffet table laden with succulent homemade meals and a single plate of mouldy cheese swarming with flies and maggots.
And simply put, no matter how nice that dessert is next to it, you can’t keep the flies from flying over and crawling all across it.
I was debating the merits of writing a reflection on the book: Cinderella is Dead. As I neither love nor hate the book, there is not a lot I have to talk about. So, instead I am going to reflect on the reactions of other readers.
But first, Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron features 16-year old Sophia living in a very restrictive world post-Cinderella. Sophia is not excited to attend the mandatory ball, where matches are made as she is more interested in princesses than princes.
Book cover from the internet.
I liked that our lead protagonist was female, coloured and a lesbian. I liked that the book really questioned the arc of fairy tales. Sophia’s world treats the Cinderella story like scripture, which brings forth so many problems. And really, it is always important to question what you read and the common ideas held by society. I also liked that Cinderella was real, 200 years dead, but still a member of this world. I didn’t love that the target audience was young adults. The writing was really geared towards a younger reader, which simply does not interest me at present.
And that pretty much sums up my perspective on this book. I would give Cinderella is Dead 3.5 out of 5 stars. It was solid, but not super amazing.
Then I did some research to see what other people thought. Reviewer A loved the book – 5 out of 5 stars. Reviewer B hated the book – 1 out of 5 stars.
I would agree with Reviewer A, Sophia was candid, straightforward and determined. These were great qualities in pushing the story forward. She knew what she wanted and she sought to change the world around her rather than break under the expectations of others. And yes, the King was a terrifying villain. He was not only evil, but inspired his followers to be just like him. This was striking considering the state of our world at present. A morally corrupt leader will draw out the worst in his people.
Book cover from the internet.
While I think Reviewer A gushed overly about the story, they did pull out some good highlights. In contrast Reviewer B seems to have been ridiculously harsh. Reviewer B thought Sophia had no empathy or sense of the world around her, concluding that the main character was entirely selfish. While I will concede Sophia is far from a complex character, I don’t think it was blind-selfishness that had her standing up for herself. The world in this book was harshly patriarchal. It was extreme in the way women had zero control in their lives. And Sophia was a counter to that. She was determined not to give in to the expectations of others. In a longer narrative, you might have been able to look at more shades of grey, but I think the message of standing up for yourself and your neighbors against tyranny is too important to dismiss as selfish. It wasn’t just that Sophia wanted to marry another girl, it was that she wanted to have control in her life. She wanted a world, where married women were not abused and cruelly discarded. Where daughters were treated with respect and given agency in their own futures.
Reviewer B did bring up at least one dumb moment, where the characters act stupidly. The book is not perfect, I will admit that. And there are some questionable actions by the key characters, personally the whole seeing the future moment seemed irrelevant. However, overall, I don’t think it deserved the level of hate.
In the end, I maintain my rating of 3.5 stars. A good book with diversity at the forefront. I am just past the young adult (tween) age group.
The Best We Could Do is an illustrated memoir by Thi Bui. While this is not a book I would normally have chosen to read, it was picked by my new book club as one of the reads for the summer. The following review will have spoilers – can you have spoilers in a memoir?
The Best We Could Do was well done. There are some interesting and powerful messages in the text. The biggest point in its favour was the illustrated narrative – it was a fast read! Which is something I appreciate in a genre I am not drawn to. The illustrations – yes, think comic book, but for adults – is coloured in black, white and rust. The rust really adds to the historic feel of the story.
One panel from the book The Best We Could Do – image from the internet.
The story is one person’s reflection on their family history with a particularly strong focus on Thi’s relationship with her parents. In fact, a considerable amount of time is spent looking at both her mother and her father – their childhood and early years of marriage.
Thi Bui’s family is from Viet Nam and her memoir touches on some of the turbulent years of the country before her family finally fled to America. I don’t know anything about Viet Nam or its struggles. But I do know something about Cambodia. I could not help but draw a number of comparisons between the stories I have learned of Cambodia and what I was reading about Viet Nam. It reminds me how difficult life is in many parts of the world. How hard change is for the people living through it. But most striking for me, was the hardships faced by refugees fleeing abhorrent conditions, taking nothing with them, and then faced with so much uncertainty and cultural difference when they immigrate to a new country. That reminder was what I took away from the book. And a stronger desire to be more understanding and compassionate when interacting with people coming to Canada as refugees.
We do not know what they have been through and so it is difficult to appreciate how challenging this move is. Particularly for families fleeing for their lives. They bring nothing with them but a sliver of hope. Hope that leaving everything behind will mean more opportunities for their children. Hope that they will be able to rebuild a life in a foreign land where the customs are so different. It is very humbling to reflect on the sacrifices these families make and the numerous challenges they face. I work with a number of newcomers, so I found this aspect of the story very meaningful to me.
Book cover for The Best We Could Do – image from the internet.
The other strong theme running through the book is that of maturing. The challenges we face as we grow from child to adult and how that reshapes our relationship with our parents. Tied to this idea are the traits we pick up and adopt because of our parents’ histories. What we carry forward from their experiences – for good or ill. I was less interested in this personal reflection. I feel I have thought about my own relationships to my parents and as I am not a parent, I cannot look in the other direction.
While the story The Best We Could Do, is not one that I naturally gravitate towards, it is a powerful and well composed book. Except for the non-linear beginning which left me rather confused about Thi’s father and his past. However, the illustrated nature of the book helps to break down the complexity of the narrative. I would give it 4.5 stars out of 5 and recommend that you try the story. It is not a huge time commitment, but it is certainly eye-opening for those who have not gone through such challenging circumstances.
Today I am going to talk about K.M. Shea’s Twelve Dancing Princesses. This another of the Timeless Fairy Tales, which are individual fairy tales set in the same world. In fact over time they have developed another world wide arc that is playing out in the background and in the Fairy Tale Enchantress series.
As always, beware of spoilers.
Book cover for Twelve Dancing Princesses. Image from the internet.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses is unlike many other retellings as it focuses very little on the princesses. In fact the main character, Quinn of the Farset military, gets roped into trying to break the princesses’ curse by her fellow forest soldier. Only a little time is spent following the princesses – three nights to be precise.
Since the Twelve Dancing Princesses is the 10th book in the series, it plays more of a role in the world-wide story arc than the books at the beginning of the series. For this reason it is less of a stand-alone. It is also less constrained to the traditional plot line of the twelve dancing princesses. Yes there are nightly dances and yes the king is searching for someone to solve the mystery (and break the curse). But this story is about Quinn, how she meets the young King of the Elves and saves them. In saving the Elves, Quinn also saves the Princesses.
Interestingly enough, the Princesses are not entirely blameless in their curse. Two of the twelve are the reason the others become cursed. I like that there is a greater range of characterization of the twelve princesses, however little time is spent with them.
The story is enjoyable and I like what it does for the bigger plot-line. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
When thinking about my review for this book, however, there were two things that I wanted to discuss. The first was the idea of authenticity – how much should a re-imagined story follow the original plot-line? Clearly, the author has chosen to take the Twelve Dancing Princesses in a different direction. She is barely interacting with the titular characters. Is this good, bad, or just a thing?
Book cover for Twelve Dancing Princesses. Image from the internet.
For me, I don’t think you need to follow the original tales that closely. In fact some of my concerns for other books in this series is that they tried too hard to follow our general understanding of the fairy tales which made for very clunky endings. These are good places to start, then let creativity run free.
I will make one additional note though, if your story deviates too much from the original source material – call it something else. I watched a movie that was supposedly about King Arthur but was so wildly different from the tales I grew up with it was abrasive. The movie would have been a hundred times better if it were called A Roman Soldier or such. To title your book in a specific way, like the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and then write a story about a forest ranger, can be off putting to some readers. They will expect one thing and get something completely different. Which is not the best example, because the curse and the twelve princesses do follow the traditional plot very well. The reader just follows a different character to get to the same information point.
The other thought I had while preparing this reflection was about favourites. The Twelve Dancing Princesses is the favourite fairy tale of a friend. She loves the different incarnations of this story. This, however, is not my favourite. I much prefer Beauty and the Beast. I really like relationships that start as mistrust and turn to love. But I also really like that Beauty and the Beast takes place over a long period of time. These characters learn to love each other slowly. So, it made me wonder, what fairy tale is your favourite? Which story do you read in all its different incarnations?
I just finished reading the Snow Queen: The Complete Saga by K.M. Shea. This fairy tale is written in two parts: Heart of Ice and Sacrifice. The Complete Saga also includes a number of short stories at the end.
As with any review, beware of spoilers.
Snow Queen: Heart of Ice book cover from the internet.
The Snow Queen takes place in the same world as the other Timeless Fairy Tales by K.M. Shea only a hundred (or so) years earlier. I am not positive, but I am pretty sure it was written after the author had written several of the other books in the same world. So, it is a bit of a prequel to the great world events, while at the same time acting as a complete story.
Rakel is the Snow Queen, a princess born with Magic. In this time frame magic users are hated and feared. Rakel is despised by her parents and locked first in a cold, isolated tower then exiled to a distant mountain peak in the northern kingdom of Verglas. While Rakel grows to love her magic, she is frightened of people – as they often want to kill her or call her a monster. All that is about to change when the Chosen decide to invade.
While her first instinct is to let the people of the kingdom suffer, that doesn’t last long. And soon Rakel sets off to save a neighbouring village. She wields her magic to protect her people and over time becomes the hero of her kingdom.
For Rakel, her journey is about making friends, learning to trust other people and to live in a world beyond her ice castle. She finds love in a colonel from the invading army, a best friend in an outgoing thief and loyalty in the Captain of her guards and the attendant who has served her for the past 8 years.
Snow Queen: Sacrifice book cover image from the internet.
It is a sweet story that clearly delineates good versus evil. Yet, it does take time to look at motivation and method. The story draws parallels between the power Rakel has and uses as the Snow Queen and that of her enemy, the leader of the Chosen. While Rakel is reluctant to kill, Lord Tenebris, leader of the Chosen is off to enslave everyone without magic. Both these characters have faced discrimination, yet both have come out of that experience with two different objectives. Rakel would rather hide away from the world. Her goal is not to cause pain to others because she knows what it is like. Rather, her strength lays in her ability to forgive (also in her incredible control over ice, snow and temperature). Tenebris wants to punish those that have hurt him. He will be the strongest and will demonstrate his strength by ensuring no one has the power to hurt him again. He also wants revenge. Death and destruction are his goals.
The death count may be low for Rakel, but just to be clear her army does not hold the same views. They are killing the enemy, occasionally there is imprisonment, but there is still a lot of death. So, yes the good guys try to be better, but in war there no real heroes. And that is something this book does not really touch on. Granted this is a nice, straightforward fairy tale of good versus evil. The message the book spells out is that forgiveness and love are stronger and more important. But I think it tries to portray the battle as too clean. In a war like this, both sides would have lost. However, that would have made for a different and more complex tale to tell.
Snow Queen: Snowflakes book cover image from the internet (this is the collection of short stories).
This was a good story. And with the chaos of the real world, sometimes we need these unrealistic heroes to exist so we have something to strive for. Sure no one is going to be as perfect as Rakel, the Snow Queen (not just because magic on that scale doesn’t exist). But we can all try to be a bit more like her: kinder, more empathetic, and far more forgiving.
Final rating for the Snow Queen: 4.5 out of 5 stars. Another good book my K.M. Shea.
It is summer reading! Look at how many books I am getting through. So, this latest book was urban fantasy rather than scifi. This is book 1 in Lindsay Buroker’s new series, Death Before Dragons. The title Sinister Magic. Beware of spoilers.
First, to be upfront and honest, I like Buroker’s writing. I don’t love all her series and I haven’t read all her books – though I have read quite a few. This is still good writing. The characters are engaging. There are a range of personalities and viewpoints. There are also a range of races in this particular novel.
Book cover for Sinister Magic: Death Before Dragons, Book 1. Image from the internet. Please notice how bad-ass Val is with her magical tiger and cleverly named sword. (Note that is sarcasm abut the name of her sword.) Yes, there is also a dragon.
For one of the first times I do not love her female protagonist. I certainly want to love Val (Valmeyjar). She has obvious issues: inflammation of the lungs possibly related to stress that is certainly a problem when slaying evil monsters. She has relationship problems, mostly because everyone she knows has their life in danger by proximity – including an ex-husband and daughter. Though, I do like that she has family. A mother she struggles to relate to along with her own ex and daughter. But few other friends, mostly a tiger from another dimension. She is also a half-elf. And who doesn’t remember being a child and wanting to be a half-elf?
I love Val’s let’s get this done attitude. She is confident, snarky and stubborn. All excellent traits in a storybook heroine. I love that she has a moral outlook, a challenge when she is essentially an assassin against magical beings. What I don’t love about Val is her approach to killing everything. She is off to save her friend, but in doing so causes a great deal of damage. While this is pretty standard fare in action films, it does question how morally sound is Val’s decision to kill things for a living. Especially when the Dragon appears and offers a different system. Granted we don’t know the details about the Dragon Courts Justice system, but mass slaughter is not the primary method.
I do like how there is some effort put into questioning Val’s methods for dealing with rogue magical creatures. I am not suggesting they should be ignored, but is killing them without trial or effort at rehabilitation really the best option? The fact that Val appears to be so narrow minded in her dealings with magical creatures (amusing because she is half magical herself) is my biggest problem with the story.
This is not a reflection on the writing. Rather, Buroker’s portrayal of Val left me thinking poorly of the main character. And while I agree you can have great stories with unlikeable protagonists, these are not usually the stories I read. While on one hand I admire Val for her ability to defend herself and friends while taking down large and scary monsters. I find Val’s use of weapons heavy handed when dealing with problems. I prefer characters that solve problems cleverly with words (and occasionally swords), like Amaranth in the Emperor’s Edge series. Though, Sinister Magic is at least aware of all the collateral damage Val causes.
Conclusion: Sinister Magic is a good book, but I don’t particularly like the main character. Still, I am interested to see where the series goes next. I would give this book 4 out of 5 stars.
