My thoughts on the Hellblade series so far

 "If I can survive the fire of Sutur and escape my darkness, then so can you"

Ninja Theories latest two games are widely considered to be incredibly competent art pieces in themselves for the involved narrative that they tell, if not for 'complexity of their gameplay systems'. They are lean experiences, telling the narrative they need to and then dipping out leaving you to swallow the bulk of it all in your own time. And they were games that I always wanted to try out but never found the space. That was, until I picked up Game Pass and thought "Hey, I've already get Sacrifice waiting for me to finish it- why don't I just go back to back?" And with that was born this little mini-review of the series of the Senua titles and what I think of this, what might ultimately go down as Ninja Theories presiding legacy over the video game landscape.

First off it's important to say that basically the Hellblade games are extremely high budget indie games, that is to say- they are paced and presented with about as much narrative exposition spoken over inquisitive jaunts through interesting environments as your average 'Gone Home' or 'Everyone's Gone to the Rapture' title. What sets the games apart is the way they've always launched at the cutting edge of visual fidelity for their time, and the fact that these are the stories of a warrior who raises her sword when she needs to. It's just that sometimes you are left wondering whether you swing that sword to defend her physical body, or to protect the very fragile essence of her mind itself as it buckles against the massive throes of trauma she experiences in both titles. The games do not make it obvious which is which at all.

The original Hellblade places protagonist Senua on a vivid and fog strewn journey into the land of Hel in search of the soul of her beloved, and within that framing device a great deal of darkly fantastical imagery is placed upon a inherently twisting introspective investigation. Senua is our viewing glass into this world and yet she is a deeply unreliable narrator thanks to, as should become obvious pretty quickly, her schizophrenia which conjures illusion borne out of her own struggles to accept the frankly horrific murder of her lover and the fantastic tales of Norse myth she recalls throughout the story as told by her old mentor Druth. In that sense Hellblade feels like a gauntlet through the indescribable given focus and stitched together through myth and imagination- though filtered through the troubling lens of a deeply traumatic mind. 

Her 'Sacrifice' is interwoven with puzzles that pertain to 'insight' into her past and the people that shaped her. As stories are narrated by bodiless voices or rarely in brief murky flashes obscured to a degree that you don't notice the out-of-place FNV means by which they are captured. (Druth's FNVs are unmistakeable though. There's no disguising that dude's realness!) And here and there across her journey manifestations of the demons that infest her 'Hel' come to life and we engage in combat- arguably Hellblade's weakest attribute. All as we forge greater to an internal synthesis where the emotionally wounded Senua can perhaps start the healing process. 

For all that I've heard spitting on the combat of these games I have to be honest- it isn't actually all that bad. These fights are clearly designed with more an idea of being cinematic than complex and dynamic, but given their relative infrequency they are totally serviceable as simple breaks from the puzzle solving and frank storytelling. They even throw in different enemy types and dodge cycles to keep things interesting, and even a special move you can fall back on in times of stress. It's not particularly difficult either, with Senua pretty much undying unless she gets double-tapped whilst already on the floor, which is pretty easy to avoid as it is. Near the late game, however, there are a couple of frankly annoying gauntlets where the game throws giant waves at the player which suffer from the same problem that Kingdom Come Deliverance's late game hoards did- this combat system absolutely is not designed for multiple combatants. It becomes a game of awkwardly snapping between enemies that can literally spawn out of aether behind you if the game so chooses and this doesn't feel like the kind of game where you're supposed to get frustrated at the enemy waves. (Just saying.)

Senua is beset her entire adventure by four voices in her head, manifestations of her mental illness, that helpfully work to convey conflict, doubt, resolve and everything she keeps so tightly wrapped inside. It really is a unique framing device and a way to get over the lack of direct supporting cast in the game. Aside from the FMVs, Senua is literally the only human model in the entire game, which makes since when you consider the amount of effort that went into creating her at the time as one of the most realistic looking video game characters conceived of. Giving her people to talk with, even if those people are just herself, gives the push and pull a narrative of significant change requires. And, fittingly, it helps to reinforce one of the key themes of Senua- her feeling of deep isolation as a result of her psychosis. 

If there was anything I would criticize from the original, it would have to be that ending. Not the actual ending itself, but the lead-up and its gauntlets of combat, really highlighting the shortcomings there, followed by a frankly frustrating 'revelation' moment. Without spoiling anything because these games are so narratively solid you really should play them- the key most revelations are two fold- namely the significance of the wonderfully baritone male inner voice who hounds her, and the source of this 'darkness' she feels haunts her. Both are resolved rather inexplicably. She just decides that she knows the answer, and whilst the identity of the voice doesn't take a rocket scientist to solve-  the other mystery is genuinely pulled out of thin air. If this entire journey takes place in her subconsciousness, or at least she can only cobble together fragments of her mind to reach synthesis- then how the hell could she have discovered the fate of someone she, by all accounts, was not aware of beforehand? Is this was supposed to convey some sort of repressed memory- they did a shockingly poor job foreshadowing that given this entire adventure takes place in Senua's head. It's arguably a minor point- but one I feel worth voicing because... they kind of do it again in Hellblade 2. (But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga is probably the most graphical impressive game I've ever played, and artistically the thing is shot like a modern Lord of the Rings movie in the composition of landscapes and light, the flashes of battle, the hues of the supernatural and the sheer fidelity of the world in front of you. Almost in direct contrast to the arguably entirely ethereal setting of the original, Hellblade 2 actually takes place in the real world, for the most part, as Senua- now reaffirmed in her connection with others- travels up north as a slave in order to discover the heart of the Northmen who, famously, were responsible for the mutilation of her lover- but more recently are conducting various raids and enslavements in Senua's homeland. Rather curiously the connection these men have to Senua's lost love is not addressed once in this entire game, which I can guess surmise just how definitively she put that part of her to rest in the original.

Materially how the original game is very similar to the sequel, with the exception that whereas that had the sensation of 'puzzle rooms' in a manner similar to your average indie game- Hellblade 2 feels more like a big budget epic adventure occasionally interrupted with puzzles, which in themselves are a visual treat to behold as you manipulate blue fireflies into hard rocky substance by the flickering of nearby fires. And whatsmore I have to be honest, I was very impressed with the incredible improvements to swordplay- which in the original was more of a clunky but impressive animation showcase stretched a little beyond it's limits but this time around feels like an almost visceral experience.

From the very first actual fight Senua wages it is clear that Ninja Theory want you to feel the din of chaos- the confusion of the flurry, the taste of the dirt, the blunt violence of metal searing flesh- it is a stunning and breathless spectacle that, at times, defies belief to be anything more than a cinematic. Of course, this effect is achieved because combat is still largely on the rails, the the breath of the presentation (as well as the general framing of the entire game as a straight, focused narrative) just about makes up for that. It was actually in these moments of battle, particularly at night, that I first caught those glimpses of fidelity so stunning it looked indistinguishable from real life. Just flashes mind, but the effect is truly surreal in a way that might just beat the old 'unreal valley' effect I've felt ever since the days of 'Beowulf'.

Additionally, given the setting being largely in the real world and Senua's progress as a character, we actually have in-game side characters this time around who are rendered just as impressively as Senua herself- although obviously not as iconic. (They don't even wear their own war paint or nuthin!) These supporting cast lack quite the level of depth that Senua is afforded, at least throughout the main narrative, but act as emotion tethers to the brutal world that heightens the player's connection to it- mirroring the way that Senua herself becomes increasingly tied to a world she thought had left her behind. It's a fantastic bit of diegetic narrative set dressing which brings so much to the world and story that I love to see.

The reason I specify 'in the main narrative' is due to the fact that Senua's Saga actually features alternative narrators that are from the perspectives of other characters throughout this story, which help us break through the lens of who these people actually are as well as what is real and what are part of Senua's psychosis. Unfortunately I could not bring myself to try any of these out purely because of the HiddenFolk chapter, which was such a never ending assault of puzzles that I just could not endure a second time around. That chapter dragged! But I can definitely see someone else really taking to the Hellblade enough to get a lot out of the renewed reasons to play through again, even if just to see what they missed.

Saga is largely focused around these giants that blight the land of the north, sources of many great hardships and suffering which afflicts the isolated townships up in the hills. Now from the get-go, the fact we're dealing with actual giants seems at odds with what we know of the Hellblade world which seems, as far we could tell, to be set in firm reality aside from Senua's delusions. Solving this as a viewer forms the backbone of the plot intrigue and sets this story apart as just that tad more active than the previous game as now there is something to unravel. Yet even saying that, and pretty accurately figuring out the third act before it played out- I'm still at odds with if it all made as much sense as they want it to. The second giant in particular doesn't seem like it lives up to scrutiny.

And finally- the revelation: this one might be poorer than the first. It's a narratively satisfying reveal, that is, and a perfect culmination of the Saga's current story- but there is absolutely no congruent way that Senua could have made such a deduction on her own. She believes fully in her psychosis and even has her delusion ratified by those around her thanks to what I can only presume is a shared group deliria- yet somehow she works her way to a conclusion that actively opposes the delusions she has lived through, despite never questioning her grip on reality up until now. Sure, she knows something is wrong- but her beliefs paint that as some sort of possession or shamanistic second-sight into the land of the dead: nothing would permit her to totally shatter her own warped sense of reality even in the midst of the most tense confrontation. Shame really- it was a really satisfying finale otherwise.

Hellblade really is a narrative gaming experience unlike any other out there- and really does feel like the ultimate culmination of everything Ninja Theory have been working towards up until now. Short though the games are, they are experience pieces designed to stick with you for the unique story they're telling and the unique device through which they bind you to their world. Much to my own surprise I actually think that the Saga is the superior one- simply for the amount of actual substantive pondering I've had on the game and what it's themes and layers represent- rather than the first game where I was just puzzled about what exactly happened at the end, and then kind of what "oh" when I figured it out. I'm not sure there really needs to be another story in this, though some might see that last moment as a cliffhanger- I think the very fact it ends on the precipice of two ravines is kind of the point itself. Besides, I would love to see Ninja Theory take their out-of-the-ordinary storytelling chops into something more gameplay traditional like that DMC game they made all those years ago- I can see forsee something truly spectacular out of them in the future!

Put Assassin's Creed back in the Shadows

 

Lookie, lookie- once again we've got ourselves an Assassin's Creed game sniffing up our rears and once again all of the Ubisoft agnostics that found themselves so utterly repelled by Valhalla are coming around raising their tail spouting the same old routine dialogue lines of a patrolling guard after their aggro has dropped. ("Huh, Must have imagined things." They say whilst nursing the arrow sticking out of their throat and hobbling back to the campfire, where now sits the corpses of the drinking buddies they left with.) And to be fair- I get it. It simply can't be worse than Assassin's Creed Valhalla- a game so utterly barren of purpose and narrative that even their most full-throated cult members say they needed to cool it down a bit. If even those lobotomised circus seals are on your case- you must have screwed up big!

'We've made the map smaller' they insist, as though it was the struggle to fill up that bulging England map which scuppered their considerable talents- as though 90% of that map wasn't just swamp-clogged country wastes populated by nothing but sheep, fields and the Welsh. 'Oh, we're focusing much more on character this time around!' is that why we're being split between two protagonists despite the fact you struggle making a three dimensional character out of one with 100 plus hours of screentime? 'We're toning down the grind this time!' You literally said that exact thing in regards to Valhalla after people whined about Odyssey- yet it seems those words left the mouth before the brain checked in to it's office because Valhalla might just be the single most 'bogged down by crap' institution since Mussolini's Italy! Don't believe the lies!

But it's only fair to judge the latest Assassin's Creed gameplay footage for it's own merits because already people who should know better are calling it the comeback of the franchise. Why? Because they gave one of the characters a hood and told everyone she's the 'stealthy character'. Hard to consider a character the 'stealthy one' in a game that has stealth mechanics so old they're entering their senior year and head-hunting for college. Ubisoft's idea of stealth are detection cones and waist-high tufts of grass placed at the sides of roads. They think 'free form level design' is making one highly tailored route into a fortified location... and then simply giving players the choice to ignore that path and clamber over everything with their decidedly too liberal free running tools. Their brand of stealth isn't stale, it isn't even rotting, it's disintegrated into dust- and remember that is one of the key pillars not just of Assassin's Creed, but literally every single one of their franchises because Ubisoft just make the same game over and over! I would be embarrassed.

I'm getting off track- what does Shadows do that no other game did before? It gives us the choice to choose between going in violently and going in quietly. Hmm... pretty sure that's literally the choice that every Assassin's Creed game has ever offered- only this time those 'playstyles' (as I'm sure they internally referred to them) are split between the two protagonists. If you want to be loud, you play Yusuke and play through the half decent hack and slash mechanics that Ubisoft have been trail and erroring since Origins, quiet lovers will familiarise themselves with Naoe and her... well she has... Oh, she can go prone now! Yes, this has been a stealth franchise for seventeen years and they only just figured out a way to incorporate crawling into the level design. (Better late than never.) Oh, and she can destroy light sources to move around easier! Which puts this game's dynamic stealth systems on par with the original Splinter Cell from 2002. (That was actually also a Ubisoft game, by the way. Guess that little innovation got lost along the way for a couple decades, eh?)

To be fair I like that there's some degree of player choice, even if the two vectors of approach lack the dynamism that makes truly great stealth games so heart pounding. Needing to switch on the dime to react to what comes your way is what gives this genre it's bite, without that I worry our pre-chosen builds could veer on being too restrictive. What if Yusuke gets overwhelmed? What if the atrociously designed open worlds they regularly make dumps an entire battalion on his head whilst trying to just walk down a road? Can Yusuke run fast enough to get away? Is he even capable of sneaking? Naoe can defend herself, but can she strike like a predator in a last hail mary ditch attempt when her back is against the wall? If this were any development company truly dedicated to their craft I would just take these ideas for granted as obvious considerations that any sensible developer would take into account. But we're not dealing with normal people. We're dealing with Ubisoft developers. 

I just can't help but shake the sensation that Ubisoft are a little bit, how do you say, hopelessly late to the party with this game. That is to say- everyone and their mother has made a Samurai game and everyone else was manned by Japanese teams or at least teams with close enough ties to Japanese influences to do the material justice. Like a Dragon Ishin may have been a remake, but it soared all the same. Rise of the Ronin did great things for Team Ninja's brand, I'm told. And, of course, Ghost of Tsushima blows away literally everything that Shadow's is promising to achieve- from gameplay complexity to visual artistry to respect. Yeah, I think Sucker Punch has more respect than Ubisoft, the team who thought Egypt and Greece were such dull places they had to be spiced up with badly interjected mythology tangents that they never quite managed to justify. (Still no one can explain to me why Hades lives in a facsimile he openly construes as 'The afterlife'.)

By what mast do I hoist such a damning flag? Well how about the way the marketing has gone, sending bizarre merch with reportedly misspelt Kanji and mismatched clan emblems imprinted here and there? Maybe Ubisoft are actually trying to tell us something hidden in all this, like a physical manifestation of how little they care anymore for a franchise that once teetered on the verge of respectable historical fiction. (Then they said Aliens. The franchise never really recovered from the aliens, did it?) Then there's the little distinction in how the character's battle themes go. Naoe's are woodwinds, obviously. She's Japanese and those are the only Japanese instruments that their team have ever heard of. Yusuke? Well, he's black so... Japanese music in the style of hip hop? Sure, why not! What do you mean this predates not even the invention of hip-hop, but the founding of America and the formation of the identity known as African American? Those sound like the kinds of things someone who cares would react to... And we all know what effect that has on a team like Ubisoft!

So yes, despite the many years we waited for Assassin's Creed to get off their high chair of pretence which was scrapped over all the way back in those security logs for the second game, I cannot summon any less possible excitement for this game than I currently have. It is like a blackhole of potential sucking out my lifeforce just by it, and it's damnable parents, breathing the same cursed air as me- it's drains me to even think about. And the worst part of it all? The game will make money. Oh, it will make gangbusters. And it will be messy in a ton of supremely obvious ways that many of the industry leaders will scratch their heads at and silently wonder how this could have shipped like that. And Ubisoft will offer plenty of empty platitudes and bow before the penitent shrine, cusp their hands around the throned handle of Mea Culpa- and do it all over again next game. And no one, absolute no one at all, will be, in the least bit, surprised. 

Ubisoft Star Wars- not impressed

 

And with that the pact has been sealed. Ubisoft has done all they possibly can to try and shill Star Wars Outlaws before it's release- and I honestly wonder why they bothered so much. Why all the trailers? Why all the coverage? Why stick this on the side of buses? It's not like the marketing is doing anything more for the optics of a Star Wars game made by Ubisoft. Both are brands so ugly and garish that people just flock their way with cash-in-hand regardless of what they get in return. Ubisoft could be selling bottled farts labelled with the Republic's insignia and make a mint in the process. All that marketing effort could have gone into supporting something that could have actually used it- like, I dunno... The Division 2? (But I digress.)

Outlaws is a Star Wars property (urg) being published by Ubisoft (Urg, brother) that is an open world. (Brother, URG! What's that brother?) I cannot imagine a more detestable combination of ingredients plopped into a single cauldron if I tried... actually yes I can. They didn't make it a Live Service that is NFT powered. (I imagine that took great restraint on Ubisoft's end.) The Star Wars brand has been dragged through the mud in recent years, as Disney milk it dry with piddling TV show after TV show, squeezing out the last goodwill they can whilst all potential and promise fans once saw in the series sizzles and drys out under the boot of executives complaining about how 'hard' and 'expensive' it would be to make something ambitious and interesting. (I've heard really worrying things about that Acolyte show- and I'm not talking about from the typical chuds.) Ubisoft, on the otherhand, are the bottom-feeding wastes of the Games' industry- it is any surprise why I find the paring of them physically detestable?

Then again, Star Wars games do have a tendency to be on the whole better. The Jedi Series is one of the better Souls-like games on the market that has a rapport with it's audience enough that we actively like to seek out and consume content with these characters in it- which is quiet the high praise for Star Wars content! And we even get some high budget experimental games like Star Wars Squadrons which brought flight-simulator rules to the Star Wars mythos. Unfortunately the game didn't quite sell as well as everyone might have liked- but those who did play the thing attest to it's quality! Of course, then we also have the mobile game which recently released, Hunters, which was every bit the over-monetised waste of potential we all knew it would be. So just as in the Star Wars universe, the brand holds the potential for great good or great evil.

Ubisoft already set us of to a poor start by trying to suck our wallets out through our eyes through merely watching the trailer and selling their pitifully understuffed deluxe editions for an arm and several more legs than can grow on a single human. For prices like that you'd think the company earns them, and aren't just the laughing stock generic-factory of the AAA gaming sector. These are the kind of prices that Rockstar can, and largely do (if you count their eye-watering shark cards for GTA Online) get away with. But after giving us a significant showing of gameplay, and inviting journalists around to see some behind the doors goodies- (simply to try and ingratiate themselves with such an important community vector) maybe the game is finally that one step up and forward that Ubisoft have been hesitating to take all these years. Afterall, this isn't just a Ubisoft game. It's a "Wicked Wicked" Ubisoft Massive title.

Perhaps the most prevailing sense that this new game gives off- both to me and to those unlucky enough to sit down and see the curated 'behind curtains' preview- is that of dire unoriginality. Say what you will about the open world genre AAA gaming, how they all kind of ape that Uncharted feeling of exploration, dot a little bit of forgettable busywork to keep you interested and linger on just those few hours too long- but at least most of them have something unique to spice them up just that little bit. The incredibly fun saber combat of the Jedi games make it a blast to master, Hogwarts Legacy carried the tourist-friendly appeal that kept people playing, Horizon has it's very unique world concept and spectacular machine hunts- and Outlaws has... well you see in Outlaws you can...

The idea of Outlaws is to try and make the Smuggler style of story work in Star Wars without chucking in any lightsabers- and that's an idea that can really work if you put forethought into it. Disseminate the archetypal smuggler to their base-most form and you get an anti-hero in a cowboy movie- then all you need to do is find a way to bring that feeling to life in a way that doesn't ape at Red Dead 2 because even after all these years that is a fight Ubisoft will never, ever, win. Instead what we've seen is just... generally serviceable. There are the Ubisoft stealth sections, said to be as pointless as always because general mayhem is all-around more reliable. There is the uninspired wall climbing which at this point has become such a headscratching trope I genuinely think it would be a surprise to come across a game character not capable of supporting their entire weight with an iron grip. And apparently there is a sprinkle of Space Combat too, but I've never seen Ubisoft do a space fighting game before and the team are functionally incapable of creating a decent mechanic that hasn't been regurgitated through the guts of five previous attempts- so I'm guessing it's dull as dishwater.

Is there any point of praise I can raise? Well, technically there is- but it's the exact same thing I say about every Ubisoft game such that it doesn't even feel like a compliment anymore. It's like a lingering, festering curtsey we perform in front of the ailing wad of distended tissue we once deemed a sovereign, paying some false shadow of gratitude and respect upon a station long-since alien to it. Performance for the sake of routine alone, serving neither us nor them. Indeed- Outlaws looks pretty. Actually, 'pretty' isn't a full enough picture. It looks like 'Star Wars' and all the baggage that carries. Typical alien landscapes of vaguely terran-looking worlds with maybe a palette swap, that exact same style of interior which seems to be the uniform of every cantina in the galaxy, that unimpressive palette smudge of 'frontier grime'- it fails to excite by brand alone as it once did. I guess that goes for Star Wars as a whole though, doesn't it?

Now to be clear, even if this is the single most made-by-numbers video game in Ubisoft's entire history it wouldn't be their worst and I don't wish to imply that's what I'm saying. That crown is still rested pretty squarely on the head of Legion. I just think that once again Ubisoft are treading waters and getting rewarded for the effort. Just as they did when they created a serviceable, but systematically cannibalistic Avatar game, or a vastly expanded but clumsy and fat-fingered Ghost Recon Wildlands follow up. To quoteth the bard: "They'll never change. They'll never change. Always the same. Ever since 07, couldn't slap a coherent game design doc together to save their lives. But couldn't be Ubisoft, not our precious Ubisoft! Robbing them blind. And they get to sell the game for $130? What a sick joke!"  

Dragon Age makes me a sad panda

 

With the recent reveal of 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard', (I feel like people are ignoring how abrasive a 'the' can be in your product's title) I am saddened to report that my misgivings regarding the direction of modern Bioware have not been abated. In fact, if anything they've been lionized into a depressing colation of the reality that the famous studio we once loved is looking paranoid and now is spiralling. I once loved Bioware, and some part of me still wants to believe in them- I want them to win me over but it seems the world has left them behind when it comes to RPGs, and now they've left RPGs behind in kind- leaving me wondering what it is this Studio even endeavours to be anymore. If they're not an RPG studio, what even are they? Just developers? The Bioware I knew would have never been content with such a position! But they're not here anymore... are they?

Obviously the worst aspect of the reveal was that initial trailer which, quite rightly, set alarm bells ringing across the reaction world. I wasn't aware of Dragon Age being 'Dark Fantasy' as people apparently say, I took Origins as grim but not excessively, intentionally disturbing or frightening- but I do agree that Dragon Age has a tendency to treat it's world with a general mature passion which heightens the stakes at their most dire. The Veilguard's descent into hero shooter peppiness with Suicide Squad intro cards, soft rock backing tracks, one-line epithets describing surface deep quirkiness and, most importantly, terrible sound mixing so Varrick's voice is drowned out by the music- kind of felt like the people in charge had absolutely no idea what made the franchise work. They seem to have fallen for the memes which claim that the only reason we come to Dragon Age, or any Bioware game, is to meet and romance their collective cast. But to be honest, Bioware romances haven't exactly gotten any more interesting since Mass Effect 2- (Andromeda tried something unique, but people didn't respond to that game very well.) and after Baldur's Gate 3: this cast has quite the uphill struggle to enter the poppy zeitgeist. 

In particular I think it's the designs that are throwing off the general public. Dragon Age has never quite gone for the 'true to life' character meta which ages so poorly as game fidelity doubles every other generation, and I find that to be a strength of their art direction- even as they do objectively improve in the visual department. But something about Veilgaurd's character designs appear to veer towards overtly exaggerated features that flow out into Overwatch levels of cartoony. All the new monster designs we've seen thus far, such as those new 'Darkspawn' we glimpsed, looked out-of-proportion and goofy. I shouldn't be seeing a bone monster and think 'Goofy'! And don't get me started on that Alfred Pennyworth in Doctor Strange cosplay-lookin' fella! That man looks like a Fortnite character- his facial proportions look like they've been mangled by the Mandibular Rearranger from The Outer Worlds! He looks terrible!

Of course, as everyone who took the time to actually go and watch the recently revealed gameplay will tell you- the actual in-play action seems to be a lot better than what was teased. It's all very slick and cinematic action set-piece with flashy and exciting combat and glittering particles and the Frostbite engine weeping sadly in the background. The face to face dynamic camera actions also look vastly improved, which may be due to handcrafted angles explicit to the main dialogues or maybe intensive work on the AI to teach it more coherent camera-man philosophies- either way it's working and this game is coveting the same sort of cinematic flair that sang for Baldur's Gate 3. Unfortunately that is the only positive comparison to that game I could make.

One of my favourite aspects about watching the Dragon Age Franchise grow was measuring how cinematic the game became whilst wrestling with keeping the tactical RPG elements alive- and until the this very game that seemed to be a balance they took very seriously. This time around what we have is an action slasher with abilities, no character switching and totally eradicated tactical planning whatsoever. Even in the most ludicrous moments of Inquisition, there were the bigger dragon fights where you would plant members of your team in the right places, place the built tank to draw attention whilst your damage dealers weaved around the legs and the healer tried to keep everyone standing. Team composition was essential. This game has already gutted the total party size from 4 to 3. They took the 'RPG' out of my RPG franchise.

In many ways it reminds me of what happened with the Final Fantasy VII Remake as retold by someone with literally no ability to comprehend what they're playing. FF7R got rid of the ATB based combat of FF7 original in favour of action combat- however the spirit of what that combat imparted- real-time combat with abilities, was imbued into the spirit of the game so that even if a different genre was being tickled, the RPG heart of the original lived on. Veilgaurd doesn't even appear to feature healthbars for your party members! And enemies, at least in what we've seen, don't aggro on companions at all. And health potions are not rationed out carefully at campfires, or brought in town- they pop out of cartoon green barrels. This doesn't feel like a mainline Dragon Age, it feels like an action-themed spin-off.

By and large, Dragon Age: The Veilgaurd hasn't really shown off anything to show lessons learned from Inquisition thus far. The biggest issues of the last game were based around the design of their world and story progression, which Veilgaurd's intro completely avoids by setting itself purely in the intro act- and the combat looks utterly guttered and simplified to the level of a toddler. They turned Dragon Age into Mass Effect- but then again, even Mass Effect gave you companions that can draw aggro and pass out! So whilst some out there are clapping their hands and declaring that Bioware have pulled optics back in their favour- for me I'm actually more worried that the team have killed the last piece of RPG magic that studio still had.

Starfield's 'Engoodening'- stage 2

 

Bethesda are constantly fighting a slow war against themselves to try and post-prove every product that they put out. It took a while with Fallout 4 but most think the came around point was Far Harbour, (I don't carry as positive memories of that DLC and still consider Fallout 4 a step backward) 76 was still labouring under its own inequities until Wastelanders came around and turned the franchise back into being an RPG (thanks for that) and Starfield seems to be entering the second stage of it's life- the added content period. Well, actually it's been there for a little bit, but now is when the team got serious with the pedigree of the content they've adding- because they've invited modders to the party! And with that comes the real reason Starfield was made in the first place- to become a modders haven.

Right from the get-go Bethesda was up and clear with the message that they want Starfield to be the single most modded Bethesda game ever, and to that end they seem to have sacrificed a lot in terms of basic design philosophy to accommodate perpetually updating world spaces where seamlessness might have instead aided 'game feel'. That promise had really sat on the back-burner as everyone waited patiently for the creation kit which- lo and behold- has finally dropped; along with preliminary work from a bevy of the most talent authors that Bethesda could snatch up to be part of an introduction video. Including but not even nearly limited to the wonderously demented mind of Trainwiz and the queen of home design herself Elianora: it's always great seeing modding legends work their strange magics!

The biggest news that Starfield wanted to throw out was that of the upcoming DLC- oh, I'm sorry- they're suing the parlance 'Expansion' for this one- Shattered Space. Predictably expanding on the only part of the original game's lore that sounded a little deeper than the surface, the House of Va'ruun and their creepy crimson coated planet in some deep recess of space we need to uncover. Now I'll admit to being slightly curious as to where this might lead- because the very structure of Starfield makes it plausible that Bethesda could tie in totally distinct ending paths into every major Expansion they bring out- but thus is merely my speculation because for whatever reason- this turned out to be more of a 'teaser trailer' than an actual proper in-depth dive into why this DLC is cool.

Of course, I understand the desire to keep your secret's secret- why else would you be so invested in making these cool trailers and subtle hints wrapped in mysteries: but surely Bethesda have to know that their fanbase are currently wondering what's the purpose for returning to this game. All we have to go on is a slightly creepier looking DLC that looks like it might lean a bit more into that Sci-Fantasy angle which the base game shuddered away from so vehemently- which is music to my ears but I'm angled to try and like this game. The average player probably doesn't look that deep into it and just saw a grim looking trailer and shrugged their shoulders. Is there any significant change coming with this DLC to expand the game out? Because if it's literally just one questline and a couple of side stories on one new solar system... phew, I don't even want to think about that...

 

So mysteries of Shattered Space aside- we have the other big announcement that dropped the very same day- the same day release of Creations- which allow for Bethesda to sell us tiny chunks of DLC they call mods that set off people's 'paid mod' alarms. Honestly it seems that the only content being charged for is literal verified-user created snippets of content, thus stuff made by the actual masters of their craft which Bethesda brought abroad- not the average mumblings of any Tom, Dick or Harry: which makes this curated charged content more microtransactions than anything else. Which may itself be beyond the pale for you, considering this is a fully Single Player game- but it really is your very own battle to fight. At the very least Starfield is putting it's foot behind console modding by allotting a whopping 100GB of total possible mod space on Xbox Series X!

To put things into perspective- the total allocated space for Fallout 4, the origin of console modding, was 2GB! For Skyrim special edition it was 5! I've been heavily modding Skyrim and Fallout 4 for years now and I have never reached even close to 100 GB in my own efforts. (The only time I did was when I tried to play Fallout 4's overrated mod Collection: 'Storywealth' which was stuffed full off unnecessary texture mods.) I never expected we'd get the opportunity to hopelessly mod a console game to absolute Oblivion but here it is- Bethesda really do want this to be the kind of game we play forever! Now if only their achievements weren't so wholly unreasonable to get without endless grind so I didn't have to choose between disabling my mods forever and jumping fully into the amateur modding world! (Seriously, Bethesda only made a handful of their own creations 'Achievements Friendly'. Some of their own charged content disables Achievements! What the heck?)

To whet everyone's whistles to the possibilities Bethesda released a brand new free faction into the game called the Tracker's Alliance- basically it's a framework for bounty hunting with radiant quests and a single curated major quest which is a decent enough side diversion. However, a second curated quest does exist- if you're willing to fork over the 700... 'Beth Bucks?' to buy it! The intention being that now and again Bethesda will add new bounties to the store over the months and potentially years. Now, I actually am not fully against the idea of new faction questlines behind added into the game for 8 bucks a pop- considering that was pretty much how The Elder Scrolls Online made it's content for a while. But paying 8 Bucks for a single half-good mission? No, that's utterly ridiculous and I hope Bethesda realise just how unreasonable of a value proposition that is! The average faction questline in Starfield is about 7-13 quests long: that means, acknowledging we got the first quest free, Bethesda are looking to charge between 42 to 64 bucks for a faction questline in their single player game. What the hell? 

Would it be fair to call the 'story of Bethesda' that of one step forward and two steps back? They can't help but make a fool out of themselves in the most blindingly obvious way, and then stand there with their shoulder's shrugged wondering what all the fuss is about. Of course people will get upset about charging by the quest- especially with quests as middling as what Starfield averages- let alone the price tag attached! And on the verge of so many positive steps for the game, one can't help but wonder if there's some form of intentional self sabotage wrapped up in all this because honestly what else am I supposed to think? Honestly, Shattered Space better be absolutely revolutionary to start clawing back public interest else this game might truly be cooked. 

I did a sin

 

I am a fossil. A relic. An antiquarian. An ancient. An old fogey. An irate man shouting at the clouds. Whenever I play New Vegas, you bet I pick the 'I'm slow to embrace new ideas' option. But every now and again the needle pushes itself forward, without my say so. Or with my say-so, but the cajoling is heavy. Largely I like to consider myself immune to the snake like charm of marketers, being fully cognizant of the worm like grip of 'guidance' those creeps try to employ- and perhaps it's in begrudging knowledge of that which I made my great shame. Or perhaps I am just a shameful person. Either way I would like to admit that great shame in front of all of you today, and then maybe chat a little about my great shame for the room. Savvy? Good.

So you may have picked up on my manners of playing throughout the years but I've never outright stated it. To be clear, I like to primarily game on my PC. I used to keep that specifically for older games and RPGs, things that my relic of a system wouldn't have any trouble with (although I modded my Skyrim playthroughs so much they ran like slideshows!) But around about my incredible choppy playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake I decided a change had to be made, and then last year I totally decked out my PC and now I use it to play literally anything. However I do also have a Series X and a Switch- for which I use mostly at times when I'm doing stuff on my PC such that it can't also play a game. Or if I'm not home. And it was here that my issues began.

You see, I recently blogged about the upcoming Elden Ring release and it's significance to myself. The whole 'playing through previous games' predicament was slightly muddied by the annoying fact that Dark Souls 1 places a lot of it's most important items behind Covenant rewards, which can only be achieved through online play. Frustrating as that is, I find myself disadvantaged even greater by the fact I had run out of 'online membership' for my Xbox and simply refused to get it updated because I was busy elsewhere. Which is why I was quite surprised to find that Xbox Gold had been totally rebranded to 'Game Pass Core' when I was signing up... typically I would avoid the thing like the plague for that naming convention alone, but I didn't want to miss out... but then- because I was diving into purchasing options I'd never experienced before I started looking at the other options and then...

As embarrassing as it is to say, for the first time I actually sat down and purchased Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Yes, you heard me right- I haven't actually played with Game pass before and caved in on something of a whim this time around- and thought I don't exactly intend to keep it as a recurrent subscription all year round- I have to confess that this really was the kind of service I should have been involved in from the start. All I really wanted was online access, but it hardly took four minutes of browsing the Game Pass store before several dozen games I wanted to try but never got around to stood out to me and I'm fully intending on knocking them down my list. Which is really what the entire purpose of the thing is- and I sound like a cruddy commercial saying it. (Crap! Balls! There- that should chase away the sponsors!)

Because to be utterly honest with you all- was I ever really going to sit down and play Callisto Protocol? The pretty looking, but not quite successor to Dead Space? I mean I love Dead Space, but I love Dead Space as... you know... an Alien send up! Callisto Protocol just brought Melee combat and... Karen Fukuhara. Don't get me wrong, I love Karen Fukuhara in my game but... not enough to drop a sixty. But if you offer it to me for alongside my subscription? Why wouldn't I say yes- that game's got Karen Fukuhara! And that's really the sweetspot target demographic for games that makes the product such a tantalising proposition.

Now I'm still very much 'old school' in that there are a certain breed of games I want to have and own for myself so that I can pick them up at any time. I don't want to have some overshore sever farm decide what I'm playing- and I get that mood to strike up a FromSoftware Souls playthrough at all strange times of the year. Also I would never do that to ATLUS because I simply respect them too much to not give them my money straight up. I would pay them a monthly wage if I could- I love them. But Lords of the Fallen? Pff, I don't respect them! I've literally never managed to complete the original game, and I'm pretty sure I only got it on games with Gold anyway so I've literally never spent a dime on this franchise. (That actually makes me feel bad. I should probably buy a DLC or something. I won't. But I should.)

In fact, I do wonder if the Gamepass promise doesn't veer into the territory of too good to be true, based both on my now first-hand account and the things that I've read about in various coverage piece over the years. On my own account- The price of a single AAA game covers about 5 months of Gamepass. I, and bare in mind I'm a lot more active than your typical gamer, could probably dish out about 10 triple AAA games in that time. Forty if I'm hustling. (And particularly unoccupied in those months.) On the outside, there's pretty decent evidence to believe that the lack of growth in Gamepass is what put the strain on Xbox forcing them to close a studio who game them an Award Winner. It seems to be a product that demands perpetual growth to be considered successful and... that's not always possible.

So for the time being I've joined the legions of plebs who are smart with the way they spend their money- and I have to say- not loving how it feels. Even the slightest amount shift in the winds is wont to get my Rheumatism acting up, and my lumbago. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't currently have about 200 Gb of game that I'm going to gorge on over the next... actually I have two weeks off; wow, I'm going to be drowning! Still, I doubt that Xbox could afford to buy exactly my taste of game all year around so consider this a temporary courtship to a brand I'm still pretty sure is currently afflicted with a terminal illness. Sure there's a kink for that, but I'm rarely proud to boast I don't know it's name.

Catching up with the Souls

 

You know, I actually wasn't all that invested in going out and playing 'Shadow of the Erdtree' at launch. I respect the heck out of Elden Ring, and consider it to be the most perfect form of the Dark Souls franchise- but I just didn't think I had the spare time to send it's way. And then I just kind of started playing Elden Ring again... which then made me realise that if I was going to access the DLC I'd have to get far enough in to beat Mogh, but I last stopped playing literally at 'The First Step' Bonfire on New Game +... so I just kind of grinded several hours and got to Mogh... and then I figured I might as well grind for some more hours to get to Radahn- as for some incomprehensible reason Miyazaki says we have to off him too! (I'm guessing the entrance to the underside realm is covered up before the Meteor shower.) And at that point I thought 'What am I doing- I might as well just get the DLC.'

But we have a few more days until the Shadow drops so what could I do to kill time in the interim? EVERYTHING ELSE! Everything I had put off doing in the Dark Souls franchise for so very long, would become my immediate goal there and then. That meant finally coming around to complete the DLCs for Dark Souls 3- in which are contained some of the franchise's most well regarded boss encounters, and I even finally bit the bullet on the Dark Souls Remaster after seeing that it would be cheaper to just splurge on the remaster than it would be to buy the DLC for the original. If that would even be possible- I don't think they sell XBOX 360 DLC anymore... Who knows, I don't- I'm getting to play the game at a resolution that doesn't make my eyes bleed and real honest-to-goodness frames! (I wonder if Gwyn's song actually plays and isn't slyly stuffed with miniscule micro-stutters like it does in the 360 version!)

Of course the biggest port of call was the Dark Souls 3 DLC- because anyone with even the most-passing sliver of interest in the community will know there's only two things that people never shut up about- Bloodborne being hard-stuck on the PS3, and Slave Knight Gael: the final boss of the latter DLC. Slave Knight Gael had amassed a genuinely mythical status under my perception of the Dark Souls franchise through sheer merit of his name becoming evoked in literally every single conversation about bosses under the FromSoft brand. "Oh, that boss was too hard for you? You'd never survive against Gael!" "Malenia was tough, but in a frustrating way- not the sheer perfect way that Gael was!" "Yeah, Soul of Cinder might have been the single most perfectly dignified personification of ever major theme that has run throughout the Souls franchise and thus soared as a final boss... But Gael is still the final boss in my eyes. Also did you know that Pontiff Sulyvahn was going to be the final boss?" (YES, EVERYONE KNOWS!) 

But does Gael live up to the hype? Well, I ain't answering that because I played Ashes of Ariandel first! A DLC which did the impossible and made the painted world not a nightmare to traverse. The idea of the other-universe known as 'the painted world' always fascinated me regarding how roughly it jars against the direction everything else seems to be heading. All the franchise emboldens the significance of impermanence and the dignity in death- whereas there is a world perfectly preserved in paint that houses creatures sequestered within. Then there's the little confusion about the naming convention. The Painting of Aramis from Dark Souls 1 is, it turns out, at least the base coat for the painting of Ariandel- as evidence by the fact that Pricilla's old tower is hidden away in the DLC. Both paintings are named after their creator's apparently, although Aramis is never seen residing in his painting, or at all- and Father Ariandel is a refugee in the painting, almost as though he himself is the subject. And then, of course, at the end of the DLC you are asked for your name so that the next painting can be named after you- despite the fact that totally spits in the face of the naming convention, although I guess that will come around in the Age of Dark so everyone will be a bit too preoccupied coming to terms with their totally rewritten reality to start penning angry letters to the painting-planning-council.

And the DLC itself? Fine. I've never liked how FromSoftware handles their snow sections- I think their swamps are always delightfully imbued with active mechanics that make them challenging but fun to conquer- whereas snow is consistently just a pain! Elden Ring's Consecrated Snowfields? Can't see a bloody thing! Dark Souls 2's Frigid Outskirts? Constantly spawning Unicorns- one of only two locations in the entire franchise to feature endless spawning mobs! And Ariandel is just stuffed silly with that most annoying breed of bad guy you can't help but hate! At the very least we get to see the themes of wider Dark Souls finally seep into the painted world as the concept of 'Rot' is introduced. A distorting organisim that consumes everything if the picture is not burned away and remade- presumably explaining the name change. Which of course births one of my favourite lines- voiced by a literally no-name NPC- "When the world rots we set it afire, for the sake of the next world. It's one of the few things we do right, unlike those fools on the outside!" (slightly related note: how does mister 'no-name wierdo' know about the goings-on outside of the reality he was born and spent his entire life within?)

But the real draw of these DLC are the bosses- and Sister Friede was an experience to say the least! Bare in mind that I was on New Game + 3 so already wasn't going to be having a fun time- Good lord did I not expect the mockery that woman made of me! Pulling my main girl Pricillia's invisibility move right off her corpse and doing it better- I'm ashamed to admit how many times I got manhandled by her until I figured out that gimmick. But even then the gimmick alone was just a prelude to the first three stage boss fight in the game- with three entire healthbars, mind you- not just three states of attack tactics! The fight was a thrill but so frustrating to figure out. Can't exactly call it a favourite of mine, I have to admit.

Which brings me to 'The Ringed City'. I'll cut to the chase- I liked the DLC. It reminded me more of the actual explorative adventures of Dark Souls 2's DLC rather than just 'an extended prelude to the boss' like Ashes of Ariandel felt like at times. But Slave Knight Gael is the big attraction. And after beating the man- I can understand the appeal. Gael is a supremely fun and fair fight that really doesn't hold any muck, no gimmicks, no hidden health bars out the ass- just an out-and-out slug fest against a worthy component. So many of Souls bosses from yore hold that one screw you move seemingly designed only to rack up player deaths rather than to add to the battle itself. Gael didn't feel like that, but he wasn't a push-over either. He's an example of the best of the series, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of The Soul of Cinder and Sword Saint Isshin. Which is probably why FromSoft made up for it by giving us Darkeater Midir. Screw Midir- screw his eyewatering high health bar- screw his one-shot laser attacks his farts out in his second act. I'm happy I gave on playing nice and chocked the bugger to death on his own overinflated healthbar. I know people say Pestilent Mist is not an easy kill like it once was at launch- but I'll just take the compliment if that's the case!

Dark Souls 3 really does feel like a whole different ball game with it's DLC- which I guess has always been the way that FromSoftware has handled their additional content. Chucking giant chunks of new difficulty ceilings at those kind enough to spend more money is really seeing what the community seems to be wanting and meeting them kindly, with a giant middle finger to the face and a loving clap around the cheeks. As a lifelong masochist who's dream is to torture enough self respect into himself that he one day grows confident enough to genuinely experience 'imposter syndrome': (What a luxury!) I love the carnage. Now I just need to actually finish the Dark Souls 1 DLC and I'll have officially experienced all of Dark Souls- putting the lid on a world I wasn't quiet ready to finish when I reached the final moments of Dark Souls 3- but which I actually feel ready for today. However it's pretty unlikely I'll beat all of Dark Souls Remastered before Shadow of the Erdtree releases- so don't expect a follow-up soon.