Velma and franchise hijacking

Recently the fires went out. The blood drained from the sky. The nasties withdrew back into their caverns and the air tasted not of acid, but of sweet honey, for the briefest of moments. The clouds broke and heaven rays of gold cut through like steel curtains, basking warm life on a cold field. The wearer paused, their hardships and toil forgotten, and greedily they drunk of this moment, this innocence, this bask-worthy light. For in that moment all the world might know that the beast was slain. That the evil had dissipated. That Velma had been cancelled. And then the light ceased. The curtain drew. Colour drained the world again and that the last of the warmth dried up and withered. That was when we all knew the horrid truth. Somehow- Velma had returned.

To be truthful the 'cancellation' was an ill-sourced jump of the gun spurred on by a bizarre post from an artist of the show who basically just lied and later called it a mistake. This artist has no idea if the show will get another season, and thus the hope for all those that love uninspired commentary on 'modern society' poorly slathered on a half-assed mystery show parading around with a bad Scooby Doo cosplay- can be happy. The show is probably coming back. But the reason I even mention all of this is actually rather pointed beyond Velma itself- because to be honest- I actually like the show. Not it's quality, god no. I like laughing at it, and I was actually a little sad for that brief moment when it was cancelled in the hearts of us all. It's not harmful to art- or at least, not specifically. What it represents however- yeah, that actually is harmful.

Because what is Velma, if we're honest with ourselves. A Scooby Doo show? No. Not even nearly. It borrows none of the charm, formula, characters or occasional wit of the show. (Very occasional- I will never forgive 'Get a clue'.) What Velma actually is- is a generic adult animated comedy that someone, probably looking through the graveyard of similar uninspired adult animated crap that never make it past their second season; figured would have a better chance of making it if they tied it to the Scooby Doo franchise. They essentially hijacked a popular franchise to better shore up the profitability of a dull idea. And it's not the only recent entertainment product to do this. Just look at the Halo show, which spent it's entire first season stubbornly trying to not be Halo in ever conceivable way, but kowtowing where needed to suit marketing. Or Netflix's Witcher- especially where 'Blood Origin' was concerned!

Now from the cold mind of a corporate marketer there is absolutely nothing wrong with this whatsoever. In fact, being able to recycle franchises that have run their course with the uninspired talents of mediocre writers incapable of conceiving new content of a comparable quality is cost effective work! Just as The Rings of Power team, they owe their careers to this kind of finagling! But what is the cost on the art of entertainment? Well now it's becoming even more impossible for new ideas to break through into Hollywood. Old franchises are being squeezed dry to the point where they're no longer appealing. (Star Wars Outlaw's underperformance demonstrates that. As does 'The Acolyte's failure.)
 

We were witness to a legendary example of this very thing with the recent Borderlands movie- a practise in 'how bad can we possibly make our adaptation' fielded by a team who had literally no care for the source material aided by a team who lost their connection with the source material. Whatever corny action sci-fi snorefest of a plot they originally had on their desk was stuffed with random characters across the Borderlands franchise that barely resembles the original cast dragging a weak concept down into abject parody. It was a mess, to say the least. And it shouldn't have happened. There was no talent, no passion, no purpose. That's the worst part- no purpose to the thing! Every piece of art needs a purpose.

Maybe that's what has bred this age of cynicism where I can no longer trust the franchises I love to resemble the kinds of stories and experiences that they used to- because it's all to easy to commandeer them and then ride off the total change in everything that matters as "a change in direction!". "What are you, stuck in the past?" All the while the try to bamboozle the world with blatant smothering of an old brand over unrelated work. No care put into to recognising the original, building upon it's strengths, improving that earlier work with a worthy successor- it's all about making the most amount of money by jumping on a profitable brand.

And perhaps that it why I'm so suspicious of everything that the new Dragon Age game presents. Nothing I've seen has been offensively bad, even that original trailer was just wildly off-base instead of objectively awful- but similarly I've not seen anything that speaks to the Dragon Age I know. The in-depth world building, the iconic yet grounded characters, the evolved tactical gameplay- I don't recognise the brand I grew up with. And with how long it's been since Bioware last put out a good game, and how many changes to staff they've undergone in that time, it kind of feels like a totally new team coming in with their own ideas to make a game that is being squeezed under the Dragon Age new for profit's sakes.

Thankfully, unlike Hollywood the Game's Industry isn't nearly as cooked with this stuff. Sure, we still get our fair share of remakes and sequels and the like- that's just the way of things- but there are plenty of brand new strike-outs that score too. Wukong has been a smash hit that made back it's investment and is shooting straight into profit after month one, Metaphor Refantazio has been ATLUS' fastest selling game of all time (helped in no small part thanks to that demo) and one sequel that did actually do it's original vast justice, Space Marine 2, has soared to such a surge in the hearts of the gaming public that Game Workshop are having a near Baldur's Gate level jolt to the system to ramp up their general output of product. As long as the spark to create new franchises breathes, as it no longer does in film and TV, we can stay above and ahead of the creative bankrupt hijackers.

The rebirth of Halo?

 

Come to me but a handful of years back and ask me what I think about the current state of Halo and I would stare you blank in the face until you just assume that I died and left the room- but since then I've availed myself of the entire Halo saga short of Infinite- simply because Infinite wouldn't load on my computer for some reason- otherwise I've played them all. And to be honest with you, even lacking the multiplayer experience for these games which are half known for their online community, I can taste the downfall of quality. Genuinely. Those first few games hold up incredibly, I still get the itch to go through Combat Evolved to Reach every now and then- but from the very moment that 343 took the reigns- the games started to stink. And remember- I went in thinking that 343's first game was Guardians- I hated 4 before finding out they worked on it! That ain't bias, that's straight game, baby!

The truth is that ever since Bungie left Halo the franchise has been on a downward trajectory that has coincided rather roughly with the collapse of Microsoft as a super power in the video game space. Super sad, all round. Oh, and now Bungie is currently being fed through a wood chipper by their new Sony bosses- with Marathon as their only saving grace providing it is a slam dunk mega hit... which it actually might be because that Studio is a generally trustworthy sort that can slap together a decent title even when they're on the backfoot. (You know, providing that Sony left enough remaining staff after the layoffs.) Which is to say, there ain't no 'call back the parents' to try and breathe life into Halo once more. Heck, a decent chunk of 343 were Bungie staff branching out to dedicate themselves to the Green man. Didn't turn out too well.

Halo Infinite is where the ball was supremely dropped, however. After game after game of disappointment, usually followed by some sort of broken promise around post launch support (Not that anyone was crying about the lethargy inducing Spartan Ops being quietly downsized)- they decided to put all their eggs into a Live Service focused Halo entry... and then forgot the live part. Seriously, Infinite's Support was glacial ontop of being underwhelming, and it resulted in a confused audience that very much wanted to engage with the solid foundation provided- but with precious few avenues through which to do so. They led with gregarious predictions of years worth of support, earning the name infinite- only to peter out within a few months and drag themselves the rest of way to achieve the bare base requirements to make a complete Halo product. Again, big shame.

And in the face of something like that, knowing that Halo is no longer really worthy of being called Xbox's flagship: honestly, I'd want to change my name too. Then leave the country and take up a new profession serving sweet treats in a mall, before my ever-present self-destructive thirst for excitement wrapped in a veneer of false-greed calls me to a series of petty heists that end up getting my back on the radar of those I was trying to escape from all this time... what was I talking about? Oh right, so 343 literally changed their name to 'Halo Studios'. And it makes sense- there hasn't been a single good Halo game with 343 printed on the box art. I think. (Did 343 manage to get their name on Creative Assembly's Halo Wars 2? I can't confirm.)

Still- that's a little cyncial- wouldn't you say? "New name, new me"? As if! Still, it's heralding a slight change in leadership and a capitulation to the gait of the industry in that Infinite's heavy investment custom made engine (which won't run on my bloody computer) has been scrapped in favour of the single most over pivoted-to engine in Gaming right now. That's right, Halo 6 is going to Unreal Engine! Of course it is- have you seen how many rendering triangles that thing can fit onto a single screen? Witchcraft I say! Automatic LOD? Sign me the heck up! And I'm sure Master Chief will look all nice and pretty with the cutesy new ray tracing bouncing majestically of his dome visor as realities slowest Sci-Fi plot lurches forward another few inches before flopping down and hibernating for the decade. That seems to be the 343 MO, afterall. 

But the game looks so pretty now, doesn't it? I mean- from the sweeping vistas they showed off... well, rock formations and... Combat Evolved locations? They look good, I guess... is this a remake? Nah- there was one Flood locale they showed off- this is new stuff... why does it look so retro then? Is it Chief's Armour? I think it's the armour. regardless- the question is whether or not 'making the game look good' is the end goal of this change up- because there are so many more questions when it comes to what would make a good modern Halo game. What kind of interesting sceanrios can you cook up, how can you make the conflict with the Covenant still feel fresh, will this be the first time in the past 10 years the core narrative takes a significant step in a direction without walking it back? Can we please never see the Prometheans again, pretty please- that faction and all their weapons suck.

In all seriousness- It is nice to see there be some sort of recognition from the former 343 that something has got to give, and making some sort of effort to detail out a then and a now indicates awareness and planning that is, sadly, uncommon admits spiralling game developers. That might because they no longer have an auto-sell evergreen franchise on their hands anymore, they might not even have a Microsoft exclusivity deal anymore if things are going the way they seem to be- Halo Studios may no longer be the face of Xbox- which means these games need to stand on their own merit and to achieve that is going to take some effort. And giving off the bulk of the bitch-work to Unreal Engine whilst you focus on the actual designing- that's a sensible place to start.

More Anime-bait please

You know by now that I'm an eclectic gamer- I pick up any and everything and don't allow the concept known as 'Genre's to stop me unless they truly are reprehensible- such as the survival game genre. (That concept has only ever thrived as an addendum towards other more complete genre ideas and I will die on that hill.) But recently I have to admit to being blown away by a few of the action games that we have been gifted as of late- a couple in particular, that speak to the scale of big budgets that we except to be realised. It isn't often I have to sit back to take in the insanity of the spectacle, and you can kind of start longing for that sensation after a while. When you don't get it from the grandest TV or the most exciting movie- I guess that's just another way that gaming leapfrog's traditional entertainment.

Black Myth Wukong has been on everyone's lips who gave it the good old shot, and I think that might be because of the blockbuster energy that the game just exudes- not in the tired 'game large for the sake of being big' Ubisoft trite; nor the 'we literally hold our consumers hostage with our entrenched multiplayer systems then brag about the player retention' Activision method; but rather the 'everyone shut up and listen- this game is the one' kind of way. And we've had actually a few games like that this year, funnily enough. It's not perfect and it doesn't do everything, but that it does set out to do it performs exceptionally at- but what take the cake for me with Wukong is the presentation.

From the very first cutscene you know right away that the name of the game is 'taking the action to the limits of extreme' in a manner you only really get out of the most bombastic anime. Wukong and Erlang, themselves inspirations for some of the most iconic anime rivalries out there, literally fly through the air propelled by the the force of their colliding staves- like a Wuxia movie, only with stunts that are animated and therefore don't feel stiff and on wires. The gigantic scale of the Heavenly Kings leering down on the battle are just the cherry atop the cake. And you know what- that isn't even the best that the game has to offer.

Action games that can transfer the energy and excitement into both their gameplay and their storytelling are far and few between- and off the top of my head I can only really think of Devil May Cry from 3 onwards as a definitive comparison. In those hands you get the kind of set-piece moments that hang around in your nogging for months even years after in fond reminiscence- and that is by no means an easy feat to achieve. Particularly in gaming- big set pieces can be so very difficult to make land as well as they did on the paper when first conceived- and maybe it's the years worth of those pretenders and attempters that made me so very unprepared for moments that would send me back to the giggling glee of childhood just like Black Myth is stuffed with.

Another contender has been my time with Final Fantasy XVI which, true to it's recent processors, is full of eye-popping spectacle moments that regularly blow you away as you sit back in sheer awe. This is actually nothing new for Square Enix or Final Fantasy, it seems this style of cinematic excitement has been their go-to since at least the days of Final Fantasy XII if not before. In fact, some describe the style of Final Fantasy as a bit desensitising in their more hyperactive throes- and to that I will say: there were moments during Final Fantasy XIII where I literally did not know what I was looking at one screen. Cluttered designs are no stranger to the halls of the Enix.

But XVI manages to bridge the gap between spectacle and gameplay which we don't always see teased. Even more so than Final Fantasy XV before it. Give us a big Kaiju fight and we'll remember it- let us partake in a Kajiu fight and we will love every second of it! There's something novel and cool about taking control of giant country-side destroying mega-forms for a brief amount of time to really stand-out through an otherwise jam packed adventure story. And even beyond that we get to face up against the very forms of godlike power themselves- playing against the man-versus-goliath visual often. There's even some great main story boss fights against aggressive and spectacular monsters with the kind of attack sets that make you just want to zone out and appreciate the intensity of it all.

I like to call these 'Anime Bait' moments, because they do tend to cater to the standards of excessive maximalism when it comes to action set pieces that Anime champions. A design standard of 'if I can imagine the coolest still frame moments for a conflict, then all I need to do is transition to those moments as smoothly as possible to get cinematic signatures'- and it proposes the kind of thrill-based eccentricity only really successfully catered to by animation. We're talking set-pieces that are all about embodying something primal, from pure crackling energy to effortless weightless grace to dying beauty and birthing monstrosity: these are the moments that memories are made of.

And I want more of them. Yes I do, I love this times. More than any action movie, no matter how expensive the budget- these are the kinds of visuals that speak "big budget blockbuster" to me. The only case in which such features don't tick off my 'possible embezzlement' alarms. 'Anime-bait' may sound vapid, and some times it can totally be, but even in their most infantile and blunt- the best anime astound in the understanding and manipulation of visual art- much more so than any other genre in the medium. Matching that in the 3D realm is that step beyond the pale that video games can trail, and modern AAA games lacking that can of visual excellence just don't sell it to me anymore. So for the next $70 'premium' title I see on the shelves, those are the kind of visuals I'm going to be on the hunt for. Like a true Anime weeb. 

The forbidden remake

 

Anticipation is a potent spell. This magic is known well to any marketing executive across the planet- it's their very reason for being- to deftly place the pellets that lead an audience to "ohh" and "ahh", ideally over a promise not spoken. Otherwise I consider marketers little more than glorified showgirls, putting up lavish displays of actual achievements. No, it's those that conjure tapestries from mist and rumour from direction which earn my respect. Anyone can make a great looking game shine if they have enough pool, only a talented marketer can sell the essence of a game on whispers and hype. Of course at some point the world become receptive to their techniques and then the conversation changes. No longer do we assume the unspoken is unbidden- because now what is unsaid must be charged! Why not speak of a much requested product. Because you make it in secret of course!

And this way of thinking doesn't stem from nothing, mind you- we have precedent. Hollow Knight Silksong fans have been led by the neck for years on the promise of a sequel that seemingly will never be made. Each passing day expanding the gulf between anticipation and deliverance. Then we have the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Remake which entered horrific production troubles but all behind the scenes away from any official word. Just recently we heard that whoever caught the hot-potato of development responsibilities promises with their pinky out that it's still being worked on- trust! And let us not forget about Beyond Good and Evil 2- a game delayed so horrifically long that every interesting idea it once presented has been outstripped by various other titles across the two console generators since. We used to dangled promises from the abyss.

Which is why I can presume there is an inexplicably movement out there utterly convinced of the single most unbelievable production ever- the secret development of a Bloodborne Remake/Remaster from the Sony devs. Now of course, Bloodborne is a much beloved Souls game that is considered to be among the best by those who had the fortune enough to play it during that original release for the PS4. But seeing as the game has never once been ported to newer platforms, nor to PC, nor patched to run above 30 frames per second- it might seem as though the franchise has been abandoned by any and all. But don't tell that to the faithful. They'll call you a liar and forge forward with the belief of madmen- emboldened by the viscous, saccharine syrup called 'Anticipation'.

It doesn't matter that Sony have rather aggressively avoided maintaining anything related to Bloodborne as part of their image unless they're really pulling for scraps, such as for Astrobot. It doesn't matter that the literal creators of the game themselves, FromSoft, claim to not have any control over the franchise and what happens to it. It doesn't matter that Sony's goto remake developing studio, Bluepoint Games, are currently wrapped up on what they insist is an original title; (and they aren't really of the size to be multi-tasking) people will accuse them of making Bloodborne 2 if it'll aid the anticipation! (Which is utter nonsense; who would be insane enough to make a sequel to a FromSoft game without Fromsoft? Madness!)

At this point people are willing to conjure any reality imaginable, just so long as within that fantasy space they have a semi-modern release of Bloodborne to keep them busy- but Playstation's hold of the franchise in a limbo state seems less like 'playing with anticipation' and more like 'fumbling the bag.' What I think truly has Playstation's nuts in a vice is their simply insatiable thirst to ruin the playability of their ports in order to squeeze out pointless subscriber numbers that they can flaunt for investors. So why haven't we got a Bloodborne port yet? Because Playstation are on a totally different wave than we think they are right now.

You'd think this is all a business and it's about making money- so just give us our port and make that bread- but whilst that makes sense to literally anyone else within this spinning globe of ours- Sony want something else. They're not just putting out games to make a buck, they're putting out investments on PC to spruce up their numbers. Forcing players to sign up to PSN for literally no benefit- sometimes even lying about 'moderation' or 'user experience' to secure their bag and then making off with your information. In some places that makes these products straight up impossible to buy because of no PSN coverage- in England that means that Sony are literally scoping for our damn Passports so that for their next hack our country can see a handy spike in identity thefts- thanks for that one! And for everyone else this adds an 'always online' functionality to otherwise entirely single player games that Sony have no right messing with.

Bloodborne, on the otherhand, is this antiquated little niche title that didn't even sell gangbusters when it originally released and would struggle under the weight of forced online requirements. (Even though all FromSoft games have some form of optional online anyway.) It just doesn't slide in neatly enough with Sony's image to warrant doing. Does it matter that they've been hassled about it forever at this point? How about the fact that Souls-Like's have ballooned into big business? Well... maybe they would have considered changing their view if the Demon Souls remake had taken off- but whether due to poor PS5 sales or just general disinterest; that didn't pan out too well either. More and more, as they rise, the bottom line is really starting to form the heart of Sony.

It's just a shame how Sony grew from this allusion to player first attitudes into this voracious beast that everyone has to struggle against in order to get the basic most morsel of food. That's what happens when you give a studio no competitors, allowing their greed instincts to take over. And Bloodborne fans join the ranks of us Silksong clowns, beating our head against our computer screens every big event praying for an impossibility out of the cold husks we call companies. It's a self defeating circle of embarrassment. 

   

The final word on Shattered Space

 

Now the reason I struggled so much with getting through Shattered Space after the first few hours of genuine promise that I was really excited for was not because the content was horrible- it was actually the crushing realisation that Shattered Space might have been the single least ambitious pieces of DLC content that Bethesda have put out since Oblivion- and it is galling to see them bold face call this great high quality content worthy of the fee they charge. It's almost as though we're watching a delusional man with a missing limb swear-down that he is completely uninjured as the blood literally cascades out of the giant whole in his body. You can expect this to go on for years until Starfield is behind them before Bethesda will admit they didn't maybe perform to their best- and by then it will obviously be too late. Take it from Fallout 76- they react like a cocky anime villain after the protagonist's music starts swelling: overconfidently and not effectively enough.

Shattered Space felt like cut content with a little bit more on the package, a definite break from the rules that founded their least interesting modern game- procedural generation and small content pockets, but lacking in any overall purpose to define it's existence. Not that purpose is a must-have for every single questline in any wandering Bethesda game but for a major DLC in a recent struggling release that seems like a huge omission! Take us back to Fallout 4- their DLC's both attempted to address a vertical of the gameplay experience. Far Harbour was an answer to those that found Fallout 4's roleplaying options severely lacking, Nuka World was an answer to those that thought there wasn't enough evil play options- therefor Raider-cosplay DLC! And Shattered Space... was to answer those that found procedural generation lacklustre? Is that really all it tries to do?

Okay so sure, that's a purpose no matter how you cut it- but does that really add the gameplay formula? I'll admit- I actually enjoyed seeing the sights of... the new location who's name I can't remember and won't look up: I liked walking about and seeing what was there- even if none of it was exactly Bethesda at their A-game of world building; despite the relatively constricted space they had to work with. (Remember when 'Shivering Isles' did the same and managed to contain some of Bethesda's best world building?) Shattered Space doesn't really achieve the same level of quality, nor the level of scale of a traditional Bethesda game- so it just goes to demonstrate a direction that Bethesda could have gone in if they decided to put a bit more of themselves into creating their worlds and trusted less to the generation machine. Which just makes me feel sad because they didn't.

What about arguably their best title- Skyrim? Heathfire introduced constructable player housing that fed into the simulation loving audience, Dawnguard played into their alternative playstyles and made Vampires the most interesting they'd ever been in the franchise, Dragonborn expanded the adventure- Dragonborn abilities and played to nostalgia. All of these felt like honestly directed experiences with a direction and a goal- I'd even extend the same virtue to Starfield itself- though I feel the direction might have not perhaps hit everything it wanted to. Shattered Space, predominately, feels like content for the sake of content. Like you might get in a live service where a land expansion is mandated for this year even though no one really has an inspired idea on what they want to do with it- that's Shattered Space in a nutshell.

And I think it's apparent even in the name. 'Shattered Space'? Evocative, but empty in the face of context. 'Shattered' is clearly suppose to refer to the incident that befell the the Va'ruun which ended up breaking reality around them and seeping in creatures from some other form of reality into this one. (Don't get excited, this isn't Star Trek. They're just mindless teleporting bugs- no creative imagination required.) As for Space... where? What does this have to do with space? The DLC is rather pointedly landlocked throughout it's duration. With a title like that you would expect some kind of implicit shift to the foundations of the normal Starfield tries to set- that of Space Travel. Something about that has become 'Shattered'- it's wrong, broken and fits together differently now. But what we got feels a bit more like content designed to fit the title rather than a title conceived to label the content. Does that make sense?

Perhaps the enemy design best highlights the sheer lack of heart here- because outside of the teleporting bugs which are fine- not scary like the team tried to build up- they're just fine. We also get humanoid void enemies. Their thing? They shoot and they teleport. Kind of like the Starborn then? Eerily like the Starborn. Not quite. See, these guys are treated like infantry and so you'll come across them in chunks, and they seem to have basic grunt AI which means they charge you- constantly. So yes, the flagship new enemy of Shattered Space are basic grunts with a blue ghost effect slapped on them and the ability to teleport behind you- which they spam endlessly. How does that sound to you? Fun? Honestly, it's a bit annoying. And it becomes more frustrating the higher you attune their deeply unbalanced difficulty scales. At basic 'Extreme', which is one below the highest setting, you feel like you're beta-testing a broken mod from a first year game designer. I feel like how I imagine the testers for 'Fallout: The Frontier' felt- like my brain was melting along with my patience.

Need I even bring up comparisons? The new lord Vampires from Dawngaurd with their crazy cool design, new abilities and an entire league of smaller mob redesigns to buff up their faction. Alongside the creepy Chaurus Hunters. And the entirety of the Forgotten Vale with it's unique Fauna? Shattered Isles entirely unique enemy set (with a lot of reskins, to be fair- but that was back in 2006.) I know I'm delving deep into 'petty' here but it's the only way I can try and identify all the ways in which this one DLC from Bethesda has totally shattered my belief that there is a company I recognise in modern Bethesda. But there has to be, right? There haven't been that many gigantic staff overhauls- the creative powerhouses are still there, aren't they? So what are they doing?

It isn't a total disaster. The beginning mission for Shattered Space is fine, and the finale is actually uniquely cool. One of their better faction finales. But that is pretty much all it was. A fun start, a cool end and a middle so utterly bland I could not tell you what happened if you held me at gunpoint. Terribly boring characters, a script begging for rewrites and cuts, mostly uninspired quest design, (the dam one was alright) and- of course- horrifically short. Vague consequences that are hinted at but displayed nowhere. Shattered Space was the worst it could have been- a total waste of time. For me and Bethesda. And that's all I have to say on it- and it's probably the last I'll think of it too.

The paradox of Paradox

 

So oft do we discuss the machinations of the titans of our industry it can sometimes escape mind that the backbone of gaming is more commonly everything but. The indies, the AA's- those who entreat the niches of our niche and not just the big crowd seekers that seek the every expanding splash. And admits them there is none that I am coming to respect ever more in my advancing years than Paradox- a publisher who exists to squirm annoying in the face of those that insist gaming is and always has been solely for children. (Yes, I read that Metro article- inflammatory and reductive though it was.) Theirs has been the realm of 4X tactics games, Simulation titles, city builders and maybe even a life sim if we lived on a different timeline. But alas- that particular cancellation is the topic of today.

Life by You was the topic of many a thought piece not that long following their rather sudden cancellation just a few short weeks before the supposed launch of their Early Access- and in that void questions have sprung up as hearts sored for what they never had. Personally I saw Life By You as little more than an overly ambitious pipedream fed out of a little bit of a ropey-looking Unity project- but in hindsight I came to appreciate the spirit of what the game promised which everyone else seemed to grasp so much more readily. It wasn't about the individual quality, but having the desire to try and challenge and remake the stagnant life sim genre- wresting a monopoly out of the hands of Sims 4- a game which disappointed in scope back when it first launched- let alone to this day!

But how does a game go along the track to imminent publishing before getting pulled out from under someone like that- to such a rapid degree that even the development studio didn't expect it? Following the cancellation a lot of questions hovered around regarding the game, why it was canned- even by the developers themselves! Well, that was before they, Tectonic, were shut down by Paradox in a move which I think can only be described as 'shocking'. Then again, with the space of hindsight, I suppose Tectonic were founded with the sole goal of creating Life By You, therefore without it there's no objective reason to keep them around- but outside of objectivity it's just kind of a dismissive way to treat your studios. As though we don't already have enough systemic wrestles with self worth in this day and age- you know?

Now I think a lot of unfortunate circumstances have come crashing together for Paradox of late, creating a kind-of miasma of despair they've unfortunately fallen prey to. I'm talking about the general dissatisfaction with City Skylines 2- the complete and utter failure of Lamplighters league, (Wait, that was a Tactics title? Like X-Com style tactics? Might have to check that one out...) Oh, and then there was the split with Double Elven- creators of the cult classic 'Prison Architect' (A game I tried desperately to get into several times) causing the sequel to be delayed into eternity. This has been a bad year for the company all around- and I hate to see it because honest- at their best Paradox published titles hit the kind of itch no-one else can. Stellaris, Crusader Kings the first City Skylines- I love those games for what they are. I'd hate for their publisher to find themselves in jeopardy. 

Paradox Interactive recently went in front of their investors to be appropriately upfront about what they see as being 'the problem'. Overconfidence, in a word. The deputy CEO spins a tale about going into projects too hard, investing early in ideas that might have ended up not panning out the way they wanted them to and this feeds into a lot of problems we see effecting the industry at large. Bigger teams with longer tails end up circling the wagons more on simple tasks. We've recently been inundated with excerpts from Jason Schierer's upcoming book on Blizzard that relay similar confusions, where team members end up working on assets that had been completed by someone else months prior. Even just arguing about the direction of a game can hold of months of pay, muddy an idea or entrench viewpoints that fail to reflect the realities of the outside world. Long story short- it's tough out there for scaling up production.

For Paradox it seems they claim their confidence applied blinders, maybe something akin to the sunk cost fallacy, where ideas that really weren't working were allowed to fester because to say otherwise would be to admit having wasted time and money. That explains how a Life by You would have made it all the way to the week before launch until someone sat back and went "This game really isn't going to do well at launch". It sounds harsh, but bare in mind Paradox recently went through City Skylines 2- a game which had the entire genre-type in a chokehold during marketing only to realise as a poor shell of the original title that sought innovations in areas that few to no player really appreciated in exchange for taking liberties in places that players really cared about- such as accessible performance. Skylines still has a sore reputation in the community after years and that rubs off on the developer and the publisher- maybe Paradox saw the exact same situations approaching with Life By You.

Of course we're never going to get specifics, that would be 'unprofessional' or something- but you don't really need everything written in bold ink to figure the heart of it all. We hear about them 'trusting the devs' before realising "Everything will be worse if we keep going, so we have to stop." It seems a good guess was made by the community in the assumption that the cost required to make this game a true competitor to Sims 4 was more than the publishers realised that they could fund- and in the current state the Early Access would embarrass more than it would impress. And that's a really hard thing to see from the inside looking out, to be honest. Getting to that point requires some real introspection that can become muddied in the big picture of a team project.

Where they are right now, Paradox has really burnt up a lot of that consumer trust they had- which is significant given how much a publisher their size relies on that trust. Sure, on one hand you might argue they have a stranglehold on games of this type built to this size, but on the other- a lot of their popular titles are enfranchised. All those popular hitters I named are years old supported by infrequent DLC drops, you can't really support a growing publisher off of that. You need new games that people buy, expanded IPs, eggs in more baskets. But as I said for 343, recognising the problem is the first step to fixing it- and I hope Paradox really knock it out the park in the years to come because, to be honest, their a unique little star in our industry I want to see shine more. 

Shattered Space: Not what it needed to be

 

I always approached Starfield with an open mind because to be honest- I like the raw gameplay, I think that with the difficulty options switched on it play in a very unique manner (they should have all been available at launch) and like many others I think there's so much potential for Starfield to shine. (Or rather I thought that way.) I was very receptive to the direction the team implied they would go with Shattered Space to try and pimp up the game experience, leaning more towards Morrowind-esque gameplay experiences, and I wanted to see what a grounded Starfield played like given that the biggest problem with the loop is decent shooter experiences stretched between large gaps of boring space travel. And after giving Shattered Space a faith shake- I'm not only unimpressed, I'm a little disillusioned.

Firstly, I will say that I like the world building of Va'ruun pretty much exclusively compared to every other faction in this entire game. No one else interested me with their premise nearly as much as the science cultists do, and figuring out how they maintain their bizarre belief platform is interesting- even if increasingly less convincing the further you dig. Discovering some concept of 'god' sort of begs for a level of universal cause and effect that would be up to the writers to elucidate and make physical in the world building sense- conjure some observation on the nature of life and mix it with the symbology of snakes and you'll have the basis for creating a believable cult. As it is Va'ruun just kind of feels like Scientology- lazy and stupid. The interest more lies in learning how their society works.

That's where the Morrowind comes into my impressions of this DLC. By going around and talking to people, getting sucked into their little problems and losing yourself in a minor quest line, there's a decent and subtle way to build up cultural quirks and worldly traditions that brief life in the micro of this society as well as the macro which the main quest revolves around. Unfortunately it is with that macros that Shattered Space feels a little wanting. Actually a lot wanting. And it might be because this DLC is unforgivably short given the price tag. I don't know what Fallout 4 did to change the brain chemistry of everyone at Bethesda, but sometime half-way through the development cycle of that game's DLC they ramped up the DLC price out of range of reasonability for what they were actually offering and they haven't grown out of that since. It's been close to eight years at this point.

And the length of the DLC is reflecting in the depressingly small scope of what this DLC aims for which makes the whole thing kind of come across as cut content instead of a focused expansion. I know I already pointed out that this content was penned before the release of Starfield and so wouldn't sit as a course correction based on player feedback but it was still largely developed after release- there was time to add onto the DLC elements that would reassure fans that Starfield is aware of it's faults and is working on some of them. But now I'm starting to wonder if all the criticism that the team listened to started and ended with structural space exploration problems- because they absolutely do not start and end there- to be clear!

Starfield has a problem with larger consequence that only really pans out in a single mission of the main game and a post game summary. Seeing as how this DLC would be around saving the forgotten house, my expectation was for a Nuka World style post game where we would build up Va'Ruun's presence around the settled systems and reintroduce them to the galaxy, or something that would carry outside the scope of this DLC to have an impact in the wider game to make this feel like the evolving world that Bethesda have been trying to sell us. Or at the very least give us an indication that the choices we make had a knock on effect on the wider story of the universe in the post game summary! But unless there's a really belated effect (and maybe there is, I wasn't exactly exhaustive) it seems like the buck ends with the DLC. There's no grand ambition. There's no proof that this was always going to be additive DLC, and not just content ripped from the base game and sat on.

Of course that also bleed into itemization which I'm going to be honest- has been getting worse at Bethesda. Fallout 4 kind of kicked the rock down the hill with the introduction of legendary effects that tried their hardest to replace unique weapons in a meaningful way, but I kind of figured they learned their lesson with the various DLC the game got since, and even the more recent updates and CC content which all championed unique guns with unique functionality. Starfield was the absolute worst of it, where even unique items had non-tailored buffs and effects and Shattered Space- fixes nothing. Which is horrendous given how core to the gameplay loop itemization is- how has Bethesda not heard this critique? It boggles the mind!

Which brings me at last to the open world. Shattered Space offered to be a chunk of old school Bethesda open world to keep us satiated and it almost delivers on that promise. From the outside it all looks promising enough, but of course Bethesda drop the ball in how they present it. Repeated locations hurt a bit more in apparently tailor-made content, inconsistent enemy makeup that defies the lore makes me think back to the days of Skyrim where DLC would conjure up an entire new faction if they needed trash mobs for a single location- and the new horror elements that Shattered Space tried to drum up- predictably atrocious. This feels like an outsiders take on the kind of world spaces that Bethesda used to make- or maybe a Modders interpretation. It doesn't feel like the Bethesda main team.

I never saw the moment where Bethesda changed so completely that they are no longer the team that made the great games of the past. There hasn't been any monumental staffing changes, just some natural small scales peel-offs here and there. But After Starfield and this expansion that at least should have course corrected- I sense Bioware levels of drift. This does not feel like the same Bethesda and I'm not sure I can continue following them as rapidly as I have. This is the last Starfield content I buy, probably until the complete edition comes out and I have some sort of 3rd party assurance it's an all-around improvement. Now my attention, and nearly birthed fears, are pointed towards where I hope the missing effort is- The Elder Scrolls VI. Please come back, Bethesda- I miss you...