Let me vomit about Star Wars 'The High Republic' for a second

Disney misses the mark once again

After 20 years too long, the over-bloated series of Star Wars movies that was ignobly labelled 'The Skywalker Saga' is finally at an end, good riddance. What's left is an entire universe of opportunity for Disney to explore, full of timeless stories and characters that have been hoisted from their rightful place in the Star Wars canon. Now it's true that Disney themselves are responsible for a great deal of that hoisting, but they still hope to sink brownie points with the community by reintroducing this stuff so I think we're supposed to forget about that. "Hey, you guys liked Timothy Zahn's 'Heir to the Empire', right? Well we've already screwed up the plot of the sequels too badly to bring in Mara Jade, but you guys can have Thrawn. (Not in the movies, though. Just in the animated series which we'll then cancel before it's finale.)" So us Star Wars fans should be grateful, shouldn't we?

All of this pandering and posturing would be just that little bit bearable if, at the end of the day, Disney higher-ups finally pulled their heads out of their rears long enough to hear what the fans want. Instead they must play this excessively perverse game of Chinese Whispers for how badly they managed to mutilate the execution every single time. Do you remember, not so long ago when Benioff and Weiss weren't industry pariahs, how they had been selected to direct the new trilogy of Star Wars movies that would set, lo-and-behold, in The Old Republic? Wait really? The Old Republic? So it's finally happening? The best Star Wars comic series and the best Star Wars video games will finally be recognised for their greatness and be touched upon on the silver screen? Huh, I guess that maybe Disney aren't a bunch of talent-less hacks afteral- what the heck is 'The High Republic'!?

In a desperate effort to revitalise the Star Wars community after a divisive trilogy, (to put it mildly) Disney have unveiled the direction of their next movies through a publishing effort they have dubbed 'Project Luminos'. Luminos intends to bring the Star Wars mythos to a whole new era of history; 200 years before 'A New Hope', a time they've dubbed 'The High Republic' for it was a time in which the Jedi were at the height of their strength and power. (Really? What was wrong with them during the prequels, they seemed pretty with-it. I mean sure, they granted emergency powers to the Chancellor who then took advantage of that to launch an empire within the space of a week, but everyone has their ups and downs.) Interestingly, Disney isn't just going to launch us head-first into this era with a movie, but rather ease folk in which a collection of comic books and the like that will be aimed at everyone from adults to children. (Because I'm sure that Disney are really going to publish adult Star Wars stories. Pull the other one, Mickey.) All of this signals a brand new dawn for the Star Wars universe and I totally hate every second of it; and let me share with you why.

The Old Republic marks a period in history that it feels like Star Wars had been building up to for a long time ever since the prequels launched. Us fans always dreamed of a time before the Sith were driven underground, where they and the Jedi were equal forces in the galaxy and fought for supremacy. It represented a time where the distinction between 'good guys' and 'bad guys' wasn't so distinct and clear cut, and the Republic wasn't yet accepted as this galaxy-wide government. And most of all; it promised of huge battles between thousands of Jedi and Sith, something that people had been hopeful for since the year dot. All that is completely ignoring the great stories that have been told with the Old Republic as a backdrop, and it's all meaningless to Disney I suppose; because they've gone and made their own era just to avoid addressing KOTOR.

Project Luminos' announcement was accompanied by a sizzle-real in which you can watch a room full of 'young put-together' folks brainstorm their ideas for this new universe and coming up with such amazing deductions like the fact that these new stories should have: "Feelings". (Give these people the Oscar!) From an optics standpoint, this is clearly just a propaganda video designed to make people think that they actually have a plan this time around (seeing as how that was one of the biggest complaints with the sequels) and that this has some connection to George Lucas. (Because some folk were upset about that recently.) They even went so far as to arrange their little summit at Skywalker Ranch, although George wasn't even there so I presume that they just broke in to shoot that segment. Security probably had to chase them off the premises as soon as the cameras were off.

From that video we've learnt precious little about what the actual universe is about apart from the fact that the Jedi order will not be opposed by the Sith but rather a new faction called the 'Nihil', that are apparently supposed to be space vikings. I guess that means these folk will go around raiding colonies on the fringe of space and living like nomads; hardly 'take over the universe' level threats. Even the brief concept shots we got of them was largely underwhelming, with the folk just looking like a collection of alien pirates from all different walks of life with no discernible uniform visual. (at least none that I can tell so far.) The team seem really chuffed with these bad guys too, claiming that they were born out of the desire to discuss "what are the Jedi afraid of?" To which the answer apparently isn't an age-old order of similarly powerful warrior monks who's power and influence threatens to undermine all that the Jedi are and could be, but rather a bunch of pirates who don't wash. (I know I'm quaking in my boots right now.)

Talking about 'visual style' that's another aspect of The High Republic which is looking pretty weak so far. Every single era of Star Wars has had something unique about it's style so that you identify it at a glance, with this trait only really faltering when Disney took hold. The Original trilogy was iconic with it's impressively distinct design, the prequels played up the monk-angle to the Jedi and the Old Republic bought a medieval touch to everything. The Sequels just seemed to to remix the original trilogy's design philosophy and the High Republic has borrowed from the Prequels aesthetic; nothing looks unique so far. They couldn't even be bothered to show off a new lightsaber colour, which is another thing that these Era's used to do. The Original bought us Red, Blue and Green; the prequels bought Purple and Orange and the Old Republic introduced Yellow and Silver. All these new era's have given us is increasingly stupid new saber designs that are just plain impractical. (What's that? Some High Republic Sabers have hilt guards? Well what the hell is that going to do against laser swords?)

So there we have it. Disney have bait-and-switched their audience and left everyone eager for TOR stuck with this bargain-bin rip-off era. What makes all this worse, at least in my eyes, is that we won't even be able to enjoy this from a gaming perspective as with EA still in charge we'll have to wait for the late 2020's until they manage to get a game together. Who even knows if Star Wars will even still be profitable then. Personally, I feel let down by Disney to the highest degree. They've done this time and time again and I'm getting really tired of getting myself excited for the next Star Wars event only to be gut punched at the last moment. Hey, maybe I'm just being myself and this Project Luminos is going to turn out to be a really cool idea; but after remembering that Disney's last big Star Wars related project 'Operation: Cinder' was literally one of the dumbest villain plans ever conceived, my hopes aren't exactly high.

Magic Legends

Mystique would be jealous...

Not too long ago, during the VGAs, I noticed a little trend wherein a traditionally single platform game, League of Legends, was actively trying to diversify itself with a bunch of new single player titles. Personally, I thought it was a great idea hindered only by the fact that LOL's lore is notoriously wishy washy, making it hard to build upon. 'Magic: The Gathering' on the otherhand is so much more robust in that category, and that just makes sense doesn't it, considering that Magic is run by 'Wizards of the Coast'. (The guys behind 'Dungeon's and Dragons'.) With that in mind, it's a no brainer for a 'Magic: The Gathering' extended universe game to be released. Why not expand that card game into something more substantial and build the brand, yada yada... but somehow there has been a little bit of a roadblock in that pursuit.

Before I proceed I shall be fully open for a second, I had no idea about anything surrounding this game until very recently. I had, and have, never played 'Magic: The Gathering' before, my knowledge of the game doesn't expand anywhere past that South Park episode on Magic and the announcement of Magic Legends passed right by me like a fart in a hurricane. But upon learning of the situation, I can't help but find myself entranced due to the odd similarities this all has to the 'Warcraft 3: Reforged' debacle with flying accusations of 'false marketing' and 'poor communication' confusing a community around a game that doesn't look so bad. (Although in fairness I'm told that Warcraft 3 was buggy as all get-out.) So I took a look at what I could find about this game and here's what I saw.

Our story begins all the way back in 2017 when I still had no idea was Magic was and 'Wizards of the Coast' has just gone public with their hiring of Perfect World and it's subsidiary, Cryptic Studios, on a very special project; Magic Legends. Cryptic, who were previously known for creating Neverwinter, Star Trek Online and City of Heroes, would be tasked with putting their MMO crafting abilities on the Magic universe in order to build the next step in it's lore. This would be "a new free-to-play, action MMORPG", which is a collection of words that bodes very ominously if previous experience is to be taken into account. Things get specific in the next bit of the PR, for "as a Planeswalker, you explore amazing worlds, combat powerful creatures and meet the legendary beings that shape the fate of the multiverse", whatever that means. (Oh, will the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor show up then? What about Pariah? I don't think Tom Cavanagh has played enough versions of Harrison Welles yet...)

So far so normal, right? A celebrated crafter of decent-MMOs has secured the rights to make yet another. Of course, now we get the standard trailer announcing the new game, and if you've ever seen a 'Magic: The Gathering' trailer before, you already know exactly what this one contains. A whole bunch of still 3D renders, a few drops of melodrama and a beat drop that's so loud it'll blow out your speakers. Honestly, I do wonder at what studio the Magic team gets to put these trailers together, they're barely any better then what you'd expect out of a 1st year graphics class, is the price of quality really that high? Will the sky fall upon our heads the very second you choose to display some actual honest-to-goodness gameplay in your trailers? (Okay, I'm getting a bit off track.)

After that announcement, you'll likely not be too shocked to hear that the community was treated to a generous helping of silence for the next two years. During this time there could have been any number of developments to the project, (As there evidently were, we'll get to that later) but no one in the teams involved thought it prudent to maintain a single avenue of communication with the audience. You know, the people who would be buying the product. It seems to stupid to shy away from the basic tenets of transparency so much in the modern gaming market, you'd think that No Man's Sky and the like would have roundly taught that lesson to everyone, yet every year there's a studio that has to learn the hard way, and this year it looks like that studio might be Cryptic.

I say this because it was this year that Magic Legends worked it's way back into the spotlight once more with another dull trailer and a revised description on it's website. "Magic Legends (is) an all-new online action RPG." Hang on, aren't you missing something, guys? Maybe the letters 'MMO'? On January 15th this confusion was cleared up a little when we got to see our first gameplay trailer, and we could see quite clearly that this was a title that hails from the genre that I'll just affectionately call 'a Diablo clone'. Now, don't mistake my frankness with disapproval, I'm actually quite the fan of Diablo-type games, but when hype and renown is mounted with the promise of one thing, it kind of sucks for the pay-off to be for something else entirely. (Unless we're talking about a movie twist, in which case that's very much the point.)

The reaction from the public thus far has been very mixed. Some people really like what they are seeing from this game while others are understandably confused about the fact that they were sold on a lie. To be fair, Cryptic at least had the courtesy to let people know that the game isn't what they originally promised, rather than release it and then pray people wouldn't notice. (Like Blizzard essentially did.) This just puts everyone in a weird position wherein they have to judge this game from an entirely new set of eyes. Plus, the crowd that was amassed looking for an MMO isn't going to be anywhere near the diablo-crowd, so I'd call this a grand marketing faux-pas for everyone involved. Look at me, for example; I lack the charisma and friends to play an MMO but I eat up Diablo-clones, and yet I'm hearing of this one because of the controversy it's sparking rather than for the merits of the game itself.

So this isn't quite the huge meltdown that Blizzard are currently up against, but the Magic community are feeling betrayed and that will hurt the ability for this game to grow. To make matters worse, the Diablo-like market of games has become rather crowded in the past couple of years, to the point wherein the next Diablo has already been announced with a substantial gameplay walkthrough. Magic Legends just seems to pale in comparison as it cannot match the muted semi-realism of Diablo nor the quirky colourfulness of titles like Torchlight 2, making this title seem like an inferior choice for everyone involved. The even worser-er part of all this, I don't even think this game'll be a good way to expand the Magic brand, an MMO would have been a much better vehicle. Maybe when the time comes we'll all be proven wrong and Magic Legends will be the next big thing; But I won't hold my breath.

This is all we have to go on for Magic Legends right now, and it's a real shame too. Just like with LOL, I think Magic is a huge universe worth of stories that would be a very interesting well to delve into; but somehow I don't think we'll be getting that. Cryptic will be working outside of their comfort zones to create a non-MMO and fans will be out of a fully-immersive massively multiplayer experience in favour of a gameplay-loop dependant title. It's actually quite amazing what a world of difference there is between the promised game and what we're seeing today, and I'm just struggling to figure out whether this change has been positive or negative. In the coming weeks, it'll be up to Cryptic to explain things with fans and get them on board, or they'll risk allowing the seeds of betrayal that they sewed to bloom. I will remain very interested to hear more on their response, just as I'll remain interested to see if this title ends up being better than it looks.

Whatever happened to Pokemon Stars?

Time for a makeover!

You may have noticed my subtle hints over the last few blogs, but I have found myself hopelessly addicted to Pokemon Sword for a good while now. It's gotten to the point where I have beaten the game, finished the Galar Pokedex, filled all the available Galar Pokemon into the National Dex, (Which took a lot longer than it should have) and am currently stockpiling EXP candy for the off-chance of making a split-second trade for any regional variant Pokemon over the GTS. (If any of that went over your head, I promise that's the worst it'll get.) So as you probably imagine I'm slowly building up to writing a review on this title, in order to break my spell for playing it, but I'd prefer to warm with something simpler, like a setting of the stage. (I enjoyed doing that for Assassin's Creed afterall.)

This was a topic that came to me rather by accident, because until Pokemon Sword and Shield I hadn't actually been a fan of this franchise for nigh-on over 10 years. (What do you mean 'Pokemon Emerald' actually came out 16 years ago? I think I'm gonna be sick...) It was only by chance that I happened upon some of the hype surrounding the next Pokemon game and a coincidence that I'd find myself thinking back to that in the months leading upto Sword and Shield. As it stands today I have over 250 hours sunk into Sword (And that's only on my main save. Please don't do the math.) and I'm starting to run into questions like 'How did this game come to be', and that's what I want to cover today.

It all starts with the release of Pokemon Emerald back in 2004. (Actually, one could say that it starts with the original game but no one has time for that.) Up until Emerald, Gamefreak had a genius marketing ploy to attract more sales that they had stuck to religiously, and it had worked wonders for their brand. Whenever a Pokemon game would be released it would accompanied by a partner game which contained all the same data as it's sibling, but in a different configuration. So both games would consist of the same story, world, adventure and pocket monsters for catching, but there would be slight differences to how they were implemented. One game would contain most Pokemon in the game, but there would be some that could only be found in the other title, the same could be said for certain trainers and characters that you meet along the way. This poised a problem for the Pokemon-obsessed children of the time as they would find themselves constantly bombarded with the Pokemon catch phrase "Gotta catch 'em all", despite being hindered to do so by their measly single game. Of course, this conundrum could be overcome by trading Pokemon with your friends using the Gameboy's signature 'link' systems, or simply buying a second game and handheld to gift them to yourself. (Either way, a second sale would need to be made.)

This marketing tactic ended up working wonders for the Pokemon brand and certainly helped to secure Gamefreak's legacy as one of the longest enduring handheld developers of all time. (Perhaps the longest.) It became such a sensation that Gamefreak decided to play it up in future games through their boxart. The original two games, Pokemon Red and Blue, merely featured pictures of the two colour appropriate starters; Charizard and Blastoise, two pokemon that you feasibly receive in both games with some limited trading. The next games, Gold and Silver, would feature that generation's legendaries; Lugia and Ho-oh, in the knowledge that no one is going to trade those without a fight, you'd likely need to buy both games.

By the third Generation of games (my favourite) there had evolved an slightly new dimension to this tradition. First came the games: Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, which focused on conflicting environmental plotlines, but next would come a bridge game in the form of Pokemon Emerald. This wouldn't just bridge those two storylines into one narrative, but also actually wrapped up the entire conflicting narrative succinctly. In brief, Ruby followed Team Magma's plot to use volcanoes and the legendary Pokemon Groudon to dry out the oceans whilst Sapphire followed Team Aqua's plot to flood all land with the use of the legendary Pokemon Kyogre. Emerald played both teams off each other and had them come to an agreement once they threw the balance of the planet off requiring a mediating presence to calm both sides, enter the legendary mascot of Emerald; Rayquaza. (The best Pokemon and no one can tell me otherwise.)

Gamefreak had already made their sales from selling Ruby and Sapphire simultaneously, Emerald was a way for them to resell roughly the same narrative with one huge boon; the ability to capture both game's legendaries for the first time ever. (With a brand new offering in Rayquaza) This ended up being wildly successful and allowed Gamefreak to make a stupid amount of money for doing very little in the way of new idea generation, everybody was happy. Except apparently not, because the next generation would feature an entirely new way of drawing in fans, remakes of the Gen 2 games. (A good idea, but it still lacked the pizzazz of Emerald. At least for me.)

In truth, Gamefreak only really settled on making Emerald as opposed to a new set of games because they were on the cusp of a new handheld generation and didn't want to dive into the new consoles without securing their fanbase first. Release a game that you know they will love in order to tide them over for the next two years whilst you shift efforts onto developing for the brand new Nintendo DS title. (A smart play.) As such they never needed to do another mash-up game like Emerald again due to the ludicrously long life-span and popularity of the DS which meant they could takes games at their own pace in the knowledge that their fans would follow diligently. Of course, something would have to give eventually.

Around about the time of Generation 7, Nintendo had just finished shipping their biggest console bomb in a long time, The Wii U. (There's a lot of reasons why this console was a failure, but I can't be asked to get into any of them right now.) Gamefreak and the Pokemon Company were riding a sure thing with their newest titles, Pokemon Sun and Moon, but they knew that the Nintendo 3DS was slowly reaching the end of it's rope. In my speculation, I'd imagine that the studio probably also wanted to move away from purely handheld Pokemon titles and diversify themselves, as that had been their entire identity for so long. However the Nintendo Wii U certainly didn't appear to be the game to dedicate their first major leap to consoles, and so they held off.

By the time that the Nintendo Switch was being talked about, Gamefreak were circling themselves and had just released Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and they knew the time was coming for them to make their jump to home consoles. (Even though the Switch is technically a hybrid, don't get at me.) Around this time Nintendo were well aware how much of a flop the Wii U was and was calling in favours to ensure that the Switch would have the support of all their flagship games as quickly as possible. This meant a mainline Zelda game by day one, a mainline Mario game by Christmas, and a Pokemon game not long after that.

This would put Gamefreak and the Pokemon Company in a position where they had to rush to meet the release schedule of this new console, but not so fast that they couldn't test the waters. They still decided to start with a tactic that they hadn't used since 2004, re-releasing a game that they had made before with enough benefits to draw in fans who had already bought these games. (Twice now, due to the release of the 'Ultra' addendum games.) This began the development life of 'Pokemon Stars', which we have only recently learned wasn't just a meme title, but an actual mash-up game in development for a time. This would have ensured that the first console generation Pokemon game bought in a sure-fire audience and would be a relative success no matter the comparative success of the Switch.

Of course, things didn't end up needing to be that dire, as the Nintendo Switch has been a huge success since it's launch despite being markedly weaker than it's competitors. (Heck, I'm literally playing it right now as I write this.) This success eliminated all the rush for system seller games to hit the console and allowed for the Pokemon team to pull back on development for 'Stars'. As a result, I imagine they took stock of their direction and realised that they could look upon this new console launch as the starting point for their next generation of games, thus was scrapped Pokemon Stars and from that was born Pokemon Sword and Shield.

We can still see the vestiges of Stars in the way that every single Sun and Moon legendary (excluding the one's from the wormholes) could be found in the coding of Sword and Shield from day one. In fact, the launch of Pokemon Home has allowed for the mass migration of these Pokemon, including Alolan region variants and starters, to be ported over with little stress because they were all that well integrated into the core game. So what does this mean for the Sword and Shield, and how did the final game turn out despite being a 're-imagine and replace' job? Find out in my full review which should hopefully be up this Sunday. (Or last Sunday. I'm not too good at schedules)

Let's talk about the corporate world for way too long!

Fast times at Disney high

You know, there I was just minding my own business, downloading all 61gb of X-Com 2 + War of the Chosen (Why is that download so large?) when I saw something both unexpected and wild hop along my news thread. (And I can't just not talk about this!) So I sat back and thought "Ohh... another surprise exit from an important industry role that's sure to have ripple effects around the entertainment industry. My favourite!" The only problem with this particular story is the fact that it isn't strictly related to the world of Video Games and thus I don't have quite a clear-cut incentive to discuss it, however the fellow in question did head-up one of the, if not the, biggest entertainment companies in the world, so perhaps it's fair to presume this may have a blowback on my favourite pastime. The company in question, Disney, and the man who recently announced his stepping down effective immediately; it's (now former) CEO, Bob Iger.

Now, there's a chance that you've never heard of Bob Iger, but if that's the case then it can only be because you pay literally no attention to the movie entertainment world. Personally, I spend a lot more attention to that part of the world then I really should for someone who only averages roughly one movie a year. (And I just watched 'Uncut Gems', so I'm already tapped out for 2020.) The reason why I keep up so vigorously is anyone's guess, but I will say that it is fascinating to see how practically any trend in the film industry can be traced back to Disney and/or Bob himself. And is that really any surprise? Disney have been absolute megalomaniacs in the entertainment industry, expanding voraciously and buying up any and all potential opportunities they find along the way. In the movie market alone they managed to supplant every other studio to become the most influential film maker in the world with their nurturing of Marvel Studios, and after their purchase of Star Wars they now can boast ownership of the second and first most profitable movie franchises of all time.

All that growth and expansion was done within the last 15 years, which coincides with the amount of time that Bob Iger has sat as CEO for the Disney Empire until very recently. (Okay, technically he's contracted to sit the board and guide things until December 2021, but he's out from making key decisions effective immediately.) In terms of how this has effected the gaming world, Disney has all but entirely retreated from the gaming market during Iger's turn to bat. As gaming as steadily marched towards becoming the most profitable entertainment medium on the planet, Disney has steadily started to have less and less to do with it until they straight up downsized their studio to little more than a licensee. Nowadays, Disney exists in the gaming world purely vicariously through efforts like the 'Kingdom Hearts series' and that EA-'Star Wars' deal.

When asked about why that was, Iger reportedly claimed that Disney was never really that good at the video game market, and that their efforts were better spent on the mediums they had already mastered. Personally, I thought such sentiments betrayed an incredible lack of bravery from a company that rakes in enough profits to easily write off even the most deadly video game flops of all time, as well as a blatant disregard for history, given the old school Disney game titles that are beloved by old school gamers. Be that as it may, Bob still wanted nothing to do with gaming and displayed as much in the harshest possible way when Disney acquired Star Wars only to immediately gut 'Lucas Arts' (Maybe it's a little cruel to attribute that directly to Bob Iger, but thus is the responsibility of a CEO. Vicarious liability.)

But all that is in the past now because Iger shocked the world, and Disney's share prices, when he announced his stepping down yesterday. Now all the responsibilities and trials will fall to one of the many other Bob clones that Iger has kept around the office; Bob Chapek, so one can only imagine what sort of changes we are in for. In terms of individual projects, perhaps things won't be too drastically different. Marvel Studios still summons money from the dark pits of hell so we can expect them to remain unscathed, but maybe there will be some sweeping changes given to the direction the company decides to expand. (Could this mean a resurgence in the gaming market? Will I still continue to hope for such even if all the evidence points otherwise? Unlikely and yes.)

Immediately when hearing about Bob Chapek taking the role of Disney CEO, one might find themselves wondering exactly who this 'Bob' fellow is, and how he's different to the flavour of 'Bob' to which we are accustomed. Quite simply, Bob Chapek (Whom I shall henceforth refer to as 'Beta Bob') is the fellow who has, until recently, been directly in charge of running that most beloved of Walt Disney's legacies; The Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Yep, this is the guy you can blame for slowly driving up the prices of DisneyLand in order to keep your poor-ass out, ol' Beta Bob himself. Bob also served as head of Disney Consumer Products, which is a role I know less about on an anecdotal level, but I'm sure there's just as much scum-mery happening behind the scenes there too.

Does this bode badly for Disney's future? Not really. The man can make money, and that is all that's really important to Disney right now. I mean don't get me wrong, Disney ain't exactly hurting for money, but I'm sure that the board of directors do suffer some sleepless nights when realising that they're only making most of the money when they could be making all of the money; and perhaps Beta Bob is the one to finally bridge that gap for them. No, the real reason why we should all be quaking in our boots about the Beta Bob's CEO appointment is due to the direction of his success, which has been pointed towards China for quite a while now.

Chapek is renowned for his shaping of the parks and products of Disney to better meet the wants and budget of the wider Chinese populace, and now that he's in charge of the entirety of Disney we can only expect that favouritism to get worse. Disney has already attempted to devote itself to the Middle Kingdom for some time now with varied to incredibly poor success, (at least in terms of movies. Which are the only terms that I recognise outside of games.) so this wouldn't even be that drastic of a shift for The House of Mouse. So what does that mean for the world of gaming... well, it's not too hopeful. You see, China may have the largest gaming populace in the world, but their gaming scene is laboured by two crippling disadvantages; firstly, the majority of their gamers primarily play mobile games (You could argue that 'disadvantage' is more of a matter of taste, but I don't have the energy to explain why you're wrong right now) and secondly, there's this little thing China has called an Authoritarian Government.

I've mentioned it before but it bears repeating: the Chinese government is one of the worst potential influences that the world of gaming could hope to ask for. As with any industry that touches China, gaming is subject to strict censorship whenever it comes into contact with China and thus regularly has to submit to ridiculously draconian stipulations. Some of the most ridiculous being the removal of all supernatural themes and elements from a fictional story, (For fear of 'disrespecting the dead') no depictions of death of any sort, including cosmetic skeletons (for the same reason) and, on some occasions, the removal of violence altogether. (For fear of giving their populace ideas of how to otherthrow their oppressors, I presume.) We've already seen examples of these rules leaking out of China and making a mark on the rest of the world, such as with Blizzard last year and even Ubisoft's 'Rainbow Six: Siege' debacle some years before that.

Although it's hard to imagine what sort of direct effect there would be for the gaming world if Disney were to hop into bed with China, you must remember that they do hold the licenses to two of the biggest brands in the world right now and they do like to have tight control over the perception of their brand. When 'Star Wars Battlefront 2' was publicly exposed for it's avaricious issues not too long into it's launch period, rumours spawned that Bob Iger himself called up the head of EA in order to demand him to get the situation sorted, before the Star Wars brand was seriously hurt. Of course, much of the damage to the Star Wars brand would then be done by Disney themselves through their 'meh' movies, but that anecdote still goes to show you how seriously the company takes their licenses. Could it be fair to assume, then, that if Beta Bob starts running things it'll only be a matter of time until EA, Square Enix, or whoever else holds a Disney license starts receiving directives to dance to the Chinese Governments tune?

Now I know I'm just being apocalyptic, as usual; but you should know by now that I subscribe to the tried and true adage; "The pessimist is the optimist's realist". Nothing is going to change overnight (Besides from Disney's plummeting stock prices) and it probably isn't fair to judge Beta Bill's reign from the day that it starts; however it never hurts to prepare oneself for the inevitable. (Not that I know what one would actually do in preparation for Disney going fully pro-China. Burn your electronic Mickey Mouse memorabilia before it gets retro-fitted into spy-ware?) Whatever happens then, we still have the here-and-now to enjoy what Disney has to offer. So we can place aside future fears and just be excited for the coming year of cool stuff, like that new Star Wars initiative which I hear is going to finally focus on the Old Republic! Wait... What the hell 'The High Republic' and why does it sound like a 90's stoner parody?

Outriders

You remind me of myself.

Remember when I said that there were two upcoming games that had wormed themselves out of the proverbial wood works to surprise me? No? Well I did, and the second game was one that I don't feel quite so positive about. But with the studios involved I feel inclined to pay some vague amount of attention toward this new title, and that title would be 'Outriders' from 'People Can Fly'. (That is what the studio is called, not a personal nugget of advice.) You may remember this particular studio from such games as; Gears of War Judgement and a whole slew of 'co-development' jobs on various Epic titles. But now they have a full blown game of it's brand on the way (Not remembering 2004's 'Painkiller.') and this one has picked up enough traction to sink publishing from 'Square Enix.'

Back when I was younger and still believed in such things, I used to look upon the Square Enix logo as a brand of quality. This perception was fuelled by those incessant articles that read like "We got Square Enix artists to draw this, and look what cool designs they came up with!", making it seem like the entire company was stacked to the brim with imaginative geniuses. Later I learnt that things weren't that black and white, and how, as primarily a publisher, things can actually be rather hit and miss with their games. It's with that perspective that I approach this new title with some trepidation as I'm not entirely blown away by what I'm seeing nor with who's involved, so I've very confused why so many outlets are so insistent on telling me that "Outriders is (my) newest obsession!"

Outriders is a drop-in, drop-out, 1-3 player online shooter RPG set in "an original, dark and desperate sci-fi universe." (Not sure about those first two points, but I'm definitely feeling the 'desperation' behind this marketing.) So straight-off-the-bat you may be noticing some similarities between this title and another co-op RPG shooter that favours 3 character classes, and that is because this title definitely sees Destiny as something of a foster father judging by how all the visuals designs have come out. (Especially with the player armours) As far as I can tell the story revolves around a colony of humans escaping "our dying Earth" and finding themselves on a hostile little planet called Enoch where they must fight to survive as they are beset upon my an army of various alien beasties. So with that in mind the narrative sounds more akin to 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' (Let's hope then, that there's no extended period of questlines that involve setting immigration policy with the world's most unfinished alien race.)

As far as actual story motivation goes,  those human settlers will find themselves immediately struck with an anomalous affliction that grants them one of three classes, then they are sent hunting a "mysterious signal" across the many wild environments that Enoch has to offer. So in that respect it seems that they are rivalling Gears of War for 'most flimsy driving force to base an action game around'. Okay, I'm being rather unrelentingly mean about this title right now, let me try and look at some of the positives. Some of the enemy designs look alright, although by the standards of creativity that we usually see from Square Enix partners Outriders' designs do seem comparatively lame; but the screenshots do look colourful, although the gameplay I've seen does look monotonously brown, so I'm conflicted on that front.

I find it hard to point to one thing about this title which I see as really unique or trailblazing, which is weird considering that's the one thing about this game that everybody else can't shut up about. "It's like Destiny, but so much more!" In what way? What are you seeing that I'm not? Am I going completely crazy? Quite possibly. I'm so disengaged by this title that even seeing some actual, honest to goodness, non-scripted gameplay wasn't enough to shake my doubts. Recently we've begun seeing snippets of gameplay courtesy of a press event held by 'People Can Fly', but the product of these sessions has been hours of gameplay that just look dull. I've seen trenches that look like they've been lifted from a World War 1 game, populated with out-of-place alien beings and a janky over-the-shoulder camera that reminds me of 'Binary Domian', in the worst ways. (BD wasn't quite so bad in hindsight.)

Straight away it's clear that 'Outriders' is trying to place itself as the next big 'Live service' that'll overthrow the likes of 'Destiny' to become the next must-have gaming sensation, and maybe that is why I find myself so inexplicably wary of this game. Admittedly, the marketing material has been very careful not to mention anything about a 'persistent world' and the like, but I've seen the lifeless hub world that player's have to scoot through between missions and I'm pretty sure I know what that means. So with this in mind, what does Outsiders do to insist that our gaming free time is best spent with them instead of everyone else? Honestly, nothing. The gunplay and animations seem average, the special effects are uninspired and the enemy variety is lacking. (Although I'd imagine there's a lot of enemies that the team have yet to show us yet, at least I hope there is.) 

If I'm right about this game's place as a 'live service' aspirant, then that means at it's most basic level that the developers have to deliver us a world that we want to explore, and that's something I'm just not feeling yet. With 'Destiny' we were greeted with a visually spectacular world brimming with haunting music and cool futuristic weapons, Anthem nailed the 'wild, hostile world' aesthetic and used the mystery of 'The Anthem of creation' to get people's imagination going and 'The Division' built upon it's 'teamplay' elements to deliver an unrivalled co-op experience. Of course, all those games spectacularly fell on their face for other reasons, but they had that initial 'wow' factor that got you through the door. Outriders borrows the 'search for a new home' plot from 'Mass Effect'; being granted with mysterious powers from 'Destiny'; having to navigate a 'wild, viscous planet' from Anthem; and chasing a mysterious signal from literally every lazy story ever made. Now an optimist might see this and go "Great, this game combines all my favourite things." but I get lost in wondering "But what does this new game do for itself?"

Maybe I'm just being an arse. (I usually am.) Perhaps you've taken a look at this title and thought "That actually looks pretty cool." And if that's the case then I'd encourage you to explain why that is to me, because I'd honestly want to know. I love being excited about upcoming games, even when they are for genres that I don't usually play in, so If someone could show me why I'm wrong about Outriders I would be very grateful to hear it. Until then, however, I'm going to lay down and likely immediately forget everything about this game like I have done several times whilst trying to write this blog. (Maybe I have brain damage?)

My my, what a mess.

ooooh, dumb Internet drama, my favourite...

You know, sometimes you get lucky and every single gaming story you come across is happy and positive and makes you excited for the future, and other days there come the terrible times where everything is unravelling before your very eyes. Even rarer still, are the days when the biggest news of the day is so cringe-inducing that you just want to shrivel up into a walnut and pretend that you never read it. Today is one of those latter days, it would seem, as the gaming community was 'treated' to the self destructive tale of a person who haphazardly attempted to sink the reputation of an entire game over a broken heart. (Kinda. Look, it's not as cute as it sounds.)

First of all I should introduce the uninitiated to a title known as 'AI: The Somnium Files' (Look I don't name these games, okay?) Hailing from the visionary mind 'Kotaro Uchikoshi', 'AI' looks to be another weird and wonderful Japanese title that's heavy on the likeable characters and melodramatic story. So why haven't I bored you by drooling about this title before? Simple, it's from the creator who gave us the 'Zero Escape series' which are all VNs (Visual Novels). I have a very hit or miss relationship with VNs, I don't like them too bad that I want to rip out my eyes or too good so that I become crippled with the depressing realisation that I'll never write like that, and I hear Kotaro's work is on the latter end of this scale. (Yes, I know I'm pathetic; but you can bet I'll lampshade the crap outta myself.)

Upon it's release this latest title was met very positively by it's niche fan base, folk love their visual romps and this game promised to deliver that in droves, I guess. (I read one reviewer who said that the protagonist is a dull lump of wood, but apparently that doesn't detract from the overall experience given the high review scores this title was imbued with.) Oh, but I shouldn't speak so soon, because a few months after launch there was a single night in which the Metacritic review scores were struck with a review bombing far worse than the one 'Warcraft 3: Reforged' was subject to. (At least in terms of scale, Reforged still covets the lowest user score on the site.) By the end of this vicious attack the user score had been sunk from the highs of 8.2 to the lows of 1.9. (That's out of ten, just so we're on the same page.)

So what happened? Did some grave misjustice untoward the community result in a violent user review backlash, as was the case with Warcraft 3? No, actually a vast majority of the fans were baffled by this turn of events and couldn't put 2 and 2 together. Kotaro even picked up one this and entreated folk to relay the situation to Metacritic through his Twitter, no one wants to see the reputation of their product drug through the mud so bitterly and without any real reason. Some folk made the assumption that this may have something to do with some short 'pro-LGBQ' scene in the game, but whereas that might make a fun headline for Vox, in reality the game had already been out for several months and there was no reason to believe this would be a cause for alarm now. (Besides, people tend to forget humanities capacity for apathy.)

So what was going on? Well, there was one individual who seemed to have a working theory on the matter. They, for I choose not to name them, deduced that this act was performed by a single individual and with the intention of highlighting how 'broken' Metacritic was and how easy it was to game the system, they even provided a list of reasons why Metacritic's systems were outdated and how they could be bypassed. Rather insightful as far as your average Resetera post goes, although one could find themselves surprised at how this user not only managed to guess that just one person was involved, but figured out their motive, method and even pinpointed the exact minute that the review bombing started. (The Wayback machine ain't that precise.) Things unravelled when this post was shared via tweet, likely from someone trying to spread this helpful post as far as possible, only for some new fellow to point out that they know the user who made that post, and in the vein of all truly stupid criminals, they were bragging about conducting the review bombing all over discord.

Rather curious case of a self-own right there as this individual managed to insert themselves into their own crime scene despite having no eyes on them at all up until that point. (Guess it's true what they say about returning to the scene.) And what did our illustrious review bomber do when rustled? Immediately jump down the throat of the person who narc-ed of them for claiming that the perpetrator "Hated the community". (So much for due process, the guy literally confessed.) So what was the ultimate reason behind all of this? Was he highlighting the 'problems with the system' like he claimed? Nope, turns out that was the equivalent of Martin Shkreli claiming he hiked up HIV drug prices to highlight how everyone else in the industry was doing it, not just to make a quick buck like he obviously was.

As with all Twitter spats, this revelation was accompanied by a tidal wave of petty personal dramas that only a regular denizen of Resetera could excrete, although it only took a little prodding to unfurl the real trigger factor behind it all. Turns out that our bot spammer here took quite a heavy exception to the game, despite enjoying a good portion of the promotional material. He even developed a crush on the character 'A-set', a fact which the community mocked him relentlessly for. Whilst he never explicitly stated it, and for the sake of what's left of his pride he likely never will, the running consensus is that he was disappointed with how 'A-Set' was portrayed in the final product and took to relieve his frustration by review bombing Metacritic. (Most people just settle with writing fanfic. Or heck, maybe even slash-fic if you're that riled up!)

Our pantomime villain immediately took to lamp-shading themselves (hey, that's my signature move!) by claiming that he has an "attachment problem" and that this entire predicament is just a testament to "how much A-set means to (him)"; but as you can rather predictably imagine this was met by a flurry of "You need help" replies and he ended doing nothing for his image. (Then again, at this point he's probably just defeated.) So why have I shone a light on this sorry saga? No reason in particular, other than to say; I get it. Storytelling is, at it's heart, the art of eliciting emotion out of someone, and in some cases there is no greater compliment then managing to have people care about a fiction character. Remember how 'Snow White' was specifically designed and manufactured to prove that,with enough talent, one could bring an audience to tears over an animation? Storytellers are all about making people believe in the intangible and, honestly, I have to give props to our fellow for admitting how this specific character from 'AI' managed to touch him. (Albeit, the manner in which it touched him is a bit weird. And a lot cringey. Should I add creepy? I think it's implied.)

The point at which this crosses the line, at least in my eyes, is where he decided to take his frustrations out on the game's user review score, because there's just no need for that. These sorts of actions have a knock-on effect to the popularity and success of a title and there's an entire studio of real people who don't deserve to feel the brunt of this kid's unrequited (I'm assuming) crush. Look at me, I'm spelling out the obvious to everyone here, but I feel the need to let it be known anyway. I don't endorse what he did, but I won't rag him for his obsession, however weird it may seem to some folk. (There's certainly a whole world's worth of worse things to be obsessed by.) That being said, the only reason I wrote about this here is because the entire situation managed to make me cringe into a ball yet fascinate me at the same time. That, and I just missed out on bagging a Shiny Ditto and I need something to take my mind off the pain before I throw myself out of a second story window. Well, that's all I got; see you for another impromptu blog the next time something this surreal goes down.

Red dead Online: Endgame

One doesn't think about 'fun' when bringing balance to the Endgame.

Not too far back I remember getting really heavily into Red Dead Redemption 2's Online features, just as I did with GTA Online back in the day. It honestly does fascinate me for the reason that these particular Online experiences mimic the stylings of your typical MMO/Live Service and yet still appear to be entirely distinct entities as of themselves. Even folk who find themselves deadset against all things 'live service'-ey seem to be able to make an exception for a little of Rockstar's Online games in their life, and I wanted to explore just why that was. That meant taking an objective look at all the individual elements which made up RDR Online and seeing where they excelled and where they fell short and, unsurprisingly, there was one huge omission from the base product; the endgame.

'Endgames' are a very important aspect of 'Live Services' as they represent the point at which the player has overthrown all the pedestrian challenges of the main game and then must submerge themselves into the nitty gritty of higher play. In MMO's like The Elder Scrolls Online, this would mean grinding different dungeons and Raids in hopes of getting the exact right roll on your gear which will make your specific class pop. In looter-shooters like Borderlands this would mean playing through the campaign on various raised difficulty settings in order to roll the best guns with the right stats. For open world live-services like Red Dead and GTA, however, what can you really grind for? All the games really have to lust for are new outfits and/or horses; so what's going to keep you coming back for more? When Grand Theft Auto Online first launched, the answer to that question was absolutely nothing at all, and somehow Red Dead Online launched with the exact same failing.

Later on in GTA O's life, the game was finally blessed with an endgame in the form of a multi-stage heist. This was essentially a raid-difficulty scenario that required peerless teamwork and communication, as well as a substantial up-front investment,in order to pull off. Of course, the endgoal of this content was still just to acquire an influx of cash, buy that money ended up going towards some of the new content that Rockstar would be adding throughout that game's life cycle. Each new chunk of content would come with an in-game money barrier that would either require high-level grinding or a back-door microtransaction to get in. This was the endgame loop that would go on to make GTAO the most profitable game of all time whilst keeping fans entertained for as long as humanely possible. So it would only be fitting for Red Dead to follow that example, right?

Except it would seem that Rockstar hit a bit of a roadblock with RDO, because that hasn't been what they've done with the game. (At least not exactly.) There is still a substantial monetary roadblock that is set-up between players and new content, but there's no high-level raid-esque content to grind through, and that really does hurt the desire to partake in the traditional gameplay loop. When the first new gameplay update was added to the game, professions, (although Bounty Hunter was the only one really worth paying attention to) players were met with a hard moneywall of Gold bars in order to take part, which could only be overcome with days worth of grinding. (Or a microtransaction backdoor.) I'd imagine that anyone who actually had a braincell to work with would have instinctively been repulsed by such a proposition and thus would have spent their free time on any number of other games that seems to treat them with respect, but I'm a sucker and so I went for it. (So I can relay that it took roughly 2 weeks of 3-4 hours a day of play time.)

But was it all worth it in the end to get ahold of the Bounty Hunter license? Pretty much, but honestly this sort of content feels like it should have been in the game at launch. Bounty Hunting in Red Dead Online pretty much boils down to this; you roll up to any town and pull a wanted poster off the wall, afterwhich your bounty will spawn in a location near to you and it's up to you to proceed however you want to. (Dead or Alive, and all that.) Complication can arise, such as locations in which your target is yet to arrive, requiring you to stake out the spot, or even situations where the bounty is currently in the middle of a high-speed train robbery, making your job just that much more high octane. The point is, these bounties can be taken one after the other and they form the backbone of a gameplay loop that should have been available to everyone at launch, rather than something that people had 'earn' through boring themselves silly.

That isn't all that the Bounty Hunter mode had to offer. You see, whilst Red Dead Online has yet to implement anything on the shear scale of GTA's Heist's, they did implement high difficulty missions in the form of 'legendary bounties' that were easily the most challenging content in the game. The targets would all be fleshed out with an introductory cutscene and a specially made mission, and would all require a different level of care to be taken by the hunter in order to successfully reach them. One target may have you scale a hill in order to take a heavily defended point whilst your target, a trained sniper, rains down lead on you; whilst another might have you battle wolves and bears in the middle of a snow storm while they make their grand escape. Additionally, everytime you fell one of these targets you are treated to another shot at it with an increased difficulty level which could translate to anything from giving every enemy a more powerful gun to requiring the capture of additional targets on the field.

If there was one let-down for this whole affair, which stops me short of declaring this content raid-esque, it's significant incentive for completing each mission. Sure, the player will be treated to the odd boost in revenue but it's barely more than could be earned by simply grinding missions in the same amount of time and so it makes these challenges feel somewhat redundant. There's not even some special medal or achievement to be collected by doing these, it's just a challenge for challenge's sake. It's for this reason that I keep finding myself worried about Rockstar's ability to keep Red Dead Online feeling fresh if they can't master the basic routine for hooking players, I've already grown sick of the whole routine in a fraction of the time it took for me to feel the same way about GTA Online. How long until others start to follow suit?

Of course, I'm not the expert on this topic, in fact if we're talking about pure success in this market than no one is actually more qualified than Rockstar in putting together this sort of game, but that doesn't make them immune to mistakes. The main dev team have likely already come back from their break and are hard at work creating the next industry disrupter and the GTA Online team have clearly moved their talents back to working on their game, leaving the Red Dead Live team to work by themselves and currently I'm not sold on their talents. This year will really shine a light on their ability to pull out something special on amass a following for this title that's even a fraction as loyal as the GTA O audience, and I, for one, will be really interested to see what the team has up their sleeves. Perhaps Red Dead Online will be the next big online game of 2020, but that will be a title hard won and even harder kept.

StarCraft: Ghost is real?

Let's close this cold case.

Turns out one of gaming's most infamous cases of vaporware was finally granted some form of closure recently as we saw the fruits of labours from 16 years ago. That's right, I'm talking about Blizzard's first foray into diversifying their brands into different genres, the much anticipated: 'StarCraft: Ghost'. But no, as far as I'm aware the studio still haven't done us the common courtesy of coming out and admitting that it's cancelled. (So maybe there's still hope for this title to come back to life and steal the throne of the single most delayed game of all time.) There's a lot of history to go over in covering this title as well as some gameplay if you care enough to look, so this is going to be something of a roller-coaster story we're shifting through.

In the early 2000's Blizzard got it into their heads that they should start bridging out their core franchises to newer audiences (That's right, the concept wasn't invented last year by 'Wizards of the Coast' and 'Riot Games'.) This meant two separate projects that would expand upon their fantasy series 'WarCraft' and their sci-fi series 'StarCraft'. The former of these projects would turn into a rather elaborate affair that would slowly start to drain more and more resources as it's scope grew, but StarCraft was no less as ambitious, just in a vastly different way. Whereas with WarCraft they would end up with a massively multiplayer title, StarCraft's first new title would be a single player game that would take cues from popular action adventure titles from around the time, with the added boon of the meaty StarCraft lore to fall back on.

This title, dubbed 'StarCraft: Ghost' would follow a highly-elite tactical 'Ghost' unit called 'Nova' as she fought against the encroaching Zerg menace. Those familiar with 'Ghost' units at the time knew them as infiltration specialists that were capable of completing entire missions without any back-up, making the prospect of being put in their shoes rather compelling. In order to make this title a reality Blizzard hired on a company that would come to be know as 'Nihilistic Software', future creators of the 'Black Ops' port, Conan and- A 'Vampire: The Masquerade' title that I haven't previously heard of?! (I may have to go buy something immediately after this blog.)

As far as anyone can tell Nihilistic were very excited to work on this title and dove into fleshing it out with abandon. The arrangement would start to become trying, however, as the team found themselves constantly answering to the producer heads at Blizzard which changed often, each one bringing their own ideas about what the game should be. Then there was the release of other high-profile games such as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell which would be reflected upon the teams in meetings. Feature Creep allowed for the scope of the product to shift and mold to a point where no one quite knew what the game they were making would be. One day it was an on-the-ground perspective of the massive RTS fights that you'd have in traditional StarCraft games, another day it would be a stealth-action experience with the focus on handling single enemies at a time.

This influx of new features that were constantly being ordered ended up hurting the balance of the game and Nihilistic's team. They would find themselves working around the clock to ensure the game wouldn't be too stealthy, or too action-y before then finding themselves working on a multiplayer mode. As far as I can tell it was them, rather than Blizzard, that decided to walk away from the project, due to significant friction that the project had caused. From there development was handed off to Swingin' Ape Entertainment for them to put together all the pieces that Nihilistic had left behind. The fruits of their labour would be that infamous demo that was shown to the public in 2005 and which managed to drum up a ludicrous amount of attention amidst those who heeded the gaming world.

Of course, something else would inevitably get in the way of this product coming to fruition, and in the case of 'StarCraft: Ghost' is was merely a case of wrong place, wrong time. You see, Blizzard ended up acquiring Swingin' Ape in 2005, clearly impressed with their work, and probably expected to take the development of Ghost at their own pace. However, 2004 had just seen the release of Blizzard's other diversification project, World of Warcraft, and the scope of that title had eclipsed anything the studio had ever worked on before. By 2005 they were devoting more and more resources to the growing phenomenon to the point where soon the entire company was dedicated to WOW, including the former workers of Swingin' Ape. 'StarCraft: Ghost' would be left at the benchmark of having debuted an impressive trailer whilst everyone else worked on changing gaming history forever with one of the world's most popular titles. What followed next for 'Ghost' was a series of delay after delay until they just stopped coming back to the game and allowed it to fade from the public consciousness.

That was the whole story of 'StarCraft: Ghost', until today. Due to the magic of message boards, someone recently leaked a playable build of the game out to the public via an old console dev kit. The game obviously isn't finished and lacked polish in a lot of places, but anyone with the means of running it can dive into the old showcase build for this game and get an idea for the sort of game this was shaping up to be. (Or you could just look at the bevy of footage now online.) One thing that's immediately obvious is the way in which the game was torn between identities, there's a turret section and a stealth scene in the same mission. At some point I would love to go more in-depth, (maybe even get my hands on it myself) but for now we can at least put to bed the mystery of one of the original vaporware titles. Was 'StarCraft: Ghost' ever a real game? Yes, and it's likely never going to see the light of day. (At least not the legit way.)

For my part, I will say that I am very interested in how this game was turning out, the demo footage my not look like much in today's world but for the time it would have been pretty cool. Don't get me wrong, however, this game would have been bought into a world in which 'Snake Eater' and 'Chaos Theory' already existed, so it likely wouldn't have revolutionised the industry, but it still seemed like it might have been a fun title. Of course, that would also be a reality wherein World of Warcraft didn't get as big as it did, and who knows where gaming would be without that! So it might be fun to speculate, but honestly I feel this game just might be more popular as a ghost than as a tangible game. (Pun intended.)

Atomic Heart

Pretty flowers need the sun, this applies to everyone.

Hey, it's cool-game discovery time! In my time to endlessly procrastinate from that second Resident Evil blog that I'm now 2 months late from, I've happened upon a couple of upcoming games that I previously knew nothing about. I cannot say whether or not this is due to my subconscious desperately trying to distract me from the things I need to do, (Even when that thing is just 'play a specific game') or an increase in the amount of marketing that these titles are doing; either way they're in my radar now so I might as well talk about them. With that in mind, I decided to start with the one game that immediately caught my attention when people began comparing it to one franchise that I'm hopeless in love in; Bioshock. But that's not the game's name, unfortunately. Today I'm talking about 'Atomic Heart'.

I can't really explain either how this title popped up in my sight all of a sudden nor how it remained out of it for so long; all I can say is that I see it now and I'm liking it. Straight away from the May 8th 2018 trailer that you can find right here, you can see that this ain't your typical FPS game. Developed by a rather new Russian Studio called Mundfish, 'Atomic Heart' wants to achieve the dual goal of sending it's players back to a bygone age whilst sideways to an alternate space-age future. (And suddenly the 'Bioshock' comparisons make sense. Although, I must say that the tonality seems more in par with 'Fallout' or even 'The Outer Worlds') According to Wikipedia, this title will whisk us specifically to the Soviet Union sometime between the 1930's and 60's in a spectacular spacey-tech world where technologies like Robots, Holograms and >shudder< The internet are already around! Therefore, I'm assuming this is some alternate universe where the World Wars didn't happen so that the trajectory of technological evolution could be maintained. And yet somehow the Russian oligarchy was still overthrown and the Soviet Union was established... maybe I'm not supposed to think too hard about this...

Player's are thrown in the shoes of 'a mentally unstable KGB agent called P-3', and from the visuals in that trailer I recommended alone we can see that Mundfish intends to use that particular plot point to drive their creativity wild. I think that's the most pertinent word I have to take away regarding this title: Creativity. Everything looks so far beyond this world that I'm fascinated by all of it and just want to experience it all in glorious game-form. It reminds me of that same giddy excitement I feel whenever I dive into the more crazy-looking Japanese RPGs out there like 'Monster Hunter: World' and 'Xenoblade Chronicles 2'; the visuals are so far beyond anything you'd imagine from your wildest dreams and for me there is no more attractive a trait in you're marketing. (Besides having an instantly lovable lounge OST. Please come to PC, Persona 5, I'm begging you!)

Before I move on from the look, there is one more aspect of the visuals regarding this title that I want to discus and if you watched that trailer I'm sure that you know what I mean. Beyond the content of the visuals, the fidelity of what I've seen is absolutely unbelievable. And I'm not being figurative with my use of that word; it's unbelievable, I do not believe it. I don't see how a fresh studio that came out of nowhere could put together a title with crispier looking foliage than the most recent Uncharted outing, more credible fur than the next-gen tease title 'Godfall' and better motion blur than, well I guess there's not really a grading-scale when it comes to motion-blur, but this title's blur is pretty damn good. If I take the marketing for face value and believe that this is representative of the final game, which I currently don't, then I think it's safe to say that this has the potential to be one of the prettiest games of the year. (Provided that the next-gen launches really are impeded by the Coronavirus like people are saying they will be. And that this game even comes out this year as the release date is currently TBD)

Given my lack of coverage on this title there is currently alot of content for me to shift through, such as a 10 minute gameplay walkthrough also on the Youtube channel. It was a little nostalgic, immediately, to go through one of those 'old-school' FPS walkthroughs like the one's we used to get every E3. You know, the one's in which the demo player moves in a way that no real person would or does ridiculously contrived things in order to force of the narrative of the demo along. (Why did you waste your ridiculously limited ammo on enemies who were clearly only passing by? Oh, it's so you could get cornered later without an easy exit strategy!) That being said, it does fill me up with the old fuzzy member-berries, so I can't complain too much. Plus, it allows us to see this stunning environment of weirdness that I absolutely adore for squeezing the question "Why?" out of me so much. Why do those adorable little robots have saw-blade mohicans? Why are there bubbles of undisturbed water just sitting on dry land? And why, in this technological superior reality, does the player's equipment look more scavenged then your average Metro 2033 weapon?

If there's one immediate weakness that I've noticed with this title, and it was even somewhat apparent in that highly-curated trailer, it is the slightly janky animations. Some of the more elaborate finisher moves looked jittery and everytime the player picks up an item off the ground it looks like a third arm has grown out of their shoulder, (although given how weird this title is, that might be intentional) but I'm willing to let that slide for the pure quality of everything else that I've seen. Melee combat also looks to be a bit weak, borrowing that 'chopstick' attack pattern that the Elder Scrolls games often get mocked for, but this looks to be a game of cool, science-y, guns so I wouldn't worry about that too much. Honestly, every draw back is tiny when you come back to the fact that this is an indie game that looks better than your typical triple A offering.

From a design aspect I will say that I'm rather decently sold on the retro-futuristic styling, which is saying a lot considering that the, shall we say, 'bold' design choices of 'The Outer Worlds' almost repulsed me to that entire subgenre. (Fallout 76 hasn't helped none either.) I will express that much of my hope for this title rests on the games that I'm assuring are this one's inspirations, such as Bioshock and Wolfenstien, because I am currently struggling to see that all-too-necessary escalation of gameplay. Bioshock had it's powers and Wolfenstien had it's various heavy guns, but what I'm seeing out of Atomic Heart, at least in martial terms, is currently leaving a lot to be desired. (Of course, that might very well be intentional as the team are trying to save their coolest secrets for the release, but I'd like a taste of what I could look forward to now.) If everything that this game has shown off so far isn't impressive enough, according to the website there is also going to be PVP content, which just blows my mind. How has an Indie studio managed to put all of this together?

Atomic Hearts is one of those indie games that, on a personal level, speaks to me and reminds me that cool ideas can come from anyone; even a little-known studio based all the way in Russia. I think it's an absolute crime that their current Youtube trailer has less than a million views and challenge anyone who has ever even had a passing interest in titles like 'The Outer Worlds', 'Wolfenstien', 'Bioshock' or even 'Deus Ex' to give the trailer a look. I can't say for certain that I know how the full title will look (Rumours have sprung up that the game has received a severe downgrade, however those rumours were over on Resetera so I'd smother that stuff in salt) but I'm on board enough to give it a shot and put this title on my Wishlist, take a look at this game for yourself and see if you can tell why.

How do you solve a problem like EA?

How do you take this deathly Publisher down?

Here on this blog one might get the impression that I hold a particular animosity towards one particular publisher of electronic artworks. Quite often, in the paragraphs I choose to pen you may find that familiar acronym, 'EA', and naturally come to the conclusion that I have some personal grief or vendetta against the folks. Such would, of course, run counter to my earlier assertions that I would try my hardest to be impartial, but I made that promise so long ago that I can't even remember the name of the blog in which I wrote it, so we can probably just assume that it never happened. In truth, I do not have personal grievances with the company, at least not anymore personal than a relationship between consumer and creator can allow; they are just that eclectic in their mishaps that their logo comes hand-in-hand with almost every sad or disturbing development in the video gaming world. Point in case; take a look a today's story.

Ghost Games was a studio that had grown out of EA's den to become it's own branded entity. Originally known as EA Gothenburg, the Ghost Games license marked the start of a potential new studio that could grow to become something special, given time and nurturing. Seems that EA weren't all to ready to give this budding studio such time, as they dropped their awful reboot of the 'Need For Speed' series in their laps and then gawked when the games didn't turn out good. To be fair to absolutely everybody here, it's unclear if the rampant anti-consumer choices, (Such as monetising customisation so badly that it required lootbox pulls) and plain deluge of bugs were specifically EA mandated, but in the interest of staying professional I'll just say that all parties are to blame here.

'Need for Speed: Rivals' was the first game developed by this studio. (A game who's quality varies wildly depending on the eyes of the beholder. I thought it was crap.) After that the next three games (which were the start of the reboot) NFS, NFS Payback and NFS Heat, all got progressively less inspired until we reach the point where we are at today, with EA officially closing down Ghost Games and wrapping them back up into EA Gothenburg. (They were aloud to spread their wings a little, before having them ultimately clipped.) It's unclear what this means for the folk that started signing up to Ghost Games, although some have reported they there are being absorbed into nearby projects, but this has allowed the Need For Speed Licence to go back to Criterion; a company safely within EA's bubble.

But why am I even talking about this today? What makes the shuttering of a baby studio that didn't even show that much potential a 'blog worthy' issue. Well, you might have noticed but I have a particular thing about broken promises, they really drive me nuts. When Bethesda promised that they would keep Fallout 76 free of gameplay-influencing microtransactions and then broke that promise, I was quite ticked off. When Blizzard vowed to do better with communication and conduct following the Blitzchung debacle, only to mess up again a handful of months later; I was justifiably angered. And when EA have recounted time and time again how the practice of consolidating partner studios is antithetical to their vision for growth, and how they don't want to maintain the cycle of 'purchase and consume'; I start to see the beginnings of a lie considering how this story is playing out.

Of course, the situation isn't one-for-one what they were discussing, Ghost Games were born out of EA and weren't purchased and guttered for their talent and licenses; but you can't deny that this still isn't a good look for a studio that claims to be on the reform. When it comes to my stakes in the matter, I'm just worried for the future of one of my favourite game studios of all time, Bioware. They've had a rough go of things for the past few years and it honestly feels like their relationship with EA is rocky at best. The studio has been bleeding talent like crazy recently and the most substantial concrete note on their current to-do-list is the reform of 'Anthem', the game that Bioware wasted several years worth of EA's time and money just to screw up royally. EA may claim that they have no intention of swinging the axe down on our old heroes, but the Bioware team must be feeling like the last chicken on the farm after hearing about the Ghost Games abortion.

This sort of behaviour would be by no means out of the blue for EA, and that's part of the reason why they are hated by game Developers alongside consumers. Just by doing a preliminary google search online you can see the vast number of high profile, promising, studios who met their end when they signed their souls over to EA. Bullfrog Productions, (Peter Molyneux's studio) Westwood Studios, (Who's survivors made the fantastic Empire at War) Origin Systems, NuFX, Pandemic, Playfish, Black Box Games, Dreamworks Interactive, Phenomic Game development, Victory Games, Mythic Entertainment, Maxis, EA Salt Lake and, the one which hurt me personally, Visceral. (It was nice of Heavy.com to have a handy list to scroll through. Although they'll need to add an addendum soon.)

The 'vampiric' reputation which EA has cultivated should be reason enough to rally against them, unfortunately the company just has too much money, licences and influence for fresh studios to completely boycott them and for fans to abandon their products. I mean I do it, but there's a lot more gamers out there who simply don't care about the black stain this publisher helps to carve upon the industry and prefer to just buy their games and worry about other matters. (Which is, I suppose, their right.) I just find it crazy that such a predatory influence on the market has been left to sail completely unabashed without any real pushback, aside the odd 'weekend outrage' on the consumer's side.

So what is the solution for this? Honestly I haven't the slightest clue. Whereas EA's baby, lootboxes, is currently in danger of being seized due to mounting legal pressure, even if that does happen it'll just be treating the symptoms, not the sickness. I started this blog by saying that I hold no ill-will to the company EA, and that much is true. I'm sure that there are plenty of fine, talented folk working under that label. My issue is more with the abstract entity that EA represents, a twisted personification of corporate greed that gorges upon itself over and over without stopping to consider how sustainable their course in life is. Some like to paint EA as a pantomime villain, but I see them as something much more mindless than that. They know that their 'live-service mandate' is unsustainable and self sabotaging, they know that killing all their partners ultimately harms their future, and yet they persist as though powerless to stop themselves. Like a mile long ship that's far too gone to even bother correcting itself now. So perhaps the only way to resolve this tale would not be to destroy EA but to find a way to reform them, and maybe even save them from themselves.

Catching up with the Microtransactions!

Wait- is this one a repeat?

Okay, Okay- stop me if you've heard this one before. A kid is playing around with FIFA Ultimate team when- Ah, you've probably guessed where this is going, huh? A distinctly English and lad-y website that pops up on my feed every now and then called, Sport Bible, recently flew into my headlights thanks to a few key words that are within my searchlights. Namely; 'FIFA' and 'Points', because we've got another story showcasing the fact that excessive microtransactions are the bane of everybody's collective existences. This particular tale does feature a little bit of a juicy twist upon the usual formula however, and so I'm inclined to address it today.

As the report goes "A furious mother" revealed that she is fed up after an 11 month battle with Microsoft which turned up fruitless. This customer support limbo was spurred on after some 36000 FIFA points were purchased through her credit card due to the nefarious deeds of 'Fraudster Hackers'. This was, of course, only allowed to happen due to the fact that her credit card details were connected to the Xbox account, allowing for anyone who had access to that account to spend anything they wanted willy-nilly. The charges amounted up to three lots of 12,000 point purchases which equal £79.99 each, this totals to just over £200 to those who can't be bothered to whip out a calculator. (Neither could I, to be fair, Sport Bible did the math for me. I'm such a slob.)

The situation has proven to be quite the upset for the family as ever since the incident she hasn't allowed her boys to access Xbox Live. (So that's 11 months of no Fortnite? What manner of sick twisted hell is this?) She issued a PSA in her statement "I am fed up of fighting and I want to warn others. None of this is our fault.", and those are very ominous words to consider for any other family of gamers. Of course, being the nation of cynics that us Brits are, the initial reaction was very much one of incredulity and suspicion. (My first tip off was the use of the term 'Fraudster Hackers' without any specifics for either claim.) A good number of people in the world today have literally no clue what the word 'Hacker' means and I wouldn't be surprised if this was just an unintentional spending spree from the sons which they covered up with the oldest excuse on Xbox Live; "It wasn't me, it was the Hackers! And the one-armed man!"

However the details of this situation, provided that they are true, paint a much more nuanced and interesting picture. The mother recounted being alerted of the card payments after the purchases and tracking down the recipients to two Xbox devices that had been added to her card without her permission. She managed to have them removed and withdrew her card details from all Microsoft accounts but it was too late to save her wallet and, from the sounds of it, Microsoft were none too compassionate to her pleas. So maybe this was the result of 'Hackers' who managed to slip their way onto the family wifi and credit card in order to mooch some FIFA points. (Seems like a very frivolous reason to break the law, but what do I know?) At the end of the day, who purchased the points isn't even really the point, it's the fact that game studios continue to allow things like this to happen.

FIFA is a money printing giant for EA and that is built solely of the back of microtransactions and a system tailor-made to milk as much of those purchases out of the player base as humanly possible. They mirror the tactics of casinos and other gambling-providers but snake out of sharing their supervision through legal loopholes and splitting hairs over terminology. (Which, to be fair, is essentially what the entire legal sector of government exists to do.) Time and time again people have raised the problems with unregulated gambling-hubs like FIFA and purposed middle-ground compromises like the implementation of daily spending limits. (Huh, that would have really helped out our 'hacked' family, wouldn't it?) But these studios would never do that because they know exactly how much such systems would cost them. (Better to let these people wring themselves dry, I suppose.)

This issue had gained such traction over the past year that lawyers have even been drafted to sue EA in France, under the pursuit of getting their practises labelled as Gambling. (Thus making them subject to the regulations of gambling plus prohibiting them from marketing these games to impressionable kids; which they still happily do.) This particular lawsuit is being launched by a player who felt the sting of FIFA's gambling lures once he found himself becoming addicted and spending 600 euros in five months. The man in question shared his paradoxical dichotomy over his addiction. "Whenever I buy a pack, I tell myself that this is the last time, but I always do it again." These are the sorts of testimonials that you expect to hear from a gambler's recovery group, not an avid gamer, and I hate that company's like EA are actively working to blur that distinction through their avaricious actions.

But that is just the latest, and perhaps grandest, reaction from the wider world as the workings of the shadier sides of the gaming industry steadily become unfurled. The Netherlands famously took a hardline stance against EA's preferred from of microtransaction: lootboxes, and insinuated a hard ban. (Bet that went down well at the EA Christmas party.) Over here in England even our apathetic asses are starting to get into the fray, with our director of mental health for the NHS, Claire Murdoch, calling for a straight ban on lootboxes for the sake of "The Children". Unfortunately, she made her plea directly to the gaming industry, as though EA and the like aren't in direct control of all the regulatory boards. (Seriously Claire, do your research!)

I wish I could end this topic by painting a bright picture of the future, one in which the gaming industry suddenly comes to it's senses and starts throwing it's weight back into making games worth the money rather than focusing solely on the monetisation, but I don't think any of us are naive enough to believe that day will ever come. Just as this trend in gaming preys on addiction, it is itself an addiction for the company's who partake, because not a single one of them can possibly envision a reality wherein they let such a lucrative market slip form their grasp. That is why the only way to enact real change is by force, which is why I'm just rubbing my hands waiting for the day when these Shylock-aspirants get the legal sucker punch that they so desperately deserve. (All I can do in the meantime is wish upon a star...)