And there goes 2020

 Good actual riddance

That's a wrap folk, 2020 is over and if you're reading this than I guess you actually made it. Not to come across as a broken record or anything; but what an absolute dump of a year that I never want to go through again. Yeah, this is pretty much going to be a winddown blog here so you can go ahead and skip on out if you're looking for something more gaming focused. I've decided to give myself a break and have a blog just talking about me, somewhat similar to what I did last year, and that ironically ends up taking a bit more effort because I'm a totally backwards mess, as can likely be inferred. That being said this is technically a blog dedicated to gaming so I guess I can say; this was a decent year for gaming for the most part but there were just a few too many disappointments for me to really sing praises. Also, I just realised that Demon Souls apparently didn't make it into the Game Awards; what was that about?

Oh, but before I start it's customary that I warn you how when I rant off the cuff like this I don't come back for spell checking or editing. When I first did one of these I gabbed about how it was for 'integrities sake' or some such rot, but in reality this is my relaxation blog and I don't want to put too much thought or effort into it. (IS that so much to ask? I only get like, 2 of these every 3 months or so, let me have my laziness) Also, all illusions of professional attitudes or form tend to go out of the window, with the exception of one curtsey that I've remarkably managed to keep for the entire length of this blog but I'll let you guess what that is. Not for any grand reason of preserving the mystery, but because I'm treating this like a Jinx; if I don't say it I won't end up accidentally doing it 5 weeks from now.

Now that's done I might as well ask you how your past 12 months were, because mine were pretty crummy. Being stuck down here in England on the outskirts of the capital meant that I was very much in the line of fire for every single lockdown, regulation and restriction which this pandemic has warranted, including the heavy lockdown for Christmas which was installed just a week before the fact. The only part of that which didn't fall upon me like a ton of bricks was the break of social contact because, as I hardly make effort in hiding, I'm not really blessed in that department anyway. (Plus it means that my family didn't get to throw their numerous annoying parties this year. They only got to throw one.) But that being said, I've still had to go out into public every single day of this year just as part of my natural day-to-day, and if I hadn't already come to terms with my own death this year would have been the thing to set me right.

And I know; why would I worry, as long as all the correct precautions are taken and nothing stupid is down I should be fine. But knowing myself and how things tend to pan out, I wouldn't be surprised if I managed to breath in every rogue particle for a 5 mile radius, it's just the sort of luck I deserve. In fact, what really confuddles me isn't the risk nor the concerns that should be raised by such, but the absolute lack of an impact it's really had on me. Maybe that's because, like I said, I've had to go out every day this year so I adapted to things rather rapidly; but seeing the amount of carnage and chaos this virus has wrought on a social level, as well as the thousands of lives it's ended, hasn't really moved me any. I'd like to say it's because I'm numb, but I think that a selfish part of me just doesn't care about all of that because it's not happening to me. It's one of those nagging things that I can't stand about myself, I feel like the sort of person always in it for themselves.

For all the good that's done for me. If 2019 was a year of roundabouts for me than 2020 was a heelturn back to nothing, because I feel like I'm even more empty handed than I've ever been. I don't like to get too personal, or at least not with specifics about my life, but let's just say that in terms of a career I've had little more than a few little jobs now and then with a whole lot of existential dread in the meantime. I'm far past the days of panic attacks in the local parks that would have me aimlessly wondering around for hours on end, but I can't help but think the energetic mania which I deploy to get through my day-to-day, and write this blog, is faltering more and more. For a writer, even an amateur one, it seems absurd to say; but I still can't quite name what it is that I feel like I'm missing without being vauge and general. I'm missing motivation, but motivation to do what? I want to desire to do something, but what should I desire to do?

When it comes around to this blog I'm happy to say that I have no such delusions. I sometimes wonder if this daily pace is sustainable, and I'm pretty sure it is not, but I find coming to write this one of the easier things in my life. Although perhaps that there is a problem. If I'm not wrenching my very heart from my chest to put this down every single day than am I really living? Probably not, and if this were my career I'd call that a serious problem and start working on it. But as I write in a limited capacity to a limited audience, I don't think it's anything I need to analyse too hard. Nor do I think myself necessary to settle into a niche, which is why you'll sometimes see a spate of commentary blogs in a row and sometimes more creative endeavours strung together. I just write how the mood takes me and see what turns up. I'm happy with it and until some feedback says otherwise I'll continue pace.

But that doesn't mean I don't want to do anything more. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to call writing my passion, because I haven't genuinely felt passionate about something for as long as I can remember. I may have never felt that way. Writing is still the one arguable-talent that I know I posses and it comes somewhat easily to me. As to the actual talent of that skill. Debatable. Pretty much none existent. But where I'm at right now I don't really find myself caring to any great degree and maybe that's exactly what I should feel. I mean, pressures to perform and conjure great works seem like the barriers of real authors, but for some nobody on the Internet; heck, who cares what I write as long as it's published. I didn't actually expect this little indirect self therapy to help me through any issues, and I don't believe it has, but I've incidentally nurtured my writing and now I can't stop. Physically, I cannot stop doing this, send help.

In closing, though by all traditional measures I'm a total waste of space who's long overdue for 'taking responsibility', (if you catch my drift) that wave of mania that I ride has kept me afloat and has even lined up a little personal project in front of me. I can't say what is it, because again: Jinx, but what I can say is that it has taken a strangely prominent position in my life right now. I don't much about what the future will hold, but for some reason I know that I cannot move on until this project is complete, and only now am I realising how that sounds like the ominous ramblings of a madman. I promise I'm not going crazy, or at least not in the violent sense. So from the grumble-worthy year of 2020 into the bright horizon of 2021 (and I'll not hear affirmations that the new year will be equally as bad. All who say such are pessimistic cliches who need to switch out their music box, their tune is getting hackneyed) May my confused, probably misspelt, my honestly heartfelt ramble mean something more to you than it does to me. Happy new years.

I played the Back 4 Blood Alpha

 Back from the dead

So remember a few days back there was this thing called the 'Game Awards' that happened? Well you see it's this big show where they give us trailers and show off upcoming games and even play music sometimes. There's even the odd celebrity or two. I hear that they hand out awards too, but no one really cares about that stuff, so I just focus on the games really. And in that vein there was one title which really did the work of wooing me with it's very premise and that was Back 4 Blood. The cheekily-named successor to Left 4 Dead made by Turtle Rock Studios in the absence of any Valve funding. (They'd only fund a sequel if it came exclusively to VR with 4D options) I expressed some mild interest at the time, that's a lie I pretty much fell head-over-heels for it, but what I was really excited for was the promised closed Alpha which would be not too long after launch. Well as of the publishing of this article that Alpha ran it's course about a week back and I was lucky enough to be a part of the ride, so what exactly do you think I thought of the whole thing?

Well, firstly, I had a little bit of trouble with the settings, although for as embarrassingly weak as my rig is (there's nothing stronger than a GTX 1050 Ti in my box) I managed to erase practically all lag with a little bit of tinkering, so that certainly speaks to the accessibility of the game even in public Alpha. I also had a strange bug where I couldn't reliably use iron sights with my mouse, which was the most bizarre thing, but I have an Xbox controller so there was no big fuss there either. Hmm, let me see... The AI was terribly ineffective, but this game was clearly built for online play so I can't get too fussy. The sounds of the weapons were either too tinny, weak or- whatever the heck that vulcan minigun was supposed to be. (It sounded genuinely awful everytime I used it) Yep, I think that's about every major gripe I had in my experience; now with that out of the way I can focus on the many positives.

Firstly, yes, this is the Left 4 Dead 3 that you've been waiting for all these years by all accounts except name. From the moment you spawn inside of your first safe room you'll instantly know exactly where you are and what you're playing, and that familiarity might, if you're me, distract you from the actual new systems that this game shoves in your face without warning. Such as the store which is accessible in every starting area and makes use of the currency found throughout the levels in order to buy ammunition and special gear. (I.E. grenades, lockpicks and medkits) This is just about the start of the ways in which Back 4 Blood proposes to switch up the formula that you're used to by offering, among other things, actual builds to be run for characters.

Now don't worry, these characters aren't inbuilt with immutable skills that'll have people fighting over picks in the lobby (There's already been enough of that this year between Genshin and Avengers) although I did notice that Holly appeared to spawn with her baseball bat unlike the other characters, whom she referred to by its name an annoying amount. Instead Back 4 Blood operates with a perk card system which gives each character one unique trait and leaves the rest to be picked up the player each time that they enter a safehouse between acts. (Or they can be bought directly during the run in some very rare scenarios) These Perk cards are entirely random and part of a new Roguelite aesthetic that Back 4 Blood is trying on for replayabilities sake, and I like the idea even if the execution hasn't exactly stood out to me yet.

As you select your perk cards 'the Director', (Back 4 Blood's name for the AI who spins RNG and apparently dynamically places loot and enemies) picks three cards that the 'Ridden' abide by. Most of these I completely shrugged off each time they were pulled apart from the one which decked a bunch of them in bulletproof armour; that one actually sucked a lot. What I found a lot more interesting were the player perk cards which could range from something as innocuous as a damage boost to weak points to something as build-shifting as a sleight heal for melee kills or even one perk wherein when you heal another player you also get healed for the same amount of hitpoints. (Yeah, that one's pretty much a must-have) I really got a sense for how in the full game, when things are a little more refined, these cards could really change things up significantly enough to fuel replayability. And that's on top of a basic premise which already promotes replayability anyway as evidenced by the still thriving communities around the predecessors.

But that's all the stuff you can read on the box, how about how it all actually plays? Well just like with Left 4 Dead I found my play experience peppered with unforgettable dynamic moments that were the heart of this game to me. I had one standoff against one the deadly goliaths known as an Ogre who pinned me and another player down by camping a door we needed to leave out of, cue a scene of me managing to sneak between his legs and mounting a mad dash down the highway whilst his pursuits shook the screen with every step. Or how about the quest where we were tasked with blowing up a ship freighter, for which we all seemed well equipped until one by one we got picked off and only I was left to escape the horde whilst everyone else bled out around me. Or even the screw up where an AI teammate lowered a bridge for progression and then retracted it when half the team was crossing, killing us all. All these moments where over the course of several playthroughs across the one mission that was available in the Alpha, highlighting how much I expect to get out of running an entire campaign over and over.

For a very long time I had forgotten the heart of Left 4 Dead and what it was about the game that I found so alluring, but the silly fun of being swamped by so many bodies that you can't even see your bullets is easily summoned once more by Back 4 Blood. And why shouldn't it? These are pretty much the same devs. Whilst I have in the past praised games like Vermintide for evolving upon the Left 4 Dead premise and turning it into something new, like a melee brawler, there's something about the original that's just implacable. And whatsmore, I feel like there's enough space in this niche little corner of gaming for Back 4 Blood, Vermintide and even that new 40k themed title that's coming in the near future. Despite feeling similar they all serve vastly different genres and moods, and I respect a gametype that can be that diverse.

So safe-to-say I had a lot of fun with my few days playing Back 4 Blood, and though it's not the sort of game that I could grind out repeatedly, it was one that made me smile evetime I played. If that's the promise that this game can hold then you can consider me sold, and that goes doubly true if I get a chance to see the ways that a title like this will improve. (Because we all know what it means for us to be living in the live service age, no?) I see this as the sort of the game to keep on your harddrive for those days when you feel like doing nothing else but bashing-in some heads, and for me it takes a very special game to fill that sort of void. So given everything I've played so far, I'll say that Back 4 Blood is on the right track. (Although for a parting bit of advice I'd encourage given the Director a little more freedom, I'd imagine it could really become something incredible with some nurturing)

Who's the bigger fool; thee or me?

 Development. Development never changes.

Ubisoft, sometimes I really wonder what is going on in that studio. Sometimes the biggest games studio in Europe, Ubisoft has the money and power to put out anything that they want to, be as experimental as they want to, carve out a path of their own however they see fit, and yet they default to the same tips and tricks time and time again. It's really fascinating, as even EA takes the odd wildcard decision such as with 'Jedi Fallen Order' or 'Star Wars Squadron', (albeit, they may have been slightly coerced to go that direction) Activision steps outside of it's comfort zone a bit with their F2P Call of Duty title (not the one in China) Warzones and yet you have Ubisoft as this sort of snail who do just enough to keep the tech decent, but simply cannot bring themselves to have an original thought enter the development process. I learnt this a good while ago, but even then I'll admit I was curious when I heard word of Valhalla and the 'unique narrative structure' that was supposed to be unlike anything that had been done before. That's a mighty empty-sounding promise there, guys, I wonder how that'll turn out... It's basically just like a series. Self contained arcs strung together that sort of from one long story if you squint your eyes and give out all the doubt you can muster. (Real innovative there, Ubisoft.)

But if there's one repetition in regards to Valhalla that truly has me baffled, it's the policies behind the scenes that they've implemented to, once again, try and make up for uneven balance for the game. Now that may sound like a positive but fear not, ladies and gents, because the actual 'solutions' here are duplicitous and greedy in all those ways we've come to just love from our developers. So what am I talking about here? Well, you know time saver microtransactions? You know, the little options that developers having been adding since the early Forza Horizon games where you pay, not for any new content, but in order to get some of the content in the game you already purchased faster? Don't you just love that? Paying for a game and then being asked to play less out that game whilst being told this is for your convenience? Isn't that just great? Well that's exactly what Ubisoft have thrown into Valhalla merely a handful of weeks after launch and I am positively muddled by such news. I cannot comprehend it, or else I don't want to.

For histories sake lets try to find the heart of this, because Ubisoft didn't always charge through the nose for basic amenities before, oh no. In fact, the first time I really noticed anything like this really entering into my Assassin's Creed experience it was all the way back in Unity in which a lot of the gear could be purchased directly with real money instead of being found in the world. This was significant because Unity was the first game to really implement something of a half-way meaningful gear system where more powerful items were required to progress. (Or at least, they were required until you hit about the midgame mark at which point you pretty much grew powerful enough to take out anyone with anything, like Assassin's Creed is meant to be.) This expanded in Origins to actual time saver packs and reached it's final form in Odyssey where literal offline XP boosters were hawked to the audience whilst they complained of the grindy and gating nature of the progression. (Bad look guys.) So I wonder how that sort of deal turned out for Ubisoft...

Oh, that's right! It turned out poorly. I don't think there's even been a single moment in history where anyone has bought this apologist crap about time saver packs saving time for the audience. Everyone sees through it as Ubisoft just selling the cure to the affliction they caused and it reflects badly on them each and every time. (We all played Deus Ex, guys, this sort of grift isn't going to work!) But regardless, Ubisoft have done the exact same thing all over again despite apparently acknowledging how it's a problem! We even heard the developers themselves admit that they received criticism that Odyssey was too bloated and that they would do something about it, only for Valhalla to be somehow even more bloated and for them to do the exact same thing. At this point I'm not even sure that Ubisoft are being this way on purpose, they've been cursed to relieve the same development issues in perpetuity like it's freakin' groundhog day or something.

And though it might be beside the point of this particular blog, it is worth mentioning how disingenuously this very 'time saver' pack thing has been imparted. Rather than have these things in the game at launch, the team waited for several weeks after the game has been out and had all of it's reviews so that none of the people who played the games could factor in these generally disliked practises. It's just sort of a giveaway that you're doing something at least a little wrong if you're going to these sorts of lengths to obscure and hide it from the reviewing public. They did the exact same thing with 'Ghost Recon: Breakpoint' and quite honestly is was the bookend to that game's popularity, because it seems all the crowds either dropped off or stopped talking about this embarrassment to the industry. But Ubisoft have never been one's to learn from their own mistakes, I guess. They're all into 'try, try and try again'.

Now to be clear, there is a demand out there for something to be done about the ludicrously overbearing length of 'Assassin's Creed Valhalla', there has been since launch. Remember that this is game which purposefully shirked traditional storytelling methods and narrative rhythm in order for something... different, (not really better and arguably much worse) which allowed the game to be ballooned far further than the breadth of enjoyment on offer here. For some reason the team decided it would be in the best interest of the players to take part in literally every single part of the invasion of England, despite having known as far back as Assassin's Creed 2 that cherry picking key moments makes for a much better play experience. But then, should anyone really be surprised that this is the state of the franchise right now? I mean, this is exactly where Odyssey implied the series would be going, so is it really Ubisoft's fault for putting themselves in this position or ours for following suit and allowing them to?

I can't help but wonder if this is going to just the state of gaming for the next few years, with games coming out that are far too big for their own good. Both Assassin's Creed games of the last few years have suffered from this issue (albeit in slightly different fashions) although accusations of the franchise heading this way have been around for years; and the spending habits of the average consumer is certainly fanning these flames. Look at the other big game to release around this time (but whom I won't name because I've spoken about it negatively far too often) that also suffered under the weight of it's size, but it also secured enough Pre-orders to refund development costs before release. And what has been the game which snuck to the leaderboards after that game's fall from grace? Why Assassin's Creed Valhalla, of course. It's sort of hard to for the community to besmirch the bloat emblematic of oversized games whilst simultaneously flocking to these games in droves, and If I were Ubisoft I too would listen to the money over the free advice. Let the money tell you where your customer's hearts are at, I guess.

I remember a time when I couldn't really understand the problem with a game that was deemed 'too big'. I loved the idea of a game that could keep me occupied seemingly perpetually and couldn't comprehend what the problem would be if that meant a huge open world or prolonged story; I was in no rush to finish games and I'm still not. It all sounded like the problems of a reviewer rather than that of a consumer. And to this day I think there are shades of that in the review culture, but I can also see the detriment to actual vision which bloat can have, to the point where great ideas fall apart or unravel in them. I'm not fan of 'Time saver packs' but a chaotic side of me can understand their existence and even somewhat sympathise in an industry that seems to encourage uneven and overblown design. So I guess at the end of the day the question bounces back to the start, who is the bigger fool: The developers who step on the same rakes or the consumers who reward them for doing so?

I Recommend: Tyranny

Binding fates and taking names!

So I consider myself an eclectic gamer who really does pay attention to the game of the day no matter what their genre or my chances of actually ever playing them. I know when the newest FIFA comes out and about such a game's pros and cons even though I've haven't owned a FIFA since '05, the same could be said for Forza games and even Just Dance. (Have to keep up to date on Ubisoft's super seminal franchise, afterall) As such, when it comes to a genre that I'm super invested in, RPGs, and a studio I love making them, Obsidian, I expect to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of them up in here. That should be a given, I shouldn't even have to look it up; freakin' osmosis should just kick in. Therefore when Epic Games decided to give out some Obsidian games in their free program I scoffed in the knowledge that I was likely already well versed and experienced with all the titles that could possibl- what the heck is 'Tyranny'? Why have I never heard of this? It came out a year after Pillars? How could I not have heard of this? What the heckin' heck?

So yeah, apparently Obsidian managed to sneak an entire RPG around me about four years back and I'm only hearing about this now. (How sneaky of them) And to be clear, Obsidian is the sort of company whom I very much expect to hear about whenever they make moves. Ever since 'Fallout: New Vegas' dropped and I realised that these guys beat Bethesda at their own game, I made it my mission to note everything that comes out of their offices, because there's a good chance I'll like it. I never got the chance to give 'Alpha Protocol' a try, which saddens me because despite the heavy jank which people claim the game shows I literally adore the premise. Stealth-based spy-themed RPG with choices and an odd sense of humour? Did Obsidian read my dream journal for that one? But that loss made me all the more dedicated to snapping up every one of their games whenever I got the chance, lest I be left short again, so I have no idea how 'Tyranny' slipped me by. (Well it's in my hands now.)

But what about the game itself, what has Obsidian thrown together and how does this differ from the isometric formula which Obsidian themselves helped revive back in 2015? Well actually this time the very premise pretty much sums up the USP, because Obsidian went for an off-the-cuff premise with this game and I have to admit I was dubious at first. (Okay, that's not true. First I played it for 2 hours and then I looked up what it was roughly about. Then I was dubious.) Essentially 'Tyranny' takes place in your everyday fantasy world without the crazy races but not without magic. Plus, there's an all-powerful agent of evil who seeks control over the entire world, par the course for any game out there. But things diverge from the norm, because instead of telling the story of a simple farmer's rise to becoming the 'hero of us all', 'Tyranny' starts at the end of that story. After the Tyrant has already seized control of the entire world and won, all that's left is the subjugation of some bumpkins out by the coast who are such a non-threat that they're busying fighting themselves by the time you arrive. Oh did I mention; you're also very much on the side of the Tyrant and consolidating their rule. (Talk about flipping the script!)

Now the reason this had me worried, even after playing the intro and quite liking what I was seeing, was because of the way it was marketed on the Steam page. "Tyranny turns the archetypal RPG story on its head!" the description reads "The player is not a random villager!", 'this isn't your grandma's RPG!' Yeah I made up that last one but you get the sort of vibe this is going for, right? 'Everything you expect out of a game from this genre? Yeah, this game completely changes all of that so buckle up for a envelope pusher!'. It's the kind of marketing that lays itself into what the story isn't over what is, and it gave me the impression that the game would mirror that sort of direction. The result of such situations would typically be a promising premise that get wasted when it could have been something really special. Luckily, my fears were so far off base that it's almost embarrassing, 'Tyranny' doesn't miss an ounce of it's potential.

Set in a world where the villain has won, Tyranny knows exactly what sort of world it's trying to build as it establishes a struggle between lawful tyrannical order and unrestrained chaotic freedom in a manner that's almost reminiscent of Shin Megami Tensei. The world building towards this is fantastic, and though it demands a lot of the player, in terms of reading heavy and detailed passages, it proves itself rich and deep enough to earn that commitment. Terratus is a plane that is shaped very much by the cult of personality which the regime forms around the all-powerful and mysterious Kyros, and as soon as you are positioned as a agent of this regime it'll become clear that traditional concepts of good and evil aren't really going to apply here. By most traditional standards you very much are the 'bad guy', but in this narrative that are no more side left apart from Kyros', and that fact alone paints this laudably natural coat of grey over each dilemma in the game and each system feeds that amorality beautifully.

Just like in New Vegas, the players will find a lot of their actions will be driven by the desire to build or sully relationships with close party members, factions and even just the various societies around 'The Tiers' (The region under siege). And just like in New Vegas, this allows for unique shades of personality and opinion to enter into decision making in a manner that doesn't quite happen with mortality-shader RPGs. And within this dictatorship relationships can shift and devolve over the matter of a few dialogue choices, thus players are always hyper aware of their interactions and the way it shapes those around them, to a degree that honestly shocks me in that I never really knew I wanted it this deep. But as if to wrap it all up in a beautifully neat bow, the very reputation system and it's quirks even get naturally tied into the overarching narrative in a manner so clever that I had to clap my hands together when I heard it. Or read it, I guess. (It's amazing how masters of their craft can blow you away even when you think you've seen everything.)

If there's another general feature of Tyranny which I cannot in good faith go without mentioning, it would have to be the the choices and consequences. Now, if you know me you'll know that I hate games wherein 'choices have consequences' is waved as a chief selling point, as it's almost always a prelude to disappointment as it merely draws attention to all the ways in which such a system doesn't live up to it's promise. Literally everytime it's a letdown, from 'Cyberpunk' to 'Life is Strange'; it's never as deep as they say. Tyranny, however, plays with this is a very subtle way wherein actions have consequences that may not be obvious all the time, and may not try to be flowers of opportunity either. Sometimes a choice you made in the prologue scrawl (Which is an extensive and important section) will shut down a potential interaction you could have otherwise had, or ingratiate you to someone you've just met, thus opening up more freedoms to interaction. It's hard to describe but I find it be a very honest approach to the concept where I have found myself frustrated upon coming against a wall, but its a wall I've built myself and thus I'm only immersed deeper by that frustration. (Does that make sense?)

I'm being very vague about my time with Tyranny and the parts of it that I loved and that's because I'm both still chipping away at the game and this isn't a review; it's a recommendation. Sometimes when a big shiny new hotness comes along and promises the world, what you really need instead is a robust and reliable clunker with a few tricks up it's sleeve and fine motor. (If you can even decipher that horrendously mixed metaphor) Tyranny won't blow you away with it's graphical fidelity (it does look pretty, but more artistically) nor it's gameplay; (it's basically just a real-time RPG like any other you've played) but it will satiate that hunger for solid, clever stories wrapped in an unfaltering RPG shell, if that's what you're so inclined towards. So unless the final act I'm approaching manages to screw everything up to an unreal degree, I'm pretty comfortable calling Tyranny my recommended game of the month. Because that's a thing I decided that I'm going now and you can't tell me it's dumb, I already know that it is.

Resident Evil: During The Storm

 Racoon City Rises...

So Resident Evil has been on a bit of a comeback for these past two years, now hasn't it? I mean if we're really tracking things to the source then I suppose you could say that 'Resident Evil 7: Biohazard' was when things started changing for the better, but that game did go through a little bit of underperformance thus I'll wager that Resident Evil 2 Remake was really what made the people with power turn their heads. (The money men.) Thus we're in an artificial renaissance for the franchise wherein the old games are remade seemingly until we reach Resident Evil 7 and then... does that get remade? (Will Resident Evil 9 and Resident Evil 9 Remake come out within a month of each other? What's the endgame here Capcom? Do you even have an endgame?) But whereas we have a whole new army of fans that are starting to buy into the appeal of zombies, bodyhorror and puzzles, there are those who have been there from the old school, people who never dropped off after Resident Evil 6 and even those who still prefer the originals to this day. 

I don't usually talk about mods too much on this blog, but that's not because of any unspoken policy or dislike towards them, I just rarely see something that looks so incredible I have to talk about it. Personally I have a huge amount of respect for those with the humility, love and talent to sit down and just create a mod for a game that they like, just for the love of the game in general or to put their mark on it. Over the years we've seen all kinds of community driven mod projects that have ranged from the thousands of armour and weapon mods for Bethesda titles, to total conversions for Half Life and everything inbetween. And for my part I've dabbled in a great many mods in my spare time, and being a little bit of a PC gamer sometimes mods are literally required in order to play some older games. (Or simply for those games to work in times when PC ports are buggier than all get-out.)

Total conversion mods, however, are the things that really blow me away, as that's when the basic game is modified and changed upon to the extent where the base game often isn't recognisable and instead one is simply just using the engine to make their own world or tell their own story. For this you have famous mods such as Skyrim's Enderal, Oblivion's Nehrim, Empire at War's Republic at War, (a favourite of yours truly) and, as is the point of today's blog, Resident Evil 2's During the Storm. Now to tie things back into my intro, where's not talking about the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 but the old school 1998 original bought to life on PC through the 2006 Sourcenext port. (Which, for the record, is kind of a pain-in-the-butt to get ahold of today, but I'm sure there's always a way if you're interested.) Someone took this framework and decided to expand on this game with an entire conversion mod, and it is insanely impressive.

Taking place in the largely unexplored location of Racoon City, (Heavy sarcasm detected) the mod takes one of the 'Resident Evil: Outbreak' characters who survived that disaster, and Racoon City, in order to place them down in an semi-open world branching narrative storyline. Yeah- 'ambitious' doesn't even begin to describe the sorts of heights these developers are shooting for, and were I Brutus I'd probably be preparing my best stabbing knife. (Sorry, that was an atrociously bad 'Julius Caesar' reference. I'll see myself out.) According to the Moddb page, they want to create an 'Open world' akin to what Dark Souls employs, which I understand to mean a world made up connected areas and corridors rather than large open locations. (Don't think the engine could handle that) They'll be side quests that have a bearing on the outcome of the main story, thus imparting branching narrative opportunities, time sensitive objectives which don't cause a mission fail but might reflect down the line, an extensive cast of side characters and enemies who will be able to follow the player through cells. I know that last point doesn't sound quite as impressive to a layman but trust me; that is incredible.

You'll probably notice something about all the points I bought up, like how Capcom are currently employing exactly none of them with the Resident Evil's of today. (Except the 'following the player through doors' thing, I guess) Even with all of the modern day advancements and revolutions to game design, modern day Resident Evils are basically exactly the same in structure as their older counterparts. In fact, when thinking the RE3 remake in particular, there have even been some steps to actively stomp down on things like 'branching narratives' for whatever reason. And I'm not denigrating the new games for that, I think too many titles fall for the allure of other game's strengths rather than nurture their own, (Resident Evil fell for exact trap for 6) but that doesn't mean I've never wondered. Seeing such innovations actually be pursued, and by an indie fan-made mod no-less, is actually quite exciting.

One question I immediately had when I came across this was "how". Not the ins and outs, but just the basic 'how did any of this happen on the simplest of levels'. And now that I've looked a bit into it I think I understand it to be a use of the Resident Evil 3 development method, in that assets are being recycled in order to make new locations. However, this team have access to Resident Evil 2 and 3 for assets. (As well as Outbreak, I guess, but I'm not entirely sure if there was even a PC port of that. Or if it would even have any useable assets at all.) I don't know if anything new will me made in the general world building department or if match-ups and reshuffling will go to make up some of the 'new locations' they've hinted at, but there was a bit of talk about custom weapons so I'd imagine there would be. Also, I don't know what sort of black magic sorcery this team is working with but they're apparently projecting the game to the be twice of length of Resident Evil 2. How does that happen? I dunno, but I like it.

The team in question have bitten off quite the undertaking, and it's natural to throw a little sceptical shade about everything I've just told you because nothing should be taken for granted. However I will say that out of the 7 members of the team that I see listed on Moddb, there's some promising pedigree. Several of the folks have worked on other Resident Evil 2 mod projects and the director/main programmer has another big mod in 'Resident Evil: Mortal Night' that they completed several years ago; so there's receipts here. That being said, from what I've browsed through this seems to easily be the most ambitious thing that any of them have worked on (At least in regards to modding) and I just love the sort of people willing to step outside of their comfort zone like that. To go to these lengths to mod a game that isn't even readily available for the average player? There undeniable passion there.

Of course, with the tense I've been using you'll likely have become aware that this mod isn't exactly out yet. In actuality it's due for 2021 and we're just starting to see videos of the work they've done so far around about now, but it's all just jaw dropping for someone like me. Resident Evil 2 was actually one of the first horror games that I played which had an effect on me (Somehow I played 1 as a kid and barely even remembered it; go figure) so seeing anything new imposed onto this framework (I can't believe I'm referring to a complete game as 'framework') does something special to me. Of course, the game doesn't look impressive graphically so if you lack the nostalgia element you might have trouble seeing the scope of the work like I do, but perhaps you'll still be able to respect the effort and work some people are willing undertake for the hobby they love.

The Chalk Prince and the Dragon

 There's Agate in them hills!

This holiday season has marked the very first significant content update for the new Gatcha darling of 2020, Genshin Impact, where instead of getting a new character, new quest or an update event, fans were treated to a whole new chunk of land to explore, and I wanted to take a look at just how significant this actually wound up being to the Genshin experience. Now I wouldn't exactly call myself an addict to this game so much, but it had turned out to be one of my most played games of this last part of the year so there's certainly some attraction beyond the normal. I'm just constantly tickled by the idea that this game made it into the same ecosystem as trash like RAID: Shadow Legends and it's kin. I genuinely have fun logging into Genshin and that's just the sort of thing I'd never though I'd be saying for a F2P title, therefore judging the way that content is distributed might be an accurate way of judging how long this game will keep my favor before the next fad grabs my attention. So with that in mind let's talk about Genshin's Christmas chapter; The Chalk Prince and the Dragon.

Now first of all this update is completely free to all players, as it very much should be considering how much money this title made for it's owners in the first few weeks. That's a precedent I hope we're all expecting the team to maintain as it establishes the value of the package before even a step is taken into Teyvat. And Dragonspine, for those who haven't dipped their toes into the lore, is essentially the giant snowy mountain which can been seen practically anywhere in Mondstadt or Liyue. Whereas I originally believed this to be a part of Snezhnaya, (The realm of the big-bad Russian-inspired Fauti) and thus was confused why a presumably endgame area was coming as part of the first big content update, I was wrong, this is a standalone area featuring just the mountain with the cold weather being the natural consequence of high altitudes. Also, I do believe this to be currently, and perhaps enduringly, the highest point of the world right now, making this Genshin's version of The Throat of the World from Skyrim.

And as this new content is set in the snowy reaches of an ice mountain, tasking players with scaling such a perilous beast, it makes sense for the creators to 'borrow' another system from Breath of the Wild. That's right, just like with the visual style and basic gameplay, MiHoYo has adapted Breath of the Wild's temperature mechanic and bought it into Genshin, albeit in a much more rudimentary way. Basically, as you explore Dragonspine you'll find yourself accumulating a dynamic bar just above your health which is said to keep track of 'sheer cold'. Once that bar reaches fullness the player will start to take damage until their icy death. The cold can be kept back by lighting braziers with fire attacks, following warmth Seelies or activating these geo-looking lanterns that are scattered across the mountain. Rather disappointingly you cannot use generated fire from your attacks to whether the cold, as I tested extensively with Diluc, but I suppose that would take away the challenge, would it not?

So there we have a barrier to exploration, logic would dictate this is because there isn't that much to see and the developers wanted to gate players from seeing it all too fast. Or at least that's how my pessimistic mind would work. But after spending some extensive time in this world I can pretty much say that no, I was certainly off-base for this one. Dragonspine is actually surprisingly full to the brim of stuff to see and do, to the point where this almost feels like all the content you'd find over one of the game's reigons shrunk down and put in this one relatively tiny mountain. There's caves, puzzles, ruins, heights and enemies falling on top of each other, to the point where you can actually really start to appreciate the way the minimap actually takes height into account  and accommodates for that. (Otherwise this map would get overly cluttered fast)

Whatsmore, this place seems to have been built with an emphasis on freeform exploration first, which is where I feel that Genshin is at it's best. Most sidequests for this game pretty much devolve into fetching stuff or slaying small groups of the same enemies, and thus actually solving puzzles and seeing new things is where the magic moments are held and Dragonspire has been full of those. Just figuring out how to get to the summit alone was rewarding and required mastering this new mechanic where you'll come across enchanted Ice that can only be broken by accruing an effect that activates when you collect a crimson ore littered across the land. This alone has you paying a lot more attention to places in the environment where you see that ore and making notes or routes in your head, and I just love when Genshin leads into this sort of play; this is the golden heights of this game!

In terms of story, that's where I'm a little more hands-off on the content right now and that's because not all of it has actually dropped yet. Following the footsteps of the Fischl and Mona inspired Fallen Stars event, The Chalk Prince and The Dragon is actually releasing in parts across the month in order to segment content and progression in a way that keeps players coming back on multiple days. For my part I will say this helps establish a sense of scale to events, but only if you follow the routine, otherwise it's just an annoying gate to progress that you are forced to wait out. Thus I think it appropriate that the developers put in systems, during this event, to make coming back a worthwhile endeavour. In this instance it's actually a free 4-star sword called Festering Desire, which players can actually improve by going around and collecting materials that drop off of enemies slain in this new region, encouraging coming back on several days during this event. Although by that very nature it does put a time restraint on how long you can keep improving on this new sword, and not everyone likes that sort of pressure. (I sure don't.)

However I think the real disappointment in regards to Dragonspine was something I was really picking up all the way back in the reveal trailer; the distinct lack of new enemies. Don't get me wrong, there are a few new ice-types wondering about the place and 2 new boss enemies to contend with, but for the most part the mobs are identical and I think that's a shame. One of my issues with the regions already in the game, Mondstadt and Liyue, is the way that their enemy ecosystem is almost identical in a way that means general combat gameplay doesn't feel unique comparative to where you travel and Dragonspine has continued that tradition. Now this might be because Dragonspine is supposed to sit as this meeting point between the two nations, and that once we enter a new region they'll actually be new creatures, but all I have are my own hopes to believe that, now assurances have come from the team thus far.

But even with all that said, as far as additional content to a free game goes, Dragonspine is shockingly high value to it's players. Carrying unique rewards, (in it's domain) challenges (in it's 'Sheer Cold' system) and experiences, (in it's puzzles) there really is no reason not to give it a shot. I do wonder, however, for the new story content somewhat, which (like in the falling stars event) seems to be hinting at some larger reveal which the narrative is sharing. (And which the community unravelled eons ago. The story is about Gnosticism, we get it!) But all in all I can say rather heartedly that if this mountain is any indication of the sort of support that MiHoYo intend to maintain for Genshin then I'm down for the journey, even if it gets released in small chunks like this rather than whole nations at a time. This was really cool, team, I liked it.

Merry Christmas; also, screw this whole year

Warning: No holiday cheer to be found here, just disappointment

Not really a fan of the season, but others are so I might as well come out and say 'Merry Christmas,' now can I just say that this has been the worst year ever. Yeah I know, not exactly a new take out of me, but I just really need an outlet and this is pretty much all I have available to me, so there it is. Now from the very first moment of this crappy year there has been every single possible kind of scare that it's feasible to have, oh and a pandemic thrown in there just to tap things off. General life has been difficult too, coming from a Caribbean family I understood exactly what it was like to be in the middle of a group of people who believe themselves patently too good not to still throw stupid parties in the middle of all this. The general public, who are already kinda standoffish over here anyway (being British) have become their true ornery selves in public. And the job market's a wasteland, but maybe I'm getting a bit too personal with that last one, there's just as much crap happening in the gaming world too. (And isn't that just the best? When my escapism needs an escapism!)

But where do you even start with the absolute mess that this year has been. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I mean the best gaming event that happened this year was probably the release of Demon Souls Remake. But that was PS5 so I can't really celebrate that one too hard. (There was also Ghost of Tsushima and FF7R but I don't have a PlayStation. Others can claim that victory.) I guess Doom Eternal was pretty tight, but from there things just seemed to go down hill. First there was the game that I highly anticipated for about an entire year, Resident Evil 3 Remake. Now I haven't really talked about this much because I wanted to enjoy as much of that game as there was to play, but there really wasn't all that much. The biggest problem with the original RE3 was the fact that it was essentially made from 80% recycled assets which really limited the scope of the game and resulted in a much smaller experience. The Remake didn't need to share that problem, and yet it did! The assets were new, some of the zombies were new, but the game was still unnecessarily truncated and sold for the same price as last year's Resident Evil 2! (The missed potential- It burns!)

Then there was the situation with Avengers the video game, and yeah- I pretty much saw straight through this game from the very get go- but gosh darn it I wanted to believe so bad! I've always been a huge fan of Marvel even before their recent spat of Movie success; I read the original Days of Future Past, I played the X-men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance games; I was a Marvel fan. (I am a Marvel fan, I should say. The game wasn't that bad.) But somewhere along the way this game which should have been a bonafide Marvel swansong fell to the wayside and floundered. (Meanwhile Sony's Spiderman shot webs around Avengers and gloated their superiority.) Even having played the game myself I don't think is was quite worth the murdering it received from the community, I mean it didn't deserve it's price either, but for the £20 it's typically seen for around now I'd say it would be worth it. It's a little bit of fun. (If anyone actually played it anymore, which they kinda don't. Also I guess it's not optimized well either...)

Warcraft 3 Reforged- wait a minute, that whole thing happened this year? Wow, that was back in January... feels like a whole different world, doesn't it? Now to be fair, I didn't have the personal link towards this game that would make it really hit home, but I do consider myself somewhat in tune with the community so I understand the hurt it caused. The Original Warcraft 3 pretty much laid the groundworks for the archetypal community supported game. (Or at least got the ball rolling for Half Life to set the world of modding into motion.) It was a classic game, nurtured such creativity that a whole genre spawned out of it and prepared the scene for the Blizzard juggernaut that was WOW to rule the MMO landscape for the next decade. Thus it was heinous what was done to this game under the guise of 'making an upgrade', especially when considered alongside the rampant marketing lies and anti-community policies which were put into place. Why, if this was the way the gaming year started, imagine how sucky it would be if the year ended with a dark mirror of this exact situation?

And there we come to the cap off for this year, the Anakin Skywalker on Mustafar moment of 2020. Cyberpunk 2077 was bought to us after 7 years of development to break the spell that this abysmal year held over us, and yet it was seduced by the allure of quick profits and lie-driven marketing. They were supposed to redeem the industry; not damn them! Bring balance to gaming, not leave it in ruins! Have you heard the tale of CDPR's fall? It's not a story the Jedi would tell you... But in all seriousness, I can't think of a worse possible blow to the gaming world than to have the literal paladins of the Industry, CD Projeckt, (As in the whole company, not just the 'Red' developers) turn out to be liars and oathbreakers. It's like having everyone you love slowly stick a knife in your gut and twist it, only for the final person to be the one you trusted the most, like a kindly parent or a kid who shot your girlfriend that one time. (Huh, that metaphor got stuck somewhere between Final Fantasy XV and Game of Thrones...) Point is, we were lied to and the betrayal is still very fresh for some of us. (Well it's been less than a month so I guess that makes sense.)

'Coming out: When it's ready'. Can you believe that was the first thing we saw regarding this game all the way at the end of that reveal trailer all those years back? What a total crock. 'When it's ready' was like the rallying cry of CD Projeckt fans over the years. Whenever a AAA game drove itself off a cliff because it rolled off the production line with faulty breaks, you'd hear the discordant chorus of "Should have come out when it was ready, that's what CDPR are doing!". I was never part of that crowd, to be honest, but I did share that feeling of safety that everyone of that ilk did when they considered Cyberpunk. CDPR would get it right, they understand how to treat gamers right. And somewhere I'd like to think that's still true, though that part is struggling with the realist who tells me I'm coping from the shock right now. Like finding out your older sibling sells ketamine for a living in order to pay for those lavish presents he always gets you for Christmas. (Okay, that one wasn't even a reference; my imagination is just running wild; no more Metaphors. That was a simile. No more of them either.)

And you want to know what the most messed up part is? The thing which makes this burn so much worse than the other gaming screw ups this year? I still want to play the game, it still looks good; only I don't have the hardware to run it. I would have been fine if CDPR had just cancelled the current gen versions, I mean it would have hurt being denied access after waiting so long, but it would have been better than handing off this deformed abomination and calling it an appropriate port! I was dragged along on the lie that Cyberpunk was within my grasp, and it's one that seems all the more incredulous when you account for both the absolute state of the game and the original release date. Remember how that was slated for April? Before the Series X or PS5 were even formally announced? (You know, the two consoles on which this game actually consistently runs like it should?) What in gods name did the game look like then and how did anyone think it was nearing completion as long as they did? At the time I remember remarking about how the delay was clearly long overdue as evidenced by the sheer length of it, but this is insane! The game should have been delayed by a year at least! (Maybe then it might actually be 'ready')

Sure, though we've seen their apologies and heard the crocodile tears of the bigwigs telling us how "We just weren't paying enough attention"; what a load. "We totally forgot about the console versions until they launched, our bad!" Really? Well that's funny considering that two trailers actually released dedicated to showing off those versions of the game, (albeit, rather pointedly not on the base last gen consoles but their suped-up cousins) and the footage was rather curiously free of all the bugs which the game launched with. Do they mean to tell us that this clearly curated footage just happened to be completely bug free and run fine, so they thought the game ran fine too? Is that the reason why they denied console review codes to reviewers before the release of the game too? It wasn't just done in the knowledge that the PC version was both more stable and came with the inbuilt excuse of "Well, the bugginess is because you're trying max settings without the hardware to back it up." (And yes, they did try that.)

So they purposefully obfuscated the shoddy performance and shipped the game on every platform, why exactly? This is the point that doesn't compute to me; why not just delay the consoles release? Is it because deepdown CDPR know that no amount of patching is going to solve the fact that previous gens just don't have the processing power to run Cyberpunk? (I certainly hope that's not the case, but I'm losing all trust in CDPR's abilities recently. I'd like to think rightly so.) But again, why did CDPR need to sell broken software to half it's customers? I mean what is the point? Bluepoint didn't need to sell a crappier version of Demon Souls in order to make that a success, so why did Cyberpunk need to release on everything? It smells like a classic case of corporate greed and the desire to make 'all the money' even when it's a desire that leads you off a cliff.

And this time it absolutely has, because as much as it pains me to say; it seems the industry is turning Cyberpunk into an example. Likely due to it's hype and the high-profile nature of this blunder, everyone is trying to make it known that regardless of the overall quality of the product (Which, again, seems decent) this was unacceptable and it won't be stood for. Memes have mocked CDPR relentlessly, stock drops have cost them a cool billion, (They made back Cyberpunk 2077 costs in pre-orders, don't cry for them just yet) and now, shock of all shocks, Playstation just removed Cyberpunk from it's digital store. A week before Christmas. Because apparently they built up enough heat for a level 3 action. (Yakuza reference, anybody?) Now these blogs are written a week before debut, so it's highly likely that something more has transpired which I don't know yet, but dems the breaks for now. And you know what? I'm still angry. (Admittedly, the Playsation store thing does take a lot of that anger off. There's a kick to the nuts I wish upon no game company) This should never have happened in the first place, and CDPR, more than anyone else, should have set the example that a rushed game is immediately bad whilst a delayed game is eventually good. (That's Shigeru Miyamoto, man; learn from the king himself!) 

ARK 2

 Survival Evolved even further?

Have you ever had a piece of media effect you so very deeply that it bought you to tears? That you couldn't help but shed some of your emotional expenditure in wake of it's brilliance? Ark 2 is one such product for me, for even in the trailer, there was enough material to move me. Although, it must be said, that might have been because I was literally crying with laughter from the moment I saw Vin Diesel's face onwards. I couldn't help it, I know it's mean, but just the sheer shock of the exact second we saw his mug was enough to send me over the edge, and from there everything just built. The way this almost looked like it was going for a 'Horizon' vibe with it's concept, only coupled with hilariously stiff animation which didn't match the gravity of that pedigree at all. The way that Vin seemed to be the de facto hero of this trailer, fighting everything off one-handed like this was some kid's Fast and Furious Fan fic. And then a Dinosaur turned up and I lost it all over again. Vin Diesel and Dinosaurs? Are you literally freakin' kidding me?

Of course, the absolute magic of this moment was shattered into something all the more darker once the name of the project flashed up. Ark 2, huh? For a moment there I'd fooled myself into thinking this was some wanderstruck indie project that had managed to drum up enough investor capital to score Vin Diesel in their trailer, (Although apparently not enough to secure a decent animator) but in reality this was Studio Wildcard and what we were seeing was the fruits of their long tumultuous relationship with a community that's so lukewarm to them that merely reading a page worth of community reviews was enough to talk me right out of a purchasing decision. (For which I did not look back) But hey, maybe this is an opportunity to write all the wrongs of the past on a fresh playing field with a leading man to head things off in Vin Diesel. (That still sounds funny just to say in my head.) Huh? He's not just starring but helping to produce it too? Okay... I'll choose to see that as a portend of good things too... somehow...

Although I feel there are a great many questions ahead of us, I think the most genial would be what could possible await us in an ARK 2 sequel. More specifically, why is a sequel even needed for a game that's a live service and thus has existed on the merit of updates up until just now? Well, keeping friendly, I would go so far as to say this is likely an issue with the structure of the game, from the networking to the base code. We saw this from Among Us which was on the verge of a sequel before the surprise success, because the base game was apparently a little messy to work with on the codebase and the team thought it prudent to start fresh. At least, that was until they secured an audience so huge that it would be literally stupid to split them up right now and thus they opted to bite the bullet and frustration for the time being. The cynical side of me does wonder if the reason for ARK 2's existence might be the exact opposite of Among Us 2's nonexistence. As in, ARK has been waning in popularity with a gameplay cycle that's notoriously tough to get started on and many veterans leaving for some reason or another, and so a big new trailer was what they needed to set things off again. But that's just speculation, I couldn't say for certain.

Whatever the purpose I will remain cordial as I suggest that this could ultimately end up being a good thing for the ARK experience given that it provides an opportunity for the game to 'catch up with the times' as it were. 'ARK: Survival Evolved' launched at a time when survival games were a dime a dozen and each title existed on the exact same core premise with a wild card (see what I did there) gimmick thrown in. ARK's was dinosaurs and that proved well enough for the time, but I feel that as the years went by and the meta for popular games shifted, the rough survival routes of ARK grew so unruly that in today's age most guides specifically tell new players to heavily toggle down half the settings in order to get a halfway decent experience. Maybe a new start from the getgo will allow for more palatable systems that play better to the heart of the ARK experience and is more welcoming to newcomers. Or maybe even the suggestion of that will alienate longtime fans who roughed out the base ARK experience and see any streamlining as traitorous. I guess only time will tell.

We would be amiss, however, not to mention that ARK 2 wasn't the only thing which was shown off by Studio Wildcard and their partners during the Game Awards, oh no. There was also a brief look at an anime series which, to be honest, looked fine. Just fine. I get the feeling that the footage we saw was a purposefully streamlined teaser, which is why it seemed a little passionless and focused on showing raw action. Although the animation quality was certainly who worlds better than what we saw in the game trailer, but then we are comparing the worlds of 2D and 3D animation and I'm not nearly qualified enough to reliably go there. What really got my attention was simply the amount of names attached to this animated series. Gerard Butler, David Tennant, Karl Urban, Malcom McDowell, Russel Crowe and Vin Diesel? Just what in heck is going on where everyone signed up for ARK 2 in the same moment?

I do wonder when it comes to these 'catch all' sort of game launches, which come accompanied with all this fluff and extra content which the primary customer doesn't really care all that much about but which requires all this effort anyway. I mean even the big studios, your Ubisoft's, Bethesda's and Square Enix's, struggle to maintain such unwieldly grasps of content when they shoot for several mediums at once, but here's Wildcard out of nowhere saying that they can do it no problem. And you know what? Some part of me wants them to pull it off, and that might come from my newfound hatred for all AAA studios as much as my desire to see an underdog succeed, but there it pretty much is. If this ARK Animated series is halfway good, and it looks to maybe be, then I see no reason why the game itself can't be quite a bit of fun. (Especially learning from all the misteps that the first game went through over the course of many expansions.)

But now I'll let out the cynical side and admit that this all seems a bit much from a team who's first game was honestly a bit of a mess for a good long chunk of it's life cycle. And don't get me wrong, I know just as well as anybody how difficult it is to make something from scratch, (I've even got experience with amateur coding) but it takes a special kind of brave to jump from a single messy game's lifespan into what looks like a multimillion dollar cross-media effort. I can't say if Wildcard has appropriately grown enough to take on that sort of responsibility. I mean, at one point the community was straight at odds with these developers over conduct and decisions made, you'd think they'd have to cut their teeth a little before getting put in a position this important. But then again, who ever got anywhere without taking risks, right? If they can put all this together and secure a decent game in the mix, then I'll clap the fellows over there as sure as I would anyone else. 

Ultimately, I have to come clean and admit that I not really the target audience for this game at all, so my opinion on it all doesn't really matter. Sure, my gamer brain might be saying that this much footage without any gameplay is suspect, but as someone who literally only played 30 minutes of the original (with 20 of those being in the cue to get into the game) I don't really have the right to say anything or point any fingers. I'm just happy that Vin Diesel, a man who genuinely seems interested in the gaming world, gets the chance to be in a video game that might not be total garbage like the last one he was in, the man deserves that much. Also, I guess I'll watch the series once it hits Netflix, I'm a sucker for these sorts of shows afterall.

Mass Effect 4?

 So, we just gonna forget about that last game or...

In a Game Awards packed to the gills with no surprise after no surprise, how curious it was to note that the most interesting moments popped up separate from the awarding process whatsoever, such as through the two anaemic Bioware trailers the studio threw our way. Now to be clear, my very first thought when I saw these little snippets was "Isn't this more the bare minimum that gets reserved for N7 Day?" But then I guess we did get the remasters teased that day so these get to take the much more coveted game awards spot. (Makes sense.) So that's why we got a prolonged trailer for Dragon Age wherein someone who sounded a little like Varric (only tired) tried to gaslight us all by telling us that this time around we'd have a different protagonist "Without a 'magic hand'". Oh, that's funny Varric, because literally only the Inquisitor from the last game has a magic power, that's what made them feel different from the last two, so don't wave this powerless protagonist in our face like they're some sort of break from the norm you trumped up Cameo-case who's not nearly interesting enough to carry the prolonged screen time you are so often rewarded! Sorry, that one just rubbed me the wrong way. Also, I still haven't finished Inquisition, (sue me) so I prefer to focus on the Mass Effect stuff this time.

So this trailer came at the tail end of the event, wherein typically sits the biggest trailer that is set to blow literally everyone away with it's grand scale. And honestly, that did work a bit against this trailer because the second we see the Milky Way and think 'anticipated space game', I think it's safe to say that most of us default to Starfield. But as Bethesda seem deadset on making Starfield another stealth launch from their studio (because that went so well the last two times...) we instead got a zooming in on a broken Mass Effect Relay and that small hope vanished. Yet somehow, more the fool I, it took until the trailer zoomed in on a curiously familiar Asari woman digging Shepard's helmet rim out of Luna's dust for me to realise what this means: The next Mass Effect isn't a sequel to Andromeda... it's four! (Which, again, I should have realised immediately from the broken relays because Andromeda rather pointedly had no Mass Effect Relays which is why everything took place in a miniscule space with only one new alien Civilisation and was terrible.)

Now I know I'm not the only person scratching their head at this because, by all reckoning, there shouldn't be a Mass Effect 4. The first 3 Mass Effect games built up this epic Science Fantasy opera revolving around a galaxy-level threat where action and consequence built up into the crescendo that was Mass Effect 3 and its game-long wrap-up event. Some people disliked Mass Effect 3 because they found themselves turned off by the three (later patched to four) colour endings by the end that felt completely independent of the unique choices that led them this far, but this was meant to be the conclusion none the less. Me personally, I interpreted the entirety of Mass Effect 3 as the culmination of the last two game's choices, so I got a lot more mileage out of the game, but even then I didn't really see any of this game as a jumping off point for the next Mass Effect to pick up right after this one. But then again, here we apparently are.

I think the most puzzling thing about this apparent reveal is thus; despite the three endings being wildly mocked at the end of ME3, they were still so ludicrously distinct from one another that making a follow-up game seems a tad foolhardy. One ending saw the Reapers become slaves of the galaxy, disabling the threat for now but leaving the machines alive to potentially rise up again someday. Another saw them all destroyed along with the Mass Effect Relays that their creators built (thus disabling FTL flight seemingly forever) And another still saw organics and synthetics merged at a molecular level to reach some new species. (Never really understood that last one, seemed a little out-the-blue) Oh, and then there was the ending they added in where the player proved to be an obstinate ass and refused all choices in favour of damning all the species of the Milky Way for another 10,000 year cycle. How do you spring off from all those decently distinct paths and create a sequel? That would be impossible, no? Well not if you just ignore half of them!

Although this is going purely off of the ludicrously slim reveal trailer that we saw, which was accompanied with no information apart from the redundant "Mass Effect will continue", (Ya don't say?) It seems we can narrow down the exact ending that Bioware went for. As I remember it (And I played this game literally six years ago so forgive my poor memory) the power required to execute any of the endings required the destruction of the Mass Effect Relays, so merely seeing one drifting through space in pieces isn't enough to tell us anything. Seeing Liara, however, tells us that this wasn't the 'obstinate ass' ending, because she's alive and otherwise that probably wouldn't be the case. She appears entirely organic too, with no mechanical glint in her eyes or something to denote she's part synthetic, so either the team chose to hide this or the 'synthesis' ending has been written off as well. Then comes the smoking gun which nails it down; the mask fragment which she found. We can assume it belongs to Shepard because otherwise there would be no reason for it to feature in this trailer, and we can assume this is Luna because she travels to a moon and Luna would be the closet to where Shepard was last seen. (Although I don't remember it being particularly snowy on our moon but maybe that's several years worth of ash and debris, who can say?) Such would imply that the Citadel which Shepard was on exploded, thus settling things on the 'Destroy' ending.

Not that there's really any special reward for figuring that out, as not only was the destroy ending easily the most popular among players, but it was also the only ending given special treatment of there being two variations of it. One you get just from hitting the bare minimum requirements, (I.E. reaching the final section of the game) and the other you get by completing the majority of the side content and amassing a War Asset score threshold higher than is required to get any of the other endings. It's just a little teaser shot of Shepard's body lying amidst the rubble in a ponderous pan before he takes in a breath of life like freakin' Captain Scarlett up in here. Although I don't think anyone really expected anything to come of it and I'm not sure how I feel about continuing this story.

On one side of the fence I do realise that Andromeda was a absolute false start that seemed to bumble any remote build-up whatsoever to the point where by the credits I honestly couldn't identify a single plotline I wanted to see continue apart from the fact that I liked some of the teammates and wanted to see them evolve. (Not Liam. God, not Liam) But on the otherhand I thought this left the field completely open for the team to learn from their mistakes and really make the next Andromeda game special. Yes, the alien design for Andromeda sucked, but that was just incentive for the next round of aliens to be amazing! Yeah the Milky Way Refugees spent the majority of the game setting up crappy outposts instead of having a driving force to them; but that just opened the way for an actual narrative now that all that admin stuff was out the way! I was genuinely excited for the future of Andromeda and now I feel like a mug for ever feeling that way. Plus, I'm honestly done with Shepard and felt there was no more to say with his/her story; so why exactly are we going back to them? Isn't the same problem everyone had with The Last of Us Part 2? Continuing a story that didn't need anything added to it? Just seems like a recipe for ruining the last fond memories anyone had of Mass Effect in my opinion...

Misgivings aside I will admit that, unlike with Andromeda, this feels like the right time for a new Mass Effect; so I'm ready for whatever Bioware has to throw our way. There is that slight nagging feeling that this all just reinforces how Bioware has lost such confidence in itself (or from others) that they're retreating to what they know, but Mass Effect isn't the least creative franchise on the planet so I don't think they'll be scraping the barrel just yet. Of course, given the current state of affairs with literally every single AAA company on the planet, I'm far from given my confidence to a studio like Bioware, but I'm also a fanboy deep down and if I have another chance to fly the Normandy, by god I'm going to take it. Good tease, Bioware; now you just need to follow through.