S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chernobyl

 You never get used to the zone

One of the things I was most happy to note during my time watching the E3 showcase was the absolute influx of Slavic games, or at least games with Slavic voices, across the presentations. I don't know exactly why this is the year that all these Slavic game developers decided to hit the scene, and I'm sort of tickled by the fact that most all of their games were in some way inspired by S.T.A.L.K.E.R, but I'm always a proponent for other cultures throwing their creative weight into the marketplace of ideas and no artistic medium, except for drawn art I suppose, is quite as good at mixing the strengths of various cultural influences as gaming is. Bring all the creativity that's unique to you into the industry and that could inspire people from across the globe to pick up that torch or incorporate parts of it into their own project, all in pursuit of this global oneness that we all aspire to.

I've seen Chernobylite steadily rocking towards the grand wrap up of it's main storyline, Atomic Heart slowly meteoring towards the wide spread attention I've said it was worth for months now and even Metro Exodus popped up in a trailer this E3 for some reason despite being over three years old now. All this shows quite clearly that our Slavic friends have the potential to be power houses in the game development world and we should be excited for their contributions. Chief among which, at least in my eyes, comes from the long waited true sequel to the hardcore shooter grandfather, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl. A game wherein real time strategy and first person shooter elements were married into a hair-raising bloodpumping dance of death where even the most mundane of encounter could spell death for the unprepared.

What you have to understand about the sort of game that S.T.A.L.K.E.R was, is that it was aimed at shattering the notion of first person games up until that point. Until then those games were all about embodying some demi-god human who had the strength to plow through hoards of demons, or single-man rush entire enemy battalions of Nazis or heal from deadly wounds simply by standing still and catching their breath. They weren't realistic and tried their hardest to feed into the whole 'power trip' notion of the gaming ecosystem. S.T.A.L.K.E.R rejected this premise, because it's team, GSC Game World, understood the elation which came from surmounting the impossible and riding the knife's edge against all but certain death. That same sweat-drenched satisfaction that us Dark Souls fans crave, was present in the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R and it's part of what makes that game timeless.

Thus now that the Souls franchise is considered gaming royalty, it only feels fair for S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2, now called 'Heart of Chernobyl', to resurface the beloved series for us all once again. A game which has finally landed a shot at the bigtime with Microsoft themselves seeming more than willing to back the thing for exclusivity rights. That's a long way to rise for a series that would have be considered pretty niche ten years back, and all of it is rightly deserved given the level of mirror-sheen quality we're seeing out of this game on a pure graphical level so far. What they've managed to achieve so far looks incredible, and after the most recent trailer which blessed our eyes I simply cannot wait for the full raw gameplay reveal.

Straight away this new trailer actually did show us some real gameplay for us to salivate over, however it was stylised and cut-up chunks when what I really want is a substantial ten minutes or so of uncut gameplay with everything in there so we get an idea of the pacing for a game like this, something that's sure to be important. But even then we still got a pretty good idea of how this game will play at an alpha level at the very least, as between some dialogue there were sections of actual action and even some gunplay. Honestly that was a lot more then I expected from a Microsoft conference, so Kudos to them for actually learning about what the fans want to see from games. (Now if only the rest of E3 could learn the same lesson.)

I do, however, look at the gameplay we saw as pure Alpha footage (but with a nice coat of paint slathered on there) because there was a clear whiff of 'just because it would look cool in a trailer' shown here. Watching the way that attachments for weapons are applied real time (something which Battlefield is also doing), hearing snippets of the genuinely stellar sound design and the gushing about the practically photo-realistic rendering of the building that was being sieged, there's a lot to love here. However we did clearly see several instance wherein there was obviously no enemy AI in the game, which was strange. Seeing the player stand out in the open whilst gormless soldiers stand shooting straight ahead for the mere effect of the trailer is a real big standout in a game series where a single stray bullet can take you out. I understand dressing things up for a trailer, but couldn't the trailer player have just acted as though the enemies had AI? Maybe even taken cover? I just think it's an odd way to highlight the shortcomings of your unfinished project.

We were also lucky enough to see some anomaly gameplay up on the surface of the wasteland, which carried this perfectly captured air of desolation to it that rivals Metro in it's artistry, and Metro's developers are the kings of atmosphere so that's really saying something! There was also a bit of survival horror thrown in there when a huge mind-flayer anomaly was stalking across an underground laboratory and going full slasher-movie on the player. (Something I hope carries over to when the team get around to actually coding enemies, I don't want this to just be a flashy staging for the trailer.) And finally we got one extended shot of an impassioned speech up close, highlighting both the quality of facial animations and the voice acting which, and remember that I don't speak Russian as I say this, seem actually AAA quality.

Looking at S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 compared to the original classics is honestly rather jarring in that a lot of it is almost unrecognisable. Flawless graphics, stunning setpeices, full-body motion tracking animation, it feels like a whole new world that this relatively straightforward franchise has stepped into and I'm ecstatic to see the results. The gaming landscape has gone too long without that tough-as-nails shooter to bring us back down to earth and remind everyone that we're really as the bottom of the foodchain, and I can think of no better deliverers than GSC. It's great to see you back on form, guys.

Elden Ring is NOT the sequel to Dark Souls

 Hearest thou my voice, still?

Okay, everyone's had fun with these concerted and absolutely conscious attempts to piss me off through way of getting the absolute simplest of facts wrong, but I think it's gone far enough. We're all really excited about the new Elden Ring game from Fromsoft, and I understand fully how anticipation for getting the scoop on a title as promising as this one is going to get in the way of some games reporter's ability to do basic research. (Trust me, I feel that all the way.) But there comes a point where you're hammering home an easily fact-checked mistake, to the extent where entire articles have been published headlining specifically it, and it begins to seep from innocent unfamiliarity to wanton ignorance. So let me make it very clear for everyone at the back right now; Elden Ring is not the sequel to Dark Souls. It is the successor, but there's a world of difference in that simple synonym which diverges the definition significantly. So let's start at the simple beginning.

This really began when people began to note how similar Elder Ring looked to Dark Souls, with them both going for European Medieval fantasy settings as opposed to the feudal Japan cultural influences of Sekiro or industrial Victorian influence of Bloodbourne. (I'm not as familiar with either of those two titles and the lore around them, so I won't bring them into this, which should be fine as no one else seems willing to do that either.) Rationality would dictate this is because of the same base inspiration within the hearts of these worlds, Berserk, but without having played Elden Ring that's merely a supposition. Whatever the reason, the indication is clear; this isn't just going to be another one shot, this could very well be FromSoftware's next flagship series that they come back to now that Dark Souls is buried. Making it the Dark Souls successor. But regardless to what some art trying to claim, that doesn't automatically make it a sequel series.

In fact, when we really break it down to it's core, theorising that Elden Ring is a sequel to Dark Souls doesn't even really make sense if you understand what the Dark Souls franchise was about on even a base level, not even touching on the deeper hints of the lore and the various factions. And I don't care what 'George R.R. Martin' had to say about his work on a video game he'll never play and a series of games he hasn't played. This is a man who doesn't care about games, just telling stories, so I'm sure that when he heard this was a game that would follow Dark Souls he just went "Sure, it's a sequel. Whatever." Let's not use the ramblings of a 72 year old man as conclusive evidence fully detailing the structure of the FromSoftware library of franchises, not when there's a lot more very simple explanations that we could be learning from.

Let me lay it out for everyone, and bare in mind I'm about to spoil the entire Dark Souls franchise right now; there is literally no way that Elden Ring could take place within the Dark Souls universe, because that universe doesn't exist anymore. Or at least, everything recognisable and identifiable which makes the Dark Souls world stand out, was erased at the end of Dark Souls III. That was the entire purpose of that game, to close out that franchise as conclusively as possible. And given the tidbits of lore we've heard about Elden Ring so far, such as it being set in a universe ruled by demigod warlords, the new game isn't a prequel either. Remember that Dark Souls, as a franchise, rather helpfully covers the birth of the world and it's death, aligning with one of the utmost key themes of the series in the natural cycle of life. Nothing is meant to persist, all things wither, and everything ends eventually. Just like Dark Souls ended. It would be a literal betrayal of theme to continue it on in a sequel.

At the beginning the Dark Souls of timeline there was the 'age of ancients', an age characterised by a world still very much in formation and consisting of just the basic elements of nature and some Dragons, because I suppose Dragons exist outside the natural order of nature. (I guess they can, as a literary trope, be largely allegorical, so it's thematically justified.) In this age are Hollows, soulless husks of beings devoid of any higher function typically required for tasks such as thought or assuming purpose. That is until they stumble upon the First Flame, a primordial force of nature representative of its element; the First Flame is the personification of life, desire, drive, and the very concept of a soul. It's from the First Flame that these Hollows are ascended, gaining the souls of Lords, transforming them into god-like entities. These are Gwyn, The Witches of Izalith, Gravelord Nito, Seath the scaleless and the Furtive Pygmy. Together they overthrew the Dragons and ushered in a new age, the age of fire.

All the Dark Souls games take place at various points within the Age of fire, and the worlds we explore, Anor Londo, Dragleic, Lothric, are all kingdoms birthed from the age of fire, crafted through the power granted from the First Flame. These are kingdoms ruled by gods and other wielders of immensely powerful souls, and the size and prosperity of their domain is a direct reflection of the strengths of those souls. As such, it's no mistake that every single Dark Souls game takes us through these kingdoms in their twilight years, when the grandeur has faded and decay has set into every stone tile across the land. That is because Dark Souls tells the story of the time when life has reached its end for the first flame, because fire, as something which consumes to live, can never last forever. Lord Gwyn, however, was a man who built all he was around the power granted to him by the flame, and thus the reason these stories exist is because he struggled to prolong the flame indefinitely, and spat in the face of the natural order through doing so.

And make no mistake, prolonging the flame is an affront to nature. We're told right away how The Witches of Izalith tried to create their own artificial flame to replace the dying one, and in doing so created a profane uncontrollable chaotic flame that lashed out and destroyed their home, burning and mutating all in it's wake. As a force of nature, it is the fate of the First Flame to burn gloriously, to shine resplendently, and then to sputter and to die, but Gwyn couldn't accept that. For whatever reason, I suspect pride, he tried to keep the flame going by feeding it with the very souls it had granted him, anything to preserve the life and world that he had cultivated. His stubborn refusal to accept the inevitability of the end marks him as an enemy of fate itself, and the more he defies fate the more the world and its people suffer. It's even indicated, as the series goes on, that some of the most grotesque and twisted parts of the Dark Souls world are a direct result of this process of recycling souls that artificially prolonged the Age of Flame far beyond its appointed time. The suffering of the Dark Souls world comes from nature screaming out, begging to be allowed to die, because from that death something new can be born.

The age of Dark is foretold to follow Dark Souls, and though we don't know what that actually entails the promise is that it will resemble nothing of the god-ruled age before it. It's an unknowable quantity, a literary device given value for the very fact we will never see what it is and can only guess as to its look and function. Somewhere on the otherside of that will likely be a new age of Fire, but nothing of what Dark Souls is right now will survive to that new age, because as the fire dies so too does everything its power built. (As evidenced by the literal implosion of the worldspace in the final scenes of Dark Souls III) Dark Souls III ends, no matter what choice you make, with the First Flame either dead or moments from dying, granting the inevitable end of all Dark Souls was. It's a beautiful finale, and an exhale of relief for the struggles that characterised Dark Souls.

As such, Elden Ring cannot, under any circumstance, be a sequel to Dark Souls else it would be a total invalidation of what that ending, 5 years in the making, meant. Theoretically, at the furthest stretch, we could look at the world of Elden Ring as the next age of fire, but there seems to be entirely different world rules and overarching forces of nature, which have no relation to some primordial flame; that tells me we're seeing something entirely different. Sure, one might draw some base conceptual parallels between the Urdtree and the First Flame, as central forces of something important probably tied to the nature of the world, but that's just a trope of fantasy worlds. Or else are we going to wind in the Crystal from the various Final Fantasy games as evidence of how FF is within the Dark Souls universe? Make no mistake, no one who went to the effort to tell the story that Dark Souls did, about fighting against and then accepting the ultimate end, would sully that with a sequel; it would be the height of dishonesty to your own message. Dark Souls had been put to rest, and now something utterly new has arrived, it's time we approach that reality with the respect it deserves. And stop with the "is this a sequel?" articles, for everyone's sake.

Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger to Paradise

Chaos hates capitalism, and yet he participates in it. Ironic.

Climbing off of the success of previous E3 years, it seems Square Enix committed themselves to a notably low-stakes conference this year. That is to say, they showed off precious little of anything new apart from two games, both of which managed to disappoint in uniquely interesting ways. The start of the show kicked off with an indepth look at a lukewarm looking title that's deserving of it's own blog, but the end of the show ended with something so magical that I just couldn't let it wait any longer. I need to talk about it. So, what do you do, when you're Square Enix, and you've just managed to sweep up the world as they've fallen in love with your spate of  Final Fantasy games recently? You hire outside teams to make more, of course! With FF7Remake being such a success that rumours tell of a potential PC release just around the corner and Final Fantasy XVI already knocking people off their feet with little more than a single reveal trailer and an old-school fantasy aesthetic, it only makes sense to commit even more for greater results, right? But if there's one thing we should all take away from the newly revealed Chaos-Simulator, 'Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger to Paradise', it's that you should be careful what you wish for.

However starved the fans may be for content, and however much they may beg for ever more adventures with spikey-haired teens in fantastical worlds, there'll always be a point where the trigger of 'what the hell is this nonsense' overrides their desires. Such was rung loud and clear during the reveal trailer for 'Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger to Paradise', thanks to... well it's whole thing. You see, Stranger to Paradise is set to kick off a whole slate of 'Final Fantasy Origins' titles, wherein modern engines and development principles are bought to the old school 8-bit FF games in order to tell stories set in those universes but around the key events, thus buffing out the lore of those games. For a game like Final Fantasy 1, a title with practically no story over than it being a quest to slay some guy called Chaos, such designers have an uphill battle. And judging from that aforementioned reveal trailer, it was a battle that they lost.

All but the most forgiving fan on the planet recoiled a little on the inside when they saw this trailer, and that didn't come from the quality of the gameplay, but for the contents of it's dialogue. For you see, if there's one thing the trailer footage manged to let everyone know deeply and intrinsically, it's that our protagonist Jack really doesn't like Chaos. (The FF1 antagonist) In fact, I'd say he even hates Chaos, considering how much he talks about him. "I'm here to kill Chaos" "Looks like Chaos has been waiting for us" "I only know one thing; I want to kill Chaos. Need to. It's not a hope or a dream. It's like a hunger. A thirst" "You sure Chaos is here?" "This is the shrine of Chaos, he's here" "Chaos"  "We're here to kill Chaos" "I, am to become Chaos". All those was excepts from a 2 min 33 trailer, the name Chaos is said eight times. I invite you to watch the thing for yourself, but I'm telling you now that the only character trait we learn about our hero is how he wants to kill Chaos. I'm more than familiar with the melodrama of series' like this, I revel in it, but this seriously steps over the line into cringe territory, and the internet noticed right away.

Obviously this became a meme pretty much overnight, with people mocking the hilariously one-note trailer and it's depiction of the 'Warriors of Light'. Oh that's right, that odd-job assembly of what looks to be background characters from a low budget isekai; those are the protagonists. (Seems not just the dialogue was phoned in.) Bonus points go towards our leading man, Jack, who looks like a render of Eminem after he rolled out of bed in the morning. The man walks up to the castle of Chaos in nothing but a shirt and trousers, whilst his equally as forgettable friends a least had the common decency to wear armour. Of course, defenders have been quick to point out that this seems tied to the progression system, in that Jack will get more actual armour as he finds it during his adventure, but that doesn't excuse such a lacklustre base design. Maybe this is just coming from someone who's discovered Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, a series which has nothing but great unique designs for it's characters, but I really don't have time for these utterly uninspired designs anymore, it's boring. I can't care for it. It's muda. Muda muda.

Strangely, the low effort design and script cannot just be blamed on this game being some side project that Square hoofed to some no-name studio who couldn't care less. Stranger to Paradise is actually being actively developed by Team Ninja, no less, creators of the lauded Nioh souls-like games and some of the 3d Ninja Gaiden Games before that. And that boringly named protagonist Jack and his pathetically generic design, curtsey of Tetsuya Nomura. For those unfamiliar, that's the man who created Kingdom Hearts, worked on Final Fantasy XV for decidedly too long before he was kicked off the project, and now seems to be trying to stretch out his work on Final Fantasy 7 Remake to be work lasting for the rest of his life. He's also credited for designing Noctis Lucis Calem, protagonist of Final Fantasy XV, and though he's not exactly the most interestingly designed character in the franchise, Noctis is still leagues better than Jack here. What happened?

Chaotic shifts in branding, it would seem, because as Mr Nomura has been kind enough to share in recent details, Stranger to Paradise was designed to be a completely stand alone title with no connection to Final Fantasy. Apparently he was trying to envision a Final Fantasy game with no ties to the licence whatsoever, where the gameplay would be action based and dungeon-clearing oriented. Somehow that led to him designing a lead face with as much character in it as a concrete wall, apparently, but that does sort of make sense at least for why we have a protagonist named Jack, in a series where heroes are typically called stuff like 'Cloud', 'Tidus' and- 'Clive'? (Okay, I guess Final Fantasy XVI and Stranger of Paradise are more similar then we thought. I see why Square Enix chose to bring them together now.)

'Chao's Garden' from Sega's Sonic Adventure is an entirely separate-from-the-main-story addendum to that title for which the franchise wouldn't suffer at all were it to be removed, and yet many found it to be a valuable and worthwhile minigame that they enjoyed coming back to, for whatever reason. Stranger to Paradise is a little more than a minigame, being sold as a full release, but coming out as a prequel side-story game in the middle of the marketing for XVI and the episodic release of FF7R, it's easy to squint ones eyes and put this title in the same shoes. So what if the game seems to not have the most amount of effort behind it's words or character design, it's not the focus of Final Fantasy attention and fans have other games to flock to, so perhaps a little bit of half-assed work is fine. At least, that's the perception I get from this, even if personally I look upon this and worry that if Sqaure are allowing this cringe quality to be associated with their brand, what on earth are they cooking up in XVI proper? At the very least Square managed to put out a demo for Stranger of Paradise on the day it was revealed, so even if the trailer hit the world as badly as it did, the gameplay (crafted by a studio known for their gameplay) would speak for itself. So I wonder how that turned out like?

Chaos. In a word. The demo somehow hit the storefront in a completely corrupted state so that no one who downloaded it could even play the thing, something which took all of 24 hours to rectify for whatever reason. (How does that even happen?) And then some of the people who actually got to play the game found the thing be mediocre anyway, so this has been just a total failure of marketing all the way around at this point. (I don't have a PS5 so I can't judge for myself.) Now perhaps these are just kinks that Team Ninja fully except to iron out in the months to come, but I don't really think that's the case, do you? Stranger to Paradise is probably going to suck, and given the sheer volume of FF content flying our way of late we were bound to get one total failure in the mix. Or maybe this game will perform great regardless of it's content, propelled by sheer meme value; the world is so unpredictable nowadays I wouldn't rule anything out.

Dark Souls: Nightfall

 And then there was fire

Well would you look at that? A mod after my very own heart given my, often overbearing, adoration of the Dark Souls franchise. Anything that happens in this Dark twisted plain, forever situated at the very edge of a dying world, has my absolute attention right off the bat, which is something I didn't think I'd need to take into account anymore now that the series is good and dead after the successful completion of it's story. (Hear that? The series is over. No amount of Elden Ring is going to change that, because that game isn't a sequel!) But even having come to terms with that, there's still that nagging part of me which loathes to abandon a video game universe that once meant so much to me, because those memories, lasting and forged in sheer pain, tie me down. Thus I can only imagine it was in sort of recognition of those lingering memories, that Youtube Recommendations immediately hit me with the trailer for a brand new ambitious fan mod coming for Dark Souls Remastered, which looks to expand upon a game series I love.

Now mods aren't anything new to the Dark Souls world by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot of the most famous ones aren't really... designed to extend that Dark Souls experience. You know, that carefully constructed and weighed balance between tough but achievable which fans are forever butting heads against. The mods we see for Dark Souls games are typically huge overhauls that seek to just completely throw out pre-conceived notions of 'balance' and just make the game as hard as possible. Spawn several hundred more enemies in the game to stand in-between baked in spawning grounds? Sure. Enchant some enemies with a red-eyed aura that makes them Sekiro back to life after their first death, stronger then when the went down? Why not? Give us a randomiser mod so that the exquisitely intentional placement of the world and its items become a mismatched jumble of AI dictated chaos? You betcha, we're all over that! But what about that one mod which just wants to keep what makes Dark Souls special and provide more of it? Well, that's a tall ask and some might say an impossible one for someone who's not a trained and practised Game Developer. And to be fair I don't know the credits of the entire Team involved, but that's at the very least the mission statement for Dark Souls: Nightfall. 

To be brutally honest with you, I don't really like the name all that much. 'Nightfall' sounds a little obvious of a title for a Dark Souls related product, and certainly lacks the panache of another Dark Souls mod by one of this mod's creator's: Daughters of Ash. Speaking of which, it seems that the Daughters of Ash mod is a direct predecessor to this project, or at least that's the impression I get from looking at the personal web page of one involved developer: Grimruhk. But whilst that was an expansion upon the Souls world, this actually pitches itself as a direct sequel, which immediately makes me think about the sequel that was already made for Dark Souls, but then I remember how that was a surrealist journey through a land of no-consequence wherein you fought time travelling tree-giants and spent the entire length of the plot engaged in a side mission that didn't even address your primary reason for starting the journey in the first place. I can see why one fan took it into their own hands to make a sequel.

But what does a 'Sequel' even imply, what would something of that kin even look like? Well much like Daughters of Ash, the mod appears to be taking assets and world pieces from the base Dark Souls game and recycling them into this new mod space in the form of new encounters. An elegant solution, a gardener's solution actually, for it assures that everything we see will look and feel will fit as if it's from the Dark Souls that we recognise, and with the exception of some inflated models and added effects, it very much is. (Plus, I don't think Dark Souls has official Modding tools. Creating and adding in a whole new game's worth of original textures and meshes would probably be much more of a pain than it's worth.) The results actually do look inviting, even for someone as familiar with the base game as I am, for when the base game we're talking about is Dark Souls, more of the same is all great with me.

Of course, all that isn't to say that there aren't some new surprises waiting there for the hopeful who wants something new from their Souls adventure. One of the stand outs for the trailer was a new Katana type that appears to be two handed and is worn on the back of the player, like a Dai-Katana. Whatsmore, this weapon comes with a curiously new looking moveset that features a quick backdodge that I swear lifts the effects from the Milkring of Carthus from Dark Souls. The whole 'disappear like a phantom' thing brings back those sore PVP memories at the very least, even if the effect is wholly custom. The mod promises to have other little surprises like that, and a diehard is certainly going to find it a special moment to stubble on something they think they know only to have it totally surprise them in a fun way.

    

Recent years have seen an huge influx in all of these types of crazy Modding projects that go on for multiple years and aim to cure cancer or something, to the point where they're almost becoming as big events as a new game release itself. The Witcher 3 similarly just dropped a brand new anticipated Quest mod that has some groundbreaking, and slightly controversial, technological techniques in it's construction. Personally I love to see the way fans are taking control of the games they're given and turning it into their spot in the limelight, it's a special dedication to something you love as well as a wonderful way to market oneself and your talents, all and all it's a win win! (Though I wonder what the FromSoftware team make of projects like this. Are they flattered or insulted that one would deface their work? They're a weird company, it could go either way.)

We're due a glimpse into the realms under the Undead Asylum as soon as this December, which marks it as one of the few big mod projects out there with an honest-to-goodness release date and not just a- "Hey, this is cool isn't it? Well we're expect it come 2030 and be happy if it comes at all." Whatsmore, this release date it exactly one month before when Elden Ring's first, almost certain to be delayed, release date is due. I hope that's a coincidence and not a matter of "Oh crap, Elden Ring's release date was just announced! We need to hurry and get this out before it gets buried under the new game!" As it plays out right now, the average Souls fan can find themselves enjoying this remix of a classic masterpiece as an entrée to the Elden Ring main course. One last send off of the franchise we've loved for the past 10 years now. (So no pressure to the mod team.)

The age of fire will never truly die whilst there's the calibre of creator out there willing to devote years of their personal life to projects like this. And those that can't let the Souls universe go can rest easy in the fact that neither can others out there. It's gaming royalty now, and getting mods with stupid amounts of love and effort in them is par for the course. I'm just glad to see that the original Dark Souls is finally getting the modding love that the other games were getting due to it actually now owning a decent port. (Prepare to die Edition was a sin against computer gamers everywhere.) Can't wait to play it for myself once Elden Ring gets indefinitely delayed and we're all desperately crawling for a souls-like to fill up that heart-void. Till December!

Vampire The Masquerade: Swansong

 I see your white door

Not that long ago I dived into the wild and crazy World of Darkness video game universe to talk about all the plethora or 'in-process' or recently released games that were coming towards us waiting 'Vampire: The Masquerade' fans in order to soothe or aching hearts after the whole 'Bloodlines 2 losing half of it's development and going on extended hiatus' incident. As much as it saddens me to say, in that time we've heard absolutely nothing new from the game and I think (judging from all that's come out regarding warring opinion's of direction and higher-up dissatisfaction) we're edging ever closer to either a complete reboot of the project or just a straight cancellation. Honestly, I hope for neither eventuality as I was really liking what I was personally seeing, but there we are. During my hopeless groping search for literally anything worthy of clinging onto, I spotted this little game called 'Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong' which intrigued me for existing in name only.

Typically whenever a new game gets announced you want to do that along some form of content to at least prove to the public that something is indeed being made. Be that a trailer, some screenshots or, if you're feeling real spicy, maybe even a demo. (It happens! Don't give me that look!) Swansong hit us so abruptly and so 'sans-trailer', that I initially thought this was a surprise reveal of the new subtitle for the Vampire game. (This was before I discovered that 'The Masquerade' was in reference to the tabletop's edition. Or that the game was even related to a tabletop to begin with.) It was only later that I realised this was actually it's very own game with nothing more than vague words that sort of implied we were looking at something narrative based with RPG elements to it. It wouldn't be until this E3, actually, that we managed to get a trailer for the game which could put it's money where it's mouth was, thus we now have footage to flesh out this proposition for us.

Or rather, this is a trailer that has fleshed out what one third of this game is going to be, because we know from the mission statement that this is going to be a game of multiple perspectives, so our enigmatic developers are still playing things close to the chest on that front. Instead we have a single perspective being highlighted, which at least shows how the team are dedicated to making each part of the game substantial enough to stand up on it's own. What we're still missing, however, is the concrete evidence that this game is an 'RPG' as the initial statements claim. Remember that? 'A narrative RPG'. What does that even mean? 'A Narrative game' makes me think of something akin to 'Life is Strange' or a Telltale title, where you follow a story and make choices for how events should play out, sort of like a 3D interactive VN, but RPG opens that definition up so much more. Is there going to be levelling? Skillpoints? Combat? You leave us with so much to speculate on, Big Bad Wolf Studio!

So what of the trailer? Actually things seem pretty intriguing, with as getting to see a rather disturbed looking female vampire who seems to be caught between some sort of delusion of being a mother-like figure in some idyllic mindspace and the harsh reality being a Kindred. Of course, we're currently looking at the Malkavian's perspective on this Swansong story, with this particular branch of vampirism being forever renowned for their loose grip on reality fuelling seemingly random bouts of lunacy covering the odd kernel of supernatural perception. We've never really gotten the chance to explore one of these kindred in a video game format before, which could prove quite interesting. The most I can think of is in Bloodlines one, where if you picked the Malkavian then you would be treated to singsong dialogue choices that would infuriate just about everyone around with their indirection. This looks a lot more involved than that.

There was even hints of actual gameplay in this reveal, and when I say 'hints' I mean actual slithers of barely anything tagged with the label 'beta gameplay' to let us know the developers have actually coded something during all of this time. Once again, we've no indication of any of these RPG elements that have been hinted, but there's plenty of Life is Strange parallels to me made with all the personal one-on-one conversational moments we're spying and the walking around. There will be walking in this game. Okay, at the very least we saw our player character dressed in a police uniform and walking towards a cordoned-off section of what I can presume is a classified crime scene, which implies some form of stealth here, but that could be as 'involved' as your typical David Cage game for all we know; actual gameplay is still very much sitting in the 'you'll have to trust us on this one' camp.

Which leaves us with little more than speculation, my absolute speciality, for deciding what we've got in store for us. For which I'll immediately say, I really want to see some examples of mind-bending Malkavian nonsense winding it's way into the actual narrative. That lore alone serves as an invitation for some really creative and non-conventional storytelling techniques, and I just love the idea of the studio choosing to challenge themselves like that. (Provided they actually live up to it.) I'm guessing that RPG elements that might show up in the game will be more useful in a social sense, which would fit in with one of the tenets of World of Darkness as a whole. Multiple endings should be a given, I don't think that's even speculation. And mostly I hope for a genuine and worthwhile crossing over for the perspectives in this narrative, don't have the three stories mash into one for the sake of it, have their goals and desires wrap up together in a manner that feels unintentional, and then you could even get away with not even having the protagonists meet. That's pretty much the extent of what I'm hoping for right now.

Curiously, and fitting to my tastes, Swansong appears to be putting players in the shoes of various members of the Boston Camarilla in their struggle to maintain the masquerade on the verge of something that could endanger it all. I've always wanted to be in the shoes of the 'law' for this world without law, and thus I think this will make a grand backbone for the various tales to shoot off from, especially as questions of loyalty and politics start to be thrown up. I can't wait for some of the hard choices and frayed allegiances that could expand from these sorts of narrative threads, as well as that inevitable opportunity to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down which I may or may not shoot exclusively for like the unhinged anarchist I am at heart.  

I've said it before but somehow, inexplicably, it's still a good time to be a Vampire fan. Even as the flagship title softly fades as it dwindles from sight, the shear smattering of different titles out there are enough to satiate those willing to seek them out. The only question comes from how many people are willing to do such, as there were still people during the Swanswong trailer that didn't know this wasn't Bloodlines 2. Maybe there needs to be a more centralised advertising effort from the Masquerade rights holders (Paradox) to ensure despairing fans become fully aware of the sheer wealth of options in front of, next to and behind them. At the very least let the guys over at DONTNOD know they've got some serious competition in the works...

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

 Not THAT Avatar

So we endured a Ubisoft conference where the big French boys did their darndest to make out that they weren't working on any of those projects that we'd be waiting on for the better part of the last quarter century. You know what I'm talking about; that 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' game which has been so quiet since it was last seen, and promised so much back when it was, that it sort of feels like Ubisoft were scammed and are too embarrassed to announce it. (Just give me that swearing monkey, he's all I want!)  Then there's some people looking forward to that 'Skull and Bones' ship combat game which means absolutely nothing to me, but I have to agree how it's excessively weird that we haven't seen hide nor hair of it for several years. I mean, the framework for that game was already created by 'Assassin's Creed Black Flag', do they really need to build it all from the ground up? Heck, in the time it's taken that game to be made, Assassin's Creed has had the chance to go back to the ship combat and reiterate it twice. (Are we getting our ship game or not?) Then there's the big one, our out-of-action stealth hero, now the last of his kind, Sam Fisher, has been relegated to supporting roles in the Tom Clancy game series for too long. He needs to return in a big way, bring us Splinter Cell. So which one of these big three question marks did Ubisoft resolve during the show?

Well after an excruciating E3 which only now, after two undeniably worse shows, scores as middling in the whole 2021 E3 pantheon, (I thought this was the worst it could get, then I saw Gearbox E3) we all breathed a collective sigh of relief once Yves Guillemot stumbled in front of a zoom call. Then we all remembered all the troubles going on within Ubisoft that Yves had remained silent for (even refusing outright to accept responsibility for) and that relief became bitter sweet. But at the very least this would prove that something special was waiting on the otherend of all this torment because no game studio in their right mind would be so utterly clueless as to think that ending on a glory shot of their CEO is the perfect fit for an E3 conference. Then again, Gearbox sacrificed half their runtime to watching Randy Pitchford live out his childhood fantasies; so what do I know?

Once he was done crooning, Yves chimed those words we all wanted to hear "There's one more thing" or something to that nature which literally every gaming press conference needs to say in order to not get ridiculed for their efforts. End on a big note, always. The 'showstopper' as we like to call it. Ubisoft were unfortunate enough, this year, to literally be the first conference following up the Summer Games Fest which ended with freakin' Elden Ring, so right away we knew they were up against it. But it was fine, because they had so many promising upcoming titles in the works that the finale simply couldn't be a misfire, now could it? And that certainly didn't seem the case when we opened up on a lush jungle paradise and theories started flying. In my mind, I instantly saw something bright and alien and thought "Oh my god, we're seeing an entirely new planet for Beyond Good and Evil 2! The game's real!", others were much more hopeful and thought "The jungle? Are those 'Chaos Theory' throwbacks I hear? Sam Fisher here we come!" And then we saw the blue people.

I think that accurately picking out the worst part of this feeling that descended on all of us at that moment is tricky, because it's this amalgamous mix of disappointment and utter bewilderment. Because you see, it's not as though we didn't recognise these overgrown Smurfs, I don't think there's a single developed civilisation on the planet who doesn't recognise these long necked azure creeps. They're Na'vi. Freaking Na'vi. The people who have hair sex in the Avatar film. The Avatar Film from 12 years ago. Those Na'vi. They're getting a game. Avatar is getting a game. Not 'The Legend of Aang'- the bad Avatar. Why? Why are we still here? Ubisoft and their practical jokes might just be the end of me, because this has to be a practical joke and what the what-

Sorry, I sort of lost it there. Because that was about the level of coherency my mind was running at when we first saw these guys bumble onto our E3 stage. What followed, oh so predictably, was a CGI romp through the world of Pandora where a bunch of 'bad guy' humans try to shoot some 'good guy' Na'vi on their hunt for Unobtanium. Oh, did you remember how the special ore which serves as the Mcguffin for the Avatar film was called 'Unobtanium'? Just in case all the pretty visuals and flashy effects made you forget that despite it's gilded presentation this series-to-be has been about as deep as puddle. Living up to the heart of that movie just perfectly, this final reveal featured no gameplay, no hints at gameplay, or anything that could feasibly construed as 'substance' during it's runtime. Just some CGI... It looked pretty at least.

So can we ask why are we getting an Avatar game? I feel like that's a fair ask. Don't get me wrong, I understand that through bullish pigheadness and a studio that trusts him far too much, James Cameron has succeeded in shoving his fantasy retelling of Dances with Wolves down the throats of everyone. For those who aren't keeping track, it currently sits atop the throne of the highest grossing movie of all time, mostly through warrant of it getting extended cinema runs years after it whelmed the world back in 2009. "Wait, I thought that record was nicked by Avengers Endgame" you may think, and rightly so. Avengers Endgame neatly and impressively managed to swoop in for that record with a fairly normal cinema run time in comparison. (Although it was still extended far past your average movie because, ya know; Marvel) But then James, a sore loser apparently, went and pursed yet another Cinema run in China a decade after initial release in order to steal back his crown. The man won't let bygones be bygones, and now he's teaming with Yves Guillemot to perpetuate his blue hair mating-things in the games industry too.

To be clear, yes I know the real reason Avatar released in China was to be in preparation for these three new movies in the 'Avatar universe' that have been on the way since year dot, and I suspect that's the reason we're seeing this here game. But divorcing that behind-the-scenes garbage for the facts at hand, at face value this really does look like Ubisoft jumping on the in-thing literally over a decade after the boom and looking hopelessly out of touch for doing so. Whatsmore, this trailer proved they had nothing to show for the game, so they easily could have held off until one of those movies were formally announced in order to not come across as actual madmen. At the very least we can maybe extrapolate this game announcement to mean that one of the trio of Avatar films is on the verge of getting a concrete release date, but this entirely empty trailer could very well mean this game is in the early Alpha stages, (Ubisoft are the arbiters of early announcements afterall) so I'm not sure what to take away from- wait, this game's coming out next year? 

Huh? So I guess the tentative release date for Avatar 2, which was locked in so many years ago, was 2022 which is now right around the corner. Is James Cameron really expecting to hit that? Well he's commissioned a video game for the same year so I guess the answer is yes; but seeing as how we don't have a trailer or even a title for this Avatar film (don't say it's 'Avatar two') I have to wonder if this is just a delay waiting to happen. And just how long have Ubisoft been working on this game to the rate where they cannot show off Gameplay but expect to hit next year for release. Don't tell me they actually consciously chose not to show off gameplay for a new game in the modern year. That would be insanely dumb for Ubisoft to do as it shows the height of mistrust for your team's abilities. I don't know, I feel like something's going on behind the scenes here that I can't put my finger on. Guess next year it'll all come out, for better or for worse

What we can say definitively is thus; an Avatar game is being made and I for one cannot say I personally know anyone who asked for this. And yet, going to the Ubisoft announcement video and reading the comments and checking the likes, it would seem that the audience it there. Somewhere there have been these hoards of Avatar fans that have languished unloved for an entire decade, now getting the recognition that they crave. And for those beleaguered I'm happy, you're getting the game you've waited for and I hope it's everything you dreamt of. For Ubisoft, however, I feel a plethora of emotions, mostly negative, but chiefly concern. This is yet another big game project they're waving under their already overstuffed wing brimming with large projects that are largely MIA, so what hope does this one have? Maybe with the dragon that is James Cameron looming over them, Ubisoft might actually be able to finish this game and get it out. Maybe...

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

 They're back. God help us all.

Ubisoft might hold the record as the only developers out there who've managed to finagle the rights to a main Nintendo mascot and get to develop a game with him free outside of the direct preview of Nintendo. I mean, obviously Nintendo show up for their due look over to okay the product before it sees the light of day, I don't think anyone is questioning whether that happens; but Ubisoft get to stick their name on the box as the sole developers; they don't have to pretend to be part of the Nintendo conglomerate. That's pretty crazy, don't you think? No other developer would be afforded that right, and most Nintendo Studios don't even get individual names. Guess all you need to do to get some recognition and respect around the Nintendo offices is literally be their biggest international competition, and to offer up the soul of your worthless franchise for the exchange. And yes, I do consider Rabbids a worthless franchise. Maybe 10 years ago that wouldn't be the case, but thankfully we live in ever so slightly more enlightened times. (Can't believe humanity let that become a franchise... what were we thinking?)

That same special place in ear-scrapping hell that most people reserve exclusively for the minions, is my person sauna for the Rabbids. I hate their intentionally plain ugly design, their generic irksome voices, their gormless gaping maws and most of all I hate the way they managed to utterly destroy the Rayman franchise by way of annexation. Rayman birthed these monstrosities, and for his trouble his series was taken over by them. Ubisoft would rather dedicate their funds towards making their little pale snot eating money printers go on another adventure than support my main man with the floating hands. Heck, I don't think it's any coincidence that the second the franchise ditched these hell spawn, what followed was undoubtedly the single best Rayman game ever made in 'Legends'. Which is currently on it's way to being 8 years old. (Don't mind me whilst I shrivel up into a ball and fade to dust.)

But I can't mourn Ray's death forever, and what better way to honour his legacy than by going to a game where you literally get the chance to shoot Rabbids to death. (Or just to unconsciousness. But I choose to believe that's quickly followed by death) This spawned 'Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle' and to this day I cannot possible fathom a more dream game for someone like me. First of all it's a game that features warfare against the faux cute mascots of destruction whom I've loathed since first inception, but much more importantly is the gameplay. Who'd have thought there'd ever be a Mario game that has the X-Com style of turn based tactics to it? And I love the X-Com turned based formula! It's as though it were a game made specifically for me.

And what's more it was actually good. I suspect that may be due to the exacting standards of the Nintendo quality division as much as for the developer over at Ubisoft, (If left to their own devices they'd have pawned off recolours of Mario's outfits as microtransactions) but the result is another modern classic under the plumber's stuffed belt. The levels were fun, the fights felt engaging, it didn't get wobbly under the weight of it's own systems, and it featured Luigi as a battle hardened sniper. Any game in which Luigi gets to hit us all with that 1000 yard square is destined for greatness in my book. But alas I'm not sure the game sold so well and thus chances of a sequel were ever going to be sli- oh wait, didn't I bring up this whole thing because a sequel was literally just announced?

Oh that's right! 'Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope' (Would it kill ya to use 'and' Ubisoft?) hopes to capture lighting in a bottle for a second time with the help of some intergalactic travel, a few remixed core gameplay systems and Rabbid Rosalina. Although if you think that's bad then it's perhaps in your sanity's best interest that you don't look into the toothy aberration that are the new Lumas.Why did you have to ruin poor celestial, grace-strewn, dignified Rosalina for us? Also- that title. 'Sparks of Hope'. It sounds like lyrics for the new Smash title song, doesn't it? It's not straight-forward and to-the-point like 'Kingdom Battle' is, I feel like it could do with a little of form correction. But I'm really pulling at threads here, the truth is that it's another XCOM Mario and in my heart of hearts I all the way down for some fun like that.

So does the thing look any good? Of course it does, it's a Nintendo approved product. Throwing players into the new locales fraught with storms and Grecian-style beaches is never going to be enough to overpower the sheer style of modern Mario, and I love that Ubisoft were able to emulate the same clean look for the Plumber of the realm rather than having to try their own hand at envisioning him. (I guess it's just a happy coincidence that their Rabbids design lines up so well with Nintendo's modern Mario, huh?) Some of the fantastical world design that we've seen from the reveal do one-up what the first game pulled off, though, and come into something just mind-bogglingly gorgeous to look at. Some of this looks Disney-quality level of design down there, I'd say that I didn't know Ubisoft had it in them but that wouldn't be true, world design has always been their forte.

What I'm actually curious about is the brand new reimagining the team have treated the tried and tested turn based strategy formula to, which we get a glimpse of here in the trailer. From the looks of it, on your turn the player is given a circle within which they get a limited time to do whatever they want to and position themselves in whatever position they feel they need to. Now at face value this sort of looks like an accessibility tool to help out newcomers to the genre type, as one of the most frustrating things one can go through is a misclick that throws your entire plan out of whack. (Trust me, that pain is very fresh now that I'm playing through 'Divinity: Original Sin 2' on Tactician difficulty) But I also wonder how exploitable this will be for veterans. Will multiple actions be allowed within the timelimit, are we able to move after an action, could we essentially use something like this to play as a 'rogue-duellist'?  Sneaking out from behind cover to do excessive damage and then taking cover before the round is up with a free action? And whatsmore, is this going to slow down matches at all? Tacticals games in this vein can already drag on, and I feel this might be an opportunity to serious exacerbate the issue unless balanced to a tee.

It's hard to really nail down things right now because we're really just looking at teases, something the Nintendo conference would go on to mirror after a few days, but I can't really find anything to be significantly worried about. Knock on wood and pinch my nose super tight, but games in this vein seem to always be some sort of good in their own right, and though  I actually refuse to look it up I've never heard of a turn based tactical game be a steaming mess. (Ignorance is total bliss today) And though I loathe them, some of the Rabbid designs do look a little fun- fun to shoot in the face as a dual wielding Mario that is- and can we really ask for anything more in our video games than the chance to shoot a Rabbid? What an actually cool reveal that came out of E3, I'm not really used to that in such a low-key year for reveals, and to think that was only the third coolest Nintendo product... there's some exciting looking games lined up that I'm buzzing for. (At least this means you can go and pick up the original Kingdom Battle for cheap now; retroactive support ya'll!)

Rainbow Six Extraction

Call it 'Quarantine' again you cowards!

Remember all that stuff I said about Ubisoft franchises sort of losing what made them special and becoming something else entirely? Yeah, that's pretty much what this game personifies. I don't even rightly understand it, truth be told, it's as though Ubisoft have all these grand ideas for games that they want to make in all these different genres, but absolutely no faith in establishing a new IP or anything truly out there. Maybe that would explain why they turn around and make these games that try to be different, yet are tied down with a desire to be similar to the last entry, and end up never quite nailing the benchmark feeling that they were shooting for to begin with. It's a game of compromise every step of the way, and I think that it really does hurt the developers around them given just how much of a market share Ubisoft have their hands on. Oh, you think I'm being melodramatic and picking on Ubisoft because it's fashionable? First-of-all, I've been picking on Ubisoft since the launch of Assassin's Creed 3, and secondly we're looking at a Rainbow Six game with Aliens in it. So yeah.

Rainbow Six is the series adapted from the works of Tom Clancy to depict a highly specialised military unit who work to save the world against the various terroristic threats that befall it- basically just like every other Tom Clancy story in the world except this time there's a team instead of one really buff man. My introduction to the franchise was the absolutely stellar third person team-based tactical shooter 'Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2'; a game which took and nailed the tactical shooter genre with absolute gusto. I mean it may not have had the level of depth to it that SWAT 4 has or anything, but for an experience designed to be open for everyone it truly did an admirable job in simulating the job of a squad leader with setting up tactical breaches, exploiting choke points, having clear sweeps, and just about everything you'd expect from a game like this.

And I played it to death, utterly and truly. Vegas had an almost mulitplayer-esque unlock system in it wherein you unlocked new gear and weaponary as you earned 'experience' by killing things and completing objectives, and the best gear was locked so high along the XP trail that you were encouraged to either play the campaign an ungodly amount of time or grind the multiplayer. I came to the game years after the multiplayer dried up, so I was all about that campaign. By the last time I played it, I could run pretty much run most of the missions solo because I'd memorised enemy layout like an insane person. The game was grounded, but not boring. Versatile, but not overwhelming. It was exactly the sort of game that Tom Clancy would have been proud of for his military obsessive fictional stories. (Actually, one I assume he was proud of, given it came out when he was still alive.)

Nowadays Rainbow Six only comes before the word 'Siege'. Made as a cobbled together revival of the work that went into the cancelled Rainbow Six game which I was simping for back in the day, Siege is a mutliplayer title that I think few can deny is the single premier multiplayer tactical game on the market right now. Even when I want to hold Ubisoft's feet to the coals for all the half-measures and ignored potentials in their library, I take a moment to acknowledge how Siege is the exception to that rule, because even a broken clock is right twice a day. But it's a multiplayer game, with a less than friendly community attached to it, so I don't get the chance to live out my stupid tactical commander fantasies that I came to this series for. Thus I was so excited when I heard about the upcoming 'Rainbow Six: Quarantine'. Finally, I thought, a return to form!

How foolish I was.

Billed as a 'spin-off' to Siege, and renamed to 'Extraction' for some reason... (Ya bunch of cowards!) the new Rainbow Six features those operatives from the main Siege imbued with the personality traits that could only be dreamt up by a fanfic.net writer. You know, the sort of character where everyone is sort of larger than life and makes sure to lay themselves out on the table with every sentence, also the sort of personality traits that don't originate from the actual game because there these 'characters'  were just classes with faces. These opertaives are then sent into dens of extra-terrestrials that resemble grown-up inklings in order to go through objective based tactical clearing gameplay with your online friends and come out the other side with some sort of McGuffin. There's so much there I want to like, caked in a lot more I find totally alien. Pardon the pun.

"Where does this come from?", you might ask, and the answer is actually pretty simple. So Siege does these events from time to time where they shake up the year with limited time event modes. One such event featured aliens like this in a sort of horde survival mode. It was a welcome change to the formula and enjoyable enough for the time. How that ballooned into a full-blown spin-off is beyond me, I thought fans just wanted that mode to be made permanent- ah, but that must be it! Ubisoft heard the talk about 'I would pay full price for this' and had the whole 'Euro signs in their eyes' moment. Thus was born another Rainbow Six Siege game stepping away from the storybased fun that I assume only I really want at this point. Instead we've got Aliens. Whatsmore, according to the footage someone thought it insanely clever to (in that stereotypical fashion of making a name and then abbreviating it) have these enemies called 'Archies'. Really? 'Archies'? Now I'm just imaging every Alien as a ginger haired stud looking to tell me about "the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school football."

So why haven't I spoken about the raw facts about the game? It's looks or gameplay? Well that's because the trailers we saw were supercut in such an odd way that we never really got to see a proper match play out. But in essence it looks exactly like Siege, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if all new assets were lifted out of unused Siege content, and the gameplay is GTFO. Yeah, Ubisoft didn't come up with anything original, they just ripped off GTFO and made their game run better because of course they did, they're a multimillon Euro company. Although I have to say that GTFO certainly does look considerably more hardcore, if that's the measurement you want to address quality with. Ubisoft really didn't want to put a proper gameplay run together for this one, which I can only assume means they're still trying to nail it. For those who want that, I guess.

I'm not trying to denigrate those who want a Rainbow Six game like this, because from what they've shown even I admit it does look decent. I'm just bitter that it seems to have come at the cost of yet another opportunity to treat us beleaguered. Once upon a time EA were rode across the coals for openly stating their desire to move away from the 'dying' (See: "Not as easily exploitable") single player market, and I feel like Ubisoft are trying to do the same without saying it. (Heck, look at what they did to Ghost Recon.) I suppose at the end of the day I can't complain too hard, because at least the games I like are getting an entry. (The Splinter Cell fan in me was weeping after this conference.) If tactical Inkling hunting is for you, congrats your game has come. Now don't mind me as I sulk back to my SWAT game...   

The Evil Dead

Groovy

 All the way back in 1981, then amateur director Sam Raimi would drive into the woods with a few friends a handful of actors and some recording equipment and they came back with footage that would make them immortal. For such a humble beginning, the Evil Dead franchise really has gone to shape the horror genre substantially in its time, helping to totally evolve the melodious, often slow, pace of those terrible hauntings into something punchier and more commanding. It changed how gore was looked at in movies like this, and in doing so was influential in changing views on movie gore in general for at that point it was still all very taboo. I think it's safe to say, then, that the current climate of Horror movies that we endure in today's world (largely repetitive trite) is likely, at least to some degree, due to their influential trendsetting. As such it's probably The Evil Dead's due to pay horror fans a little reparation work, no? The TV show was fun, but how about us Horror gamers who were affected by proxy due to how Hollywood horror influenced Video game horror? Hmm? We're getting a game Evil Dead too? That'll do for starters...

Horror is one of the most oversaturated markets of games out there right now, because everybody and their mother thinks that making a horror game is the easiest in to the video game world. And to be honest they're all absolutely right, because making a Horror experience can be a great way to develop skills of setting atmosphere and influencing the audience, without having to worry about developed and satisfying gameplay loops. But the consequence of this horror deluge is that the genre does sort of lose it's lustre on the modern stage and one can even come to question whether gaming horror is a thriving genre at all, or merely one that flounders the most as it drowns in a sea of it's own waste. The Evil Dead game which rocked up in full force at the Summer Games Fest certainly holds it's horror associations loosely, but the name alone ties them back into this market; thus I wonder how well it might do, especially in a market which (unfortunately) largely doesn't seem to remember it's name at all. I suppose that potential success will come mostly down to raw quality at this point.

When we first saw this title teased, it sort of looked like a horde-mode survival game made on the cheap that was looking to place itself as a small fun party game like 'Friday the 13th: The Game' did. Just a little fun adventure full of violent murdering with a tad of asymmetric multiplayer thrown in there for prosperities sake if you're really lucky. Now given it's full gameplay reveal, in a trailer narrated by the legendary Bruce Campbell himself, that is pretty much what we're looking at except I'm surprised to note that whatever studio is working on this project really managed to get their development dollars to work for them. I mean the animations look clean, the models are great and, though this is just my impression from having observed the thing, it looks like a supremely robust experience; maybe even a fun one. Then again I suppose this wasn't a Kickstarter affair, so some party really did have the money and confidence to make this thing real.

So who are they? The mysterious developers who jumped aboard a movie licence project in the modern age with investors? You may think that sounds like a boring query, but I'm actually super curious considering how vehemently such projects have been rejected by the industry over the years making them almost always cursed ventures for both developers and Hollywood to embark on. If someone is looking to single-handily bring back movie licence gaming I want to see their face. Well on publishing you have 'Boss Team games', who I mistakenly first mistook for 'Boss key games' and nearly had a heart attack. (I thought you were dead!) No, Boss Team are responsible for a Cobra Kai mobile game too, so they're new to this world of licencing. No, it's Saber Interactive who are the brawn behind this decent looking game.

Saber have been alive since 2001 and have the lucky privilege  to be have gotten involved with and helped develop some of the most impressive titles it's possible to have on a resume. They helped 343 Industries create the remastered version of 'Halo: Combat Evolved', handled the remaster of the ever popular Ghosterbusters video game, worked on the remaster for Crysis (You know, the one that came out just a year before the upcoming remake was announced) and are working both on a Switch port for Kingdom's Come Deliverance and the Next gen version of the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. So these are no fresh faced fellows, completely new to this field; the know what they're doing. Oh and to slide into that 'licenced game' niche; they were also the team behind the impressive looking World War Z video game which I always felt like never got the long-term due it was deserved. (I guess Left 4 Dead style gameplay only works for the masses in first person or something...)

So now everything the trailers have shown off makes a little more sense, this is a game made by folk with the experience and resources to make it as good as they're saying it looks. (could this be one of those mythical 'honest trailers' that the prophecy spoke of?) And it would have to be considering that what The Evil Dead is going for is perhaps the perfect trifecta of multiplayer titles like this so they're not going to be short of competition. 4 Players, wave survival, Asymmetric elements. (It's not exactly the most unique ingredients in the kitchen) As such I think this is a game that's going to have to rely on the strength of the Evil Dead franchise it has behind it and the heart of the movies that such imbues. Or rather, the heart of the movies after the mid-point of Evil Dead 2, as before that the franchise was trying to be scary and from then on it evolved to a sort of self-aware creepy action silliness which makes this series stand out like no other. Now conceptually that does create a bit of a catch 22 when that franchise needs a great game to stand up on, but the team seem confident the formula will work itself out and I defer to their, hopefully more researched, opinion.

From the trailers we've seen that the game will take from the 'Ash vs The Evil Dead' TV show, both for characters and in the rendering of the main Ash himself. That of course means the return of the iconic Chainsaw hand, shotgun combo with the blue shirt and brown pants that at this point I'm starting to believe Ash has never taken off. But we're also seeing some of the supporting cast from that show and I think, although we only get to see some of these characters from the back so it's hard to say for certain, a few of the original cabin members from the 1981 movie. Including elements from that does go a way to making this a celebration of the franchise that is just going to drawn in fans like a mothlamp, that and the fact the original cabin is going to be a battlegrounds on which to fight off the demon spawn. Bruce teased multiple locations, but apparently that's something the team want to keep dubious for the moment. (I'm hoping for an appearance from the S-Mart store from the show)

The big reveal for this gameplay, in my mind, was the aforementioned asymmetry, which could be the extra spice to really give this game a little much-needed staying power as long as they don't do a Dying Light and lock that feature behind a preorder DLC. (people love killing their friends, don't charge them extra to do so.) It looks as though there will certainly be AI enemies to keep players busy so it's not going to be a case of split lobbies where you can never find a full team because everyone wants to play the monsters. (One of the things that killed 'Evolve') From what we've seen, the variety available to 'demon players' has the promise to be actually impressive, with your everyday Deadites being playable alongside that creepy teleporting Eligos Demon from the show whom I always thought had a fantastic, almost Doom-esque, design to him. Keep pulling from the sources like that and Saber Interactive may not have a ceaseless font of content or anything, but they'll be enough to build a solid foundation that may just pay for itself.

Four player multiplayer chaos seems like the obvious choice for The Evil Dead, even if it's not exactly what I would have done with the storied franchise. It's been over 10 years since anyone tried an original story for the Evil Dead games we've seen over the decades, and maybe that'll have a stronger effect on the masses. Removing my love for the franchise and approaching it from the viewpoint of someone who knows nothing about it, I can understand people looking at this and thinking it's cool but not seeing anything exactly special, and that feels like a huge loss when there could be a truly brilliant darkly comedic horror single player title hiding in the DNA here somewhere, Maybe Saber Interactive aren't the ones to bring that out, and given their history of games that wouldn't exactly be their wheelhouse anyway, but maybe a little renewed franchise interest after this would open up the way for someone a little more creatively ambitious. But I'm courting hypotheticals again, for the present we have a solid looking survival game with a badass leadman on the front cover and that's all I'm asking for. 

Divinity: Original Sin Review

Seven grants abundance 

The end of the Journey

'Divinity: Original Sin 2' was a game that pretty much tore up the scene when it was first dropped upon the unsuspecting masses of the RPG world all the way back in the bygone year of 2017. It won multiple award shows, topped many people's 'best Modern RPG' list and remained there, catapulted the slowly rising Larian Studios into the stratosphere, got ported to just about everything with a hard drive and even won its developer the highly sought-after contract for Baldur's Gate 3. That last one is the stickler, because it seems as though the entire CRPG genre had been vying to make their own version of Baldur's Gate for years now for want of a third title that was assumed to be forever lost. No one really ever expected that game to be made, but Larian had it dangled in front of their faces and they jumped at the opportunity so hard that they had to literally drop a project mid marketing cycle in order to focus fully on BG3. (RIP 'Divinity: Fallen Heroes'. We'll never know thee.)

So with all of this fame and adoration, I really wanted to see what all the fuss was about for myself. Join in on the Original Sin 2 fun and all that, but there was one problem; I'd never played a Divinity game in my life. Now if you're a normal person this isn't really a problem at all, because you'll just throw yourself into the game and expect to pick up the relevant context and world as you go along, but I've never worked like that. I need to know context, I thirst for context, and if your series has a rich backlog of games and stories that led up to this one, it feels like my duty to familiarise myself so that I can fully appreciate the journey this franchise has gone through. It was the same loop of 'buy the entire series and work my way up' that I went through when I got a passing interest in 'Splinter Cell: Blacklist' a while back, and I simply loved that summer of Stealth military action experiences. (Apart from Double Agent. Screw Double Agent.) I figured I'd just do that again. I put that plan into action about three years ago.

Turns out that there's quite a lot of Divinity Games, don't you know, and they go back a very long way. In fact, this was a very long laid out series of Role Playing games (mostly) leading all the way back to 2002, and I would be catching up on all of that history as quickly as possible, whilst taking the time to appreciate the games as I went, of course. So what was my journey like? Well these aren't full blown reviews or anything but it went something like this; Divine Divinity (2002) was a beautiful little old-school RPG gem that surprised me at how fun it was even in the modern age. Beyond Divinity (2004) was an ugly and garish follow-up which focused on all the wrong aspects of the series and turned me off so much that I actually quit playing after Act 1. Divinity 2 (2009) was a deeply average, through charming, jump to third person action adventure RPG; fun enough to play through once but lacking depth and story quality. 'Flames of Vengeance' (2010) was the second part of Divinity 2 and was a surprisingly marked improvement in every way despite only being a year's work; it wasn't enough to make that game amazing, but the series' signature jokes were at least landing the majority of the time now. (Beyond Divinity's 'humour' was gut-wrenchingly bad) And Divinity Dragon Commander (2013) is a real-time tactics game and I really don't feel comfortable enough in that genre to give a full assessment. I will say that I liked the game, and all the 'kingdom management' and 'personal relationships' stuff you're asked to do between fights was great. (The fights themselves just got frustrating by the end.)

Which brings me to 'Divinity: Original Sin', the topic of this blog and end of my Journey to Divinity Original Sin 2. I honestly didn't know what to expect, apart from that this had some how spawned a sequel which many people lauded as a modern classic, so I couldn't have been a total disaster, right? What I ended up discovering just before starting to try and play it was the world of CRPGs which sort of drew me down a rabbit hole and away from the Divinity Series for a bit. I played and loved Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity, grew an eye for games that took classic sensibilities with a modern eye for storytelling, and only with that experience came back around for Original Sin 1. But now I've finally come full circle and Original Sin is behind me. It feels like the zenith of a great entertainment journey as I've watched Larian grow in size and talent throughout the years, all to reach their greatest triumph. (You know, before Baldur's Gate 3 which is shaping up to be the gold-standard for CRPGs going forward)

Original Sin

'Divinity: Original Sin' is a prequel to the entire franchise- (Wait, so I didn't need to play all of those lead-up games? Son of a bi- why did no one tell me this! That took a year! Gah-) anyway. Taking place before all of the lore of the previous games and thus disregarding all those events, (with the exception of Dragon Commander which technically predates Original Sin but invalidates itself through one of the most stupid self-imposed retcons in history. Also the greatest, I love that they did that.) Divinity recontextualises a lot of what we would come to know from later (earlier) entries through information that ultimately doesn't really have all that much of a baring and doesn't change the overall narrative. Yeah, that's sort of the problem with the Divinity Series in my eyes; the series seems to redefine itself so often that there doesn't really feel like there's a consistent universe being adhered to here. One day Source is the route of all healing, then it's evil sourcery something juice; one day undead and Orcs are your stereotypical badguys, the next Orcs are almost thrown to the back burner and Undead are one of the major races of the realm. (What? How does that even make sense?) One day all the races are laid out before you, and they next they throw in an entire species of aristocratic lizard people as though they've always been there and we just never paid attention to them. I think if aristocrat lizards had existed in Divine Divinity's day, they'd have factored in somehow!

Now this does sort of make sense for a series that's almost 20 years old now, because the game has to evolve in order to fit the evolving industry, I understand that. But Divinity almost feels identityless a lot of the time because the rules of the universe just seem to change so drastically with little to no explanation a lot of the time. Elder Scrolls, by comparison, has bent over backwards (from Daggerfall onwards) to ensure that the world feels like the same one you experienced from the classic games so that there's a sense of progression and consequence for the journeys that you go on and the time you spend in Tamriel. When TES turned around and made a prequel MMO, that meant something because it was exploring a world we knew so well and would expose it in a light we'd never seen before. Original Sin's prequel prospect just seems by the numbers. "Sure, okay. Not really sure what Rivellon even looks like on a map to be honest, let alone care about it's history. Fine, whatever." I mean, Original Sin throws in an incredibly important goddess to the plot whom I've fairly certain had never been mentioned before in any of the 'preceding' games. How am I supposed to take any of this seriously?

But if I put that relatively unaffecting personal gripe aside, I can say that on an individual level the worlds that the Divinity games build is entirely serviceable, if lacking the tangibility of some of it's contemporaries. If there's consistency at least in the Original Sin series, then I can live with that at least. Call these games a 'soft reboot' if you will. (Although Original Sin 1 does, inexplicably, cut out every single race apart from Humans, Wizards, Orcs and Imps for some reason. Not sure what Elves, dwarves and Lizardmen did to upset you guys so much. Maybe there's some forty minute catch-up video I need to watch to bring me up to speed.) So with that put to rest, what exactly is this game about?

Divinity puts us in the world as an duo of 'Source Hunters', an elite order of knights tasked with purging the world of the toxic influence of 'Source'; a corrupted (and undefined) magic which has a history of plunging the world into chaos and destruction in the past before being mostly put down by the original Source Hunters. Now you're tasked with smothering out any Source embers before they can grow into something world threatening again, and are on the search of just those rumours when you stumble upon the small water-port of Cyseal and the story starts from there. Of course, there's pretty clear parallels between this set-up and the Grey Wardens from Dragon's Age, so if you like that sort of 'specialised group of  heroes devoted towards a single goal', then you're in luck because that's exactly where Original Sin lies.

Playing with fire

 

One of the big selling points of the Original Sin games is that they are actually mutliplayer affairs, allowing for yourself and one friend to trek through a turn based RPG in it's entirety together, settling differences through 'Rock/paper/scissors' style showdowns. (JANKEN!) I don't personally have the social circle to be able to say how it works out in multiplayer, but I have seen accounts from others who have and say it's a really cool and unique experience. As a singular player you still get to enjoy the game just as much, although it's just like controlling two main characters where every now and then one will decide to object to your quest decision for the most inane reasons. (Thankfully you can just force them to stand outside the room to relieve yourself of these forced conflicts.

Having two protagonists does mean, however, that you get to create 2 heroes in the customizer, and it's here where Divinity actually disappointed me. Of the CRPGs that I've played, some of my favourite parts is creating a character for the sheer amount of game-changing variety involved in the process as you choose races and classes that transform the abilities available to you throughout your playthrough. Original Sin airs towards a more accessible iteration of character customisation, and in that pursuit losses a lot of the potential depth. The plus side is that new players will never find themselves married to a build that they just absolutely hate and don't want to stick with, because you can retrain into just about anything with enough effort. The down side is that none of the starting classes feel utterly distinct from one another. Also, Original Sin 1 has no playable races other than human. That seems reductive as heck, what's wrong with racial bonuses? I can't even figure out a narrative reason why this would be the case, I can only assume it was a feature they just never got around to adding before they wrapped up 1 and started development on 2. All and all, I'd call Original Sin's character customisation one of the weaker of the CRPGs that I've enjoyed recently.

And yet, even with that misstart, I must say that I absolutely adore the meat of the Original Sin gameplay. Built as a turned-based RPG, (my favourite type) Original Sin's combat is all about positioning, ability points and hit percentages. (like a fantasy X-Com, if you will.) Each fight will choose an initiative order based on your stat sheets and you'll have a certain pool of AP points each round to do a certain number of actions, whether that be attack, move, cast a spell, drink a potion, read a scroll, equip some armour, or (rarely) interact with some environmental tool. I prefer this to the whole 'move and then do an action' set-up because it allows you to build some really agile and high damage dealing characters really at the discretion of how you want to handle levelling up. It's a robust system with a lot of room to excel and Original Sin does a great job of achieving that potential.

If there's one element in particular I feel I have to single out as the single biggest combat triumph, it's the encounter design. That's because Larian did a simply fantastic job in designing every single fight so that there's some sort of substance there. Typically games like this will be littered with a lot of 'inbetween fodder' where you roll through low level enemies for EXP or just to feel powerful, but Original Sin cuts down on this as much as possible. I remember having to seriously consider skills for almost every fight and it gets to the point where you really start to look forward to the mental challenge of 'solving' another fight scenario using the tools available to you. Even at it's most challenging and frustrating, there's something deeply satisfying about figuring the tactic that works for you, or pulling things back from the brink because you've really taken that step back to analyse each moment to the most minute detail. I simply loved D:OS combat.

I think that love comes from a certain 'robustness' imbued in the game design wherein game rules are established and are upheld unerringly to decently creative results. In particular I'm applauding the element system here, because many of my favourite fight moments has been playing with that. How things work is that elements are designed to imbue consistent relevant effects universally, and then the player is given access to a bunch of utility-esque opportunities that allow for exploitations of those elements that feel natural. For example, coming into contact with water imbues the 'wet' status for a limited amount of time, obviously. Well, 'wet' isn't just a cosmetic effect; being 'wet' allows for a small resistance to fire attacks, a negation of the 'burning' status effect, an increased chance to be stunned and even a synergy with the 'chilled' status effect to cause the 'frozen' debuff. Mechanically, this means that if you get ahold of something like the rain spell (which summons a cloud of rain over a large area for a decent number of turns) you can use that to put out companions on fire, set-up an electric stun or air freeze attempt or just weaken enemies for an elemental follow-up. That's just one example and the game is built to maintain a lot of them, it's one of the most dynamic systems of it's kind that I've seen and it truly opens up the combat to be this more puzzle-like affair. (and anyone who has read my Hitman blogs knows how much I love a pseudo puzzle game.)

Whatsmore, these rules work outside of combat and in the open world, which works great for moments of solving world puzzles that the developers have laid out. For example, you may come across a floor covered in poison which is impassable. Well, fighting with poison might have revealed to you how it's liquid and gas forms are flammable, (making for some great, and some terrible, dynamic combat moments) so you know that you just fire a fire-enchanted arrow into the pool of poison to set it ablaze and then summon rain down upon the blaze to put it out. It's this sort of utility to spells that I think is deeply routed in the Dungeons and Dragons influence for the game and executed wonderfully. And don't worry, the developers devised the lava surface for the puzzles they don't want you to find a clever work around to so that there's no way to entirely trivialise the puzzle solving process.

Guardian Hunters

In narrative is unfortunately where I think Divinity Original Sin is at it's weakest, although considering how highly I rate the rest of the game that actually still leaves the story as rather decent. As I've already detailed, this is a series that trips up on world building between entries and that makes it hard to really come to care about core elements of this world, and as such every narrative feels like it has to start from scratch. Yet even with those road bumps to overcome I found myself decently invested in the story of the Source Hunters and the way that it evolved, only really furrowing my brow and rolling my eyes at the minutiae which bordered on 'get the Mcguffin of the week!' for some parts.

As the name of the series implies, it doesn't take long for the story of the game to became embroiled with the realms of the gods, which is fine and all even if I think the pantheons of this particular universe are criminally underexplored for some reason. There's also a constant question as to what exactly constitutes a 'god' in Divinity, because none of them seem to posses a particularly creation-ism vibe, all seem actually killable for some reason and in this game it's even explicitly stated that the gods aren't even omnipresent and that there are some entities older than them. What can be older than a god? What even is a god at that point? (How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence.) Are we just talking really powerful people with glow eyes, because in Divine Divinity that was literally all it was.

Ultimately, however, I was disappointed with the direction the narrative went; although that's because of what I perceive to be falsely promised potential. This game's hubworld is literally called 'The End of Time' and appears to be some fallen version of the world torn about by some evil entity that you've got to stop. I perceived this as some Dark Souls 3 situation where you're literally moving through time each time you go back to the Hub and seeing the results of what happens to the world if you fail. (Except, of course, in Dark Souls 3 there is no 'this can be prevented'. Because everything always dies in the end.) Whatsmore, there's some playing around with the heroes and their role in 'The End of Time' that really made it seem like we'd be going through the journey of discovering how the world was destroyed like this and working to prevent that.

Or so I assumed. In reality, and this both took me a while to figure out and disappointed me greatly once I did, 'The End of Time' isn't actually related to time at all. Yeah, despite it's name 'The End of Time' is actually just some metaphysical realm who's state of disrepair has no bearing on the wider world and there's no 'learning the world you'll soon experience' here to speak of. In a choice-based (somewhat) game it would have been simply wild to show off a glimpse of what will happen and show the way your bad choices led to it, before given you the context to change fate. (You know, like Dragon's Age Inquisition did to great success!) I think that would have actually made for a much stronger and more imperative-driven plot over what we ultimately received. Which to be clear was still good, but it could have been great. (severe missed opportunity that was literally staring the team in the face, in my eyes.)

Going out with a bang?

The endgame of CRPGs like this is where they really sink or swim in my eyes, as these are the sorts of games that are built upon the promise of what you'll become at the end of the adventure, so once you reach that end you need the space to be as cool as you've be working towards being. In this vein, the combat scenarios for Original Sin ramp up and as they do the combat just becomes ever the more exhilarating for me. Playing on the hardest difficulty, I did get the impression that there was a little bit of a scaling drop-off towards the end of the game, to the point where I was breezing through some encounters just a bit easier then I can tell the fights were being set-up as, but that could just be because I was a stickler for completing most quests before the end and thus was practically max levelled.

And yet I really did come to get frustrated as I got closer to the end because of the increase in puzzles that were thrown towards the player out of nowhere too. Now I remember what I said about the versatility and dynamism of these puzzles, but that was in the early game. By the late game Larian start using exclusively lava-puzzles so that you have to solve them in the uber-specific fashion that they've laid out, and this saps a lot of the freedom out of these parts of the game and thus they start to feel like tedious time sinks nearer to the credits. It doesn't help that some of these puzzle solutions are simply just about trying to discover a lever or button that's hidden on the wall textures, which doesn't even make sense in the lore of the world. If I were in the eyes of my player and looking, I'd have clearly seen that button on the wall, but from this isometric distance it's more of a struggle, so why did this dungeon designer build a secret switch that was hidden only from omnipotent sky gods? In fact, why did this designer build a trap with an off-switch on the infiltrator's side anyway? Who does that keep out? See what happens when you over expose this nonsense, Larian? Questions get asked and then the entire fabric of the world begins to unravel!

Finally, and spoilers for these two paragraphs alone, I want to talk about the final boss and the big choice that was made here. So as far final enemies go, conceptually the Void Dragon was a good choice. Classically Dragons make for good final enemies as they were originally constructed as literal devices to represent the apex of things, most famously in Beowulf as a personification (or 'Dragonification' if you will) of all the troubles of life; something we battle with all that can, but something we can never ultimately utterly overcome, and who only dies with us. (Although modern sensibilities might question the folly of a philosophy which dictates that all problems die with you; Kiryu Kazama would certainly label that as 'childish') That was me justifying the Void Dragon, did it work? Now let me tell you why I didn't like the Void Dragon. Icara was the main enemy we'd be fighting the entire game. Yes, she wanted to use the Void Dragon to destroy existence; (which seems like a bit of an overaction to losing against your sister in a love triangle, but I'm not going there today) but that makes the Void Dragon just a means to an end then. Although he was there for entire narrative technically, the dragon didn't feel personally invested in the stakes of the plot and so I didn't feel so invested to stop him as I did for, say, Thaos in Pillars of Eternity. (Although POE had it's own problems with it's main villain and character motivation, let's not forget.)

But that's just the narrative issues with the final boss, how about the fight itself? Who in their right mind thought it was smart to have the final fight be an escort mission? Having to kill the Dragon whilst protecting Astarte came right out of left field and was just plain annoying. It's like the way in which the game immediately ends if both heroes die; why would that be the case when there's others still fighting? Why should Astarte losing her health points instantly end the fight? It's never been that way in any other fights for the game. And to play devil's advocate I get the desire to provide a unique challenge for the final boss, but typically fans want that achieved through clever boss design rather than implementation of a game design trope that's largely considered one of the worst in the industry. At the very least, for the final version of the game they stopped Astarte being able to move because apparently that was a thing she did in the original version. (Charging right at the Void Dragon and getting mauled to death? Thank god they ended that.) Aside from the whiplash of the set-up, however, the final fight was alright. (The AI was kind of dumb on both sides)

In Conclusion

Divinity Original Sin was a game I didn't expect the world from, because I assumed Divinity 2 would be the one to knock it out of the park. However, Original Sin managed to really stand up on it's own legs and prove itself a solid entry more then I expected. Even as a lover of turn based combat, I was blown away with how simply ingenious Original Sin's gameplay setup was and I think that if anyone going forward is looking to make a CRPG they need to look at what Larian did and either copy or improve upon that formula. That's a level of dynamism it's hard to come back from. The narrative was a letdown, however, and that is a shame when you have so much space to tell a story with a text-heavy genre like CRPGs. (Then again, I suppose that is the rope which hung them in many ways.) With all factors taken into account then, I'd have to give Divinity Original Sin a grade solid B, neither plus nor minus. It was an above average title with shades of genuine greatness to it, sullied by other parts of the package. Yet I can definitively say that this was the best Divinity game I'd played so far, so I'm practically giddy to see what awaits me for Divinity Original Sin II. Larian have come a long way in their development history, and following them along the ride has made it abundantly clear how deserving they are of the success in their hands right now, making them the rare modern game studio I have no qualms in supporting. Now if everything goes to plan that's a view I'm going to retain on the other end of Original Sin 2. (Que my drastically unpopular opinion blog 3 months from now)