The Wayward Realms

 We need to bring back the adjective 'High Falutin' for the benefit of this game alone

Hype. The drug of the excitable and the foolish, whether you consider those two to be synonyms or not, that breathes tangibility to the unreal and to that which oftentimes does even exist yet. In some respects you could look on it as the twisted cousin of hope, fuelled by dreams and morphed by expectation, and rarely responsive to the rules of basic reality. We all like to have a little bit of hype in the grey drudgery that is our lives, like of shot our colour across our boughs, the promise of hype is the promise that anything is possible, a promise that magic can happen for you, a promise that is ultimately a lie. Hype is knowingly, and intentionally, peddling in exaggeration and half-truths in order to spark the all-powerful imagination train and spin the wheels of the hopeful. That's not to say that one should hide themselves from it's allure, but that they should not wantonly give themselves to it with no reservations. Be curious of all things in life, be critical, ask questions, get excited but be sensible. All advice I would lay upon anyone hearing just the first breaths of murmurs related to this game: The Wayward Realms.

This I say in guttural reaction to the very first thing I heard regarding this brand new project which has floated out of the nether, the first thing that most anyone has heard of this game "It's an RPG on a scale never attempted before." You can feel the pomp and pretentiousness dripping off a hype-fuelling message like that, can't you? And though the quote itself is actually bastardised from the, already active, Steam page which actually makes that claim in direct reference to the 'choice and consequence' of this new title, the sour taste is still there in my mouth. I'm still looking at a game which is claiming to be the best in the world (or at least to shoot for being the best) in a manner despite being totally untested. It's just a bold claim, and as much as I like and encourage one to be bold, there is a fine line to cross where excess falls into arrogance, and I fear these Wayward developers might just be toeing it with their rhetoric.

Thus might be their right, however, when you hear of the pedigree of this studio working on the project; Ted Peterson and Julian LeFay, two of the three who created The Elder Scrolls, are the key staff making headlines for this brand new title. Their key credits are for Arena and Daggerfall, but their legacy is one of the biggest and most successful Western RPGs of all time. Their brand is one of the key reasons why Bethesda is now a household name and the various spawned games from the franchise are beloved by many out there; me included. I love The Elder Scrolls, and thus I wasn't immune to a little bit of the prototypical name-drop tactics that was employed for this new project. I got excited, and whilst I'm still retaining some of that excitement, my critical mind has raised a few concerns. First of all, it's curious how The Elder Scrolls is the image which all the press is evoking, despite the fact that these two were responsible for the two games before the series really found it's identity.

Let me be more specific. The Elder Scrolls Arena, for those that haven't played it, is an Elder Scrolls game in name only. Historically it remains significant as the game that so many polished their craft on in order to bring it to life, and many of the lessons learnt in it's inception no doubt went on to fuel the skyscrapers that Bethesda would go on to establish, but as with Final Fantasy little of the DNA of the future series was founded in that first game. Daggerfall has a lot more of that DNA, making up for a lot of the basis for what The Elder Scrolls would come to represent, how the world was formed, the people who lived within it, how people lived, the way their stories would be told. But if we're being honest, it wasn't until Morrowind where that vision came together. Daggerfall was important, no doubt; but Morrowind was the blueprint from which The Elder Scrolls soared. Peterson has oodles of experience with Morrowind and Oblivion atop with the founding credit, but LeFay only worked on Morrowind a bit as a contractor after quitting. None of that is to invalidate their experience of course, just to point out a strange dichotomy in the coverage surrounding this new game.

But what of this game? What is the Wayward Realms and why is it touted as being so ambitious? Well the Steam page can tell you that much, but I'll choose to quote their personal Website instead. "The Wayward Realms is an attempt to revivify the RPG genre by applying modern development standards and QOL advancements to- classic role playing games." It's a game they struggle to define, touting "Choice, consequence, scope and roleplaying will be experienced like never before- In depth class and combat systems- Complex and dynamic faction relations and a realistically scaled open world where players will experience a new class of game: The Grand RPG." So for those out there that weren't blinded by the spectacular fluff of that statement, these guys made a Sandbox RPG. They made a Sandbox RPG and pretended it was a new subgenre. I'm not sure if that's marketing being disingenuous or the team literally never bumping into games like this before, but they exist; and I'm going to talk about them.

Games like Kenshi, Mount and Blade, Freelancer, even modern RUST to some extent, are all games where the focus of the game in on creating a world that the player interacts with in a dynamic and meaningful way, rather than focusing on grand pre-written storylines and adventures. They champion player agency and complex systems which allow that to flourish, oftentimes by crafting intricate worlds that works together like a finely tuned clock, only to let the player loose into the world to make of it what they will. No matter how you go over the notes that OnceLost Games have made about The Wayward Realms, that is the type of game that they're making, not some mythical new type of unheard game, the first of it's Strand-like kind; it's a Sandbox RPG. Own that. And they should, because I think there's a real gap in the market for a proper AAA Sandbox RPG to roll in and show everyone how it's done, and if Wayward Realms can be that then there's a clear spot for it on the pantheon of Role playing right next to The Elder Scrolls.

That is a pretty big If, however, and it's dependant on nailing a notoriously loose type of game on a "scale never attempted before". I'm already dubious, not least of all because that 'scale' comment could easily be in relation to the world size itself which is said to take place on an Archipelago of over one hundred realistically scaled islands. Right away that sounds too big to be completely intelligently designed, which says to me that this game is either going to feature prefab dungeons and or/towns (certainly the promised thousands of NPCs in these towns will be prefab) or computer generation will be employed, which is notoriously hard to get right when we're talking about the generation of worthwhile exploration-based content. Plus, there's the fact that despite invoking the name of Classic RPGs, this game is clearly a more modern Action-Adventure RPG, to the point where they even shirk class systems for one of those 'adaptive class systems' which never feel as consequential and rewarding as their older cousins. ("In depth class- systems" indeed...) There's even a talk of a 'Virtual Game Master' to keep things evolving around the player, which really needs some fleshing out to detail what that even means, but immediately evokes thoughts of the 'storyteller' system from 'RimWorld'. And just a minor addendum onto that; I really don't like the look of the game right now. Orcs look... unique, but goofy. For such a 'Grand RPG', I'm not feeling the grandiose nature of it just yet. (And no; a sweeping vista shot over a mostly featureless mountain range isn't immediately 'epic')

So I have concerns, that much is obvious, but allow me to subvert the expectations I set myself by saying I'm utterly sold on following this game to the bitter end. Because whilst I find their rhetoric eye-rolling and with every mis-formed promise I loose hope in even the team working on it, I adore sandbox RPGs. They're the type of game that even if you make it a highly flawed mess strewn together and held tight with duct tape, as most of them are, as long as the EXE runs you've still made something special. There's a mysterious presence unique to these games, they're just so different and special and I'll always rock up for the next one when it's announced. I don't care for the pedigree this team is standing on, I don't care for various farts the team are sniffing, I don't even care for the early screenshots; but the idea is a solid one, and I'm eager to see it bought to fruition in whatever way the team can do. Although, baring in mind this was literally just announced, I'd expect a 2025 release date at the earliest. So that's about it, nothing else has really happened lately I want to talk about except... THE STONE OCEAN TEASER JUST DROPPED! (Yeah it's not gaming related but I'm excited, sue me.)