The GTA 6 Rumours

 The incorruptible

There no such thing as a secret in today's world, it would seem. Either because of the hot-hands of ISPs, the blabbing lips of store providers, or the loose tongues of actual developers; every single snippet of information around this Internet-focused world is privy to the eyes of someone they weren't mean for. And that is why there will perhaps never be a coming game release that will be a total surprise to the in-tuned fan out there, because for some reason every team has that one intern who's just begging for that 'rush' feeling when they break their NDA and betray the trust of their temporary supervisors and hardworking colleagues. Am I happy about such a state of the industry for giving me more to talk about? No, not in the slightest. I really wish that teams themselves were more communicative with the audience about where they were at and the things they were doing instead. But alas, that seems to be an impossibility and thus the stolen snippets of misheard rumours is all we have to sustain ourselves.

Such is the case with Grand Theft Auto Six, a game which was recently announced to absolutely be in development and has since elicited very strong opinions by just about everyone with a keyboard. "The five lessons that GTA 6 must learn from GTA 5, and 5 more it should forget about!", "Rockstar needs to bring out a different type of game before making GTA 6", "If Rockstar doesn't make it's entire cast of characters into Overwatch-style toons, it will fail!" and so on and so forth. I can be opinionated, no doubt; but I'd never presume to definitively cast my casual opining as the do-or-die bible upon a development studio who have regularly established themselves as the most definitive in the world. And to address specifically the one I saw most recently; Rockstar have tried to make other non free-roam games before, and people just laugh in their face for it. To this day I think Max Payne 3 was a brilliant game with some of the best multiplayer modes ever devised, but I'm the minority voice.

Though with a game as massive as Grand Theft Auto it's hard to take any leak as anything more than a cry for attention, many people seem to have taking it as unshakeable fact that GTA 6 will feature a female protagonist so let's start there. Yes, perhaps in direct response to many of the disparaging reviews that GTA 5 received for it's portrayal of female characters, six might just be sticking at least one front and centre. Apparently she will be one of a pair that travel around in a Bonnie & Clyde style relationship, and already I'm doubting these rumour due to how predictable they make the story. First of all; robbing themed narrative? Haven't we literally just done that? It's exactly what GTA V was about, the most major arcs of GTA Online focused, and the framing device for the gang drama of Red Dead Redemption 2; are Rockstar really going to focus on that for a fourth time? Secondly, Bonnie & Clyde crime duo? Hasn't 'It Takes Two' beaten Rockstar to the punch there? 'Oh, I wonder if the final mission is going to pit the partners against each other?'.

Long story short, I think that particular rumour is bunk; but the idea of a female protagonist does intrigue me. For no other reason than I expected it of Red Dead Redemption 2 and was a little bit let down. If Rockstar are making such a big change to their model based on responses by critics, I wonder if they'll also be willing to add individual reactivity depending on the character being played as. Such as maybe making it a tendency for police to respond less aggressively for non-violent crimes committed by the female protagonist, letting players get away with being a bit more of a public nuisance until they start getting out the guns. At the very least I expect that such a direction would not forget the inherently sardonic themes of the GTA franchise, which is part of the reason why an emotionally charged narrative beat is always a secondary objective next to opportunities for satire. (Which is another reason why I think the 'Bonnie & Clyde' idea works better for another Red Dead than a GTA.)

Another big rumour, which due to it's nature can slot right alongside that female heroine idea, regards not what the game is set to hold, but rather that which it once did during the planning stages. Apparently we were once looking at a project designed to be bigger and better than GTA V in every way shape and form, boasting 3 explorable cities and 4 protagonists. That was until Rockstar realised how much development time that would take away from GTA Online and decided it was better to feed that talentless cash cow than try to expand their limits. A lot of outlets are covering this as a quality versus quantity dynamic but I don't really know if there's enough information in this leak to be able to land on that issue. The implication is that Rockstar literally just got their teams together and went "Lets do the Death Star but bigger", but I don't think we've ever really seen Rockstar to go the Ubisoft/Force Awakens route when it comes to their games before, so I have to question either the validity of this leak or the prominence of this 'original idea'. (What was it; a footnote during the initial planning sessions?)

As the game currently exists, in the eyes of these rumours, there is a much paired back vision of the world that will have less than 4 protagonists and 3 cities. Which sounds all well and good and people can clap themselves on the back in the knowledge that Rockstar are going to make a good game rather than a big one because 'big project = bad'. If I were some sort of conspiracy theorist, however, I may offer the fact that this 'leak' actually revealed nothing at all and just said the game was going to be a ludicrously big idea and now is going to be a slightly smaller idea, essentially propagating a rumour that can persist on the strength of a disprovable negative. I'm not saying that this and other rumours around GTA 6 are a bunch of crock, but I will note the uptick of suppositions as to the development of GTA 6 have only really started piling up in the time since the development was officially announced rather than before when only the crackpots were waving their hands talking about it. Certainly makes for thought food.

In fact, this just in; my exclusive sources tell me that GTA 6 is going to be an MMO hybrid game with a cops-and-robbers inspiration to essentially make it a spiritual successor to APB, which in itself was designed as a GTA spiritual successor. Except, oh no; I just heard that they scrapped that idea for being crap and now are committing to something less crap. My source couldn't tell me what that new plan was, despite being very specific on the, now-defunct, previous details. You see my issue here? Right now the only true fact we can all say without a shadow of a doubt is that GTA 6 will facilitate the sequel to GTA Online. And, regrettably, that is likely going to see the only post-game support that GTA 6 ever receives in it's life cycle. Thank you, live-service culture, for making the single player into nothing more than chopped meat in the eyes of Rockstar.

Now obviously the rumours are not going to stop chugging anytime soon; there's significant clout to be made playing Nostradamus and guessing as to what way the Rockstar stars will align, but I urge perhaps not paying the utmost attention to it. For one point the development team at Rockstar will be more than happy to show off their work when it's ready to be seen, and jumping the gun isn't going to unveil any unspoken truth of the universe; but just let us into the unfinished works of a not-done game. The Grand Theft Auto Six I want is the game which is going to be the finished product Rockstar has consistently delivered to their impeccable standards. Standards that tend not to last the second the thing is shunted out of the womb, but for those few months until they abandon us, Rockstar are the greatest hosts a single player game lover could ask for.

The Multiversus is upon us

A new challenger approaches

The very moment that Super Smash Bros Ultimate wrapped up it's final character reveal, that party signalled the dinner bell for everyone and their mothers to jump into the Smash-style ring in order to have their own shot at scooping up some of that eager fighting game action that Nintendo was moving on from. Almost as though every fighting-game-curious company out there was under the impression that Nintendo held some sort of copyright over this style of game, and only once Sora dropped without an addendum announcement releasing that legal hold did it become obvious that they've could've been feasting on that Smash money for years now. I cannot come up with any non ridiculous reason why both Nickelodeon and freakin' Warner Bros have stepped up to fill the void; not exactly the biggest developers I personally think of circling the fighting game fields. Nick used to be busy drowning its websites in godawful browser games (of which I played about 90% of them back in the day) and Warner Bros have some fundamental game mechanics to try and copyright in order to actively stifle the innovation of the industry. (I haven't forgotten about that WB... never forgive.)

But now we can officially step out into the modern internet and breath a tincture of that new world air as a fresh sun rises; a sun split between Nickelodeon All Stars and- oh wait, no actually there's no competition whatsoever in hindsight; Mulitversus is crushing Nick All Stars in numbers. Wow. According to that most venerable of sources, the emotionless robot over at Steam Charts... and his API, (Ba-dum tish) Nick All Stars, which has been out for several months now, has seen an all-time high of over 9,000 players and is averaging around 50 active players daily nowadays. Multiversus, which literally launched last week... 153,000. Those sorts of numbers don't play the same sports, wear the same jerseys, go to the same school, attend the same year or even study the same curriculum. That's the kind of numbers that makes Smash aficionados stick up their heads from their Switches and so "Okay, what's going on there then?" Thems fighting numbers.

And what could be the vast chasm of difference that makes Multiversus a worthy contender to carry the Smash banner into the sequel and Nick a foot note on that journey? Well, the consensus seems to be that Nick tried to make a fun little game to pass the time, where Multiversus is taking things almost disgustingly seriously. Grabbing every licence they have, setting up battle passes on day one, winding in gameplay tutorials to make sure everyone understands the basics (Even Smash Bros Ultimate doesn't do that) and, this is a big one in my book, reaching out to the original voice actors to provide player lines. There's no way Tom Kinney couldn't be reached to give out SpongeBob lines, and WB knew that when they paid off Kevin Conroy for the 50 thousandth time. (He's earned that money fairly every time.) That was enough to win me over to the otherwise stunning cynical synergistic brand vehicle that Multiversus represents.

Of course, they also did something they absolutely did not need to do in order to make sure this game would stand out. And I'm not talking about the surprise development of a mascot character created specifically for this game called 'Reindog'; that very much was a necessity and we would never have accepted this game without him. I'm talking about the abundance of moves and systems specifically designed to aid teamwork. I'm not just talking about moves that can be used synergistically together by happenstance; I mean entire character moves built to save a falling ally or teleport a friend across the map. Genuine Team-play gameplay features to compliment the game's currently flagship team based multiplayer mode. I was honestly shocked to a gameplay system not pilfered from that old faithful Smash Bros. (Ugh, that actually felt a little dirty to say.)

Which isn't to say this game's set-up perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I do have my gripes. For one I feel like all the stages make for little more than backdrops without any real personality to them. I know that hardcore competitive players only gravitate towards very functional stages when it comes to Smash, but as a casual player I always liked the one's that forced you to always be on your toes, jumping off constantly moving platforms and dodging stage gimmicks. It's just a bit more fun, in my opinion. Depriving all stages of that, in a bid to serve the ranked crowd, and every stage backdrop begins to feel like little more than set dressing. Sure, a couple of buildings can fall to pieces in some of the stages, but that doesn't change the flow of the fight. The only stage which does, as I've witnessed, is that damnable stage with the pit in the middle of it. Additionally, many of the characters are fitted with a lot of cool systems that make them feel unique, but sometimes the UI doesn't feel quite adequate enough to tell the player all the information that they need. Finn has a whole system where he collects coins, but until he goes to spend them how many he's collected is a mystery. Cooldowns don't have timers nor does the move description tell you how long they're timed-out for, leaving you to just sort of guess at it. And in an effort to declutter the screen, most of the 'this move is ready' icons are shoved into a little window underneath the actual playing character. There's no Character card lingering at the bottom of the screen like in Smash Bros so they couldn't stick it there instead, but resorting to squishing it directly in the middle of the play field means that you need to lose focus on what's happening in the action in order to check if your abilities are ready to use, which poses an obvious problem

Of course, for all it's oddities and quirks (and missteps) there's little hiding from what Multiversus is; an online ecosystem built with the potential to last and thus facilitating a yet-to-be-unlocked in game store and plenty of replay hooks. And beyond that, at a fundamental level; this is a meme game. Yes, I know it stings to hear but you've gotta hold your nose and chug down that vinegar. We pretty much knew that was the case once previews revealed Shaggy jumping around with Super Sayian powers, or 'Ultra Instict' if you prefer. But even whilst playing the game you can just feel that the memes are everywhere. Batman telling Wonder Woman before a match "Believe it or not, I've got a plan for this", Buggs Bunny relaying after a victory "You know I had to do it 'em", the existence of Lebron James as a character; all of it is catnip to a Reddit browsing, basement dwelling, meme breathing, crowd of degenerates. With love and roses for good measure.

It is both a little gross that such a mainstream conglomerate as WB is using memes to sell their game, and a little bit cute to think the personalities of some of the developers are coming through in some of these more 'in the know' jokes. (Although they must know most memes die in the sunlight, so what they're facilitating is tantamount to joke genocide.) But I have to admit with how indulgent these creator's are, they have managed to reserve themselves just the tiniest bit in order to hold a little bit of a life cycle in this game from the get-go. There's no playable Rick and Morty characters for instance, despite there being a Stage directly from that show present. There's also only one Game of Thrones character to speak of, which is obviously going to change as WB desperately tries to win back some of it's acclaim with the ill-advised spin-off GOT series'. There's impressive room to grow here, and I'm excited to watch it.

Although there is one character missing from their rooster which is not just waiting there for them to adapt, and would in fact be a headache to licence; but for whom the Multiversus roster would not be complete without. There's no doubt about it; we're missing out without our Morbin Time. Sony may not want to deal on the matter, they may try to push back on the meme which already cost them two consecutive theatrical runs. But there cannot be a quarter drawn on this; Multiversus has to end with Jared Leto's greatest performance else the mission statement of the team will be forever a failure. And so I pass on to the development team, to ready themselves for facilitating a business deal that could very well be the only act in their lives that has ever meant anything. Secure the Morbius rights, WB; complete the Multiversus.

 

Skull and Bones resurfaces!

 Yo ho

Though I'm choosing to actively forgo my basic due diligence by actually not checking on the matter, like the lazy cur I unashamedly am, I know that I've accused Ubisoft's Skull and Bones of being vapourware before. (Edit: Actually I ended up searching. I kind of cover is in this blog.) And probably on this blog. To eat some crow, but explain myself, I'll admit that I see this game that way with no small amount of bias. First, it's a Ubisoft game that is typically emblematic of their uninspired spiral loop of rereleasing and slightly improving the same ideas over and over; and secondly it's a pirate game, and I find the whole 'pirate fantasy' to be so often turgid and trapped in an unevolved rut since the fantasy was first conceived. Yet I cannot sit back and ignore the fact that Skull and Bones has resurfaced from the depths with a release date, November 8th, and is probably going to actually land it this time. Guess I was the wrong. And it only took the team 9 years of development.

Skull and Bones was first conceived of as an expansion to 'Assassin's Creed Black Flag', the first AC game in the series to prove that breaking away from the somewhat stale Assassin's Creed formula could be viable for the series as long as the entry has a strong personal identity to stand out. Black Flag's assassination elements were largely unimproved and actually somewhat pulled back from Assassin's Creed III, but people flocked to it for their pirate adventure fix and so the game did gangbusters anyway. As time went on, however, and Ubisoft changed their plans on how to expand Black Flag, Skull and Bones was reimagined as a spin-off multiplayer mode for Blackflag, and then an MMO, all on it's way to eventually becoming a stand alone pirating game with it's own brand behind it. Of course, even today the bones of Black Flag are painfully jutting out of this Frankenstein's Monster body of nearly 10 years of conflicting ideas and corporate fiddling, leaving many to question, outside of the multiplayer elements, what exactly does Skull and Bones do to warrant it's independence from Black Flag?

Well, it's set in the Indian Ocean instead of the Caribbean! And that's... that's pretty much it. Yeah, the whole fantasy Pirate of sailing the tropics of the Caribbean is a dead dream now, because Ubisoft wants to both be different, but at the exact same time stay boringly 'realisitc' and grounded. Of course, the 'ship combat' formula has already survived a shake-up by Ubisoft before with 'Assassin's Creed: Rogue' which transplanted the Black Flag formula to the icy snow drifts of the North Atlantic. So again; at what point has Skull and Bones proved it's worthy of it's own brand? Developer talks indicate that once upon a time there was an idea to bring Skull and Bones to a fantastical isle of magic that the team could really stretch their legs with and get mythical; but Ubisoft realised it would need to actually drop some more money to make a dream like that happen. And so here we are. Grounded. In our sea pirate fantasy game. Whoopie.

The player starts off their adventure being washed to shore after a shipwre- Jesus Christ, that's literally the exact opening of Black Flag... >sigh<... From that point onwards our hero develops a fear of touching any ground that isn't the ship port or his own ship, because yet again this is another vehicular exploration where you are the ship and not a human who can walk around this world and interact with it. I cannot convey how much I hate that design phenomena. It works for hyper specialised genres, like I wouldn't really want to get out of ship and explore in Chorvs or something; but if this is supposed to be a Pirate 'adventure' game, tapping into those specific fantasies; why in god's name would you shirk sword fighting, or treasure digging, or walking about the hold of your ship, swapping stories and getting drunk on grog with your friends? Sea of Thieves, probably this game's biggest conceptual competitor, has been doing that from the start for about two years now. 

Apparently there was a point in development where the team had pulled back on the ship aspect and devoted themselves fully to exploration survival in the vein of Rust. (Whether that mean the game was first person or not is beyond me, but the fact that this game's ideas went fully through the survival game trend is just emblematic of the how long this game was kicking around conceptual hell.) That was swapped out, and probably because Ubisoft proper saw that as a direction in no way supported by the game system they had worked on before and shuddered at the very idea of taking a potential risk, as they are so wont to do. Why we could hit a healthy middle ground between ship combat and ground combat is beyond me, but I suspect it's because even after all these years Skull and Bones still recycles the basic template of Black Flag, and any combat they ended up developing would be compared directly to the exceptional combat of that game.

What we've got now appears to be something akin to a semi MMO, somewhat similar to Sea of Thieves, wherein you ride around the sea building up your ship, taking missions, fighting players for scraps in their cargo bays, and undergoing side content that is dragged right out of Black Flag. Such as the spear fishing minigame, (Pretty sure Alligators aren't supposed to go that far out from land) and this game's idea of fun cooperate group content; attacking a fort. You remember that thing you had to do in Black Flag in order to clear up some routes, and you endured it only because you got to do a cool raiding section after you destroyed that huge health bar? What if they took away the raiding bit? Even boarding ships is done through cutscenes; why does this game feel like you're playing chauffeur for an AI that gets to do all the real fun? 

So the feedback to this announcement? It's what modern outlets tend to call 'mixed'; which means it is widely hated and spat-on by just about anyone who was actually holding out their hopes for this game. Everytime there's a space-sim game set entirely on the ship I'm called the weirdo for wanting to explore that universe on foot, but it seems pirates is the one medium where we can all reach a common ground. There's just too much of the pirate fantasy lure which exists outside of simply blowing other ships to pieces with canons to make this proposition desirable, especially when there's a cheaper and more established game already out there which grants exactly that missing lure. Right now, the only advantage that Skull and Bones has is it's realistic art style compared to Sea of Thieves cartoonish look; but that just means it's visuals are going to age poorly. That is, even more poorly than the character models already have.

Ubisoft made several gambles with the new dull version of the Skull and Bones which was teased, and it seems they made the wrong bet every single time. I can't pretend to be someone who was ever seriously interested in Skull and Bones, even as a flat competitive multiplayer game like what it seemed to be at announcement; but even I have to gawk at how off-the-mark this new direction feels. And now the release date has been marked, the game has been in development too long to warrant a reworking, we're stuck with a game that's going to underwhelm. And it's coming out the day before 'God of War: Ragnarok' too? Jeez, this is Titanfall 2 and Mad Max all over again... Let's remember in the post mortem of this game, which I'm expecting by about November 10th, that it wasn't the release window that killed this game, it was the flawed product itself.

CDPR Stock goes down

 Yeah, this is an investment blog now apparently

They used to rule the world. Back before the Cyberpunk crash of 2020, CD Projekt Red were riding high as the single most profitable video company in all of Europe; and the community was largely proud to have them there. It was refreshing not to have to endure the most successful of our industry being another bottom-feeder conglomerate intent on magicking money out of the lifeblood of it's fans through some other exhaustive scheme. CDPR were the people's company! They were honest, made great games, earnt their success through genuine hard work and not the back door crap that 90% of other big studios do. Heck, they even accepted game piracy figuring that it was duty of the devs to provide enough incentives with a quality product to earn people's purchase. (Kind of- I'm colliding a couple of stories together because it's a bit of a confusing one. But the spirit is as I described it.) But that was before.

Just recently the headlines have been lighting up the sites. "CDPR stock fallen by 75% since the release of Cyberpunk." Obviously that's not exactly how situations like this are supposed to go down, dropping the single most hyped-up game in all time is by all rights a situation worthy of celebration because success raises prestige which raises stock which attracts more money. It's a cyclical meritocracy. (At least in theory. No need to get into the realities of capitalism in a blog like this.) But of course that never happened. And now we're seeing that despite selling obscenely well for a game which barely resembled the carefully sculpted dream that CDPR sold it as, the scars of the mess that was Cyberpunk has hobbled and marred the company's trajectory much more seriously than one would imagine. Not that CDPR is in trouble, I should add. Just that they're going to be smarting from the Cyberpunk debacle until they can conjure another mega-hit to recoup their lost momentum.

And as I look to what CDPR are doing with the game, and the extended universe plans that are slowly trotting out after two years in development, (that Anime looks alright) I can feel nothing but a deep emptiness about the futility of all this. Despite making their promises and spending a crazy amount of time desperately trying to make Cyberpunk into at least a pale shadow of the promise they originally sold, we know that they plan to essentially dump the game as soon as they have technically fulfilled their promises. The upcoming DLC, which is said to be something of a lean expansion not really on the scale of CDPR's long lauded 'Blood and Wine', is going to be the end of their support cycle as they abandon that game engine entirely and move onto newer horizons. (Again, unless they totally remake the game in Unreal 5 and then work on the next DLC from there. Which... they are absolutely not going to do. That would be utterly ridiculous.)

Then crunching the raw numbers it is apparently the fact that the company who was once valued at 40 Billion Zloty is now less than 10 Million, demonstrating that Stock loss in a much more palpable fashion. This means they had to relinquish their crown of 'biggest European developer' at around the same time they had their 'world's greatest Dev' mode forcibly seized by the angry mob of their fans. Those same outlets are reporting the new winner of that title is Techland, fresh off their successful launch of Dying Light 2, which is surprising to me because I always figured that CDPR took their title directly off of Ubisoft. But no, despite not being public apparently they've got it on good estimative authority that Techland is worth around 10 billion and Ubisoft is only- six? Really? Damn, Imma need to reassess my casual valuations. (All those games and all those years and CDPR, with their two major releases, is still more valuable than them even on the otherside of a 75% drop. Wild...)

So what's the obvious meaning behind all of this? Well for one it means that CDPR are probably in a lot of hot water from their investors on account of their rank failure to serve the value of their stock. Remember they ended up pulling them along for this grand farce based on either sheer incompetence or sly flasehoods, and it's cost their investments to a significant degree. Heck, there were even a handful of investors who tried to sue CDPR for misrepresenting the strength of their game before launch, which- appears to have gone nowhere but having suits filed against you ain't exactly a glowing endorsement to other prospective investors! Also, this reinforces for the industry that lying to make a quick profit today is not worth the downturn it might cause on the otherside; which I suppose is a positive in a way. And I'm sorry to be leaning on something as vapid as the broken trust between company response and investor knowledge, but I'm just trying to figure out how the company justified their lying to themselves.

No, I'm not talking about the lie of releasing a game that was in no way the one their marketing was producing; there was no way CDPR were ever going to be able to make that game; but releasing a game that was actually unplayable to all but their wealthiest customers... I mean that's a little screwed up. It really goes some length to make the hobbyist feel unloved by the industry because they couldn't find it in their pocket to drop several thousand on a competent gaming rig. It's... galling to think that CDPR managed to convince itself, maybe through merit of it's fiscal responsibility I don't know, believed that flogging a non-functional mess was better in the long run than delaying by another year. Yeah, that would have sucked a lot and probably given their stocks a hit, but I think the post-apocalypse right now is hardly any better, if not much worse.

 But, of course, CDPR are not a dead company. They just released a new Witcher game, although it's just a follow-up to their card game (which was said to be excellent if that's your thing) and they've announced The Witcher 4, which appears to be following a new protagonist altogether and not, as we all hoped, Cirilla. What I'm trying to say is there's hope in the future for a comeback to a little bit of the grace they once had and maybe, with enough elbow grace, they'll be able to fool a whole new generation into trusting them before they announce Cyberpunk 3333; and try to pull this whole backwards scheme once again to yet another colossal flop. (But seriously, if they did do this exact thing again with a new Cyberpunk game I would laugh so hard.)

All this makes for grim reading for the Cyberpunk 2077 fan out there, still desperately trying to tell everyone that this game is actually flawless because the sunk cost fallacy has hit them that hard. (Come back when the game has a semi functioning law system; how about that?) And though once I never would, today I have to ask what sort of effect this is going to have on CDPR's future big budget releases. Are we going to see cheap monetisation generating methods that old CDPR would never endorse in order to make up the difference. Something that starts as simple as some cosmetics, then evolves to 'time savers' and then finally morphs into Cyberpunk Immortal? I'm thinking of a worst case scenario again, I know; but it has a little weight, doesn't it?

Ravenlok

 Down the rabbit hole

I've have become a fiend for fantasy games of late, which is a byproduct of my RPG kick considering that most RPGs are Fantasy. (The good ones, anyway.) Which places me in the exact right position to take full appreciation of the new 'Alice in Wonderland' styled action Isekai by Cococucumber, the makers of Echo Generation. (As far as I can tell they are not a subsidiary of Cocomelon, as unbelievable as that sounds.) As any indie company who wants to kick it with the big leagues must these days, Cococumber have developed their own distinct style with these voxel amalgam models strewn with such variety and colour that they look like something of a retro-rendered storybook. Echo Generation lost none of it's distinguishable flair with it's overtly cubic visual palette, and Ravenlok is such an increadibly intricate evolution upon that art style you'd genuinely be forgiven for not even notching the blocky foundationals of each image, especially as it weaves itself in and out of the image drawing contrast between the storybook characters and the main girl who navigates them. I bawk at the amount of effort would take to render such gorgeous plains.

But alas, I fall for the old indie game trap of jumping immediately into an assessment of the visual direction as though that alone is all a non-big-publisher backed studio can offer to compete in an industry like this. Whilst anyone who has sit down and played the single greatest Metroidvania of our age, Hollow Knights, knows that not to be the case. So how about we back up and treat this game on it's own merits, court it a little, get to know the belle of the ball? Because for as much as the visuals did strike me during it's debut reveal at the Bethesda/Microsoft conference, it's the whole package combined which convinced me that this was a game worth following up on even amongst its impressive peers.

Described as a reimagined fairy tale, Ravenlok features a young girl living on what looks to be the Kent Family Ranch, finding not an old Kryptonian crash pod in her barn but instead a magic mirror whisking her away to a dark land of castles and giant talking animals, alongside ghoulish mushroom monitories, roboticised rotary chickens and not a single Isekai box truck. (It's like you people don't even care about the rules of visiting another world...) Right away there are clear allusion in premise and presentation to, as I said, 'Alice In Wonderland', as well as 'The Lion and the Witch in the Wardrobe' and maybe even a hint of 'The Wizard of Oz'. (That farm looks mighty familiar.) And I doubt these similarities are accidental, two of the three comparisons I made have 'fable' like aspects in their telling, (Lewis' work is more traditional fantasy with overly discussed biblical allusions.)  providing the framework expectation for the stroytellers to, presumably given the nature of these sorts of game as well as the promise of a 'reimaging', subvert those inherently instilled expectations.

Now pretty looking fantasy games by indie studios is hardly the rarest stag in the woods, however Ravenlok set itself neatly apart once I realised that this was not a typical party-based RPG as every fibre of it's being would suggest; instead it's an action based slasher with what looks to be a only a hairline of developed roleplaying systems. And that intrigues me. It intrigues because it is oh-so very confident for an indie studio, even one with successful priors, to dedicate itself to such a precise and challenging genre in the hopes of creating a working game. Not that classic or modern RPGs are a walk the park, by any stretch of the imagination, but there's a ton more wiggleroom in what makes solid role playing gameplay as opposed to what makes solid action gameplay. Huge AAA studios have had their expensive games live and die on the minutiae of damage frames and dodge responsiveness.

Matters are even heightened by the way the trailer for Ravenlok clearly takes inspiration from your typical Souls-like trailers, with the presentation of tiny man versus huge creative monster set peices, wide swipes neatly dodged and sneaky chipping in potshots. Although I should point out that there is no indication this will have the hallmark features of a Souls-like, just that the developers have correctly identified that subgenre as the current apex of this style of game and want to try and conjure that feeling, or something approximate. And to that end I will say the team have done a good job making very bestial, yet grandiose, looking subversions of your typical fantasy enemies. You expect your giant plant boss, sure, but the horrifyingly regal butterfly wing-face Caterpillar queen who's maw splits in four is much more guttural and unsettling than anything you'd ever see in Fable.

Being such a fun of the American Mcgee Alice in Wonderland games, which takes that original body of work and stretches it into a much darker fantasy action game which spans a wildly creative dive into the broken psyche of an institutionalised Alice Liddell, this obviously similarly inspired adventure dug it's way into my heart. Whereas as American Mcgee's version of this world was utterly twisted both inside and out of the fantasy world, Ravenlok by the very merit of it's presentation is considerably less foreboding; but who am I to say, maybe the team have something really dark in their hearts they want to bleed out through art in order to save on therapy bills. (I know that's why I write.) It might be slightly expectant to compare the two, but design a title like this which fits into these specific gameplay brackets and the comparison invites itself.

  

At the very least there's a ton of visual creativity dripping off of the character designs of this game making them stand out in the ol' memory banks. The many toothed Venus fly trap, whilst a little obvious, is a scene stealer, alongside the fire-breathing clockwork bird who makes some impressive ground with those lunging swipes of his. I do worry whether or not this level of visual interest can carry through the game. Right away it's pretty obvious the most unique design they have is on the queen, which makes sense given that she appears to be the main antagonist, but that doesn't mean we can't have equally disturbing creatures tucked away in this world. Additionally, whilst the voxel composition of the various environments are deftly and expertly done, I'm yet to feel a strong thematic background art which matches the dark, twisted vibe I get from characters like the queen. In fact that brief glimpse of the inside of a castle flanked with jesters looked nigh-on generic from a fantasy castle design perspective. But hopefully that niggling feeling is merely a consequence of a jumpy trailer.

Ravenlok grabbed my attention, and nowadays that's the special factor you really need to stand up in a sea of games and developers. Right now, however, the substance of what I've seen impresses me more for what it is trying to achieve than for what it has proven that it can. The development team do have a solid reputation from what I can tell at an offhand glace, but this, understandably, might just be their biggest project they're embarked on. consider my interest piqued and my attention wrestled over for the immediate, and with an actually memorable name I'll remember to look this one up from time to time. Cococumber has won over an interested party over here, now we just have to wait until this flower starts to bloom to see if it's bud can keep us around.

Baldur's Gate 3: Early Access. Bards and Gnomes.

 Shredding Lute

Baldur's Gate 3 is happily trucking along, totally oblivious of it's own tail as it drags now to an early 2023 release date (If we're really lucky) and along the way our Early Access overlords slowly peicemeal fundamentals that seem just about done. After this update I believe there's only a couple more base classes left to introduce, so we're pretty close to the end of our big content updates before the big one. For Update 8, entitled Bards and Gnomes, it's pretty darn obvious what the team have cooked up for us. Going into the update I have to confess that I was totally blindsided by the fact that Gnomes weren't yet playable. I mean I thought about it, sure. Especially given how my original Baldur's Gate 1, 2 and Throne of Bhaal character was a gnome, originally I was a little bummed how I couldn't relieve the glory days. But I never really thought it was going to be something the team would get around to. I'm greatful, I guess; but I think the Bard is the addition that's drawing the eyes to the yard.

The Bard is one of the most interesting, and most boring, classes in these CRPG like games. On the tabletop game they're a font of creativity and roleplaying, dripping with utility and purpose and tricks up their every dextrous sleeves; but a lot of that comes from play outside of combat. Many CRPGs, quite rightly, focus heavily on combat; relegating Bards to mostly limp support roles depending on the quality of the ruleset adaptation. In Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Bards were practically just supremely underpowered rogues; maybe there's a trick to drawing blood out of their stone, but I'd dare anyone out there to go ahead and solo the series with a Bard and see how long it takes for them to rage quit or pass out. In more modern CRPGs like Kingmaker they're a lot more involved, but still more as dedicated support unless specifically built otherwise, and that doesn't speak to the spirit of the bard class in my mind. 

Though it may not sound like it by name, Bard's are actually the perfect class for the all around adventurer who doesn't want to exclusively specialise and instead prefers to have their hands in a little bit of everything. A 'Bard' is essentially a wandering adventurer who has picked up a lifetime of minor expertise in just about everything over time, and it hasn't been until this iteration of them in Baldur's Gate 3 that I've really felt that bought to life. Of course this mechanically works thanks to their Jack-of-All trades trait which bestows a +1 on just about every ability check ever, but that feeling also expands to gameplay. The Bard is an actually versatile spellcaster in Baldur's Gate 3, gaining access to powerful spells, somewhat sound-related that are fun to play around with like Thunderwave and Shatter, and use their signature 'bardic inspiration' as a bonus action. But for now they also have their own spells, based around the concept of bardic performances such as the powerful 'Dissonant Whispers', which does hefty psychic damage and has the chance to frighten, or perhaps my single favourite mindworm ability out of all the classes so far; Stage Fright. A spell which, get this, gives a group of enemies disadvantage on their attack role and then punishes them with damage everytime they miss an attack! That's groovy.

But of course, all of this pales in comparison to the single greatest ability that any Bard has at their disposal. The real signature of the Bard's repertoire, 'Vicious Mockery'. A cantrip wherein the Bard quite literally insults the enemy so hard it does psychic damage. I know that technically in the lore the Bard is actually enchanting their words as they speak them, but I like to believe they're literally just dropping such spicy burns that it literally short circuits their opponents brain and kills them. Of course, to bring this alive Larian sat down and recorded something like over 70 (if I remember right) insults for the player to cycle through, all for a move which only does a maximum of four damage and so isn't exactly going to be the burning go-to. All for that hardwork to be replaced once the game comes out and someone immediately creates a mod to replace those insults with utterly incomprehensible British road-man slurs. But doesn't that alone just present exactly how much effort Larian is putting into every fibre of this game to make it not just the best game it can be, but the best framework from which to launch countless custom stories (hopefully) or DLC or maybe just be a springboard for Baldur's Gate 4; because I think we all know Larian isn't going to just be happy giving us a single DnD game where the max level cap is 14. If the DLC doesn't do it, they're going to give us another game to explode the spectacle all the way to twenty; that feels like a given.

The amount of effort that Larian has put into this one class, as they do with every class, defines the best-of-the-best of triple A CRPGs. No other CRPG has come close to capturing the level of prestige that Baldur's Gate 3 is aiming for. The Bard class has their selection of instruments, each of which carries unique animations and sound scapes for when they're playing or casting spells. There are multiple renditions of songs that players can play for roleplaying purposes or to draw the attention of a crowd. The update also came with a swath of new hairstyles to pick through, not just a flicked switch that allows men and women hair to be worn by either gender; there are some new hairs as well. And a two tone hair dye system and a greying hair system. We just need that sort of detail expanded to the facial details and the character customizer will be complete!

Now, is the Bard update perfect? No, in fact Larian may have introduced a rather meddlesome exception in the game for the soul purpose of realising the Bard. What I'm referring to is the fact that reactions have been turned off for enemies being pushed so they no longer see it as a violent act, presumably because otherwise they'd see playing music as a violent act. But this essentially allows you to, in areas where it's applicable, go around pushing people into lava without recourse. Bardic Inspiration isn't perfect, in that it's hard to nail down exactly what action you want to inspire, specially in a defence scenario, thanks to Baldur's Gate 3's lacklustre reaction system. And for some reason the 'Friend' spell is now a hostile action. As in, when is wears off the person who was charmed gets angry. So angry that they may just try to kill you. Which doesn't seem in the spirit of 'friends' if you ask me.

Having played with the Bard quite a bit now, once through as a College of Lore subclass and now a bit away through enough as a hybrid dual-wielding crossbow style College of Valour bard; and I think I've enough experience to sum up thoughts on the class. I really like it. Just like it's supposed to; the Bard class is versatile and dynamic, giving you a response to just about any situation you come across. It may not always be the perfect response, and you may fail miserably and end up surrounded by a group of harpies who just resisted your 'Stage Fright' and are currently pecking your eyes out; but you get the chance to try. I've also been encouraged to be more creative with the way I solve problems thanks to not being the master of my field, which can go from the usual: try to lure enemies near a ledge precarious enough for my Thunderwave, to the more tactical, douse my hand crossbow with fire and wear fire-damage buff gear to make my hand-crossbow into a scion weapon from hell.

Bards and Gnomes represents a Baldur's Gate 3 which is getting closer to it's final face than ever before. The UI tweaks here and there are making visual information sing just that little bit more, and whilst I think new comers would seriously benefit from an optional walkthrough of how to navigate the abilities panel (No one ever notices the passives panel on the first run) it seems like the Baldur's Gate we're seeing today is almost perfectly wrapped up. (At least for this, hopefully tiny, snippet of Act 1.) Larian are just looking to bring in internal testers for the other two acts, most of the classes are wrapped up, it really does feel like we're approaching the other end of this Early Access and I couldn't be more excited. Even after 4.5 playthroughs I still love going through BG3 again and again and must sing the praises of Larian's inspired encounter design, if they keep up the momentum they build in this first Act, I have no doubt BG3 is a modern classic waiting to be unleashed.

EX-EA CEO goes sicko mode

 How very illuminating

You know the problem with developer or publisher interviews and that whole world of pre-packaged reactions? It's all a constant flow of junk, trussed up and poured over by focus groups and script writers all running themselves ragged to ensure that their spokesperson hits all of the perfect talking points and skirts all potential lines of controversy. Which of course makes it all the more hilarious when one clad in such hefty armour inexplicably stacks it in front of the interview mic anyway; I can only assume Andrew Wilson bitterly refuses to talk to his PR team before interviews with the amount of feet-in-mouth that happens whenever his gums go flapping. If you want a little bit of authenticity, so that you really know what's going on in people heads, then you need to trick these guys into an informal setting. That's how the Days Gone developer let slip his thoughts on non-wealthy customers, and it's the only reason I can possible imagine how an EX EA dev managed to be caught waving a middle finger at huge swathes of the industry in the middle of his interview.

The EX CEO in question is one Mr Riccitiello, a man who had jumped around leadership positions for his entire career but settled on an EA position no less then twice in the early 2000's and 2007. His second tenure was ended by way of 'resignation'. (which means he was forced out because of the company's financial performance- which might clue you in a little bit to his bias around this topic, eh.) Unfortunately, like all truly unpleasant crustaceans he seemed to have developed a taste for the copious amounts of money he can squeeze out of the gaming industry and so he has joined the ranks of the other 'musical chairs' of executives who slingshot between various game production studios like they're playing real-life Breakout. And just like the other sub-humans who share his job title, the second he starts flapping his gums without a script that false veneer of nicety melts away and you really start to get an idea of what the man underneath is like.

I actually think it's a blessing that so many people like this are so intelligent in their chosen roles but utter dunces whenever it comes to presenting themselves as anything more than the puddles of piss stains that they are. It's like the great equaliser from the cosmos; Night will swallow day and CEO's will lead their own pitchfork mob. For this instance, it was an interview with PocketGamer about a coming merger where the charm-paint started leaking. Given the interviewing outlet and topic of the blog, this means a lot of the dialogue was very dry and drab, as one would expect. Just a couple of sweaty suits lying about the growing quality of the mobile market they're investing in, trying desperately to convince the world that mobile games have evolved in the past 5 years beyond hashing out more standardised methods of annoying players into coughing up dough. That was until one question in particular.

Pocket gamer bought up the push back that some developers have had to the idea of monetisation entering the conversation of game design earlier and earlier, which prompted a quite candid, and typically confused, quip from our CEO friend. First off, he claims that developers who think like that are a tiny percentage of the industry, and that they are some of his "favourite people in the world to fight with - they're the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They're also some of the biggest F***ing idiots." From the way our man answered this question, in the typical scatter-brained manner of your typical garden-variety passionless career executive, he seems to equate those that stand against the proliferation of egregious and integrity compromising monetisation systems as selfish blind artists who "Doesn't care what their player thinks." Yeah, our 'genius' over here is trying to say that developers who don't want to fleece their audience aren't paying attention to a fanbase begging to be drained dry in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. (Please bankrupt me, Blizzard-kun!)

It was a flash in the pan moment of megalomaniacal greed turning our EX EA man here into a modern day King Lear. ("Nothing will come of nothing; Grift again, lest you mar your fortunes") And you know what? I'll bet this monster in the candle-light is a lot closer to the real man than the lie he wants to sell to the public. It's at this point I should probably mention that his second tenure as CEO oversaw 2012, the very same year that EA was voted the worst company in America. Shows you just how 'in tune with the wants of the people' that Mr man over here is; doesn't it? Of course, I would say this didn't exactly go down well with the public, in fact Mr-guy-whose-name-is-too-long-to-keep-writing received such vehement backlash that he took the cowards way out and apologised. That is, he 'apologised that you didn't get what he was saying'; which is just another beautiful symptom of the terminally socially inept. 

Probably thankful that a scandal is aimed his way from a dumb answer he gave to a question, rather than for the several highly questionable or nakedly repugnant business decisions he has made under his current position over at Unity; Riccitiello took to the dreaded Twit-longer. (I forgot about copy/paste) There he let known to the world that he actually respects all game developers, which slightly runs up raw against the way he questioned the mental acuity of anyone who held a conflicting set of values to his own. In fact, he never even said he hated them to begin with, he actually was very complimentary about his feeling towards such people, only that they were adorably simple from his enlightened perch; like a stupid child or oblivious moron. His condescending concept of 'respect' sort of makes his entire first point of apology moot. So what about his second?

Well his second point is a reiteration of his total misdirection to the original query. You see, for some reason Riccitiello has tried to pretend that this statement he garbled out was actually a total misfire whilst what he was trying to convey was how his new heavily controversial Unity acquisition (he bought a reviled malware host. It's a whole other can of worms.) will benefit the development of comprehensive feedback tools so that developers know the kind of game they're making will have an audience. Which doesn't really address the prompt. Remember, he was asked about monetisation and did not redeflect from that opener quick enough to be able to claim total innocence from his meaning. Under the context he's attempting to readdress all this under the statement isn't quite as foul, although he's still calling fellow colleagues gibbering morons for believing in their vision more than his supposedly infallible feedback. And that's just... it's enlightening to the sort of toxic arse this guy probably is in the workplace. I know exactly what it's like to work under people who freely reference their subordinates and colleagues in such a fashion and they often are whirling nightmares of pompous negativity that will literally ruin your day to share a even the most passing of interactions with. I'll bet he has to invite himself to work functions.

Riccitiello is the kind of guy who doesn't live on the stage of people and stories, he lives in a backroom of his own domineering affectations. He can't grasp what it is to have passion for something as esoteric and unquantifiable as 'enjoyment' or 'art'; he lives in a world of hard finanical returns. And it's a world he's always lived in. Like I said; he's a career CEO; jumping from company head to company head position landing with whoever fits him with the shiniest golden parachute. And there's nothing inherently wrong with being that way, plenty of people live in their own closed world where only the immediate presence exists to them; but ain't nobody going to stand it when their arrogance leads them to believing themselves the one true authority of the world. People like him are confused, and unfortunately, far too powerful and decorated for anyone's good.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves trailer

 That's a whole lotta bard.

Dungeons and Dragons: The grandfather of fantasy if you really squint your eyes and cover your ears so that the disturbed and screaming resurrected spirits of Tolkien, the various Beowulf poets and the entire middle ages don't break your concentration. (Oh- I didn't even plan that reference!) It seems incredible that we've had to wait this long to see it finally come to the big screen and- wait, there's already a D&D movie? Several? And they suck really bad? Okay, I already knew that. And that's part of the reason that when I heard the title 'Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' I immediately assumed it to be a schlocky fest of thoughtless chaos. But after actually taking the time to watch the trailer for myself and form an independent opinion- I still think that it's going to be schlocky chaos, but now I'm hopeful that it might just be fun chaos too!

The fandom of Dungeons and Dragons is obviously in the middle of it's vast revival period thanks to the teeing up that Stranger Things did for it back when that series was starting, and the spingboard to super stardom then spurred on by Critical Role. All efforts to demystify the classic game and reveal how, far from being one of those tightly wound specialist hobbies guarded by staunch elitists, Dungeons and Dragons is actually a game expressly designed to morph and mould itself to fit the individual playing it, no matter their experience or familiarity. It's actually one game with the most open-armed approach to running it's community, which has led to an increase in adoption and a renewed general mainstream awareness of it's existence.

Of course for me, Dungeons and Dragons really exists through it's influence to Classic Role Playing Games and how they function. From Pillars of Eternity to Pathfinder: Kingmaker, to Baldur's Gate; these are my windows into the famous hobby that introduced me to it's many systems and tricks and tips. Which is why the world of Faerun is so tightly wound to the spirit of D&D for me and thus I have to make an effort to remind myself of the unbound nature of the D&D ruleset. Anybody can come to D&D and turn it to suit their tastes, giving it feasibly unlimited replayability and transmutability; all of which is why unlike with the vast majority of video game adaptations, I'm not so diametrically opposed to a movie adaptation of  D&D. I mean, I do very much think that a TV show would make more sense for how a typical 'campaign' is run, with many adventures that culminate in the grand showdown; but that's a different conversation entirely. I'm accepting of this film's existence.

Even if I think that name 'Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' is a bit limp. First off, 'Dungeons of Dragons' is a system, not a franchise of ownership that informs the viewer of the world they're entering into. This could be, and possibly is, set in Faerun, but it could just as easily be in Spelljammer, or Ravenloft, or maybe even Critical Role's own Exandria; all utterly separate universes with hardly any interaction between them. Simply saying 'Dungeons and Dragons' is so broad it becomes meaningless. I know that the logo has to be on there somewhere for franchise rights, but it didn't have to be in the name. And as for the title that's going to show up on the ticket stub, 'Honor Among Thieves'; a more generic turn-of-phrase I'd struggle to conjure. That's pretty much just asking the name of this movie to melt out of the minds of movie goers within a couple of weeks, leading them to just say "Huh, what's up with that D&D movie." Rather than remember the concept for it's one identifying title. Try harder, Hollywood; you're embarrassing the medium.

But putting all that aside I have to admit that the Chris Pine starring trailer was somewhat entertaining to watch, if totally and utterly devoid of anything substantive. I mean we saw an adventure that took us across forests, battlefields, arenas and what looks to be the Underdark; featuring Dragons a Druidic Owlbear and a very ill-fitting Led Zeppelin track stitched atop of everything. And it all looked- good. For a visual effects showcase the team did a great job of selling the fact that this looks, at least from a distance, high budget and grandiose. Whether there's any real sets in this entire movie however- well that I can't say. And no, doing a fly-by over a couple of Scottish islands does not count as having a real world set. The cast look decent as well, or at least I like the girl they literally designed to be a live action Keyleth and I'll watch literally anything that Justice Smith is in. His performances always crack me up with how he underacts literally everything.

And when it comes to the substance? I think this movie is going to just be a carnival ride. The trailer introduced some world ending threat that is the 'most terrifying evil this world has ever seen', which is typical boisterous Hollywood pandering. Assuming this world is The Forgotten Realms, the most popular DnD Setting, then you're talking about a realm that faces world ending threats literally weekly. What about that time the entire sword coast was set ablaze in the middle of a free-for-all against countless dozens of bastard demi-gods trying to inherit the throne of their evil death god father to wreck havoc upon the world? Is this bad guy going to be more impressively crazy than that? I doubt it. In fact, I bet no one is going to remember a single plot point from this movie once the credit rolls. And you know what? That's okay.

Something like this I more consider to be a celebration of all things Dungeons and Dragons than an actual movie. Is it a movie made by actual fans? Debateable. There's certainly a unmistakeable aura of 'executive trying to ride the popular trends' to all this. Will it satisfy an audience expecting to be taken into another world? Probably not, unless you really lower your standards to rock bottom. But will it provide a tour across a vaguely DnD themed world with the odd obvious reference thrown in your face for people to awe and gawk at? Most definitely; we're absolutely going to get that. And in a lot of ways I'm actually grateful for that slight chucked bone of recognition instead of the whole hog attempted take-over that traditional media always attempts to do where they act all "That was stupid baby storytelling, because it's a stupid game. But now we, the traditional media, are here to grace you with our learned superiority! Now cower as we rewrite everything to a fundamental level so you can't recognise the thing you love in the slightest!"

Maybe it's a matter of "This can't be any worse than what I've already seen." Resident Evil, Halo; that upcoming Last of Us show which doesn't need to exist and is yet another reason why I consider Neil Druckmann to be a legitimately clueless rube who got hit the nail on the head once and has been blindly flailing ever since whilst declaring himself the new Michelangelo. When you strip away the pretence and the pomp, and don't pretend to be anything more than the popcorn-movie that you are, there's a vapid entertainment to be had there. Kind of like how I felt after watching Uncharted. Was it a great movie? Not in the slightest. But did I enjoy myself? Absolutely. And that's the miniscule bar I think DnD:HAT has a semi-decent chance of clearing. Now just don't screw up the performance check, dear god.

Minecraft slaps down NFT

 Mission failed: We'll get 'em next time

We're going to be hearing about NFTs slow and steady implosion for a very long time as more and more fools come to realise how piteously self defeating it all is. All except for Ubisoft, I guess, who have already murdered their own respectability and are in competition with themselves to see how far off the deep end they can drag themselves. (I have faith in them; I think they take it all the way to chapter 7 Bankruptcy!) This 'NFT movement' becoming one of those issues where no matter how little you think it matters about anything, you can be sure at some point you're going to learn what certain people think about them. Whether it's influencers, celebrities or even that sterile amalgam of an entity we call 'companies'. Not because this is the wave of the future, but because it's a normie plaything that serves as a fascinating litmus test for how much of an out-of-touch luddite your are. Proof that under the right dressing, MLM's and Ponzi-schemes can be pimped out by any famous mouthpiece, not just professional-moron Gwyneth Paltrow.

Yes, I wish this whole boat would just tip over and sink too, but even with pretty stern evidence that the single most successful NFT exchange is an elaborate, and wildly successful, prank run by 4Chan grifters; the ship of public opinion is a mile long. Turning from stern to bough is taking years at this point. Still in the belated interim, slightly more self aware pundits and commentators can use this whole movement as an easy way to score themselves some quick public relations win with the public by simply coming out and stating that they're not interested in engaging with this new buzz term. Which has to be one of the most ironically lazy ways to cement your moral values. "Hey, just so you know; we're not going to kidnap children so we sell their organs on the black market." "Thanks, Company X; I didn't even know you were considering it!"

Although even with that framework for moral mediocrity which this atmosphere breeds, I have to admit to a little bit of surprise when I heard that Minecraft, of all companies, were publicly moving away from NFTs. Given that they're now a subordinate of a mega conglomerate, you'd have thought that tired money schemes would be their catnip. Then again, it takes no great strength or moral upstanding to take a look at the many failed ventures of your peers and decide your efforts are best spent literally anywhere else. (They might as well spend funds in an alchemist to chemically distil liquid gold for them; it'd have a higher chance of success) If anything taking such a stance just proves you have some slight sense. Not like Gamestop, who are desperate to leverage all that unearned publicity the whole 'Gamestonk' incident earned them and waste it on a pitifully misguided NFT collection. No, I'm not kidding even though I so wish that I was. Now your hero has been fallen and their message corrupted; what do you stand for now, WSB?

In a statement that, from an outsider's perspective, dropped out of freakin' sky, Minecraft has come out to clear their up stance on this issue publicly, instead of the much more effective route of doing it litigiously. (Which is what I would have done in their shoes.) Apparently Minecraft considers the NFT movement to be outside the established scope of their mission statement to be inclusive to as many players as possible (which is- I'm not even going to lie they're 100 percent correct about. It's weird to agree with a corporate statement so totally with no caveats) and as such they're concerned about some individuals who are already implementing Minecraft world files and skins. They've outright banned blockchain integration into their game and sent a stern warning whilst doing so; although if they seriously think this is just going to stop anything they've got another thing coming. The NFT marketplace was built on theft, first of art then money; you ain't stopping no one from outside the court room. 

So what is it that they're talking about? Well I've actually seen a few of these offers pop up around the Internet and thought nothing of them, which probably matches the level of forethought that went into constructing these lacklustre schemes in the first place. Minecraft Servers that have access tied to NFT ownership so you can't get in without the blockchain's approval, and from there it get's even 'better' as these blocky landlords dictate the land you're allowed to exploit with the amount of NFT's you purchase. That's right, the exact same digital land ownership that everyone from Earth 2 to Peter Molyneux  are trying to take advantage of right now has been transplanted to the digital ownership space so we all can share in the hatred together; how utterly and unabashedly terrible! Of course, many big servers already play around with land plots for some sensible management reasons, but as always NFTs ruins that to greedy extremes.

There's also talk about 'skins' through NFTs which I've actually heard nothing about but am agog by the sheer audacity of. Are people selling Minecraft skins as non fungible speculative assets? I can't imagine such a grift considering that in the Java version at least the ability to freely create and use skins is exactly that... absolutely free. Any skin can be replicated easily using basic factory software, and if NFT owners lose their mind about screenshotting just wait till they learn about copy/paste! Bedrock Edition actually does have a framework to buy and sell skins because it's infrastructure isn't as open to mess around with, but even then I'm decently sure that every skin pack has to be sold directly through Minecraft's ingame store so there's no way for independent grifters to make millions off that without raising some eyebrows; nor is it really possible to instil any sense of exclusivity.

So not only is Mojang rejecting NFTs as a rank condemnation of their conceptualisation, but the Minecraft systems don't even really support such a world anyway. And I know what the idea is, these NFT heads wanted to interface with Minecraft and NFTs in very precursory little ways until such a time where they can force Mojang to rewrite the game to accommodate them due to the widespread mass-adoption their propositions have garnered. Except they hadn't garnered that adoption, and never would. Obviously. You can't just develop a scheme tailored to exclusively exploit the wealthy and then turn around and say this is the playground of the everyman, that's what we call: 'asinine'. Mojang aren't going to fall for that, Microsoft ain't going to fall for that, any company with more than 5 brain cells to share around their management board aren't going to fall for that. Which is probably why Ubisoft is still very much on the grind.

The lesson is clear; the whole idea of the WEB3 world being primed to overwrite the antiquated old way of the Web is a fabrication, one that not even the big potential profiteers are willing to buy into. Now as any monetarily minded organisation would, Minecraft did the leave the door open in their statement declaring they'd witness how things develop across the blockchain world, but all of that is mostly just lip service. Unless some real visionaries get behind this technology and sculpt it into something sublime and actually industry changing, they're not going to budge any more than us moralists on the topic are budging. Although just seeing that slightly jutted door is enough to convince these grifters to never give up as they consume themselves with the myth of success they've fuelled their very being with. Which is kind of respectable in a deeply embarrassingly sad way.

Skate on down!

 To the refund store

You found him, right here. I'm the one guy who never owned a Tony Hawks game growing up. Yes, marvel at my deformities, my shortcomings, my obvious lack of a childhood. Although bare in mind that didn't mean I never played a Tony Hawks game. I tried them around other people's houses, found them fun enough but never really wanted to buy them. Why would I want to be playing a skating game when I could be convincing the console owner to put on Grand Theft Auto instead? It simply made no sense whatsoever. And so that was my short lived- okay, that's not true. I did actually end up playing and owning one Skating game I liked so much I finished it; The Simpsons Skateboarding! Huh? That's one of the worst skating games ever and I'm a heathen for liking it as a kid? But I just liked the Simpsons... What, are you going to tell me bad things about my other Simpsons childhood game, Simpsons Wrestlin- Huh? That's regarded as even worse? (Damn, kid me had no taste.)

In actuality I did own a more realistic Skating game back during those days, although it ended up being a game for the Wii rather than the Xbox games everyone of my age range went on about. Can you guess what game it was? Yep, it was Skate. Or rather, 'Skate It'; as this Wii derivative was known as. It was actually quite innovative for the time too; featuring an exclusive Wii Balance board control system that was meant to simulate actually skating for oneself but I somehow recall being supremely unresponsive and hard to work with. (And this is a kid who nearly beat Simpsons Wrestling, so I have a resistance to poor controls apparently.) None of which is to belie some sort of intrinsically bound lost love for the Skate franchise, but rather more of a mutual respecting. I recognise a game I thought was pretty cool and would play again given the chance.

Since those days Skateboarding as a hobby obviously fell out of the spotlight, however in certain circles it's really picking back up I'm told. Probably something to do with the rise of a whole new generation trying to make themselves famous on Tiktok were I to guess. But then I only know skating is becoming popular again by proxy so I could be totally of base with that assumption. (It just seems the most logical deduction.) The stage is ripe for the grand return of a Skateboarding game considering the last great entry was a rerelease of an old classic Tony Hawks Skating game. You can't just leave your genre languishing on the heights of a rerelease! Do that and you're no better than the Sonic franchise! And god is that a fate worse than death...

So Skate 4 has long been rumoured ever since 2010 as being the sleeper agent game being worked on by EA whilst they completed their 'worst company in America' tour. Only for such rumours to pan out into nothingness as every skating fan twiddled their thumbs and decided to become productive members of society or some such rot. That was until very recently where it was revealed that a new Skate is a real possibility, and in fact it was actively being worked on in a very rudimentary, but still watchable state. Remember that fans were starved for content; even seeing a video labeled early-early-early Alpha without any backgrounds and some missing character models managed to draw wide spread praise and pages of encouraging messages from hopeless hopefuls with stars in their eyes and tears down their cheeks. What could possibly go- oh it's an EA game; what do you think?

Yes, it's a Live Service. And what is quickly growing into one of the most outdated gimmicks of the industry is being trotted out to the pony show once again. Seriously, when was the last time that 'Live Service' meant anything more than 'disappointing launch product doomed to die a long slow death?' Tell me true because I'm drawing a total blank! What we have here is a dead and flogged horse being beaten ragged by a company who just cannot, and will not, let it go. I swear at this point EA must have lost more money on failed live services than they've gained from successes; but they're still chasing the white whale of that one mega hit which will put their great grandkids through college. In that most puerile and cynical of contexts, I can somewhat bitterly respect the dedication.

Otherwise I'm at a loss. For what possible reason could a skating game benefit from a Live Service model? I'm not one of those bores who believe that Live Service as a concept is inherently broken; there's a couple of games that wear it really well and have done wonders with it; but it has it's place. We're talking a fertile ecosystem nurtured with content drops and variety that stirs the stable economy of it's players. This is a game about skating around skate parks. What are the content drops going to be? New Cosmetics? A couple new parks? Seriously, what kind of legs does this sort of model have for Skate? What's the 5 year roadmap look like? Because I have a feeling it cuts off after year one, just call it a hunch.

Ask the team director and he'll tell you that this new Skate (It's just called 'Skate' by the way; because modern creativity is dead) was always meant to be a Live Service game and I am going to call that man a bold faced liar. This is my accusation, and a year after launch after they announce the live services are drying up and fans turn around and realise that the amount of support they got is on-par with or less-than what they would have received from a traditional DLC cycle, I'm going to call back to this moment for my proof. I don't have their business plan; I've just seen this play out time and time again, at this point I know the dance better than EA does. Announcing this game is a Live Service is literally just declaring you want it die with a whimper, not a bang.

And can I just say for a moment; no, Live Services is not the next evolution of game design. It's belayed and stretched out design and development which is crowd funded. It's early access without the warning for due diligence. The very few 'Live Services' who live up to their promise of a finished game with extras, tend to end up putting out content in the same manner an indie studio working their way up to full release would. Except the road-map is constantly being stretched out and there's no 1.0 version in sight. You can lie to yourself and call that the 'next paradigm of design' all that you like, but just don't go making a fool out of yourself declaring that in public. You make the whole of the community look bad spouting rubbish like that.

EA's Skate is going for the 'pointless award' and I think it's a shoe-in so far. I would say that I'm happy for the team to prove me wrong, but let's be honest with each other, you and I; they won't. And it's for this reason I'm just going to have to invoke the bogey man word which sets all the heckles rustling whenever it's called out: because this is a obvious cash grab move. They've got a single game's worth of content and they want to make 5 games worth of revenue out of it. At the end of the day that's how the mathematics is going to shape out. I ain't no Nostradamus, I'm speaking from learned experience, and anyone who is legitimately, and sometimes vehemently, defending the EA way of doing things; utterly loses their rights to complain when their Live Service roadmap is a hollow, time wasting, mess. You lose that right, and we gain the 'told you so' right. Deal?

Ubisoft and preservation

 Or 'The shirked responsibility' 

Ubisoft is a joke. I think that much is a universal truth that the majority of the world has attuned itself roughly too. That very bell I've been ringing for years has finally caught on, and though they're presently gearing up to try and deliver that competitive multiplayer pirating game they've been teasing for the past 9 years; there's an aura of irremediability about their conduct which taints their every move and being. Even in the throes of their relief, people on Twitter are poking fun of the way in which the 'Skull and Bones' UI almost perfectly resembles the 'Elden Ring UX' joke tweet from earlier this year, proof that even the heights of hyperbole Ubisoft are the laughing stocks we see them as. In some ways it's a shame for this once promising and rising video company to be dragged down so much in the public eye; and in other ways they absolutely deserve it and will earn no quarter from me.

As times have gone on Ubisoft seems to have accepted it's slipping grasp on the hardcore mainstream gamers it struck a cord with so very long ago, and thus have relegated themselves to industry snake oil salesmen. How better would you describe avid proponents of NFTs at such a point where no one in the world can identify a single undeniable benefit of their existence? They were more than preponements- they were guinea pigs; sacrificing the last good will that 'Breakpoint' had to struggle to earn on the altar of cheap profits only to end up selling less NFTs than it cost to mint them on the blockchain in the first place. A resounding, and well deserved, failure on the part of a company that has totally lost step with it's audience and the sorts of experiences that they expect. So now that we've established what sort of company they are, it is any surprise that they've been spiralling down ever since?

Even with them riding the coat-tails of the remake age with their two currently running projects (both of which were announced without any representative footage, indicative of just how non-predetermined and trend chasing these projects are) there's suspicion surrounding every decision they make. And that's because Ubisoft kind of feels like it's in a state of running a big exit scheme out of the industry, where they throw all their weight into one last big grift to soak up as much capital as possible and just bounce from all responsibilities. That might seem like a drastic and extreme assumption, and it absolutely is; but how else am I going to take it when the company in question recently went out of it's way to attack one of the most sacred pillars of the speculative trust between consumers and providers; preservationism.

Now that isn't actually a word. But if it was, it would denote the act of preserving and keeping available access to gaming software in the hands of any who seek it. Because as I've stated before, retro gaming isn't as simple with old games as retro movies is for movie watchers. Software needs to be nurtured in very special ways in order to compatible with modern systems, and many games require whole rituals in order to get them working today that have to be workshopped by compassionate communities trying to keep these games alive. That is the basics of preservation, but there's an even bigger part of the world which intersects with the developers who publish and make these games; and that's where ownership rights lie when it comes to gaming.

Antiquated market laws dictate that currently, any software we purchase is granted through a license that can be revoked at anytime, which means that for digital game owners, we hold no recourse if a company wants to deprive our access to content we've paid money for. Amending such a gaping hole in mercantile code would require heavy and informed rewrites of transactional laws that no one wants to bother with, meaning that the crux of this issue has to rely on a limbo stand-off between consumers and publishers. We have to assume that even in situations where games are removed from sale, we can still access that which we've paid for, otherwise the precedent which becomes set is that all game purchases become a limited time subscription with no fixed date. Destroying faith in the foundations of our industry and putting faith and power in the pillars of piracy.

But since when did Ubisoft care about 'nurturing the industry'? That's what people felt over the current holidays when Ubisoft, in apparent celebration of their flagship Assassin's Creed franchise, put each game on sale directly before delisting a bunch of the older ones and disabling their online modes and DLCs. Fans of Assassin's Creed were in for a rude awakening during the start of these switch-offs when it was revealed that a whole game, Liberation, was going to not just be discontinued from sale, but according to an adjacent warning message, be made unavailable to all potential players; even those who already owned it. Now to be fair, Assassin's Creed Liberation is easily the worst game in the series, with the most boring protagonist and dull story slapped across a horrendous hybrid gameplay style between 3 and 2, but people still don't want things they payed for taken away from them. Even if the toy in question is a abomination upon man.

Now whether it was a miscommunication or a sudden shift in tone, Ubisoft have since come out to clarify that Liberation will still be playable to those who already own it, or who purchased it in the sale that the developer just promoted, and the second steam message about the game being 'unavailable' has mysteriously vanished. But this whole debacle has left an aura of uncertainty around the relationship between players, games and publishers. Ubisoft very well could have revoked that access, and had it been for a series that not so many people knew about they could have gotten away with it too. What would that make of our Steam libraries? This is a line too far for game's companies to cross, and that Ubisoft would even come close to toeing it is so utterly typical of pariah's like them, yet utterly repugnant at the same time. We cannot allow this equilibrium to be broken.

Someday this stalemate of ours is going to be truly tested, and the question of game preservation is going to become a hot button issue of debate. Remasters and remakes can only go so far, and sometimes the original running software or hardware holds very special places in people's hearts too. I hope there's a safe ultimatum we can reach, and one that doesn't involve NFTs, before that crowd starts nattering about the 'infallibility of the Blockchain and ownership there'. Ubisoft has dared to brush against that wall and had their hand bitten for their curiosity; who knows what company might be next to go whole hog. (I'm betting it's going to be a Netease game.) Until then enjoy your games and back them up if you can; you never know who's going to come for them. 

Does Tomb Raider Live seem kinda odd to you?

Begin at the beginning. And go on until you come to the end: then stop.

So there I was, just minding my own business and milling about Youtube trying to kill a few hours in abject despondence and what should hop before my eyes but a new Tomb Raider experience that I knew nothing about. Now to be clear I am an avid fan of new Tomb Raider. The old games lost me and my dad back when we couldn't find a stupid cog that was the same pattern as the floor texture (Yes, that is a level in the first game. Thank you for noticing.) But the remakes have been an absolute joy of remade and reimagined fun that I've come back to time and time again. I was really bummed when the proposed trilogy wrapped itself up and have been waiting patiently for new news like an diligent fan boy would. Only for the developer to be wrapped up in a long doomed multiyear Avengers project which has also swallowed up Eidos. Basically what I'm trying to say is I wasn't expecting to see that pockmarked font adorning anything until Avengers was good and buried; so imagine my excitement.

And then sudden proceeding bewilderment when it turned out to be an escape room. Because... huh? No really... what? I'm not going to pretend I understand the cultural movement behind escape rooms as it is, I don't have nearly enough friends to have ever partaken in one so it's an aspect of culture that has swung by me. But from the distance of context I can at least understand the idea. It's like one of those 'experience' events at theme parks but with a bit more intractability to it, I dig the concept. But I don't see where it intersects with gaming culture enough for a room baring it's brand to be a big hit with people. I mean sure, Tomb Raider has been around for a very long time, and there were even a couple of movies back a while ago; but does that translate to real world attention? I think it's hard to say.

Twitter. You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

But the very premise at least caught my attention, if in more of an amused fashion than an interested one. What I observed was typically corny with sets that look like something off of The Crystal Maze (Edit: I just read that they do a Crystal Maze experience too. I swear I didn't know that when I first wrote that sentence.) and actors that are chewing the scenery so hard the sets are in danger of collapsing. And I noticed something odd. It was the glowing eggs that seem to be the treasure of choice in each room. I mean I think I recognise that sort of thing from the 'Adam & Eve' catalogue but not Tomb Raider all that much. And then I started looking closer at the sets themselves. Cabin in the snow? Is that supposed to represent Siberia out of Rise of the Tomb Raider? Maybe. A rusty ship? Okay, that's definitely the wreck of the 'Endurance' from the first Remake game, I can make that one out. Mystic alien pillars with scrawl text up glowing shafts? I- isn't that more Assassin's Creed? (Okay, granted, I never actually finished 'Shadow of the Tomb Raider'. Maybe the finale got weird.)

I know, picking fun at the sets seems like low-hanging fruit, but it got me looking at the whole project with a bit of a closer eye. You see, when I first saw this trailer I was certain there was going to be a bit featuring archery, (according to the FAQs; there's probably a Crossbow. Which isn't the same thing but I guess we'll take what we can get.) given how much of a focus on archery the new Tomb Raider games bought to the character of Lara, such to the extent that it became almost a meme of open world games at the time for how often the hero's would wield bows. I expected a shooting range, or a challenge room, and maybe there is something present on the course but the trailer for it showed nothing. There was a zipline, which is kind of reminiscent of some of the game's events; but without a bow and arrow what are you even doing? Heck, if was running this thing, I'd just let an active plane turbine loose on the guests and let them try and survive it. (I wouldn't be in charge for long, is what I'm saying.) 

You'd think they'd say 'Square Enix LTD' at least once. Right?

So now I'm confused. "There's no way Square Enix or Crystal Dynamics could resist an archery section, right? So maybe this whole experience is supposed to based on the original Tomb Raider games that I don't know that well." But then I see the logo; that's definitely the new Impact Font and withered text version of the logo, I'd recognise it anywhere. So I check the website and- hang on... is there a CG image of old Lara Croft? I'm not claiming to be able to identify the butt checks of a 3D model; but I'm pretty good with outfits and hair. Even with the special composite of the original outfit that the team made in the new games, Lara doesn't wear short-shorts; she has more modest full-length trousers. And even more damning; new Lara doesn't have the long braid. She has a sort pony tail. That 3D model is from the old Tomb Raider, and that logo is from the new Tomb Raider. Someone in marketing made an oopsie.

New Lara in Old Lara's Outfit. For comparison's sake.

Fair enough, innocent mistake. Let me just quickly scroll down to the contacts so that I pen my impassioned and enraged rebuke of the team's ineptitude and... where's the logo's at the bottom of the page? Typically, with web pages of experiences like these, you'll have the embossed logos at the bottom of the page that detail the many studios and IP holders who have their fingers in this pie, along with the necessary 'copyright text' in the small print. There is some copyright text there, but it's made out to 'Little Lion Entertainment'. Which is funny, because I thought Square Enix owned the Tomb Raider brand and now I'm more than a little perplexed. Let me look it up and- yeah, Little Lion is a an attraction's company; I'm decently sure they haven't magically taken hold of the Tomb Raider licence. Wait- wasn't Tomb Raider recently sold to Embracer Group? Has that deal gone through yet? Well it's a moot point anyway; I don't see Embracer Group's logo or details on the website either.

Yeah, they'll get back to me. Anyday now

In fact I went the creepy route and checked their Terms and Conditions. No, I didn't read the whole document, I'm not a mad man; but I did Control-F it. No mention of 'Square Enix', no mention of 'Embracer'. Ten uses of 'Tomb Raider'. Now that is interesting, isn't it? There's certainly no news about Embracer quickly pawning off one of it's newest assets on these 'Little Lion' guys. But they do follow all the expected accounts on Twitter. Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Radier... 'Tomb Raider Movie'? Okay, sure. So basically, I don't know what to think. As the account itself can't receive direct messages I've exercised my due diligence by just commenting on their latest Tweet, (which was my first Tweet in over a year) but something tells me they're not going to respond to that. If they do however, I will update this blog.

So as Little Lion Entertainment is an English company and thus any allegations made towards them by myself would be legally accountable (even for a small nobody like moi) I've no real conclusions to draw from anything I've discussed today. In fact, this is a terrible blog and I've wasted all your time, because there is absolutely nothing to deduce from the random musings I've exposited today. And any conclusions which are inexplicably reached by the totally inconsequential facts which have been laid out there are utterly and totally independent to you. In fact, you know what; I'm going to personally condemn the idea of making independent conclusions based on any of this information. How's about that? I've just nattered on about nothing and I hope you enjoyed it and I have nothing more to say about any of this. So that's about it. Bye.