Is Oblivion the king of Elder Scrolls?

 The eternal struggle!

I'm something of a traditional soul towards most things in life, ever erring towards the tried and true and typically glancing askew at anything even resembling some 'new world contraption here to rock my norms!'  I'm the old guy who shouts at windmills- you know how it is. And yet I find myself inexplicably on the other side of the fence when it comes down to the most important debate of our generation: Skyrim or Oblivion. Okay, so maybe I oversold that a little bit- but I really am surprised how heated this back and forth gets- particularly when there is only one objectively right answer- and it's Skyrim... right? But time and time again I'll hear people with opinions I typically respect drumming up their love and admiration for the mastery of Oblivion that Skyrim just couldn't match, and I have to scrub out my ears to believe it. Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game too, so I understand nostalgia- but I live in a world where facts are facts. Don't I?

Wait, now I'm actually questioning that. Because if I really break it down and look at myself, there were certain areas in which Oblivion performed more competently than Skyrim did, weren't they? Bethesda is a company that tries to overhaul their games from entry to entry, not just get incrementally better year by year; as such sometimes they push themselves too far in one direction that doesn't pan out, and the past efforts shine all the better for the misstep. Fallout 4's over-reliance on base-building over pre-existing complex world factions being a salient example. So how does Oblivion prevail over Skyrim in any similar fashion, and could they come together to create some form of reality where the old guard title truly is the superior to Skyrim in any remote fashion whatsoever? I'm really splitting hairs here, because otherwise I'm going to be horrifically bias.

Now I've said it before, and it's low hanging fruit for certain, but Oblivion's faction system is so much more robust than Skyrim's. Whilst they are both essentially the same, a string of quests in a self-contained line themed around the faction, Oblivion really remembered how to create an environment where you actually felt like a member of a guild. You would travel around to various guild halls, get to know your fellow members, perform quests for all the different guild leaders where advancement came based on how many of these favours you performed rather than how far along in the questline you were. Yes, Oblivion's faction system did still very much inherit Morrowind's tendency to present utter trash requests as 'quests'; although Oblivion's lowest standard of quest design was still tons better than Morrowind's worst. ("Please collect this ingredient."- please never fall that far again, Bethesda Narrative designers!)

Some have gone so far as to expand upon that point and claim that the world simulation of Oblivion was superior; referring to the way that Oblivion sold the illusion of a breathing world around the player. Indeed, Oblivion featured more believable Imperial patrols that scanned the important roads at night on horseback with their little torches and a modular ambient conversation system between NPCs that could react depending on where you had reached in various questlines. (even if it did become the basis of memes for how unnatural it sounds.) But the most ambitious iteration of Oblivion's world simulation is buried, half finished, in it's code. I'm talking about the semi-functional feature known as Goblin Wars, wherein various factions of Goblins would spread autonomously across the map to mount raiding parties and overtake territory depending on the status of special goblin totem poles and non-respawning raid-leader NPCs. It is a much debated about, but genuine (half working), system that really demonstrates what Bethesda was going for when constructing the world of Oblivion.

Then, and here's a controversial take, we have the combat. Oblivion's is better. But Skyrim's looks and feels better. Skyrim's combat is essential swipe and dodge, without a dedicated dodge button; and the existence of that blasted action-locking 'kill cam' is genuinely game-breaking at higher difficulties. Oblivion's combat has a little more depth to it with unlockable skill moves at certain level thresholds, which really rewards dedicating yourself to a single marital style of an extended period beyond the relatively boring damage increases that the younger brother title presents. Skyrim also had locational damage- oh wait, no it actually doesn't! That was just a rumour which has since been debunked by actual code skimmers! Oblivion knew the onus of complexity should be on melee combat and dedicated the bare basic amount of development to realising that, even partially. Of course, neither game has great combat by any stretch of the imagination, but Oblivion's at least remains partially interesting in the late game. Skyrim's flatly does not.

It has also been said that Oblivion has superior DLC, and this really comes down to a matter of taste and opinion. Mine being that 'Knights of the Nine' was okay but I don't really care enough about it to dedicate another playthrough through it... pretty much ever again after my first. 'Shivering Isles' is a literal classic and I seriously don't begrudge anyone who thinks it's unique world, unforgettably tormented characters and ironically twisted and intricate narrative and lore is a match for anything that 'Dawnguard' or 'Dragonborn' produced. The Shivering Isles reintroduced visual complex weirdness to the Elder Scrolls after that angle was notably toned down from the heights of Morrowind. It's one of those landmark pieces of content who's blueprint you can see on at least one of each proceeding Bethesda game's DLC offerings; because everyone always chases that high of old.

Finally, it has to be said that Oblivion really did a much better job providing a varied offering of objectives in it's main mission slate. Skyrim's are pretty straight forward- go here and kill this and survive that. Oblivion added something for everyone. There was a stealthy infiltration mission of a murder cult following a cloak-and-dagger subplot, there was a giant fiery siege of an Oblivion torn town against some truly tough monsters, there was an open-choice 'collect a Daedric Artefact' quest hook that pushed you out and forced you to not just explore but dig up one of the secrets of the game world. A main quest should explore the breadth of the wider game to some degree and introduce players to everything they might expect, Skyrim just kind of thrust people into the hands of The College of Winterhold, or The Companions, or The Thieves Guild and expected them to accidentally join up whilst otherwise attempting to save the world from a murder dragon. It got the job done, I guess, but it lacked the tailor-made nuance of Oblivion's approach.

So overall, yes there are a slew of things that Oblivion did better than Skyrim ever could of... however- the world of Cyrodill is still one of the most visually bland that Bethesda has ever produced, the vast majority of it's citizens still utterly lack in all but the most basic personality traits, the speech minigame is still a largely perfunctory trainwreck, the level-scaling system is still impressively broken and Skyrim's selection of mods are, and pretty much always have been, vastly superior. In my mind, Oblivion was a product of it's time that excelled for what it was but by merit of it's age was lacking some of those evergreen properties that make Skyrim and Morrowind games you can never grow completely tired with. Maybe next year I'll give another shot at an Oblivion playthrough to desperately try and love it. Maybe that time I'll get through my first visit to the Imperial City without quitting and uninstalling.

Does 'Alien' have potential in games?

In the vacuum of the games industry, no one can here your pleads for a sequel! 

It doesn't get much more classic than Ridley Scott's 'Alien' franchise, the first of which presents a stunningly grounded sci-fi arthouse monster story that elevates itself far beyond its station by merit of the sheer quality of presentation. James Cameron's 'Aliens' would present itself as something of a aspirant to that coveted role, however, itself presenting a much more action heavy, and thriller-adjacent, sequel rife with swarming monsters, explosive machine gun fire and endless quippy and quotable movie moments. For years fans of each have argued back and forth about which is better, an argument I have no horse in personally, because the only question I have to ask with this franchise is thus: which iteration of the franchise has more of a future in the gaming space, and why does it seem like it's only the action-heavy Aliens sequel? Does 'Alien' not also have it's credit and purpose?

Firstly, let's establish the difference. Alien presents a simply iconic and distinct look of the industrial space-age future, one that feels so tactile and believable compared to the technical utopian visual of Star Trek that it's impression is stamped forever on Sci-Fi iconography. Alien stars a highly intelligent yet utterly inhuman monster, one that seems to hunt down and victimise the crew throughout the entire movie tearing them apart as if for fun; hardly ever does it feel like the crew of the Nostromo have anything resembling a chance to survive for be merit of their brawn, and even their sharpest wits seem a mere pittance to the unknowable intellect of the 'perfect organism'. Aliens, on the otherhand, is more visually generic with it's look at space-age colonies, and due to budget constraints their 'xenomorphs' are considerably less impressive and artistically shot. Their monsters are mindless and charging, like stumbling ants with nothing but murder in the brain who charge into death by turret fire with little more intelligence than a computer drone. The movies have their considerable variations of vision.

Yet if we look at the amount of games that have birthed from the original Alien vision, only two really come to mind off the top of my head. One is Dead Space, and Dead Space 2 by extension, which both borrow heavily from the basic premise of Alien as well as the visual motif of 'industry in space', bringing rough and dirty utility to space-faring innovation. Their monsters aren't quiet as imposing and overbearing, as merit of it being it video game through which players are usually expect to go through hundreds of enemies in their campaign to survive, but the 'Necromorphs' certainly carry the 'fear factor' for what they've capable of doing; growing out of the bodies of the deceased on shock body horror glory. 'Alien Isolation', on the otherhand, is direct adaptation of the source material that does everything in it's power to faithfully recreate the world, feel and emotions of Alien to a game playing public. From visuals, to themes, to even the presentation of the Alien as this unkillable, overbearing menace that seems to toy with you as it hunts with an advanced AI that never seems totally stumped by your efforts to sneak around it. Both are gaming classics in their own right, both have very few companions to share that space of their respective subgenre with.

Aliens, on the otherhand, possibly by merit of it's premise, has many more entries under it's wing. You have Aliens Colonial Marines, a legendarily shoddy first person shooter that may or may not have been the operate factor in the smuggling of assigned investment money towards the betterment of Borderlands 2. (Allegedly.) You have Aliens Versus Predator: a severely underrated three-person narrative following various sides of an extra-terrestrial conflict that allows you to play as everyone with a stake in the battle, with a simply sublime multiplayer mode welded ontop for good measure. Aliens Infestation, a side-scrolling DS game. 'Aliens: Fireteam Elite', multiplayer Xenomorph hunting. 'Aliens Trilogy', a doom-like loosely based on the films. Aliens Versus Predator (the originals). And the upcoming 'Aliens: Dark Descent', which sounds like the Alien-Amnesia crossover that no one could have ever foreseen.

On it's surface the reason why should be pretty obvious. When it comes to designing games, we're all more comfortable designing products where the main way of interacting with the world is to shoot big guns extensively, then we are with the types of games that exploit psychological horror in their attempt to unnerve us. A lot of expertise and specialised passion needs to go together to make a game like 'Alien Isolation' work, and nearly as much passion needs be spread about the audience for them to like and get aboard with what it wants to create. But a game about marines shooting aliens? Well, that has some of that all important, investor pleasing, universal appeal; doesn't it? There's FPS lovers and makers popping around this industry like flies ever since the 2000's boom of shooters, might as well capitalise on that by making Aliens themed shooters, no?

To be fair to them, I at least think that some of these shooters are inventive; and almost none have been bottom-of-the-barrel trash. Colonial Marines at least attempted to be a worthwhile shooter with broken squad based mechanics, unimportant new Alien variants and a proposed canon narrative that poked giant holes in some of the most hated plot elements of the Alien canon. Fireteam wanted to bring a cooperative shooter angle to the formula, albeit in a manner I found exceedingly generic. And Alien Dark Descent purposes to throw in some light 'XCOM' style tactical precision with group squad orders and permadeath and all that goodness. Still, I can't help but wonder what would happen if the less trigger happy elements of the Aliens franchise had their day.

The Resident Evil franchise has proved that horror can have it's loud and quiet entries, sometimes one after the other, without the world totally folding in on itself from the sheer paradoxical nature of it all. Alien Isolation has remained the franchise's sole venture into exploring it's traditional roots and it is one of the highest regarded horror games of it's generation. So why have we never gotten anything even close to a sequel? Or heck, any other interpretation of the Alien formula that respects the majesty and integrity of the original design? Or at the very least make a Five Nights at Freddy's reskin, I mean come on! I know that Alien has potential in gaming, I've practically seen it- but I cannot prove that it has a future... which to me is the sorer spot.

Is the Blockchain the new mobile market?

 No

I've touched a lot on both mobile gaming and the concept of 'blockchain gaming' as it exists within the idealised dystopia that is the mind of your everyday crypto bro lunatic, and it only makes sense that I bring them together to ask such an important question about the evolution of our gaming industry. Afterall, the mobile industry has been brought up every now and then by Cryptoheads of a prime example of a gaming platform that started off in pathetic fashion but grew into the most popular in the world, isn't it possible that the same sort of thing could happen with the blockchain? Yes, this is actually something of a common refrain, and one just that tiny bit complicated enough to require an extended rebuttal. So consider this my extended pre-built answer because god knows I can't be compiling all this together on the fly every time someone wants to insult mine and their own intelligence by speaking nonsense.

Mobile gaming, in the days of the flip phone, was indeed only one degree above tiger handheld electronic for being the bottom of the barrel for those who wanted to play. Ugly and rudimentary platformers that typically only stood out for licence agreements made behind the scenes, they were heavily limited by the simplistic tech of the time. the improvement of the phone hardware over the years has been what has allowed mobile gaming to blossom into actually intelligentially designed pieces of complex software. On the absolute flipside, Blockchain gaming started on the computer. The rudimentary design elements are not due to hardware limitations, but with blockchain integration on the most conceptual level. In fact, no Cryptobro seems able to propose a use case for the tech that isn't aggressively, eye wateringly misinformed or easily doable without blockchain technology.

It genuinely hurts my soul to go over these talking points, but I do intend for this article to be a full rebuttal. First off, item ownership and unique unlockable items; they can easily be created and integrated into a game's ecosystem without blockchain integration. Server first rewards have been held in Runescape, sellable weapon skins in CS:GO, cash out opportunities are practically everywhere if you are a purveyor of the 'grey market'. As for cross-game item integration, believing in that requires such a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to game design that it's almost insulting to respond to. Every asset in a video game needs to be created intentionally by the team to have a use case in their game in question. Assets go through processes of conceptualisation, artistic rendering and mechanical compositioning before they even make it into the Alpha build. It's a delicate process of balance and control. Now imagine if a medieval fantasy game like Elden Ring had to do this dance whilst also trying to figure out some way to throw in a hula-dress from a NFT game that released a year ago, a laser rifle from another one, and several items from every single NFT game ever released ever.

That isn't even taking into the account the fact that each of these games would belong to totally separate developers, which means that in this theoretical, FromSoft would be dedicated development manpower for the benefit of a studio they have no affiliation with, just to keep that separate company's NFT ecosystem afloat. From a player's standpoint it only really offers a base precursory glance of value for items that only have innate value in the games they were made for, in a market sense it is absolutely unrealistic for the thousands of games that are made and released every single day, and from a business standpoint it's literally a money waster- which should in itself be a wake-up call to these dreamers because money making is all they care about! And that these are literally the 'strongest' use case arguement these people can come up with, should be all you need to know about the kind of 'forward thinkers' we're working with here!

"But Mobile games are good now!" As the refrain goes. To which my answer can only be a condemnation. No, Mobile Games are not good- they're popular. The vast majority of mobile games are lightly animated waiting simulators wherein the chief most gameplay mechanic is the requirement to wait until meters fill themselves or the autobattle screen rolls by or the 'cooldown' expires. There are good games on the mobile platform, but those are either exceptional islands in a vast sea of mediocrity, which are usually soon ported to PC, or ports of real PC games made playable on the phone. No, Heartstone is not a mobile game. No more so than Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas is. Or Final Fantasy one through six. The mobile market hasn't suddenly grown standards in the past decade, it's just gotten better at money gouging.

Still, just because a game isn't good that doesn't discount the value of it's popularity. On this we do agree, and if Blockchain games can snatch the popularity of the mobile market then they'll became a staying power in the industry no matter what more traditional gamers think. But here's the rub, mobile games became popular because of how accessible they are for gamers, whilst the Blockchain is anything but. Mobile games are easy to find, easy to play, and typically free to start. Blockchain games are difficult to trackdown, a nightmare to get working and require stupidly expensive buy-ins that are typically made months before the game even starts development, because that's how these blockchain games make their money. It's pretty much night and day in that regard, Blockchain has something of an uphill struggle.

Of course, there's also the refrain about all the famous and storied developers who have turned their hand to the blockchain market. People who had a hand changing gaming history now feeling the direction that the market is trending pre-emptively. Except, are they? Where's Kojima's Blockchain game? Todd Howard's? Sid Meyer's? Shigeru Miyamoto's? Oh, we've got Peter Molyneux's crypto game? You mean Peter Molyneux: the guy renowed for promising more out of his games than his team were ever able to deliver, to the point where he verged on straight being a two-bit hustler before his crypto period? People like that are your burning symbol of righteous quality? Heck, you guys can go ahead and keep Molyneux; we don't want him anymore!

For the time being, I think we can pretty definitively say that the Blockchain market doesn't hold much of any sway over the world of gaming, and isn't set to shift that balance anytime within the next 10 or so years. Mobile gaming truly did turn the tables with what it was able to accomplish, but to compare the mobile market with blockchain gaming would be like trying to compare the rise of commercial trains to the ascent of the commercial blimp market. One is now ubiquitous, the other collapsed in a fiery ball that killed 36 people. The Mobile market is soaring, and the blockchain gaming market has crashed over and over again in a fiery explosion that hasn't directly killed anyone yet, but has at least contributed to virtual wage slavery of third world economies. So yeah, can't wait for that Crypto future; how about you?

Ubisoft makes the most Ubisoft Headline ever.

So they can Ubisoft their Ubisoft whilst they Ubisoft

Part of me is saddened by the fact that Ubisoft has trended towards every single negative I pre-emptively assumed they'd fall for back when I first picked up on the woes of the 'Ubisoft formula' a few years before that term became the mainstream consensus. And the other parts of me are just aghast and agog about how utterly clueless Ubisoft management truly appears to be concerning the optics to literally every single daily thing that the company does. It doesn't take no crystal ball or Nostradamus insight to perceive the most basic concepts of 'action meets consequence' in Ubisoft's world; but it seems that their higher management consists of true aliens with no grasp of basic human empathy of any sort. That is the only reason why I can see Ubisoft themselves posting a video on their own Youtube channel that already uses the title of a theoretical hitpiece against themselves. "Ubisoft is developing an AI ghostwriter to save Scriptwriters Time."

Do I need to record the bare basic problems with such a headline? Probably not, because you are not a robot totally lacking in presence and being; but seeing as how Ubisoft is, shall we entertain their rudimentary attitudes? Firstly, the fact that Ubisoft are taking the actual work away from humans thus reducing the amount they have to pay those humans to work, and providing the ever so subtle implication that they might one day give that AI more of a role if the human team doesn't 'prove their worth' or whatever dystopian attitude the studio runners are looking to set. Replacing humans with machines is perhaps the most lionizing red alarm that any company can embark on, and Ubisoft have rung that alarm with a seeming gusto that I and many others find just utterly perplexing.

Now for the time being this is being limited to the speech of NPC characters who populate the garishly over-big open worlds that Ubisoft seems to insist they're good at making despite nearly two whole console generations worth of proof otherwise. Ubisoft wants the machine to work on the dialogues that populate the open world around the player, probably figuring that such dialogues are unimportant enough to relegate to a machine. But here's a shocker for you, basic craft knowledge insists this isn't the case. Any narrative designer worth their salt will tell you that NPC world dialogue is another avenue for world storytelling, with the attitudes, topics and temperance of NPCs talking to one another painting the outlines of the world you're in. They may not be discussing mission pertinent information, but that doesn't make their conversations any less valuable in the grand tapestry that is artful game design.

Take it from a company that still cares about their open worlds, like Rockstar. Walk around Los Santos and listen to the NPCs talk, and you'll notice that a great many of their conversations contain their own little metajokes and humorous commentaries on modern American culture. As GTA is about satirizing American culture, this obviously sets the mood and creates an environment supplementary to the overall setting. Those aren't details that every player picks up on, obviously; but they're an extra layer of care and attention that the odd few players will pick up on and respect the amount of dedication and love that has touched every corner of this tailor made experience. Compare that with Oblivion, where NPCs throw random disjointed topics at one another picked by an algorithm and call it a 'chat'; and the unnatural stiltedness of it all becomes a meme in itself. Which direction does it sound like Ubisoft are currently heading in?

For me, I find the idea of 'saving time' for the scriptwriters concerning on two fronts. For one, Scriptwriting is a deeply iterative process of seeing what works for the moment, moving forward under those presumptions and going back and making tweaks where necessary; you rarely ever get it perfect the first time and it takes an intelligent self appraisal to see where improvements can be made. Secondly, scriptwriting is just something that takes time. Now typically that time is condensed and squashed and layered upon other parts of the script and brought back home to have nightmares over, but there is no circumventing that time put in to making a solid script. Now I understand that Ubisoft hasn't had a decent script in years now, so they must have forgotten how much work typically goes into that, but that's why we're all here. To remind them.

And perhaps the biggest head scratcher of them all: of all the most advanced AI writing bots on the market right now, including many made by companies who specialise in the development of AI; the weakness of the platform seems to be, by and large, creative writing. So why has Ubisoft hired the software to creatively write? Even the newest iteration of ChatGPT, independent from it's rampant lying, is regularly put to various tests to see how it fairs up to human averages; but time and time again what we get as a take-away is simply: technical papers it does well, creative writing papers lack in language diversity and narrative complexity. Which is... well that's obvious, isn't it? Computers can't create and store context; if they could we'd be having entirely different conversations about the overreach of AI right now. So why can't Ubisoft accept that?

I suppose from Ubisoft's perspective, their idea is to train their AI ghostwriter to write within the parameters of their scripts. Teach them specific context and verbiage so that the AI vomits out inoffensive and generic lines of chatter that the AI presumably then also voices in that unnatural gait which made half of Watch Dog Legion's cast so inhuman. Of course, a human would need to be writing that context, going through the dialogue, correcting obvious mistakes, looking over every single aspect of the output and trying to salvage useable text out of heartless drivel. Probably editing a lot of it but still going uncredited for being the only actual artist involved in the work. So in essence, Ubisoft have saved themselves having to pay an artists wage for doing the pick-up work of a artist. Really innovating the industry, guys.

It seems both gaudy and combative to paint Ubisoft as the inexcusable 'bad guys' of every single aspect of the game development space; but they just seem to compete for that role so vigorously! Even as they and other storied studios slowly shrivel down from the heights they once dominated, I can't help but cluck my tongue as I try to squint and remember a studio I used to be excited for. I played every Assassin's Creed, I greedily consumed every Ubisoft E3 show, I was sold by the pomp of the big company doing big things. But now, how abhorred in my mind those times are. My gorge rims at it. In many ways, this is Ubisoft quiet literally baring it's heart for all the world to peek at and realise that it was, all this time, totally synthetic and broken. That's the Ubisoft of 2023. On the bright side, they showed off some Watch Dogs Legion with the announcement so... Watch_Dogs 4 still a possibility? 

Risk versus Reward versus gaming

 Dicey

Recently I got back into playing Persona, what with the recent reveal of the mobile Persona game rocketering our way, and in doing so I became intimately reacquainted with how heart-wrenchingly 'risk and reward' that game's set-up is. To be clear, on normal difficulties the game is nice and decently paced for your typical RPG player, but on my chosen difficulty (Risky) the game presents a heart pounding escalation of consequence that mounts on the player for every moment they choose to grind for experience by holding a gun to the head of the single most valuable resource in the known universe- time. Which got me really thinking once more about the impact of these sorts of systems outside the narrow scope of Souls-like games because we talk about them literally all the damn time on this blog. In fact, I technically just mentioned them again so time to take my 'bingo' shot, I guess.

So to explain the Persona situation, first I have to preface this by revealing that Persona 4 is one of those rare few titles in which your party based RPG demands the survival of the principal character. Not only is the main hero not allowed to die, they're not even allowed to fall unconsious in battle otherwise you are kicked roughly back to the title screen. Yes, Persona 4 doesn't even send you to the load screen, or a recent checkpoint. In normal difficulties this isn't the end of the world, because the game will autosave everytime you cross a floor meaning that the typical grinder can't expect to lose more than 10 or so battles worth or progress assuming they commit to totally wiping a floor clean before moving on. On Risky difficulty, however, that dynamic changes considerably. Because on Risky, there are no autosaves. Only manual saves. And when battling in Persona, the only place to manual save is at the nexus between dungeons outside of every battle space, which you can only reach by walking out the dungeon through the way you came (which would require passing through roughly 10-15 floors worth of respawning enemies) or to use a limited resource to teleport. (Thankfully the game allows you to pick back up the dungeon from the furthest floor you reached.)

What this system essentially does is place a premium price on how often you can rest and save between runs, beyond the general time limit of the ticking days for which certain story milestones must be met. (or else the game ends completely) Players on this level have to commit to a run in the dungeon and pay the price for not completing it fully, whether because their team are running low on precious resource or because a presented boss simply isn't feasibly killable at their current level. Persona doesn't pull it's punches when it comes to tough bosses, either; being unable to easily beat a presented boss because your level just can't withstand their hits is in no way an unlikely scenario. So grinding runs are a gamble, dedicating your time to wiping up trash mobs for XP all the while being nervous of how many times you can feasibly leave the dungeon to 'bank' that XP (by saving) and the mounting risk of all that grinding time being utterly wasted if you get one lucky mob who slams your MC with a 'god-fist' dealing 900 damage. (That would probably even one-shot someone with a physical resistance shield active- giving that move to trash mobs is just nasty.)

There's nothing more crushing for anyone in life than the feeling that the time you just put into something was wasted. In fact, it's a constant battle with modern game design to try and develop systems in such a way that players feel like they're constantly moving towards some sort of goal. Rougelites are a spectacular example of this, presenting an ostensibly 'one run/ one life' system wherein death resets everything, whilst at the same time typically presenting background systems that unlock new tools or variations for each run; alongside the general game knowledge that comes from mastering those sorts of games. For a title to straight up slap you in face for failure is actually shockingly hardcore for a game of the modern age. And Persona does not care to tell you that have wasted your time by playing poorly. (Thanks Teddy, I'll cry myself to sleep now.)

But when happens when we start turning the dial to the opposite extreme? What happens when the reward comes without the risk? Or, to put it another way, how do you pull off a situation where the amount of work put in by the player doesn't correspond to their reward in an appropriate fashion, because they are either under or over rewarded? World of Warcraft had a problem similar to this early on it it's life cycle, where one of the early game quest rewards gifted a supremely useful utility tool that granted a buff to general world movement speed. However this item was given at the end of a fairly innocuous starter quest, and as a 'choice reward' against a pretty useless alternative. With the lack of purpose put behind the reward, alongside the relative freshness of most players to the game at that point, several people ended up passing on the movement boost not realising it to be a pretty unique enchantment and passing it off as early game trash.

Another example I always like to think of would be Grand Theft Auto Online, which tied it's economy and it's microtransaction store to the same in-game reward money system. This meant that all new game content could be grinded with in-game money to access, all it took was the dedication and perseverance to sit down and do it. Of course, this also meant that there were a few quests that drew people in for how relatively quick it was to do versus how much potential payout it would dish. The high-paying 'Rooftop Rumble' could be finished in minutes if you knew what you were doing, and grinding it endlessly for hours at a time could net you virtual millions, all from blowing up the same parking lot full of bad guys over and over like a zombie. Yes, I was one of those zombies.

To combat this, Rockstar ended up fundamentally changing how GTA Online rewards it's missions, by instead of prioritising the actual mission, the onus would fall on the play time. The longer you spent in a mission, the closer to full payout you would earn, with fifteen minutes or more required to score the most amount of money. Of course, this had the knock on effect of killing momentum on every activity as being good at doing any sort of task ended up punishing you in the long run. Rockstar would make a similar mistake with Red Dead Redemption 2 Online, in which they punished people for completing more than one activity within an hour by heavily cutting each subsequent reward within that cooldown period. It's their bread and butter, so you know why they're trying to thin out grinders, but when you remove that element of reward, the investment of time and dedication to risk becomes utterly moot and momentum killing.

Higher concepts of game design aren't really the things that get discussed when making your bog standard game. A lot of the indistincts have already been figured out and those that want to make a genre title can merely follow those guidelines, but the trailblazers know that messing with these guts of design are what makes or breaks the gameplay formula. And as with everything in art and cooking there is no right cure all for everyone, I'm sure there's many who would find that Persona 4 situation I explained utterly hellish, and sometimes I'm right there with them, but when you know your audience and what they're typically willing to accept and be attracted to, you know exactly how to create the right feeling reward tapered by the exact measurements of risk.

The Day Before- The Calendar App

 The clock is ticking on FNTASTIC

My god, do I love talking about this absolute train wreck of a brand as often as I can, probably due to how unbelievable scuffed it's operation always seems to be no matter what the circumstance or whoever happens to be involved with running it. Because everytime someone manages to change my mind into giving this developers the benefit of the doubt, looking at them from another point of view and considering all that could be going on behind the scenes that we just don't know about, something else slips out from the woodworks to sufficiently embarrass the developer and all those who claim to be responsible for it. I think we're reaching that point of critical mass where The Day Before has finally shattered the faith of the last person who believed in it, and from here on the reputation of these developers over at FNTASTIC is just going to drain slowly out of the tub like the stopper's been pulled.

And the operate factor in all of this is, of course, the way that 'The Day Before' got itself pulled from the steam store thanks to a trademark dispute involving it's name that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere when the game was hardly a few months from it's supposed release. Of course, it was a circumstance that the team used to excuse the game being delayed for half a year, which in itself seemed very surprising given the fact that a simple trademark dispute shouldn't really take half a year to clear up- but of course it then came out that FNTASTIC were planning their to delay zombie survival MMO beforehand and merely used these issues as an smokescreen exucse. Of course, then the team came out and announced as such after that information had already done it's rounds about the Internet and everyone figured out the lie for what it was... just to show you the kind of consumer-developer transparency were dealing with here.

But with this premise of lies and half-truths that FNTASTIC has set itself, after a career of gaslighting and misdirecting it's audience, I think we can all be forgiven for raising the possibility that this trademark dispute was a total fabrication to begin with. I mean, the team went so far as to drag attention their way a few years ago by announcing a playable event, only for that event to turn out to be the surprise launch of their erstwhile developed game : 'Prop Nite', a limp Dead-by-Daylight clone. These guys are grifters at heart, why would anyone believe they would be so callous as to announce a game with a trailer under a trademark that they didn't own and never attempted to acquire in the several years since announcement and this year? It just defies belief. And yet...

Much to the surprise of I think everybody, it turns out that another The Day Before does in fact, exist; and it's not a video game. Yes, there's actually a Korean Calendar app called 'The Day Before' which covets the trademark which FNTASTIC wants so badly, and according to them they've actually held the rights since 2015 in several countries including where FNTASTIC would need it if they want to sell their game off Steam, The United States. You'd have thought that a decent developer would take the time to make themselves familiar with this conflict in branding before spending the money and effort constructing advertising and marketing around it- but then again the Logo is literally just a copy of The Last of Us's logo, so I guess FNTASTIC didn't dedicate much effort into the marketing process anyway.

What seems to be absolutely fascinating me about this is the fact that, despite an initially knee-jerk reaction of attempting to protect themselves by going quiet, FNTASTIC have since carried on to promote the game under the name they are apparently legally forbidden from using. We've seen the publishing of another controversial gameplay trailer under the Youtube channel featuring that name in it's heading, as well as a bafflingly tone-deaf video of several characters sitting in an in-game sauna- because that is definitely the vibe you want to dish out when the community around your game is a utter disarray of people who don't even believe the game was ever real to being with. Their twitter is still called The Day Before, and posts every now and then. What are we supposed to think? Has the trademark issue been resolved? 

Now I fully understand, I really do, why people have been imploring others to respect the difficulties that go into running an indie company, because we all want to see the best in those around us. They are a relatively small company that got a break beyond their wildest dreams when it came to The Day Before striking a cord in the hearts of so many people across the world. But given that the trailer in particular was a composite featuring a title far beyond the team's capabilities to create, and given the team have proceeded to put out similarly misleading trailers in the years since- I think we've passed a point where the bravado and 'out-of-ass' bragging has earned this company, no matter how green, the scrutiny they are met with today. I was suspicious from day one because of how I am, but the benefit of the doubt has rightly worn on everyone.

And none of that is even going into the troubling claims from some supposed employees (of questionable verifiability, mind you) that FNTASTIC is a truly horrible place to work whilst stuck under the thumb of two leaders who lord over the company like titans, driving development in bizarre and sudden tangents, shouting at anyone who dares raise a conflicting opionon and driving the team around the bend with backwards shifts of focus. I know I give Cloud Imperium a hard time for how Roberts runs his company, but at least that man has a track record for getting things done eventually; it's honestly a wonder that FNTASTIC have managed to publish any games beforehand given how ramshackle this company presents itself from the inside-out, all in the pursuit of the one thing in the modern world more valuable than money- clout and attention. (Although they do have a bunch of investor money too, which I bet is nice.)

I'm far past the point of hoping for some total gear shift in the story of FNTASTIC, because I'm not for typically believing in unicorns and fairies if I can help it. All I'm expecting now is for the company to slowly run out of excuses for fobbing off their producers and farting out a total, hardly functioning, trainwreck of a product that is the final death knell the world needs to feel vindicated in their disdain. Because of everything that a successful game needs, strong universally shared vision, creative talent, a company of people who aren't considered 'volunteers' by management- FNTASTIC are missing seemingly all of it. At least I hope the profile of this case manages to give the employees that have wasted their time under this pipedream the experience to move on towards real development studios in the future. Let's try and dig some nugget of goodness out of the refuse pile.... 

Jedi Survivor intrigues me...

 And worries me...

I still remember well the days when we could expect a brand new Star Wars game at least once every year thanks to the decently accepting licences that Lucas Arts maintained, before the bad days of 'The Disney Occupancy'. In that time it didn't matter for a gamer if the Star Wars franchise was putting out a new movie, because we could create our own games in our heads with the countless dozens of pieces of media surrounding the space opera and the magic space wizards. Which of course means that I remember how jarring a time it was when no new Stars Wars media was being created whatsoever, leaving us hopefuls waiting in the dust for anything new. For the single player fans, it really wasn't until the 'Star Wars: Jedi' series that we had anything to hold onto. (So thanks for that EA!)

But what a wait it was, because 'Fallen Order' has to be one of my favourite action adventure games of the past generation for how well it handled fun-feeling combat, exploration puzzles and great stand-out set-piece moments: I really do see how the gaming public managed to latch themselves onto this game as their Star Wars trilogy. Personally, for the first time in a long time, I'm actually infused by the direction of the narrative and where they're going to take the story next to make Cal Kestis' survival throughout the age of the Jedi purge relevant in the grand scope of Star Wars storytelling. The narrative of an action adventure game has my attention- that's how you know these devs have crafted something special here to work on across the next decade.

Of course, with that attention to narrative comes a cast of characters I'm seriously excited to get to know more about. One of my only real hang-ups with the Fallen Order story was the fact that because Cal and Cere got the majority of the attention, side characters tended to just be around. I feel like we only scratched the surface of characters like Dreez and Merrin; both of which have the opportunity to really take centre stage a little more now that they've been set loose on the universe to be their own people. It even looks like Merrin may be becoming something of a late-life Jedi Padawan from some of the early footage we've seen, which would place her at a central point in the narrative moving forward as we explore this new rebel shootoff of the Jedi.

And the real reason I want more games to come out of this franchise; is to expand the world of modern Star Wars outside of the excessive constrained, and actually somewhat boring, scope of what Disney have been messing around with. Even their purported far-shoot from the main timeline, the High Republic, hasn't yet got that star power entry of this is must-watch content; leaving those bored with the events of the Skywalker sage feeling burnt out. Even the Mandalorian managed to tie in the Skywalkers- only Andor and the 'Star Wars: Jedi' series are interested expanding out the lore in any distinct and interesting direction; so I hold onto both of them like lightning rods keeping this franchise from becoming stale. Just as with Harry Potter, I want the property to outgrow the owners and become it's own thing; that's how media becomes evergreen.

But with my anticipation comes a considerable amount of trepidation, because with the greatest expectations comes hand-in-hand the greatest potential for a fall from grace. The higher the pedestal, the more gruesome the splat at the bottom end. One such issue I have would be related to the God of War problem, namely that I wonder if this franchise had given itself enough time between entries to really formulate new ideas or if it's just recycling more of the same but in a bigger prettier package. God of War was said to be a near perfect game, so people accepted it when that game's sequel didn't go in any great strides to push the game formula forward, but I for one will say that Jedi Fallen Order had some weak points that could have done with some touch-ups. I just hope the team aren't resting on the laurels of what they had already made.

For one I think that the boss fights of 'Jedi: Fallen Order', at least those on the critical path, were largely just ok- with one stand-out exception being the tree-top duel with the Seventh Sister. That fight alone had several stages, attack-switch ups, variant timing and all that great stuff witch makes a challenging and memorable Souls-like duel. Compared to her, even the final boss fight is disappointingly straight-forward and generic- even for all of the pomp and grandeur around the setting of those later fights. I need the main-line fights to respect life-bar stages going forward, to keep the fight feeling dynamic and ever shifting, and perhaps to include more creative elements akin to what Sekiro does- tying specific actions to solve certain fights. Imagine if 'Jedi Survivor' pulls off a fight with the scope and versatility of the 'Divine Dragon'; that would be a heart stopper moment!

And one last worry point, it's the amount of new characters that we're going to see out of Jedi Survivor. Rather than keep the team together as they were at the end of 'Fallen Order', 'Survivor' has scattered them to the wind and given the players a new set of friends to become familiar with. But as I mentioned, I still think there's considerable growing the base team still has yet to do. It's not like Mass Effect where every crew mate has enough character building to be chucked out into the wild and still be legends in their own right, I genuinely think that certain crewmates from the first game were still in their foetal stage of narrative progression, and I wonder if we'll feel like we've missed them growing up in the jarring transition from where they had just started blooming to where they've already fully blossomed in the modern world.

But my concerns and worries are brought out of a place of love. Love for this franchise and the development studio that didn't forget about the sizable amount of Star Wars fans that just don't get the same thrill out of online games that they do from fantastic single player masterpieces. I just want this trilogy of Star Wars games to be absolutely perfect and satisfying in the way that the recent trilogy of Star Wars movies just wasn't, and if I even catch a whiff of problems I'm going to hunt it down like a bloodhound. But I was just as sceptical of that first game when it first reared it's atypical head, and I'll likely be just as weary of the third game when it's around that time; I guess I'll never miss a chance to be pleasantly surprised by a game that ultimately outperforms my expectations. So go ahead, Respawn: Outperform! 

Square Enix falls on it's sword

Ouch.

So it's not been a very common year by the metric of how often I've talked about Square Enix, and that's not because they're a company who's games I find objectionable by any stretch of the imagination. I actually really like Square's games, their overly designed conceptualisations and their usually world-tier JRPGs; (Whether or not we're still allowed to use that term.) but I just can't afford to engage with their habit of overcharging for every one of their titles. No matter what the game is, whatever the type of development process or the size of the output, Square insists on pricing the game higher than it's similar contemporaries, so I end up buying those instead. In fact, recently Square even found a way to overprice a full-price worthy AAA title, but pricing it over full price. And you know what? I only think that's a 10th of the reason their company appears on a downwards spiral to the pits of hell!

A much larger aspect of that would be the decision makers absolutely losing touch with what their audience wants and is looking for, to the point where the only games Square really has to show off today are Final Fantasy's forever and freakin' Symbiogenesis! Everytime I get a look at the logo of Symbiogensis, my heart sees a new cool-looking logo for a JRPG, before my mind reminds me that it's actually place-holder art for perhaps the most full-throated NFT/gaming project ever mounted. Square are well and truly dedicated to trying to revolutionise the relationship between gamers and their wallets, to make the Square Enix brand preeminent again, through tricking every Weeb in the world into being their pay-piggies. Of course, such a fetish is defined by payment from one party to another under hope of a recompense that may or may not come, and usually doesn't. Which I think actually fits this world a bit too cleanly, doesn't it?

Symbiogenesis has somehow still managed to retain it's elusiveness since being announced, delivering to us only one extra trailer showing off their map space and some details plucked off the Twitter such as how the game will feature 10,000 'unique' characters that will all be NFTs. Of course, these NFT characters will somehow be tied to the theoretical gameplay that Symbiogenesis might potentially have. We don't know, because Square either have nothing designed or are too embarrassed to reveal that this is just a mobile game with even less going on than Fate Grand Order. (Not to offend FGO fans, but come on; You know the game is mobile trite, right?) The only kicker being, and this one gets me right in the gut- the elements of art we're seeing are to the same standard of typical Square titles! Well... mostly. We'll get to the outliers.

The Youtube video which Square has shown off, which depicts only the splash drop reveal of parts of a world map, but with a subtle stylisation that vaguely reminds of Persona's world depiction- somehow already has it's like and dislike bars turned off. Despite the fact that Youtube still have their dislikes removed meaning no one could even see the absolute dunking they were getting anyway; but I guess that made that public by the merit of omission, didn't they? Mostly the criticism seems to be because the marketing is so awful that the only people who even knew this trailer dropped were those following Square on Twitter who had full knowledge of what the project was and judged it on those poisoned roots. But the art, the music composition, the feel of the trailer- they're fine. Not great, we still have no earthly clue what the game even is, but enough to make me realise that genuine artists are having their talents wasted promoting this pipe-dream to nowhere.

Of course, then we have the character models that Square tried to 'sneak preview'. Just a handful of the '10,000 unique models' that players can buy with 'in game functionality' and 'the right to use them on social media profile pictures'! (Oh, so I can buy permission to make my Twitter PFP an anime character? Wowzers, I've always wanted to pay to be bullied!) And as you might imagine, for any team that was tasked with creating 10,000 unique characters for one project, they all look the same. Now when I heard that criticism I was understandable sceptical, I've heard Anime knee-jerk haters claim that all the faces of protagonists are identical before and it's typical a clueless catch-all critique of the visual style of anime. But actually looking at these characters... no, they're the same face copy and pasted 10,000 times. 

Literally every face is the exact same shape, with a really odd looking underbite that makes every face look distinctly shrivelled and oblong. They are all positioned in the exact same pose, looking off into the same indistinct middle-distance, and they've all had their other facial features superimposed onto that base frame. I can confirm this, as can anyone by simply looking at the dolls and seeing how their hair clips right through the hats that some of them are wearing, which is intensely amateurish when we're talking about 2D models! That doesn't just detail an art project that has been slapped together by AI, but one which didn't even go through a human review and touch-up process after the fact. Quite honestly, this isn't even worthy of having the, typically artistically divine, Square Enix brand logo slapped onto it. This is an embarrassment to their prestige. 

All we have to go on for what the game might actually be when it comes out is an apparent pitch document discovered which details the model of the game. Of course it is as you would expect, people use their NFT characters to log into accounts where they get quest hints that are entered into some sort of world event, all the while being pressured at key points into duplicating and selling their NFTs? I think. It's confusing. Doubly so because this is one of the most pathetically poorly laid out pitch documents I've ever seen, with a step by step process in which step one is in the middle of the page! What happened to the top left of the screen? (Or the top right, if we're following Japanese standards.) Ugly design for an ugly plan for a game that sounds like it's going to have one ugly heart beating it it's gilded chest.

Symbiogenesis to me is the embodiment of dystopian modern game design given digital flesh; a 'investment opportunity' game that caters to all the least interesting aspects of the market to try and drum up fascination. Money hungry moguls are already rushing to it, and I see them snapping up whatever they can, laughing at the audience who stares on in abject horror at what Square Enix has become. They all consider a totally inescapable reality that these games are the new norm of the entertainment industry, in which it makes total sense to alienate the old-school relics of today so you can snag the audience of tomorrow. The problem is, today's audience is tomorrow's audience. Gaming just doesn't want anything to do with NFTs, from a functional level and a people level; and if Square is going to keep dragging their feet on this matter, spurred on by brain-rotted Dr Disrespect clones- they're going to be left behind to wither in the dirt. We might just lose Square Enix to this struggle, and that would be one crying shame.

AI- it is evolving

 Only, stupidly

The last time I delved into the innerworkings of AI it was in a speculative degree to assess whether or not the AI advent horizon was looming down upon us or merely a speculation for this lifetime. We took a generous look at learning algorithms and AI humanity tests and from that saw a array of the places that AI was and where it was headed. But since then the conversation around what AI can do, as well as it's availability to the general public, has all but skyrocketed. You merely have to search about on Google a bit to see countless of diatribes on the dangers of AI influence on our creative careers, the reliance of AI in customer support capacities and the utter uselessness of current AI platforms to verify any information, despite the increasing reliance on that very function. Go on Bing, if you dare, and you'll quite literally be prompted to use an AI in order to perform whatever search you were interested in. Clearly a line in the sand has been crossed.

Midjourney and Image generation was probably the start of the public interest in this new wave of artificial sensationalism. Seeing an algorithm take a single string of prompt text and turn that into a visually appealing image based on those speculations felt like a touch of magic, and a kick in the face to the many artists who's work was broken down and reworked in order to create those images. You see, despite the blow of it- AI still very much works on more complex versions of that same learning model we looked at last time. It takes existing stimuli, programmed into it, and attempts to rework the elements of that stimuli within it's operating parameters in countless different ways to fit certain 'success parameters'. Such parameters are typically also based on existing pieces of work, meaning that AI cannot fundamentally create something that is distinctly different from what already exists. So right away we can debunk those saying that 'true AI is here'! No it isn't, and I don't know of a single AI leader who even has an inkling of how to start working on it as of yet.

For the time being you could leave AI to teach itself for 100 years without any interaction from the human world and end up with an AI taste in art that hasn't evolved during all of that time, because there is no way for AI to generate new ideas as of yet. In fact, AI is so bad at new ideas that it's composites almost always carry with them a horribly disfigured signature from the artist who's work it's stolen. I always thought signing art was weird, but it seems I was always the blind one because that's exactly what is catching all of these learning algorithms off. But you can see why this is still rubbing artists the wrong way. If a machine can, pretty inexpensively, replicate their talents- then who's to say their talents will still be of value several years from now? Without regulation, it would seem nothing.

Of course, AI doesn't just stop at art- it's coming for the written word too. Language models like ChatGPT do much the same thing that the other AI algorithms are doing, only they seemed to have been integrated into our daily lives much quicker and much more seamlessly than the art did. These platforms are capable of taking example articles for form structure and language and put together coherent output articles on specific topics when prompted. This has already led to reputable news outlets making articles with ChatGPT, (With only a tiny faded disclaimer at the very bottom of the article disclosing that fact) companies already setting up corporate emails to be dispensed through ChatGPT and as I've already mentioned, Bing's desire to replace it's search engines with ChatGPT.

But with this adoption has come it's own fair share of issues. For one, Bing's search engine helper has been discovered to be a little... unreliable. That is to say, if you ask the helper to read out information to you on a topic, there's a good chance it will make up stuff and lie- which shouldn't really be a surprise considering the machine is seeding it's information from an internet rife with half-truths and fabrications. Then there are searches that veer wildly from the path of simple conversation and turn oddly personal. We've seen examples of Bing's AI threatening people who challenge it, confessing love to people who chat with it for too long and just shutting down completely if it doesn't know exactly how to answer. Which should be good news for people in my shoes, I ain't completely out of a job yet. Oh wait, this isn't even my job! Why am I even invested?

Yet despite these very apparent and prevalent hang-ups, we already see people trying to take advantage of the tools as they appear. Just browse the news from the past few weeks and you'll pop across dozens of tales about students trying to get out of writing assignments by getting ChatGPT to put an essay together instead, or getting around sending a tough personal email commiserating rough times with ChatGPT's emotionless assistance. And as someone who studied English, I understand. Sometimes you come back to the same Essay everyday for a week and haven't added a single sentence. But if you don't reach that wall where you just break down and stream of conscious forth until the entire page is full of trite, then why have you even signed up for college? It's not there to beat, it's there to break you down and make you feel like insignificant crap on the way out. ChatGPT robs you of that humbling.  

Headway has been made with the democratisation of AI accessibility, even if the functionality of said AI has been rocky. This does mean that when the time comes that AI starts getting better, and adaptive learning starts becoming possible, that's going to be the sort of tools that hobbyists will be able to play around with their bedroom. From this light, I could see a future where nothing in the human imagination can possibly be constrained because of the limitless potential at their finger-tips. Of course, by that very same merit I can't help but think of the countless cliché warnings that Science Fiction has blasted us with over the years. Skynet. The Matrix. You know how it goes. Limitless power, limitless danger, Christian Bale going nuts at a stage hand- the dark future.

Curiosity bides my attention, as it always does; a yapping hound dog lapping at my cheek to watch what next feat of daring it performs. But I am a cautious observer. Dubious and careful. As much as I want to see what AI is capable of, I don't want to see it's improvement erase entire industries of creative talent, as it is already in the midst of doing for labour. The combination of machines into the work place is a matter of consternation to be chattered over for hours, and more important minds than mine have pondered it's intricacies. But even then I won't lie about being tempted for what AI might be capable of in a year, or two. What we see today already strains what I thought possible, tomorrow might break my mind all over again.

The end of the world

 Stark and stunning.

Is there any more comforting a thought than 'soon this will all be over'? Someday the great weight of pressure crushing against your chest will finally cave in and from there- total, blissful oblivion? That the great spoke that grinds through the people of this world cannot churn forever, and one day it's gears will rust and the machine will crumble. The stars will collapse. The land will burn. One day it will all be quiet. Do you see the peace in that? I do. I always have. Which might be why the prospect of the apocalypse in media sings so harmoniously with my soul. Whenever I get asked about what fictional world I may theoretically wish to disappear within one day, I invariably go to the the worlds either set in the fictional past or the dystopian future- which had made me something of a connoisseur of dystopias over the years. As such, I want to observe some of these 'worst case scenario' end-of-the-world circumstances here today.

Now the most obvious 'Apocalypse' I can think of is that of a totally destroyed earth, baptised in chemical or nuclear flame- scrubbed clean of the typical make-up to sustain sentient life. Thus is the background for many of the most popular dystopias: Fallout, Wasteland and Metro; and each one brings their only little special something to the mythos of the 'scorched earth scenario' or what would come after. I think the most vanilla out of the titles I'm largely familiar with is Wasteland; a typically lawless desert of sands and blown out old cities largely populated by themed post-world bandits but occasionally home to monstrously overgrown rodents and bugs too. The most unique aspect of Wasteland would probably be it's relationship with robotics, as the post world seems to be dripping in mechanical men, giant robot weapons platforms and tiny dancing disco-bots that all have a penchant for murdering lawmen. (And the players of Wasteland are, usually, Lawmen.)

Metro would be a more realistic spin on the idea of a holocaust, dragging society underground and prioritising limiting skin exposure to the outside pockets of radioactive death. But at the same time Metro leans into the grotesque radiation monsters that came out of the otherside of the nuclear fires, and from them is bred the dramatic thriller side of the Metro formula, as well as some degree of the general moral pathos when you get further down the line. (Somewhat similar to 'STALKER' in that regard.) Fallout would be my favourite post apocalypse in gaming however. Stylised on a fifties-fuelled vision on what a cold-war future would look like, there's just so much burnished and rusted personality glittering under the hot dust of the Fallout wastes. Chatty robot 'love' dolls, Elvis Presley street thugs with hearts of gold, high school American football dress-up tribals: Fallout wears it's wackiest ideas on it's sleeve and carries them with the cool gusto of a kitted-out Jojo protagonist. 

Of course, 'Apocalypse' scenario's don't always have to be so apparent, or so present. Take the techno-dystopia's like the one's depicted in Cyberpunk 2077, Half-Life 2 or even Metal Gear Solid 4. (Before Revengence came out and somehow depicted a post 'Guns of the Patriots' world that seemed somehow more normal.) These are game world are, I would consider, on the brink of totally falling apart as they exist in that special limbo 'teeter' state just before the fall off the deep end where everything starts unravelling. Cyberpunk's Night City is a warzone to survive for even everday inhabitants; the wealth disparity is so pronounced that those who aren't rich live like actual rats struggling to survive in a murder-strewn death pit where catching a stray bullet makes you one of the lucky ones. Half-Life 2 depicted a totalitarian dictatorship of earth under the boot of the extradimensional (?) alien menace who round up humans and harvest them like cattle.

Metal Gear Solid 4's world however is, appropriately given the mind of it's creator, the most complex. A world of privatised and profit-driven warfare where the industry of trading lives has grown to into such a grotesque monolith that every aspect of the modern world is behold to it's influence. That, naturally, lays bear a world state on the world of total collapse the second one external power decides to seize control of those specialised tools of control that manage this dangerous opera of warfare and turn them against their creators. Obvious commentary on the military industrial complex laid bare, just how our man Kojima loves to write his scripts- and a compelling, whilst very unique, way of depicting a modern and moderately functioning world that just beneath the surface is bubbling over the top.

And then there are the dystopias that take the very concept in a wildly different direction, playing on the familiar tropes and turning them on their head. Instead of a world laid bare by scorched fire, how about a world overrun by a mycelial infection represented by nature overrunning the world of man in The Last of Us- or the ecological disaster landscape that sells itself even more into that aesthetic, such as Horizon? What if we take the concept of a 'dead earth' and fast-forward it far into the future such that the only representative of what was are android created in the vision of man, and use that one-stepped removed lens to examine the aspects of the scattered and dead world left behind objectively, a distance from which you can observe the simple beauty in interpersonal connection, or the vapid ugliness in standards of attraction. Oh, that last one was Nier Automata, if it wasn't obvious.

For this concept, one of my favourites is Kenshi. Itself a concept born out of traditional 'world is scorched bare' framework but built upon a wild and twisted alternative world that resembles our own in some aspects and veers off into bizarre creative freeform in other instances. Based loosely on some romanticised version of feudal Japan but spruced up races of robotic skeleton people and cannibalistic insect hive men- all struggling to survive in the ruins of once sprawling empires now smashed down to the stone age by some great downturn of the world's progression. There's a echo of faded beauty in the world of Kenshi, and envisioning the world that was through the muddy graphics and twisted, oftentimes utterly inhospitable, environments brings you closer to just how far the present world has denigrated in the time since.

The world always ends with people. Some one left there after the end to spark the next flame, that will signal the burst of the next age whatever that may be. Maybe a great shade of the fallacy of human optimism, to think that even if we as people cannot conquer death our species is resilient enough to outrun the end of everything, no matter how total it will be. I wonder then, how it would be to come across a totally devoid world where there is no trace of latent humanity waiting to be reawoken into a next age of humanity. Would such a story be refreshing or far too fatalistic? How would you tell it? After the fact or during the last age? See, like I said just thinking about this topic gets me all excited! I just can't help thinking about such concepts because, I think it's a comfort being able to rely on impermanence as that final cure-all to everyone of the vast and overwhelming ills of this muddy world of ours. That, and people won't let you walk around blaring fifties music with all these 'laws' we have in the functioning world- what's up with that? 

Does everything need a reason?

Who is reason?

Why are we here? Just to suffer? Seems so, because without the sweat and blood of the worker, the gears of the world would refuse to turn. But here's a question; does that mean the purpose of life is to suffer? Well, then we start entering the level of metaphysics as it collides with philosophy and theology, all fields dedicated to deciphering the indecipherable in whatever manner best suits them and before you follow that thread for long you'll just end up throwing up your hands and saying; Does any of it really matter? And that's a valid question to ask- does any of that higher pontification on meaning and purpose really matter in the grand scheme of things? Perhaps to the individual, perhaps in reinforcing self-evident truths in their confidence about the universe- but outwardly? To the world? No- I'd wager that it's all ephemeral scribbles blown away by the wind. But how does that relate to art; how does that align with game design?

Purpose is actually a big question that we ask ourselves whenever it comes to mounting a piece of work. As I sit to write this blog the purpose is very evident to me- to explain my thoughts on the matter listed at the top of the page- there's no artistry in presenting or conveying that in clever, subtle ways- in fact the more subtle I am the less successful the blog- in my experience. When we turn to art, however, purpose has a different relationship. Purpose becomes this writhing snake that ties itself to every aspect, every decision, every shift in direction- a tether that connects to all disparate aspects of the development process and bring them all in some degree of harmony to a central ideal or theme. We hold these higher 'purposes' as gospel, in our art, calling back to them when we get lost in the sauce, drawing confidence in expressing them, and often take great pains in deconstructing and then reconstructing their very essence.

Themeing is actually a crux of writing whenever I sit down to pen a story, not so much for the 'higher purpose' of writing to 'teach the audience' or anything like that, just because it helps to narrow down the scope of the story. Otherwise whenever I sit down I'm just looking at a blank page with no idea how to fill it. Story is fine for the overview, but knowing the tone of what characters are doing, what they are conveying and how they choose to do- those specifics always come back to theme. And theme, as I've always come to use it, is merely the reason why. The question of why this story exists in it's most basic and primitive form. The DNA that makes up the makeup of any piece of fiction. And I'm sure if you ask some of the more 'heady' elements of the writing world they'll tell you how nothing can exist without that reason.

But is that strictly true? I mean if you break down some of the most complex works of plot and fictional lore, like Dark Souls, I've always maintained you can strip it down to a story about obstinance and desperation to cling onto past glories. I argue that the whole series, on a theme level, is a treatise to let the worn fade and die like it's supposed to so new things can be born- whatever they may be. But then- what would be the purpose and theme be for, say, the complex narrative of a game like Minecraft? Itself a game that almost purposefully lacks a narrative of any kind except on a very esoteric and mostly aesthetic level? Is there any higher themes at play in Pacman? Tetris? Brawlhalla? Does a work of art need a purpose in order to feel complete and worthwhile? And what does lacking one change about the way we view art?

Well as you can likely tell from my preamble up there, I don't think purpose and theme are necessary ingredients to the completed recipe of art. Plenty of stories exist and are strung together by a thread of 'this works' and 'this is cool' and there's nothing abhorrently apparent in such examples that would hint at any form of deficit. And when look to forms of art that are excessively technical, like that of film or games, it becomes even more common for stories to be told that are spurred up by technical achievement rather than thematic purpose. Mirror's Edge's sterile dystopia is secondary to the raw presentation and, then experimential, mechanics of a robust and intuitive first person free-running engine- and some may say that is just as valid a purpose as a more traditional reason to exist.

Reason is quite often compared to the concept of a 'story moral', which in itself carries presumptive expectation to what is being said and how it should be interpreted. Is it the purpose of every piece of fictional art to define the moral parameters of who we are as people, reshaping them with tales told to admonish and punish certain behaviours and venerate others? Of course not. People who form their belief and personalities based on the media they consume are often some of the least confident and personally fulfilled you may meet. But we can still have the desire to learn, to be challenged or to just be entertained propelled on by a great work of art.

The more I ponder it, the more convinced I am that the actual purpose of a theme is really to benefit the creator and keep them on the same track- because the relevance of being able to identify and pick out the raw thematic purpose of a work is functionally irrelevant. The emotions that works makes you feel, the topics that it raises or the quandaries it has you contemplate- they ideally should be evident to all the intended members of the audience. That is the point of telling a story, afterall. To share something of yourself outwards. Maybe that alone is all the reason there needs to be. Whether it is the way you feel, the way you wish to feel, a truth you want to make real or just a talent you want to show off- performance for performance's sake is, in itself, a reason.

To posit that all things must have a reason confers the onus of purpose onto the creator for some higher reasoning, whereas I've come around to believe that all things have reason simply by being. To reposition an old Socrates talking point- what makes a chair a chair is simply being a chair- does that makes sense? Using the chair as a chair gives it the purpose of being a chair. Treating media as you do, to enjoy, get excited at, be intrigued by, become angry with- contextualises it's purpose even in the most subjective of senses. In that light; reason is malleable, personal and ever-shifting. Thus concludes my essay on why all English examinations are antiquated garbage that the education system should have gotten rid of years ago. FREE THE ENGLISH GRADS!

Success

 And succor?

Following my treatise on what it is to lose in games, I thought it only right that I try and touch on the inverse scenario; what it is to win and the relation that special moment has to the way that we as players experiencing gaming. There's quite a bit of nuance in this topic, perhaps just as much as there is with losing; and by objectively analysing the higher concepts of success and how it effects ideas of 'enjoyment' and 'satisfaction', perhaps some deeper understanding into certain genres that play around with these ideals may be granted. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself, first we should identify that which further differentiates the medium of gaming from other interactive mediums, the ability to succeed or complete the interaction with the piece of art.

Winning is a novel concept, typically defined as resolving the conflict presented by the game, the actual specifics of what 'success' is can vary depending on the game in question and even the player behind the controls. For some the very act of finishing a level is a 'win', or defeating a tough enemy; for others those are only positive touchstones on the road to total victory; completing the game. But then there's the question of what 'completion' even is. How many people actually finish every single activity in open world games? Very few I'm sure, so then is 'completion' simply finishing the core narrative questlines? Do side quests count as well? What about branching RPG games where you can reach a totally different ending depending on choices made by the player, such as in Outer Worlds where a low intelligence stat character can smash their face onto a ship control panel and launch that vehicle into the sun, bringing the narrative to an end halfway through a traditional campaign? Is that a victory? The parameters and measurements most typically are left solely to the discretion of the player in these instances.

'Completion' of a game or a full narrative is not necessarily the height of the experience as one might expect by the natural adulation you'd afford a 'victory'. It may seem a little cliché to say, but the moment you 'complete' a game is typically quickly followed by the moment you put it down and stop enjoying it through active engagement. You may have fond memories of that victorious moment to look back on, but the pedigree of that memory is forged more by the struggles and failures which predated the end rather than the moment itself. What tastes more sweet, the vegetable that you pick out of the ground or the ripe fruit you have to climb a tall tree in order to reach? And yes, that analogy is loaded with prejudice and manipulation but the thought experiment it provides is valid; strife builds accomplishment. A concept which I think might be best understood by... say it with me... Soulslike games.

Soulslike games as a genre are built on the understanding that difficulty is most pure when it can be attributed to the strengths of the player and failure that is down to anything other than player error feels like a robbery. (That doesn't stop Dark Souls from throwing in the odd random death drop, but they never rely on that cheap shot too heavily.) In many ways, beyond the lore and the themes and emotional resonance the narrative is attempting to portray, the raw experience of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds is the fibre at the beating heart of the Soulslike genre. Which is probably why the commonly held refrain from those who aren't as big fans of these styles of games, that they are lesser without some sort of 'easy mode', is so vehemently pushed back upon by those that do. Yes, inclusion is important and accessibility should absolutely be more widely adopted as industry standards, but Soulslike games are most chiefly informed by their carefully designed difficulty. Stripping away those layers to allow someone to experience the story is like hollowing out a peach so it's easier to swallow; you've removed the substance- what remains is hardly worth sharing.

But I digress, because success does not all always need to be the overwhelming wash of relief at the end of a hard-fought adventure- it can be little stabs of sunlight from the little victories along the way. That moment when you crack a Pokémon egg and get a shiny you've been grinding several hours for, or solve an annoying logic puzzle that's been stumping you for just as long. Everytime you hit that resolution button and are struck by those waves of buzzing endorphins, I consider that a 'victory' moment in gaming. However as with any chemical infusion, the more used to receiving that endorphin hit you are- the less effective that drag becomes. Perhaps that is why some of the tougher games, where victory seems all but illusive, strike the hardest when you've finally pushed through the immovable wall.

Yet even with everything we've talking about so far, I've somehow managed to still keep to largely traditional games and their understanding of success. What about Minecraft? What about Stardew Valley? What does success look like in those endless styles of games that are designed to be experienced theoretically forever? In my mind, this is when we get back to the, decently cliched, idea that 'the journey is better than the destination.' Success and achievement can be rewarded in milestones of progress, such as finishing a large build in the ongoing construction of your base, or saving up enough for that house upgrade you've spent several seasons eyeing. Sometimes the parameters aren't even suggested by the game itself through clear presentation hooks, and sometimes it's beyond what the developers even intended for the game in question.

Success can be a powerful incentive and reward when handled correctly, and sometimes it needs to be managed in a sense of balance. Keep the prize of a victory too elusive and you'll starve the players out of anticipation and straight to simple frustration. Of course, the threshold for what is 'too much' can differ wildly from player to player, so an understanding of your audience is an essential aspect of this recipe. And though the 'ultimate' success, completing the game and moving on- can bring with it a moment of sadness as you leave behind the experience- without that pathos I don't think any journey is truly complete. Like a full course meal missing it's desert, that finale isn't just a sweet treat, it's often a palette cleanser and reset designed to cap-off and compliment the entire dinner. I've been at that point of refusing to finish an adventure you just can't put down- but at the end of the day aren't you just denying yourself the fullest experience of that adventure in your trepidation?

The reasons why we play are many and varied, from searching for relaxation to waging against competition to experiencing accomplishment to basically yearning to be entertained. As esoteric and ethereal as the particulars of art can be, the chemistry is often as down to earth as one could imagine; breaking down these elements, what it is that makes someone feel victorious, and how to bring about those sensations, can absolutely be the key to understanding some of the highest concepts of game design. Of course, those very same questions are asked and toyed around with by professional psychologists who come up with ways to exploit the brain to empower mobile games and GACHA systems; so there's dark clouds amidst every silver lining. With great power comes a great number of corrupt influences ready to take advantage of it, I suppose.

Persona 5... 3?

Huh?

Wait, no- we were promised a sequel. As in a proper sequel. After waiting all this time for ATLUS to stop dragging their feet and announce that they are even thinking about making a Persona 6, another licenced team have slipped out of the nether realms to announce what appears to be a direct sequel to Persona 5. But that in itself is a bit of a red herring, because Persona already had a sequel called 'Persona 5 Strikers'. So what in Arsène's name is 'Persona 5: The Phantom X' then? This franchise's own 'Persona 5: Lightning Returns'? (I still think that was one of the worst Final Fantasy game names of all time.) Ah, why am I complaining? More reasons to jump into one of my favourite universes of all time, with one of my favourite styles of game design, is always a boon in my books. I mean, even if it looks like more-of-the-same, that's never a total negative to me! Fallout New Vegas got the same criticism when it was shown off, only to prove that content matters far more than appearances when it turned out to be the greatest game in it's respective franchise! What could be so questionable as to make my faith in the Persona game series waver?

Its... it's a mobile game? Oh no... I should have known this day was coming. It was obvious, really. Live Services and mobile games are always a big hit for the Japanese audiences, even if the rest of the world recoils in disgust from the platform after being burned countless times. Japanese developers have to make games that cater for their immediate demographic, it's a surprise that there aren't more exclusive Final Fantasy mobile games to be honest. (Although there are already a few). It's just a heart breaker- to see potential for a new solid game entry be whittled down to the cramped and ugly confines of a 'mobile gam'e- and the reason why is borne purely from my prejudice to this platform, I'll be honest; but man, do I have precedent! It's not as though modern mobiles aren't capable of holding well made games- heck you can literally play Genshin Impact on mobile phones, and PUBG- it's just that mobile exclusives always let you down in the most important way.

To say what I mean, I should start my saying that 'Persona 5: The Phantom X' is not a throw away trash phone title like that terrible city builder Final Fantasy XV game. This is a real playable title, with RPG battles, inbetween socialisation breaks throughout the city and a real written-out narrative with some actual full-animated cutscenes. This isn't a throw away title by any stretch of the imagination and I imagine the developers wanted to make a game of worth and purpose within the Persona 5 sub-universe which I would love to get my hands upon. But when it comes to putting any game on the mobile platform it's almost as though a switch of regard to the audience just flips in the creator's heads. They have to make it free-to-play in order to match the market, and that means they have to find the most invasive, and pervasive way to sully the play experience begging for monetary funds from their audience. The more grubby the tactic, the better the performance of the game on the soulless board of 'money made'.

But my god do I love Persona. So much so, that I am willing and ready pretend the inevitable actually won't be the case for this game. Just looking at the gameplay trailer recently released, though it's all in Japanese, I get those stinging call backs to that colourful and evocative game which stole my heart the second I saw it with a teaser trailer. It's not quite to the visual flourishes of the original game mind you, a title which ruled it's themes with masterful aplomb in it's colouration and music, but this new entry looks as though it's leeching off the greatest of a title that had plenty to go around. Apparently some with a better understand of the language than I have said that some of the story snippets in the gameplay trailer seem to touch on somewhat similar themes as well, which is why it makes sense keeping this new cast of characters tied to the P5 world, however I do find it exceedingly curious that the Velvet Room seems to have adopted a distinct attendant who is missing nearly all the hallmarks of traditional attendants aside from the uniform. (How curious) And though I think the new Penguin mascot doesn't hold a candle to Morgana or Teddy, (it looks too... militant) I can see myself coming around to... accepting his presence with prolonged exposure.

At it's heart, what gives a mobile game it's vampiric thirst for cash injections is the desire for those titles to be constantly supported via integrated servers. For some reason every single mobile game under the sun is running with servers so expensive that unless the team are making multiple hundreds of thousands a month, that game just isn't worth the development time or resources to keep continuing. And I fully understand 'moving on because making a new game would be more profitable', obviously; but why do all these mobile games have to then be shut offline? (Am I still mad about Elder Scrolls Legends, you bet I am!) Although by that very same merit, the inherently live-service style of mobile games would probably slide into the Persona formula in a really unique way if the team can pull it off.

Think about it: living through the daily life of a school kid slowly improving their talents and relationships between bouts to the otherworld in a narrative that unfolds itself in seasonal chapters spaced out over a few years- that really would make a lot of sense given the framing structure of what Persona actually is. Of course, the narrative would have to be written in a manner that is satisfying in each one of those released chunks, but the general formula of a typical Persona game does already kind of play into that supposed model. You embark on investigations into certain characters which culminates in a progressive dungeon based and themed around that target's larger personal insecurities. Only instead of that resolution leading onto the next chapter immediately, it could lead onto a 'too be continued' cliffhanger, which the Persona story enjoyed doing anyway.

It's really going to be the actual inbetween gameplay elements where the game makes or breaks itself. Persona has a very clearly defined JRPG playstyle of statically linear weapon and level improvements spruced up by a splice and combine 'spirits' system for in-battle complexity. This system is tested throughout countless RPGs, it's complete and it works just fine. What I'm trying to say is, throwing in a rarity system and endless loot drops would not only be creatively lazy, it would sully a gameplay model that doesn't need replacing. This needs to be said, because like the Ubisoft open world design method this crutch of design is becoming honestly painfully overdone to the point where even the titles in which it belongs, like the upcoming Diablo IV, are starting to feel stale for merely sharing the larger industries woes. I need some RPG developer out there to solve the problem of how to create prolonged improvement without resorting to the lowest common denominator of design. Convince me that this industry still consists of artists and problem solvers, not mathematicians and financial experts.

Persona is a beloved franchise of mine; for which I pray on hoping for a new entry that will alight it's fame clear across the industry as much as Yakuza 0 did for Ryu Ga Gotoku. And whilst Persona 5's applause and success was already a big moment for ATLUS, one which they clearly aren't ready to move on from judging by the two sequel games they've got based around it- I know that a global synchronous release of a brand new Persona 6 will propel their brand to heights that company couldn't  currently dream of. So in my heart, ignoring my head, this mobile game is a stepping stone on the way to a smash hit 6. When I look at it that way, I can feign ignorance to the baggage that any mobile game invites into the equation simply by being itself. Hey, at least Joker is going to be in it- right?