My thoughts on the Hellblade series so far

 "If I can survive the fire of Sutur and escape my darkness, then so can you"

Ninja Theories latest two games are widely considered to be incredibly competent art pieces in themselves for the involved narrative that they tell, if not for 'complexity of their gameplay systems'. They are lean experiences, telling the narrative they need to and then dipping out leaving you to swallow the bulk of it all in your own time. And they were games that I always wanted to try out but never found the space. That was, until I picked up Game Pass and thought "Hey, I've already get Sacrifice waiting for me to finish it- why don't I just go back to back?" And with that was born this little mini-review of the series of the Senua titles and what I think of this, what might ultimately go down as Ninja Theories presiding legacy over the video game landscape.

First off it's important to say that basically the Hellblade games are extremely high budget indie games, that is to say- they are paced and presented with about as much narrative exposition spoken over inquisitive jaunts through interesting environments as your average 'Gone Home' or 'Everyone's Gone to the Rapture' title. What sets the games apart is the way they've always launched at the cutting edge of visual fidelity for their time, and the fact that these are the stories of a warrior who raises her sword when she needs to. It's just that sometimes you are left wondering whether you swing that sword to defend her physical body, or to protect the very fragile essence of her mind itself as it buckles against the massive throes of trauma she experiences in both titles. The games do not make it obvious which is which at all.

The original Hellblade places protagonist Senua on a vivid and fog strewn journey into the land of Hel in search of the soul of her beloved, and within that framing device a great deal of darkly fantastical imagery is placed upon a inherently twisting introspective investigation. Senua is our viewing glass into this world and yet she is a deeply unreliable narrator thanks to, as should become obvious pretty quickly, her schizophrenia which conjures illusion borne out of her own struggles to accept the frankly horrific murder of her lover and the fantastic tales of Norse myth she recalls throughout the story as told by her old mentor Druth. In that sense Hellblade feels like a gauntlet through the indescribable given focus and stitched together through myth and imagination- though filtered through the troubling lens of a deeply traumatic mind. 

Her 'Sacrifice' is interwoven with puzzles that pertain to 'insight' into her past and the people that shaped her. As stories are narrated by bodiless voices or rarely in brief murky flashes obscured to a degree that you don't notice the out-of-place FNV means by which they are captured. (Druth's FNVs are unmistakeable though. There's no disguising that dude's realness!) And here and there across her journey manifestations of the demons that infest her 'Hel' come to life and we engage in combat- arguably Hellblade's weakest attribute. All as we forge greater to an internal synthesis where the emotionally wounded Senua can perhaps start the healing process. 

For all that I've heard spitting on the combat of these games I have to be honest- it isn't actually all that bad. These fights are clearly designed with more an idea of being cinematic than complex and dynamic, but given their relative infrequency they are totally serviceable as simple breaks from the puzzle solving and frank storytelling. They even throw in different enemy types and dodge cycles to keep things interesting, and even a special move you can fall back on in times of stress. It's not particularly difficult either, with Senua pretty much undying unless she gets double-tapped whilst already on the floor, which is pretty easy to avoid as it is. Near the late game, however, there are a couple of frankly annoying gauntlets where the game throws giant waves at the player which suffer from the same problem that Kingdom Come Deliverance's late game hoards did- this combat system absolutely is not designed for multiple combatants. It becomes a game of awkwardly snapping between enemies that can literally spawn out of aether behind you if the game so chooses and this doesn't feel like the kind of game where you're supposed to get frustrated at the enemy waves. (Just saying.)

Senua is beset her entire adventure by four voices in her head, manifestations of her mental illness, that helpfully work to convey conflict, doubt, resolve and everything she keeps so tightly wrapped inside. It really is a unique framing device and a way to get over the lack of direct supporting cast in the game. Aside from the FMVs, Senua is literally the only human model in the entire game, which makes since when you consider the amount of effort that went into creating her at the time as one of the most realistic looking video game characters conceived of. Giving her people to talk with, even if those people are just herself, gives the push and pull a narrative of significant change requires. And, fittingly, it helps to reinforce one of the key themes of Senua- her feeling of deep isolation as a result of her psychosis. 

If there was anything I would criticize from the original, it would have to be that ending. Not the actual ending itself, but the lead-up and its gauntlets of combat, really highlighting the shortcomings there, followed by a frankly frustrating 'revelation' moment. Without spoiling anything because these games are so narratively solid you really should play them- the key most revelations are two fold- namely the significance of the wonderfully baritone male inner voice who hounds her, and the source of this 'darkness' she feels haunts her. Both are resolved rather inexplicably. She just decides that she knows the answer, and whilst the identity of the voice doesn't take a rocket scientist to solve-  the other mystery is genuinely pulled out of thin air. If this entire journey takes place in her subconsciousness, or at least she can only cobble together fragments of her mind to reach synthesis- then how the hell could she have discovered the fate of someone she, by all accounts, was not aware of beforehand? Is this was supposed to convey some sort of repressed memory- they did a shockingly poor job foreshadowing that given this entire adventure takes place in Senua's head. It's arguably a minor point- but one I feel worth voicing because... they kind of do it again in Hellblade 2. (But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga is probably the most graphical impressive game I've ever played, and artistically the thing is shot like a modern Lord of the Rings movie in the composition of landscapes and light, the flashes of battle, the hues of the supernatural and the sheer fidelity of the world in front of you. Almost in direct contrast to the arguably entirely ethereal setting of the original, Hellblade 2 actually takes place in the real world, for the most part, as Senua- now reaffirmed in her connection with others- travels up north as a slave in order to discover the heart of the Northmen who, famously, were responsible for the mutilation of her lover- but more recently are conducting various raids and enslavements in Senua's homeland. Rather curiously the connection these men have to Senua's lost love is not addressed once in this entire game, which I can guess surmise just how definitively she put that part of her to rest in the original.

Materially how the original game is very similar to the sequel, with the exception that whereas that had the sensation of 'puzzle rooms' in a manner similar to your average indie game- Hellblade 2 feels more like a big budget epic adventure occasionally interrupted with puzzles, which in themselves are a visual treat to behold as you manipulate blue fireflies into hard rocky substance by the flickering of nearby fires. And whatsmore I have to be honest, I was very impressed with the incredible improvements to swordplay- which in the original was more of a clunky but impressive animation showcase stretched a little beyond it's limits but this time around feels like an almost visceral experience.

From the very first actual fight Senua wages it is clear that Ninja Theory want you to feel the din of chaos- the confusion of the flurry, the taste of the dirt, the blunt violence of metal searing flesh- it is a stunning and breathless spectacle that, at times, defies belief to be anything more than a cinematic. Of course, this effect is achieved because combat is still largely on the rails, the the breath of the presentation (as well as the general framing of the entire game as a straight, focused narrative) just about makes up for that. It was actually in these moments of battle, particularly at night, that I first caught those glimpses of fidelity so stunning it looked indistinguishable from real life. Just flashes mind, but the effect is truly surreal in a way that might just beat the old 'unreal valley' effect I've felt ever since the days of 'Beowulf'.

Additionally, given the setting being largely in the real world and Senua's progress as a character, we actually have in-game side characters this time around who are rendered just as impressively as Senua herself- although obviously not as iconic. (They don't even wear their own war paint or nuthin!) These supporting cast lack quite the level of depth that Senua is afforded, at least throughout the main narrative, but act as emotion tethers to the brutal world that heightens the player's connection to it- mirroring the way that Senua herself becomes increasingly tied to a world she thought had left her behind. It's a fantastic bit of diegetic narrative set dressing which brings so much to the world and story that I love to see.

The reason I specify 'in the main narrative' is due to the fact that Senua's Saga actually features alternative narrators that are from the perspectives of other characters throughout this story, which help us break through the lens of who these people actually are as well as what is real and what are part of Senua's psychosis. Unfortunately I could not bring myself to try any of these out purely because of the HiddenFolk chapter, which was such a never ending assault of puzzles that I just could not endure a second time around. That chapter dragged! But I can definitely see someone else really taking to the Hellblade enough to get a lot out of the renewed reasons to play through again, even if just to see what they missed.

Saga is largely focused around these giants that blight the land of the north, sources of many great hardships and suffering which afflicts the isolated townships up in the hills. Now from the get-go, the fact we're dealing with actual giants seems at odds with what we know of the Hellblade world which seems, as far we could tell, to be set in firm reality aside from Senua's delusions. Solving this as a viewer forms the backbone of the plot intrigue and sets this story apart as just that tad more active than the previous game as now there is something to unravel. Yet even saying that, and pretty accurately figuring out the third act before it played out- I'm still at odds with if it all made as much sense as they want it to. The second giant in particular doesn't seem like it lives up to scrutiny.

And finally- the revelation: this one might be poorer than the first. It's a narratively satisfying reveal, that is, and a perfect culmination of the Saga's current story- but there is absolutely no congruent way that Senua could have made such a deduction on her own. She believes fully in her psychosis and even has her delusion ratified by those around her thanks to what I can only presume is a shared group deliria- yet somehow she works her way to a conclusion that actively opposes the delusions she has lived through, despite never questioning her grip on reality up until now. Sure, she knows something is wrong- but her beliefs paint that as some sort of possession or shamanistic second-sight into the land of the dead: nothing would permit her to totally shatter her own warped sense of reality even in the midst of the most tense confrontation. Shame really- it was a really satisfying finale otherwise.

Hellblade really is a narrative gaming experience unlike any other out there- and really does feel like the ultimate culmination of everything Ninja Theory have been working towards up until now. Short though the games are, they are experience pieces designed to stick with you for the unique story they're telling and the unique device through which they bind you to their world. Much to my own surprise I actually think that the Saga is the superior one- simply for the amount of actual substantive pondering I've had on the game and what it's themes and layers represent- rather than the first game where I was just puzzled about what exactly happened at the end, and then kind of what "oh" when I figured it out. I'm not sure there really needs to be another story in this, though some might see that last moment as a cliffhanger- I think the very fact it ends on the precipice of two ravines is kind of the point itself. Besides, I would love to see Ninja Theory take their out-of-the-ordinary storytelling chops into something more gameplay traditional like that DMC game they made all those years ago- I can see forsee something truly spectacular out of them in the future!

Put Assassin's Creed back in the Shadows

 

Lookie, lookie- once again we've got ourselves an Assassin's Creed game sniffing up our rears and once again all of the Ubisoft agnostics that found themselves so utterly repelled by Valhalla are coming around raising their tail spouting the same old routine dialogue lines of a patrolling guard after their aggro has dropped. ("Huh, Must have imagined things." They say whilst nursing the arrow sticking out of their throat and hobbling back to the campfire, where now sits the corpses of the drinking buddies they left with.) And to be fair- I get it. It simply can't be worse than Assassin's Creed Valhalla- a game so utterly barren of purpose and narrative that even their most full-throated cult members say they needed to cool it down a bit. If even those lobotomised circus seals are on your case- you must have screwed up big!

'We've made the map smaller' they insist, as though it was the struggle to fill up that bulging England map which scuppered their considerable talents- as though 90% of that map wasn't just swamp-clogged country wastes populated by nothing but sheep, fields and the Welsh. 'Oh, we're focusing much more on character this time around!' is that why we're being split between two protagonists despite the fact you struggle making a three dimensional character out of one with 100 plus hours of screentime? 'We're toning down the grind this time!' You literally said that exact thing in regards to Valhalla after people whined about Odyssey- yet it seems those words left the mouth before the brain checked in to it's office because Valhalla might just be the single most 'bogged down by crap' institution since Mussolini's Italy! Don't believe the lies!

But it's only fair to judge the latest Assassin's Creed gameplay footage for it's own merits because already people who should know better are calling it the comeback of the franchise. Why? Because they gave one of the characters a hood and told everyone she's the 'stealthy character'. Hard to consider a character the 'stealthy one' in a game that has stealth mechanics so old they're entering their senior year and head-hunting for college. Ubisoft's idea of stealth are detection cones and waist-high tufts of grass placed at the sides of roads. They think 'free form level design' is making one highly tailored route into a fortified location... and then simply giving players the choice to ignore that path and clamber over everything with their decidedly too liberal free running tools. Their brand of stealth isn't stale, it isn't even rotting, it's disintegrated into dust- and remember that is one of the key pillars not just of Assassin's Creed, but literally every single one of their franchises because Ubisoft just make the same game over and over! I would be embarrassed.

I'm getting off track- what does Shadows do that no other game did before? It gives us the choice to choose between going in violently and going in quietly. Hmm... pretty sure that's literally the choice that every Assassin's Creed game has ever offered- only this time those 'playstyles' (as I'm sure they internally referred to them) are split between the two protagonists. If you want to be loud, you play Yusuke and play through the half decent hack and slash mechanics that Ubisoft have been trail and erroring since Origins, quiet lovers will familiarise themselves with Naoe and her... well she has... Oh, she can go prone now! Yes, this has been a stealth franchise for seventeen years and they only just figured out a way to incorporate crawling into the level design. (Better late than never.) Oh, and she can destroy light sources to move around easier! Which puts this game's dynamic stealth systems on par with the original Splinter Cell from 2002. (That was actually also a Ubisoft game, by the way. Guess that little innovation got lost along the way for a couple decades, eh?)

To be fair I like that there's some degree of player choice, even if the two vectors of approach lack the dynamism that makes truly great stealth games so heart pounding. Needing to switch on the dime to react to what comes your way is what gives this genre it's bite, without that I worry our pre-chosen builds could veer on being too restrictive. What if Yusuke gets overwhelmed? What if the atrociously designed open worlds they regularly make dumps an entire battalion on his head whilst trying to just walk down a road? Can Yusuke run fast enough to get away? Is he even capable of sneaking? Naoe can defend herself, but can she strike like a predator in a last hail mary ditch attempt when her back is against the wall? If this were any development company truly dedicated to their craft I would just take these ideas for granted as obvious considerations that any sensible developer would take into account. But we're not dealing with normal people. We're dealing with Ubisoft developers. 

I just can't help but shake the sensation that Ubisoft are a little bit, how do you say, hopelessly late to the party with this game. That is to say- everyone and their mother has made a Samurai game and everyone else was manned by Japanese teams or at least teams with close enough ties to Japanese influences to do the material justice. Like a Dragon Ishin may have been a remake, but it soared all the same. Rise of the Ronin did great things for Team Ninja's brand, I'm told. And, of course, Ghost of Tsushima blows away literally everything that Shadow's is promising to achieve- from gameplay complexity to visual artistry to respect. Yeah, I think Sucker Punch has more respect than Ubisoft, the team who thought Egypt and Greece were such dull places they had to be spiced up with badly interjected mythology tangents that they never quite managed to justify. (Still no one can explain to me why Hades lives in a facsimile he openly construes as 'The afterlife'.)

By what mast do I hoist such a damning flag? Well how about the way the marketing has gone, sending bizarre merch with reportedly misspelt Kanji and mismatched clan emblems imprinted here and there? Maybe Ubisoft are actually trying to tell us something hidden in all this, like a physical manifestation of how little they care anymore for a franchise that once teetered on the verge of respectable historical fiction. (Then they said Aliens. The franchise never really recovered from the aliens, did it?) Then there's the little distinction in how the character's battle themes go. Naoe's are woodwinds, obviously. She's Japanese and those are the only Japanese instruments that their team have ever heard of. Yusuke? Well, he's black so... Japanese music in the style of hip hop? Sure, why not! What do you mean this predates not even the invention of hip-hop, but the founding of America and the formation of the identity known as African American? Those sound like the kinds of things someone who cares would react to... And we all know what effect that has on a team like Ubisoft!

So yes, despite the many years we waited for Assassin's Creed to get off their high chair of pretence which was scrapped over all the way back in those security logs for the second game, I cannot summon any less possible excitement for this game than I currently have. It is like a blackhole of potential sucking out my lifeforce just by it, and it's damnable parents, breathing the same cursed air as me- it's drains me to even think about. And the worst part of it all? The game will make money. Oh, it will make gangbusters. And it will be messy in a ton of supremely obvious ways that many of the industry leaders will scratch their heads at and silently wonder how this could have shipped like that. And Ubisoft will offer plenty of empty platitudes and bow before the penitent shrine, cusp their hands around the throned handle of Mea Culpa- and do it all over again next game. And no one, absolute no one at all, will be, in the least bit, surprised. 

Ubisoft Star Wars- not impressed

 

And with that the pact has been sealed. Ubisoft has done all they possibly can to try and shill Star Wars Outlaws before it's release- and I honestly wonder why they bothered so much. Why all the trailers? Why all the coverage? Why stick this on the side of buses? It's not like the marketing is doing anything more for the optics of a Star Wars game made by Ubisoft. Both are brands so ugly and garish that people just flock their way with cash-in-hand regardless of what they get in return. Ubisoft could be selling bottled farts labelled with the Republic's insignia and make a mint in the process. All that marketing effort could have gone into supporting something that could have actually used it- like, I dunno... The Division 2? (But I digress.)

Outlaws is a Star Wars property (urg) being published by Ubisoft (Urg, brother) that is an open world. (Brother, URG! What's that brother?) I cannot imagine a more detestable combination of ingredients plopped into a single cauldron if I tried... actually yes I can. They didn't make it a Live Service that is NFT powered. (I imagine that took great restraint on Ubisoft's end.) The Star Wars brand has been dragged through the mud in recent years, as Disney milk it dry with piddling TV show after TV show, squeezing out the last goodwill they can whilst all potential and promise fans once saw in the series sizzles and drys out under the boot of executives complaining about how 'hard' and 'expensive' it would be to make something ambitious and interesting. (I've heard really worrying things about that Acolyte show- and I'm not talking about from the typical chuds.) Ubisoft, on the otherhand, are the bottom-feeding wastes of the Games' industry- it is any surprise why I find the paring of them physically detestable?

Then again, Star Wars games do have a tendency to be on the whole better. The Jedi Series is one of the better Souls-like games on the market that has a rapport with it's audience enough that we actively like to seek out and consume content with these characters in it- which is quiet the high praise for Star Wars content! And we even get some high budget experimental games like Star Wars Squadrons which brought flight-simulator rules to the Star Wars mythos. Unfortunately the game didn't quite sell as well as everyone might have liked- but those who did play the thing attest to it's quality! Of course, then we also have the mobile game which recently released, Hunters, which was every bit the over-monetised waste of potential we all knew it would be. So just as in the Star Wars universe, the brand holds the potential for great good or great evil.

Ubisoft already set us of to a poor start by trying to suck our wallets out through our eyes through merely watching the trailer and selling their pitifully understuffed deluxe editions for an arm and several more legs than can grow on a single human. For prices like that you'd think the company earns them, and aren't just the laughing stock generic-factory of the AAA gaming sector. These are the kind of prices that Rockstar can, and largely do (if you count their eye-watering shark cards for GTA Online) get away with. But after giving us a significant showing of gameplay, and inviting journalists around to see some behind the doors goodies- (simply to try and ingratiate themselves with such an important community vector) maybe the game is finally that one step up and forward that Ubisoft have been hesitating to take all these years. Afterall, this isn't just a Ubisoft game. It's a "Wicked Wicked" Ubisoft Massive title.

Perhaps the most prevailing sense that this new game gives off- both to me and to those unlucky enough to sit down and see the curated 'behind curtains' preview- is that of dire unoriginality. Say what you will about the open world genre AAA gaming, how they all kind of ape that Uncharted feeling of exploration, dot a little bit of forgettable busywork to keep you interested and linger on just those few hours too long- but at least most of them have something unique to spice them up just that little bit. The incredibly fun saber combat of the Jedi games make it a blast to master, Hogwarts Legacy carried the tourist-friendly appeal that kept people playing, Horizon has it's very unique world concept and spectacular machine hunts- and Outlaws has... well you see in Outlaws you can...

The idea of Outlaws is to try and make the Smuggler style of story work in Star Wars without chucking in any lightsabers- and that's an idea that can really work if you put forethought into it. Disseminate the archetypal smuggler to their base-most form and you get an anti-hero in a cowboy movie- then all you need to do is find a way to bring that feeling to life in a way that doesn't ape at Red Dead 2 because even after all these years that is a fight Ubisoft will never, ever, win. Instead what we've seen is just... generally serviceable. There are the Ubisoft stealth sections, said to be as pointless as always because general mayhem is all-around more reliable. There is the uninspired wall climbing which at this point has become such a headscratching trope I genuinely think it would be a surprise to come across a game character not capable of supporting their entire weight with an iron grip. And apparently there is a sprinkle of Space Combat too, but I've never seen Ubisoft do a space fighting game before and the team are functionally incapable of creating a decent mechanic that hasn't been regurgitated through the guts of five previous attempts- so I'm guessing it's dull as dishwater.

Is there any point of praise I can raise? Well, technically there is- but it's the exact same thing I say about every Ubisoft game such that it doesn't even feel like a compliment anymore. It's like a lingering, festering curtsey we perform in front of the ailing wad of distended tissue we once deemed a sovereign, paying some false shadow of gratitude and respect upon a station long-since alien to it. Performance for the sake of routine alone, serving neither us nor them. Indeed- Outlaws looks pretty. Actually, 'pretty' isn't a full enough picture. It looks like 'Star Wars' and all the baggage that carries. Typical alien landscapes of vaguely terran-looking worlds with maybe a palette swap, that exact same style of interior which seems to be the uniform of every cantina in the galaxy, that unimpressive palette smudge of 'frontier grime'- it fails to excite by brand alone as it once did. I guess that goes for Star Wars as a whole though, doesn't it?

Now to be clear, even if this is the single most made-by-numbers video game in Ubisoft's entire history it wouldn't be their worst and I don't wish to imply that's what I'm saying. That crown is still rested pretty squarely on the head of Legion. I just think that once again Ubisoft are treading waters and getting rewarded for the effort. Just as they did when they created a serviceable, but systematically cannibalistic Avatar game, or a vastly expanded but clumsy and fat-fingered Ghost Recon Wildlands follow up. To quoteth the bard: "They'll never change. They'll never change. Always the same. Ever since 07, couldn't slap a coherent game design doc together to save their lives. But couldn't be Ubisoft, not our precious Ubisoft! Robbing them blind. And they get to sell the game for $130? What a sick joke!"  

Dragon Age makes me a sad panda

 

With the recent reveal of 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard', (I feel like people are ignoring how abrasive a 'the' can be in your product's title) I am saddened to report that my misgivings regarding the direction of modern Bioware have not been abated. In fact, if anything they've been lionized into a depressing colation of the reality that the famous studio we once loved is looking paranoid and now is spiralling. I once loved Bioware, and some part of me still wants to believe in them- I want them to win me over but it seems the world has left them behind when it comes to RPGs, and now they've left RPGs behind in kind- leaving me wondering what it is this Studio even endeavours to be anymore. If they're not an RPG studio, what even are they? Just developers? The Bioware I knew would have never been content with such a position! But they're not here anymore... are they?

Obviously the worst aspect of the reveal was that initial trailer which, quite rightly, set alarm bells ringing across the reaction world. I wasn't aware of Dragon Age being 'Dark Fantasy' as people apparently say, I took Origins as grim but not excessively, intentionally disturbing or frightening- but I do agree that Dragon Age has a tendency to treat it's world with a general mature passion which heightens the stakes at their most dire. The Veilguard's descent into hero shooter peppiness with Suicide Squad intro cards, soft rock backing tracks, one-line epithets describing surface deep quirkiness and, most importantly, terrible sound mixing so Varrick's voice is drowned out by the music- kind of felt like the people in charge had absolutely no idea what made the franchise work. They seem to have fallen for the memes which claim that the only reason we come to Dragon Age, or any Bioware game, is to meet and romance their collective cast. But to be honest, Bioware romances haven't exactly gotten any more interesting since Mass Effect 2- (Andromeda tried something unique, but people didn't respond to that game very well.) and after Baldur's Gate 3: this cast has quite the uphill struggle to enter the poppy zeitgeist. 

In particular I think it's the designs that are throwing off the general public. Dragon Age has never quite gone for the 'true to life' character meta which ages so poorly as game fidelity doubles every other generation, and I find that to be a strength of their art direction- even as they do objectively improve in the visual department. But something about Veilgaurd's character designs appear to veer towards overtly exaggerated features that flow out into Overwatch levels of cartoony. All the new monster designs we've seen thus far, such as those new 'Darkspawn' we glimpsed, looked out-of-proportion and goofy. I shouldn't be seeing a bone monster and think 'Goofy'! And don't get me started on that Alfred Pennyworth in Doctor Strange cosplay-lookin' fella! That man looks like a Fortnite character- his facial proportions look like they've been mangled by the Mandibular Rearranger from The Outer Worlds! He looks terrible!

Of course, as everyone who took the time to actually go and watch the recently revealed gameplay will tell you- the actual in-play action seems to be a lot better than what was teased. It's all very slick and cinematic action set-piece with flashy and exciting combat and glittering particles and the Frostbite engine weeping sadly in the background. The face to face dynamic camera actions also look vastly improved, which may be due to handcrafted angles explicit to the main dialogues or maybe intensive work on the AI to teach it more coherent camera-man philosophies- either way it's working and this game is coveting the same sort of cinematic flair that sang for Baldur's Gate 3. Unfortunately that is the only positive comparison to that game I could make.

One of my favourite aspects about watching the Dragon Age Franchise grow was measuring how cinematic the game became whilst wrestling with keeping the tactical RPG elements alive- and until the this very game that seemed to be a balance they took very seriously. This time around what we have is an action slasher with abilities, no character switching and totally eradicated tactical planning whatsoever. Even in the most ludicrous moments of Inquisition, there were the bigger dragon fights where you would plant members of your team in the right places, place the built tank to draw attention whilst your damage dealers weaved around the legs and the healer tried to keep everyone standing. Team composition was essential. This game has already gutted the total party size from 4 to 3. They took the 'RPG' out of my RPG franchise.

In many ways it reminds me of what happened with the Final Fantasy VII Remake as retold by someone with literally no ability to comprehend what they're playing. FF7R got rid of the ATB based combat of FF7 original in favour of action combat- however the spirit of what that combat imparted- real-time combat with abilities, was imbued into the spirit of the game so that even if a different genre was being tickled, the RPG heart of the original lived on. Veilgaurd doesn't even appear to feature healthbars for your party members! And enemies, at least in what we've seen, don't aggro on companions at all. And health potions are not rationed out carefully at campfires, or brought in town- they pop out of cartoon green barrels. This doesn't feel like a mainline Dragon Age, it feels like an action-themed spin-off.

By and large, Dragon Age: The Veilgaurd hasn't really shown off anything to show lessons learned from Inquisition thus far. The biggest issues of the last game were based around the design of their world and story progression, which Veilgaurd's intro completely avoids by setting itself purely in the intro act- and the combat looks utterly guttered and simplified to the level of a toddler. They turned Dragon Age into Mass Effect- but then again, even Mass Effect gave you companions that can draw aggro and pass out! So whilst some out there are clapping their hands and declaring that Bioware have pulled optics back in their favour- for me I'm actually more worried that the team have killed the last piece of RPG magic that studio still had.

Starfield's 'Engoodening'- stage 2

 

Bethesda are constantly fighting a slow war against themselves to try and post-prove every product that they put out. It took a while with Fallout 4 but most think the came around point was Far Harbour, (I don't carry as positive memories of that DLC and still consider Fallout 4 a step backward) 76 was still labouring under its own inequities until Wastelanders came around and turned the franchise back into being an RPG (thanks for that) and Starfield seems to be entering the second stage of it's life- the added content period. Well, actually it's been there for a little bit, but now is when the team got serious with the pedigree of the content they've adding- because they've invited modders to the party! And with that comes the real reason Starfield was made in the first place- to become a modders haven.

Right from the get-go Bethesda was up and clear with the message that they want Starfield to be the single most modded Bethesda game ever, and to that end they seem to have sacrificed a lot in terms of basic design philosophy to accommodate perpetually updating world spaces where seamlessness might have instead aided 'game feel'. That promise had really sat on the back-burner as everyone waited patiently for the creation kit which- lo and behold- has finally dropped; along with preliminary work from a bevy of the most talent authors that Bethesda could snatch up to be part of an introduction video. Including but not even nearly limited to the wonderously demented mind of Trainwiz and the queen of home design herself Elianora: it's always great seeing modding legends work their strange magics!

The biggest news that Starfield wanted to throw out was that of the upcoming DLC- oh, I'm sorry- they're suing the parlance 'Expansion' for this one- Shattered Space. Predictably expanding on the only part of the original game's lore that sounded a little deeper than the surface, the House of Va'ruun and their creepy crimson coated planet in some deep recess of space we need to uncover. Now I'll admit to being slightly curious as to where this might lead- because the very structure of Starfield makes it plausible that Bethesda could tie in totally distinct ending paths into every major Expansion they bring out- but thus is merely my speculation because for whatever reason- this turned out to be more of a 'teaser trailer' than an actual proper in-depth dive into why this DLC is cool.

Of course, I understand the desire to keep your secret's secret- why else would you be so invested in making these cool trailers and subtle hints wrapped in mysteries: but surely Bethesda have to know that their fanbase are currently wondering what's the purpose for returning to this game. All we have to go on is a slightly creepier looking DLC that looks like it might lean a bit more into that Sci-Fantasy angle which the base game shuddered away from so vehemently- which is music to my ears but I'm angled to try and like this game. The average player probably doesn't look that deep into it and just saw a grim looking trailer and shrugged their shoulders. Is there any significant change coming with this DLC to expand the game out? Because if it's literally just one questline and a couple of side stories on one new solar system... phew, I don't even want to think about that...

 

So mysteries of Shattered Space aside- we have the other big announcement that dropped the very same day- the same day release of Creations- which allow for Bethesda to sell us tiny chunks of DLC they call mods that set off people's 'paid mod' alarms. Honestly it seems that the only content being charged for is literal verified-user created snippets of content, thus stuff made by the actual masters of their craft which Bethesda brought abroad- not the average mumblings of any Tom, Dick or Harry: which makes this curated charged content more microtransactions than anything else. Which may itself be beyond the pale for you, considering this is a fully Single Player game- but it really is your very own battle to fight. At the very least Starfield is putting it's foot behind console modding by allotting a whopping 100GB of total possible mod space on Xbox Series X!

To put things into perspective- the total allocated space for Fallout 4, the origin of console modding, was 2GB! For Skyrim special edition it was 5! I've been heavily modding Skyrim and Fallout 4 for years now and I have never reached even close to 100 GB in my own efforts. (The only time I did was when I tried to play Fallout 4's overrated mod Collection: 'Storywealth' which was stuffed full off unnecessary texture mods.) I never expected we'd get the opportunity to hopelessly mod a console game to absolute Oblivion but here it is- Bethesda really do want this to be the kind of game we play forever! Now if only their achievements weren't so wholly unreasonable to get without endless grind so I didn't have to choose between disabling my mods forever and jumping fully into the amateur modding world! (Seriously, Bethesda only made a handful of their own creations 'Achievements Friendly'. Some of their own charged content disables Achievements! What the heck?)

To whet everyone's whistles to the possibilities Bethesda released a brand new free faction into the game called the Tracker's Alliance- basically it's a framework for bounty hunting with radiant quests and a single curated major quest which is a decent enough side diversion. However, a second curated quest does exist- if you're willing to fork over the 700... 'Beth Bucks?' to buy it! The intention being that now and again Bethesda will add new bounties to the store over the months and potentially years. Now, I actually am not fully against the idea of new faction questlines behind added into the game for 8 bucks a pop- considering that was pretty much how The Elder Scrolls Online made it's content for a while. But paying 8 Bucks for a single half-good mission? No, that's utterly ridiculous and I hope Bethesda realise just how unreasonable of a value proposition that is! The average faction questline in Starfield is about 7-13 quests long: that means, acknowledging we got the first quest free, Bethesda are looking to charge between 42 to 64 bucks for a faction questline in their single player game. What the hell? 

Would it be fair to call the 'story of Bethesda' that of one step forward and two steps back? They can't help but make a fool out of themselves in the most blindingly obvious way, and then stand there with their shoulder's shrugged wondering what all the fuss is about. Of course people will get upset about charging by the quest- especially with quests as middling as what Starfield averages- let alone the price tag attached! And on the verge of so many positive steps for the game, one can't help but wonder if there's some form of intentional self sabotage wrapped up in all this because honestly what else am I supposed to think? Honestly, Shattered Space better be absolutely revolutionary to start clawing back public interest else this game might truly be cooked. 

I did a sin

 

I am a fossil. A relic. An antiquarian. An ancient. An old fogey. An irate man shouting at the clouds. Whenever I play New Vegas, you bet I pick the 'I'm slow to embrace new ideas' option. But every now and again the needle pushes itself forward, without my say so. Or with my say-so, but the cajoling is heavy. Largely I like to consider myself immune to the snake like charm of marketers, being fully cognizant of the worm like grip of 'guidance' those creeps try to employ- and perhaps it's in begrudging knowledge of that which I made my great shame. Or perhaps I am just a shameful person. Either way I would like to admit that great shame in front of all of you today, and then maybe chat a little about my great shame for the room. Savvy? Good.

So you may have picked up on my manners of playing throughout the years but I've never outright stated it. To be clear, I like to primarily game on my PC. I used to keep that specifically for older games and RPGs, things that my relic of a system wouldn't have any trouble with (although I modded my Skyrim playthroughs so much they ran like slideshows!) But around about my incredible choppy playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake I decided a change had to be made, and then last year I totally decked out my PC and now I use it to play literally anything. However I do also have a Series X and a Switch- for which I use mostly at times when I'm doing stuff on my PC such that it can't also play a game. Or if I'm not home. And it was here that my issues began.

You see, I recently blogged about the upcoming Elden Ring release and it's significance to myself. The whole 'playing through previous games' predicament was slightly muddied by the annoying fact that Dark Souls 1 places a lot of it's most important items behind Covenant rewards, which can only be achieved through online play. Frustrating as that is, I find myself disadvantaged even greater by the fact I had run out of 'online membership' for my Xbox and simply refused to get it updated because I was busy elsewhere. Which is why I was quite surprised to find that Xbox Gold had been totally rebranded to 'Game Pass Core' when I was signing up... typically I would avoid the thing like the plague for that naming convention alone, but I didn't want to miss out... but then- because I was diving into purchasing options I'd never experienced before I started looking at the other options and then...

As embarrassing as it is to say, for the first time I actually sat down and purchased Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Yes, you heard me right- I haven't actually played with Game pass before and caved in on something of a whim this time around- and thought I don't exactly intend to keep it as a recurrent subscription all year round- I have to confess that this really was the kind of service I should have been involved in from the start. All I really wanted was online access, but it hardly took four minutes of browsing the Game Pass store before several dozen games I wanted to try but never got around to stood out to me and I'm fully intending on knocking them down my list. Which is really what the entire purpose of the thing is- and I sound like a cruddy commercial saying it. (Crap! Balls! There- that should chase away the sponsors!)

Because to be utterly honest with you all- was I ever really going to sit down and play Callisto Protocol? The pretty looking, but not quite successor to Dead Space? I mean I love Dead Space, but I love Dead Space as... you know... an Alien send up! Callisto Protocol just brought Melee combat and... Karen Fukuhara. Don't get me wrong, I love Karen Fukuhara in my game but... not enough to drop a sixty. But if you offer it to me for alongside my subscription? Why wouldn't I say yes- that game's got Karen Fukuhara! And that's really the sweetspot target demographic for games that makes the product such a tantalising proposition.

Now I'm still very much 'old school' in that there are a certain breed of games I want to have and own for myself so that I can pick them up at any time. I don't want to have some overshore sever farm decide what I'm playing- and I get that mood to strike up a FromSoftware Souls playthrough at all strange times of the year. Also I would never do that to ATLUS because I simply respect them too much to not give them my money straight up. I would pay them a monthly wage if I could- I love them. But Lords of the Fallen? Pff, I don't respect them! I've literally never managed to complete the original game, and I'm pretty sure I only got it on games with Gold anyway so I've literally never spent a dime on this franchise. (That actually makes me feel bad. I should probably buy a DLC or something. I won't. But I should.)

In fact, I do wonder if the Gamepass promise doesn't veer into the territory of too good to be true, based both on my now first-hand account and the things that I've read about in various coverage piece over the years. On my own account- The price of a single AAA game covers about 5 months of Gamepass. I, and bare in mind I'm a lot more active than your typical gamer, could probably dish out about 10 triple AAA games in that time. Forty if I'm hustling. (And particularly unoccupied in those months.) On the outside, there's pretty decent evidence to believe that the lack of growth in Gamepass is what put the strain on Xbox forcing them to close a studio who game them an Award Winner. It seems to be a product that demands perpetual growth to be considered successful and... that's not always possible.

So for the time being I've joined the legions of plebs who are smart with the way they spend their money- and I have to say- not loving how it feels. Even the slightest amount shift in the winds is wont to get my Rheumatism acting up, and my lumbago. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't currently have about 200 Gb of game that I'm going to gorge on over the next... actually I have two weeks off; wow, I'm going to be drowning! Still, I doubt that Xbox could afford to buy exactly my taste of game all year around so consider this a temporary courtship to a brand I'm still pretty sure is currently afflicted with a terminal illness. Sure there's a kink for that, but I'm rarely proud to boast I don't know it's name.

Catching up with the Souls

 

You know, I actually wasn't all that invested in going out and playing 'Shadow of the Erdtree' at launch. I respect the heck out of Elden Ring, and consider it to be the most perfect form of the Dark Souls franchise- but I just didn't think I had the spare time to send it's way. And then I just kind of started playing Elden Ring again... which then made me realise that if I was going to access the DLC I'd have to get far enough in to beat Mogh, but I last stopped playing literally at 'The First Step' Bonfire on New Game +... so I just kind of grinded several hours and got to Mogh... and then I figured I might as well grind for some more hours to get to Radahn- as for some incomprehensible reason Miyazaki says we have to off him too! (I'm guessing the entrance to the underside realm is covered up before the Meteor shower.) And at that point I thought 'What am I doing- I might as well just get the DLC.'

But we have a few more days until the Shadow drops so what could I do to kill time in the interim? EVERYTHING ELSE! Everything I had put off doing in the Dark Souls franchise for so very long, would become my immediate goal there and then. That meant finally coming around to complete the DLCs for Dark Souls 3- in which are contained some of the franchise's most well regarded boss encounters, and I even finally bit the bullet on the Dark Souls Remaster after seeing that it would be cheaper to just splurge on the remaster than it would be to buy the DLC for the original. If that would even be possible- I don't think they sell XBOX 360 DLC anymore... Who knows, I don't- I'm getting to play the game at a resolution that doesn't make my eyes bleed and real honest-to-goodness frames! (I wonder if Gwyn's song actually plays and isn't slyly stuffed with miniscule micro-stutters like it does in the 360 version!)

Of course the biggest port of call was the Dark Souls 3 DLC- because anyone with even the most-passing sliver of interest in the community will know there's only two things that people never shut up about- Bloodborne being hard-stuck on the PS3, and Slave Knight Gael: the final boss of the latter DLC. Slave Knight Gael had amassed a genuinely mythical status under my perception of the Dark Souls franchise through sheer merit of his name becoming evoked in literally every single conversation about bosses under the FromSoft brand. "Oh, that boss was too hard for you? You'd never survive against Gael!" "Malenia was tough, but in a frustrating way- not the sheer perfect way that Gael was!" "Yeah, Soul of Cinder might have been the single most perfectly dignified personification of ever major theme that has run throughout the Souls franchise and thus soared as a final boss... But Gael is still the final boss in my eyes. Also did you know that Pontiff Sulyvahn was going to be the final boss?" (YES, EVERYONE KNOWS!) 

But does Gael live up to the hype? Well, I ain't answering that because I played Ashes of Ariandel first! A DLC which did the impossible and made the painted world not a nightmare to traverse. The idea of the other-universe known as 'the painted world' always fascinated me regarding how roughly it jars against the direction everything else seems to be heading. All the franchise emboldens the significance of impermanence and the dignity in death- whereas there is a world perfectly preserved in paint that houses creatures sequestered within. Then there's the little confusion about the naming convention. The Painting of Aramis from Dark Souls 1 is, it turns out, at least the base coat for the painting of Ariandel- as evidence by the fact that Pricilla's old tower is hidden away in the DLC. Both paintings are named after their creator's apparently, although Aramis is never seen residing in his painting, or at all- and Father Ariandel is a refugee in the painting, almost as though he himself is the subject. And then, of course, at the end of the DLC you are asked for your name so that the next painting can be named after you- despite the fact that totally spits in the face of the naming convention, although I guess that will come around in the Age of Dark so everyone will be a bit too preoccupied coming to terms with their totally rewritten reality to start penning angry letters to the painting-planning-council.

And the DLC itself? Fine. I've never liked how FromSoftware handles their snow sections- I think their swamps are always delightfully imbued with active mechanics that make them challenging but fun to conquer- whereas snow is consistently just a pain! Elden Ring's Consecrated Snowfields? Can't see a bloody thing! Dark Souls 2's Frigid Outskirts? Constantly spawning Unicorns- one of only two locations in the entire franchise to feature endless spawning mobs! And Ariandel is just stuffed silly with that most annoying breed of bad guy you can't help but hate! At the very least we get to see the themes of wider Dark Souls finally seep into the painted world as the concept of 'Rot' is introduced. A distorting organisim that consumes everything if the picture is not burned away and remade- presumably explaining the name change. Which of course births one of my favourite lines- voiced by a literally no-name NPC- "When the world rots we set it afire, for the sake of the next world. It's one of the few things we do right, unlike those fools on the outside!" (slightly related note: how does mister 'no-name wierdo' know about the goings-on outside of the reality he was born and spent his entire life within?)

But the real draw of these DLC are the bosses- and Sister Friede was an experience to say the least! Bare in mind that I was on New Game + 3 so already wasn't going to be having a fun time- Good lord did I not expect the mockery that woman made of me! Pulling my main girl Pricillia's invisibility move right off her corpse and doing it better- I'm ashamed to admit how many times I got manhandled by her until I figured out that gimmick. But even then the gimmick alone was just a prelude to the first three stage boss fight in the game- with three entire healthbars, mind you- not just three states of attack tactics! The fight was a thrill but so frustrating to figure out. Can't exactly call it a favourite of mine, I have to admit.

Which brings me to 'The Ringed City'. I'll cut to the chase- I liked the DLC. It reminded me more of the actual explorative adventures of Dark Souls 2's DLC rather than just 'an extended prelude to the boss' like Ashes of Ariandel felt like at times. But Slave Knight Gael is the big attraction. And after beating the man- I can understand the appeal. Gael is a supremely fun and fair fight that really doesn't hold any muck, no gimmicks, no hidden health bars out the ass- just an out-and-out slug fest against a worthy component. So many of Souls bosses from yore hold that one screw you move seemingly designed only to rack up player deaths rather than to add to the battle itself. Gael didn't feel like that, but he wasn't a push-over either. He's an example of the best of the series, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of The Soul of Cinder and Sword Saint Isshin. Which is probably why FromSoft made up for it by giving us Darkeater Midir. Screw Midir- screw his eyewatering high health bar- screw his one-shot laser attacks his farts out in his second act. I'm happy I gave on playing nice and chocked the bugger to death on his own overinflated healthbar. I know people say Pestilent Mist is not an easy kill like it once was at launch- but I'll just take the compliment if that's the case!

Dark Souls 3 really does feel like a whole different ball game with it's DLC- which I guess has always been the way that FromSoftware has handled their additional content. Chucking giant chunks of new difficulty ceilings at those kind enough to spend more money is really seeing what the community seems to be wanting and meeting them kindly, with a giant middle finger to the face and a loving clap around the cheeks. As a lifelong masochist who's dream is to torture enough self respect into himself that he one day grows confident enough to genuinely experience 'imposter syndrome': (What a luxury!) I love the carnage. Now I just need to actually finish the Dark Souls 1 DLC and I'll have officially experienced all of Dark Souls- putting the lid on a world I wasn't quiet ready to finish when I reached the final moments of Dark Souls 3- but which I actually feel ready for today. However it's pretty unlikely I'll beat all of Dark Souls Remastered before Shadow of the Erdtree releases- so don't expect a follow-up soon.

Giving Avowed it's chance

 

I have been very skeptical about everything that Avowed has shown off ever since that initial reveal trailer built up expectations to a product that was never really in the works. Not just to the scale they seemed to be implicitly implying by the frame of the game, but even on a visual artistic level that original vision seems almost unrecognisable to the game we're seeing nowdays. That being said I am a huge fan of Pillars of Eternity and find the promise of the franchise expanding out a bit, particularly towards the direction of The Living Lands, a place I was always interested in since playing the original, peaks my interest quiet a bit. Of course it's not the game I wanted it to be, but I think we're all starting to come to the realistation that Obsidian are never going to be the company to make those kind of grand visions come to fruition ever again. They're happy how they are, and that's just the way things are.

Avowed promises to do something actually pretty stark in the gaming world- they want to create a satisfying first person melee combat focused game which isn't a heavy medieval simulator. In fact, the question of 'Gamefeel' seems to be something the team kept going back to try and improve for knowledge of just how integral that would be. That's how we're getting the quick switch magic system with it's dual wielding beams of magic for all the flash and pomp you could possibly want as you cut down the country side! Of course, many of the core rules of the universe are being scuppered in order to make the more action-RPG crowd happy and in doing so expanding this universe out into more than just a digital TTRPG. Whether it comes together is nigh on impossible to determine from an outsider's glance. I would need it in my hands. But it looks good, at least.

What the team are now trying to insist is that common war between showcases and marketing we always see brought up whenever RPGs go to bat- that there is player agency and consequence to the actions that you take. Avowed already had a gameplay event from a year ago touching on a little conversation with branching conclusions, but what we've seen recently is a more dynamic example of the same sort of thing. A colony of dangerous creatures you are required to infiltrate throughout which the slaying of the inhabitant enrages their queen mother inspiring an unavoidable boss fight, whereas successfully sneaking past and around them opens up the possibility to negotiate. Now sure, this is literally taken note for note from Deus Ex Mankind Divided- but it was a great idea then and that remains now- I love that level of intentional consequence you can stumble upon by just being a dumb careless gamer!  

Another addition to the way this world works is that of weapon improvement. That sure existed in the first game, albeit in static tiers that were supposed to represent + 1, +2 and so on - were we to use DnD parlance. Essentially this creates a power creep throughout the stages of the game where enemies will start to become resistant to your lower area weapons requiring improvement. I've never been a fan of this kind of scaling for how easy it is to screw up and make it all feel excessively contrived- but there are ways to make this work. Visual and audio cues, different classes of enemies, different species of enemies- I think a smart enough game designer can pull this off without breaking immersion- and Obsidian tend to have a reputation for housing smart artists.

I also have to say that visually I'm really starting to come around on the game. It's still not quite as gorgeous as that reveal trailer had led us to believe, and I still think that Aumaua look downright ugly up close, there's a pleasing gentle stylisation that retains the spirit of true-to-life fidelity whilst seeking a more evergreen balance that it sure to still impress in years to come like The Outer Worlds still does. I also notice the lighting appears to veer towards the more cinematic Spacer's Choice school of design. For somewhere as supposedly vibrant as the Living Lands I'm really starting to buy that this was actually a really appropriate choice in direction and scope.

Remixing the Unreliable from The Outer Worlds, Avowed allows you to interact within a camping environment which evokes sensations of  Baldur's Gate 3 in the best way. It's always nice to have that special little space away from the action and carnage to mingle with your close group of allies- and having them all interact and live together really amplfies that sensation of being 'part of a unit. I really hope they lean into this more than just in the surface level manner, allowing party mates to move about and have interactions with one another in way that makes them feel alive. That was one of the problems with Mass Effect in my opinion, your team never left their set areas of the ship and thus felt separated- which is why Andromeda was so wise to update that and have people pop up all over the place to go visit each other! Another careful concept I want them to take their time with.

And lastly there is general game-feel- not just in the moment to moment action- but in the actual way it feels to move around the world. There's a weight here that seems all but absent in Bethesda games, regrettably, and I envy the connection to the game world that imbues. Simply feeling the weight of a short hop down a small cliff face feedsback in that natural way you expect, rather than the stiff and stilted way that Bethesda Creation Engine games feel like they have to. But of course, Game-feel does extend to combat. Feedback looks effective, I'm seeing actual honest-to-goodness recoil from sword slaps. Some people might be umming and ahhing about sponginess- but I consider that a non-problem in games like these. I'm genuinely vibing with the offerings so far.

This might be the first time I've given Avowed the time of day and to be honest- I still can't get myself hyped about the thing- not to a level of "imagine the possibilities!" But I can appreciate what's there and see the game at it's own level and pick up some cool little factors about it that sound like they're coming together. A great game is just one where all the pieces slot together in something of a satisfying manner and Avowed- well, that's what I think it's shaping up as. It may be the ultra-realistic gritty game that most of us were seemingly sold from the reveal, but it is seemingly a title somewhere up my alley to some small degree. It really depends how much they lean into the 'Immersive Sim' angle. I'm hoping a lot. Never had a fantasy Immersive Sim before (outside of Dishonoured) could be cool.

The Wayward Realms has hit the public...

 Or it's hit public funding at least

The Wayward Realms has always been something of a smallscale proposition even back when it was teasing through sleight teasers and inworld books- (most of which I've perused through at some point or other.) a true successor to the likes of Daggerfall that did not go the more popular action adventure route of The Elder Scrolls but rather remained dungeon crawling focused and doubled down on the sort of scale that Daggerfall purportedly offers. And yes, I say 'purportedly' because for some crazed reason Daggerfall is the only Elder Scrolls game I haven't played extensively. (Yes, I've played oodles of Arena. I don't know what's wrong with me- I promise to get around to it at some point.) Now hearing anyone who has played Daggerfall before go on and on about it- you'll have heard the whimsical dreams of the true freedom Elder Scrolls once offered, and within that find something of an anticipation towards this little project.

Of course back then it was just a promise of something being worked on by the original creators of the Elder Scrolls series- we'd maybe hear something more in a few years and then it would drop. That, by all accounts, was the original idea- and though that hasn't panned out I can't say I'm much surprised given that a title like this, banking on the goodwill towards a decades old cult classic- really was made for Crowd funding, you would think. Either way, The Wayward Realms is threatening to start getting serious, raising public funds for a year of development as well as to raise publisher interest in an audience that are willing to buy the thing- all good steps on the road to making something in a criminally underserved sub-genre which can be the key to becoming another cult hit if all the stars are in alignment. And as of the writing of this blog, that Crowd Funding campaign is currently live.

Now I have to get a little something of my back first- yes the team are still insisting that we call the game a 'Grand RPG' despite giving all the hallmarks of a Sandbox RPG and asking us to take them for their word- however I will relent that some of their phrasing when describing the world does low-key sort of imply a main questline- which isn't a typical hallmark of the Sandbox RPG genre type. Is that enough to create an entirely new subgenre tag? Meh, why not. We've made distinctions for fewer. (I still stubbornly refuse to internalise the apparent differences between Rogue-Likes and Roguelites and intentionally use the two interchangeably whenever talking about one or the other.) That is my biggest gripe with the game because everything else sounds really interesting!

A vast archipelago littered with rich factions vying over control of the various territories, a unique distinct focus on sealife gameplay as you sail from island to island in search of fortune and fame, a Morrowind reminiscent (for me- I'm sure it's a Daggerfall callback) topic-based conversation system which always felt supremely slept on by the RPG world after everyone shifted to direct dialogue text boxes; There's a spark of something interesting here. Last time I spoke quite a bit about the trailer and the ambitions of what the game wants to be, but it really is the little things and the core fundamentals that make all the difference- and I've always had belief in The Wayward Realms for being one of the little games that get's the smallstuff right.

One aspect I've always wished Bethesda would focus more on when it comes to their games is robust and grounded traversal methods- the jetpacks of Fallout and Starfield exist- sure, but what about climbing? How much more clever design opportunities would be opened up by the functional ability to climb a wall? Well that is something we'll be able to find out in person during the Wayward Realms given the climbing vines we saw teased during gameplay. A hint, in my mind, back to the untethered times of level design such as I recall from the days gone of Morrowind- where entire giant secret temples of treasure would be hidden at the very tips of forgotten caves, truly selling the myth of the undiscovered dormant cavern chambers that all these games rely on.

Wayward Realms is also supposed to feature something in the way of early Alpha testing in the way of the tutorial island which will be released to backers- which should serve as a pulse check to see if this really is the kind of product that has the breadth to go the distance or if... well, let's hope for the positive, yeah? We've certainly see early access periods wibble and wobble here and there under the weight of actual players- and right now the game is looking pretty rough in some of it's preliminary departments. Not least of all combat which... well I've seen worse but it's nowhere near ship worthy. I can say that much.

I'm always on the look out for the next fully engrossing fantasy game world I can hide myself within and whether this is a Sandbox RPG or simply a game that carries nearly all the hallmarks of one- I believe I've identified my next target. Choice and consequence teased to some degree across tailored made faction questlines and a mysterious 'Game Master' system which promises to provide mysterious dynamism to 'the player story'. There's so many interesting ideas I want to hear more about- The religion system, the 'major world events' that are supposed to 'shape our characters', their own attempt at Bethesda's patently boring 'radiant quest giving' system that gives me Rimworld feelings.

There's always room for a bit more innovation in how the Western World handles their RPGs, because we're no longer at the point of leapfrogging the bottom of the barrel of 'approachable' titles. Baldur's Gate, Cyberpunk 2077, Pillars of Eternity- experimentation is a heady spice I will never get tired of seeing it's disparate, even messy, strains. Unless every RPG starts making purely zombie slaying titles. Then I'll start getting bored. But we're not there yet and The Wayward Realms seems every bit the envoy of that. Provided they make that $500,000 goal of there's by the end of next month! (I'll do my part, to be sure!)

Falling out

 

This ain't one of those pleasant everyday topics. This is a rant. A complaint against the powers that be that touches on merely the extent of my own burnished ego. No one is made better or whole by my whining, and accepting that in full public is how I'm going to get over the fact that I know Bethesda are working on this, but good lord am I just not in the mood to be understanding. It takes a special kind of idiot to do what Bethesda does so often and so fully, so I am going to rant, I am going to be upset, and there's nothing that logic is going to do about it. Because to be fully honest, it reflects so badly on Bethesda as caretakers that this was ever a conundrum to begin with, and perhaps we should start moving to a future where we tell the big B no! Work on your new damn games for once!

Fallout fever was going haywire for a while, and whilst the knock-on effect is going to be alive for a while- I'd say that the fever pitch has faded somewhat. People are knuckling down and waiting for the second season, passing away their rampant excitement into that box they bury under the church and then slather in concrete next to the emergency sledgehammer should it ever need to be recovered. The production may be talking big talk about how they are rushing to bring the next season "as soon as humanely possible", but considering that now it's not uncommon for a season of a show to take three years of production to bring out- that is straight meaningless. We'll still have buried this show and it's characters long before anything new can be shown off. And do you know what Bethesda did during this golden period of the show? Sabotaged themselves.

Your average gamer flocked to the properties they love in gusto, partaking in all the great vanilla games and stories kept therein, delighting in the eccentricities that the game developers laid out for them. The rest of us are well and used to all of these mods. We've been there, we've gone through the motions, we're fully done with them. We use Bethesda games as springboards to canvass out our adventures through mods- and that concept alone has kept Bethesda RPGs at the very top of single player RPG play charts for years creaking into decades at this point for some. I'd argue it's a core pillar of the company to develop with Mod Making intelligently included in the equation, which is why all the utterly brainless cries to move their new games onto Unreal Engine 5 so they'll look more 'conventionally pretty' always scrapes at my very mind. Unreal Engine games have never, and will never, be as accessible to mod as Bethesda's own propriety engine games, that would be literally the worst move that Bethesda could possibly take towards their future. That being said, that doesn't mean Bethesda don't sabotage their modding scene in other ways...

Fallout 4 has endured so very much, and us with it, in the struggle to be 'recurrently profitable'. The eye-wateringly bad 'Creation club' early days- where Bethesda tried to sell us various recolour mods for every shade of the rainbow, still stings in my mind. And even though they've largely moved past that, and reserve their paid-modding efforts for the largely substantial leaps- we're still scrapping at the dark ages. Make no mistake that this is no the breadth of Bethesda's ambitions, and I suspect what the team really want is to try and get one of those truly seismic mods on their service. Which in actuality would be great for console modders- it would essentially just be a brand new DLC for them to buy. As for everyone else... I shudder to think of the prices cooking up in that twisted head of theirs.

I've said before how insanely 'Bethesda' it is to have Fallout 4's mod-breaking modern version come out directly during the most profitable period for the franchise ever- but I could hardly have predicated just how badly they screwed things up. 'Just wait for the F4SE' I thought, 'as soon as that is updated- we'll have all the mods we need available'! Little did I know the extent of how bad things are. First off, Buffout 4 is AWOL. That near-essential mod that fixes engine problems and provides crash logs- hasn't been updated and no one knows if it ever will be. The creator just can't be found and given that the last time the mod had to be updated was four years ago- that's no great surprise. Who the heck is going to be Fallout modding 4 years down the line- we still don't get any new companion mods in the Fallout modding space!

But what if it gets even worse than that? What if they somehow managed to ship with a mod specifically detrimental to the best the community has to offer, large scale mods? Of course I'm not asking hypotheticals- Fallout 4's current version has a seemingly inherent bug wherein the game stutters whenever an NPC's data is updated- which covers quite a lot of mod types out there. Anything that updates enemies to keep them competitive with the levelling system, for instance, or maybe a mod that changes visual data. The stutters build with the more NPCs added- and though I don't think anyone has been brave enough to try it and post the results online- one could only wonder what big faction remixes do. The more NPCs loaded into the vicinity there are, the worse the stutters become. If you had a Brotherhood remixer and stood under the Prydwen the game would probably crash.

And that has just persisted. Bethesda left that in the final patch. And guess what- the only way it's getting fixed again is if the team go out of their way to patch the game on more time, which means another arbitrary round of updating script mods! In fact, I suspect the only reason we haven't already got the update is because the maintenance team are smartly waiting until they've figured out everything they broke with the latest update so they can safely fix it all with the next one. Because that is just the cursed cycle that all of us live within under the white sun that is Bethesda. Not to imply that Bethesda is dying- I'm sure that Starfield latest DLC reveal went great and we're all talking about how Bethesda is back right now. I don't know because I'm writing this blog literally 15 minutes before Summer Games Fest- but Bethesda wouldn't let us down again... right?

So this was a rant to basically say- good god does this company have it's hand firmly on it's ass recently- they can't even accept a free PR moment correctly. The only net positive thing they did was maybe update Fallout Shelter- oh wait- I forgot that Fallout Shelter has been abandoned for the past few years on every device that isn't a mobile! So that update didn't touch the Switch or PC version! (Yes, the PC version is the un-updated one! Kill me.) I just want to grab at the team and shake them by the shoulders- desperately pleading for them to nail something. Anything! I want to talk about how much I love this studio again but by god- they really don't want me to! I love their games but it's getting harder to convince myself of that as the years go by...

The Dragon of Amazon

 Under the roiling cauldron of the pacific churns a ecliptic ziggurat. A ancient temple of prehistoric build buried beneath the destructive power of earth's primordial waves. That black temple stone sleeps, untouched by erosion, unbowed by Mother Nature's fury, impossible and non-Euclidian- it houses the unspeakable. The unwoken, the ever dreaming, the tyrant, the priest, the mountain, the fish man, the dawn and the twilight. His dreams are our nightmares, and his wake will be our sleep. Cosmic and alien, the God of Dreams waits, harrowing against the thin veil, clawing at the membrane of our psyche, leaking through the cracks, manifesting in our mania. And it is to him, Great Cthulhu, that I credit the recent announcement that Yakuza is getting a life action adaptation.

Because come on- what else am I supposed to believe? I've been bringing up how good of an idea this would be in blog after blog for years now, knowing well just how much brilliant stories and characters the world was missing out on thanks to the barrier to entry of the gaming world. This dreams, this longing, existed solely in my warped and peeling mind- until it didn't anymore! What am I supposed to believe, that Amazon reads this blog? Don't be foolish- 'twas the god king, obviously! In his neverending war to break beyond the waves and reclaim his foot on the head of all mankind, Cthulhu plucked that little gem from my mindscape and went "Oh, that's actually a pretty good idea! I'm going to just insert that in an Amazon exec's noggin' so when I rise there'll be a couple of seasons of the show to binge on!" He's a savvy one, that Cthulhu! Always planning ahead!

With this conflux of realities breaking down comes the apparent rapidly approaching adaptation of Yakuza 1's entire story within later this very year, under Amazon studios! Which would, of course, make this the second attempt to retell the beginning of Kazuma Kiryu's story- the first being a hilariously bizarre movie in which Majima walks around with a shotgun he uses to gun people down- (I suppose that was made back when Majima still flittered between being a good or bad guy) and wore an eyepatch on the wrong eye. But it did spawn that unforgettable image of Majima slyly peaking around the corner of a hallway using his blinded eye to spy on Kiryu and Haruka. (Classic.) Although I have to be honest, I'm not sure if this was the best start for a Yakuza series.

Back when Yakuza 0 was developed it did rest on the back of five Yakuza games before it in order to inform characters and direction, making it a prequel in the truest since balancing the weight of all that came after. But it was also a hail mary to try and score a western audience- which succeeded with gusto. Many people, including myself, were introduced to Yakuza through 0 and thus closely relate the majesty of that franchise with the quality of that original power house of a game and let me be clear- that is because 0 is an incredible introduction. None of that game is dependent on knowing who these characters are or what they will become. Foreshadowing is subtle character work delicately laying out the complexities of the iconic personalities these to-be heroes would adopt, and the overall narrative itself tells the origin of the series' most iconic landmark it returns to so often it even starred in the finale of Infinite Wealth earlier this year- Millennium Tower.

And that isn't even to mention the fact that Yakuza 0's story is, to be honest, actually a lot better than Yakuza 1's. That original was created back in a time when Yakuza was still finding it's identity and thus basing itself around the various rigors of romantic crime drama- in an almost cliché sense. You have the virtuous sacrifice, the 'protect the small girl' subplot, the betrayal, the surprise romance so cold I'll bet people were literally flashbanged by "I love you" in the final moments of the game. Yakuza 1 is a classic, no doubt- but 0 was a legend. Yakuza 0 broke all these characters down to their base most form and dragged them across a complex conspiracy that spanned across Asia and across generations, peppered with genuine slow burn romance, one emotionally shattering confrontation and enough cliffhanger plot-twists to break a gordian knot and worlds collided in a scrabble to seize what would eventually become the most important piece of real-estate in this entire franchise. That would be the way to start this new media journey, if Amazon were taking this serious.

We've already got ourselves a glimpse of our Kiryu's back, bearing a tattoo reminiscent of the classic dragon though slightly different, bringing to mind the most pressing question we should be asking about this adaptation- are we still going to do the one arm strip move? Afterall, how else are we going to demonstrate that tattoo? We can't have Kiryu rip his precious outfit, he needs to take that off in important and impactful moments- and will he perform the physics defining hand rip to pull it off? For that matter- what exact tone are the team looking to strike with this adaptation? Are we going to get ourselves a fun and light-hearted farce, or a serious and intense drama? Or will the showrunners be clever enough to know that in order to match the game franchise, they need to actually strike a balance of both?

An important point of note is the stipulation that 'Like a Dragon: Yakuza' is said to follow a 'loose' adaptation of the events of the first game, which may be their licence to trim the fat in a few areas- or to use the Yakuza franchise as a flesh-suit for the showrunners own failed storytelling ambitions as we've seen happen to 'The Rings of Power', 'The Witcher' and, regrettably, 'Avatar'. Ryoma Takeuchi is playing Kiryu, which means we'll have an actor of the right height at least, and he bares the name 'Ryoma'- so I guess they have to do an Ishin series if this thing makes it off the ground- I just can't shake the feeling he looks a little young for the role. (Which would have made him perfect to play 'Yakuza 0' Kiryu! Ah, I'm never going to shake this, am I?)

But enough misgivings. This is what I want. It's what I've always wanted. For Kiryu to finally shine on the screen in a medium he can genuinely be added to. None of these nowhere adaptations that have no possible ability to improve, or even match, the original- such as with cartoons like Avatar to live action versions of the same scenes, only slower and clunkier. Like a Dragon bases itself over an exaggerated reality which, if given a totally straight face, could elevate the source material in those special moments. Does that mean I want to see blue glowing auras and videogame stuff like that represented? I honestly don't know yet- and the fact that this series could literally go one of a hundred directions and still potentially prove faithful, as proven by the murder happy farce-fest of the movie- is just proof why this is the one video game adaptation that was meant to be.

Finishing off The Outer World

 

As I've grumbled about quite often in the past few years, The Outer Worlds failed to land with me the way I wanted it to, which has grown into something of a dichotomy for me considering it has become readily apparent that the excitingly revealed 'Avowed' was going to be another game in that exact style. I ummed, and ahhed, pulled at my teeth, tore out my hair- but nothing could get to summon up that same level of wonderment I felt when first viewing that trailer all those years ago- this with little else to turn to I have to rely on- bleargh- hope to fuel my wanton ambition. At least that was until I decided to bite the bullet and finally finish of The Outer Worlds the way I had failed to do several times across the years. Over the past few days I finally bit fully into The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition.

You see, the one aspect of The Outer Worlds I had somehow managed to miss were the two DLCs that Obsidian released while the game was still in a support cycle- and considering some of my most favourite moments in previous Obsidian games came from their DLC, I really wasn't giving myself the full picture. This grinding my way through The Outer Worlds so that I can reach the DLC and give the full experience a fair shake was the only thing that made sense to me- plus it would give me an excuse to replay through everything I did like about The Outer Worlds, rather than dwell on that disappointing main narrative which had left such a sour taste in my mouth all these years. And I am glad to report that there has actually been a shift on my feelings and thoughts regarding the game.

First, I totally forgot how sarcastic the game was. Largely in it's characterisation of the Player Character- but pretty much every character has a dry retort packed away somewhere in their unhinged diatribes aside from, probably, Felix- because he is the most boring character. There are so many delightfully inconsequential dialogue trees you can hop down with characters that exist simply to screw with the peace around you- and I really like that unique level of flippancy which is indicative to how the general feel of The Outer Worlds' worldbuilding is. I'm pretty sure every single terminal entry in the entire game has at least one 'corporate hell' joke or pun stuffed in there somewhere. It's like the team committed themselves to only writing lore entries when they thought up a joke to slip in there for prosperities sake.

I also totally missed how decent the game's straightforward levelling system is at allowing you to go crazy with a custom build. Whereas I tried to do my stealth assassin routine for the original game, specialising in pretty much anything I thought that I would need, totally lowballing how much space the game would give me to max out everything. (There is no possible way to max out every stat, I would later learn) This time around I picked a direction congruent with the character I was roleplaying and stuck rigorously to it, a loud violent handgun expert with a healthy heaping of scientific knowledge to make the most out of all those unique science weapons. And with that vague direction in mind, I quickly ended up making a character who was broken pretty much at the start of Act 2 and only got more devastating as the game went on. The final boss of the game, whom I spent 25 frantically desperate minutes carefully whittling down in my original playthrough? I melted it in 15 seconds this time around. Same difficulty. (I guess picking a trade really helps sometimes.)

Peril on Gorgon actually reminds me vaguely of a much more exploration-friendly version of Dead Money from Fallout. Exploring a dead and deserted facility whilst you pick through the corpse learning what secrets were buried when the asteroid was abandoned, all whilst fighting through hoards of Marauders who seem to infest the planet. There are no unique enemies to the DLC, rather disappointingly, but there are some interesting new revelations about the world space that justify such a direction. I actually really love the mystery Gorgon presents and think it's concise but consequential narrative and ultimate choices were honestly superior to the core game- even if the twist was nicked wholesale from Mass Effect Andromeda.

Murder on Eriandos, on the otherhand, feels like Obsidian stretching their chuckle muscles once again to let everyone know that they haven't lost their touch. I'd call this the 'Old World Blues' of The Outer Worlds, with the added stipulation that this is no where near as hilarious as Old World Blues. Eriandos is practically dripping with snark and farce as you investigate the murder of famed starlet Halcyon Helen. Flirting with Noir at times before the sheer weirdness of the meta plot cuts through all that and by the end of the adventure there is no pretense left- the story goes into full silly mode and abandons the veneer of serious murder mystery they teased- which would be a faux-pas if it didn't match the tone so acutely. I definitely laughed the most during this quest mod and though Gorgon had me more invested, Eriandos is a must play for anyone sailing through The Outer Worlds.

I must admit that The Outer Worlds saved their best content for these DLC snippets, and perhaps that is aided by the fact that this arguably flimsy setting works best in bite-sized snippets, rather than stretched across an entire system of people we're supposed to care about. It's kind of like imagining Pillars of Eternity if the entire world was just the Dyrwood and you had to wrestle with the moral weight of bad things happening to those various factions of awful people- who cares! But when you take a small community out of them, such as for The White March, and flesh them out- I can care a bit more about the horrors that befall them. And maybe, taking that feedback into account and learning from it, Obsidian can do what they did with Pillars 2 and make the world of The Outer Worlds 2 feel more real and worthy, thus empowering the weight of the tales they wish to spin. They've done it before, and seeing this formula work in The Outer World's DLC- I'm a little bit hopeful they can do it again.

Okay... so Perfect Dark proved me wrong.

 

In the leadup to the Xbox conference I made a few predictions about what we would be seeing, and I'm proud to say I only got one of them horrendously wrong- the other two were only mostly wrong! I thought we would get a hail-mary years-too-early announcement for an interim Fallout project being developed by a studio in order to capitalise off the last few dying embers of hype from the show- and instead we got Gears 0... (Yay?) I also figured we would get a commitment to hardware from Xbox considering with everything that has happened over the past few weeks it has really felt like this is their last generation- so I expected an announcement of some brand new console, or maybe a tease of the next generation. We got a half-hearted full digital Series X which spits in the face of all their jabbering about 'game preservation' and a slight sneeze about a next generation 'at some point'. And lastly, I predicted we'd finally see Perfect Dark again, and it would be such an insubstantial teaser with the slightest huff of gameplay that we'd be disappointed, and it wouldn't have a release date. (2/3 ain't bad.)

Perfect Dark is the debut game of 'The Initiative', the supposedly vastly funded AAAA studio (yes, that term was coined before Ubisoft said it. Of course it is, those gibbering buffoons can't even grift in an original fashion.) which went 'perfectly dark' years ago after announcing this game and no one had seen hide nor hair of them since. I speculated that the team had died mysteriously, but unlike when I said the same about Team Cherry I might have been a little off pace. Instead it would seem that 'The Initiative', an idea I think most knew was doomed from the start, (blank cheques rarely equal better art) had been wrapped in a turbine of development hell from whence there was seemingly no escape. That was part of the reason I expected absolutely nothing at all- we'd heard so many members of the original team had bailed- I assumed this project would get a reboot because Xbox would be far too embarrassed to cancel the thing. I was very wrong.

When that logo came up during the conference I braced myself for the trainwreck trailer and... I sat up straight the moment we saw actual gameplay. I can't say whether or not it was intentional, but having the first thing we see be a near-futuristic train station immediately drew a parallel to the very first gameplay footage of the last Cyberpunkian immersive sim we had- 'Deus Ex: Mankind Divided'. Us stealth fans have wept in the absence of our core franchises, and Deus Ex's hiatus has stung the most often and fully. I want to be the super ordinately powerful solider throwing all manner of cool gadgets and insane gizmos in order to run circles around heavy security checkpoints! Perfect Dark was never really about that, being the predecessor to Golden Eye it was more of a spy-themed 'shoot 'em up'. This gameplay looked nothing like the original game to be honest- and I couldn't be happier!

In my wildest dreams I imagined what Perfect Dark could have been in it's best possible showing. I imagined a fantastic looking Immersive Sim with creative world design and complex layouts. What I didn't imagine was mirror's edge style parkour- blasting the exploration vertical wide open! Nor did I expect gun-fu style first person gameplay making the close quarters engagements look like something out of a high-budget action movie! What I'm trying to say is- Perfect Dark looked better than what I whimsically theorized it could have been on it's best day! The Initiative may have crumbled out of the gate, but they put together a dream game for me on their way to dust- and it has no release date... bugger.

That strange looking woman they've got cosplaying Joanna (they couldn't even match her hair colour, really?) seems to be every bit as resourceful as the original if not more so- recording the voices of a conversation in a crowd in order to use that one as a voice activate lock is such a uniquely interesting gameplay concept- I wonder if that is purely contextual or if they went the Metal Gear route of having that kind of system be nearly fully dynamic. Like playing a voice down an alley to draw attention from guards- that's the kind of gameplay interactions which blow stealth games past the basic set-up tools that Ubisoft always develop for their games- and then call them 'stealth friendly'.

And I simply must extol how simply gorgeous the game looks! I was expecting some form of stylised character design choices but no- they really seem to be making this a high fidelity looker- with the exception of perhaps some later action sections that seem to veer a bit more into the cartoonish, but in the effort of expanding the range of crazy-cool action moves Joanna is feasibly able of pulling off. Even the little touches in the heat of action sell the game- from the way that balcony crumbles when a shot-guard collapses on it, puffs of strategically blasted extinguisher smoke, that snazzy AR vision that gives beyond-wall vision; everything tells me that I was wrong to ever doubt The Initiative... or was I?

Because you see- despite spending all the money and goodwill trying to make this game on their lonesome- Perfect Dark has been half-surrendered to Crystal Dynamics to help bring it life, which is why they share developer credits. And given that team has just finished with the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy (and Marvel's Avengers) they're a proven enough commodity to push through development of a title like this. So are we really looking at a AAAA swanswong game developed by an XBOX birthed studio? Not really. But then again, do I really care about the circumstances of it's conception when this is a title that is, you know, literally everything I could ever ask for out of entertainment?

Immersive Sims are an incredibly difficult style of game to create, which is probably why we see so few of the buggers. CDPR thought they could make an entire open world game into one through Cyberpunk- but that turned out to be a tragic miscalculation. Perfect Dark seems cognizant of it's ambitions and simply wants to stun- and with everything I've seen so far I not only think it will, I know I'm going to play it as soon as the thing hits shelves. Or theoretical shelves, with how 'full digital' Xbox is heading. I just can't believe after all this time we still have no damned release date- good god, why show us the promised land if we cannot enter?