The Bioware I used to know

 

I did something utterly insane the other day. I did something that there was a good chance no one else in the entire world was also doing at that exact time despite the horrifically easy accessibility of it to just about anyone. I loaded up Anthem. And let me just specify- I'm not talking about logging into my packed Anthem character from back in the yesteryear to check out my stats and gear for nostalgia's sake- because no such character exists. I never played Anthem before, but I was curious and I wanted to satiate that curiosity by playing what many would consider the beginning of the end for the once-beloved RPG studio known as Bioware. And as we trudge ever closer to one of the most confusing 'comeback' attempts ever, headed by a studio who don't appear to resemble the developers we once saw as the saviours of the western RPG- I can't help but think back to the Bioware that I used to know and recolour my lens with what I now know.  

There is no sugarcoating it- Bioware was very much the company that introduced me to what an RPG was as a gamer. The first RPG I really fell over in heels for was Fallout 3, but Bethesda have always developer action RPGs- good ones, but not into the intricacies of the TTRPG-inspired titles like the genre-type was born from. Bethesda games do their best to live by those basic principals but disguise them as cleverly as possible behind more accessible gameplay systems and friendly-facing loops. For which there is no problem, I endeavour to impress. There is a lamentable distaste for 'accessible' games out there that render games like Skyrim inferior because they aren't as RPG dense as predecessors like Morrowind despite, you know, Morrowind's gameplay being ass. Morrowind serves an endlessly fascinating world with a curiously politically charged narrative that bears few equals- but don't pretend you get a rush from duking it out with those snore-fest combat systems- please! Bioware very much occupied a similar space of the RPG industry, but with a greater emphasis to the routes of RPGs.

Mass Effect and Dragon Age were my favourite games of their type- Sci Fantasy and 'apparently' Dark Fantasy worlds that felt brimming with stories, potential and life: they were limitless in my eyes. Immersive universes propped up on treasure troves of lore, character and imagination. These were the pinnacle of RPGs. It really is amazing, in hindsight, just home much heavy lifting the story-telling chops of the team were, considering how comparatively rudimentary these games were on a raw level. Satisfying, no doubt, and just deep enough to sustain themselves- but nowhere near the level of robust complexity that later and former CRPGS would champion- I would come to recognise that far too late not to take it for granted.

So sold I was into the Bioware way of doing things that I never questioned the odd weak narrative plot point here and there because I just figured they knew what they were doing, masters of their world like they were. It would take the distance of years to look back and see how Tali's whole narrative throughout Mass Effect 2 actually ended up going nowhere, or how strangely written Overlord is in the grand scheme of the series- I'm still not all that upset about how the ending of three either, because I always just looked at the entirety of Mass Effect 3 as the consequence of the decisions that came before and don't really hold a grudge that the state of the universe was condensed into three resolutions because... well what do you want? That's the best you could hope for! Bioware had me wrapped around their little fingers.

Which is why Anthem felt like such a betrayal, I should think. All that time spent building this intricate worlds that feel like ours to shape- giant sprawling narratives- and what we got was the absolute anthesis to all of that. At least Mass Effect Andromeda took what was there and made something cool out of it- at least in my opinion- but the money went into Anthem and that game turned out to be a misguided pipedream leading in a direction that no one rightly understood. Dragon Age Inquisition was good, but started to slip into that old pattern of 'overpromising' that might be common amidst AAA, but never for Bioware- and then it all fell apart with. It just seems like the 2010's in general were not kind ton the company.

Which brings us to the 2020's. Bioware has been quiet for the last 10 years regarding Dragon Age and to be honest- I don't really see the vision in their new game. Beyond the bad marketing which set off alarm bells for many out there- it was the actual gameplay that set the chills up my spine and everything I've seen since has cemented my feelings that something wrong has entered the pipeline and been allowed to fester. Apparently somewhere along the way someone fostered the belief that party based tactical gameplay was bad. Not just 'no longer vogue' but actively 'to be avoided'- and now they've settled to developing an action adventure slasher... at the same time as some other studios have gone the same path and now I have to compare this game with titles it doesn't really feel ready to go up against.

Let me see- are there any other traditional RPG games that switched to hack and slash recently? Oh wait... aren't the new Final Fantasy games startling examples of this kind of gameplay? Yeah- when you decide to focus heavily on the action gameplay you shift into the quality of that gameplay and Bioware... haven't really absorbed new play styles very well. Then again it cannot be denied that the currently make up of the company is entirely distinct from the legendary Bioware of all, so maybe all these new people are simply clueless when it comes to complex RPG mechanics but can whip up a hack'n'slash when push comes to shove? I don't know, I'm trying to keep together over here.

The Bioware that I used to know always made me feel excited, the always presented a new vision of what their franchise was that felt additive onto the experience. They always made me feel like we as an audience were progressing towards something. I don't see that anymore. 'Veilgaurd' doesn't make me feel much of anything to be honest. And maybe that's just me growing past Bioware as a company and the games they made- even old faithfuls like Origins feel a little quaint now even compared to some of their more complex contemporaries, but certainly in the face of more modern sweeping epics like 'Pathfinder: Kingmaker' and 'Baldur's Gate 3'. I hope they can win me back, but maybe that's the kind of optimism best saved for the Bioware that I used to know. 

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.

Amending the Anthem

 I can fix it: I have the imagination!

Live Service games: The final frontier. Aside from the mastermind of the genre, Destiny itself, it seems that the 'Live Service' style of game is one forever circling the drain ready to swallow up the unwary. A missing link between single player focused personally driven narrative and massively multiplayer bigger-picture gradually unveiling narrative; it never seems able to grasp onto that core audience of people who'll love it for what it is. Probably because so many of these games try to be exactly what Destiny is, not realising that Destiny was a success case of funding, development and novelty that even then had a plethora of growing pains in the beginning. Still, there has to be a way to do one of these games right. Destiny, and I guess the Division, can't live as sole arbiters on what it is to be a healthy live Service.

No, in fact I'm convinced that there is some missing substance that all these games have lost and I'm going to discover what it is as I unravel the method through which we might theoretically reboot some of the saddest failures. Avengers recently shut off all updates, and though I wish I could fix that one up first- I'll be honest it's a difficult conundrum to solve. Superhero's as a genre just doesn't seem to work from a fundamental level with what a Live Service functions on, as we've seen twice already with Avengers and Gotham Knights, (I know Knights was an offline Live Service, but the principal was the same) and we're about to see it a third time when 'Suicide Squad: Kills the Justice League' commits Seppuku. So I want to take look at an easier game to work with, Bioware's supposed opus: Anthem.

Now Anthem was one of those games doomed from the start, with no one quite knowing what the game they were making even was until the E3 trailer team informed them and the audience in the same moment. But what was there appealed at least conceptually. A high fantasy sci-fi world with mech suits and a mysterious power called 'the Anthem' left behind by the old gods. It had this 'Sci Fi channel' vibe to it with a lush and diverse city of people's kept within a massive fortress surrounded by untameable wilds full of wild monsters, bandits and eye-pleasing visual delights. It had all the looks to be a hit, and even it's world seemed functional enough to support this style of modular progression, expedition based gameplay snippets and slow unfurl narrative progression. It could have worked! But it didn't.

Largely I'd say this was because of the 'lack of vision' problem. This game was thrown together at the last minute, the team had no way of creating enough content to keep a new player base happy and had to stretch out what they could make until it was stringy and ugly- but in the world of imagination we can restart development with intention from day one and propose what the game could have focused on instead. And to start with, I think that Anthem should have shifted pace from creating a WOW shrunk down experience (like what Destiny shoots for) and try for a more Runescape style of game with a unique Bioware flavouring sprinkled on top for good measure. Don't understand what I mean by that? Don't worry, I've been brainstorming this for at least a year at this point.

Now from the getgo I think that most Live Service titles, Anthem included, would be vastly improved by going the route of providing 'vertical progression paths' rather than the genre-standard 'Horizontal progression'. Essentially what I mean by this is giving players an incentive to progress down the skills and activities they come to like rather than down some vague universal 'core level' like most RPGs already do. If, instead of focusing on purely getting stronger, the game provided a range of activities that players could level up their proficiency at doing, such as what Runescape offers, you'd have yourselves a fertile field for player constructed storytelling to thrive. For example, let's say that one such activity was being an Escort Javelin for the various merchants travelling the land. Completing basic escort jobs unlock more dangerous routes against complicated land- travelling across sea or in the sky- facing different threats along the way. The endgame version of these escort missions could have you safeguarding a merchant through an active 'Anthem' whilst it rages about, teraforming giant chunks out of the ground, dealing mind-bending effects of one of god's tools gone haywire.

The effect that specifications like this would have is in providing some sense of roleplay without making the entire product a 'hard RP' dystopia like you'll find in some of those 'Sandbox MMO's which never seem to catch on too well. Players will naturally gravitate towards activities that they enjoy and assume those roles within the ecosystem of the world, giving them an intrinsic reason to grow attached to the world of Anthem. Now they won't just be logging on to hit the next level cap, they're checking in to fulfil their duty hunting down the overbearing wildlife, or collecting rare materials from dangerous areas of the map. Of course they'll be players who want to be good at everything, and they'll be welcome to try. All that the developers would need to do from here would be to ensure that each play archetype is catered to as development progresses to tell the larger narrative.

But perhaps the biggest change in my vision of Anthem would be how it handles it's narrative. Bioware famously stepped away from their traditional storytelling methods by reasoning they wouldn't be possible within a live service space. Which meant no meaningful choices, no fleshing out your character with personally driven shifts in perspective, no relationship building or breaking with people around you- everyone had to follow the same static narrative because otherwise there would be narrative inconsistency. Well I've figured out the solution and it's a real special one. Get this: Instancing! But seriously, instanced main story objectives is how RPG MMO's like TOR handles their stories and it allows for everything that Bioware said was impossible. TOR has it's choice based storylines, (although I do critique the worth of those choices in the main narratives of The Old Republic. A more narrowly themed game like Anthem could definitely improve upon that part of the formula) companion relationship building and grouping up with friends whilst playing separate story objectives. This simple approach would have let Bioware play to their strengths whilst trying something new.

And finally, in a sort of wrap up of everything I've said: the world of Anthem needed to be more interactive to make it feel liveable. Even simple things like the ability to sit and have a drink at the bar adds wonders to the immersion factor. Read some in-universe newspaper, wake up in the infirmary after getting KO'd and choosing not to respawn at checkpoint in a mission, spotting key narrative members out and about and sharing a few lines of dialogue: this is the heart of a proper liveable world that Anthem, and games of it's kind, are so often missing. Sure, Anthem's problems ran a lot deeper than the game which was in the planning sheets, but in a perfect world with perfect development and a perfect launch: this was the Anthem I wanted to see. And maybe with a bit of luck it will be the framework of a Live Service we'll see someday in the future.

'Dragon Age : Origins ' the old gold standard

 Respect for your elders.

The year is 2009 and Bioware is about to release one of their greatest, and most terrible, achievements. Because you see, 'Dragon Age: Origins' is a game that would shoot the already accomplished developer into the spotlight once again on a golden horse of quality, and would unfortunately be the absolute peak of their life from which the studio would spiral into ignominy. Every success they make from then on would be compared and contrasted to it, every failure would be heightened in the knowledge that they once made this; the entirety of Bioware history would be whittled down to before 'Dragon Age: Origins' and after. At least in the eyes of some. I'm someone who still remembers that this is the studio who bought both Knights of the Old Republic (an arguably better game) to the world and the Baldur's Gate Trilogy; an actual classic masterpiece. None of which is to say that Origins isn't another masterpiece for their shelf, because it absolutely is; but when I see people heralding it as the unbeaten gold standard for RPGs I can't help but roll my eyes. 

'Dragon Age: Origins' is a spectacular RPG, not least of all because it's the only RPG I can think of which has managed to create genuinely impactful origin story set-ups so that the character you make in character creation is firmly cemented in the world. Cyberpunk 2077 even tried to copy that feature, and ended up screwing it up because they forgot to add the follow-up main narrative tie-in which makes the origin stories impactful! Origins also balanced its narrative between several big self contained stories with their own climaxes that all leant towards the bigger goal, so that by the time you reached the credits you really felt like you'd embarked on a world shaking adventure novel the size of a Tolkien book. It presented a simple RPG system which, whilst lacking depth for a game of it's genre, provided a very fun set of tools to navigate the world with. And it also toyed with action and consequence in a manner that felt like it had impact, even if as-a-whole it sort of feels a bit like the whole 'Mass Effect 3' style story where you shore up allies for some big final battle at the end because you need the numbers rather than because you're shaping the specifics of the future.

All of which I lay down in praise, because Dragon Age has been one of my favourite fantasy worlds almost exclusively through of it's stellar introduction in 'Origins'. (And that's still the case after watching that Cassandra Anime which that convinced I'm the only one who has ever watched. So that goes to show you how much of a fan I am.) Thedas succeeds in being a fantasy world lacking the backing of a well established book franchise to lean on or any of the other dozens of helping hands that some game devs rely on, and is still pretty interesting and cool, apart from the elves who are cookie-cutter cliché fantasy elves. And that isn't a given, by the way; lest I remind everyone of Larian's Divinity and that total sewer of a fantasy world so rotten that Larian literally reimagines the entire world canon every game or so. But in Bioware's failure to really nail the formula of Origins again, or to try and supplant it with something better like they've tried to do twice now, I think it's safe to admit to ourselves that the golden boy of 'Dragon Age' is no longer at the top of the pecking order for RPGs anymore. Well, unless you're looking specifically for a mildly deep, narratively formulaic, fantasy cliché ridden, role playing game. By Bioware. If you want those specifics; then 'Dragon Age: Origins' is your king. But if you're looking at the buffet that is RPGs; the genre has moved and branched beyond what that old classic can offer.

Rather than just living in the world of the RPG. Or the western RPG and the JRPG, if you're cultured. We now have the RPG and the CRPG. And for what it's worth, I think that CRPGs have effectively overtaken the western RPG market and made those old titles largely irrelevant, at least from a gameplay standpoint. (Origins will forever be well written, afterall.) These CRPGs harken back to the old days where RPGs existed to adapt robust and expansive board game rulesets into the digital landscape, which provided vast swathes of gameplay potential as they were designed to do. Bioware came at a time when RPGs were smoothing out a lot of those complexities in an effort to become more widely playable, and at the time that made the most sense; but we're leaning back towards an industry of niche and specialisation, such that those old games that tried to balance the fence just don't really cut in comparisons anymore.

Pillars of Eternity was the big return to form for a lot of people out there, as Obsidian slid into the space left behind my the death of the original CRPGs to remind everyone what we love above board-game based RPGs. Options. So many options and builds and styles of play beyond the bog standards 'rouge, mage or warrior' that everyone and their mother usually does. Although for me it was Tyranny which really tipped the cart over on DA:O's shoes. Their unique narrative presentation of being someone who serves the dictator sparked to life that world in a manner I hadn't felt for a new RPG in a very long time, that same spark which had gone stale for Dragon Age after two entries that felt like they weren't giving themselves to the world building quite as much as they could. (What the series needs is a single globetrotting action RPG that really highlights the beauty and diversity of Thedas, rather than redesigning a whole race and telling us to just go with for the third time.)

But what about that unique structure which DA:O rocked? True enough, no matter how many other RPGs you find which get the individual bits and pieces down pat, none quite capture that epic feeling of a total adventure told in one great stride. DA:O is really the successor to the Baldur's Gate trilogy in that regard, only without the ramp up in challenge to match the stakes of the narrative. Except... Pathfinder Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous give it a damn good try, don't they? Both adaptions of entire adventure campaigns, those Owlcat Games titles go even further than 'Dragon Age: Origins' to tell branching and intricate epic journeys that feel like a whole sweep of novels by the flipside. They haven't perfected that formula just yet, and there's still some ways to go for Owlcat but they're not stopping improving their craft. Unlike Bioware they aren't moving away from that style of RPG, they're embracing it and expanding it to create games that challenge RPG diehards. Whilst Bioware let the mantle rot and fester.

Ah, but I can't extol the virtues of Bioware RPGs without talking the cinematic presentation that they alone have possessed and perfected for all these years, now can I? Unless... oh, Larian is in the process of nabbing that crown of excellence with their work on the upcoming Baldur's Gate 3; a game which is a follow-up to Bioware's own legacy work too, which has got to be something of a double whammy. Soon Bioware won't even have the façade of epic narrative storytelling to hold up as their saving grace, which is going to end up leaving the studio practically bereft of virtues to call their own. And that's probably because in the years since DA:O came out, the game development industry has grown and involved in ways that version of Bioware could never imagine. 

Some games really do stand the test of time and remain the shining beacon that everyone looks back to for inspiration, but they are very rare exemplars of their genre. With how busy the RPG genre is, it shouldn't really be news to anyone that even a classic like 'Origins' isn't going to remain the top-dog golden standard forever, this medium evolves too quickly for that. None of which is to say there isn't still lessons to be learned from Origins, specifically in it's still unmatched character origins mechanic. (I really would have thought Larian would have managed to trump that one in the years since, but no such luck.) But even legends need to be put to rest, lest we leave them on the pedestal as more of a curtsey and it just becomes an embarrassment, like giving Martin Scorsese an Oscar for Gangs of New York instead of Goodfellas; it's just unseemly. So sing of how good Origins was during it's time all you want, but don't pretend it's still the king of the crop. Give it the respect to let the game rule it's time, why dontcha? 

Mod Review: KOTOR- 'Brotherhood of Shadow: Solomon's Revenge'

 There are worst fates than death.

It's been a very long time since I've sat down and spoken about my thoughts regarding a mod, but it's been so very long since I've played through a huge mod that wasn't another Bethesda title addendum. And that's obviously because Bethesda games naturally lend themselves to mod creation with their accommodating engine and easy-to-learn creation tools. Trying to match the scale of a big Skyrim mod on any other game is like an uphill struggle where the entire climb is a constant overhang- it just ain't happening. But then there are always those who will push themselves through the trials and tribulations, and the more beloved the initial property is, the more likely those people are going to be inspired to come out of the woodworks. And it doesn't get more beloved than Knights of the Old Republic.

I recently did a full playthrough of KOTOR in memorandum of the game that was before it's memory is entirely washed away by the action-adventure remake dangling on the horizon, and seeing as it might be one of the last go-arounds that I give it, I thought it only fair to play that highly rated huge quest mod which people always rave about; 'Brotherhood of Shadow: Solomon's Revenge'. And much of my attraction came from sheer amazement at the fact that yes, this is an entire meaty questline added into the framework of a 2003 aged game that really doesn't feel like it has the sort of versatility to accommodate for that. But coming out the otherside of a ten hour playthrough (yes, the mod took me ten hours- it's that substantial) it's hard to convey just how utterly impressed I was with the scale that Silveredge9 was able to accomplish. The mod took this creator 3 years to complete, by account of their own FAQ, and the results are humbling. On the mod page you can see it advertised as a KOTOR expansion pack, and it certainly has the heft to justify that title.

The entirety of this mod, which is technically two narratively connected mod questlines bought together, is designed to place itself during the final act of the game where all the big secrets have been revealed, so from this point onwards I'm going to proceed with a SPOILER warning so that I don't have to go all 'he who must not be named' going forward. In it's size it essentially acts as a bloat to the later half of the game allowing the player to really ingrain themselves in the identity of Revan as they explore the war he perpetrated and the lives he effected along the way. Even more crucially than that, however, the mod serves as a vehicle to tell the particularly long and draw-out storyline of this mod's OC, a pale Twi'Lek Dark Jedi called 'Shadow'. (Which is also why the mod needs to happen in the last act of the narrative. Shadow takes up Bastilla's spot in the party selection screen.)

The way that the first part of this mod, Brotherhood of Shadow, works is largely by reusing and changing existing maps from the base game and throwing in new textures, new NPCs and a few new models in order to create a new storyline. Conceptually simple but elegantly performed. You'll certainly noticed the reused areas, the appropriated sound tracks and how every NPC seems to shun Galactic basic, (so that the existing in-game alien speaking sounds can be used instead of having to go and find actors) but this mod manages to successfully remix them into the deck of a new ship called the Orion, and explore a intriguing and mysterious enemy who is visually and conceptually arresting, totally not like anything we'd seen before KOTOR and much more fitting in line with the lovingly created Sith Lord weridoes from Knights of the Old Republic 2. Choosing that ponderous slightly-unsettling void theme from the prison box area to be the theme of 'The Brotherhood' was a truly inspired choice too; it makes you feel like you've stepped into an alien world space, totally beholden to their laws and playing to their pace once they seize control of the narrative. In story alone, I think this first part of the mod is fantastic.

But then we get to the gameplay. Now I understand how it is; a mod creator is not a tried and tested game developer who has teams of feedback and second opinions to help them fine-tune the fiddlier bits of design such as balancing. We just have our ideas about what sounds cool and what we felt should have been in the original game. I imagine our Mod author here found KOTOR to be too easy, probably felt that KOTOR II's decidedly tougher edge fit better and wanted to bring that to the first game. But let's just say that in trying to make a 'challenging' experience, this mod crosses over into eye-brow raising difficult curve territory right fast. First off, the mod deprives you of your party. In a party-based RPG- they remove everyone else. Then the mod conjures situations that will make you question if this was even designed with the hardest difficulty (what I play with) in mind. Basic enemies with eerily high stat sheets, boss fights in narrow corridors with minimal prep time. And on the later end there are encounters that I can't even begin to defend and to me can only be the result of someone who lamented the fact that KOTOR is an RPG and not an action game. Putting the player in a circle of sword wielders to be cut to death expecting the PC to be built to the exact specifications you've designed your PC is a frankly amateur design faux-pas. (I'm lucky I invested in a least one CC, because that is absolutely not a given in a free-form RPG like KOTOR.)

Solomon's Revenge marks the second mod in the collection, and this is when the scale explodes into truly mind boggling territory. Practically all the naked limitations that were present in the first mod have been entirely leapfrogged. Not only is there voice acting, pretty good voice acting at that, but there are custom maps! I can't even comprehend how that was achieved- and a lot of them look great, a couple in particular look genuinely incredible! I think it was about now when I started to note the author's writing prowess which, apart from one early typo (wrong version of 'To', I do it myself all the time) was seriously good. It was confident and expressive, and whilst I could tell that KOTOR II's standard was sort of the aim, especially in some of the later 'weighty' dialogues, I think the quality doesn't quite reach that high. But that, in turn, brings it pretty neatly in line with KOTOR 1's standard anyway, so what I'm trying to say is that it fit. The character felt strong, the narrative grabbed my attention, and I pondered the story of the central companion, Shadow, for a while after the credits. If only it all wasn't so self indulgent.

Now again, trust me when I say that I absolutely understand where the 2009 author of this mod is coming from, but I'll bet even they, when looking back at this script, can cringe and concede: "Yeah this goes on about 50 pages too long." The basic idea was to tell this sweeping narrative that, occasionally through your eyes and sometimes through the eyes of a third party, would tell the story of events leading up to the Jedi civil war. Fair enough. But this game lingers to the point of having flashback scenes for every single significant event mentioned in the timeline, all of which are playthrough sections with that signature questionable difficulty balancing and a regular hijacking of your personal agency. In that way, this mod actually reminds me a lot of those beginning 8 hours of Knights of the Old Republic 2, in that everytime you think the game is going to open up and give you your freedom, it seizes the narrative for another highly orchestrated procession of scenes. Not that I expected some Bioware sized second game area out of this mod, just the freedom to play the character I'd built throughout the game would be nice. (The flashbacks regularly switch out the player character, which is very impressive technologically because I didn't even know KOTOR 1's engine could do that, but still rather annoying.) 

Shadow, or the other 5 names you're going to know her by at the end of this thing, is the protagonist of this tale, not really the player. And her story is surprisingly engaging given she's the only member of the main cast without a proper voice actor. (She's voiced totally through pre-packed alien grunts) However, self indulgence raises it's head as nearing the end of this story her scenes of personal revelation, specifically through flashbacks and back-and-forths with Solomon, drag heavily. Conversation and argument points are stated and restated until they're bleeding out of your ears, battles inexplicably reset themselves several times over, and the final monologue stabs at your patience as an ostensibly dying man embarks on a mile-long monologue to make Shakespeare blush. For the final hour and a half of play I was begging for it just to end, as the mod had entirely outstayed it's welcome. Yes, that might have coincided with the absolute flurry of enemy-spam boss fights hosted one-after-the-other with inane mechanics even worse than KOTOR's vanilla Malak fight, which was such a shame after the mod featured one truly fantastic finale-feeling boss fight at the head of this unsolicited boss royale.

All that being said, though the presentation was flawed and the plot far too lingering, what was actually accomplished was incredible. We get to see the Taris promenade turned into a battle zone, (with rather questionable tactical cohesion considering both armies are literally standing in front of the other and blasting) we get to face Mandalore in a one-on-one duel set in a strikingly epic bridge that looked to be a custom map, (Loved the design of Mandalore) and we even get a glimpse of the ancient conquests of the original Infinite Empire. All that is rather haphazardly wrapped around a decently written overarching plot with characters that I'd personally consider to be memorable. So would I recommend this Mod for a KOTOR lover? Absolutely, I think it's a total must play! But would I say the same for a newcomer trying out KOTOR for the first time? No, it's too unevenly constructed, and unforgivingly balanced for that. And would I play it again? Maybe... it depends what I would do with the mod on a second playthrough. I know there are two paths, good and evil, and I am curious as to what would change for the second path, but I also don't know if the frustration and bloat is worth enduring again just to see the other side of the narrative. Still, a very impressive mod overall and certainly worthy of it's legendary title in the Star Wars KOTOR modding community. Let's call it a B+ in my arbitrary, largely meaningless, rating system. Seems apt. Oh, and the 'plus' is because the mod does what Bioware failed to do and gives the player the chance to earn and wear Revan's robes. At least the author knew what the fans wanted there. 

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Review

 The force can do terrible things to a mind

Ever a creature given to totally inane and wanton flights of fancy, just last week I was enveloped by the inexplicable and singular desire once more to play through Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic in it's entirety; something I haven't done since before the inception of this blog. Only this time I wanted to do it with the finest that the community had to offer, dripping with the best of the best mods that the game could boast- until I found out that some of the big one's are totally incompatible with one another, so then I had to pick and choose. At it's core, however, I was still playing the KOTOR game which I fell in love with all those years ago and crowned highly on my list of favourite games ever. Do I stand by that designation, even today? Does the game still stand up enough to warrant the renewed interest around it in the light of the Knights of the Old Republic Remake, and have my recent gaming experiences at all reshaped how I look at KOTOR? Let's discuss.

'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' was a title from the Bioware golden age set within the Star Wars universe and coinciding with a series of Dark Horse comics set in an era of the Star Wars mythos still totally unexplored by Film or TV. If you've never had a chance to read the Knights of the Old Republic comic series, I would definitely recommend it, as even amidst the pretty decent quality Dark Horse Star Wars run, that collection in particular stands out as absolute gems. (I remember being helplessly hooked to the series back when I was a kid.) Released in 2003, KOTOR was a RPG that benefitted from Bioware's work with the exceptionally well-received Baldur's Gate games, as Bioware found a way to translate the Third Edition of D&D into a Star Wars game just as they had done with Baldur's Gate and Second Edition D&D. Of course, for your average Star Wars fan, the origin and basis of the mechanics was perfunctory, all we cared about was that this was a Star Wars RPG and it played good.

Using a D20 combat system linked with your typical attributes-stat-sheet set-up, KOTOR is built for real-time, round based, combat encounters with a limited number of feats and force abilities available at the player's discretion to add strategy and moment-to-moment decision making. The effectiveness of these powers, the likelihood of scoring hits, and the activation of crits, are all decided on behind-the-scenes dice rolls further influenced with bonuses granted from the stat sheet. When I first played this game I stumbled into it's systems having no idea what a D20 system was, and came away no more elucidated, yet incredibly I finished the title on the hardest difficulty with a character I can only assume was horribly sub-optimal; which is to say that the systems Bioware established here are decently complex if you want to get into them, but accommodating enough for an actual child to work them. I can attest to that from personal experience.

Coming back to the game after having learned of CRPGs and beaten the considerably more difficult Baldur's Gate games, I can appreciate the slight layers of complexity that allow for a decent amount of flexibility and distinct player builds. I won't lie to you and say there's a crazy amount of build variety on display here, even the six classes (three Jedi, three non-Jedi) are only really sliding scales from 'high mana user' to 'low mana user', or 'heavy weapons guy' to 'small arms man'. But that ankle-deep complexity works in the game's favour, as it gives you more time to focus on the act of playing the game rather than the interim moments of reading ability sheets and deciding how to approach each encounter. You won't have any truly taxing fights that challenge the limits of your creativity and resourcefulness, but you will spend a lot more time in the thick of combat and exploring the Star Wars Galaxy. 

Speaking of, KOTOR delivers us a version of the Star Wars universe that we had never before seen in any of the movies. An era set thousands of years before the prequels, wherein the Republic was not yet the de facto government of the universe, and crimson-saber wielding Dark Jedi could be expected in the hundreds as they spawned from a Dark Side fuelled Sith Empire. This is a Galaxy both familiar and unfamiliar, with technologies comparable to the Star Wars we love, but with a medieval twist that grants a more fantastical and mythical taste to the narrative. You have protocol and astromech droids looking decidedly more alien, newly designed fleets of Republic and Sith battle ships that adhere to the impractical-but-shapely philosophy of normal Star Wars starships and a more 'honorbound Knight' twist to how force wielders dress that I find instantly evocative and iconic. KOTOR looks the part of a Star Wars Era flawlessly, no doubt helped by the work Dark Horse did on shaping the world in their stellar comics. 

KOTOR tells the story of the return of the Sith Empire heralded by the legendary Jedi war hero Darth Revan and now succeeded by his traitorous former apprentice Darth Malak. You play a lowly Republic contractor inexplicably thrust into the middle of this conflict only to slowly discover that you might have more a role to play in this war than you'd ever of guessed. The narrative of this game is widely praised as one of it's greatest aspects, and it is for such good reason. Bioware's writers perfectly played off the beloved 'farmer to hero' trope that Star Wars lives and dies for and twisted it into grander, evolving beast with one of the greatest rugpulls in gaming. These writers took Star Wars, imbued it with another genre (swords and sorcery) and created a darkly majestic storyline that KOTOR fans still giddily discuss to this day; all over fifteen years before 'The Mandalorian' launched. If only this story could have served as the bar for narrative writing in the Star Wars universe going forth, we wouldn't still be having discussion about whether or not Star Wars has the depth for intelligent stories. (It does, and KOTOR is a masterful dip into the very crest of that lake.) 

One who has played any games from this studio before will likely be able to guess the structure of the game. After an introduction world you are set free on several planets, most of which are iconic in the source material, and you must engage complete questlines on each planet in order to serve the greater plot, which in this case is tracking the location of some mysterious powerful weapon called 'The Star Forge' which is giving the Sith Empire a domineering edge in the war for the galaxy. Each planet gives us a self-contained story delving into the state of the universe from this corner, one touches on a once cloistered ocean world now turned in a fulcrum point for the entire war thanks to it's exclusive production of the healing substance 'Kolto', another tells of the struggles of the tribal Wookies of Kashyyyk against slavery, all present the player with choices and consequences for how they want to shape the Galaxy they are saving. Now admittedly, these are choices in the very black and white 'Light Side', 'Dark Side' variety (for the most part. There are a couple of morality stunters packaged in there too.) but they still provided the freedom to be the Jedi that you want to be, a hallmark of great Bioware design.

As a Bioware RPG, you can expect a lionshare of the writing weight to be placed on characters and their interactions with the player, both as members of your party and people you meet in the frontiers, that is just the Bioware way. But even recognising that high Bioware standard, I have to admit that KOTOR in particular does a simply marvellous job characterising even the individuals you brush past for a single quest line over the whole story. Characterisation in the writing is so good that there are some standout characters you'd love to stick around more, and whom make me rue the fact that KOTOR is one of the only RPGs of it's type not to feature an end-slate 'where are they now' slideshow during the credits. Of course, this expands to most of the companions too, who are all classics for their contributions. (Even if I think that from a gameplay standpoint, there's a couple too many companions for them all to have unique talents and you're probably going to end up ignoring at least two for the entire game.)

I must say, however, that whilst many of the characters are personable and likeable, from the headstrong Jedi prodigy Bastila Shan to the scrappy Twi'lek rascal Mission Vao, (and the lovably blood-thirsty assassin-Driod HK-47, of course.) I don't think most of these characters boast incredible depth to them or anything. Which is fine, they serve the purpose that they need to well enough and aren't cardboard cutouts because Bioware simply would never write 2 dimensional characters like that, but in terms of character writing I don't think Bioware placed the bulk of their efforts in these people. Which unfortunately means that for the characters who aren't immediately ingratiating, such as the annoyingly testy Carth Onasi and the conceptually exciting but physically bland Canderous Ordo, it can be a chore to hang around them long enough to learn what their character growth journey shapes up as. (I know people out there like Canderous but I can't help it: I find his war stories incurably boring.) 

What I love about KOTOR is the way it takes a fresh period of Star Wars history and makes it yours, to explore, to redeem, to corrupt, to adventure within; and it does so in the familiar pattern that Star Wars fans love. We have our own team of ragtag adventures that smuggle across an iconic disc-like ship and who are thrust into an exciting journey to stop a galactic tyrant. It's like a full Star Wars film just for you, and I buzz for that sort of personal attention. Of course, I also adore the way it takes that step that not all RPGs do, and gives the player their own spot of purpose within the world so that events we're shaping feel like they have consequence to us! They were clever about it too, obfuscating the connection with typical 'nobody from nowhere' set-up that we come to expect from our RPGs nowadays, only to flip the script in the final act; I love watching the big scene where it gets revealed every- time!

In contrast, my griping points about KOTOR are few and utterly unrelated to the narrative which I think is actually one of the best that the Star Wars universe has ever enjoyed. I think that the force powers lack in choice, not that I'm wanting for a D&D sized spell book but there could be more goodies to look forward to in the last five levels of levelling beyond just upgrading some powers to auto-win CC variants. I dislike the lack of fast travel points outside of the ability to transit back to the Ebon Hawk, which in itself can only be done in certain arbitrary locations. Pazaak is fun, but about as deep as a pond once you realise it's a modified version of Blackjack with all the special features removed. And I despise the enemy spam in the final level, along with the tedious 'unique mechanic' of the final boss fight, but then I have an entire blog ranting about my thoughts on Bioware final level enemy spam, so I don't need to go into any more details on that here.

I think KOTOR shows us how an absolute icon, legend of a game can be a lean and tight experience with great ideas behind it, rather than being some bloated 100 hour adventure that's dripping with endless sidequests and extra routes and stupidly large dungeons. It actually surprised me several times how quick and sweet some of KOTOR's dungeon areas were and how much more I enjoyed them because of that, rather than having to endure a total slog through identical corridors like some more contemporary RPGs prefer. (I love you, 'Pathfinder: Kingmaker', but you have a problem.) When I finished KOTOR, I had a 42 hour save file; and that's only because of a huge 10 hour-long mod which I installed and played through on top of the base game; (Which is the reason for the robes I'm wearing in some of these screenshots) a thirty hour game can be a legend too.

None of which is too say that KOTOR is a totally polished experience, because beyond some levelling short-comings, this game has bugs, some of which are pretty bad. One I've seen consistently, as in every time I've ever played, is the bug in which character questlines (all of whom require a notoriously fiddly approach event to trigger) just don't start, or how Mission's entire plotline will break if you open an empty room in a key plot area before her quest is started. I have never managed to play every companion quest line in a single playthrough, and in fact only finished Juhani's, and thus did them all, in this most recent playthrough that I did for the review. Also, it took hours of fiddling to learn how to get this game working on 1080p, betraying the need for some sort of basic update patch that this game has been wanting for over a decade now. I don't know who the licence holder is for this game these days, but they've got to show this game some love. It's a classic!

In summary, Knights of the Old Republic is a revered and worthy gem of Bioware's glory days that excites and impresses today just as it did back in 2003. A classic that might show it's age on a technical front, but effortlessly holds its fun factor even against the titles of today. It's plot is iconic and involving in all of the best ways, and it's characters have just that right level of heart to latch onto yours quicker than you'd expect. It's gameplay systems are robust, if a little bare, and the size of the game is neat enough to be experienced in a a much more sensible timeframe than most modern RPGs demand. With all this taken to account, it hardly takes any deliberation at all to say that 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' is worthy of an A Grade and an express recommendation because classics like this deserve to be played more. Whatsmore, you really should give this game the time of day before the PS5 Remake turns it into an action-based Souls-like in the near future. (They literally said 'God of War' and 'Nioh 2' are inspirations. What the heck does that even mean for a party-based Stat-sheet roleplayer?)

Mass Effect will continue

 Apparently...

Recently we were 'treated' to everyone's favourite annual event that we only get reminded by in news reports after the fact, N7 day. You know, that strange Mass Effect holiday that Bioware have celebrated for a while despite the fact it represents a franchise that was on life support for several years. But those days when the many journeys of Captain sleeps-with-the-entire-crew had slipped into naught but myth are now long gone. Thanks to the release and success of the Mass Effect trilogy remasters, people have the ME brand in their mouths once again and are sitting on a fire in their bellies wondering whatever happened to those games. And then they simmer down when they soon remember "Oh yeah. They got a sequel. And it was Andromeda... shame."

This break that we're going through right now, four years without a concrete whisper of a word about the new Mass Effect game, is the sort of gap I expected between Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda. Instead, it sort of felt like no longer than two years after 3 dropped, everyone was already gearing up for the next game. I can't speak for the rest of the community, but to me the overarching sense of "It just isn't the right time yet" was the main reason why I had my troubles with Andromeda. That being said, I do love me some Mass Effect and even Andromeda has some characters whom I'd be distraught not to hear more of in the future of this franchise. (Not Liam. Liam can go burn up on re-entry for all I care) In fact, I'm guilty of doing that super fan thing where you create an entire new trilogy of your own head and plan it out in ludicrous detail alongside major narrative twists, character revelations, set-piece moments, and even the seeds of a subsequent spin-off series that might well with the Yakuza formula. (Hmm? Literally no one else in the world thinks that much about this franchise. And only I would be dumb enough to think Mass Effect needs a Yakuza-style spin off series? Well okay then, you don't need to be rude about it...)

But breaks are not ends, and despite the very real fact that the Mass Effect series was dealt a perfectly serviceable point to cut their losses and run, they're back in the business, baby. And to be clear, I guess I do sort of see where the team at Bioware are coming with both, both within the confines of Mass Effect and taking in the bigger picture. Inside the franchise boundaries, Mass Effect Andromeda was sort of like a slap in the face from a wet sock, unpleasant and lingering. It introduced a whole new world, promised a whole new threat, and made the questionable choice of recycling important thematic elements (mysterious technological superior progenitor race) only this time in a universe that has a grand total of 1 native intelligent alien race. (If you don't believe me, I'll give you a second to think about that. And if you still don't believe me, look up a synopsis for the game, I'm right.) So for a series that's a tour of weird alien worlds and cultures, that made the entire universe of Andromeda feel like a tremendous let down. (Something I would have fixed in my Mass Effect Andromeda continuation series, whereupon the various species are actually sequestered into a specific region on the other side of the galaxy under the rule of- huh? You don't care about my fan fiction? Okay...) 

Outside of the Mass Effect brand, Bioware are in trouble. And everyone knows it. Sure, the totally oblivious smooth brains over in their PR department can waft away the smoking fumes of a house currently on fire all they want, but the can't change the fact that Bioware have delivered consistent substantial flops to a parent company not only renowned for being all around awful in as many areas as it's possible for a company to be, (EA) but one that has a specific reputation for acquiring studios, bleeding them of their IPs and then shuttering that company. The fact that Bioware jettisoned an entire Dragon Age prototype game they were conjuring just because they thought some high up at EA would like their flying jetpack game a tiny bit more, displays that very fact wonderfully. (And how did that work out for them again? Oh right... Anthem.) Bioware need their next games to be hits or else they're up for the chop next, (if they aren't already) and so it comes as no surprise that the words 'new IP' are entirely absent from their docket for the foreseeable future. (They didn't get a look-in for the KOTOR Remake: how the mighty do fall.)

So with all this playing behind the scenes, and in public if we're being honest with ourselves, is their even a glimmer of grandeur in this year's N7 day special surprise: A vague screenshot of a spaceship with the caption 'Mass Effect will continue'? Oh really? Will it? You mean the years of leaks about such a project wasn't enough? And neither were all the stars aligning to make this the next sensible move? The investigative reports which bluntly said such? How about the trailer that you had released at the end of a next gen conference that showed footage of a game that you entitled 'Mass Effect' and which featured the familiar face of famed Asari Liara T'Soni? None of that was enough to confirm a new game was in the works, you needed to screenshot confirm it? Guys, I think Bioware are actually going through the first stages of collective memory loss right now, we need someone over there to make sure they've turned off all the stoves and aren't trying to drive the car.

But sure, whatever. 'Mass Effect will continue'. Allow me to blow-out all of the party streamers and do a back flip. Now that all the celebration is out of the way, can we sit here and reflect exactly what we can expect from this news, given that Mass Effect seemed to doing just fine as a corpse up until now? First off, obviously, this means that Mass Effect is going to continue on from 3 rather than keep up with the Andromeda series, which I find a shame because I liked some of that cast, but I can definitely see how that world building was so god awful no one even wants to return there. (It's just a shame that all the main ME cast are dead by the Andromeda timeline, else I'd hope they would dream up some stupid stuff to drag the new team back to the Milky Way.) Also, I guess the ending of Mass Effect 3 is going to be entirely nullified, because their individual ramifications are far too vast for any one game to try and cover sufficiently. (Which, to be fair, Bioware has done before with the ability to kill off Shepard at the end of Mass Effect 2)

Now comes my complaining, because I'm just not entirely sure we need more story tacked onto the end of this series. Early hopes were for a prequel Mass Effect series that would explore the first contact war against the Humans and Turians, but for my part I really wasn't interested in a game that didn't have most of the cool alien species and environments to explore. It's becoming clear that Bioware might have felt the same way, but is a post Reapers universe going to be any better? It will likely be a galaxy without FTL travel, considering that the Mass Effect relays are rendered inert in most endings. (Sort of defuncts the name of the series, but then I guess Andromeda had practically no relays in it at all aside from the Slingshot mega relay from the intro) The intergalactic governments will probably have been reduced to tribal squabbling. The citadel will be no more. A lot of species will be endangered. More likely than not this entire game will be focused around rebuilding the galaxy, which will make it feel like a stepping stone to the actually interesting story, just like Andromeda felt like with it's "colonialization done ethically" plot.

But I guess it's unfair to judge the game at this point, because the sky really is the limit right now- as long as that sky is given the go ahead as decently financially viable from EA. I've given Bioware some slack over the years, and getting into CRPGs recently has really highlighted all the areas in which Bioware undersell what could be their best mechanics, but I do love them. (As a whole, that is, the individual staff are proving themselves more and more out-of-touch and grating over the past year.) I don't want to see Bioware be eaten by the EA machine, and so I hope all the best for a Mass Effect sequel even if I secret away dour misgivings about the whole affair. Please feel free to prove me utterly wrong team, and please prove you guys can still make half decent games. (We're getting worried out here.)

When Choices don't actually matter

 Your actions have consequences

I actually remember my first time booting up Telltale's The Walking Dead and seeing that ominous message fade onto the screen amid a wall of black. 'Your actions will have consequences' blinked into life and hung for a time, ensuring the message really squirmed into your gut and nestled in your psyche. I'll be honest, it unnerved me. I wasn't throwing my head up and shouting "Finally, a game where things matter!", instead I was glancing to-and-fro, trying to exactly pinpoint how I typically like to play games and what sort of mess that might land me in. Could I accidentally screw up the entire story by not taking it utterly serious from day one? Would the main character instantly explode if I failed to select the perfect rhythm of choices? How serious are the 'consequences' we're talking about? I saw it as a threat directly against the laid back, see how things go, way I used to play narrative based video games, and maybe that was a jolt I needed in order to pay more attention and care about these games.

Obviously it didn't take long for a bit of experience with these types of games, all of whom started with that exact same plodding flash card, for me to realise that my 'actions' would only actually have a very limited set of 'consequences' and usually at highly specific moments where the actions are blindingly obvious. "Will you help the annoying guy or the useless woman in the middle of the zombie attack? Bare in mind, the other probably ain't gonna make it." Titles like these talk a big game about how branching the plot is, or how every single butterfly trod on will cause a cataclysm one world over, but in truth they're limited by the plot and the writers. You can't make every choice lead to some unforeseen consequence, else people will be too terrified to make any choices for fear that they'll screw everything up! (Not to mention the sheer vast range of options and story twists that would take in order to nail down to the wall perfectly.) But some fans can find this to be a bit of a betrayal in that they very much expected for their every choice to become a new plot point. So I wanted to explore some games who flounder or succeed on that very promise.

Take Cyberpunk for instance, being a game that very much sold itself on being a heavily choice-driven experience, but which famously didn't live up to that nearly as much as fans wanted. One of the most commonly quoted points of contention is the 'origin' system, wherein players would get the chance to choose who their character was before the storyline and that would influence the way they would interact with the story. Similar to how a lot of the more hardcore RPGs function. However, that origin ended up influencing only the very beginning of the story and as the plot went on, people found themselves only really being given an influencing part in the main plot at very sparring moments. Most annoying for some, being the fact that some conversations would give you a chance to offer an alternative option (even requiring a skill check to be passed in order to raise the point to begin with) only for your opinion to be overturned in favour of where the game wants you to go. Presumably the option is just there for characterisation in showing how smart or capable the player is then? It mostly just frustrated instead.

Pillars of Eternity is a game that doesn't suffer nearly the same amount of narrative hatred, even though it does actually handle it's origin choices very similarly. In that when you select where you came from, what your species is, and what you do; oftentimes that comes up very rarely in conversation, and when it does it comes as mere flavour text that is then contributes nothing tangible to the actual scene or interaction. The sequel does a much better job of this, but in the first game the only point I can recall where something tangible can be done depending on what your character is, was in the very beginning of the game where you find some braziers which can only be lit if your character is a fire god-like. But even that doesn't make any sense because you actually find torches littered all over the place, why can't they light the braziers? Of course, the rest of the game has a lot of choices and branching quests independent of your character creation choices, so this is more a 'drop in the bucket' problem for Pillars, but Obsidian did take steps to rectify it for the next game so it was definitely a recognisable problem.

On the other side of the spectrum we have games like Deus Ex, where we are presented with a world where choices do matter. Now by it's very nature, Deus Ex is a series where player choice shapes the experience, as this is a stealth-based immersive sim, and so building your character to be better at hacking defences and turning them against the enemy is going to change how you approach pretty much every area of the game. But choices effect the story too in that you're given chances to effect the progression or ending of practically every single encounter and mission in these games. A lot of these are self contained instances, wherein the matter is opened and closed within this quest alone and the wider narrative carries on unabated, but the effect still rings true in that the player feels like an active architect in their own fate.  On the otherside of the adventure, this means all these games have huge branching finales that can mean drastically different things for the future of the world and the people who live therein, encouraging replayability as these sorts of systems are designed to do.

So we've seen examples of both successes and failures in this field, but what of a successful failure? Mass Effect and Fallout 4 both have shades of everything we've already talked about in them, however when it comes to choices and consequence there is a shared criticism that these games illicit more than any other; the misleading dialogue option. With the very nature of how dialogue is handled in these games, a preview for the player followed by a full response from their avatar, there comes a few situations where the player will pick an option only for the response to veer in tone drastically from what they expected. This isn't necessarily an example of the writing lacking the scope to change the story, but can still feel like choice being invalidated due to the game interpreting your choices in a way that you didn't intend for. My example for this would be during Mass Effect Andromeda, where if you're too friendly with a swashbuckling smuggler side character the game will automatically assume you are pursuing a serious scandalous relationship there, which leads to some very awkward 'surprise intimacy' moments down the line. (I didn't know it was that easy to lead a guy on...)

I've touched upon a bunch of different types of promised consequence met by disappointing payoff, and what I've landed on is that mostly successful payoff (like Deus Ex) relies heavily on choice that has a distinct effect rather than choice that merely adds flavour; but does that automatically mean flavour options are bad? Whenever I was playing the Pillars games and an option would pop up to indicate that the experiences I'd had or the options I'd selected in character creation, would give me a unique option, I'd pick it. Personally, I saw these not as new paths to through the narrative that needed to branch into new questlines, but just an expansion of who I was, providing a unique perspective that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to experience. But I think the key is balance. Don't promise your game will be a choice-important romp if the majority of your choices merely add context that the other person would have shared anyway.

There are a lot more examples of choice versus consequence in the interactive story games out there, but I found a lot of those example to be much more situational and specific than what I was talking about here. Although I bet it would be fun to pick out some of those games and really go to town on the key choices of certain episodes, maybe I'll do that sometime. My view on things is that choices and consequences shouldn't ever really be the key selling point of your game, but merely some spice thrown in there to mix up the pot, provide some replay value. Because when you put the weight of the game on it, then you open yourself up to criticism about "But what about this moment where I couldn't choose?" or "Why didn't this choice mean as much as that one?" At the end of the day the tag is performative more than anything else, no one really wants to make a story where every element of it can be pulled apart my some scrappy player who thinks they know the best solution to every problem. It's the writer's story at the end of the day and is limited by the shades that they want to explore, maybe that's a reality that game's marketers need to be more cognizant to in the future if they want to avoid unnecessary disappointment. 

The Baldur's Gate: The Story so far...

 The life and times of a Bhaalspawn

With the Baldur's Gate series now well and truly behind me, I can hold my head up high and say that I've experienced that mythical age of golden Bioware and their platinum Roleplaying games that people drone on about incessantly; like my very own RPG coming of age story. I've yet to start Icewind Dale or Planescape Torment (All in due time) but given the reverence that Baldur's Gate affords at almost any comparison, I think the real historical merit lies there. Therefore, in order to truly unwind myself from the series and prepare to get back into other series which I've kept on hold for far too long, and maybe even the oddly titled 'Baldur's Gate 3' down the line, I thought I might decompress and go over what I thought of the narrative of these games in this here blog. Because although I was a big fan of most of the gameplay elements (THAC0 is stupid and can die in a pit for all I care) the narrative is what makes this series special to so many people, and it's personally the reason why I'm looking at Larian's coming campaign with the eyes of the sceptical. As such, there are going to spoilers for a twenty year old series heading this way, (no BGIII spoilers, I haven't played that yet) so if that matters to you at all than abandon blog here.

So a nice catch-all way to refer to the Baldur's Gate campaigns as one, from 1,2,Throne of Bhaal (and now, made for the enhanced edition versions, 'Siege of Dragonspear') is the title 'The Bhaalspawn Saga', on account of the way all the game's tell the story of you, the Bhaalspawn. One of my pet peeves with the original Baldur's Gate narrative is the way in which its key aspect, the fact that you are a child of the God of Murder Bhaal, is linked to an event called 'The Time of Troubles' which is only ever barely touched upon during the games themselves. Yes, I know its a time where many gods took the form of humans and walked upon the land, but I don't know why that happened, I don't know how long of a time it was, I don't know when the gods decided to sod off back to heaven, I know basically nothing about an event who's breadth is crucial to this entire storyline; something which could have easily been fixed through something basic, like maybe having the story start with you having a lecture on the Time of Troubles before Imoen interrupts class to drag you out early because Gorion needs to see you. Perhaps that might be a little on the nose, but it would present the information to the audience in a natural way and make sure that just a sliver of it is rattling around their skull for when the time comes to call back upon it. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself; Baldur's Gate begins with you, an orphan, being whisked out from the relatively safety of Candlekeep by your adoptive Father in the wake of looming destiny come to kick your arse into gear. Before you can get more than two feet down the road, however, Gorion is killed by a white guy with a black guy's voice and you get pulled into the mystery of discovering who you are and what your role to play in events to come might be. As far as impetus for storylines go this one is pretty textbook and, unfortunately, devoid of the emotion it's supposed to inspire. Gorion is introduced as your adopted father literally the scene before his brutal murder, and at no point is the player given a reason to understand and believe the ways in which he fills that fatherly role, as such the several points throughout the series in which your asked about your feelings towards his murder feel hollow. That being said, this actually works fine to get the player involved in the mystery of why all of this is happening, and that's an important thing even some modern RPGs can fail at sometimes. (>cough< Pillars of Eternity 1 >cough<)

The main meat of Baldur's Gate 1 is journeying across the Sword Coast tracking the activities of a guild known as the Iron Throne, and here blossoms my issues with the BG1 narrative. The Iron Throne are expected to be your main antagonists right off the bat from leaving Candlekeep, despite there being no specific story hook to tie you to them. Sure, if you go the optional route of finding Gorion's friends and following them, then you might be introduced to the Throne naturally, but BG1 like Fallout, treats it's players to a little more freedom than their narrative is built to maintain. Which means you could very easily get a few chapters into your 'investigation' into the Iron Throne without even realising you're investigating them. But that's a small hold-up in the grand scheme of things, because it doesn't take long to figure out they may be the bad guys when the Iron Throne are artificially painting Baldur's Gate's neighbours at Amn as ruffians prepping for war.

Only around about the midpoint of the story does the Saga drop the other shoe, yet strangely through another optional event, as you can actually miss reading the journal which reveals your protagonist is the child of Bhaal, god of murder. (I had to reload because of how badly I missed it.) It it revealed upon a revisit to Candlekeep that not only are you a child, but that Bhaal sired a score of progeny before he got killed off at the tail end of the Time of Troubles, presumably in some scheme to continue his legacy beyond his unavoidable death. One such child just happens to be the murderer of Gorion, one Sarevok Anchev, the guy murdering his way into a leadership position over at the Iron Throne. The finale of Baldur's Gate has the player battling to stop Sarevok as he schemes to brag his way into repute across Baldur's Gate, start a war with Amn, and revel in the discord and loss of life just enough to fuel his ascension to godhood. Something he has absolutely no evidence will work, but at least he's being proactive or something, right?

It's here where I have to congratulate Beamdog, the developers who remastered these games recently, in their efforts at creating a connective chapter between BG 1 and 2. Siege of Dragonspear manages to introduce a brand new storyline and threat that has a slight connection to preestablished Bhaalspawn narrative whilst providing a complete open and shut tale all on it's own. Caelar Argent's crusade at Dragonspear drags you into it under rumours that Caelar is another spawn of Bhaal (which pans out as being untrue) but really hooks to the next BG game by introducing Jon Irenicus early as a mysterious hounding figure that seems overly interested in your bloodline and the potential of you nursing your powers. I really enjoyed the position of worth that Siege of Dragonspear thrust you in as being the far-recognised hero of Baldur's Gate, similar to what Tyranny does with it's protagonist, although I did acknowledge how that in turn makes it arguably the most 'Role Play' limited campaign in the saga. (You are literally unable to kill innocents, much as that sucks to have to say.)

Putting aside the contained narrative of Siege of Dragonspear, decent though it is, I really have to commend Beamdog again for perfectly matching the enigmatic dominance in portraying Jon Irenicus; really stoking the flames for his intrigue-driven pursuit which Bioware laid out in the Shadows of Amn, the first campaign of Baldur's Gate 2. By the time I started BG2, I was already invested in what this guy was about, given the fact that he frames you for a highprofile murder and in doing so has you run out Baldur's Gate. (Handily explaining why you never return there for the rest of the saga) As such, it feels a little less jarring when you start of BG2 having just been kidnapped by Jon and experimented on, as it might do having just gone straight from 1 to 2. (Else I might be wondering why on earth I was sleeping outside in the wilderness to start with.) My only lingering ache was from the fact that Skie's story was never wrapped up, with her being left as your murder victim and never really getting the closure you felt was promised. I wonder if Beamdog meant to expand on this with another BG-based expansion down the line, but I neglect to see where such an expansion might fit into the games. (Unless the gap between Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal is longer than we realise.)

Shadows of Amn is all about mystery, learning who this Jon Irenicus is and why you and Imoen are so important to him. An inquiry that eventually leads you to discover that Imoen, the girl you grew up alongside in Candlekeep, is yet another child of Bhaal, feeding further into the mystery. These first few chapters were handled perfectly to me, with the creepy way in which Jon is trying to clone some woman that he is rumoured to have loved, whilst recovered journal fragments reveal how he now struggles to feel anything for her. If only Bioware had thought of a more interesting conclusion to the whole thing, because the second you learn what Jon was all about in the end he becomes a cartoonishly boring stereotypical evil guy. Oh, he wants to siphon the 'world tree' so that he can 'become a god', that's why he was interested in your Bhaalspawn taint... 'cause you're kinda like a godling... So he wants to... to steal that taint so he can use it to become a god through... >snore<

I don't know. The entire final chapter of Shadows of Amn was just a disappointment to me. From the way that an entire huge Elven city was just sprung on you as being just a few miles from Amn despite no one ever even mentioning it before, to the fact that these Elves and their story is essential to Jon's life, as it's revealed he used to be one of their elves before being cast out. I think my ire stems from the promise in the early chapters that this would be a personal tale, what with his obsession with the Bhaalspawn taint, only for the late game to blossom into a standoff where only plot elements introduced in the final two chapters mean anything at all. I think the plot's set-up was poor, that's about the high and low of it. But it did lay the stage for The Throne of Bhaal nicely, so I can be content in retrospect.

The finale of the Bhaalspawn saga, Throne of Bhaal, starts with chaos gripping the Sword Coast as the various children of Bhaal start tearing up the land and causing destruction just as they had been prophesied to do all this time. Leading this carnage is a cabal of five Bhaalspawn who seem to be actively hunting their siblings and are decently concerned about the rise of you, a Bhaalspawn who's been making quite the name for themselves. This actually makes for a great crescendo for the entire Saga, as the action is taken away from the machinations of the giant principality of Amn or the bustling city of Baldur's Gate and instead reduced to this edge of the world bustling with God-like Bhaalspawn duelling for supremacy. It sets things up so that the events here feel like the most important thing happening in that world right now, which is what you want for a finale. 

It isn't long before you are suddenly introduced to the entirety of your extended Bhaalspawn family, as the town of Saradush has been turned into a makeshift sanctuary for them by the mysteriously magnanimous mage Melissan. Or at least, it was a sanctuary, until the Five started assaulting the town in order to get to their siblings and kill them for their own supremacies sake. The protagonist is then thrown in the middle of this chaos, stuck in this war of Bhaalspawn, as they attempt to break the Five and save themselves from their wrath at the same time. (All the while becoming aware that the time of prophecy is upon them) I loved the paranoia of this part of the story, as everyone important you met could easily be another Bhaalspawn, and therefore could be someone else plotting your destruction. Amusingly, this also meant you had the opportunity to meet all those lesser Bhaalspawn from all over the place who didn't rise to become demi-gods and are just trying to live their cursed lives in relative peace.

Of course, things don't pan out well for the Bhaalspawn, and whilst you're working against the Five, Saradush falls and the passive Spawn are all slaughtered, much to the horror of Melissan. Thus you are sent on a journey to hunt down each member of the Five before they can achieve whatever horrible end it is they're planning and trying to ignore the way they all gloat about how "Oh yeah. It's all coming together" in their dying breathes. (Oh, and Sarevok comes back into the story as a resurrected teammate. So yeah.) I rather enjoyed how distinct the five were from each other and how each one of these boss fights were different enough to make you sweat and change things up from battle to battle. Although I do recognise that this is also the draw of many critics who claim Throne of Bhaal is too Boss fight oriented. (Personally, I love boss fights. So I guess it's a preference thing.)

Once the Five are defeated, it is revealed that you were betrayed and that lovely mage lady who only wanted to help all Bhaalspawn, Melissan, is actually the leader of the Five who intentionally corralled all the other Bhaalspawn to Saradush in order to be slaughtered. (Something which she literally is accused of doing in the first act by the paranoid general of Saradush. Nice foreshadowing, Bioware.) Seems the Five were sacrificing Bhaalspawn essence in order to resurrect your dead Father and bring about his return, as led by Amelyssan, (Melissan's real name) who was once Bhaal's topmost priestess. But I guess working for an evil god breeds treachery (who could of seen that coming?) because Amelyssan has turned her back on old man Bhaal and is instead funnelling all Bhaalspawn essence into herself so that she may become a god. Which sort of means she needs to off you for your essence. (Well nuts.)

What follows was, for me, the hardest battle in the franchise wherein the woman manages to summon six shields on her at once, (Which is literally impossible by DnD rules. Someone tell the DM she's cheating) and throws endless waves of high powered demons on you to screw you up. All this is just the icing of course, because Bioware expects you to kill her four times in a row without resting. (The amount of hair I tore out in that fight isn't even funny.) Once you've done the impossible and killed a fledgling god, it's up to the last surviving Bhaalspawn, you, to finally decide their own fate. (Imoen, if she's still alive at this point, willingly surrenders her Bhaalspawn taint. Something it was never made clear that anyone could do until this express moment.) You can either ascend to the Throne of Bhaal and achieve godhood, maintaining the balance he sought over (and abused) for time immemorial, or surrender your taint to the gods so that they can destroy it. (or hide it. For some reason the ending seems to imply that they do both.) Either way, thus marks the end of the Bhaalspawn saga.

Truly an epic tale and one that absolutely needs no additions to it save from maybe another Beamdog DLC to wrap up the loose narrative thread they themselves sent dangling. (Way to write in your own job security. That's forward thinking!) So one might wonder why on earth Larian is currently making Baldur's Gate III, I don't know but I'm morbidly curious to find out. The team have implied that there's a real good reason they're sitting on until the full release of the game, and whilst I struggle to believe them Larian hasn't actually given me any genuine reasons to be mistrustful and so I ultimately surrender to their better judgement. Whatever the case, the Bhaalspawn saga, as it exists, is all up there and I'd go so far as to call it one of the most decent Bioware RPG narratives the company has told. Larian certainly have their work cut out for them if they want to attempt to even match their predecessors, let alone succeed them, but even if they fall off one can just remember how the originals are always here and just as kick-ass as they were back in release. (Except for the THAC0 system. Screw THAC0)