What does perfect Character Growth look like in gaming?

When I grow up...

Storytelling is a big part of my life and who I decided I would be, thus whenever it comes to telling stories and the mechanics and techniques that go into it, those are pretty much the topics that I go to sleep dreaming about. (I'm not exaggerating, I literally dream about this stuff.) Thus I love considering how to handle character introductions, struggles and ultimately growth, for all that makes for, in my opinion, the best experience for the viewer. Any story wherein the audience feels personally invested in the lives of the fictional characters is heighted by that bond, and it's in such a state where the storyteller has the very heart of the public in their hands to do so as they please. And for me, I particularly love that moment of comparing who the character currently is to where they started, the greater the disparity the better. (With some very pointed and clever exceptions at times.) As far as I'm concerned I think character growth is the bedrock of any great story and I think gaming serves as the perfect medium to serve up such stories, thus that's what I'll be touching on today.

In my experience I think that accurately portraying something as complex as emotional growth is one of the most complicated yet rewarding tasks that a storyteller can embark on. On one hand it can take a huge chunk of your storytelling time away from you, whilst on the otherhand it can make a scant 2 hour movie feel like an entire lifetime when laid out correctly. Oftentimes when it comes to movies or TV the biggest issue that plagues the storytelling is a lack of time to cover all the bases of telling in-depth stories with deep characters, which is why I feel we see a better balance of this in books where they are typically allowed to spend as much time as they need wherever they want to. (Of course, such room also provides a lot more space for the narrative to hang itself, but that's an argument for another day.) Games sit in that space between whereas they follow a lot of the conventions of visual media (mostly, I think those that break such conventions usually are my favourite, however) whereas they can have the breadth to breathe that you'd find in written media.

So what, then, does Character Growth in the world of gaming actually entail? Well I think that's somewhat of a difficult question to breakdown, because when you take into account the huge genre of RPGs and their mechanics it could mean a great many things. I mean if we're being as literal as possible, one might say there's a great chasm of growth in a story about a brash silver-haired 'demon hunter' who wonders about an old castle and gets impaled on a sentient sword, only to then go onto become the savour of the world several times over. Yet even then I wouldn't personally consider Devil May Cry's Dante to really be the poster child of great character growth. (Not knocking Dante or his games, they just have their own, somewhat immutable, style to them.) I'm more interested in the sorts of stories wherein characters will be an emotionally changed person from the moment that they walked onto screen to the moment they bowed off it.

And thus I think one of my main reasons for having this particular topic bouncing around my head is none other than the musical crime drama extravaganza; Yakuza. (or Ryū ga Gotoku, as I found out it is called in Japan, rather confusingly.) This game, or more specifically Yakuza 0, follows the journey of two men as they navigate their lives through this criminal organization and what it ends up making of them. Now where I think character growth really stands out in this game is the way in which the experiences and tribulations that the protagonists endure have such a marked effect on these people that you can literally replay the game and point out the different people and the way their mannerism ended up bleeding into the heroes. Now admittedly, Yakuza 0 had the benefit of being a prequel wherein the writers already had a clear idea on who these characters will end up being, but what appears to be a huge boon can actually be a rather constricting complication if you don't know what you're doing. (Just look at 'Solo'.)

To touch lightly upon spoilers; Yakuza 0 follows Kiryu Kazuma and Majima Goro on their early lives in the Yakuza as fresh-faced early-twenty year olds, before they first get entangled together into an endless web of conflicts and disputes. We meet a brash and somewhat unscrupulous Kiryu alongside a servantly and respectful Majima that are both thrown together in a journey full of lies, set-ups and, most importantly, manipulation from all sides. Yakuza 0 unfolds in a somewhat straightforward manner when it comes to character growth, by having these two literally run into people who they end up basing their future selves around within the story. Simple, but effective. By the other end of the story Kiryu comes out wanting to be rolemodel of an honourable Yakuza (as much of an oxymoron as that sounds) whilst Majime comes out putting on the persona of a unhinged lunatic in order to never make himself seem vulnerable enough to be manipulated ever again. As far as I'm concerned, these here are textbook examples of comprehensive and effective character progressions wherein the audience feels closer to both of these folk by the end.

Although to shift our gaze to another game which is renowned for it's character portrayals and yet handles it somewhat differently, let us look at Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur Morgan. Here is a character that is cast in a tale that is already destined for tragedy, this story being a prequel to the first Red Dead Redemption. As for Arthur himself, he's hardly a fresh faced character waiting for the world to make an impression on him, he's a bandit that has lived a hard life and is already in a position that would be the end point for most characters. He's violent and cruel whilst also principled to an oxymoronic degree. And what makes his journey different is that he has become who he is by learning from the people around him, but where he goes throughout the course of this game is driven less by meeting new people and more by revaluating the one's that he's already known.

Once more I'll be fliting with spoilers but it goes rather like this; Arthur looks up to those that raised him to the point where he, despite his own common sense, believes and trusts his mentor when everything starts to fall apart. At the start of the story, events have just occurred to shake that belief, although it's only as things become more desperate that Arthur begins to react to it all and grow in kind. His journey isn't to become someone better but to merely learn about who he has been for a while now, what he then chooses to do about that is left up to the discretion of the player but either way his growth has been handled deftly. It's storytelling and character mastery like that which makes the Red Dead games so iconic and memorable.

Not all games handled character growth completely within their narrative, however, and that's where I think gaming has the potential to really surpass other Storytelling mediums. Take Persona 4 for example. That is a game which takes the concept of personal development and draws it out from the narrative and into the base gameplay. For the story you play a city boy who's found himself relegated to the country side town of Inaba with a whole cast of people he doesn't know and has never met before, rectifying that actually doubles as the way you become more powerful throughout the game. I mean that literally to, simply going around, talking to people and becoming closer to them powers up your Persona's whenever they need to be summoned giving the player a boost. This is, admittedly, a much more literal definition of character growth but I'd say it all fits.

RPGs in general provide great room for the player to feel that they're growing in ability as the character grows in personality, which helps in really selling the journey. Sometimes games can even work in little extra tricks that you might not even notice to get the message across, like in 'Spec Ops: The Line' where the performance of the actor intentionally became more ragged as you went on and the weight of the game's events began to weigh fully on him. Then there's what Cyberpunk is purposing to do, by having the player's animation become more defined as their stats improve in certain skills. That may sound mechanical, but any animator will tell you that the personality behind every animation informs the person it's equipped to, so this is actually a big deal in the narrative too. (If Cyberpunk ever actually comes out, that is.)

So what does Perfect Character Growth look like in the world of gaming, well a lot of different things. It's about nailing the character driven moments and taking their personality from A to B throughout the length of the story, but it's also about making the player feel more capable in the shoes of the person they're playing as. (Or less capable, depending on the direction you plan for the story to go.) It can be as subtle as changing the tonality of read lines to as complex as polishing several versions of dozens of animations, with the freedom of making a game there really is no limit. And all of that is just taking into account the very traditional games, whereas there are many games that defy even those definers. But ultimately creating ideal character growth is achieved by making the fictional real, and connecting hearts beyond the TV screen.

Safe Houses in Games

Little pigs, little pigs; let me come in...

With the recent announcement of the 'Saints Row 3 Remastered' I was reminded of a few things; firstly of how hilarious the concept of the first level is: with the Saints robbing a bank whilst dressed as themselves; and Secondly how I always had trouble replaying that game due to one thing: the amount of time it would take to unlock the main safe house. (Seriously, in Saints Row 3 it takes the entire first act. No, that crappy apartment from the beginning doesn't count.) And that got me thinking about what exactly it is about video games Safe Houses that we gel with so much. (Or should I say "that I gel with"? Does anyone else feel this way? Am I a freak?) Why is it that open world games feel like they're missing something essential when you lack a home HUB to return to, even in situations when that HUB is a space wherein literally nothing of consequence ever happens. (As is the case almost all of the time.)

I do find it exceptionally odd as when you come down to it shouldn't the allure of a video game be derived primarily from the gameplay? And yet we enjoy times when our game has great story to it and world building, throw in a strong character arc and things are perfect. Is this just the leftover pretentious pandering that arises from creative critique in general or is there something primitively satisfying about a rounded experience that is common across all forms of creative expression. (Am I getting too general? I'm gonna focus into "Why are there still safe houses in games") Before I explore this subject I should preface this with the same warning that I do with all blogs like this, I am not an expert and this will come down to personal preference so feel free to vehemently disagree with literally everything that I say.

Firstly, let's define what exactly we mean by 'Safe house'. This is a term borrowed from police terminology and popularised in games by titles like GTA to infer a 'base' who's location is largely secure and/or unknown to the public, thus designating it 'Safe'. Although to be even more literal to gaming, a 'safehouse' is merely a type of HUB for players to return to between missions in order to perform some necessary actions like saving the game. As the art of game development evolved and things started to become more intuitive and user friendly, even die-hard Open world titles like GTA started to leanoff on having to return to your 'safe house' and those locations started becoming less and less essential in video games, although you'll still find them in the majority of open world games.

So perhaps the obvious question to ask in regard to 'safe houses' is whether or not they still have a relevant place in modern game design or if they are a redundant hold over. Should there be some sort of movement to move past such a concept and leave it in the past alongside 'limited lives', 'points' and 'time dependant levels'. In order to figure this out I decided to look over the way that safe houses exist (or don't) in a few fairly recent open world titles in order to come to a conclusion in this matter. (Obviously, I can only look at games which are released for this so 'Cyberpunk 2077' cannot be counted even thought that game does tease a safe house that I think looks really cool.)

As I started with it for some reason, the first game I will look at in this regard is Saints Row. Or rather the first series, as Saints Row has based itself staunchly on the Grand Theft Auto formula since it's inception and that means each and every game has boasted some form of Safe house. In the first game all this space really served for was a save point and wardrobe service, although in the second game they really bought out player's safehouse as an in-game menu. Player's could use their TV to watch cutscenes, like one would expect from a bonus menu, and even customise the style of their gang. Although the players had no explicit need to go to this place due to rather regular autosaves, apart from the occasional need to pick up a new car or take some revenue from the safe present in each house. So from that angle, Saints Row is actually very minimalist with how they treat safe houses, allowing players to buy more extravagant ones but lacking any real purpose to doing so.

If there could be one point said towards why this system might still be relevant to it's game, it's because Saint's Row is a very fast paced humour dependant title. At the heart of everything the game offers there should be someway to make the player feel powerful in a humorous way, and I guess the team couldn't see many opportunities in that through simulating house life. That being said, the act of buying and acquiring more lavish and opulent houses is in line with the 'gang boss' context that the franchise is built upon, therefore it makes thematic sense to include that dynamic even if you don't really do anything with it in terms of gameplay.

Speaking of Grand Theft Auto, why not take a look at how Safe houses work in their games? For the first 3 2D titles (1,2 and London) these locations didn't really have any presence in the game, even at the start of the 3D era these locations were still just 'save here' zones. San Andreas remains the only game in the entire series that allowed players to actually buy and go inside of bought houses at their own whim, bringing that sense of actually having a home to come back to. There still wasn't a great deal to do at these homes besides save, change clothes and eventually collect upon unlocked items, but it did serve as an interesting measure of your progression of means throughout the narrative of the game. Only once GTA 5 came along did Rockstar finally kill the need to save anywhere (although you'll still always load up in your safe house.)

As I mentioned, the logic of having a safe home to come back to fits neatly into Grand Theft Auto even if such locations lack in actual functionality. GTA prides itself in being a sardonic mirror upon our reality that mimics a day-to-day lifestyle only in a violent world with fewer consequences. It makes sense, then, for the player to have a home and one that matches the condition of the character along their typical arc. (Which in GTA games usually follows the tried and true 'rags to riches' model) Although in Grand Theft Auto V these places also served a great tool for characterising each of the three protagonist by the world which they willingly choose to reside in. Trevor lives in a trailer far away from the big city, Micheal lives in the affluent upper LS neighbourhood and Franklin starts off in the ghetto before moving into a luxury pad in the hills. It's a great way of telling the audience at a glance who everyone is and what their most base, materialistic goals are.

Now here's a wildcard to consider, ladies and gentlemen, as the Far Cry franchise has been a open world game for as long as 2004 and yet only one of the games has featured a safe house system. Now that isn't to discount how throughout the Far Cry games there have been homely locations in the map, but these only served limited narrative points rather than locations with actual gameplay benefits. Only in Far Cry 2 could you explore about Africa and open up safe houses in which you could save, (an incredibly precious action within the surprisingly hardcore action of FC2) store a weapon (equally as important) and change the time of day. (Which supposedly helps for being sneakier in the later hours, but I suspect that's more of a 'placebo' situation.) But for the rest of the games there are no safehouses at all, and in fact all of the gameplay revolves around the moment-to-moment outpost conquering action rather than the moments inbetween which can  make downtime rather boring as a result.

Now as Far Cry is a first person franchise, one could be forgiven for assuming that the added one-to-one connection between the player and the character would make it more likely for the developers to include creature comforts like a home to retreat to, but quite often with FPS games the opposite seems true. I think that is because there is a part of the 'safe house mechanic' that is more psychological in the way that it gives the character a place in their world that makes them feel part of, hence making that world seem a little more real. In a third person game, all of the little things that make the character feel more real to the player are invaluable to ensure the player cares about the protagonist, whilst in first person games that connection is innate, thus character building and sometimes character narrative take a backseat. Plus, in Far Cry's case it makes absolute sense for there to be no place for the protagonist to call their own, as the entire franchise is built around the concept of people being put in situations that are a far cry from their day-to-day. (It all makes sense.)

But if we're going to sit here and talk about first person shooter action it only makes sense that I talk about a game I've played religiously over the past 2 weeks, even if it may not technically be open world, and that's 2016's DOOM. This is a level based story driven game, therefore it should make sense for their to be no home hub for the Doom Slayer, however in this year's DOOM Eternal, the slayer actually does have a base in 'The Fortress of Doom'. So why is there none in the 2016 game? Well, for one there is the narrative explanation which I'll extrapolate upon; 2016's DOOM follows a series of logical narrative events as the Doom Slayer attempts to seal up a portal to hell after stupid humans open it for what must be the freakin' 5th time. Though simple, this chain of events has a certain pace to it wherein Hell threatens to escape the boundaries of Mars and threaten the Earth unless the Doom Guy can wrap things up quickly, which makes it incompatible for that pacing if he had a home base to lounge around in inbetween missions. (Whereas in Eternal the world has already fallen so there's fewer timed stakes at hand.) But there is also another dynamic to consider.

You see, 2016's DOOM served as a revival of the long dormant DOOM franchise which hadn't be touched for 12 years prior and as such it was meant to be a celebration of all things great about the DOOM licence. That meant fast paced bloody action and a blatant intentional disregard for evolved storytelling. This amounts to the point where the team even dehumanise Doom Guy by canonically renaming him as 'the Doom Slayer' to highlight the fact that he exists as an extension of the player through which to channel their demon killing talents, rather than as a character entity of his own. Therefore there is little reason to give him his own space in the world as he doesn't need to appear real, he is the player and they are him. (And the player is real. Right?)

Looking back at another third person open world game we have one title that breaks the rules I just laid out; 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt'. This is a game that paints an involved RPG world brimming with storytelling potential and opportunities and yet there is no home base for Geralt of Rivia to set himself down in. (That is, until the post game DLC 'Blood and Wine') Functionally, this makes sense as there is quite literally no need for there to be any home base. Players can save anywhere they want and thanks to Witcher Meditation they can augment the time of day whenever they want to, so there's no gameplay mechanic that requires a safe house. Although that hasn't stopped quite a few other modern open world games so I expect there's a more thematic reason for the lack of a home. (No, I don't include Kaer Morhen. Sue me.)

In the lore, Geralt of Rivia is very much a wanderer who is obliged to help the less fortunate (provided that they can pay) but not to stick around and help people get back on their feet. Couple that with the heavily 'adventure-focused' narrative of Wild Hunt, revolving around chasing down Ciri, and it makes sense for Geralt to always be in motion, even if technically a Witcher cannot survive off mediation alone. (At least I think not, I don't know for sure.) In 'Blood and Wine', however, a big part of that narrative is around Geralt taking a step back to settle down, so it makes sense for him to have a house in which to rest his head, and to live in for the foreseeable future.

Another non-typical Safe House system in a modern third person open world game exists in Rockstar's 'Red Dead Redemption 2'. In that game, the player doesn't really have a home to go back to as much as they have a camp wherein all the members of the Van der Linde gang set themselves up. This is the place where the player goes to between missions and is actually at lost more essential then other homes as it's somewhere for the player to eat, sleep and take missions. These actions can feasibly be taken anywhere thanks to a camping mechanic (aside from the taking of missions, obviously) but the game encourages players to return to the camp as often as possible and become familiar with the place. This base is unique in that it moves across the map alongside the narrative, changing the activities available there as you go.

Again, I think this iteration of 'Safe House' comes down to thematic reasons in that all of Red Dead Redemption 2 exists to create the life of an outlaw. That means living in the woods away from prying eyes, staying close to those you trust and running from the law when necessary. This also serves a functional narrative purpose as you get chased around the country to more secluded places after which you go from 'living free' to 'living like rats' as the gang dream begins to wilt around you. Rockstar achieved something very special with Red Dead Redemption 2 and I think a lot of it comes from the emotional attachment that they establish between the player and the camp. (alongside its inhabitants) Showcasing how the 'safe house' mechanic doesn't always need to be necessary to the gameplay to be valid and justified, they might even get creative with it.

Ultimately, I think that predominate purpose for 'safe houses' are less for the tangible reasons and more for the benefit of world building. Most games that have 'safe houses' and so implement them in that pursuit and those that do not usually do so because they don't have to worry so much about world building. So whilst the functionality of 'safe houses' are mostly redundant and/or forced (I.e. locking manual saves to returning to the safe house) they do pose a viable thematic purpose. For my part, however, I think there's another piece to this puzzle. Just as I pointed out that games with a pace to keep avoid unnecessary down times, those that don't need to keep up such (like RPGs) can utilise downtimes and peaceful moments to amplify the action packed moments down the line. Therefore if the player gets used to hanging around at home and being relaxed it can make those flashes of action just that more impacting and special. So for that reason I do not think that game design has outgrown the concept of safe houses, and in fact they are just as useful/relevant now as they've always been. (Just maybe in ways that aren't exactly obvious.)

Overly Realistic

When you start bleeding actual blood, you've gone too far.

Everyone comes to Video games looking for something different from their time. Some people are looking for nail-biting action that'll blow them away, some are looking for head-to-head battles with other people over the Internet, some want challenge, some want story, some want puzzles, and some people are looking to be fully swept up in a world that is not their own. For those of that latter camp there is a concept that we call 'Immersion'. The willingness of a product to go out of it's way to connect the viewer with the avatar they are controlling to such a degree that one can fool themselves and believe in the space around them. (Think of it as the ultimate 'escapism' fantasy tool.) Therefore there are a lot of people who feel that the key to immersion lies in it's ties to realism, afterall it's easier to fool yourself into believing a world that is like your own. But what happens when that concept goes a touch too far?

In the modern day, the artistry behind video games have reached such a degree where realism is becoming a genuine gameplay feature rather than a throwaway gimmick. Systems have been introduced to inject some elements like this into the world of gaming, such as survival systems, (Which typically require players to manage their hunger, thirst and fatigue) durability systems, (Wherein equipment must be kept in working order by the player) and, recently, even systems that emulate the temperature. (Encouraging players to keep themselves warm or cool as the situation demands.) From face value, none of these systems are inherently designed to aid the enjoyment of the experience and there are some believe that such ideas cross the Rubicon, that is to say that they transcend the 'fun' that games are supposed to provide and become needless nuisances. And that's the idea I want to explore today.

There is a school of thought that proposes that video games have one overarching purpose in life: and that is to provide entertainment. This philosophy argues that any idea, system, or feature that hinders this approach is harmful to the overall experience. This idea, of course, dates back to the earliest days of video games and how they have traditionally always existed, as entrainment products. Just go back to games like Pong, and you'll find the concept rather simple; keep the ball in the middle of screen from entering your scoring area. Even in the age of Atari, when video games started becoming a little more complex, the core focus was still on creating a fun game first and foremost. Breakout required the player to juggle a ball, once again, in order to break coloured blocks; Missile command tasked them with shooting missiles out the sky, and Space Invaders was all about destroying an alien armada as succinctly as possible. None of these games had concepts that were too complicated (because systems of the day wouldn't allow for such) and that simplicity resonated with mass audiences.

Some have argued that something of that simplicity has been lost in the modern age and that has cost some of appeal of gaming to the public. Now one can load up a video game and expect to be bombarded with story before they can even get to experiencing the action that they signed up for, isn't that breaking the simple promise of a 'video game'? Sometimes there are games that are specifically skewered towards providing a challenging bout rather than a fun one, is that really what a video game is? Pure challenge and a diminished sense of fun? Honestly, to understand this way of thinking (at least for me) I find it necessary to take a very reductionist look at the world of gaming and break it into it's simplest essence. One could call this philosophy 'traditonalism' if they were looking for an assigning label. From this perspective; A video game should offer a task and a win condition, everything else is extraneous and potentially detrimental to that core experience.

When you look at video games from this view, it can easily to break things down into a simple equation as to what makes a good gaming experience and what hinders that. Simple, almost self explanatory, objectives are good, whilst convoluted objectives, requiring walls of text and cutscenes to justify, are bad. Rudimentary and manageable challenge is good whilst overwhelming odds and unfair challenge is bad. Systems that assist the player or expediate their progress are good whilst perfunctory elements that waste their time are bad. This is the creed of the 'tradtionlist' approach and it seems to ring with some truth when we compare it with the core ideals of game design. Ask any developer and they will likely tell you that they want their game to be intuitive and to provide a challenge but not seem overly gruelling. So if that's the case, then all these 'realisitc' ideas and systems that have seeped into modern gaming would be universally considered extraneous and pointless, wouldn't they? So why are we seeing them appear more often in our video game experiences of late?

That much is simple; because the definition of 'video game' has changed. Whereas once that equation was as simple as the 'Tradtionlist' view implies, today the scope of video games have expanded to such a degree that there now exist games who's soul purpose aren't to give the player fun but to tell a story. Heck, some games even advertise the fact that intend to ruin your day like 'LISA: The Painful.' (Actually the tagline is "This game will ruin your life." But always felt that sounded a tad too pompous and self aggrandizing.) Some games no longer strive to give a the player an experience that can be summed up with the simple adjective: 'Fun', but which strive to drag you down an adventure that challenges you and makes you care and threat. (Whilst ultimately still being fun in the end, of course.) This is the pursuit for which concepts like 'realisim in gaming' were founded. And yet, still there are some that argue how 'realism' is detrimental.

Lets take Red Dead Redemption 2 as a case study for this argument. Throwing aside the brilliant story, writing, characters, and acting, RDR 2 is memorable for one thing in particular, providing a realistic 'cowboy' fantasy. (Actually, more of a 'realisitc outlaw who happens to be adjacent to the world of cowboys' seeing as how you do little cattle herding in the game.) The realism comes into it through the way that Players are expected to manage their food and drink to remain healthy whilst ideally not becoming fat or underweight. Additionally, they must micromanage their outfit choices in order to stay warm in colder areas and cooler in sunny areas. The concept of realism also expands to the way you go through additional activities in the game, (That is to say; do things that don't directly progress the main story.) such as hunting. This is a whole process requiring players to track animals, ensure the pelt isn't too mangled, take down the animal using the right tools so as to not harm said-pelt, skin the thing, stick the hide and carcass on your horse, then take that carcass where you need it before the thing starts to rot and becomes useless. (There's a lot to take into account.)

Critics, well, critiqued this by arguing that all this steps made hunting much more a hassle then it was back in Red Dead Redemption 1. (In that game you just shot the animal and skinned it. Somehow shoving that giant bear hide into your little satchel.) To them, this was an example of a game going down the path of being 'overly realistic' and sacrificing that raw fun in the effort of creating fidelity. I would argue that these added dimensions to hunting which, in turn, adds more value to the act of hunting and makes the player feel more involved, but at that point it's more a matter of preference. Some enjoying hunting whilst preferring it to feel more arcade-y and less time consuming, whilst others enjoy the prospect of a challenge and welcome all of the extra details they must take into account.

There are some situations, however, where even the game Devs realizes that the more realistic approach is perhaps not the way to go when it comes to realizing their game. Just look at the heavy ordinance love-letter of a game; World of Tanks. In that game there was some much effort put in from the developers in order to realistically depict all different types of tanks from WWII, that you could place these models against real-life relics and struggle to notice any difference. The team were dedicated to bringing extreme levels of fidelity to their depiction of tanks and the result is a game that offers some of the most realistic tank combat that one can find in the entire world of gaming. With one notable exception.

One of the things that people must remember about the Tanks of WWII is that they were very much a new technology that had been designed and were produced under pressure. Incredibly smart minds were invested to bringing these machines into the world, but without all the time to work out the kinks there were bound to be some rough edges to smooth out. Therefore, a lot of actual WWII tanks suffered from various issues that would cause them to break down regularly, requiring for a mechanics to be assigned to every tank crew for basic maintenance as well as ensuring the thing didn't scrap itself every few hours. The World of Tanks team intentionally choose to avoid the unreliable-ness of tanks in the knowledge that if they had portrayed that aspect faithfully then half these machines would break down the moment each match started. Whilst that may be 'realisitc' is wouldn't be 'fun', so creative liberties were taken.

So perhaps there is something to the opinion that Video games should prioritize the act of being fun first and foremost. With this in mind, we can look at realism in the world of games as something of a balancing act between the accurate and the enjoyable. (Like a great many things in creative fields.) Creating a one-to-one experience between the player and the real situation may sound good on paper, but logistically that wouldn't make for a feasible workload for the developers or a fun gameplay experience for the player. (Unless that's exactly what the Devs are going for, like when Shenmue 2 depicted a walk that is typically two hours long by making the player walk for 2 hours.) Afterall, at the end of the day games are primarily about the 'power fantasy' of being he center of a story, rather then the boring person that the majority of us likely are. So a little bit of realism has to fall by the wayside somewhere in the creative process

The direction of morality in the future

Not right or wrong. Only consequence.

A while back I did a couple of blogs that floated around the concept of morality in video game storytelling. (A topic I find particularly fascinating.) First I spoke about how morality appeared in old video games, when storytelling was beginning to come into it's own, and then I carried on with the ways in which storytelling is presented nowadays, with choice and consequence. I want to cap this topic off by giving my predictions about how that concept will evolve in the future, both how I'll believe it'll grow and how I wish it will. Of course, that means this blog will contain pure conjecture on my part as I rattle off my hypothesis, but you're likely already use to that by now so I'll just get right to it.

Firstly, I will admit that I am dissatisfied with a lot of portrayals of morality that we see in modern day videogame storytelling, or maybe it's just with the concept in general. I look at it like a restraint upon the kind of stories that could be told and the manner in which we tell them, one that has become sadly commonplace in the AAA gaming market. (Indie games tend to be a lot more free and interesting when they tackle these concepts.) To establish what I mean, let's take 'Assassin's Creed: Rogue' for example. This was a game that was founded on an eye wateringly simple concept; Shay Cormac, the protagonist, used to on the side of the heroes (The Assassins) before he joined the antagonists. (The Templars.) A child could write this and make it somewhat interesting. And yet somehow, as though Hollywood's cowardice is catching, the game fails to go all the way.

Let me elaborate. Assassin's Creed is a series that sets itself in the midst of very important and complicated situations throughout history and dumbs everything down into a fight against good and evil. All the multifaceted and interesting folk of the era are whittled down to either advocates of freedom (Good) or pursuers of control (Evil), and as a result a lot of nuance that these games could represent gets lost. I think it is an exceedingly fantastic idea to jump throughout history and engross oneself into the story of the land, (fun and education, together at last) but Ubisoft often fail spectacularly in this regrade and denigrate their side characters into overblown caricatures. In Rogue, they seemed to have gotten around this by making the vast majority of the characters completely unique, (You still had fellows like William Johnson around, but Ubisoft had already done him justice in AC3 so I'm willing to let that slide) however it just highlighted the team's unwillingness, or inability to tell a tough story. Instead of having Shay turn against his brothers due to a genuine disagreement in personal philosophies or motivations, everything was just a huge stupid misunderstanding.

This actually reflects the way that morality is presented in a great many big budget Hollywood movies. There can never be any grey spaces, just absolute right and absolute wrong. Just look at Warner Bros' 'Batman V Superman'. The encounter that the movie was named after was based after a famous Batman comic known as 'The Dark Knight Returns'. It's a brilliant tale about an older Batman who has become obsolete due to his age and back injury, he retreated into his isolation and allowed the world to move on without him and America to turn into a totalitarian state. As events drag him back into the limelight, he ends up drawing the attention of the government as his brand of vigilantism undermines their authority. The last remaining active superhero, Superman, is dispatched in order to force Bruce back into retirement and the two decide to settle things with a battle. This story was so fondly remembered because it wasn't afraid to have it's hero's be anything less than absolutely right. Superman was still a hero that saved lives and represented America, but the country he stood up for had become bastardized and corrupt. Batman was still an anti-hero who's presence caused as much harm as good, but he became a symbol of hope to the people of Gotham who had resigned themselves to living under the thumb of local gangs. Neither side was ever completely right or wrong, making their conflict all the more dramatic. (I won't say that you ever had trouble deciding which side to route for because we all know who was more right. It's obvious. I don't even need to say it. You know who I mean. Batman. I meant Batman. You were thinking him too, right?)

In the movie, Batman is introduced as a bad tempered psychopath who's happy to kill in order to get the job done. His entire issue with Superman is based upon a baseless risk assessment that spawned the iconically stupid line "If we believe there is even a 1% chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty." They even took advantage of 'Man of Steel's destruction fetish to fuel this idea of Superman being a threat to humanity and give Bruce the justification to go ham on his ass. Lex Luthor then pulled some shenanigans and managed to set off a battle between the Last Son of Krypton and the Caped Crusader with little more than a tad of smoke and mirrors. And threats. Those too. As as result the entire movie rings hollow and feels like a vehicle to stage geekdoms most storied showdown. A showdown, I might add, which wasn't even that impressive. All these concessions and changes were made to the base material so that everyone could be in the moral right by the end of it. They could just pat each other on the back say it was a misunderstanding and it'll all be forgotten by the next movie. (Just like the rest of the DCEU.)

Unfortunately, this style of inoffensive storytelling has ruled the roost in the mainstream for a great many years now and it leaves us with a bevy of one-note leading characters. I'm not saying that every story should have the potential for an indepth character study, but a little bit depth would certainly help flesh out characters. I believe that this ambiguity is the key to pushing forward morality in the future of videogame narrative storytelling and, luckily for me, I have some evidence that might be the way things are going in the future.

In my last blog on this topic, I mentioned how the narrative storytelling for a lot of modern AAA games were leaning into the action-consequence model. (Although I would hesitate to call the model a modern construction) I find this preferable to the simple 'good guy- bad guy' layout as it forces the storytellers to expand their horizons beyond the obvious and into the world of the morally grey. Games that have pulled this off well, like 'Fallout: New Vegas', The Telltale games and the Dishonoured games, have managed to elevate their stories by removing preconceived notions of right and wrong and leaving that choice in the hands of the player. (Yes, 'New Vegas' still featured a Karma system but anyone can tell that was just a holdover from using Bethesda's engine. Obsidian clearly preferred going the morally grey route with the main story.)

The outlook does look positive that the mainstream may be picking up on this trend going forward. Later this month the hotly anticipated Western RPG 'The Outer Worlds' will drop, which Devs promise will be a darkly humorous game without restrictive moral paths. Last year's Red Dead Redemption 2 featured action/consequence prominently in it's story. (Although there was a rigid 'good/bad' system from face value, the maturity with which the story handled it means that I'll let it slide.) And the most anticipated game of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, practically lauds it's amorality in it's very fibre. These are the kind of big games that start trends and I think it is fair to assume that various big games studios may be looking into this kind of storytelling in the years to come. (If they ever let the 'live-service' idea take a break...)

That being said, this isn't the only way for video game companies to deliver a powerful morally grey narrative. Just look at 2013's 'The Last of Us' and the way it used the background of an apocalypse to tell us a story about the extremes of human emotions. (A lot more succinctly than The Walking Dead is doing, too.) I won't spoil the events of the game, this isn't the right kind of blog for that, but needless to say that there are times that make the player question whether or not they are playing the good guy. (And from the looks of it, 'The Last of Us Part 2' plans to double down on that aspect.) We can even go back to games like Max Payne 2 and see glimmers of morality vs immorality baked into the core story. I think it's a lot harder to write a narratively linear story that challenges your perception of right and wrong like this, but the reward has been a generally more positive reception. (People liked 'The Last of Us' so much that most everyone ignored the iffy gameplay. Except for me because I'm a stickler.)

In my opinion, in order for the future of video game storytelling to grow stronger, it is essential that we abandon the concept of rigid morality altogether and delve deeper into the ambiguous, let the audience decide for themselves. Perhaps it's a little cliche to say, but some of the most memorable characters in my mind have been those that made choices that I wouldn't necessarily do. Those that act on whim or emotion and not always out of rationality or heroic compulsion. Those are the kind of characters ring with the authenticity that I find myself craving nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy an enjoyable jaunt about killing demons in which you don't have to think too hard (oh DOOM: Eternal, why must you be delayed?) but I feel that there is room for more challenging content in the future. (And I'm not just talking about the next From Software game. Although 'Elden Ring' does have me hook-line-and-sinker right now.)

I do worry, however, that in the years to come we may encounter a little more issues in progressing storytelling than we really ought to, for no other reason than that of abject greed. With that I am of course referring to the rising interest growing for 'Live service' style games due to the potential for substantial financial return that they represent. Just like MMO's, 'live service' games are built to facilitate recurrent gameplay rather than great stories with diverse characters. Think of them like TV series' that keep getting drawn out with season after season with no plan to end things. Perhaps there was a uncorrupted idea in there once upon a time, but it all gets sacrificed and thrown aside in the pursuit of ensuring that the story can perpetuate itself indefinitely. This usually means that the stakes start to shrivel and the characters grow increasingly shallow and/or repetitive. (I just realized that I described the Arrowverse. I didn't mean it Grant Gustin, I still love you!)

For an example of this just look at the poster boys for the do's and don'ts of live services: Destiny and Anthem. Both are games that are characterized by bland world's and lifeless protagonists who embark on so many tireless good versus evil crusades that the terms start losing all meaning. The Destiny team scrapped their early ideas of splitting their player base by revealing a cold truth about the godlike-entity know as 'The Traveller' and seeing which players picked which side. Instead they chose a 'villian-of-the-week' model which is easily forgettable and fails to engage the critical thinking of their consumers beyond the thought "Which gun should I kill this Hive drone with?". Anthem, on the otherhand, was so directionless that the team has completely abandoned their story plans, leaving the barebones of a narrative without any idea of whether of not an actual narrative will ever pick up. (Not to mention that the story that was there amounted to another 'destory the ultimate evil' plot.)

This is especially distressing because Anthem's developer, Bioware, should really be leading the charge when it comes to revolutionary storytelling in games. Once upon a time, Bioware were the crafters of choice based narratives that pushed the rest of the RPG industry to catch-up. Now they've lost their special spark and become a vending machine for boring storytelling. And if you're thinking 'Hey, that's just one game. Maybe they'll get their groove back someday.' First of all you're wrong, 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' was a similarly badly written game. Secondly, you're still wrong, leaks tell us that Bioware's next game, Dragon Age 4, has been retooled into being a 'live service' too.

Bethesda have gone the route of live services as well with Fallout 76, following hotly off the heels of the narratively disappointing Fallout 4. (Although, in their defence, Bethesda have never exactly been exceptional in the storytelling department.) And the long promised 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' has been revealed to be a live service before we've even had a chance to learn anything about the gameplay. It seems that there is a trend picking up for jumping on this bandwagon and, giving how potentially profitable this is, I fear it could otherthrow the positive example being set by studios like Rockstar and CD Projekt Red. (However, it must be noted, that the 'Live service' model was perpetuated by Rockstar in the first place. They are our saviors and our condemners.)

Given the evidence, I feel it's safe to say that live service games are certain to have poor narratives that refuse to take risks. (Just like Hollywood.) So the direction of morality in storytelling could be grim as we slowly slink back into the dark ages of good versus evil plots only this time with but a modicum of the passion thrown in. Although I suppose this is more of a critique of the industry rather than the storytellers themselves.

Morality has the potential to become really ascendant in the future or really basic, and that may seem very middle-of-the-road for me to say but I genuinely mean that we could be straddling between those two extremes. However if I make the bold assumption that the future of video game storytelling will be placed in the hands of the storytellers, then I can certainly hold some hope for the future. Directors like Neil Druckmann, Cain & Boyarsky and those Polish guys who's names I couldn't hope to spell behind Cyperpunk, all seem dedicated to evolving traditional morality into something subversive and transcendent, and that is something that I crave to see more of in my games. Whether we will be lucky enough to see this play out in the future of our games, is a matter of fate. And maybe a little bit of Karma.

Rain

It's pretty risky

We all have those little quirky things we love that we can't explain. The kind of things that make you smile internally for some unexplainable reason that no one else shares. When it comes to games, I like to think of it as that little piece of love that you share with the one developer who worked on that. An inside joke that the two of you share and always bring up in conversation. Judging from the title you can likely see where this is going so I'll just out and say it; I like rain.

Being a Brit, one could make a sound argument that such an affirmation is a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome, but whatever the case I am a rain connoisseur. (Purely in video games, you understand. Can't stand the stuff in real life.) Anytime a video game boasts dynamic weather changes I'm always excited to see how they handle that most common of phenomena. Radiation storms are cool the first time, I guess. Snow blizzards are usually more annoying than fun. And hurricanes always sound more exciting in concept than in person. (Sorry, Just Cause 4.) I prefer to dedicate my escapism fantasy experience to the fun activity of staying out of the rain. Or rather, I would, but I have quests to do and stuff so I just have to grin and bear it. (Kind of like in real life.)

If I were to take a psychoanalytic angle to this predilection I may conclude that these feelings stem back to my days indoors as a child. Oftentimes in the autumnal months, the heavens would open up on a nearly daily basis, and in Britain when it rains it absolutely pours. During times like these I often liked to wrap up in a cover and sit by the window sill, observing the uncomfortable, cold downpour outside whilst basking in the warmth and comfort of the indoors. Perhaps there's a little bit of sadism involved in it too, as I have lived up the road from a train station most of my life, so I often got to see commuters, fresh off the train, suffering the consequences of being ill-prepared for the cloud's wrath. (It's always satisfying when it's happening to someone else...)

Something about watching my video game avatar bear the same struggles is infinitely endearing and relatable for me. I may not posses the upper body strength to wear plate armour, the charisma to make friends, the intelligence to solve crimes, or the immortal spirit of Akatosh within which I can consume the souls of slain dragons; but I can stand in the rain. (Heck, I've done it before!) Maybe me and the video game guy aren't so different after all.

"But you didn't call yourself an 'enthusiast', you specifically said 'Conisseur', which implies some critical consideration." Very astute, dear reader, yes I did. That is because I am such an individual who takes great interest in the way that rain works in video games and am always eager to ensure that there are some carnal sins of rain implementation that are not broken. (Feel like I misplaced the term 'Carnal', but what's done is done.) I won't say that poor rain implementation is enough to break my immersion from a game, that would be silly. But I would, undoubtedly, be immeasurably disappointed and have my day be ruined. So allow me to take you through the weird things that I check whenever I encounter a game with the hubris to imitate Zeus.

One of the most important aspects to consider is one that so many games ignore, does the rain fall where it's supposed to. In order to understand this, there is something I must established. Rain falls from the sky. Discounting the affects of velocity, cloud angle, and wind, that would mean the rain would fall in a downwards motion and a straight manner. Being that those facts are solid and immutable, can someone explain to be why in 'Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories' I get rain that falls on me whilst I'm inside my garage?

Of course, this comes down to the fact that some developers can't be bothered to program rain that reacts to collision boxes. (Maybe that would cause too much strain on the system. Whatever Dev excuses they want to use.) The result is rain that effectively ghosts surfaces and hit the player anywhere as long as they are in an outside wordspace. As a rain lover, this absolutely ruins the potential to stand in shelter and watch everyone else deal with the sky's tears, which is an absolutely damnable crime to the depiction of rain. Oh yeah, it's also deeply unimmersive and makes it feel like weather effects were haphazardly slapped onto the game as an afterthought. (Which, honestly, may be close to the truth.)

Those proud games that do go that extra mile to ensure that rain reacts to solid surfaces do earn my respect. Games like 'Witcher 3: Wild Hunt', 'Red Dead Redemption 2' and 'Watch Dogs 2' showcase how at least one Dev on the team cared about this as much as I do. In these games you can have those moments when you stand under an awning, close your eyes, and just listen to the rhythmic patter of rain drowning out the ambiance of civilization. Something you can't do in person because it's always too chilly in rain season and you're vulnerable to splashback when you stand under awnings, it's just not worth it. (Plus, if you stand in the middle of a busy street with your eyes closed you're pretty much asking to get pickpocketed. Or is that just my area?)

This here's a real new age technique. The kind of stuff that wasn't possible with game engines back in the day. I like to look out for whether or not the rain forms into puddles. I'm not implying that the game should dynamically create puddles to match the force of the rain, because at that you'd just be making a rain simulator game. (That would be awesome but I don't think the world's quiet ready for it yet.) Instead I'm referring to those times when the world crafter's have gone in meticulously to designate spots in the world that would accommodate puddles so that such can form when the heavens open.

Games like 'Red Dead Redemption 2' and 'Spiderman PS4', real gems of the market, like to show off how this technology works and the results are astounding. Even 2002's Divine Divinity boasted reflective puddles in it's gorgeous hand drawn sprite art. This here isn't even really an immersion factor for me as games haven't yet reached the universal level where such an absence would be brow-raising. More so, puddles serve as an atheistically pleasing tool to show of a particular game's reflection tech. (A process that is typically a lot more intensive to the processing memory than one would think.) Just seeing light bounce off of tiny mud lakes on the ground is enough to transform a soggy morning into something serene and beautiful.

Here is an issue focusing more on immersion. One that betrays the nature of game design in a way that I can accept, but still don't want it shouted at every time I look up. This particular point of contention relies on if the rain is centralized on me. Now, I understand that it is unreasonable to load an entire game world at once, no game has, or would ever have, the memory to accommodate that. Instead, games will load relevant data in chunks and have the audience's viewing point loaded whilst unloading everything around them. This works with rain too, obviously.  It would be imprudent to have a rain effect engulf your entire gameworld if the player can only see the space around them, so developers would have it only displayed where it's necessary.

The problem here, is that some games take this to it's lazy conclusion and have it so that rain literally follows you around as though you're Little Misfortune. (Yikes forever!) To understand what I mean by this, load up Minecraft and wait for it to rain, then look up and move around. Notice how, no matter where you move, you're always perfectly between the same strands of rain particles? That's centralized rain. Minecraft isn't the only the game that does it either, despite the fact that, given it's visual flair, it is the only game that should be allowed to. If rain falls through the scenery then that blunder is often accompanied with this in some form. A constant reminder that weather effects for this world were an afterthought and you are stupid for caring about their implementation. This is a feature that I find supremely immersion breaking, contrary to my earlier affirmation, and I hold particular distaste for any who choose to subject their audience to it. (For shame, sir.) 

Let's go back to the cool little Easter eggs. Rain effects that aren't really new, but which impress me when I see them every time. I'm talking about games in which my clothes react to the rain fall. Games with particular care given to their visual flair, like 'Red Dead Redemption' (Again) and 'Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain',  recognize that it is just as important to have fabrics react on the player model as it is to have rain interact with the world. This goes further than just adding a lingering drip effect, too. I'm talking about moments in which players are treated to dynamically damping clothing material that reflects how much liquid you just interacted with. That also goes for dipping in the drink.

Many games have model variations that they subtly blend together when you enter the rain, but they feel like the bare minimum in this department. Rockstar had John Marston's trousers get more soggy for the further he wades into the sea, that's despite the fact that John couldn't even swim in Red Dead 1 and drowned if he went in as deep as his hat. (His entire face could be submerged and he would still be fine as long as his hat was dry. Weird, I know.) Having Big Boss' clothing react the same way was also a very neat immersion tool as players spent quiet a lot of time sneaking through rain, crawling across damp marshes and summoning sound dampening rainstorms through experimental chemical drops. (Oh that's a 'chem trails' joke isn't it? Oh Kojima, what are you like!)

Now we approach territory that could be considered somewhat subjective. What I find acceptable in this field may not reach your standards and vice versa, the only thing for it is to judge for yourself. You see, I always pay attention to whether or not the rain looks like rain. Let me explain. Oftentimes, the hardest things to recreate in a digital medium are the effects that we see everyday in the real world. Can computers create an electrical tornado? Sure. No one knows what the look like so their brains will judge what you show them and just go "Yeah, that looks about right." But when it comes to animating water, or the ocean, then we enter whole new territory. How do you simulate something that billions of people see each and every day? How do you predict it's randomness, it's rise and fall or the way that waves come in and leave the shores? More pertinently, how do you portray the rain?

You see it everyday but stop and think for a second, how do you draw it? Take a look in most comics and you'll see it as a collection of black lines across the page, but that isn't really what rain looks like, we just kind of get the message. Making rain actually look like rain requires so much effort that it usually isn't worth it for the dramatic tension, might as well just have Spiderman and Kraven the Hunter duke it out indoors. The same goes for video game developers, only they often don't have the luxury of going the lazy route. It's often posited that every rain drop is unique (or is that snowflakes?) so designers have to ensure that it moves fast enough for you not to see the droplets but not so fast that it doesn't appear to be rain anymore, or harms the picture quality. Every aspect of rain design must take these factors into account to truly create something believable.

That doesn't mean that there aren't those that still go the lazy route. As much as I adore the game, 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' features some of the worst vanilla rain in modern gaming. It doesn't fall hard enough to look like rain, the strands are so thin that you hardly notice it and the atmosphere doesn't adopt the damp ambience that one would expect. (Yeah, I'm taking that into account too.) Altogether, the visual design is key to selling the effect and everything else can fall apart depending on how much care was put into this process.

For the last point, I want to address what I consider to be the most cathartic part of rainfall, the sound. When I sit at home and relish in the suffering of those outside who forgot their umbrellas (It sustains me) I love to hear the pitter patter of the droplets clattering into the street. The more rain there is, the more satisfying the sound. Few natural wonders derive as much genuine pleasure out of me as wrapping up and listening to the cacophonous orchestra of a flash flood. (The shop at the end of my road, which is also lowered to street level, might not share my enthusiasm there.) All that means I am someone who takes it very seriously when they hear ingame rain, either get the sound right or don't try at all.

Sound design isn't something we talk about too often on this blog, as it is a process that is mostly alien to me, but what snippets I have seen always do impress me. Oftentimes sound designers go out of their way to construct devices that create sounds identical to the ones you are trying to portray. If push really comes to shove, they just go outside with sound equipment and try to capture the raw sound, but I'd imagine the level of control that needs to go into such expeditions make it unappealing. With such a variety in potential methods, it's hard for me to explain what makes a 'good' sound for rain and what doesn't. It's one of those things that you just know in your heart of hearts. I'm not qualified enough to spell this one out for you, just to encourage you to pay attention for yourself.

I don't know whether or not anyone else pays as close attention to Video game rain as I do, or even if they should. There are so many large scale issue I can forgive in game's design that should turn me into a joy hating shrew if I were to apply the same level of critique there as I do to this inconsequential feature. (This blog is 20 paragraphs long, for goodness sake!) I suppose we all just have those lines in the sand that we draw and mine is in the shape of a puddle that better collect rainwater or so help me... I should probably wrap this up before I start to give away just how neurotic I really am, although that's likely already out of the bag considering today's topic.

Grand Dead Online

There is never enough time.

First of all, yes, I fully intend to review Red Dead Redemption 2 at some point but seriously, it's Red Dead Redemption 2... it deserves for me to take so time. Or at least for me to do a fully exhaustive playthrough. (Plus the game is only coming up to a year old. Knowing how late I like to do things, it might be more 'on-brand' for me to wait a few years.) However, yesterday I did briefly bring up an element of that game I think is interesting; the Online component. Although I believe it is only starting to reach it's full form, as Grand Theft Auto Online did long ago, I think I've experienced enough to sum up my thoughts on the affair. But before I get there, it would make sense to start at the beginning.

The year is 2013 and September has just rolled around. Rockstar have finally released the long anticipated Grand Theft Auto V after delaying the game by six months, which definitely wasn't because they purposefully announced the game early to build on hype (>wink<).  Fans flocked to the game- (Okay, that's not entirely true.) Everyone and their mother flocked to the game, making it a undeniable success in it's launch week. Although it is difficult for me to say how much they made in that first week, (No one has boasted about it strangely.) I can confirm what you likely already know; the first day of sales amounted to 11.21 million copies sold (about $800 million) with that number climbing up to 16 million within three days (breaking the $1 billion mark.) For perspective, that means that GTA V broke six world records (as observed by Guinness) before 2014; Best Selling Action/adventure videogame in 24 Hours, Best selling video game in 24 hours, fastest entertainment property to gross $1 Billion, Highest grossing videogame in 24 hours and Highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours. It was a bit of a success then.

Yet, somehow, impossibly, fans were still upset when they got the game. "Why?" I hear you ask, because the online portion; which, for the record, had only been announced and detailed in August of 2013, after the original release date, (But I'm sure the delay wasn't a marketing ploy >wink<) didn't release with the rest of the game. People had to wait an additional 18 days to get their hands on the exciting multiplayer mayhem that the trailer promised. (18 days!? but that's an eternity!) As you can imagine, mass riots broke out across the world as people took to the streets to voice their displeasure; resulting in several broken bones, casualties, and the overthrowing of the Kaznian government. Okay, maybe that last sentence was entirely false, but seeing the reaction of people online, you'd have thought that rioting was just around the corner.

When GTA Online did finally drop, it wasn't exactly what everyone was expecting. Although, to be fair, no one knew what they were expecting. GTA Online was essentially a sandbox environment for people to murder each other perpetually, broken up by a string of fun missions that led into nowhere. There was also a few unimaginative game modes, a horde mode which I played to actual death and a meta that revolved around grinding as much money as humanly possible in order to buy the most mundane things in the game. (I don't even want to think about how much effort I had to put in to buy my garage of classic/super cars.) Thus was born the foundations of the Grand Theft Auto experience for the next six years.

There was one huge omission that did draw considerable ire from the public, however. You see the premise of the main game followed a washed-up forty five year old seeking some excitement in his life by falling back into a world of crime (most importantly bank robbery.) The game focused around 3 huge spectacle robberies (and 1 James bond-esque robbery) and Rockstar promised that there would be even more in the online portion. People would have a greater amount of control over them and it would essentially be the highlight of every online experience to rob a bank. Reality set in, however, when the online mode launched without any heists whatsoever. Although an official reason was never given, I believe that this was a balancing concern. Rockstar had no idea how profitable their new online service would be and didn't want to upset that balance by adding a way for players to pocket truckloads of money off-the-bat.

Fan's had to wait somewhere close to a year before heists finally landed, and by that point Rockstar had already cemented their formula for the future. For those who are unfamiliar (or who ignored my last blog) it works thus; every piece of developed expansion for the online mode comes attached with a price tag, like normal DLC. However, this price tag is made of in game dollars that can be earnt through game play. The price itself is so high, however, that unless you are as much of a cheapskate as I am, you'll likely just pay for the cash injections that they offer for a small real-world fee. In the end, heists were such a huge time commitment, and took so many people working in conjunction in order to setup, that they didn't butt into that carefully balanced ecostructure at all.

Yesterday I mentioned how much I enjoyed that model, and I stand by my words. I've always enjoyed the concept of "If you work hard, you'll get there in the end." maybe because I've experienced the exact opposite in real life so I find the concept quaint. That being said, I do understand that this system, and it's success, is the main reason why GTA never saw any substantial DLC or 'mix up' like Red Dead Redemption had with 'Undead Nightmare'. The biggest new asset that I've seen that team cook up in the past 6 years is that giant casino that they plopped in the middle of Los Santos. Which, by the way, actually breaks the lore of the game. (Allow me to get nerdy.)

You see, GTA Online officially takes place before the events of the main game, which  is indicated when Lester mentions knowing an operative but immediately scraps the idea by saying that they're too 'unpredictable'. Therefore, the Los Santos skyline shouldn't hold any significant changes to the one from the main game, however, here we are with a brand new Casino. Are you telling me that the entire building disappeared one night, the same way it appeared? What is this, a ghost casino?

Anyway, GTA Online ended up making all the money in the world and grossing something stupid like $6 billion, beating out Endgame and single handedly making gaming the most profitable entertainment medium in the world. It is also the reason why every soulless game's company out there is desperate to make their own hit 'live-service' despite the fact that they all lack the recognition, scope, and talent of Rockstar. (Looking at you; EA, Bethesda and Ubisoft.)

Anticipation swelled when Red Dead Redemption 2 was announced, as people guessed what that game would do to push forward the formula. Rockstar confused everyone, however, by refusing to release even so much as a trailer hinting at such. (despite promising one.) Then they turned around to their parent company, Take-Two, and assured them that Red Dead Online (the name that Rockstar filed their trademark under) wouldn't be a competitor to GTA Online. So what does that mean? Would Red Dead Online not be a live-service? Of course it would be, it would just be seeking a different demographic.

Personally, I see Red Dead Online as GTA Online 2.0. Much of the core concept itself is unchanged, there is a free-roam portion, a mission mode and a whole bunch of online competitive modes (However this game's competitive modes are almost all uniquely imaginative.) Plus, a lot of the game is built around the grind for money, the only significant difference I can see is that the price points have altered. Instead of saving up for millions in order to buy that new supercar, you end up saving just as long for that $600 horse. The biggest overhaul has been the inclusion of a brand new currency in gold.

I struggle to call this a 'premium currency'. As although you can, and are likely expected to, buy this outright; you can still earn this money in game and consistently. This separates this from other premium currencies like those found in Mobile games (that limit how much you can earn to make buying anything fun damn near prohibitive.) and other AAA games. (Like how Fallout 76 drip feeds Atoms through daily activities in order to hook concurrency.) Plus, a lot of the time, gold can be used as a substitute for in-game money, achieving... I'm not sure what, to be honest. (Likely just an incentive to spend real money on gold, honestly.)

The problem comes from the fact that there are some incredibly fun elements of the game that are locked behind gold and cannot be purchased with in-game money. This ranges from particularly cool pieces of equipment to entire portions of the gameplay loop that were added in the 'specialisations' update. Again, you can feasibly make up this Gold by just grinding away at the game, but not everyone is unemployed and talentless, some people out there have lives. I'm not blind to how manipulative this all is, but similarly, I'm not blind to how Rockstar will support this game mode substantially for years to come. It feels like such a betrayal to say that I am fine with this model, but I truly hope you can see my reasoning when I admit that I am. (Although that does not extended to GTA's Casinos. Literally, screw the GTA O team for that.)

One aspect of this game that has certainly improved over GTA Online is the way that they handle progression. Just like in every other live service, you'll find yourself being drip fed things you can buy,  like clothing and weapons, as you level up. Standard procedure. But when Rockstar added the 'specialisation' update, an interesting evolution was made to that system. Instead of just earning more clothing, or endless new pistols (GTA Online), you could unlock specialized pieces of gear or skills that could be used in the main game. For example, if you level up your bounty hunter skills, you'll eventually unlock a bolas, which can knock someone off their horse from a distance and tie them up. Keep working your way through to the upper levels and you'll even learn how to duck on your horse, dodging shots from players or NPCs and becoming an invaluable tool for multiplayer matches. It's important to note that neither of these two mechanics were present in the main game and both were realized exclusively for the online.

The free roam has been expanded upon too, learning from the mistakes of GTA Online. In that game, people were upset that missions took place in their own instanced space, meaning that players couldn't run into each other or interfere unless they grouped up in the mission lobby. Red Dead Online fixes this by not just having mission occur in the open world, but actively encouraging near by players to join in. (Usually aggressively.) This can make a standard wagon delivery mission turn into a deadly chase scene, which I may be alone in liking but I enjoy it nonetheless. Maybe I'm just a sucker for dynamic game play scenarios.

The controls and gameplay are fantastic for it's mastery of all things simple, but that is a topic that I think is best left for my review of the main game. (Whenever that will be.) and Rockstar even took the effort to make movement a lot easier, by allowing you to put your horse on 'auto mode'. Yup, if you go into cinematic mode whilst you have a destination on your map, your horse will take you there. Now, if only Rockstar could make sure that doing this didn't net you with the customary "You will be logged out in 13 minutes for inactivity" threat, then I could really enjoy myself by looking at the scenery.

Red Dead Online is a game that is hell bent on taking all of your free time, and that is a little bit a problem considering every modern video game wants the exact same thing. However, with the sheen of quality over every aspect, I don't feel as dirty donating my considerable free time to the West as much as do whenever I play Fallout 76 or... well, mostly just Fallout 76. I haven't even gone into the real deep end yet; like, did you know that RDO has a Battle pass? But I am enjoying what I have played on a surface level so far. I really do hope, however, that whatever success Red Dead Online garners does not end up putting a dampener on the chances for real Red Dead DLC, as I think the single player is ripe for some extended content.  Now, if you don't mind, I have to collect some bounties.