76 Problems with subcription services

Oh shut up, Todd.

Has it even been a week? Honestly, I'm too scared to look back and find out. Already those- people at Bethesda feel it's right to test the patience of it's loyal fandom once again and I'm not sure I, personally, can take it anymore. It's tugging at my heartstings to read about these stories time and time again and wonder what happened to the studio that was once my favourite game developer. If we weren't a breath away from the release of The Outer Worlds I don't know what I would do. At least Obsidian can provide us action-RPG fans with some vague semblance of hope now that our heroes have died and been rebuilt as a sacrilegious parodies of themselves. (It just sickens me.)

If you hadn't heard or were just plain lucky enough to avoid Bethesda news altogether, Fallout 76 has found a way to get on everybody's lips once again for all the wrong reasons. Not a week after we hear news about Bethesda's attempt to squeeze the last drops of blood out of their rapidly diminishing fanbase, another blog post drops on Bethesda.Net with a chilling ultimatum. Fallout 76 will be receiving one of it's most requested (and promised) features after all this time, private servers. (with mod support at a later date.)  What's the catch? A 100$ a year subscription service, obviously. (Someone pinch me. I hope I'm dreaming.)

There is so much wrong with this announcement and what it means for the future of Fallout 76, that to attempt to cover it all without any mind bleach might just prove fatal, so I'll use this blog to compare other subscription offers with this one. (I need some positivity today, else I might just explode.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing this on the off-chance that some Bethesda employee happens across this post by some nobody and takes inspiration, this is purely for my own catharsis. This is the way I intend to process this tragedy and I'd appreciate you sticking around and bearing with me through this one. (It's going to get rant-ey.)

First of all, let me start of by saying that I do not like subscription services. I understand why they exist and hold nothing against those who partake (which is a lot more than I can say for Lootbox consumers) but my inherent stinginess physically repulses at the idea of opting into a monthly fee. On a more practical note, I'm a huge nostalgia nut who likes to find his way back to stories that I love years down the line; Therefore I'd rather own something definitively rather than rent it for the moment only to realize that I've lost it due to having dropped my subscription years ago. (It literally took me a decade to rediscover 'Devil May Cry 2' after renting it for a week. I don't want to go through that headache again.) Yet even with that inherent distaste on my part, I can recognize when a subscription deal is too good to pass up. A good deal is a good deal no matter what the asking price is; Fallout 76's Fallout 1st program is not a good deal.

The launch period of Fallout 76 has already gone down in the books as one of the most disastrous of all times, and it wasn't just because of connection woes. (Although we did have a lot of them.) There were problems with rampant glitches, lack of progression incentives, no endgame, unbalanced world bosses, unbalanced perk cards, and a sorely empty and forgettable world space. All of this should have signalled red flags for Bethesda but they all subscribed to the belief that the game would get better, sentiments that Todd Howard shared in a candid interview. (For which he was relentlessly blasted online.) So it wasn't the end of the world that the game launched as a hollow mess, for it was a platform that would start to improve.

Fast forward one year later and many of those problems that I've mentioned still persist. In fact, some of the stability issues were relived only to be re-introduced during the Raids update. Another, just as unbalanced, world boss was added and progression has been relegated entirely to the marketplace. Higher levels are just for show at this point. All this was supposed to fixed by now due to the Wastelanders update that was recently delayed, and instead the community who have stuck by this game have been sidelined and told that future incremental updates to player's quality of life will be exclusive to either the in-game store or an embarrassingly overpriced subscription service.

I'm sure that Bethesda 'diehards' (see: sunk cost fallacy) will march to Bethesda's defence and claim that none of the items on offer are necessities, but, once again, Bethesda are playing a game of attrition. The more small nicks of annoyance that they poke you with, the weaker you become to their attempts to sell the big items to you. This is simple marketing strategy, you don't need to be genius to see it. This time, Bethesda are offering an ingame camp system as an exclusive subscription item (Which allows players to create a fast-travel beacon without moving their entire base) and a free Desert Ranger outfit. Which makes no sense canonically as that organization was born on the West coast and were famously exclusive to the area of the Mojave until they encountered the NCR (Which wouldn't be formed yet for a good hundred years.), but it's nice to see that Bethesda are profiteering off of Obsidian's work on New Vegas. Real classy, guys.

The paltry offering isn't even the biggest rub here, nor is the fact that Bethesda want to attach another paywall to their sinking ship. For me, it's that ludicrous price tag. $11.99 a month? Will Todd Howard personally come around my house to give me a foot massage? If not then I expect a damn good explanation as to why I should fork out three times the cost of one month of Xbox game pass in order to play the worst Fallout game ever made. (And I'm including 'Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel' in that comparison) Game pass, may I remind you, is a service that allows buyers to play over 100 high-quality games for a paltry monthly sum, sometimes on the day of release! (And I'm not even paid to say that. I just hate Fallout 1st so much that I'll sing the praises of a serial killer if he offered a subscription for his crimes.)

But Microsoft aren't the only ones who offer a superior 'paid subscription'. Perhaps the closest direct comparison I can make off the top of my head is that of WoW Classic. (Seeing as how Bethesda fancy this game as their very own MMO) WoW was the game the defined the MMO genre and spawned a thousand failure copy cats. (Ranks that Bethesda seem eager to join.) I'm not sure how subscription works today, but back in it's prime WoW operated on a nominal fee that could be purchased directly or earnt through playing the game religiously, meaning that you theoretically only had to buy a subscription once. (Wait... is this how Battlepasses were born too? This game really was ahead of it's time!)

How about Nintendo's online service that they offer with the Switch. Initially it seemed like something of a raw deal. (Especially with the way they robbed previously online games of their connectivity.) But the deal has become a whole of a lot sweeter since the 'virtual' consoles were introduced. Just like with game pass, you can play through Nintendo's legendary library of classic games (albeit, drip fed from the big N) for no extra charge then the purchase of the online itself. "How much does it cost?" you ask? £15 for a year. (Bethesda best be taking some serious notes right now.)

If you're looking for a more traditional one-on-one comparison with a modern MMO, look no further than the best MMO on the market right now; Final Fantasy XIV. This is a game that nails every aspect of it's required agenda as an MMO and does so with absolute style. There are countless activities, events, vocations, end-game grinds, and top-tier raids to take part in. Not only that, but many of the DLC story add ons have been hailed as some of the best Final Fantasy stories ever told. (And that's coming from the franchise that practically wrote the book on epic storytelling.) How much is this game's subscription? Well for the first 35 levels it's free, after that you are hit with a $12 monthly fee. (That's kinda deceptive, honestly.) So this is a price that is closer to Fallout 76's proposition, but what's the difference? Hmm, how about the fact that you are paying for the best MMO on the market right now that is renowned for inundating it's player base with premium quality content. Not exactly a one-to-one comparison to Bethesda's game, and yet they seem to think their worth it. (Some folk are easily deluded.)

I didn't think I'd have to write another blog about abject stupidity on Bethesda's front. I hoped I wouldn't have to. But when you are met by a studio that are so adamant on throttling their loyal consumer base to their last penny, it's hard not to point and stare. At this point, I can't imagine anyone taking this game seriously unless they do a 'Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn' style overhaul, but honestly, I doubt modern Bethesda have enough passion and ingenuity to pull something like that off. Well, the blog has done the trick. I'm no longer seething with rage and have settled into my natural state of despair. So I guess I'm going to end this here. See you the next time Bethesda do something dumb, I guess.

The practical insanity of Virtual Reality

Jamiroquai is gonna sue...

Today I had the idea of looking at an aspect of gaming that I have been very quiet on with this blog, or just in general. This is because I usually prefer to write about topics with which I posses something of a first hand account. However, recently I appear to have been branching out into Blogs detailing my thoughts on the future of gaming, so I might as well get to the one thing that everyone keeps telling me is the future; Virtual Reality. Namely, how impractical it currently is and how much I feel needs to change/improve before it starts to 'take over gaming'.

It seems that widespread virtual reality is still failing to reach the levels of cultural proliferation that we were promised back when Vive and Occulus were in their infancy. You know, the time when all of these budding tech companies were stroking their VR patents and scoffing at anyone who considered their ventures with a raised eyebrow. "Laugh it up kid, in a couple of years you'll be the stupid one." And, to their credit, both companies are still in business so something must be going right. (Despite that messy lawsuit with Zenimax.) But we've yet to reach the 'headset in every home' campaign promise that made us sign up all those years ago. Sure we've seen that the Playstation 5 intends to redesign and buff up it's Playstation VR into the eloquently named: Playstation VR 2; and rumors persist that Microsoft's Project Scarlett will support some form of VR, but these announcements seem like footnotes compared to the real system sellers. "Oh yeah, we're doing VR. But check out our resolutions and our RAM! That's the real deal baby!"

This situation has had me wondering; Why? Why isn't VR the powerhouse that it rightly should be. And don't get me wrong, it rightly should be the next big step in gaming. Afterall, where else is there to go? We've created games that look so authentic that stills of 'The Last of Us Part 2' genuinely look true-to-life with the right lighting. Realism has reached the point that it seems there is little more possible improvement in the visual department. (Except maybe training better animation algorithms to lighten heavy workloads.) So shouldn't we all be retreating into Ready Player One's Oasis and teaming up with Tracer and the Iron Giant to bring down big cooperate. (I never watched Ready Player One, if that isn't readily apparent.) It seems not. Or at least, not yet.

I feel like there are a few factors at play here but to start with I want to address the systems and games that one has at their disposal with VR, and why they may not be enough to support a mass exodus to this new hardware. Take a look at the spectrum of VR games out and you may notice something, most of them are shallow. Just like with any new console, the VR space was flooded with tech demo 'experinces' that amounted to little more than touring players through a space and showing off all the cool things that the system could accomplish. Of course, with VR these experiences are far more interesting than anything we're likely to see Christmas 2020 when the new console generation launches, purely for the gimmick of total visual immersion; but it's still a gimmick and those are usually characterized by their short life spans, and such should be the case with VR.

However, things don't seem to have gone that route. Even now we are seeing 'experince' games that exist to do little more than wow their audience with a quick, but expensive, tour. (More on that little caveat later.) Back in the launch period, these titles were more blatant. There was the game in which you went shark diving in the deep ocean and got attacked by a shark, or the one in which you went mountain climbing in the Andes. There was even one which shot players up an elevator and played off of your vertigo/fear of heightsin order to get a rise out of you. These were 'amusement park' tier attractions that one is expected to pay top dollar for. Later on in the life of VR, things hardly got any better. There was Ghostbusters VR, which offered people nothing more than a tour through the iconic firestation and literally nothing else. Rollercoaster dreams, which is a rollercoaster. And countless 'things you could do in real life but lack the freedom and time to do' games that you'll soon start to forget that these systems were originally marketing as 'gaming platforms.'

That isn't to say that every VR game is a 'sit back and do nothing' snorefest. Over the years there have been some VR games that have tried to buck the trend set by their contemporaries and deliver something worthwhile. The VR game 'John Wick Chronicles' allowed people to fight their way through heavy gunfire sceanrio's with none of the deftness of the iconic man-on-fire hero but all of the bullets. Until Dawn Rush of Blood was... another rollercoaster game! Really? Okay, but this one did focus on scaring the player with weak jump scares and keeping them somewhat entertained with on-the-rails shooter segments. And Lone Echo was a fully realized game about solving puzzles and traversing space as a robot which no control over his legs. All these games were active attempts to do something fun with the VR space, but most of them delivered something that was palatable for a moment, but hardly worth the heavy asking price on the box. (With the exception of Lone Echo, that game was pretty cool.)

Some other developers tried to make games that really took advantage of what VR had to offer, and these were the kind of experiences that most users would be familiar with. Owlchemy labs seem to be the masters of this right now with their expanding 'Job Simulator' brand of games and their 'Rick and Morty' experience to boot. Those games took advantage of the way that VR sets you into a fully interactible space and mixed it with fun, sometimes dry, humor; which I can appreciate being a Brit. Then there is the VR exclusive version of SUPERHOT, which removed the movement/time manipulation aspect of the console game in favour of a system wherein careless hand gestures could spell your doom. And then there is the streaming darling: BeatSaber, which completely supplants DanceDance Revolution as the music rhythm game of the modern generation. (And they didn't even need to turn tricks for Sony in order to get an ad in The Emoji Movie. For shame, Ubisoft!)

The problem that all these games suffer from right now is one that is in serious need of innovation; (I.e. a problem that won't be solved from just throwing money at it) most VR games are incapable of facilitating movement. This is not just because of bad control set-up (although that is a factor) but more due to the inherent motion sickness that many users suffer from when their world view shifts without their body moving. It's a disconnect that the human body wasn't built to handle and thus can really mess with people's heads. Unfortunately, the cost of this issue is that many VR developers find themselves stuck with the ideas that can be realized when your player is stuck to one spot. Some games have come up with the 'teleport method' but that is murder to immersion, so that cuts off a huge amount of the appeal of VR for a great deal of potential developers and consumers. What is left are games that are either really basic on-the-rails affairs (A genre which should be killed in a fire) or imaginative games which manage to make things interesting without changing the players location too often. (Although that takes real thought and effort to achieve so most people just give up and decide to make a console game instead.)

Additionally, the effort required to develop a VR game often far exceeds the returns that one could expect, and I'm not just talking about software difficulties. (Although I'm told that those do exist.) Rather I referencing the way that a VR environment requires a lot more care and attention be devoted to every aspect of design due to the fact that players are far closer to the world and they would be through a TV screen. Suddenly, all textures have to look good up close for fear of the player sticking their face all up in it. (Don't want anyone to start hurling the second they start making out pixels.) Then there is the fact that developers have to work overtime to hide the seams of the world, because players can look up and over everything within range of their grubby little mitts. You bet that means studios are forcing their modellers to texture the bottom of coffee cups to minute details. (Bethesda may be use to it but everyone else is still adjusting.) All that work is made despite the fact that the number of consumers who actually consume VR content is far inferior to other forms of digital entertainment; so why bother with all that effort in the first place?

But we've just gone all the way around back to the original point; nobody is playing VR. Why? Well, for my part I suspect that this could come down to two factors and both of them have to do with money. (Although bear in mind this is coming from the mind of a real life Scrooge McDuck here, so take this hypothesis with several grains of salt.) Here in the UK, a HTC Vive headset will set people back a cool £499, with the Pro variant reaching up to £800. Even the cheaper option, The Occulus Quest, is retailing for £399 on Amazon. This tech is going for console-grade price points despite the fact that their gaming versatility is laughable compared to even the most pitiful consoles. Few big companies even bother to support the VR ecosystem with games and those that do rarely put any effort behind their offerings. This has led to the VR marketplace being flooded with low effort or over priced products that leave a sour taste in the mouth of consumers. There might even be actual consumer dissent if the gimmick of virtual reality wasn't powerful enough to keep people hooked. Yet despite that, word of mouth tends to be more along the lines of "Not yet, but keep an eye on things" Instead of "Go out and buy a headset right now!"

"Surely there must be good, worthwhile, fairly-priced games on the VR marketplace!" You may be asking. And you would be right, of course there is. The problem is that the vast majority of them are video games already exist on paltry non-VR consoles. The best VR shooter right now is probably Payday 2, (which is on Steam) the best open world game, and I'm using 'best' to denote the fact that there is literally no other competition in this department, is Skyrim VR (Which is based on the Special Edition available on consoles and Steam) and the best horror game is undoubtedly Resident Evil 7 VR. (Which is similarly available everywhere.) None of these experiences are exclusive to VR and yet hold a prohibitively expensive barrier-to-entry in order for the general public to get hold of them. (Except for Resident Evil VR. That's available on PSVR which is by-far the most reasonably priced VR option at £150 on Amazon.)

At the end of the day, the tech may be there for great VR games to exist, but none of the other infrastructure has caught up yet. Studios aren't willing to code for it, consumers aren't willing to fork out for it, and the native games aren't good enough to make people willing. Recent times have seen some legitimate efforts to make something special; 'Blood and Truth', though horribly cliched, seems to be a decent B-List action game. (Actually I just read the title aloud to myself, make that D-List.) and Lone Echo is getting a sequel that looks to be a bit more hands on. But we have a ways to go before VR gaming becomes a genuine contender for gamer's screentime. Maybe once the studios start getting behind the concept, and the retailers start pricing the equipment reasonably, we'll start to see something real special bloom in the world of gaming. Who knows, maybe 10 years in the future this will be a VR blog. I'm joking. I'll definitely have killed myself long before then. (If VR vertigo doesn't kill me first.)

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.

Economy of Fallout: How New Vegas got it right

Patrolling the Mojave almost make you wish for a Nuclear Winter...

Previously I embarked on an off-the-cuff rant about how the concept of economy works in gaming and specifically within the world of Fallout. (Or, more appropriately, how it does not.) Much of the issues stemmed from the way that the game is structured as a free-reign RPG. This could make it seem like I'm punishing the game for not being something that is was never capable of becoming, but I intend to put that particular fear to rest in this blog. (Although concerns of my neuroticism likely won't be dissuaded by that fact that I'm continuing this train of thought yet again.) You see, as I mentioned in the blog, there is one Fallout game that absolutely nailed economy. And it wasn't made by Bethesda. (Go figure.)

Leading up to October 2010, Bethesda were hard at working retooling their engine to put together their next entry in their darling franchise; The Elder Scrolls. (A series which has never suffered from weak in-game economy.) However, some in the studio clearly still believed that there was money to be made from the Fallout name, because Bethesda would soon end up contacting Obsidian. (A company comprised of RPG Devs, a considerable number of which worked on the original Fallout games under Black Isle Studios.) Bethesda slapped them with a very tight development shift and a strict release window. So strict, in fact, that 90% of studios would have fumbled about and put out some horrifying mess of a game which they would then desperately try to keep on life support for the next few years before the Publisher finally signed the documents and pulled the plug. (Actually, I suppose that's more how it plays out with modern games, huh.) Obsidian proved that they were up to the task by meeting their deadline and delivering a game that wasn't just functional, but is also the single best action-oriented Fallout game released. Even after 4 dropped. (I shudder to think what they might have pulled off with a full 4 years.)

I cannot underestimate how many aspects of the Fallout universe that Obsidian managed to bring to life in ways that Bethesda still can't. But right now I'm going to address the way that they effortlessly managed to pull of balancing the world in terms of progression-tied economy. You see, one of the systems that Obsidian implemented into Fallout: New Vegas was the 'weapon mod' system which, much as the name implies, allowed players to improve their weapons with a variety of subtle extras. Fallout 4 did something similar, but there it was heavily tied into the overbearing crafting system. Obsidian did not go this route and instead ensured that the player could only acquire mods by purchasing them from specialized retailers. The in-game reason for this being that weapons-grade accessories could only be manufactured by those who can manage to restore and operate munitions depots. (Which is out of the range of the average Joe.) This allowed the Devs to justify a sense of scarcity to these mods and, in some cases, exclusivity. Both ways in which a sense of progression can be established. (In fact, scarcity is one of the main ways that Looter shooter's establish progression.)

This was compounded by the fact that New Vegas' Mods were often far more transformative to the weapon than an 'Acog scope'. (Not to rag on Acog scopes, I like 'em.) Obsidian made the decision for all weapon mods to have a positive effect on the guns to which they were implied, which made sure that players didn't have to pick and choose and could end up improving their weapons at a flat rate. Don't get me wrong, you won't be transforming a plasma rifle in a flame thrower, a la Fallout 4, but you will be turning a pea shooter in something more useful and longlasting. There are mods like the night-vision scope for the Varmint rifle, Expanded weapon drums for the LMG, Chokes for the Hunting Shotgun and ammunition recyclers for laser weaponry. All little stuff that ends up going a long way to improving a gun's damage, versatility or reliability. (What I'm trying to establish is that they are items that will become desirable as you play through the game.)

Obsidian managed to tie this into a system of economic progression by ensuring that such mods are typically not cheap in the stores nor easily found outside them. They cost enough to be prohibitive to early players and be a real pick-and-choose situation for high level players. Fallout 4 fans might find this to be annoying and unnecessary, but it means that the player has to work hard and distinguish themselves in order to acquire the funding to build the tools that they want. This very much fits in with the player's role in Fallout: New Vegas, as much of that gameworld is centred around the idea of accumulating wealth in the land of sin. (That's Las Vegas, by the by.) There are numerous casino's to try your hand at, morally grey missions to undergo and trading ventures to setup which benefit to your overall cap balance. As your spending power increases, so too does the wealth of opportunities at your beck and call. (Feels like I'm being condescending but, seriously, most games don't manage to emulate economy this well.)

Weapon mods are only one aspect to New Vegas' economy. There are even some impressive luxury items that fundamentally benefit the role-playing experience by providing the player with powerful perks. On the east side of Vegas, there is clinic that is designed to cater to high lever players in which a doctor will sell the protagonist powerful 'implants' to supplement their stats. Through this, players can do something as simple as buy new attribute points to something as grand as install a Monocyte cell Breeder that will perpetually regenerate your health at a slow rate. (An absolute must-have for survival mode playthroughs of 'Dead Money') Once again, these 'implants' are far from inexpensive, ranging from 4000 to 12000 caps. Sure, the player can change their playthrough with helpful, permanent buffs, but it will require some grinding in order to buy them, just like with those aforementioned weapon mods.

Some of the DLC even helped to contribute to the game's economic progression, just look the 'Gun Runner's Arsenal pack'. (Which was once a pre-order incentive. Bad Obsidian!) With that installed, players will see an influx of high quality weapon variants that are exclusive to the Gun Runners' kiosk in south Vegas. There are even some powerful unique weapons and a few high grade mods for those weapons. Once again, these are weapons that are exclusive to clientele with the income to afford it, lending to the concept of economic progression. Although I will admit, this implementation does feel a little detrimental to the 'free-play' style of this kind of RPG as non of these guns can be found in the open world. I usually don't find myself buying any GRA weaponry in my playthroughs.

Through the weapons and benefits that I just mentioned, Obsidian managed to empower the economy of Fallout without sacrificing the scavenging gameplay. Players can pick weapons off of corpses, (and probably should) and the most amazing weapons are still discovered by exploring the world. (back when 'unique weapons' were actually unique.) Caps still remain a key tool for the player as they start to level, instead of becoming obsolete by the third hour of play. There are certainly a lot of RPG games that could learn from Obsidian's approach to ingame economy, and I look forward to seeing how the company push to improve their own approach in their upcoming game 'The Outer Worlds' later this month. Hey, perhaps Bethesda will actually learn something from the Outer World's too. Huh, what's that? In Fallout 76 they're charging actual real money for in-game fridges? I take that back, Bethesda's beyond help.

Nintendo Peripherals

But wait, there's more!

The otherday I was watching normal TV for normal people, and was bombarded by a surprise gaming ad. What company could have possibly sunk enough marketing revenue to afford a spot on BBC, I wondered. It wasn't sandwiched between any landmark shows or anything, but it's presence on the most widely watched channel in the country was impressive enough. But hold your applause, it was just a Nintendo ad. Those people pretty much wrote the book on 'family friendly' so stations will easily roll over backwards to accept some that Nintendo money. (Luckily those same advertisers don't look at the Switch's online store to see the sorts of games that Nintendo are approving nowadays. There's literally an upcoming Doom parody called BDSM (Big Drunk Satanic Massacre.) Way to go Nintendo for expanding your horizons!)

The advert itself was focused on one of the more weird announcements from Nintendo's last Direct livestream; Ring Fit adventure. If you are somehow unaware, this was a game that picked up quite some traction with the way it seemed to be attempting to supplant Wii Fit as the go-to exercise game for middle age mothers. Using a plastic ring. Okay, sure it looks bendy, but I seriously doubt about the versatility of a plastic ring to hold your Joycons. Nintendo seemed sold enough to pimp this thing out to BBC, however, so I guess they must have faith. The whole thing got me thinking about the other peripherals Nintendo has committed to throughout the years, so that's what we're looking at today.

First, since we mentioned it, we should start with the good old Wii Fit balance board. This piece of kit was designed as an addendum to the motion-centric Wii kit and sought to empower mothers across the world with the power to partake in basic yoga. Their accompanying software also included a variety of workouts ranging from the simple routines that even I could get behind to the ones so excessive that even reading the description left me knackered. As the Nintendo Wii was so commercially popular due to it's marketing towards family units, it made absolute sense for Nintendo to actively attempt to appeal to all typical family demographics and Wii Fit was exceeding successful in this department. So successful, in fact, that Nintendo went onto release the Wii Fit Plus within a few years. In terms of actual numbers, Wii Fit was the third best selling game of 2008 earning over 4.53 million units sold. (That's a lot of balance boards!)

Let me get a little topsy-turvey on you for a moment as I return to the Nintendo Switch for a peripheral that I never partook in but have been forever fascinated by. Just what the heck is the Nintendo Labo anyway? Well, quite simply, it's a 'build-it-yourself' kit of cardboard for which players are expected to construct elaborate cardboard cradles to fit their Joycons and simulate a game. (Way to save money on materials and save the planet from an influx of plastic, Nintendo! Now if only you could do something about the size of Switch game cases...)The Labo is impressive not just in it's simplicity but in it's sturdiness. None of the designs require glue or cellotape in order to make the thing work, yet all are sturdy enough to withstand semi-constant use. (Just don't take it out in the rain, I guess.) I still hold issue with the excessive large price points for what is essentially a bunch of cardboard, but I suppose that's just classic Nintendo shenanigans nowadays, no one even questions them on it anymore.

Okay, so this next one isn't exactly a peripheral, but I feel it's worth bringing up at least once before I die. Who has heard of the Nintendo Virtual Boy? That's right, one of gaming's first, and least successful, forays into Virtual Reality, all the way back in the dinosaur age of 1995. Tech for this machine was being developed as far back as 1985, with Nintendo being excited about bringing the project to it's fullest fruition pretty much for the entire next decade. Once it was here, however, it was clear that things hadn't worked out exactly the way that Nintendo, or the world, had hoped. Due to limitations in the hardware and cost, only one colour could be represented within the Virtual Boy and somehow Nintendo decided that colour should be bright, mind-numbing, red. Also, developers didn't quite know how to make games for the thing or even what kind of games to make, so the console had one of the smallest libraries of any consoles ever. (I'm fairly certain that it's below 15 games.) The hardware had a head-stabilizing stand that required it to set on a table. (That's a big brain move.) and the whole thing looked incredibly unwieldly from the outside and felt incredibly uncomfortable from the inside. Amazingly, Nintendo managed to sell 910,000 units (according to their own data) before the thing was discontinued. I guess some people are masochists.

Now, I feel certain that I've discussed this next piece of hardware before, but I can't find the article so i'll just have to assume that I merely dreamt about writing it. Remember back in the height of the propaganda wars when Nintendo and Sega were wasting millions on disstrack commercials instead of making games? (It's better than just sending each other snide tweets like Sony and Microsoft.) It was in the midst of this conflict that Nintendo decided to drop their next peripheral that would determine the course of gaming history; The Power Glove. This ugly looking thing was based off an actually impressive design patent for a glove capable of detecting every movement of the hand down to finger flexture due to fiberoptic sensor's in the material. (For the late 1980's this was space tech!) The power glove, however, had to be mass produced, so much of that was stripped out for a more basic control scheme that was a lot less sensitive. The result? The thing was nigh on unplayable. The glove was supposed to simulate a traditional controller making for a viable replacement, but due to the imprecision of the sensors, you couldn't even play Zelda with this hunk of junk. Perhaps the most famous appearance of the Power Glove was in the Nintendo propaganda Fred Savage movie; The Wizard, in which the antagonist, Lucas, wields the tech and utters that most infamous of lines. "I love the Power Glove, it's just so bad!" (The line speaks for itself.)

Now let's talk about the humble gun. Wait what? Yeah, Nintendo have had a few of these over the years. From the classic NES Zapper back in 1985, Nintendo went on to implement their light gun technology into the 1992/93 Super Scope. Both of these weapons revolutionized the way that games could be made by ensuring that aiming no longer had to be handled exclusively by humble directional arrows. Now one could just point and shoot like god intended. Although there is no way that Nintendo could get away with something like that in the enlightened age of the 2000's onwards right? Mommy blogs the world over would just explode if they saw something like that, wouldn't they? Not so, it would seem, for Nintendo also supplied their Wii with an extensive amount of hardware. An old friend of mine even owned the Wii Zapper gun and said that it worked great on House of the Dead. (Wait a minute, they released 'House of the Dead' on Wii? Nintendo really know how to surprise me...) There was also the Wii Perfect Shot (Which is just a handgun) The Wii Shot Gun (Not a shotgun but a rifle) and the logic 3 Wii machine gun. (That's a freakin Škorpion, guys, are you trying to set the mommy blogs off?) Maybe only some of those examples were first party, but they were all approved for sale by Nintendo and I take that as consent. (Can't wait for the upcoming Switch/Beretta partnership!)

I've never been a huge fan of the peripheral trend, but that might be because I'm a huge cheapskate who guffaws whenever he sees a 50+ price tag. This tools tend to be rather expensive and their versatility rarely makes up for that cost. At the end of the day, I'd rather put by money behind a cool new game, but by that same merit, perhaps I'd enjoy said game a lot more with a piece of £20 cardboard strapped around my face. Who knows? I think it a mostly harmless practise and always find it fun to gawk at the latest item and go, "Why?"so I don't want it going away anytime soon. I'm always interested to see the ways that Nintendo try to exercise their creativity, even when a lot of them are quite dumb. You can't fly if you don't first stumble, or something like that, I'm no Ted talker. Looking at all these examples does leave me with one genuine question, though; how long until Nintendo try VR again?

What's in a promise

No pictures, I'm too angry.

I want to make an announcement. It's one that I've made before but am becoming increasingly more embarrassed to say: I am a player of Fallout 76. Note how I used to say that I liked Fallout 76. For a time that was correct, I enjoyed the experience for what it was and joined up under the promise of a brighter future. (Good lord I just got Sierra Madre flashbacks. Obsidian signposted this with New Vegas years ago.) I even went so far as to buy some premium currency. (Okay, excuse time: it wasn't much and I got the game cheap anyway and I thought the game was in a good place and please don't judge me!) Now I'm sickened to even think about this game and even more sickened to think that is carries the Bethesda title. Just what has happened to this game. What has happened to this company. What will become of their future titles.

"What is your problem?" I ask myself. Well, me, it all goes back to when I first bought the game a few months after launch. I had heard about all the chaos surrounding the launch of this game and quietly stepped away, yes this was a legendarily bad launch but it would get better, it had too. Once I saw that an actual roadmap had been drawn up for the game, I decided that now was the time. Bethesda had a plan and believed the game was stable enough to start letting people in on it. And I was dumb enough to fall for it as I bought the game. (Second hand, I'm now proud to say.)

Ultimately, the game was janky, but fun. That simple description could expand out to every aspect of this game. Combat, fun but janky. Exploration, janky but fun. The Battle Royale mode, fun and surprisingly stable. Like, really stable. (Whoever coded this mode should be a damn team leader.) But with every step forward seemed to come two steps back. It's almost as though Bethesda's main division felt obliged to step in once they heard how terrible Fallout 76 is and left it once they thought it was in a good place, only for the 76 team to immediately drive the game off a cliff. That analogy may have seemed a little lazy, unclear and unfocused, but guess what, that's the game guys! All of those three things in spades.

Trouble first started to rear it's ugly head when the team saw fit to add repair kits into the game as a 'premium resource'. Previously, Pete Hines (Head of Bethesda PR) had come out to claim that Fallout 76 would feature cosmetic microtransactions only, instead of items that would affect gameplay. (A heavily disliked practise that is also known as 'Pay-to-win'.) He was very adamant in his points too, ensuring everyone that the live service could and would subsist on the goodwill of fans without twisting their arms and offering an inferior experience. Which is fair considering Bethesda were charging £60 for the game at launch. The least they could do was ensure that everyone suffered from the same experience. And yet, here were repair kits to throw all of that into question.

Fallout 76 builds upon it's predecessors predilection towards scavenging-based gameplay and forces it's players to scrounge about for rare materials in order to keep their equipment functional, and build their base, and craft consumable, and keep fed. Basically, half the game is scavenging for resources. But no more with repair kits, now all once had to do was drop Bethesda a little extra schmeckles and they could walk away with a limited quantity of kits that would instantly repair an item no matter how damaged it was. Amazing! Also, a blatant break of the promise that was made to us all those months ago. But Bethesda assured us that this wasn't the case. 'Oh, that's not gameplay effecting *really*' they said. 'It just a quality of life tool for those that want it'. (Those maggots were so close to saying 'player choice' I could just feel it!)

Then there came the launch of Fallout's raids. You know, those 'franchise first' raids that they hyped up so much. The one thing that I once joked was my sole reason for picking up Fallout 76? Bet they put their time and effort behind that right? You know what they say 'you only get one chance to make a first impression.' So how did Bethesda do here? Well... let's just say that the team made it abundantly clear that no one in their office has so much as seen an MMO before. What they delivered was an insult to the concept of 'raids' beyond any shadow of a doubt. What was delivered was something more akin to Destiny's Strikes, yet somehow more repetitive and uninteresting. I'm talking dull lifeless areas, no unique enemies/ bosses, a freakin' recycled final boss and no new gameplay mechanics. (The Vault of Glass must be turning over in it's grave.)

But wait, it gets worse. You see, despite Fallout's raids being a bigger joke than the game itself, somehow the team managed to murder their game's stability by implementing them. How? The instancing technology of course. That 'innovative' idea that was figured out and developed by online developers literally decades ago? Yeah, Bethesda managed to mess that up. The result was game instability, rampant crashes, unresponsive servers and some unconfirmed reports of players losing literally everything in their inventory for the crime of trying to play the raid. (I personally lost an entire suit of Power Armour. Thank Atom it was my unimportant set.) So there was Fallout 76, worse then it was at launch. (Or maybe people were just more invested now and so it just felt worse.) How did Bethesda build back goodwill with their playerbase? By breaking their promise even more of course.

Now Bethesda had the bright idea of bringing to life some of the suggestions from the public, only ensuring to charge players for the privilege. That's right, once again the Atom store got dumped with non-cosmetics whilst the Bethesda team assured us that we were the crazy ones, no promises had been broken. This time they added a fridge and a scavenger robot. Seems inconsequential right? And it is, in the eyes of a non-player. Let me enlighten you.

People wanted working fridges for a very specific reason; food decay. You see, as Fallout 76 had inherited everything that Fallout 4 had to offer, that means the game also received Fallout 4's food buff system. That means that players could mix items together at a cooking stove in order to make useful consumables that empowered the player. This fits perfectly into an MMO environment as many games utilize this approach to provide an alternate play style that is rewarding and encourages players to diversify their team's skillset. Look at WoW, ESO or even BDO and you'll see how well this works. (Huh, MMO's love their three-letter acronyms.)

Bethesda had the bright idea of throwing a wrench in all of this by adding a decay meter to all items, weapons, armour and food. (Even cooked.) This made food-based gameplay incredibly unwieldly as one would have to literally hunt for fresh ingredients a few hours before undergoing their important task that they need this food for. That becomes a genuine problem when some of these ingredients come from incredibly hard to find/mine source, such as Strangler Dens or Scorchbeasts. (The endgame enemies.) Players would spend all of their time wondering exclusively around high level areas (even more than they already do) desperate and eager for Scorchbeasts hearts in order to make buff food that is required to help them survive a high level area. (See the catch-22 here?) Ultimately this made food-gameplay untenable and inspired a passioned plea from the players; add fridges so that we can store our food!

Bethesda heard there cries and decided to spit in our eyes by adding said refrigerators as premium only items that you had to pay in order to use. Bethesda defended this with their 'quality of life' excuse and sycophant Redditors came to the aid of Bethesda too. (Because we live in a timeline where people are so stupid they'll beg companies to screw them over.) A civil war started to brew in the official Reddit between people disgusted by Bethesda's constant lies and those that were well practised in the art of sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming until problem went away. Which it often didn't. Want to know the worst part? The cherry on top of the fecal-cake? The fridge only slows food decay down by 50%. (I can't even verbally express how utterly, unbelievably incompetent the FO76 team are. They should write books on how to fail at every level.)

"What sparked this rant?" You may wonder, "why have you decided to speak up now even though this matter has been going on for months." Well, my inquisitive friend, that is because something happened recently. Call it the proverbial straw that broke the camels back, or just that thin thread of respectful patience that I still maintained for this studio. And no, it wasn't the delaying of the much awaited 'gamechanging' Wastelanders expansion. That was a kick to the crotch but it was pretty much exactly what I was expecting. It's going to be an absolute trainwreck which may just finally finish this game off, but I'm still annoyed that I have to wait until 2020 to see it. (Do you guys really think it's wise to place the release of this DLC close to the launch of Cyberpunk 2077? If I were in your shoes I would rather delay it until 2021.)

No, this time they broke their promise for the final time. In fact, it wasn't just a breaking of the promise, it was an absolute evisceration. The team took an axe to their sacred word in the same blog post in which they announced that their 'game saving update' would miss the end of the year. Have you no shame? Just so that everyone knows what we're talking about, let me provide an excerpt from their news update regarding an impending shift in direction for the in-game store. (Known as the Atom shop) "Our approach to these items (Atom Shop microtransactions) at launch was to keep them purely cosmetic. But after looking at all the data, it became clear that to consistently deliver content that keeps Fallout 76 fresh and exciting for all, we needed to rethink our approach to the Atomic Shop." Did you catch that? "The Data" says we have to go back on our word, oh bother! All that talk about remaining on the "Right side" of monetisation? Yeah, we've changed our mind, we'll head on other to wrong side like the hypocrites we are. 

The best part of this announcement? Undoubtedly the way in which they straight up admit that all the other items that I've mentioned; Repair kits, Kitchens, scavenger bots, (Those were in the announcement trailer, by the by. Bethesda literally ripped them from the game to charge us down the line.) all of them were game items that made the game play better. Which, due to transitive value, means that those who chose not to partake were undergoing an inferior experience. (Bethesda really played themselves with that one.) The blog also makes empty promises about not "Upset(ing) the game's balance." Whilst ignoring the way that they artificially choked Atoms in order to force players to pay for them. Don't believe me? Just before the fridges dropped, their weekly Atom rewarding challenges included one to "Kill a ghoul in a nuked area". FYI, regular ghouls don't spawn in nuked areas and glowing ones don't count. Challenges kept getting this ludicrously specific, encouraging players to give the whole thing up and fork out on atom packs. (Funny, that almost seems like it's upsetting the game's balance.)

They've even had the gall to attempt to gaslight the community in believing it was their idea. "While we had many ideas on what to add to the Atomic Shop, one of the ways (Implementing premium-only 'QOL' items) was the direct result of the community’s feedback. We heard from many of you who wanted items with some real utility. " As an active member of that community, I can absolutely promise you that was not the case. Everytime Bethesda put one of these items into the game people complained incessantly until they just ended up quitting the game for the next few months. Even the defenders, airheaded though they are, had little more to back up their arguments then "It's just one little thing, it's not like this is going to become a trend." (It's not even worth an 'I told you so'.)

At this point I, as a consumer, have had enough. I'm just sick of getting belittled by these companies, some of whom I used to look up to. Bethesda were may heroes back in days of Fallout 3, and I'll still burn at the stake to defend Skyrim from those naysayers out there. What does the community receive for their dedication and support? Lies, broken promises and being sold out through a game which, by the way, they still haven't even bothered to finish fixing before announcing their plans to re-monetise. Honestly, it makes me nauseous to think about the respect I used to have for these people when I regard the lack they show their community. Maybe I'm a bit trumped-up right now, as the wound of betrayal is very much still fresh, but I don't want to so much as look at Bethesda's logo on anything right now, I'm that disgusted in them. My heart can't sink lower than when I think about how this is the company that is going to deliver The Elder Scrolls VI. If this was the straw that broke my respect, that'll undoubtedly be the one to break my heart.

Economy of Fallout: How Bethesda messed it up.

You've got to learn to haggle!

Money. It makes the world go around, as the popular adage goes, and such still very much applies with digital worlds. Oftentimes you'll find that certain video games, particularly RPG's, feature their very own realized economy. (Although it is almost always an economy propagated entirely on the sole efforts of the player. Implementing autonomy would be a bit too fancy.) These mechanics serve game systems by acting as a regulatory tool directed to players. By tying essential items to shops, Devs can naturally slow down a player's progression and taper off some of the more powerful items for later. (Disclaimer: This entire blog focuses purely on in-game stores and spending. No Microtransactions to speak of here, I'm talking pure in-game mechanics.)

Practical applications for video game economies stretch back as far as the first Zelda games, as well as Super Mario World. 'Ocarina of Time' gated some helpful tools behind Rupee requirements, encouraging players to explore around and break some vases. Super Mario World, on the otherhand, had some shop sections that felt more like a justification for the existence of coins. (Which had, of course, already been prevalent in the series.) But it did still encourage players to save up for useful power ups, so it achieved the desired effect.

Of course, as video games have become more advanced so too has the way that they've handled economy. (Some even do have autonomy.) The games that most commonly feature such systems, however, are still RPGs. With that in mind, I want to bring one the most popular western RPG franchises in the world under the spotlight; Fallout. You see, despite taking place in a post apocalyptic America 200-odd years in the future, the remnants of the civilized world are still supported on the back of capitalism. (All hail the mighty dollar bill!) However, I've always taken issue with the way the economy systems were implemented in Fallout and therefore I intend to analysis what it is about them that I think fundamentally doesn't work.

First I should establish, Fallout is an RPG series that presents itself as a life simulator. That doesn't mean that you'll spend every waking moment of gameplay worrying about filling up resource bars, unless you're the kind of sadist to opt into that experience, (like me) but rather that you accompany your avatar through the entirety of their daily life. This isn't the kind of RPG where you guide your character through dungeons and spend your free time sorting through loot, Fallout very much wants to immerse the player in their world in a very visceral manner. That means going through the process of manually scavenging areas, buying your own house, talking with fellow survivors and enjoying the little moments as much as the action packed ones. Incidentally, that also means that the player will spend considerable time buying things at the local shops.

Now there are a few services that shopping can provide the player, but I want to focus on the idea of equipment, which is typically the main draw of spending money (or Caps) in a Fallout game. In Bethesda's Fallout title; Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, you will find specialist shops that cater to different whims. Some shops sell food (in order to simulate the atmosphere of a restaurant), some shops sell medical supplies (In the same vein that Hospitals absolutely don't), and some are sole distributors of alcohol. (Offering you the bar room experience.) Of course, given that you live in a very dangerous world, the establishments that you most often frequent in these games are those that offer ammo, guns and armour, but most veteran Fallout players will likely end up avoiding these shops altogether.

This is partially due to the freedom that the Fallout games provide. You see, in Fallout the player is given a certain amount of interactivity with the world in order to establish the feeling of being a scavenger, a key role to play for surviving a post-apocalyptic world as well as a handy immersion building device. This means that you'll often be raiding super markets, dustbins, ammunition boxes, wardrobes and the bodies of the fallen. Naturally, the player will start to accumulate items and gear that begin to render the stores obsolete. Why should you spend your hard-earned caps in the store in order to buy some stimpaks when you can scavenge and get them for free? Of course, the hook comes in ensuring that there is some scarcity in the loot that you pick up, encouraging player to top up their supplies in the shops. However, this doesn't work with every type of item in the shops.

Many RPG series, such as Final Fantasy and the Tales games, allow you to loot a certain amount of items from the environment and/or battles that you fight. In Fallout, you can loot everything. All the items that your opponent had access to, all of their armour and all of their weaponry. (Although they do tend to have some magic bullets in their inventory which the player never seems able to find.)Again, this is great for the idea of immersion but pretty pants when it comes to balance. Who, honestly, plays a Fallout game and buys their weapons and armour? You can pick them off of literally anyone you come into contact with, so why wouldn't you? Need a hunting rifle, go pick off some Raiders. Assault rifles running dry, hunt down some Super Mutants. Energy weapons looking shoddy, the Enclave always have an excess. There is no need to spend a single cap.

A problem is presented from this system because items, weaponry and tools are the single most expensive things that a player can spend on in that game. (And they aren't that expensive anyway.) Remember when I mentioned how economy works as a regulatory tool in games? Well it also doubles as a measure of progression for the player as your spending power expands. In games like Grand Theft Auto V, you are presented with luxury vehicles, businesses, and clothing that are far outside of your spending range in the first few hours. As you start passing some missions, and robbing some banks, you'll start being able to drop your money on more cool looking items which showcase how far you've come in that gameworld in a very capitalistic way.

There is none of that sense of progression in the way that Fallout 3 and 4 operate. Weapons and armour are a fairly inexpensive investment that isn't even necessary to make. In Fallout 3, there was an attempt to establish some sort of balance through the implementation of a durability system. Weapon's would start to deteriorate causing to them malfunctioning, although store bought weapons tended to function better. This was offset, however, by the fact that guns could be repaired rathereasily by using parts from a similar class of weapon. (Remember, guns are everywhere in the Fallout universe.) In Fallout 4 Bethesda introduced legendary weapons in an attempt to provide more unique attributes to guns. This allowed for them to have exclusive weaponry existing in the game's shops, but was made moot by the fact that one could find their own weapons, sometimes with better stat rolls, just by grinding through the game. The result of this lack of store incentives meant that there was nothing to buy in the shops.

This was coupled by the fact that players often found themselves getting loaded with an absolutely excessive amount of ingame currency. You found it on enemies, in crates, were awarded it for doing quests, could obtain it by selling anything, at any point of time a player could be absolutely swimming in caps. First time players may be fooled into thinking this money is valuable, but it isn't long before they'll realize that they are living in a world with an overly excessive amount of currency (caps) and no hyperinflation. So, with nothing worth buying and too much money on your hands, Fallout's economy seems to be fundamentally broken at a core level. (Funnily enough, Bethesda don't seem to have this problem in their Elder Scrolls games for reasons that I may discuss at a later date.)

At the end of the day, you may wonder why any of this matters and why I care. Well firstly, I suppose it doesn't to Bethesda as they made the same mistake twice and seemed eager to ignore it. Secondly, I care because I'm a neurotic individual who bristles everytime systems don't run like clockwork or benefit each other in a mutual relationship. (This should be obvious by now.) This particularly bothers me because there is a way to do economy correctly in a Fallout game, and I'll be covering that myself when I look into how Obsidian's 'Fallout: New Vegas' handle their shop fronts.

New and improved

So is this a prequel to Omega Man or...

The other day I was walking down the street, (Huh, unintentional Arthur) and I happened upon a movie poster that really made me stop and stare. This wasn't because the strength of the marketing material, rather the opposite actually. This was a movie that was starring Will Smith, was soon to come out, and this poster was the first I'd seen of it. Even now, with the thing out, I'm still yet to see a trailer. (How little did you guys leave your marketing team with?) It seemed particularly noteworthy given that the movie boasted the enviable gimmick of pitting Will Smith against Will Smith for some reason. (Again, haven't seen a trailer so I don't have context.) However, I was curious enough, from the poster, to look up how and why this movie exists.

I discovered that this film, Gemini Man, was making use of de-aging technology in order to have a modern day version of Will Smith battle against a version of him that looks like he just walked off the set of Fresh Prince. (Okay, he doesn't look that young.) This makes sense giving that the 'wow' tech of modern years has been the systems that can be make actors digitally appear younger in a convincing way. Just look at Disney's attempts in 'Civil War', 'Antman & the Wasp' and 'Endgame'; as well as... Disney's work in 'Star Wars: Rogue One'. (I guess The House of Mouse are really the ones pushing this, now I think about it.) All this got me thinking about the idea of going back and sprucing things up, whether it be an actor's face, an old film's picture quality, or an entire franchise. With that in mind, let's talk about remasters. (No, you're a weak segueway!)

Ask any film fan about their feelings towards reboots and re-releases and you'll likely hear the same response across the board. "I don't why studios keep rehashing the same ideas instead of doing something new. It's just a waste of time, money and talent." (Those same people will then proceed to watch those movies.) There is a slightly different sentiment when it comes to how these things are handled in games. We've yet to get a significant full-blown reboot in the video game market (With the exception of, perhaps, 'Bionic Commando' and 'Sonic Boom'), but we have certainly seen a lot of remasters, re-releases and a few remakes, especially as we're nearing the twilight of this console generation. Gamers are, therefore, more forgiving to some approaches whilst more critical in others.

Firstly, there are the re-releases. These are always a celebrated event when it comes to film. It's the chance for modern movie goers to experience an event in cinematic history that they may have missed out on long ago. Fans can see cult classics like 'Back to the Future', 'The Godfather' and 'Apocalypse Now' on a theatre screen like they were meant to be seen. There isn't a movie fan alive who wouldn't get a little giddy as such a prospect. For gaming, on the otherhand, re-releases are something a lot more cynical. Game releases are never a huge event beyond being the point at which the public can finally get their hands on the software. When those games come back around for a re-release, it's usually just an excuse for the studios to update some minor things and slap it back on store shelves for full price. (In that sense, I guess it's a celebratory event for the accountants.)

We see this for games like 'Dishonored: Definitive edition' and the constant Nintendo reduxes of 'Ocarina of Time'. These are situations in which the company has decided that they need to re-establish their game's value and rake in the same sort of money that they originally saw. This is often the case when a new Console generation has launched and it doesn't support backwards compatibility. (Or it does support backward compatibility and they just knowingly opt out of the process so they can make a quick buck.) Defenders will often point to slight graphical improvements as justification, but I chose the above two games for a reason. 'Dishonored: Definitive edition' is a game that is attempting to impprove upon a highly stylized original product, to very little avail. The only noticeable improvement is a frame rate bump, and that is hardly worth £60. For Zelda, on the otherhand, Nintendo don't even touch the frame rate. (It's part of the charm, I guess.) All they do is touch up the controls, fix a decades old design decision every now and then, and slap a heavy price tag on the box. In gaming, we use the term 're-release' to refer to the laziest form of a company capitalizing on your nostalgia.

Remasters are a slight step up from Re-releases, although their quality can vary greatly. Once again, these usually crop up when a game becomes inaccessible, due to an across-the-board hardware upgrade, and the primary concern is ensuring the product is playable once again. However, game companies sometimes decide that they want to take advantage of the new tech available, or they have to in order to make the thing function, and so we get these 'improved' products labelled 'remasters'.

The problem is that sometimes these 'remasters' get the things we love about the original wrong. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD went the graphical improvement route, only to sacrifice some of the advanced graphical integrity of the original. Sure it looks better when all you do is count pixels, but the artistic merit sometimes suffers. This is because these remasters are usually not handled by the same people who made the original and sometimes not even the same studio. It's like asking members of the public to restore a faded painting, sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you were better off living it alone. One game in which this was certainly the case was the 'Return to Arkham' remasters of 'Arkham Asylum' and 'Akham City'. There are countless examples of the way how almost every character model in the game were uglied in the pursuit of 'graphical improvement'. (With the exception of Harley Quinn, who got so much attention put into her it makes me wonder about the priories of the team responsible.) Just look at the comparison between the different version's of the iconic Hugo Strange interrogation scene from the beginning of  'Arkham City.'

Finally, and most rarely, we have the remake, which is the closest thing to a reboot we have in the gaming industry. This is when a gaming company makes the decision to go back to one of it's beloved classics and rebuild it from the ground up, with new textures, gameplay, story, VA's and just about everything really. To be honest, we see so many changes in these projects that they might as well be called 'reimagineings'. But Hollywood managed to make that term sound excessively wishy-washy so we'll stick with remake. This is probably the easiest to respect out of the examples of re-releases in the gaming market, as it is the process in which Devs put the most effort and thought into and truly do earn that price tag.

Capcom have dabbled in the remake territory before, with the decent 2001 remake of the original Resident Evil and the spectacular 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2. Both these games show examples of games that are deigned to capture the spirit of the original, but still take things in a different direction. Resident Evil 2 (2019) even goes so far so to restructure the fundamental game in order to better fit modern game design conventions. Square Enix also hope to jump onto the bandwagon soon with their Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which ditches the semi-turn based style of the original in favour of a full action game approach. Major story beats have been changed or reshuffled in order to accommodate for a brand new episodic structure which is going to have us RPG fans reliving the story of Cloud until 2025. (At least.) Unlike with movie remakes, these remakes are not attempting to replace the original product, rather celebrate everything that those games got right and present a new way that they could have been handled. (Now for the love of god remake MGS 3, Konami. Please!)

Some may look at these practises and conclude that they are examples of the game industry moving backwards rather than forwards, and in a way they would be right. But art, as a whole, is a medium in which you can revisit the pieces you love time and time again and find something new and special. That makes it as much about looking back as it does about looking forward. And considering how every game is devolving into a 'live-service' abomination of late, it helps to take a look back at the classics of old and remind ourselves why it is that we love games in the first place.