Rockstar did the unthinkable

My Dark Lord, how the mighty do fall!

Ahahaha! I could very easily make this entire blog just me laughing from start to finish at the lunacy of the news we had bestowed upon us not too long ago, and though I spoke about 'Grand Theft Auto The Trilogy: The Definitive Edition' very recently, this freakin' story is moving a mile a minute and I cannot help but stand on the side-lines gawking at it all. Rockstar have come forth with an honest-to-goodness canned PR 'statement' regarding the state of their 'remastered' collection and it reads like the bitter reality-warping perspective of a man recently convicted to death row. My favourite part is the steady and repeated assertation that not only is the state of the game "unexpected", handily rephrasing the concept of 'we didn't do any due diligence of testing the thing we decided to pawn off on you for premium price', and the summation of all issues as "Technical difficulties". That sounds a lot nicer, doesn't it? "Technical Difficulties". We've all had "Technical difficulties" before, and most of the time it isn't even our fault. (Or at least, that's what we tell ourselves) I'd much rather have "Technical difficulties" than a bankrupt creativity propped up by unsubstantiated faith in my own substandard abilities.

But here's the rub, as much as I want to point the finger at Grove Street Games, and their previous products make it really easy to, at the back of my heart I know that even they probably didn't want to put out a product this half assed. Before launch Rockstar's own previous PR work mentioned that this product was two years in the making, and though I go back and forth on this topic like the winds of nature, today I'm feeling like that's just a straight lie. Yep, I'm back to my previous idea that the actual developers were hired around April and just rushed to do an AI upscaling job to stretch around a rough Unreal Engine frame they hastily stuck together in order to meet an unrealistic deadline. That seems like the most likely sequence of events in my mind. (Although none of that excuses the CEO being cringe inducingly antagonistic on Twitter, but there's just another prime reason why no one should ever be on that hell-spawn platform: everything that comes from it is a mistake.)

None of this is the reason why I spent the morning of reading this laughing like a victim of a two hour straight sauna-bath filled with Joker gas. I'm giggling like a lunatic because lo-and-behold, within the space of less than a month, Rockstar, the gaming epitome of the one-mile-long ship, has turned about face. Do you remember how one of the most damning aspects of all this was the way that Rockstar delisted the original games from purchase on any online front, essentially nuking themselves as their only competition? Basically doing a George Lucas and saying "The original doesn't exist, only my creatively bankrupt copy that isn't worthy of the praise heaped upon the originals"? You remember that? Well, good-golly, am I seeing things or is the original trilogy back up for purchase on the Rockstar Games launcher? Well how about that, ladies and gentlemen, I do believe our boys in yellow just did a classic flip-flop manoeuvre!

Read the words of the team writing about this and see how they, in their typically gormless self-characterisation, chime how "we also understand that some of you would still like to have the previous classic versions available for purchase." I love how they phrase that. 'Oh, some of would like to preserve the originals!? Well how droll, who would ever even consider such a thing? Well, I suppose I can relinquish some small boon upon you curious peasant animals out there" The flower of benelovance has considerably wilted over the years, however, because this relisting is only on Rockstar's personal 'we get 100% of the profits' store and not on Steam or any of the console stores. Their canned statement talks about how they want these games to be 'playable' on all platforms, which is why this remaster was needed, but considering that all the platforms these games were pulled from seemed to manage running these game perfectly... well is it any surprise that Rockstar's management consists of pathetic falsehood-spouting-machines in suits?

Unfortunately, none of this means that the team are abandoning their new remasters, they can't because those games sell for £50 and there's no way Rockstar is going back to game which can be purchased in their entirety for a fifth of that. (This all comes down to potential profits, make no mistake about that.) Instead, Rockstar are going to treat this like any other gaming company far past their prime treats their mistakes and turn this into a live service. Patches and hotfixes over the next year to make you think that they're on the ball and hopefully forget the fact that this whole process would be infinitely quicker if they had done this before release. (Hell, I bet they don't even handle the patching themselves and just hoist it off to Grove Street again. They've spectacularly embarrassed themselves and the products they touch time and time again, but I'm sure this time will be their 'time to shine'!)

From this point the question we must ask ourselves is the one imparted by common sense, why should we expect Rockstar's standards of quality to suddenly rise? For the best 8 years Rockstar have made it abundantly clear that all they care about are first party titles and everything else, even addendums to those titles via online modes, can be outsourced to teams they never even communicate with. (Except to maybe fill their feeding troughs every Friday, or however mistreated these studios need to be to put out as low effort as they do) At this point I guess what I'm really asking is what is the minimum bar that Rockstar feels they need to limp over in order to justify pulling the originals off the store front again and spitting in the face of 'game preservation'. I don't believe the company mood has 'changed' any significant degree, just the messaging fuelling it.

If there is one positive that I can pull from all of this, it's that Rockstar haven't gone the distance of dunking Grove Street Games infront of the incoming bus of fan reaction, and if fact this statement even went so far as to half-heartedly defend them. (They didn't even go for the boiler-plate 'this will not be tolerated'. They do like these guys, right?) There's some mild respect inherent for a company willing to stand for it contractors, no matter how embarrassing a product they deliver, although maybe that's just Rockstar trying to cover their own backs because of the disgusting way their legal team have treated the community up until now. They see themselves reflected in the the plucky underdog team over at Grove Street Games, and that's... admirable?

Overall I take the victory of the originals coming back online, small though it is, for it proves that there is a line of overall public revoltion that Rockstar will ultimately listen and respond to. Only if it threatens to totally scrap their carefully crafted image of quality, that is. Committing to cleaning up their 'definitive' mess is certainly going to be a point of celebration for some folk, and probably will be enough to put out the rampant fires that are already built up, but I'm a firm believer of judging actions over promises, and I'm just waiting for Rockstar to wait until they think no one is watching them anymore and then dump this remastered collection like a sack of potatoes. If you really think they're going to potentially put their next big budget industry shaker on hold because of this nonsense, I invite you to come back in a year and compare the patch notes over the months to observe the slow decline of interest topped off with total abandonment. Still, thanks for the old games back Rockstar, for however long that lasts... 

DEfinAtIVE eDItiON

 The writing was on the wall

I wonder what the big thing everyone is still talking about is? Hmm, it's still the Grand Theft Auto The definitive edition? How is that even possible? You'd have thunk that growing up in the modern world of gaming, fraught with development studios who vastly overestimate their own abilities to deliver upon their lofty development goals in the pitiable time frames they assert over themselves, we'd have gotten just that little bit used to disappointment. I mean, despite the vast deluge of exemplary examples from Rockstar's own history, most of Nintendo's catalogue and special little one-offs like The Witcher 3 all proving that when you take the time to make the right game in the right way, the final product lands with so much more staying power and fans play it for longer, these people insist on shooting themselves in the foot and their fans through colleteral. You would literally be making less work for yourself, in needing to keep up with some impossible two year cycle, if all of these stupidly rich video game companies would just exercise a modicum of restraint. But I guess we can't be happy with restraint, now can we?

But I like to think that the general revoltion runs a little deeper than that for this particular mistake, which is why we can all tell pretty early on that this is going to be one of those blunders that really sticks. There's some misbelief rubbed into those grubby waking eyes, something muggy sticking to the sluggish ducts of those waking up and seeing what Rockstar really are. Lazy. Greedy. Unrepentant. It's something that they've hidden decently well to a lot of people out there with their suite of incredible games as far back as anyone can remember boosted by their cavalier non-conformist attitude, appropriate of their moniker, which made them seem entirely distinct from the rest of the gaming industry. These were the developers who just got the job done. Who dotted their I's, crossed their T's, and who delivered nothing but the full package. Only those who really paid attention to the hack-job online modes their previous two biggest games launched with could really start to see the obvious signs that some major dissonance was readily present in their QA standards. And the Definitive Edition, unable to be masked by the release of anything else before it or upcoming, demonstrated that dissonance nakedly on a stage before the world.

By accounts coming out now, and what is obvious to all, The Remasters of the GTA games were not handled by the main studios, but rather by a smaller separate studio that has been working with the Rockstar collective for some years now, Grove Street Games. Now you may look upon that name and go "Hey, I recognise that name! 'Grove street' from San Andreas, right? These guys are an official part of the Rockstar team, then?" Not quite. In fact, anyone actually familiar with this smaller group's work would have seen immediate neon embedded, silk woven, burning red flags if Rockstar had been more forthcoming about their association with this team in these remasters, because their blunders have made them legendary. Grove Street are the guys responsible for the mobile ports of the original trilogy of games, all of which are dotted with issues here and there, but for San Andreas, the grand game which Grove Street decided to try their own little remaster for, the damage was piquant.

San Andreas was treated to a port that came with it's own bunch of lighting fixes, vibrancy modifications and code updates. Nothing on the scale of these remasters, but enough to make people initially interested in this old classic's new facelift. But when it dropped that version of the game arrived with a slew of obvious issues that couldn't be shied away from. Glaring physics problems, control issues, missing controls, distracting auto-jump, comparative graphical shortcomings, and no anti-aliasing whatsoever. Grove Street also handled the special HD Remaster for San Andreas PC which, surprise surprise, was just a lazy port of that bizarre and arguably inferior mobile version with problems almost entirely untouched and a hatchet job UI rip-out which occasionally revealed the mobile flesh this skin-job was hiding. And of course, Rockstar worked with these guys to patch this version of the game over their originals on all platforms so that everyone had their flawless original replaced by this slight mess. Further proof that this reality is written by George Lucas where everything does, once again, rhyme.

It's hard not to look at what is happening right now and not turn around on Grove Street Games for continuing to be disappointments after so many failed attempts to make these games better. I mean, I very much want to recognise that these are a studio full of people and the mistakes they make are honest and not vindictive. I want to say that the assumed AI upscaling they did for most of these remasters (which would explain some of the distended skeletons and misspelt textures) is due to this team trying their damndest to meet a heavy demand from Rockstar. But I hear that apparently this remaster has been in development for two years and it becomes a little bit harder to be understanding, and then any lingering pity is stamped out when CEO of the company turns full bitter sarcastic stand-up comedian on Twitter with the comment "It’s so fun to see players out there really enjoying what we’ve put together for them. I’m honestly enjoying this unparalleled level of scrutiny on our studio." Seems our man loves pissing off the public and hearing the consequence of crappy work, so why deprive the man of what he wants? 

Theirs isn't the only company with executives that don't know how to stuff a sock down their throat when it's needed, although at least the main Rockstar team aren't doing this stupid stuff on Twitter. No, instead people have been pulling out an interview where a Rockstar executive was explaining how their company's unique dedication to the remastering process makes their remasters so much more successful than others. A questionable alleged supremacy to boast about in this modern industry where remasters have given way to full blown remakes, but I understand the sentiment. It is always more special when the developer manages to touch up the originals during the remaster process in order to bring them closer in line with modern game design standards whilst simultaneously enriching the nostalgia of those who loved the originals. Yet, once more, this was handled very questionably with this collection. Improvements to controls, movement and camera are present, and life changers, but outside of these raw controls, the very art of the game has suffered causing what many are calling an all-around inferior product. (And no matter where you do fall on such an issue, I think we can all agree it's overpriced for what it is.) So all in all, dated statement is dated.

And then we come around to that surprising back and forth job Rockstar did where they released the game and then immediately unreleased it on PC. Within a day the entire Rockstar launcher went down (preventing people from playing any Rockstar game which uses it) only to go back up after some maintenance with the new title utterly removed. Rockstar have been tight-lipped about exactly why the title needed to be immediately reworked, and despite the online faux-bravado of their sardonic CEO, Grove Street Games aren't in the mood of outing their own short-comings, so we're left with speculation. But as for that speculation, we have a couple pretty good contenders. The first is the theory I mentioned last time, where the game was immediately cracked and Rockstar pulled the trilogy down in order to protect their files being absconded and piracy drumming up. But the much more believable theory, which I'm starting to believe more and more with how lazy Grove Street Games has proven up until now, is that the Hot Coffee sex minigame which got Rockstar in trouble 16 years ago (and directly led to Rockstar falling out with the larger industry and refusing to go to E3 in the years since) had it's dormant files still in the newest release. This is something that the game had all the way back when it first launched on PC, and mods have since come out to reactive the content so everyone could look and laugh about what all the fuss was about. (It was silly and it's even sillier today) But to think that this little chunk of a minigame could persist across a port to mobile and back to PC, (because we know the San Andreas remaster comes directly from mobile port) well, let's just say that's a perfect summary of Grove Street Games' dedication to perfection. They have none.

Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition is the Cyberpunk 2077 of 2021, and they managed it with a fraction of the amount of money put into a marketing campaign. (take notes, CDPR; these guys can match your disappointment on a budget) Just as with Cyberpunk, I get struck with a distinct clinging miasma of sadness when I think about this game and the ruined potential, as well as the burned bridges that 2K helped facilitate with their removal of the originals and the assassination of various modding projects. (One of which I saw mentioned was just a freakin' shared save file, which is edging ever closer to a point where their lawyers are going to overreach, inviting a landmark counter-suit and, in doing, set a groundwork which ultimately screws over digital file ownership for ever single greed-drenched corporate worm like them and I cannot wait for that glorious day.) It just sucks because all I wanted out of this was a good Remaster. Heck, at least I bought the originals back in the day so I can still play those.

Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 6

 Go for the eyes!

Yes, after all this time talking about the thing and looking from far away, I've bitten the proverbial bullet and scooped up Baldur's Gate III at it's eye watering full price. Typically I wouldn't even dream of doing such, (I'm a child of the steam sales, always) but seeing as how I've fallen in love with Baldur's Gate, and that this a game being helmed by the infinitely talented Larian Studios, I figured it was only fair I supported the Early Access. Heck, I want the game to be the best it can be and if my tiny investment goes towards helping that in some vague wishy-washy way, then I can be happy. Plus, I was getting antsy from watching all of this gameplay, and hearing all the praise about how this is the single most AAA CRPG ever made. I just had to jump aboard! (And I couldn't wait another year, like the optimistic projections are saying until full release) And so I've completed a full playthrough of Patch 6's early access content, and here are my thoughts.

Optimisation. Oh my god. I assume that this is going to be something that the team will work on and reiterate as the game starts to finish off it's content, as that is typically the cycle for this sort of thing, but as it stands right now the game pretty much only runs decently on big powerful rigs. Those stats on the Steam page, they will run the game, but be prepared for heavy slowdown, stupidly long load in times, and the occasional temporary freeze up. (My game crashed 3 times over the 67 hours that I played. Which isn't a crazy amount, but still a lot more than Divinity Original Sin 2 has crashed for me in around about the same amount of time. Which is 0. Original Sin 2 had been nice to me.) I was able to endure, however, despite serious doubts when I first started playing, and after getting in my first proper brawl I was hooked to the point of not even noticing the slow down issues anymore. Which speaks wonders for the game on offer, does it not?

Visually we have easily one of the best looking role playing games of all time with a presentation quality that inches close to AAA. Far removed from the very dated graphics of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 or the pleasing but budgeted visuals of Tyranny and Pathfinder, Baldur's Gate is all fantastic lighting, high quality models, cinematic camera angles and animations for just about everything. Whereas other CRPGs are getting used to storybook sections, Baldur's Gate 3 refuses to take the player out of the world for a single second, even when it's to show us our protagonist sticking their thumb into a brain in order to cripple it. Of course, being still in Early Access there are still some rough edges and unfinished animations here and there, but that doesn't detract from the whole package nearly as much as you'd think. Larian wanted to put their best foot forward here, and provided you have the rig to overpower the optimisation issues, you'll be treated to an absolutely gorgeous looking modern CRPG who's presentation is currently unmatched across the genre's market.

Which brings me to the first bit of the actual game you'll find, the character creation menu. Just as with Original Sin, the game allows you to make your own fresh character or jump into the 'origin stories' of one of the companions from the game. (Only, the companions aren't currently implemented PCs in Early Access yet.) Right now we have a range of the typical choices of races to choose through (the only somewhat exotic races are Tieflings and Drow) and every typical class except for Paladin. (Which most are pretty certain is going to be the final added class to the game.) The actual set-up for classes is as straight forward as it could be and that ease-of-access doesn't just come from the inherited accessibility of fifth edition. Larian don't lay out the chart of exactly what feats you're going to get at what level in order to encourage you to min max before you've even started playing, they just want you to slap together a character in their simple, yet glossy, creator suite and get to playing who you want. (Unfortunately, I'm currently playing Pathfinder Kingmaker, so I'm naturally inclined to minmax anyway, but I appreciate the olive branch and I'm sure many other more casual CRPG player will too.)

But what about the actual action of this title? What does it play and feel like? Well, I'm pleased, but not entirely surprised, to say we're looking at a gameplay loop of the same, or perhaps even a little superior, quality as Original Sin, which is to say that it's an incredible unique gem on the cluttered battlefield of popular established role-playing games. Combat is turned-based with orders and initiative, rather different from the Baldur's Gate games that proceeded it, and battles are limited to specifically loving designed potential combat encounters with alternative fronts, ways to sneak around and sometimes even exploitable environmental hazards. (The first time a Goblin priestess telekinetically pulled down an statue ontop of my party I pretty much jumped out of my seat in surprise) You won't be harangued by endless random ambushes here, and that's thanks to Larian's propensity for fine tuning every fight to feel unique or have some sort memorable angle to them. Skills are split into actions and bonus actions, which means there's no more juggling between moving or hitting, spells are managed by Spell slots so you're forced to pay attention to how many you've used, and the basic 'advantage/disadvantage' rules apply here so if you're familiar with 5th edition at all, you'll pick up this game's mechanics practically instinctually. 

What really makes this game's combat stand out even more than Original Sins', however, is the amount of creativity available. You've still got the elemental surfaces and combinations, only they're less shoved in your face for gimmick's sake here. Ontop of all of that you have verticality, and height advantages. (in Patch 6 it's not an advantage roll but a + to attack rolls, which is still really cool) This gets really exciting when mixed with abilities that actually apply force and knock people around, like the 'shove' action which can send enemies flying. Some of my coolest moments are from sneaking up on a tough enemy and then thunderwave blasting them off a high perch and just watching those hit points melt away. It makes combat feel that bit more tactile for those who aren't spell wielders and taps into those fantastic moments when I, as the player, can take a minute off, look at my vast repertoire of skills and say "Okay, so how do I win this encounter?" Patch 6 supplemented this with an array of special weapon actions that martial characters can choose to do that are meant to mimic some of the versatility of table top play; such as firing an arrow at an enemies hamstring in order to hobble their movement range.

As with any RPG, the act of levelling is of vast importance to the flow of both the gameplay and the narrative as it allows the player to slowly be introduced to more abilities they can mess around with. I actually found the levelling to be fairly rapid in Early Access and I managed to hit this build's max of Level 4 before even touching the Underdark. Which actually leads into one of my concerns given that the team have already discussed how this game isn't going to have level 20, but instead cap out at around 10-14. Levels do stretch out the more you play, that's natural progression for tabletops, but even then hitting four levels before leaving the first overworld is pretty rapid. With this rate I wouldn't be surprised if we're playing the entire last act of the game at max level, and that doesn't make for a very engaging experience. Personally, I prefer when max level is something you could feasibly not reach if you don't touch all the bonus content, so as to help incentivise side quests beyond the promise of gold I don't need or magic items that aren't as good as the ones I have.

One quirk of Baldur's Gate 3 that I simply love is the way that the big bad dice from which everything in the game is decided, can be visualised in certain check scenarios. So if you're picking a lock, disarming a trap or making a persuasion roll, the game will show you a virtual die, give you a chance to add modifiers, and then let you see as the dice is rolled in front of you. It's an ingenious way of conjuring up the excitement of a rolling die, the anticipation of the flailing and the euphoria of hitting that result you needed. With this visual stimuli, I even didn't care so much about not hitting my quota, because I could visually make out the fact that it was random luck, dispelling that admittedly philistine suspicion I otherwise always get. Heck, most of the time I even just let a bad result lie, which speaks to the effect of something as simple as a flashy graphic. (Although the fact that I'm playing an early access does also lend to that sense of 'forgive and forget')

 

A big concern that I have left the Early Access with, however, pertains to the world and how Larian want to handle it, because I'm worried that they're going the same route that they once did with Divinity Original Sin. In those games, the game's overworlds were all directly connected to one another from the map, meaning you would walk from one location to another. What this did was make it so that everything felt really close together and robbed that illusion of a grand journey which I might have otherwise loved. Even just having these separate overworlds split by a map UI screen does wonders for breathing life into the illusion, just as Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 did. Larian have already confirmed that the game will not feature a day/night cycle, which seems to indicate that everything will unfortunately be interconnected maps, and that's a bit of a shame. However, I did stumble upon an unfinished road and the graphic which greeted me was a map of the Sword Coast with areas highlighted inside of it, so perhaps there is hope. (Although, in hindsight, the highlighted areas were close together to one another, so that might just be a mock-up of the full game's fast travel map.)

Perhaps the most questionable part of the game so far comes from the story and the way that this game justifies it's title as Baldur's Gate 3. Beyond being set in the Sword Coast, I'm not entirely convinced, and even though I think this update came with huge lore implications (which I mentioned on a previous BG3 blog) there's no direct link for this game yet beyond a few ingame books which mention the Bhaalspawn struggle. The story we've been shown so far is interesting, but reliant on far too much secrecy to be engaging or exciting. The lore enthusiast in me wants to know what these True Souls are, and the romanticist hopes the visions presented by those tadpole dreams really do represent the scale the narrative will reach, but right now the pragmatist is going hungry and it's leaving me overall feeling like the meal is uneven. The voice acting is top notch, however, and the narrator's voice is... intense. In a good way. I like hearing her tell me things, which is good for a voice that's going to accompany me throughout the breadth of the narrative. (Even if she once misread the word 'Adamantine' as 'Adamantium' in the Grymforge update. I can forgive.) 

Original Sin 2 is well known for a great many of it's boons, one of which being the suite of cool companions that you love to get to know. (Even though that's sullied by the twist at the end of the prologue, but that's neither here nor there) Companions are a huge part of any DnD game, and I have to say that so far everyone of them, apart from Wyll, is standing out as interesting to me. (And that's only because I literally walked past Wyll and had to backtrack in order to get him, cutting out huge parts of potential character development.) There's a pleasing array of personalities that aren't too neatly cut down paths of 'this is the good character' and 'this is the evil character'. Although Astarion is unrepentantly selfish, but his character revels in his pomposity and so that's a side of him that fits neatly. I think there's still a lot of work to do with making them integral parts of the world, but seeing all of the stellar worldbuilding they're doing around Shadowheart's cult, all of which has me forming an impression on her without her even opening her mouth, I have faith that Larian know how to do this naturally and succinctly. (Seriously though, Shar's worshippers sound like a literal violent death cult, almost at direct odds with Shadowheart's relative mellow confidentiality. It makes her secrecy all the more intriguing.)

There's so much I would love to talk about, but given that this blog is dragging on I'd prefer to wrap up with a piece on some of the bosses present so far, because they are just brilliant. Right now there are a handful of main quest bosses as well as harder optional ones, and each fight has it's own unique element to it that is unlike anything other CRPGs are doing right now. (Beside, I suppose, POE II's megabosses) You have your typical 'this guy has a bunch of HP, cool spells and an artefact', but then you get a piece of a boss like the Giant Phase Spider Queen who can teleport, birth mini baby spiders, and has a strong ranged attack. She's a higher level than you can actually reach in the game so far, and facing her straight up is a real hassle, but her arena is fitted with web walkways that you can shoot out from under her in order to do big falling damage, making a normal boss fight into a mechanics one naturally. And that doesn't even touch upon fights like the Eternal Protector from the latest Grymforge update, who is almost built like a lower level MMO raid boss with the way mechanics play into that fight. I won't spoil it, but it's engaging and changes up an already versatile combat system to help create a truly distinct feeling play experience. 

There is so much potential with Baldur's Gate III, and so few fundamental issues that can't be chalked up to 'it's early access' and 'they're working on it'. I could complain about how genuinely awful the menu UI is, but it's an Early Access and their working on it. Same with the optimisation. Same with the lack of major story hooks. (All of the game so far is still just act I) If you look at everything this game is right now, it shines as an example of a game that has it's head on straight, knows what it's trying to be and feels destined to become something of an RPG gold standard when it drops, just as Original Sin 2 before it was. Larian always won me over with their plucky underdog act, and Baldur's Gate is looking like the cherry atop of their increasingly impressive list of development achievements. (I couldn't be happier for them) This isn't a review, so I'm not going to stick on a score, but I will absolutely recommend this to anyone who wants to try out a CRPG but thinks Pillars of Eternity is too intimidating, or Pathfinder is too complicated, (both fair assumptions) Baldur's Gate III is welcoming, enticing, fun, unfinished so far, but special. (You know, provided you have the computer to run it.)

Mass Effect will continue

 Apparently...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lies of P: Looking as good as ever

 So how is Monstro going to translate into this world? It's going to be horrifying. Isn't it?

I don't even know why I call this a 'gaming blog', it should just be a 'souls-like' blog for the amount of times I find ways to wind out paragraphs about various entropic, depressing worldscapes littered with former men now turned beasts. I'm going to actually have to get around to finishing Lords of the Fallen in order to talk about that next. (Dear god, don't make me. I couldn't stand going across the same area for the third time in a row.) Everytime I think "It's high time you put down that genre for a little bit and move onto literally anything else", whoops, a new trailer for that one game I really liked the look of flies out of nowhere. So here we are again, with actual gameplay this time for Lies of P. Which, just for the sake of those who might have been absent for the reveal, refers to the story of Pinocchio. Yes, I'm intrigued too. I wonder what grows longer in this adaptation? (Probably nothing, the nose thing was a short bit of the source material that Disney stretched into the entire moral of the movie.) 

We all know the bare basic ingredients that smash together in order to make our most favourite Soulslikes; a typically weighty approach to combat, unforgiving bosses, a tendency towards Dark Fantasy worlds because that sort of setting slides neatly up alongside this sort of challenge. What what is it about the Lies of P that sets it apart from a lot of the other games that have caught the Soulslike bug? Well, apart from the fact it's set to star a dark fantasy version of freakin' Pinocchio, the game proposes a clockwork word for players whereupon enemies seem to be almost all jerky-movement, wind-up powered, Victorian-era, mechanisms that bring to mind fond memories of game worlds like Bioshock Infinite and that stock of creativity. It's a small change to the artistic approach, but it does open up a whole new world of possibility with enemy and boss designs, and perhaps even some creative boss mechanics involving messing with clockwork mechanisms. I'm speculating a little but all of this makes for fertile ground, and that inspires me.

Lies of P takes us to the fictional city of Krat and places us, as the boy wonder himself, on the path to find our 'father' Geppetto who has called out to us and whom I suspect to be either the final boss or at least the prelude to some version of the Blue fairy as the final boss. (Yes, former safe mother figure twisted into vile, destructive caricature; I can't imagine a Souls-like not shooting for that) What follows seems to be a journey across an industrial era cityscape wherein the organic citizens have been exorcized from the populace and all that's left seem to be these, perhaps former service robots, gone brutally rogue. (At least, I think the human's are gone, judging from the one man we see hung from his feet and disembowelled from the trailer) The jittery, jerky movements of these creatures remind me a little bit of the animatronics from later Five nights at Freddy's games, and it makes me wonder if the developers are going to take advantage of that and have some light horror elements based around their animacy. Perhaps a show room floor full of seemingly inactive robots that displace themselves when the player isn't looking, get creative with it.

Our Napoleonic Pinocchio differs from your typical soulslike protagonist and not just because of their fancy dress sense. They have a clearly defined place in this world and a relationship to it's people, there doesn't yet appear to be this leaning into his diminutive place within the ecosystem of Krat, and most importantly of all, from everything we've see it would appear that our character only seems to dabble with finesse-based weaponry. Now this could be a misnomer and the full game has it's far share of clunky heavy weapons too, (There was one huge sawblade weapon which could swing either way) but right now I've noticed there's a lot of rapiers, scimitars, and other tools that aid a faster, lighter combat then one would typically expect in this genre, and that pans out against the gameplay that we see in this early peek.

Our action portions here have a speed and swing to them that almost looks akin to a pared back hack'n'slash game at times, even going so far as to give our character a full parry move that seems to be activated by triggering a guard at the right time, rather than by purposely leaving oneself open with a stupid slapping motion. (Always thought Dark Souls' version of 'parrying' was conceptually bizarre) Another example of this fast-action comes from a little clip where we see P running around rooftops across from a gun wielder, only to shoot some sort of hook out and drag that enemy across a roof towards them, sort of like Nero's devil bringer from DMC 5. Although, to be fair, that also has similarities to Sekrio, as does the parrying system and the lighter feel in general, which leads me to believe that particular Souls game would have been a stronger inspiration than the others here. (Although the visual style is obviously Bloodborne-esque)

What we've had a lack of so-far of these trailers, and given their importance to this style of game it really does stand out, is bosses. So far we've only seen one for certain in this trailer and perhaps a quick glance at another. (Although that animatronic Bobby police-man could easily have been just another really big enemy) I hope there's effort being put into their designs beyond just making them a bigger damage dealer with more health, because I really do think some ingenuity could slip in and make this one of the most creative boss-wielding Soulslikes with the right care. That which we have seen however, which doesn't include any boss combat whatsoever, does have a visual motif to it that a wild thought of mine immediately compared to Nier Automata, from the scavenged, mismatched but graceful look to him. Should this boss match any of the grandeur of Simone, I would be simply ecstatic. 

Of course I do have my concerns going forward, which is natural when we're talking about a genre that I am this deeply engrained with. And, rather bizarrely considering everything I have praised so far, it comes from the actual enemy design. (I know; I'm a man at war with himself.) They look good, great even, but they just don't scream 'Souls' to me just yet. And yes, that could easily come from the fact that we haven't had a clockwork themed iteration of this genre just yet, granted, but I think there's this lack of utter surreal which most every souls covets. From every descriptor I just provided, you could ignore all screenshots, not watch the footage, and still have a decent idea of what this game looks like and the beings that inhabit the world. That's not because of some stellar descriptive skills on my end, but simply because this game looks exactly as the premise implies it would look, which isn't to say that it isn't creative, but just that we haven't seen any artistic risks as of yet, which is a hallmark of the best this genre has to offer that makes me feel somewhat empty without. (Heck, that one boss from the Elden Ring footage was a freak with-like, several dozen limbs and appendages; you can make things that weird looking easily with a modular clockwork aesthetic, we just haven't had that demonstrated yet.)

At the end of the day I can't ride anything I've seen too hard, though. As I said, I'm just really into these sorts of games so I tend to nitpick and deep dive, but outside of pulling hairs I have to say that this trailer looked truly fantastic. As good as a game like this could feasibly look, in movement, presentation and overall style. So I am very much pleased with what I'm seeing and can feel myself approaching that all-consuming thirst to dive into everything this game has to offer. But I'm staying reserved for the thing to be made at the very least, because I see the inkling of something very special and that should not, can not, and will not be rushed. And with all those talks about a subtle morality system and the possibility of multiple endings; well I'm just a kid in a candy store right now and I'm in incredibly dangerous territory to getting a cavity.

ExeKiller

 You people venerate savagery, and you will die- savagely!

I have a lot of respect for indie games, and not just the one's that catch my attention as games-to-play either, I really do. Beyond the technical aspect of sitting down and making an interesting video game with a group of, usually, enthusiasts and no huge company behind you is already commendable, but I just fall over for the bravery it takes to put one's own work out like that for everyone to see. To take that risk, put yourself on the line, and slap it on the internet, it takes crazy gallons worth of guts. Even more so when the game we're talking about seems to be, internationally or otherwise, placing itself alongside of the most high profile screw-up games in video game history. A game that cost hundreds of millions, and you're just going to make an indie game in a world that seems to vaguely lean on that image. Thems some real balls friend, and I appreciate them.

Okay, so maybe it's unfair to look at ExeKiller and say ""So you made your own Cyberpunk, did you?" 'cause, I mean- it's not like CD Projekt Red have a trademark on Cyberpunk, now do they? Actually, yes they probably do, what a stupid idea to call the franchise after the name of the genre. (No offence Mike Pondsmith, who definitely isn't reading this but I'm still going to exude non-offensive vibes from this blog) Rather, there can be more than one game who dives into the veritable visual ocean of Cyberpunk genre clichés, it's a wide ocean after all. And does the fact that both of these games have clear Bladerunner inspirations lend credence to the comparisons? Of course. But, we are talking about a AAA game against an Indie one so... you know, I'm just gonna say it: this feels like indie Cyberpunk. But... maybe that'll turn out for the best.

Here me out. What was the biggest problem with Cyberpunk? Well, I'd say it was overambition. These guys got one smash hit game out and suddenly decided they were the single greatest development team on the planet and were going to singlehandedly revolutionise genres much larger than them and helmed by other developers who are bigger than them. It was always going to be a bit of a mess and thus is the hubris that can come when your self image is bolstered by the plastered outward mug of a recently mega successful corporation. You lose the ability to look objectively at yourself and act with any modicum of rationale. There's no way for an Indie studio to get lost in themselves like that, (they can get lost in a bunch of other ways, but not that specific way) so maybe they'll have a better shot at creating a game which captures the feel of being an insignificant cog in a mega Corp funded machine.

And that is certainly the premise I seem to feel emanating from the reveal of this ExeKiller game, right from the getgo. And to be honest when I say this game is inspired by Bladerunner, it's actually much closer to the "World on the brink of extinction" side of that inspirational trail rather than the "technologically repressed mega future" angle. (There's your Cyberpunk distinction right there.) Set in a post apocalyptic world with whole heaps of red sand everywhere, ExeKiller tells the story of a dystopia roaming bounty hunter in the techno-future deciding the rule of law at the end of a loaded gun. There are cowboy outfits, flying cars, retro-futurism, stealth, and at least one line of dialogue that seems to have been affectionately lifted from The Mandalorian. And for a simple first trailer, it all looks shockingly good.

I'm being serious, judging purely from this introduction trailer, which is clearly made up of mostly (if not entirely) mock-up gameplay, these indie developers have a really strong vision they're shooting to nail down that will really rock if they can cut it. There's some high octane first person shooting with cinematic slow down effects and a gritty weight to the movement suite, bounty chases right out of that Prey 2 trailer Bethesda teased us all with in the far distant past, and even a little bit of car based shooting. Not to mention that the visual artists have done a great job in establishing a city-buried-in-sand environment to house this art-deco futurist architecture which really drums up images of duels at noon, blazing off in the sunset and other such wild west clichés that I'm sure the team were going for.  

Paradark Studio, who are the people claiming these intriguing little game trailer, seem to be a brand new studio right out of Poland (Uh oh, hope they're not CDPR's neighbours or this relationship could get complicated) and I have to say I'm routing for their first game a lot more than I would have expected to. I mean that whilst baring in mind that there isn't any game right now, which brings me back to the Cyberpunk comparisons a little bit because this was more or less the same sort of situation we were all in back when that big gameplay reveal dropped. Except I have a bit more hope here. That hope is, however, admittedly rather blind. I can't seem to find anything on the studio regarding the team's pedigree and they haven't put out any other game before, but after this trailer I can at least say they've got good visual designers and animators aboard. Whether they can actually make that game a thing, is less clear.

But I could easily just ignore the boring little logistics behind the nitty gritty of this game and just bask in something novel- a wild west future game; how cool. I adore Red Dead Redemption, and I have a soft spot for some of the more inventive westerns out there, so this title just snuck into my heart before I knew what was up. The feeling of untamed wilderness lashed by morale ambiguity and ruled by man unleashed, it slides into the naked Cyberpunk spotlight so beautifully it's a wonder that there aren't more crossovers of the genres. In fact, one might call these genre's distant cousins of one another, with this game being something of a family reunion. It tickles me to look at this game, which is certainly more than I should be feeling for an indie game and especially one of this style. Gods, look at me. Getting all flustered like a schoolgirl again, handily forgetting the last time my heart was shattered. You'd a thought I'd grown up by now!

I have to say, trying to keep atop of the gaming world is getting harder and harder with all these exciting new titles landing day-by-day; I'm still trying to wrap my head around Baldur's Gate III Patch 6 and suddenly my stupid Steam wishlist is breaking 150 again, all because of cool little indie nuggets like this. It's a good problem to have though, to be constantly seeing bright little stars of ideas shining through and grabbing your attention, it reminds us that though it may not look it, there are still sectors of the industry that can be fresh and still excite, and we're not stuck with the stodgy mainstays begging for something different and new. So I hope the best for this team, and even more for their game, and hope that it resembles even half the amount of promise that trailer exhibits.

Wanted: Dead

 Distinguishing features: He's got cold and shifty eyes

I've not exactly embraced my hard action self much over the past year when it comes to gaming, rather I've just fallen so far down the RPG rabbit hole that I may never come out off. But then, I did get around to running through Jedi Fallen Academy (1.5 playthroughs ain't bad) so maybe I'm not a lost cause yet. I hope not, because with Elden Ring on the horizon and potentially Bloodborne PC right behind that, I'll need to relight my inner fire for tough-as-nails action titles that don't forgive or forget. And if we're talking about those sorts of games, and perhaps divorcing the Souls-like from the equation, then there's actually another title of game that strings the same notes. 'Wanted: Dead' is a brand new IP that hasn't quite done the rounds yet, but the legacy of the developers behind it comes from the Ninja Gaiden stock, so you can bet that frustration will be commodified handily.

Browse around the Internet long enough and the robotic peeping code designed to siphon your every personal detail right out of your head will eventually figure out what you're looking for before you even know it. Thus I don't take it as any great divine intervention that the other week Youtube threw a game at me that would be exactly my type despite the very real fact that I have never once played a Ninja Gaiden game and it had been years since I ever looked one up. And yet in a season full of game announcements and reveals, this was the one the fates sent my way. Call that creepy if you want, I'll just... well I agree, it is a little creepy. But some part of me has always been curious of how Ninja Gaiden earned it reputation, and whether I would find enjoyment out of it or find it to be wholly too focused on being tough over being fun. Where I more inclined I'd might try the games myself, but why bother when this new IP is on the way?

But for clarities sake, Ninja Gaiden is a very old and well respected video game series that dates all the way back to the Sega Game Gear. As with any game from around that time, it seems a little redundant to talk about how tough it was, as that was the general style of every single game back then, but even amongst it's peers Ninja Gaiden did indeed have something of a reputation. Who knew that playing as a Ninja side scrolling his way through the big city would prove such a perilous task? In later years and later consoles, that perception didn't fade as the industry softened it's edges, and so Ninja Gaiden became one of the most legendarily tough series'. They even did that thing games did for a while and created a super easy mode that the game gently mocked you for picking. (That was before games journalists started making it their personal mission to ensure no game is tougher then they're comfortable with because if they don't like it, no one else can.)

Of course, 'Team: Ninja' aren't just renowned for the Ninja Gaiden games, (although, judging from their name, that's a big part of their identity) they also made the Dead or Alive games, which wobbled between harmless fan service to softcore beach volleyball games as the series went on, and they even helmed those Nioh games. As someone currently trying to drag himself through the first Nioh, I can confirm that these guys did not leave their love for making challenging games behind when they dumped the Gaiden franchise. Nioh is a Souls-like, with everything that entails, which means these developers aren't above following the popular trend as long as it fits their brand, so what's coming next from their offices could be anyone's guess. Although we know the bare outlines, and of course that simple-yet-curious name: 'Wanted: Dead'.

Right now there isn't a deluge of infomation and footage to dive into and get all excited about, and that which does exist is currently pre-alpha and suitably rough around the presentation. But oh-my-goodness do Team Ninja still know how to put on a show even when we're working with unfinished textures, that team have action on the mind. What we have here is the unholy trinity, sci-fi katana combat, mixed with shades of gun-fu and a little bit of straight third person shooting. It would sound, and look like, a total mismatch of ideas and genres had it been handled by any other developer, but with these guys here I have the tendency to just nod my head and go 'yeah sure, go do it.' I mean just look at the kill animations they've cooked up already for this early game presentation- if the whole game is drummed up to match that quality, we might be in for something special!

Now to be clear, this isn't actually a Team Ninja game, but rather a project helmed by experienced ex-developers; but given what we've been shown right now and it's similarity to the Team Ninja we know, I think it's fair to call upon that studio for comparison. (And to give us some sort of baseline for what we're to expect) Whatsmore even with that separation this will be , as far as I can tell, this team's into a futuristic sci-fi setting, which can demand a lot of the creativity of a developer. I mean Ninja Gaiden got a little weird with it's later game's world building, but this sort of hyper-techie, gun-sword wielding, cyberpunky aesthetic pushes beyond any of that. And it will certainly put their world building skills to the test after the, suitable sparse, work on 'Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise'. (Although, to be fair, Team Ninja didn't even know they were making an FF game when they started that project. Can't mock the undeveloped world too much.) My excitement comes from the fact that developing and adapting the past or present can be somewhat limiting depending on what kind of creator you are, but the future demands something special and personal out of you. (I'd like to see what's special and personal about these guys' view of the techno future)

Team Ninja's pedigree marks something special in the way they've made the few games of theirs that I've played, which I don't see in other action oriented games, and I hope it's something this new team can get ahold of from their past work. Sure, there's not actually a lot of AAA action-focused games which don't have some sort of genre-quirk to them nowadays, because that's just the way the industry is trending, but Team Ninja seems to delineate themselves even further to something pure and uncomplicated within their genre lines. Their games still present that very simple and straight-forward gameplay premise where the player is given their tools, put in a mission and expected to just get things done. No faffing about, no mid-mission cutscenes (if they can help it), it's just the player and the mission emboldened by the strength of the gameplay mechanics. It takes real faith in one's development skill to prostrate yourself like that, and game's of that quality demonstrate the skill to warrant that faith.

I'm not going to sit here and say that 'Wanted: Dead' is the single most exciting game ever to pop up on my radar. It's not even in my top 5 most exciting things coming in the next year, but it does appear to be a little bit of a sleeper that not many people are talking about (At least not yet) and that gives me this little conspiratorial buzz to gravitate towards this game. Call it my own selfishness for not wanting to share something I'm interested in with others, but I just couldn't get the name of this game out of my head in the weeks since I first saw it and that's why, even after all this time, I just had to speak it's name on these pages. Immortalise it's place buzzing around my psyche so I can display, even if it's just to myself, the reason why a tiny Alpha showcase can be just as exciting as the big budget AAAA series revival teaser trailer. (Actually, maybe a bit more so. The Initiative does still seem like a joke to me right now.)

The Metal Gear that wasn't

There's nothing more for me to give you.

Metal Gear Solid is a dead franchise. But for every corpse in the video game industry, MGS' is one I hold the most lingering affinity towards given the very real fact that it holds my single favourite game of all time 'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater'. I try not to think about what could have been and what we've lost without it's guiding hand in our lives, which means I tend not to think about Metal Gear in my day to day if I can help it, but then I'm greeted by some horrifying article about MGS III and MGS II getting pulled down from digital storefronts and I flip the hell out. Only to find out that it's because of licencing issues on the intro footage for the game that someone at Konami forgot to renew and they're going to be write on filing that. Thank god, I don't need that heartache today. (I don't care if there is a MGS III remaster coming, don't take my original!) but then there was another piece of gaming news that made me think about Metal Gear, and it was Call of Duty. Wait what?

That's right, the latest Call of Duty game to drop is called 'Vanguard', and it was (according to the creators) an attempt to imbue Call of Duty with some of those 'iconic character's that other franchises have and whom have be eerily absent from COD. Bear in mind, that I'm paraphrasing their words there, not giving my own opinion. In fact, the second I heard that very statement the first thing I did was quiz my baby brother, who has obviously never played a COD in his life, about any iconic COD characters he knows and even he was able to produce Soap McTavish. (Because of the Price punching you down the stairs meme, but that still counts) What followed is a game which many are calling painfully average where COD tries to bring back World War II and tell some story about a vanguard made up of 'exceptional individuals' who only get two whole missions in the entire game (the rest are flashbacks showing you how cool each member is) and the game ends on some of the most lazy sequel bait you could hope for. But it made me think of Metal Gear.

'Why?' You might ask. Well, think about that premise again. You've got a fictionalised story set in the throes of World War 2 that brings together a team of crack individuals, all specialists in their fields, on a covert mission that could change the very course of the World War. (In Vanguard that secret conspiracy is hilariously underdeveloped) Yes, by in large Activision had sat down and made their own infinitely worse version of Cobra Unit, the squad led by the Boss in Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater. (FYI Activision; you'd have scored an entirely new fervent fanbase if you'd teamed up with Konami and made this a COD/Metal Gear Crossover. The game would probably be a godawful insult to the Metal Gear name, but us fans are desperate, we'll buy anything.) Naturally this had me thinking about the possibility of the famous Metal Gear game that never was, the one which was rumoured to be in conceptualisation stages, which would have followed that very unit in a whole new era for the Metal Gear brand.

For those who don't remember or are unfortunate enough never to have played Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, Cobra Unit are a group of super solider spies who conspired to protect western geopolitical interests through the blackest of black ops missions. Their leader was known as The Joy, whom would later become Snake's mentor under the moniker of 'Boss'. Under her were The Pain, the hornet soldier who was infected with parasites that granted him control over insects; The Fear, the spider soldier who specialised in stealth and experimented with early forms of active camo; The End, 'the father of sniping' an impossibly old man with the ability to photosynthesize to keep himself alive and stake out the perfecting sniping position in the foliage by matching his body temperature to the plants; The Fury, (who the game will insist is not their own insane version of Yuri Gagarin) the secret first man in space who was engulfed in flames upon re-entry and is now a fire and pain obsessed 'fire solider'; and finally The Sorrow, the enigmatic spirit medium who's true powers have never quite been explored due to the fact that at the point of MGS III, the man is already dead. (which doesn't stop him from stealing the show in one of the most memorable set pieces the title has to offer.)  

Now just from that rollcall alone I bet you can start to see how promising of a ensemble cast we were looking at here. Much more interesting than Vanguard which just stuck a bunch of famous faces over stereotypes and called it a day. (Oh, Laura Bailey is in Vanguard? Then I guess she has to be a Russian sniper with a bad accent.) This Metal Gear game would have broken new ground as the first in it's series to feature an entire squad, probably in a system similar to the Diamond Dogs mechanic in Phantom Pain but much more constrained and focused. Heck, maybe there was even the chance for co-operative multiplayer in such a game, given that these agents must have worked on missions together at points. There's just so much that could have been done.

In my mind, the perfect idea would be a game which maps itself out over the course of the War and various locations across the Allied front which would serve as mission locations. Players would choose their load-out and the character they play as for that mission, and perhaps that choice will also somewhat dictate their objectives as characters like The Sorrow, The Fear and The Joy specialise in infiltration whilst The Fury or The Pain can perform more martial actions. Individual stories regarding who these characters were and which parts of the war they're fighting for can keep this team fresh, perhaps with making them a rough near-mistrustful team at first, only to become a diehard unit that transcends the borders of their countries by the end. All of which will heighten the underpinning tragedy of how the two lovers from the group, The Joy and The Sorrow, are destined to be split apart directly after the war as they end up on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain.

But most of all, I'd love to see how the Metal Gear stealth formula would have evolved with the inclusion of special powers and the fertile setting of World War II. How would enemies be balanced in order to make The Fear's stealth suit gameplay standout, and how will The End's photosynthesis play out in an urban sniping setting? Would The Sorrow take the stage, or would he perhaps serve better as an overwatch character? Would Kojima have gone the logical step of exploring World War 2 conspiracies, or perhaps might he have touched on the alleged occult practises of the Nazi's. And of course, what special new event would happen during the events of the war in order to spur the impending historical spiral event which characterise the Metal Gear franchise, wherein the Cold War lasts longer?

Alas, all this is dreaming of a game that we will, rather definitively, never have in our hands because the world is cruel and Konami are crueller. It's always the way that even after an entire career's worth of risks taken and dreams invented, it's the shots that aren't taken which linger the longest, sting the deepest, a sobering reminder that one can never be satisfied. But at least we have some image of what Metal Gear would have ended up looking like without Konami's assassination attempt (codenamed: Metal Gear Survive) and that is an dream to keep us smiling at night. Afterall, isn't it nice knowing that even after everything it covered, Metal Gear could have had even more stories to tell? I liken that to a fable of one's own unending worth and propensity to invent, for as long as we can keep dreaming the fantasy never ends.

Rockstar: What have you done?

 Look how they massacred my boy(s)

And this, right here, is the exact reason why I don't have faith in anyone. It doesn't matter how talented you are, how much you've proven yourself in the past, how numerous your checks and balances, you will always disappoint. Rockstar have been far from perfect developers over the past 8 years, what with the way they've sold off and bastardised their audience in order to make themselves one of the highest paid studios in the world. (At least they put that money back into the games they make, unlike EA... or rather, they usually do) But if there's one thing some people believed they could rely on with Rockstar, one line they thought would never be crossed, it's the quality-of-control containment parameters. They have to make a quality title because they're Rockstar and that's who they are. But whoops, Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition happened; sucks to be us.

To be clear, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I wasn't at least a little wooed by the honeyed words and fabricated 'improvements'. I was taken away by the fact that this rerelease of old games was going to have more of a kick to it than just being a HD collection, there would instead be brand new models, a sparkling new engine and new controls. I mean, can you blame me for being caught off guard by all that? And in that bluster, as Rockstar no doubt planned, I waved away and forgave things such as 'is the artistic integrity of the originals being respected?' and 'Will this game make a suitable replacement for the old classics?'. And I did so because; "this is Rockstar, working on a Rockstar product to sell in specific celebration for the anniversary of their blockbuster series. How much would you have to despise your own self worth and the worth of your fans to screw that up"?

I have a theory. I think that this time last year, The Definitive Trilogy didn't exist. Which isn't to say it wasn't made yet, of course it wasn't, but rather that this idea wasn't even a twinkle in Rockstar's eye back when they were gearing up for Christmas break. In fact, I suspect that around about April, maybe sooner, someone pointed out to a head guy in the office that this year is technically an anniversary year for the Grand Theft Auto brand, and a few moments of brief panic were eventually overpowered with a money-sign-eyes moment. They could take advantage of such a date for some easy sales and he would get a huge bonus for proposing such an idea! But they didn't have time to actually sit down, drum, together a team and actually make the thing, and so instead Rockstar sought to contract out to other studios. Maybe only parts of the project was contracted out, but I think that was definitely a factor here. (And I imagine at least one of these contractors had a poorer English localisation team than Rockstar was led to believe.) All of that is supposition, but I look forward to contrasting and comparing with the real story once the inevitable investigative report drops.

But I've drummed this up long enough and if you don't know already I'm sure that you're dying to wring it out of me; what is actually the deal with the Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition collection and why am I busy engraving it's tombstone? Well, as it turns out Rockstar have a steaming pile of unfinished garbage to offer us with a deluge of visual problems, a total lack of optimisation on the Switch, brain dead artistic choices, and spelling errors. So many spelling errors. I'd advise you go and look up some of these problems as soon as you can, whilst Rockstar deploy feverishly to fix all that can be fixed and cross their fingers about everything which is beyond repair. And as I go over these issues, keep ever present in mind that Rockstar have done all they can to kill the legacy versions of these games on digital platforms, and went around murdering mod projects for those games for extra spite points. This was what we got out of the end of all this hassle. Aren't we blessed?

So we've got brand new textures on all the buildings in the game, great, except that so many of them contain elementary spelling mistakes or mistranslations that feel as though they've been made by a company who, as I implied, don't speak English. These executables launched with so much data left in the files that they were apparently immediately cracked by the community causing Rockstar to withdraw the PC versions of the game within 1 day. (Although the Nintendo Switch version proved to be fruitful enough for people who want a look at behind-the-scenes source stuff.) Frame rate issues may be most prevalent on the Switch, but there are next gen console owners reporting inconsistent frame caps for a 'remaster' of 20 year old games. And these are just the mistakes that can probably be fixed. (I'm not sure about the spelling errors, Rockstar might just be lazy and leave that.)

The character models that people tore into and made fun of all the way back during the original trailer are, in actuality, much worse than anyone could grasp at the time. Essentially, these faces weren't given a modicum of attention by the team, to the point where most faces lack fundamental emotion in the very few important scenes where they're needed. (Such as in SA when CJ returns home and is instantly wrought with memories of his recently dead mother) Other characters, such as Denise, look worse than background NPCs, with faces scrunched up and squashed flat. Look online and you'll find innumerable examples of a company who just did not care. Reece, the barber shop owner, showing no signs of his age. Several female NPCs with shrunk-down heads and huge bodies like actual gorillas. Cross eyed face models. It's an embarrassment to these old games.

There are several issues with character skeletons too, with scenes glitching out and contorting characters in strange ways, animations playing out bizarrely and the engine mutilating the odd NPC as they spawn in. One of the calling cards of the remaster, the increased draw distance, was performed without any due diligence to the artistic direction of the original, so now you can hop in a helicopter and fly high enough to see the entire continent of San Andreas on a single screen. (Which was never supposed to be possible, hence it looks unnatural and awful) Those new rain effects have been called out to be some of the worst looking rain ever, milky white and far too heavy on screen. And in much lesser complaints, the lazy ass developers stole the San Andreas menu navigation sound effect and put it in all three of the games. They all had separate sounds in the original three, you could have kept up that much.

At the end of the day; yes, you can just put your foot down and say "this isn't Rockstar, it's a crappy mobile developer contractor who delivered a pathetic product and now Rockstar is going to fix their mess. Rockstar are the good guys of this story!." As several people already are already saying. Put let me tell you why that doesn't track. First of all, Rockstar are the owners of the franchise and it's their express job to ensure the content they put out is worthy of their brand. Secondly, Rockstar have removed access to the original games in order to force people into playing these pathetically crap remasters, removing their own buffer space. And finally, Rockstar attacked their own modding community for months in what is now looking like an active attempt to suppress any and all comparisons between what a multibillionaire company can create against the fruits of an unpaid fan. (Which didn't work, obviously, the Internet is forever.) At some level Rockstar knew they were grifting their audience, and maybe they thought of themselves as too big for these issues to effect them. But consumers have hit back, they've branded this game with scores worse then 1, and though I'll bet this will still be a financial success for them, this little stunt of theirs will have forever frayed that trust relationship with the community, and I suspect we'll see the consequences of that come around to bite them in the long run. (And by that time, they'll have deserved it.)