Crossplay: The Arguement

 Bridge the hardware gap

Today I want to ask you a question. Are gamers not entitled to the platform of their choice? No, says the antiquated soldiers of the long-abandoned consoles wars; that choice is in the hands of loyalty. No says crafters of convoluted exclusivity contracts; your choice lies where we say it does. No says the mad hermits over at Google; console gaming is dead, play our terminally-ill gaming platform instead. The relentless march of technological advancement has rejected those ultimatums; instead it has produced a different direction. It produced the impossible. It produced... Crossplay. A system wherein player of games would no longer be split from their friends on the account of which lump of plastic they game on. A state wherein gaming in the multiplayer spectrum is no longer hindered by the petty constraints of stuffy-suit bureaucrats and their narrow world view. And with the cooperation of one last stubborn holdout, universal Crossplay can be our default way of life too.

It seems almost pastiche and uninspired to say how much I, personally, support the idea of Crossplay across our gaming spectrum; because it's such a default stance on the world to take. It's like saying that I support the concept of oxygen, I think the sun is bright, water is wet. ("Do you support students?") No great revelation seems to come from considering the benefits of a world with Crossplay. And yet there's resistance. Like windmills trying to hold back a tornado, pointless roadblocks are thrown up against a force of nature that will, at the end of the day, be the standard way that onlineplay is handled in the future. Some out there fight tooth and nail against what will be, and I just do not understand it at a deeply fundamental level. So I'm going to do something productive about it. I'm going to play the Devil's advocate for a second, thrown myself in the alleged minds of these fanatical killjoys and try to come to some sort of sensible accord for what it is they believe in that precludes a world of crossplay. (Besides, you know, money.)

So of course I'm talking about Sony as I'm being all coy over here, and the ridiculous way that in the face of an industry bending backwards to accommodate folk who want to play with each other over the console boundary lines, Sony have been stamping their feet into the dirt like the decision lies solely with them. Recently it was revealed (through the Epic lawsuit) how Sony is the only console company charging through the nose to include Crossplay, sparking controversy at the draconian lunacy of such policies. Sure, Sony, you're currently the biggest Console company on the market right now, bully for you, but this is a matter of systemic change, in a creative industry fuelled by change. You start getting into you head that "old is gold" and stop adapting with the time and the industry will leave you behind as it has done with so many others that have failed to adapt. Even Nintendo found themselves in trouble when trying to die on a similar hill, learn from the folly of others! But maybe I'm being reductive and there's a good point hidden somewhere in their garbled nonsense, let's take a gander.

A big excuse I hear a lot for why Sony is against Crossplay sounds so bitterly like 'Press Event talk' but I'm going to throw it the ol' 'benefit of the doubt' anyway. "It's about safety". Yes, apparently Playstation won't allow for people to play across the isle because those are ecosystems entirely out of Playstation's purview and thus they can't ensure the all-important 'safety' of their own players. (Of course, this plays off of the pearl clutching of a million clueless parents across the world and so sounds nice enough on headlines.) And from the basic interpretation their logic seems sound. Sony spend at least some of their time cultivating an ecosystem that's safe for it's players, and it would be a betrayal of that philosophy to then throw those players outside that carefully curated bubble of perfect safety. (Safety in this case, I assume, meaning the ability to play games without being shouted at from a 10 years old's basement) 

Except, no they don't. Playstation implement no more rules then any other company regarding who can play their games, with the vast majority of their 'protection and enforcement' being entirely reactionary and based on 'reporting'. Actually, that's probably less work than Nintendo do, because Nintendo has the whole 'family friendly' persona that they have to maintain in order to keep their playerbase running. Heck, Nintendo doesn't even allow for voicechat in a lot of their first party games, and yet they've supported Crossplay for those developers that had broached the topic to them. And even if what Sony says about 'safety' was to be taken genuinely; Playstation would only be entering a Crossplay relationship with the other three major platforms for gaming anyway, most of which have a vested interest in staying somewhat safe and clean so that players keep playing on them. It's not as though Sony's being asked to link net-code with some diseased crappy console like the Ouya, making them vulnerable to all sorts of potential security breaches or unruly player bases. You're already working in the sterilised ward, stop pretending you're so much holier than all that.

There's another argument, and this one doesn't technically stem just from Sony themselves, as such it has something off a point. Miss matching hardware is a genuine concern when we're talking about Crossplay because different consoles are capable of running the relatively same software at their own performance levels and the question becomes how can one retain a fair mulitplayer experience when someone out there could be running a beefier rig which perhaps pulls in more frames than you can on your home console. It's a genuine concern that developers have been struggling with for a quite a while now and there's no single suit-all answer. Sometimes it's just about creating separate competitive lobbies so that those who care can ensure they're only playing those of the same console when it matters. Sometimes there's some artificial throttling on the server side to level things out. There are solutions, but they're mostly out of the hands of the console developers themselves. Does that make it, then, a good enough reason to opt out of the Crossplay movement absolutely? I'd say not. We've been working on it for a while and people seem to be happy with how it's turned out so far.

Then there's perhaps the biggest, and most honest, excuse for why one would seek to keep our gaming ecosystems separate; it makes money. Or that is to say, it aligns with Sony's self-imbued persona of a platform imbued with an exclusivity mantra. Sony has been establishing itself as the place to play games by going around and buying the best of the best to be their own exclusive pen of games, and only years after the fact are they even considering ports to the PC. (Still waiting on Persona 5) So doesn't it make sense that Sony are totally for putting their foot down and saying "Well if our exclusive games aren't enough to get you to buy a Playstation, maybe if we literally hold your friendship with other Playstation players hostage, you'll be inclined to pull the trigger." Is that a dirty tactic? undoubtedly, but does it work? I bet so. 

This was an experiment to see if I could see things from Sony's perspective but I guess it was a failure or I'm just too biased because I only ended up affirming my position. Crossplay is only to the benefit of the consumer and the game developers, opening up the pool of potential players and allowing for clean transitions between whenever that might be necessary. Maybe I want to play with my friends, maybe I want to update my copy of the game, Crossplay opens those doors for everyone to enjoy. Sony places themselves square in the middle of that relationship when they have no real reason to and are slowing making themselves everyone's enemy by doing so. Draconian brow-beating holds no place in creatively driven industries and unless we're looking to slowly lose our spark for creative ingenuity, idiocy like Sony's regressive Crossplay stance needs to be called upon and stamped out as soon as possible lest it festers anymore than it has. Also, bring out Persona 5 Royal on PC. (I will not stop asking.)

Dreamworld

The Boulevard of recycled store assets

A promise is something that we tend to hold sacred in modern society. Even if we like to alleviate the importance of such an evanescent curtsey, there's something deeply primal about how troubled we become when promises are broken, or made in ill faith to begin with. We feel as though some sort of sacrilege has been summoned upon us, something utterly poisonous to fell us, because trust once laid has been exploited and spat out. That's why I feel that even in it's most well-intentioned, the telling of a lie is considered at best condemnable and at worst absolutely unforgiveable. It's the reason why even after all of these years and despite considerable effort for reparations I still recoil in disgust a little whenever I see the name 'Sean Murray', why I wince and close my eyes whenever I hear the name 'Cyberpunk' or think of any of the artists who were involved in making that one of the biggest disappointments of all time, and the reason why Kickstarter scams are some of the most reviled of any drifts out there in the world today. (Unless you're making 'Star Citizen'; that's a literal fake-it-till-you-make-it story in progress.)

Growing up as a suspicion-filled kid with very little money to waste certainly did instil into me a sense of dubiosity when it came to giving away funds to frivolous pursuits. Having someone explain to me in great detail the things that they think they can accomplish, even with the power of experience and past accomplishments behind them, holds little sway with the current me, and thus I'm not really one to jump onto the whole Kickstarter trend. Not that I begrudge those who do, the very reason I celebrate and talk about Kickstarts I think are cool is because I recognise I'm unnaturally stingy with my money and that there are others out there with healthy financial relationships. Although given how the old saying goes about fools and their money, I'm certainly happier to be on the side of 'too stingy' than 'too giving', because there's certainly a lot of folk out there who are eager to take money for services they cannot render and then run before anything can be done. On an extremely related note; Have you heard about Kickstarter?

A platform dedicate to helping fans donate to upcoming projects on the ground level and become 'backers', Kickstarter and GoFundMe have served as the lit matches to a few modern success stories out there for products that might not ever have been made if left to the whims of the uncaring profit driven investment wolves. Sticking mostly with games, we can thank Kickstarter for the existence of Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity, Chuklefish's Starbound, Gun Media's Friday the 13th and Cloud Imperium's Star Citizen. (So you know, so hits and misses there.) The thing to remind yourself when considering Kickstarter, is that the games I've mentioned are the exception to the rule of an overwhelming majority that fail, for whatever reason, to live up to their promises. Such is what happens when you create a platform that runs on promises made with cash upfront; folk overpromise what they're capable of, or run away with wild imaginings of what they want to do without working out the specifics of how to get there, or just straight up lie to people for some quick cash. Now one could argue that it's up to the consumer to have the due diligence to look into these most obvious of scams, but in an ideal world this wouldn't be necessary at all and isn't that what crowdfunding investment sites are all about? Creating an ideal world?

Whatever, I'm just trying to figure out who's more to blame for Dreamworld. (Visit the link if you want to see it, I'll not have a single screen on this blog) You heard of Dreamworld? I'm hoping the answer's no, because good lord I feel terrible ever since I heard about it. Dreamworld was sold as, hold on let me read this word-for-word, "The last game you'll ever play". Is that right? Sort of sounds like a threat, doesn't it. And you know what? Zach and Garrison might be onto something here, Dreamworld might just be the last game I ever play because I'm not sure I want to play games after looking upon that which they've made. I think that I'm just about ready to hang up my joypad and move for good into the real world where I can deal with- nah, actually the real world is incredibly boring and one dimensional, I'll stick with any game other than this one, thanks.

So what is Dreamworld, you might be asking. I don't know. Honestly and truthfully, I have no idea what this game was trying to sell itself as on Kickstarter. Or, more appropriately, I don't know what this game successfully sold itself as, because after asking for $10,000 the campaign hit over $63,000 with more than 600 backers. (Why are we still here? Just to suffer?) At it's core I can say that Dreamworld pitched itself as being an MMO game that would fit hundreds of thousands of players onto a procedurally generated world, that's at the base level. But everything else in this Kickstarter ranges from inconsistent fluff to fanciful garbage. I'd recommend you read for it all but here are a few of my favourite excerpts for you: 

"Evert Genre, Every Style, Every game type there has ever been and will be." What does that even mean? Is you're game going to be a clicker/punch-em'up/schmup/Souls-like/Strandgame/ActionPlatformer/turnbased/survival/battleroyale/Roleplaying/Moba game? If you can't even be bothered to sit down and decide what type of game you're going to make, how is the rest of the world supposed to sit down and fund it? 

In another part of the pitch where they disclose how assets will be built by players using ingame 3D creation tools (essentially outsourcing the game creation process to it's players) there's a fun bit. "Create your own 3D models... Imbue them with useful functions such as lighting, Extra damage, low weight, Knockback, and a plethora of exciting magical properties!" You really have to read the pitch yourself to appreciate this fully, but none of the examples listed there mean anything because the game itself hasn't got an identity. Whatsmore, they start off by talking of object 'functions', which is an actual term used in game asset design, and then ended the sentence talking about magical properties which obviously exists within the game world. It's a little nitpick, but it shows how these people aren't even familiar with the terminology and lingo surrounding game development, let alone how launch a full development cycle themselves.

And the kicker. The best line from the pitch, when talking about where the team is currently sitting at right now: "2 Full time Devs, 1 part time Dev, 8 months of development." For an MMO? A MMO that's going to encompass every game genre there has ever been or will be. You have 2 developers? One of which (and excuse me for pulling from another source, their website) describes themselves as a "Superstar Ex Google Engineer", Whatever the heck that means, and the other is a "Serial Entrepreneur with 9 years of game development experience." Two red flags there. 'Serial Entrepreneur' sounds like he's incapable of launching a successful business or sets up crappy quick-sale companies deliberately for cash, and he hasn't labelled any of these games he's been working on so that's likely nonsense too. Great start guys.

Yet somehow, inexplicably, they've received 650% of their goal on a pitch that sounds utterly moronic and a trailer composed of entirely premade Unity Store assets that they've bought and thrown onto a pre-purchased map. At this point can you honestly be upset when you've been scammed out of money that you've spent so stupidly anyway? One of the backer tiers, which is now sold out, was $2000. Someone threw this insanity 2 grand! Why not just flush it down the ocean and into the sewer, it ends up in the hands of sewer rats either way! But the fact that this got funded isn't what blew everything out into the stratosphere. Oh no. It was the fact that this game actually got out there into the public.

"So you mean they delivered on their promise?" Oh no, but people still got exactly what they deserved. The Dreamworld Alpha has been in the hands of the public for a while now, and to even so much as call it a game is charitable. What Dreamworld is, in it's present state, is a featureless expanse filled with prebuilt store assets and some incredibly rudimentary UI elements tacked ontop. Its- well quite honestly it's an embarrassment to even call it an Alpha. Even pre-alpha seems generous. This is a state that literally no game with any direction in life is ever at, because it's not meant to be the barebones of a game at all. But what did you expect from a MMO made by 2 people off the back of $10,000 asked for dollars? They wanted to hire 10 more devs and continue on for another 6 months to finish up a working beta build. 1 year and 2 months of development with 12 staff members for an MMO?! Am I the only one with alarm bells ringing right now? Either these guys are malicious or delusional, and I think it may be a bit of both.

I've touched barely a fraction of this trainwreck, and I'm sure so much more is going to happen in the weeks to come. I'd strongly suggest you go out and do some looking for yourself because it's just so juicy no matter where you decide to dig in. Whether you want to touch on their hair brained scheme for getting around paying server upkeep costs, which has led to glaring security issues from the getgo. The way that they distributed the Alpha, through publicly accessible Google Drive and unlimited use keys that were shared everywhere instantly. The sob story that the Kickstart video brings up of the creator's tragically broken relationship he sacrificed for this game, which has been torn apart systematically in a video by his ex finance. It's just a total mess, plain and simple. At in the middle of it is a 'game' that defies coherent definition and reasonable logic promising, drunk on it's own hubris, to fill your every last desire and be 'the last game you ever play'. Well these people may represent the height of pretentious ineptitude, but they nailed that one promise because this entire saga has just about driven me insane. ($63,000... How?...)

 

How I learned to stop worrying and love Dragon Age 2

Unpopular opinion time

Back when Bioware used to make games that people were excited for, there was one title that I would hear about ad nauseum when I was trying to get into fantasy; Dragon Age. And it was for good reason: 'Dragon Age: Origins' remains one of the best western RPGs ever released and it absolutely kills me everytime I see it and remember that's a standard current Bioware are incapable of reaching. It nailed epic scope, character growth, varied player origin stories, simple RPG combat mechanics, a great cast of side characters, an establishment of a new fantasy world and a clear and concise set-up for future entries. It was a blueprint for making a fantasy series which would have the potential to rival any other out there today, and I honestly think it still holds that potential even if it's gone rather unrealised by today's offerings. 'Dragon Age: Inquisition' was good, but it wasn't quite that set-up to the bat that we needed from something as grand as Origins. But hang on- wasn't there a game out there between Inquisition and Origins? One with a decidedly more lazy title? Oh that's right, the black sheep.

Dragon Age 2 doesn't have a lot of defenders out there in today's age, and I can kind of understand why. In comparison to the last classic-of-a-game, Dragon Age 2 is almost unrecognisable to the standard eye. It doesn't tell a sweeping tale over an entire country, there's little fluidity to the main plot and key events are mostly linear and there is even a set backstory that you have to adhere to leaving no room for individuality. It's just not the game that people who played the first game would have expected to follow it, and that might be due to the way in which the game was allegedly rushed to launch and thus couldn't be ultimately finished. (Which happened to Inquisition as well; at this point I wonder what a totally finished Dragon Age sequel would even look like.) But I'm here today, much as the title implies, to say that despite it's flaws and shortcomings, I actually rate Dragon Age 2 quite a bit in my mind and I'm here to justify why. (Oh, and I was joking with the title. I've always liked Dragon Age 2, I didn't need to learn how to.)

Firstly, I will say that I'm not the sort of person to hold a game accountable to it's predecessor in any other terms than quality. If the game doesn't run as good as the last one or look as good, then I'm going to start raising some hell; but just because the game is structured differently or perhaps even a different genre to the last entry, that doesn't this game is 'betrayer' worthy of unjust derision. Dragon Age 2 isn't as drastic a change from Dragon Age Origins as 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon' was to 'Yakuza 6: Song of life', but the distinctions were there. For me I cherish those distinctions because I don't want a game that's going to retread the same path I've already seen. I bought that game, it was good, now show me something different. What I'm specifically targeting here is the scope of the story. In Origins you dealt with the fate of a nation, large stakes that usually accompany Bioware games, but in 2 you were mostly inside of a single city and dealt with the fate of you family. (with some higher stakes nearer to the end of the narrative) It felt fresh and I liked that.

In fact, the style of the whole narrative was considerably different from Bioware of the past, as Dragon Age 2 presents it's narrative over the course of a handful of years; telling of your family's displacement and then resettlement in the city of Kirkwall. The familiarity and connection you ultimately built with this city, it being your primary surroundings and all, was instrumental in the heart of the plot where you learn to essentially adopt the city and it's people as your family and become their champion. It's a more intimate tale, perhaps, then a struggle to save the entire country from a scourge of people-eating Dark Spawn and their Archdemon dragon boss, but I see it as expanding on the potential of this series and telling us, quite clearly, that Dragon Age can be about the smaller stories as well as the grand world-changing ones. Unfortunately, this year-by-year approach did mean the game had to treat story beats with a lot more linearity, but I feel the sacrifice was worthy for the result.

Expanding upon that, I think that Dragon Age 2's particular approach to storytelling worked best with the companions of that world and the way their relationship with the protagonist blossomed. Traditionally these sorts of party based RPGs would start with the protagonist stumbling upon some like minded individuals and then conscripting them on a journey around the world. How long are they together? Who knows. But by the end these intrepid adventurers will be the best of friends. It's simple, straight forwards and serviceable. But Dragon Age 2 emphasised the passage of time and the way how you and your companions are all living as citizens in this city of the brink of serious change all the time. This allowed the developers to place evolutions in how these friends interacted and grew with each other in a manner that felt natural and like a real friendship forming. As a result, Varric became one of the most widely loved companions Bioware have ever put out because players felt like they'd come to befriend him over the course of many months just like their protagonist had.

Speaking of companions, I also overall liked the companions presented in Dragon Age 2 a lot more than the Origin's cast, and I know this is an extreme matter of personal opinion but let me explain. The Origin's cast is a classic and contains many unforgettable party members; Alistair, Leliana, Morrigan- but it also had a couple of utterly forgettable dud characters thrown in there, like Sten and Oghren. Sten was an dull tough-guy who really had no extreme personality traits and existed merely as a 'introduction to my race' tutorial. (Such to the point where Dragon Age 2 made it clear that Sten is a rank, not a name, so it's not even possible to track him down or the effect his life had in future entries) I just didn't like Oghren as a person. He was written well enough for what he was, but 'what he was' was a dead-end drunk with pretty much no redeeming character traits as a person beyond "I don't agree with murder", I guess. Such was the intention, and the result was that I didn't like him. (Mission accomplished for the writers, I guess.) Is he as bad as Pillars of Eternity's Durance? No, I bitterly hated Durance. Oghren has a bit of charm to him, but I just kind of feel bad laughing along to his misfortunes. It just sort of felt like I was laughing down on him. I understand why some people loved Oghren, but I'm not with them. Oh, Wynne (Eb but boring), Zevran (Elf assassin Husbando) and the others were fine as well.

Dragon Age 2, on the otherhand, didn't present a single companion that I could easily write off as boring or a waste of time. Perhaps that wraps back around to their presentation and the way in which we spend so much time watching these people become who they're meant to be, but I was decently happy hanging around with any of them. Varric was just a funny and charming addendum to any situation, Fenris has an interesting perspective and quest that I was driven to pursue, Anders pretty much could have been the main character because he's so close to the narrative, Merrill is just precious and Isabella has some of the most engaging interactions with the story of any Bioware companion. That she can literally up and leave half way through the game because her own objectives take her away from yours is unheard of in other Bioware RPGs, and I'd love if that sort of thing happened more often. It's as though in the absence of grander storylines the team sought to make the individual storylines better, and it worked so well for all the ones I mentioned and even decently enough on those that I didn't.

All of this isn't to say that Dragon Age 2 didn't have it's glaring problems. The final act in particular handily wears the scars of a truncated development, with a final confrontation that seems to twist itself into being despite the choice you made along the way. The reuse of side quest locations got old real quick, and I can certainly understand how some people would get bored of traversing the same city streets for the duration of the narrative. I was okay with it, but I'm not everyone. I just think that Dragon Age 2 get's a bad rap from a lot out of there who see it as a total failure of a game when I think it has great components inside of it that shouldn't only be lauded, they should be copied. Don't be afraid to tell smaller stories in fantasy RPGs, play with the passage of time and the way that affects your world more, have fun with the way companions interact with the main story! Recent events have made the future of Dragon Age very questionable, what with Bioware being thrown this way and that in the middle of 4's development, but if the team is split and shaken up to the point where they're looking back to the drawing board to know where next to take the series, I'd tell them not to count out the lessons this burnished gem has to teach; I know there's a great follow-up somewhere in this formula.

Speeding through Dreams

 A song of mod folders and drop rates

I've never really been one to follow drama on the Internet that doesn't directly revolve around game creators and the consumers who feed their efforts. There's a special kind of joy I do get from following those sorts of machinations, hence why I tend to do so very often when I get the chance, but outside of that little niche my interests are far and few. But there are exceptions, of course there are, when I hear some story pop my way with but the littlest connection to my interests and I pay it a bit of mind, and then in twenty minutes I'm just glued to a saga of lies and betrayal. This- well quite honestly it's a problem and I need help. But you know the way that help works around here, don't you? Self therapy through sharing stories on the Internet; so sit back, relax, and try to help me unravel the enigma of Minecraft Speedrunning.

Even as a gaming fanatic Speedrunning eluded by tastes. I've touched on it before, but basically as someone who prioritizes playing every game to it's fullest in order to live that new adventure, I find the prospect of rushing through it to the point of unravelling it's finely crafted world often asinine. And if you think I'm being too harsh, just look up the Twilight Princess Low Percent run which requires players to stand still for several hours in front of a slightly broken open box animation in order to phase through walls and sequence break. (That's when you've gone too far.) All that being said I've had a change of heart recently, gotten into a lot of the more interesting Speedruns that don't devolve into walking around dead black screens in order to exploit programming bugs and force a load of later stages, I've actually grown to appreciate them to some degree; which is why I was actually paying attention when the whole Dream debacle happened.

So Dream is a Minecraft Youtuber who really come to prominence in the latter parts of 2020 when his uniquely engaging video style blew up for a community who's patrons had almost exclusively taken up considerably more passive styles of video creation. (They've been at this for years, let them rest) Dream became such a superstar for the Minecraft community, that over the space of about 3 months he went from a nobody that hardly anyone knew of to a seminally influential figure imbued with all of the "urg, it's that famous figure" derision that usually hangs around those with at least half a decade in the spotlight. As such, when this Dream fellow decided he would run a competitive speedrun of Minecraft, it was met with more scrutiny than it would if anyone else had done the exact same thing. He was a celebrity now and had to act with the caution of one, and not doing so would cause one of the largest scandals that the speedrunning community has had to date.

Though I was paying attention to Speedrunning at this time, Minecraft speedrunning didn't and does not interest me and so I only heard about this in backlash a little while after the run had been completed; but the backlash was loud enough that even over in the GTA speedrunning circuits trouble was stirring. Apparently, despite Dream's run not landing on a podium position (or even all that near to a podium position) he was receiving accusations of having cheated thanks to those who took to analyse his run. The evidence was anecdotal, with Enderman seeming to drop Pearls surprisingly often for Dream, but before you knew it there were amateur mathematicians crawling out the woodworks to start number crunching and spitting out probability figures for how unlikely it was that Dream did this legit.

When I was looking at this, people had started reaching out to professional mathematicians, and as odds starting erring into the billions it turned to Dream to defend himself with the assertion that nothing was an impossibility and sometimes lucky things just happened. Several times in a row. In the middle of a competition. (I didn't say it was an easy sell.) Soon even the official moderators for the Speedrunning circuit were calling Dream into doubts, which the Minecraft creator was less than happy with. It was this point which I would call his biggest mistake, as Dream took to airing a lot of his dirty laundry with the Speedrunning moderators publicly and thus denigrated the entire speedrunning community through proxxy of doing so. It was inelegant, dirty, and turned pretty much everyone who wasn't his fan against him as they turned around and said "He's kind of acting really guilty right now."

Investigations dove so far as to start analysing his folders, whereupon a mod folder was discovered and Dream had to defend that. He said that these were mods he'd use for videos and that it was completely inactive at the time of the speedrun. But this was all happening inbetween examples of Dream being less than cordial with some folk as he, perhaps understandably, grew frustrated at this whole situation. Unfortunately the heightened scrutiny imbued by fame amplified everything and made him look like a worse and worse villain each and every time he lost his temper. There was actually no single incident that resolved all of this either, just a winding down of hostilities naturally as time went by and people lost interest with their unrelenting pursuit. Dream saw the way he was acting and apologised, but those who he wronged mostly chose to cut ties with him, pretty much cementing the rough relationship between the current biggest Minecraft Youtuber and the Speedrunning community.

But it's been months after the fact, so why am I bringing all of this up now? Why indeed, dear reader, because Dream himself provided an update just the other day in which he rocked up and revealed that, unbeknownst to him at the time, he had installed some subvert plugin which improved mob drop rates for the purposes of videos that he forgot to turn off. That's right, all of this chaos and back and forth was pointless because the clumsy fool had done the crime and neglected to perform his own due diligence! Of course, Dream took the time to apologise, but during his long post Dream still couldn't help but try and shift blame for his own actions on the Speedrunning moderators for their being "unprofessional". (hint for apologies: it doesn't matter if you still feel that way, your apology shouldn't be about them) And all of this begs the question of how we ended up here and what is the truth of the situation.

I emphasise 'truth' because to be honest with you all it's been several months and I, for one, cannot remember a single game I've actively played (with modding capabilities) that has retained the same file structure for over half a year. There's no way that Dream was just hopping through files and just noticed this, no he knew about this for a while. So I see one of two possibilities here: either Dream knew right away that he screwed up and had his mod on (I don't think he did it intentionally; they'd be no point for such a low leaderboard placing anyway) but chose to fight against accusations out of embarrassment, or secondly that his mod folder wasn't actually active and he's just confessing to it after all of this time in order to try and bookend this whole issue for those that still held quiet reservations about his truthfulness. Eitherway, it's a mercy for the man to provide closure to a story that was so twisting like this one as all too often we are left without such in life. So now that it's over, where do you fall on the whole conversation, if indeed you are or were invested at all. And whatsmore; what do you think should be the recourse after such a revelation? Lifetime bans are so easy to dish out, but when we're talking about the biggest Minecraft content creator in the world right now that seems a little short sighted- so what would be appropriate and beneficial to the speedrunning world as a whole? My suggestion is to have him redo his run properly as an event piece, but I'm curious of other suggestions.

XCOM Avengers? Yes please!

 When... I need it...

Let me clear something up real quick about myself. Though I may have criticked Square Enix's Avengers heavily, will continue to do so, and even shared my misgivings about the project before it was even launched, do not for a second believe that I am not a fan of Marvel or Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I mean I grew up reading and watching this stuff years before the MCU, so I've got Marvel deeply ingrained in my bones and even closer to me than DC, even if a lot of the times I prefer Detective Comic's approach to character driven storytelling. And I have, for a stupidly long time now, been wanting that perfect team-Marvel game to come out for so very long, which is why when it looked like that game would be Square's Avengers, I was super critical in ensuring it would be exactly what we needed. X-men got a stellar game in 'Legends' (and also 'Children of the Atom', but that's neither here nor there. Love that game though.) I just wanted the rest of universe to get the game they deserved. Marvel Ultimate Alliance is great, and I'm so happy that franchise came back, but I want something that can focus in on a single team and give us their strengths and weaknesses as closely to the source material as possible, without having to worry about 'larger balancing' or any of that administrative stuff.

These are the sorts of ideas I used to spend a lot of time dreaming about before the MCU started and it became clear that Marvel no longer considered pursing games of viable interest anymore. (With the few that were put out being unbelievable trash.) And yet in all the realms of my adolescent imagineering (which spawned a few ideas which, in hindsight, were just as fanciful and impossible to achieve as Dreamworld) never once did I stick together the concept of a game made both of the Marvel characters and the XCOM game type. (Probably because I hadn't played XCOM back then and didn't know what it was.) So what is my raw reaction to the concept? Why did I never consider this? This is a brilliant idea. Good lord. When does this come out? I need it in my soul, I NEED IT!

But where does this concept come from and why am I salivating over it like it's a turkey-leg in the middle of the apocalypse? Because of the age old world of video game leaks, where Dev teams go in order to beta test the reaction to their projects. (Allegedly.) Apparently some rando on Reddit rocked up with news that Firaxis, the superstar team behind the brilliant XCOM revival, were currently working on a 'Codename CODA', which unfortunately isn't a project to adapt the entirety of Battle Tendency into a rhythm action game to the tune of 'Bloody Stream' and other classics from that artist. (Maybe next time, eh?) This is said to be a turn based action game based on the world of Avengers and voiced by "famous actors", implying that the actual cast of Avengers will be involved this time around! (Unless they're using that to refer to famous voice actors again. Fool me once...)

 Now this would be just a rumor that I would pay barely any credence to, but then Jason Schreier turned around and confirmed it and that's a man who does his homework. In an industry full of folk who've never done anything more than toothless clickbait articles for their entire 'video game journalism' career, Schreier actually has a stellar record of meaningful reporting on issues of import, leaks and the occasional click-bait sprinkled in there too. What I'm trying to say is; he's a man with a reputation and the resources to justify that reputation, which instantly shot this concept up from idle backyard speculation to practically triple-confirmed fact. I'm just upset why the man himself wasn't the one initially talking about this. (I get reserving some info for the benefit of the project's anonymity, but he turned around and confirmed it in a second anyway. Maybe he had to do some digging, I dunno.)

The leaker also mentioned some other gaming tidbits in his Reddit leaking career, like some NBA news (As though those weirdos are actually capable of reading) and something about a new Spin-off Borderlands game featuring everyone's favourite joke-character grown-old Tiny Tina. So lukewarm teases basically, all around this little golden nugget of coolness that is XCOM Avengers. Is this the line-up perhaps heading for this upcoming E3, an event which will not only be online once again but is apparently going to be condensed into one concentrated show with an Award event at the end? (Yes, E3 is going to start hosting awards. For their game trailers. If I was Geoff Keighley I'd be pissed right now.) Some seem to think it's unlikely, with these games maybe just being teases for the far future, but in my heart of hearts I need a stellar Avengers game at least teased so that the Marvel gaming audience doesn't lose hope as Square Enix's game slowly chokes to death on it's own mediocrity.

So that means right now all we've got is solid word that this is happening with potentially no details until next year. That sucks. But even in such a lamentable state, we can still come together to laud what might be in rampant speculation based on what we know about both franchises. Firstly, we're probably looking at an XCOM Chimera Squad style game where each character has these distinct abilties that can be improved over the course of the game. This would allow for special team builds, of course, and throwing in a little bit of randomly generated special items would allow for the replayability to seep into the game. I'd imagine the game will be scenario based, with some sort of overarching home base like Avengers HQ or the Shield Helicarrier, from which an overview of the Earth will be monitored and several operations will launch. I hope we'll be dealing with several overarching threats at once, similar to Chimera Squad, so that tough decisions can pop up about who to deal with first and how that might effect the overall campaign. (Maybe lean a little into Crackdown 1's main story for inspiration there.) In fact, if we look at this with a discerning eye, Chimera Squad might very well have been a test run for an Avengers style game in this genre, so that'll definitely be the place to look for the curious.

I think that where Chimera Squad sort of stumbled up on was the similarity of encounters, which always followed the 'breach and clear' method that become pretty methodical once you figured out the ways to exploit it. An Avengers XCOM game might want to lean more into how XCOM 2 handled encounters, with an initial position of advantage from which the player can choose how the mission plays out. Team synergistic abilities will certainly have to be played up upon, MUA style, mistakes should be punishing with easy team knockouts, (I expect Marvel won't let us straight just kill the Avengers) and I personally would love it if a game like this could lean into a lot of the more dynamic mission elements like we saw from XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. Bosses in that would just turn up mid mission and completely evolve the circumstance until they were dealt with, it made the campaign feel alive and actively competitive.

I'm simply overdosing on all the possibilities of a game like this, and could sit here spouting 'maybes' and 'what-ifs' until the world freezes over. At the end of the day Firaxis have oodles of talent behind them and a world of burgeoning potential in Marvel, that's a combo that could dream up easily the best Avengers game ever made upon release. Of course, part of this does make me mourn when I hoped that 'XCOM 3: Time for the fishies' (working title) would be their next project, but in my eyes, the more they perfect their craft inbetween major XCOM entries the better it'll be for the series in the long run. What a brilliant combination I never would have seen coming, what mad genius concocted this collaboration from their laboratory and why aren't they in charge of all Marvel digital content at this point? Dang, I haven't been this excited for an upcoming game since... oh- I'm sad now...

So I bought Minecraft again after two years...

 Minecraft?! You're still alive my 'old friend'.

Kono Giorno Giovanna Niwa yume ga aru

A long time ago, on a computer system far away and now outdated, back when I was of the optimal age group I used to play Minecraft. No, no- I don't suppose play work so well here, now does it? Anyone who knows me from those dark days knows that I used Minecraft in probably the least healthy way it was possible to use a game of 'infinite creative possibility' like that. I turned that straight-up into my job. What's that? You jump into Minecraft in order to build your little base, go out, and explore all of the little wonders of the world bit by bit? Yeah, that's not me. You go onto creative mode and let the juices flow with unlimited resources and the power of unhinderable building? That's the weak stuff to me. See- I had that horrible combination of too-big dreams and a crippling desire to make it 'legit'; so I it wasn't long until I signed myself up to the sort of project that would define my next years (Yes, years) of playing Minecraft.

But first, when I got into Minecraft it was as a spectator during it's first few years of growing into Youtube prominence, after the Indev days and into the Beta. I would see people enjoy the game in the simplest of ways and marvelled at a concept so simple yet executed so well, and to this day I still find that a marvel. Many smaller games form themselves around the 'find your own goal' model, but most of them end up falling apart from that very rhetoric either because they've got a very clear path of what the game loop actually is, and are just pretending to be 'free form' under clearly false pretences, or they've just got a really aimless and directionless game inside which it's impossible to conjure any sort of meaningful direction. (I would call out Dreamworld here, but I think it's unfair to even call that a game.) Minecraft wrote the book on how to nail this with simplicity, approachability and just great visual communication of mechanics to the players. You don't need to log onto a Minecraft world too long until you've got a decent idea what's going to be the most fun thing for you to do, even if that's just digging a hole somewhere and figuring out everything one blocky day at a time.

When I actually got a chance to play the game for myself, however, it was- as always- not quite the same game that I had slowly fallen in love with watching, because it was Minecraft console edition, the extremely limited console port. Being as weak as the Xbox 360 was, Minecraft Console Edition wasn't even the same build as Java Edition, let alone similar in size. The biggest point of contention, for me, was the way in which the entire Console world was only ever as big as the size of a single map, which was still considerable, but seriously cutdown on the 'unlimited exploration' that the Minecraft dream promised. But I never really bemoaned such, I hardly even noticed it. I loved playing Minecraft both alone and with others back then, and when Bedrock Edition was released on the Xbox One I hopped eagerly onto that (exporting my hefty world, of course) and it's increased features. (Including that unlimited world I had wanted for so very long.)

But what was this about 'treating Minecraft like a job'? Oh, heh, yeah about that... So everyone picks their own goals in Minecraft, and mine was to make a ludicrously huge home base to live in that would literally float in the freaking sky. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not, I dreamt up something that stupidly big. And I don't just mean a little floating fortress or nothing, nah this was an entire full island ripped out of the ground and hung in the air with all that would entail. It was a whole thing, don't ask. The point is that led to actual years of me just sitting down on Minecraft whenever I had the free time just to mine stone, dirt, and slowly the new blocks they kept adding. (Yes, I hated the 'new' useless mineral blocks with a passion.) That was my entire Minecraft experience, and it was honestly total bliss. There's a freedom in seeking out some mindless, seemingly impossible goal, and I relished in actually trying to achieve something this unwise and out-and-out stupid. So that was my Minecraft play experience up until about 2 years back.

What happened then? Minecraft itself just sort of locked me out. Yeah, I guess something innate in the game's programming sensed that I was grinding away my sanity in its little caves because Minecraft just crashed endlessly on by Xbox One and no one could quite figure out why. So that was a little bit of a 'forced retirement' on my end, but in a sense it was just as well because the Minecraft ecosystem was slowly getting 'out of hand' for me through endless updates that were fundamentally changing things in ways that I was having trouble keeping track of. When I left the game it was only a few weeks into the 'Village and Pillage' update, and the simple game I remembered was slowly getting buried because of it. That was totally fine in my book, of course, I loved all the new added complexity, but I just couldn't always gel with it, so to speak.

But it's now two years down the line, and I've done what I'm surprised I hadn't done an age ago and bought Minecraft Java Edition so that I may renew my stupid endless pursuit of making my dream world. Oh that's right, I haven't given up! When the last version of the game locked me out I had already built the island and was working on filling it up, and it was grand- but it had the potential to be so much more... Part 2 of Minecraft's newest update is promising to increase the height of the world by over 100 blocks, something I kept scraping into during my time playing the game. See where I'm going with this? New floating island- twice as big! Better shape, more scope, less people working on it. (I used to have a friend who helped out occasionally with life-saving redstone QOL contraptions back in the day. Now I'm just trying to rudimentally follow his shadow.) Minecraft is the endless dream that I just can't put down and my consciousness will soon belong only to it's vastly superior blocky world.

In all honesty, however, I was genuinely surprised by how jarring my reintroduction to Minecraft was. Getting used to the controls again was no big deal at all, despite years of playing with a controller I suppose I'm just so acclimatised to PC controls from similar games (thanks No Man's Sky) that I was Minecrafting to the standard of the old days (almost) in no time. It was the game itself, changed in many weird little ways, that caught me off guard. A sea of fish, coral and drowned when I was used to looking at blank oceans, (I played on a legacy world, so even after the update I had to go looking for new stuff) the wandering trader appearing out of the friggn' blue and giving me a heart attack, the various new flowers that are colourful, lush yet entirely new to me. And then, most jarring of all, the Nether. Good lord what have they done to the Nether! That update is wild to me, after the fact and having followed none of the dev blogs at all. Learning these new ultra powerful Piglin Brutes exist, reading that I need to wear a piece of gold armour in order to not be mobbed to death everywhere I go nowadays, trekking over 500 blocks in desperate search of my good-old-Nether-Fortresses and seeing entirely new alien biomes. It feels like I'm playing with mods, it's the weirdest thing.

Looking upon a game you feel like you knew intimately and not recognizing it is alienating and honestly rather scary. It gets me thinking about what things would have ended up like if I had waited another two years: would the game have been so unrecognisable that I couldn't get back into it? On the verge of the new update, which I've been cramming about in knowledge that Part 1 drops on the 8th, I've heard concerns about the Minecraft world becoming overly complicated and if that betrayed the original vision at all. I hate to break to ya, guys, but that's already happened an age ago. Minecraft is more intricate then many other titles of it's kind nowadays, and we just don't recognise it because the developers are so good at tying the game up to be as intuitive as possible. It's only when I was deeply tied into the game, pulled out and thrown back in again that I saw how crazy the evolutions this game goes through are. It's amazing to think that a single game can shift so fundamentally over a decade since it's launch, but Minecraft is that model which proves how it can be done and to rampant success. 

Hello once more, my Minecraft , I hope we treat each other well this time. (No more 20 hour sessions, I promise.)

Dying Light 2 is alive!

 Don't count me out yet!

Zombies are shaping up as something of a dying art in today's age, at least on the AAA gaming stage, because just like Hollywood they went and oversaturated the trend and now no one gets to have the undead fun they once wanted to because it's haplessly pastiche at this point. Things have become so overplayed that now even Resident Evil can't be bothered to do Zombies anymore; RE8 was about vampires and werewolves and Resident Evil 4 Remake is about that most terrifying of Lovercraftian horrors: eastern Europeans. But somewhere out there are those lone heroes that never gave up on the zombie horror genre, even when they themselves are partially responsible for that oversaturation problem I mentioned earlier. Those who have been pumping the world with their special brand of zombie game all along and were just about getting somewhere interesting before the world did a sickie for a year. Well guess what- they're back and they bought their game with them. Yes, I'm referring to Techland's Dying Light.

You see, a long time ago Techland were famous for an entirely different zombie game in Dead Island, the campy survival-esque romp where you trounced around an island resort and stomped on zombies with glee for the first two hours and then sort of glided through the rest of the game growing increasingly frustrated with the mechanics and setting being just inadequate enough to keep you unsatisfied. I swear I was so close to liking Dead Island for it's entire runtime, but I just kept getting dragged down again and again by the ceaseless backtracking through narrow streets, hordes that respawned with every area change, boring NPC's that always bog down these zombie games, and just the raw gameplay that grew stale way too quick. Maybe I was just ruined by Dead Rising and it's seemingly endless zombie murdering fun, but Dead Island just didn't do it for me. And then came Dying Light.

Dying Light took Dead Island and did what everyone wanted that game to do, it opened up the world into being something wholly more engaging to explore. Now a true open world, Dying Light let players parkour over buildings, objects and even zombies themselves as they raced around an open world characterized by speed and mobility. Improving the flow of traversal naturally lead into improvements to combat, which made the entire loop feel fresher and ended up propelling Dying Light into one of the longest-living Zombie titles of all time. I mean that to say I know people who, even years after the fact, will keep that game on their hard drives because they just like to stomp zombies every now and then. Techland have nurtured that love with a well-received DLC story cap, patches and updates, a separate battle royale spin-off for some reason, and the constant promises of Dying Light 2; oh Dying Light 2...

For a long time it looked as though this mythical sequel was going of the way of all long awaited sequels; nowhere. Just like Beyond Good and Evil 2, or even Deep Silver's sequel to Techland's own zombie game, Dead Island 2, this was just a game that kept getting the pause button thrown onto it. Either that meant good things and that the game was being cooked until it was good and done, or terrible things in that the game was going through development hell and would be lucky to make it out alive. I'll be honest, years of seeing this has tainted me into a bit of pessimist, so I personally did not believe this game was coming out. Even after seeing the 2019 reveal (which was alright) that 2020 of complete silence just sealed my opinion. "It's been dropped, nothing to see here." But seems I was a little too early, and a lot too presumptive, because whatever kinks the year of plague introduced to development has been worked off and Dead Island 2 is back, baby! ('Stay Human' is it now? Kind of cliche and forgettable, but I guess I can dig it)

I wasn't a believer, but with the recent Dead Island 2 features trailer that has been released even I have to admit that I'm a little bit tempted. Originally (In 2019) the promise of a supped up gameplay loop alongside that ever meaningless marketing buzz point of "Meaningful choices" turned me right off. Hearing them talk about how your choices would change the city, and then just showing how different colour banners fly from some fort somewhere, gave me flashbacks to the whole "change the skyline" pitch for Saints Row 3 which amounted to three or four Fleur De Lis' getting stamped onto nowhere buildings. But this time around we're seeing things that actually look interesting, switch ups that even look comparable to the impressive leveloutions that Battlefield pioneered and then mysteriously abandoned. (I get that it must have taken a lot of development time and effort; but it was so cool! Go back to that!) However it ends up, I must say that this is the way that you handle visual world shifting consequence: show giant swathes of the city be levelled by some falling tower, make me care and remember!

As for the raw gameplay, it's hard to judge from looking alone but everything has been tweaked to look very good. Suspiciously good. As in, "I kind of don't believe that all the 'gameplay' sections are actually gameplay". I mean there's some interactions where it's obviously gameplay, but that shot of the protagonist leaping all over the place and jumping up using a zombie looked a little staged. (or if not staged, just incredibly unlikely to actually pull of oneself) There's just this visual fluidity that rings untrue to my eye, but maybe that's just because they've nailed it so well, I can't say. On a much more positive note, I love how it seems the amount of gore and dismemberment enjoyed by the zombies is being extended to human enemies, as traditionally human enemies are the weakest parts of any self-respecting zombie game. These human enemies, though we've seen but glimpses, somehow still give off the impression of being as dumb as rocks, but maybe being allowed to brutally slaughter them will improve my general opinion on them.

Finally there's the factions and the world that Dying Light 2 wants to build, essentially the reason why you're going to have multiple choices in the first place. This is a highlight video and one that clearly didn't focus on them, but even then I have to say that they look bad. Really uninspired, confusingly so. With the amount of detail thrown into the environment, the animation, the glorious models of the zombie themselves, it's actually quite head scratching how the 'distinct' two factions the game has managed to dream up are rigidly brutal authoritarians versus anarchistic bandit-types. (There's also the nightrunners but I suspect their role will be ultimately inconsequential for taking control of the world space) Even Fallout 76 managed to inject more colour into their binary faction system. (A little more; they made the cops 'builders') maybe this is just the simple veneer and there's some deeper colourful story that fleshes out these people and what they represent beyond the bleedingly obvious, but if so then the writing will be doing the supreme heavy lifting because the visuals aren't selling it. (And even if that is the case; that makes for poor visual storytelling.)

So overall I'd say that Dying Light 2 honestly looks exciting, which is saying something for someone who wasn't excited for Dying Light 1, wrote off 2 ages ago, and thought he was done with zombies for at least another four years. State of Decay overdosed me on zombies to the point where I get nauseous even thinking about another rotten-flesh expedition; but if it's wrapped up in gameplay this cool looking, I think I can get through it relatively unscathed. If Techland remains half the team they were before Dying Light 2 entered full development, then theirs are hands fully safe to entrust this project into and I'll remain genuinely excited for tomorrow. Call the team 'necromancers' because they're bringing the undead trend back to life singlehandedly. (Oh, I guess Zach Snyder has a part to play too. Kinda.)

The Elder Scrolls: Dwarves

 Where did they come from, where did they go?

The Elder Scrolls online was a perfect opportunity to expand the world and lore of Elder Scrolls further than it has done ever before, and in many ways that's exactly what they achieved with that game. By the very virtue of being an MMO set earlier than any other piece of media in the franchise, ESO has served as a perfect breeding ground for all sorts of lore snippets forever injected into it's healthy ecosystem. (as it is a rather good MMO nowadays as well.) There's only ever been a few little slip-ups here and there such as how 'The Lusty Argonian Maid' exists within the games files despite the fact you literally meet the author of that play in Morrowind. And he's a normal human, so there's no "Maybe he was alive for hundreds of years" to fall back on. Maybe he totally ripped off the play from some ancient unknown source, but the protagonist is still an obvious crude self-insert of him trying to bone his maid, so I think that's a weak argument. (I guess we'll chalk that up to temporal displacement, I don't know.) But there's one aspect of lore that, as was recent discussed, ESO will never get a chance to touch on, and that's because they've been forbidden. No, it's not the ever interesting eastern land of Akavir, which I would love Elder Scrolls 6 to be secretly based in, but instead the 'mystery' surrounding The Elder Scrolls' Dwarves, and it got me thinking about them myself.

Of course, Dwarves are a fantasy staple present in just about any fantasy setting you can imagine. (I'd joke about how that's a prevailing symptom of systemic ableism, but knowing this industry there's bound to be someone who'll take that too seriously.) Dragon Age, The Witcher, The Forgotten Realms, insert any fantasy franchise you want and no matter how grounded they are there's a good chance the game has dwarves. They all tend to be the same in concept as well, subterranean isolationists who specialise in all things related to minerals and the earth: mining, smithing, general metallurgy; that's always their thing. And yet despite the Elder Scrolls sharing that cliché, I must admit that their take on it is actually one of the most original I've seen across the various quite distinct franchises that I've mentioned. It's surprising to me because as much as I love the Elder Scrolls it does tend to be very clearly influence driven in a lot of manners; but not in the Dwarves.

Known in the lore as Dwemer (Deep Elves), leading off of the naming convention for Elfin races wherein they are some sort of descriptor followed by their species of 'mer', the Dwarves are still subterranean masters of their craft, only these guys fill the role of the mandatory long-missing civilisation for this universe. Every series has their own, the Engwithans, Aen Elle, those of the Elvhenan; traditionally this spot is held by the native-American allegory race, telling of a long lost culture of nature lovers who would live forever, be more moral, and just all round be better than all the scrub cultures who live nowadays. The Dwemer go a different direction, with the Dwarves being merely technologically superior, (and also not actually short in any fashion) but conceptually just as corrupt and backstabby as their modern day counterparts, with the added bonus that their tended to be a civilisations most predisposed towards blatant sacrilege. (They literally made artificial life to be their slave protectors, these guys were hardcore 'playing at god'.)

Where the mystery comes into it, is in the way that the Dwemer actually disappeared from the world, because this isn't your stereotypical story about a society that slowly collapsed after generations of withering fortunes, no the Dwemer's disappearance is much more abrupt than that. It was a disappearance in every sense of the word, in that one day they were there and the next they were not, with no clue left as to how an entire species vanished, where they went or if they can ever return. These are the sorts of mysteries hanging over the Elder Scrolls world ever since after Arena where the team decided that the mentioned-but-not-implemented Dwarves should be more interesting. Diving into this would be unravelling one of the great mysteries of the Elder Scrolls universe, but as Todd Howard himself apparently decreed; such is not the duty of the ESO team to cover.

Except, we do actually know how the Dwarves disappeared. Is this- am I being stupid here? This was covered pretty extensively in Morrowind, but we've just sort of continued like we didn't get a pretty open and shut story told to us. For the sake of those who missed it, the story goes like this. Indoril Nerevar, the Chimer (Dunmer Predecessors) war hero who's life and times are of central importance to the story of Morrowind, really had an issue with Dwarves. Their people were traditionally enemies, but he'd managed to secure a truce through his friendship with their leader King Dumac Dwarf-Orc. The two of them were the best of friends with a relationship so tight it bought warring nations to peace. That was, of course, until the world's bigger Narc, Dagoth Ur, ran to his master Nerevar to report about how his spies had watched the Dwarves chief scientist, Kagrenac, experimenting on the heart of Lorkhan.

Woah, back up a second; okay, so Lorkhan was an Aedric god who created the mortal plane and, in true promethean fashion, was punished for his transgression by having his heart thrown to Nirn. (The impact of which would form the volcano known as 'Red Mountain'.) So this was a sacred and holy artefact that some Dwarf dude, in all the hubris of mortals, had dug up and now was experimenting on. Something about creating a big artificial god with the heart of the Dragon of time or some such nonsense, it's a whole thing. (basically he's responsible for the events of Elder Scrolls 2 indirectly) Messing with such a holy relic tied to creationism is sacrilege, and Nerevar turns to Dumac to have this forcibly stopped. Dumac doesn't believe Nerevar, and the two nations end up at war again. Nerevar and Dagoth Ur manage to storm Red Mountain and Kagrenac's lair, but he has other ideas and tries to tap directly into the Heart of Lorkhan with his tools for some unknown cause. (Perhaps he hoped to be imbued with the power of a god to wipe out their Chimer foes.) In that moment something inexplicable happened, the entire Dwarven race was wiped from the face of existence in the blink of an eye. Where they went, nobody knows, and touching on that mystery is the only real direction this story could go on.

Although, and I loathe to try and interpret Mr Howard's own intentions here, but perhaps the idea is not to delve any deeper into the Dwarves at all, ever. Maybe, just maybe, the plan over at Bethesda is to keep the location of the Dwemer a secret for now and forever, only ever hinted at or teased upon, but never fully explored. I say this because of the commonly held theory that a mystery is often best left unanswered, because the conclusions of the mind will always trump anything the creators could come up with. It's a simple and inelegant solution to one of Elder Scrolls' largest running mysteries, but as this point what other choice does the team have? The Dwemer, in their absence, has been built up to being an entire race of genius-level intellects capable of creating fully autonomous robots that function perfectly generations without maintenance. The only reason to bring them back into the lore at this point would be if The Elder Scrolls were seriously considering a hard jump into the industrial age with factories, powered automobiles and firearms. And whilst that would be cool, I don't know if that would make the best fit for a fantasy world like Nirn.

Ultimately, however, the final decision falls to the creative team for how they want to handle this one. Personally I think it's a tale worth exploring, and there's certainly a way to 'bring back' the Dwemer people as a new race for players to toy around without defying the mystique and grandeur of the disappearance. What about a small colony of exiles getting discovered on some remote realm outside of the traditional purview of the Daedric princes, letting the species join the roster as some super rare special race? (I just want there to be more official Elder Scrolls races, it's pretty dry in that regard so far.) Let me know what your ideas are for the future of the Dwemer in The Elder Scrolls down in the comments: let's self-therapy in a group.

Laxidaze: Another promising kickstarter

We will watch your career with great interest

If there's a type of game I like to happen across haphazardly, it's one with a lot of Cyberpunk in it and a Kickstarter that's been easily funded in less than a week; cause that tells me that they've got a good sense of taste and know how to speak the language of the people. (Or they have a dab hand on how to lie and manipulate people but we're not talking about Dreamworld today) Thus I knew I at least wanted to look at what was going on when I heard about Laxidaze, but now I've done more than enough 'looking' and want to start talking about the similarities I'm seeing here between the games that I'm familiar with and what this sort of game might end up being. (Gosh, I love a little bit of contrast and compare.) Although, just so that we're all on the same page, I will remind you that the kickstarter is right here if you're looking to pledge to something and like what you see. (You never know, it might be what you're looking for.)

First of all, Laxidaze is Cyberpunk and I love me some Cyberpunk. I can't even really say what it is about the genre that I fell in love with, but I think something of the dark mirror on the modern world that's been spliced and smothered in Sci-fantasy commercialism that both obfuscates and highlights the many conceptual parallels, something we see both in the deeper worlds of it's type like Deus Ex and Bladerunner. Of course, there's also the aesthetic side which I find totally serviceable on a base level; it ain't easy creating a neon-soaked future-city so I'd call any project which can pull it off commendable too. Laxidaze, from a purely periphery glance, appears to be aiming for an 'aesthetic' Cyberpunkian dystopia rather than a functional conceptual one, which would be a bit of a bummer to me if I wasn't open to accepting that, honestly, it probably fits the heart of this game better. What we've got here isn't a philosophical romp into what it is to be human, but something decidedly lighter hearted that just wants to look cool, so bear that in mind when you address Laxidaze, it wears the skin of the Cyberpunk over a body significantly softer. 

But what sort of 'body' am I talking about here? What is the heart of this little game? Pokemon of course! (And there's the third little thing I like to see from this game; competition to that ever unchallenged but supremely addictive monster catching formula) In their campaign page the software engineers behind this project, Machine Elf Studios, describe it as 'a monster taming RPG inspired by the classics'. The difference between this and those classic is that we're looking at real time 3rd person action here, so no more turn waiting which some people hate for whatever reason. (I don't get it, I guess some people are impatient) They've also highlighted both 'customisation' and 'inclusivity' as core aspects of the pitch, which are curiously vague little bullet points that could mean anything. Are we customising the monsters? Is it inclusive to capture monsters and force them to fight against their will? (I jest, of course. The 'ol Pokemon concept criticisms linger on the genre.)

The team have used a peculiar term to describe their game, as although I called this a 'Cyberpunk' game earlier for familiarities sake, the team actually refer to it as 'Cyber-funk'. Honestly, that's the first time I've heard of the expression, but weighing it against what I've seen I can only assume it's meant to evoke the easy-going vibes of Nu Jazz. That would certainly justify the saxophone soundtrack which would otherwise seem out of place over footage of bounty hunting with bullets and techno-powers flying across the screen. (honestly; it's not the best trailer I've ever seen in terms of raw composition, but in it's immatureness there is a sort of charm.) I did get the feeling that in the feel of a game alone we were looking at a title aimed at a sanding down of a genre typically infused with an easily garish degree of edge. Wherever you see that as an improvement or a step down is entirely your own prerogative. 

Why has this project stuck out to me? You likely figure that I see new games in the works all the time, the industry is wide and open like that, but this is the one I wanted to talk about today, so why? Well, that's because I read the premise and found myself smiling as it reminded me of Stardew Valley meets Shadowrun Dragonfall. What? I know, bare with me for a second. So the setting is about some superrich megalomaniac CEO who runs the capitalist-soaked dystopian city of Cascadia, he just happens to be your former boss because you've decided to break free of your soul-crushing day job and retreat into the wilderness to become closer to who you really are. So it's basically Stardew Valley, if the goal of that game was to out farm the CEO of Joja. (Maybe that'll be the sequel) And the game actually has you performing bounties in order to take that money back home to build up your community and have a HUB going. Mechanically that's sort of similar to Elder Scrolls Blades, but I look at the idea of being this bounty hunter/community leader and think more of the role thrust upon you in Shadowrun Dragonfall. All of which are great games, (Blades is alright I guess) so Laxidaze certainly has picked the right inspirations.

In fact, it's seeing that soul behind the project which keeps me interested even when what we're seeing isn't exactly the coolest thing in the world. I mean don't get me wrong; I think the animations look fantastic and colourful, but apart from that all the footage looks very rudimentary. As would make sense considering this is just the start of this project; it's in the team's ability to sell the dream and what they can feasibly make, from which we can justify supporting a game like this. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the Fortnite-esque character models, or the palette of the world which seems too muted for a design of such cartoony proportions. I especially don't like the UI, but that's clearly placeholder so I don't let that aspect get to me too much. If the heart is in the right place, however, I can blind myself to most of those criticism and focus on the good. And I think this is a right-hearted game so far.

Surprisingly, one of the most unique aspects of Laxidaze is one that has the least amount of coverage in the previews, and that just might be because it's getting heavily worked on and reiterated at this early stage. The Nanim (this universe's Pokemon) are being designed to both look and function with a personally identifiable uniqueness to them, with some utility functions thrown in such as serving as boats and flying craft outside of combat. There's even teasing of multiple evolution paths for each Nanim, which might make the levelling process a little more involved than just throwing them against big monsters and watching the exp rock up. (a design philosophy that Pokemon itself took several generations to cotton onto) There's not really any information about how the catching mechanics will work right now, but again we're at the babysteps phase right now.

I think a prevailing sense I get from everything regarding Laxidaze is that this is an RPG that's designing itself to be approachable and lighthearted, in both the design and the mechanics. The RPG levelling looks very simple and straightforward, the combat looks to be flashy rather than tooth-and-nails challenging and, unless I'm misreading things, there even appears to be an ingame MP3 option, so this is the relax, don't take things too seriously, sort of game for the Cyberpunk field. Actually, from face value, my initial response is that this whole thing looks like a more-ambitious mobile game, but it appears to be heading for all the big consoles so I guess this team just want to bring that developed 'casual game' feeling to the home console audience. It's not often we get to see an interesting sounding project so early along on it's development journey, and I truly do hope the utmost best for how this team can expand their vision to the total game because I like the picture their painting and think it might truly end up great. There's a long way to go from here, no doubt, but if this becomes what they're saying it will, then come 2025 (or whenever this manages to come together) we'll be able to look back and say the wait was worth it.

Ubisoft: bad inside and out

 Never go full 'Konami'

I am always riding Ubisoft's behind for something or another, to the point where it's grown into more than just idle commentary. Were I treating a kid named Ubisoft like this during my primary school years you'd naturally assume I have a crush on them, but rather this animosity has grown and festered over years of poor choices and bad policies to the point where it's reached a true despair. And I do, I despair over the state of a games company with the potential, both in size and raw talent, to achieve truly great and industry changing things with the way they work and handle themselves. But they flounder. Everyday and in everyway. They wake up and choose to be less than what they could be at the detriment to themselves and the industry at large. Why? Who can really say, maybe it's just hard to care about anything at a human level after a certain point, all I know is that we're reaching a point where Ubisoft in in danger of spiralling off into absolute villain territory unless they clean themselves out with prejudice. (as, I guess, is the fate of any and all large creative entities nowadays.)

Typically my criticism around Ubisoft is formed around a few big talking points, and those points can be disseminated down to one universal one: Ubisoft have lost the ability to imagine. In a field driven by creative passion and the desire to dream where the form can go next, Ubisoft is ruled by the whims of those who simply observe the changing of the winds and tries to jump on, with an unhealthy degree of 'chasing old glories' sprinkled in there for good measure. The last time that Ubisoft had a strong and original IP idea it was for Rainbow Six Siege, and for all intents and purposes the success of that title was entirely unexpected by the Ubisoft 'creatives' department and they rode those coattails for so long that now they're even trying to water down that formula with the impending release of Rainbow Six Quarantine. (Which, as much as it pained me to learn, is not a true Rainbow Six game but a poxxy spin-off) Since then there was a little talk of Beyond Good and Evil 2 which promised a simply ludicrous amount of industry changing ideas and features, but that game has fallen off the wagon so hard that Ubisoft doesn't even mention it when talking about upcoming projects anymore.

But there is another aspect of Ubisoft so vile that it poisons both the company and the industry through means of proxy, and it's something that I can't half heartedly jibe at ol' Yves Guillemot for. Because he is complicit, alongside literally every single development head at Ubisoft who has sat back and did nothing as the working conditions at Ubisoft have bordered on oppressive to the point where I'm starting to make comparisons to Konami in my head. Now to be fair I think we can all agree that Konami is certainly worse to a significant degree for the time being, but having to even draw and contrast in general is a huge problem when we're talking about lives and conditions of the workers in your company. Ubisoft are a studio of such size that the way in which they make their games and treat their workers has a knock on effect towards all the smaller studios that want to emulate them, so bare in mind that with every policy they enforce (or pointedly ignore) their wake touches everyone.

With that in mind, do you recall that moment last year when Ubisoft's pathetic lack of creativity despite the powerhouse force behind it became sickeningly clear? It was following a expose wherein Tommy Francois was revealed to be a key executive, and alleged close friend of Guillemot's, who's general bad attitude affected both the company and the games they made. On one hand he was a barrier to development that all proposals had to scale, a dunce who creatives had to pitch to in order to get his approval to move forward presumably as a measure to ensure that only the best ideas were driven by the company, even though the idiot clearly had no idea what market trends are or how to take initiative and just spent his job days leaning on games that appealed to him. So if you're wondering why every Ubisoft game sucked for the same reasons, remember that they all had to be twisted to appeal to some bottom feeding waste-of-flesh in a business suit with no taste. Might clear a few things up.

Of course, that was just one aspect of what he did. On the otherhand, he was also apparently an unpleasant pig to female employees, a tyrannical worm over various department heads, and a detestable dragon hoarding as much power and wealth over the company as he could. He instituted several close friends over various positions in the company in order to ensure his policies and way of doing things was widely accepted and he did all of this in full sight of Yves Guillemot, who simply ignored everything and feigned total innocence when it was all bought to light. Tommy may now be gone from the company, good riddance, but his various cronies still have positions and after several months of hard core investigations that were all handled internally- the single most predictable result possible has landed; nothing has changed. No wrong doings were discovered and it's business as usual making hack games at Ubisoft.

People seem genuinely surprised by this, and thus I can only assume that comes from a vested misunderstanding of what exactly it is institutions like HR and Internal review teams exist for. Firstly, yes HR were told about many of the workplace infractions that occurred within Ubisoft, but they didn't do nothing about them. What they did was go over potential legal ramifications and weighed up what backlash could occur if this went public, then tried to talk down the complainer, or if that failed than straight-up threaten them, to make them shut up. HR doesn't exist to help employees, it exists to manage human resources and ensure they're not causing a problem to the wider company. (I thought this was common knowledge, I don't know where the mix-up definition comes from.) Secondly, of course the internal investigation turned up nothing; it was an internal investigation. What do you- what do you think they hold those for? Again, it's about keeping the bottom line running and, in some cases, doing a little performative art for the public's case. Ubisoft isn't going to hold it's own feet to the fire; that's everybody else's job.

So what is the solution? At this point the way forward for those that want to see a better turn for the industry should be clear; go after the money men. (Wait, I mean that in the way of 'appeal to the money men', not 'attack in the streets'.) This is actually the way people have been trending, through the recent rise of a movement to hold Ubisoft accountable, but that is just a speck in the ocean compared to what could be done. Don't buy the next Ubisoft blockbuster, and make sure that Ubisoft know exactly why you aren't buying it, because the way they've treated their staff and their creation process is unacceptable. At this point, with the way the company is, the only way to really know when headway is made and that pressure can be relented, is when Yves resigns. And I hate to say that, I love typing and saying the name 'Yves', but the man simply has to go for the failed job he has done as a leader in literally all senses. Under his recent leadership internal conditions have deteriorated drastically and external growth has begun stunting; get rid of him, make Ubisoft a better place inside and out.

 At the end of the day, though, it's easier to say what should be done than actually acting upon it. Saying that I personally won't be buying Ubisoft games is pointless, I don't buy them anyway and if I do it's always second hand. (And years after anytime where may purchase could be touted under sales figures) It'll take the ordinary fan standing up and realising that they don't only deserve better for their money, but that the employees at Ubisoft deserve better for their talents, before something might be done. As it stands Ubisoft is the biggest game's developer in Europe, and cleaning them out of pollution will certainly knock onto every single smaller studio across this entire continent, and that's got to be worth the sacrifice for day one bragging rights, no? But then again maybe I'm just overestimating the desire for positive change from the everyday consumer; that's the sort of riddle we can't answer until Ubisoft's next big move. I just hope everything they've done up until now doesn't get instantly forgotten by the public the very second that they start shooting fireworks into the crowd like it almost always does.