Why we need KOTOR 3.

 The force can do terrible things to a mind.

There's a lot of hopeful thoughts that goes into being a fan of the game's industry; lots of pinching those cheeks and wishing upon stars, lots of bold assumptions, and just heaps of tickets for various, destined-to-be-derailed, hype public transport. It's all a part of the experience, we're teased a game and left to fill in the blanks for ourselves, usually to everyone's disappointment once the real thing launches. Unless that game is Elden Ring, apparently, but I wouldn't know about that since I haven't played Sekiro yet and it appears I have an unspoken rule to only play a Souls Game when the next one has come out. (As least for Sekiro and Ring that practice won't cut me out of some thriving online scene.) All of which is to explain that whilst we graciously accept the gift that is the upcoming Knights of the Old Republic Remake with one hand, we must grasp and grab for a threequel with the other; because it's about darn time that we get things back on track.

Which isn't to say that I'm not stoked on KOTOR being remade. It's literally my third favourite game of all time, I love the very concept of a numbers-action-rpg based Star Wars world, I adore the story and I grow all nostalgic about the cast. All I bemoan is the fact that we don't have more of that game, and now with a full remake it's highly likely that we will get that so much more which we need! (Provided it's still a stat-based action RPG game. Which it is going to be, right? They wouldn't take that away from us- would they?) But everything we're going to see made, and even the additions I hope they'll throw in along the way, all fall under the category of 'expectable content'. We know the breadth of this story; we know the major players, the winners and losers, the places we'll mostly visit and the strange trails we'll face there, and most of all we know that galaxy shattering twist in the third act. It's all expected; and what I'm looking for is the unexpected.

KOTOR 2 often doesn't get the praise it deserves as a supremely well written Bioware RPG, and that's mostly because the unfinished nature of the story and world stand out on full display. Like every Bioware game expect for Mass Effect, number 2 takes the brunt of studio complications from around that time, with efforts split so much that entire sections of the narrative had to be narrowed down into railroad sections and, apparently, the endings of the game were totally chopped off the package. Which is to say that KOTOR 2, whilst a good game, doesn't quite live up to being the successor to KOTOR that we needed all those years ago, and this remake is only going to fuel the flames for a new title even more. Now could this lead to a KOTOR 2 remake which fixes all the problems and restores the original vision? Almost certainly not, but I would spin like a top if that did happen; what's more likely is we're going to get a return to this world for something totally new.

And when you look around at the state of Star Wars gaming right now; that really is what we need right now. Back before the Disney acquisition, Star Wars was one of the healthiest gaming franchises you could think off, working with dozens of contracted companies, all of whom were eager to work on the licence, and putting out enough content to sooth every possible player itch. Then the unthinkable happened and all of that was halted, or straight cancelled, on the spot in favour for EA exclusivity. What we have right now is a much narrower market for these sorts of games that typically has a high standard of quality to them (I think it's been a while since a truly godawful shovelware title with a Star Wars label on it was published) but less wide appeal. Sure, Jedi Fallen Order was a great game and a ton of fun... provided you liked tough action Souls-like games: Otherwise you'd be crap out of luck.

From a wider perspective, we need different genres and game types to spice up the fandom of Star Wars once again and reach out to people who'd otherwise never be interested in the franchise. It's a goal I think all franchises with loft aspirations should shoot for, but one that not many have the reach to ascertain. Would people really buy a Fallout-themed Virtual Novel? I mean I would; but what about actual normal people out there? Probably not. But a Star Wars one? Well, Quantic Dream are going to put that question to the test themselves when they release 'Eclipse' a couple of years or so from now! Diversity expands your reach, which expands the fan pool, which increases resources to make even bigger and better games. A perfect cycle of symbiotic dependency. But also very clean, and spreadsheet-friendly. What about the more specific reasons why KOTOR 3 needs to happen?

 Because D&D-esque mechanics translate super well to the Star Wars brand! With all the sci-fi weaponary, Jedi arts and Lightsaber duels, this seems like a world absolutely made for numbers-RPG games and we rarely get to see that taken advantage of. I'd love to see a Star Wars game take this to an extreme, like Pathfinder does, where you can have entire class builds and specifically generated wave encounters, all to push players to the brink of their talents. We've only touched upon the potential of D&D Star Wars with the KOTOR titles and it's a well of infinite possibility if only it were given a chance. Can you imagine the incredible medieval themed super-boss Sith Lords we could be fighting in a totally expansive Role Playing game with Baldur's Gate level scale to it? We can shoot for that sort of project in this modern age, if only Disney will give such an idea the go ahead.

And then there's the health of the franchise as a whole. Right now there's only really one avenue of this incredibly big series that is holding everything together: the time immediately following the Galactic Civil War. The Clone Wars have been tapped dry, the sequel Trilogy is dead-on arrival and The High Republic has it's fans, but is still largely niche among the Star Wars universe. (Maybe 'Eclipse' will change that, maybe 'Eclipse' will further cement that franchise segment's ostracization from the rest of the community) The Old Republic is there, it's proven, it's loved, and it has such a space for new stories that is seems silly not to work it. You have a period of Jedi-Sith warfare, of European Medieval thematic influence, rampant endemic betrayals and a general darker shade on the world of Star Wars that isn't explored nearly enough.

 

I hate: Skyrim's Killmoves

 Fatility.

I have been playing a simply obscene amount of Skyrim recently, and that renewed familiarity has sparked up some dormant issues that you only really think about when 200 hours into a playthrough. Such as the killmove system: which sucks. And to be clear, I remember this being one of the most exciting things proudly postured in the marketing leading up to that initial 11/11/11 release date. Oblivion's combat was rather famously one of it's weakest aspects, with a notoriously flimsy 'chopstick' waving of swords that was considerably lacking in impactful connection and even more in strategy. Somehow even Morrowind manages to give it's players more options in the heat of combat than Oblivion did, and the magic/ archery system wasn't much more advanced. So now that Skyrim was going to be directly addressing that, people were excited to try out this fighting system for themselves. Which was when Bethesda lifted that cudgel and squarely struck the heated Iron with the Killmove trailer.

This was a trailer that consisted purely of every single moment in the game where the animations took over and the player performed some choreographed show of martial prowess, far eclipsing anything we'd seen in an Elder Scrolls game to date. It was violent, it was exciting, and I even think it might have made the cut to be included in the Trump Administration's supercut of video game violence, for those who remember that little MLG compilation vid. And we, the many who were ready and eager for Skyrim to drop into our waiting hands for months already, went crazy for it. We ate that action up to the dregs and didn't even hang around the cafeteria lady in order to beg for more, because we'd feasted heartily. All of which is to say that I was pretty predisposed towards the whole Killmove ecosystem for months before the game came out, so I was just fine ignoring any budding complications with it's implementation once the title arrived.

And nor did I really have any reason to be upset. The gameplay was spiced up sufficiently with the special little flourish moment, typically performed on the last enemy in a wave of combat, and the ability to throw on a perk that allowed for decapitations was widely celebrated by the majority of players as 'super dope'. Even playing on Master difficulty it all seemed to work out just fine. And then Bethesda added Legendary difficulty. Now to understand how these two parts of this story work together, I'm going to need to explain both how the killmoves work and how legendary difficulty works, and then you'll see why this turned into a problem so bad that I, just recently, had to cave and get the mod 'Violens' just so that I could disable killmoves almost entirely. I do not exaggerate when I say that this combination of systems makes the combat nearly unplayable in Legendary difficulties lategame, and if you don't have Violens in your load order but are trying an Anniversary Mode Legendary run; be warned about what to expect from Level 30 up!

Killmoves are triggered on the enemy when two conditions are met, namely that slaying the enemy in front of you will take the player out of combat, and that the attack in question has the potential to kill the enemy in the next hit. As in, the expected calculated damage of the hit will drain all the remaining target's hit points. At the very moment that attack is initiated, before the animation to swing has even begun, the game takes control of the action and the player can watch as an animation plays off. Archery players will know that this becomes a problem when the camera takes control for a ranged shot, and then the enemy simply moves out the way and you get a cinematic presentation of your screw up, but otherwise the system works fairly well. However, it also works on the player. Killmoves on the player can activate even if the player isn't the last enemy in the area who needs to be slain, and will take over, once again, if the attack that is about to be executed has the potential to kill it's target. Keep that in mind.

Now Legendary difficulty in Skyrim expands the difficulty of the game merely by applying modifiers to combat which, when you realise them, absolutely suck. So let me give you a warning that once you realise what the game is doing, it might subconsciously ruin Legendary difficulty combat for you in the future forever. Are you fairly warned? Okay: it's just cutting the damage that NPCs take back 1/4 of the expected damage and multiplying player received damage by x 3. Not really the 'fair world' I was shooting for when I picked the highest difficulty. I wanted to be less of a god, not become the world's most paper-thin human. Oh and yes, the buff to damage received is only on the player, meaning that if you walk around with companions they'll serve to be great damage shields with their x 0.25 damage reduction. Basically; you have to get real good at dodging attacks if you're going to be playing Legendary solo.

But then there's a issue there, isn't there? Because as I described with the way that Killmoves work, the animation takes over the second an attack is queued that has the potential to kill the target. Now kill move animations overwrite the controls of the attacker, and the target; which means that if an enemy launches an attack against you that might have killed you, but you have healing potions or, you know, the ability to move out of the way, your chance to save yourself is overruled by the game taking over for a killmove animation. This becomes an even bigger issue in Legendary difficulty, because every enemy does 3x their damage, which essentially makes it so that any level 30 or above enemy with a two handed weapon can instantly kill you just by focusing their melee aggro on you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Dodging is useless when the killmove activates before the attack animation has begun, and solo legendary play becomes effectively impossible.

And even with a huge group of companions, like how I play, it's still an impossible situation to manage. I remember recently conducting the final mission in the Civil War, and it was essentially like trying to navigate a landmine of enemies who would instantly kill me just by looking in my direction. I had to try to sneak around the enemy lines so that I could quickly break the barriers between me and the final room and just hope that the game didn't spawn 6 guys ontop of whilst I'm doing it. The problem becomes even worse who you realise that, whilst human enemies pull off the most killmoves, most other humanoid enemies do too, which makes Nordic Ruins a slog. And then Dragons can do it on top of that, so melee-range dragon fights are a no-go. Basically, the further along in the game you get, the more impossible it becomes to play the way you want to; and that's a bit of a huge problem.

I can't recall the amount of times I nearly tore out my hair from having a five minute fight totally wasted because my handy shields, Sofia and Inigo, dropped aggro for a split second; I've even had times when I've been behind a wall of companion bodies and still had the animation glitch out, thus I've been melee killed from across the room. It's quite clear we're looking at the sort of game for which Bethesda have layered so many systems ontop of each other that they didn't really realise when two glaring mechanics didn't play nice together, and I suppose now it's just too late to change anything. At least from their end. From yours you can turn off killmoves in the Ini, or download a mod to give the player killmove immunity, which sucks to have to do; but the alternative is a practically unplayable melee combat system in a melee focused fantasy game.

2022 Gabe Newell is just what we need right now.

'We can make it if we try'

You know there are big moves going on within the world of PC gaming when Gabe Newell steps out of his suspended status pod in order to commune with the world and flaunt another step is his very vivid transition into 'Newell the White'. And with everything that's been going on recently, it's an absolute wonder why we're only hearing from him now. (No I- I'm not talking geopolitics.) It's no surprise why he's finally broken his peace now with recent industry events: We have the recent heavy consolidations that the AAA market is currently undergoing with Sony and Microsoft chucking around billions,  the rise of NFTs and the depraved cloud they shroud the future of this pastime with, and then just the general failings of the global supply chain on this generation of consoles and PC parts. There's a lot of ground to cover and Gabe seems to want to try and hit it all before the twenty-three minute sand clock runs dry and it becomes time for Gabe to return to his Beach so that he can continue his endless search for Half Life 3.

When it comes to Gabe, I've never really had a serious opinion of the guy because the worlds of when he was active and when I was a PC gamer just never intersected. I made great use of the storefront he helped pioneer, so there's that, but I didn't experience that soaring age of "this is the guy that makes PC the best platform!" from those halcyon Half-Life and Team Fortress days. (I was even ludicrously late on the whole 'Portal' train) But after even just a snippet of hearing his views of NFTs and Crypto Currency integration into the gaming industry, I'm already starting to understand why this man was jokingly lauded as a deity for so long. And his opinions carry weight because, totally unbeknownst to me, Steam actually integrated with Bitcoin in April 2016 only to end up pulling those features in December 2017. That's well over a year of beta and experience to inform the views of the company, which is typically far more experience then those gibbering Gibbons over at Ubisoft have.

According to PC Gamer's interview with Gabe Newell, the decision to pull back was based on very real evidence that this was not a technology which benefited the industry. Newell recalls how "We had problems when we started excepting Cryptocurrency...50% of these transactions were fraudulent... these were customers we didn't want to have." How galling. For a payment method lauded for it's 'reliability' as well as it's anonymity, there really does seem to be a lot of corruption clinging to the Web 3 name. But Newell shares his understanding of these matters further into areas I'd never even consider; such as lamenting about the nightmare which was the Bitcoin market value, which is notoriously characterised for being jittery. In such an age there could be games that were once $10 going for $100, which turns gaming into a speculative investment market far from the medium of relaxing enjoyment all of this is meant to be part of.

But my favourite part of this little interview snippet is, rather narcissistically, the point at which Gabe Newell  backs up what I've been saying about these NFT and Crypto integration early adopters all along. "There's a lot of really interesting technology in Blockchains and figuring out how to do a distributed ledger" Gabe posits, casually throwing out a term I've never heard of in my life and dread to look up. "I think people haven't figured out why you actually need a distributed ledger." Thank you! These people are totally clueless about the technology they're working with and yet still gallivant around pretending they alone stand at the forefront of modern advancement. They're toddlers playing with particle accelerators, and we're treated as the backwards idiots for trying to establish some sensible limits. He continues "There's a difference between what it should be and what it really is... NFT stuff: so much of it was ripping customers off...that's not what we want to do, we don't want to enable screwing large numbers of our customers over" What a heartfelt and honest sounding take on this whole situation, almost as though it's not driven by greed and lust for market share, but an actual desire to foster positive growth in the industry. I don't know if I've ever gotten that impression from a major player in gaming before. It's a nice reaction to have.

Gabe also touched on these stupidly huge purchases that have rocked the world over the past few years when it comes to unwieldy studio consolidations, and again his insight was invaluable and interesting. He spoke about his own experiences with propositions to 'consolidate' and 'synergise', and how the guiding force behind these choices can be "Really strange" as he puts it. He claims that there have been many "waves of this" sort of market movement over the years and he predicts "some of these acquisitions will get unwound. And some of them will turn out to be successful." To Newell the struggle seems to be in deciding which of these acquisitions were sought out because they would be "Additive" to both parties, and which could be classified as "Empire building", in his words. Some of these decisions are the latter in his experience, and those are the types of business decisions that, he reports, don't seem to last long. Again, truly insightful stuff from someone who is actually a president of a lumbering gaming industry titan himself.

Another topic of discussion was that most annoying of buzzwords, the Metaverse. It's always the Metaverse, isn't it? As though some 'Ready Player One' Megacorporation is going to drop us all into The Oasis overnight without our permission anyday now and we've all got to get ready for it. In truth there's is no more salient an example for modern techno-jargon buzzword gibberish than the phrase 'The Metaverse'. It's a term specifically designed to invoke imagery of omnipresent Matrix-like digital world spaces where everyone is an avatar; a total conversion of the world's running to proxy servers and game-like activities, one, true ultimate hub for social interaction. And the truth is that it's all just a marketing term to justify universal brand integration within pre-existing company boundaries. There's no one 'Metaverse', no brave new ground being broken with this technology, and in large part those that support the ideals of Metaverse are driven solely by their own abstract perceptive of what this should be rather than what it really is. Which is to say; a lot of them are delusional. 

Gabe seems to agree. "Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. And they've apparently never played an MMO. They're like, 'Oh, you'll have this customizable avatar.' And it's like, well... go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy 14 and tell me that this isn't a solved problem from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing that you're, you know, inventing." I didn't even want to paraphrase that quote, or integrate it into the point that I'm making in that way which would make my Secondary School English teacher bounce with excitement. I happen to think that a lot of these supporters are genuinely clueless wave riders colourised by a few prominent shysters trying to grift a small fortune for themselves, whilst Newell seems to imply the ratio ekes in the other direction; but at least we reach a consensus that none of this hype is going to last and this 'Metaverse' terminology is going to blow away leaving the same cultural mark us on all that Fidget Spinners had. Just another cringe-part of recent societal history that we'll all hide our heads and try to forget we ever got excited and called it 'the future'.

Wrapped in such a tangle of thorny nonsense, it's comforting to hear an intelligent industry mainstay like Newell break everything about the current gaming industry down, calmly categorise it, and affirm that we'll get past it together. Like a parent who can key into your most vulnerable moments and say exactly the right thing to patch your shattered peace of mind back together, Newell serves as a fire douser. (At least, I assume parents can do that. I've never experienced it myself and thus have had to instead fashion the ability to hyperventilate until I pass out. It's very useful in practise!) I still hold misgivings that NFTs are going to stick around our more nefarious industry elements, like Ubisoft and Activision, but to hear that the larger industry is going to one day get over itself and return to improving the craft, however that looks in the future, is a warm cloud to rest on. So thank you for your insight, Gabe, it's actually nice to hear from you. Now quick, get back into your simulated environment pod before the Time Wraiths realise you've re-entered the timeline! GO!

Generation 9!

 Back on the Pokeball grind

It hardly seems real, doesn't it? Even though the time we've waited seems about right, with the way the world has been going since Sword and Shield, hardly moving at all, we almost don't seem ready for Generation 9 right now. I, for one, am not ready to leave behind Hop, Marnie, Klara and Melony as we zoom away from the Galar region; but then the ride doesn't stop and linger for me, now does it? No, the journey of the perpetual 10 year old who relives their path to ascension in different bodies time after time must go on! (Nintendo did say that Pokémon Home is supposed to feel like a home people come back to between Pokémon journeys, didn't they? So our trainer must be some sort of shape shifting timelord who takes over the bodies of children across the world in order to destabilise the careful balance of talent and supremacy in each region one-by-one. When will this ultimate Pokémon tale be told?) The world has turned and dumped about a hundred new Pokémon on our doorstep as this ever expansive world of Pokémon teeters towards becoming too unwieldy to manage. I mean, how are they going to cherry-pick out of the soon-to-be 1000 Pokémon in order to decide which roster will rock up to these wilds? Soon favourites are going to start being left behind.

But there's no time to threat about all that, not when we have Nintendo security guards breaking into company offices whenever they find a slightly ajar door so as to be unwittingly sucked into an episode of the Twilight Zone. (Seriously, that was a really weird premise for a Pokémon reveal trailer. "Remember kids: B&E can lead to some real cool stuff if you pick the right door!") Now we have seen the biggest step forward for the franchise that we need to talk about; those textures: Good lord what is up with those textures? Seriously, some parts of this trailer looked downright ghastly thanks to the rendering, and I don't know if this is supposed to represent a beta-build or if Gamefreak are trying to tell us that this is the extent of their graphical prowess balanced with the scale of this project in question; all I know is that Monster Hunter Rise looks crisp and it's several years old at this point, so they cannot turn around and tell us that the Nintendo Switch is too weak for a decent resolution wall.

In all honesty, though; Pokémon Scarlett and Indigo? Is someone going to need to explain the disparity there, or did Gamefreak seriously just give up their naming convention of related elements for their titles? That was a part of their identity for so long, with significant thematic relevance stretching across alchemical properties, historical importance and just different martial weapons. Red and Blue might have been as cookie cutter as it's been for game names so far, but even those two titles had the perceived effect of being opposite colours. (Although one might say Red and Green are the true opposites. But then Pokémon Green was a thing in Japan, so all bases covered!) And now we have Scarlett and Indigo; which are just colours, I guess? Scarlett is a slightly deeper red and Indigo is a richer blue with some red in there... so does that mean this relates to the originals? 'A new beginning' maybe? I think I may be grasping here, lets see if Gamefreak manage to cook up anything satisfying for this in the limited time they have left until launch.

The big takeaway from this trailer, what we're all supposed to be hopping up and down about even though it's never explicitly said in the trailer and we had to read the official press release after the reveal to confirm it: Is that this will be an open world game! It seems that Pokémon Legends Arceus was not quite the flash-in-the-pan experimental title we were led to believe, in fact the team were already hard at work converting the whole franchise to the open medium all this time and we just didn't realise it. All's the better for us, because it means we no longer have to prove why the Pokémon games are better like this, with Gamefreak themselves geeking out about how we'll now be able to see Pokémon everywhere, in the sky, in the sea and possibly (hopefully) maybe inside of settlements doing daily Flintstones-esque jobs just like New Ryme City in Detective Pikachu. (Just, you know; nowhere near as big.)

Of course that also means we're getting a brand new region to explore which remains as-of-yet unnamed but we can still get a good idea of what sort of geographic theme the team are going for if we squint through the mush-texture packets real hard. There's obviously a Mediterranean vibe here, what with the palm trees and the rolling sapphire oceans gushing with pearly foam in that special, inviting fashion that you just don't get over here in dreary England. (God I want to move. Or have a vacation.) There are also the iconic slopped orange roof slats that are instantly placable with golden sands and beech-white plaster walls, baked pale from an unrelenting sun. Of course, I'm not exactly a king of placing places so the best bet I could make was a toss up between Italy and Greece, but I'm hearing most are agreeing that this is supposed to be Spain so I guess I'm the idiot here.

One thing Gamefreak did not want to provide for some reason, is anything in the way of new Pokémon to look at. Practically every shot in this trailer was from Mons we'd already seen. Including a wild variant of Meowth who looks exactly like Aloan Meowth except for the brown tail tip of normal Meowth. (Does... does that really count as a new variant?) What we did receive, however, was our customary look at this region's starters and... I'll be honest they look kinda lame. Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly all have hard to pronounce names and there's not a one I'd consider to be the one for this gen. I suppose none of them look humanoid, which was complaint about the Gen 8 starters, but until we see the evolution lines I'm at a toss up when it comes who to fight with. When in doubt- go for the Water starter, I guess.

What I want to see from the new Pokémon we're yet to be introduced to, is just a bit more effort going into their personalities and how the player interacts with them. For example; some Pokémon require players to go through an extra effort in order to evolve them, such as take them under a certain arch with a certain amount of health, or score a number of crits, or level up your friendship rank. We need diversity like that from this new Pokémon lineup so that we players can feel more involved in the journey to 'catch them all' beyond just ticking off numbers from a list. Oh, and it would be real nice if Gamefreak could manage to model all of the past Pokémon for this upcoming game; these models are from the same console afterall, and though some have noticeable improvements; (I saw how shiny Magnemtie looked) I don't know if I can bear the thought of a full Pokémon adventure without my Shiny Yellow Zeraora at my side. Or my accidental four Zarudes! (Don't ask.)

And the most startling thing about this announcement, although at this point it really shouldn't be, is that the team are planning a flash release for the game in less than a year's time. Yep, they want this thing to be out for Christmas, keeping the Pokémon machine just chugging along at full steam. Whether keeping up with the schedule like this, married with such a big change to the well-established Pokémon formula, is going to have any residual effect on the quality of the final product remains to be seen; but I just hope that his whole 'open world' initiative isn't used by Game Freak as an excuse to ignore any of their other pressing criticisms from Gen 8. Most pressingly; that there's typically nothing to do in the endgame. We had to wait until the DLCs to give us purpose in Sword and Shield. Can there at least be a freakin' Beauty Content minigame or something to pass the time for this entry? We can only hope, I guess.

Babylon is lost

 Elden Ring at home:

It's a strange phenomena that sometimes, inexplicably, you can just smell a disaster coming from a mile away. Like watching the songbirds and small mammals quickly vacate the area before a hurricane, or seeing that trailing swirl of death-feeder vultures overhead; there's something about a doomed project that stinks for a mile and which everyone can detect. Even if you can't explain why, you still know it. It's human nature to respond to subtle indicators, and to detect and be repulsed by danger and disappointment. Thus I don't think a single person really sat down and bubbled with excitement, rubbing their hands in anticipation for the release of 'Babylon's Fall', regardless of the accomplished talent helming the project. Platinum Games, and the absolutely huge publisher bankrolling the whole thing, Square Enix. You can't even pretend you didn't know the thing existed, because Square dragged it around to all the trade shows like a Dance-Mom trucking around LA determined to break their kid into an acting gig. But no one ever took the bait onto the decrepit, three-wheeled hype wagon that Square were pawing off-price tickets for; even an unmarked, tinted-window, hype-white-van would have been more appealing.

And I was in the mood for some Platinum Games action, more so than I typically am at any given time, because as you can see from my recent lineup- I just got done playing through and reviewing an incredible title from their library: 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence'. A true gem bobbing above a sea of tepid middle of the road stocking-stuffer action titles, elevated by truly great writing, over-the-top performances and another neatly slick and stylish combat system from those Platinum veterans. Because they are talented developers; really talented. And they don't typically mess around with average titles, no they put out extremes; it's either the best of the best or a chore upon every waking sense of the body, there is no in-between. Which has encouraged me to develop the 'leap-frog theory' wherein I say it's highly likely that immediately after putting out a good game, Platinum Games must deliver a bad one for the sake of cosmic balance. How does Babylon's Fall factor into that equation? Well, barring some mobile titles which I don't factor into my event chain, the last proper console release from Platinum Games was the rather well received 'Astral Chain'- oh... guess that doesn't bode well, does it?

Indeed, much like it's many lukewarm gameplay tease trailers over the years have implied; Babylon's Fall is a bad game. But worse than that: It's a boring one. A game with no discernible purpose, identity, unique points of interest, initial depth, narrative intrigue or even any unashamed sexual gratification. (All 3DS shovelware titles knew that if you couldn't make a good game, you could just through some huge Anime boobs with ridiculous physics in a prefab map of Akihabara and call it a day. But Babylon's Fall couldn't even manage that.) First impressions don't lie and today it seems they proved more reliable than a card-carrying wiccan Soothsayer; cause sometimes if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, than it's probably a duck. Or some sort of man in a duck shaped outfit, according to world-renowned duck-expert Adrian 'Vigilante' Chase.

I covered this game in the past, and in that little rant perhaps the only positive I had to relay was that I thought the ingame combat looked good. But in hindsight, looking at the finished product, I may have to even revoke that; because in comparison to their own back catalogue these animations are stiff. But at least the combat has animations, because the same could not be said for the cutscenes; good lord the cutscenes! These pre-made artesian narrative-containing nuggets are, quite frankly, all total trash. They're stiff to the point of rigor-mortis, badly choreographed, sometimes feature poor sound mixing, and have the inexplicable trait you see out of some strangled budget Japanese games wherein the style of the cinematic changes drastically on the whim of the wind. The smarter games will hide this with thematic consistency, so that certain breeds of cutscene feature the lower budget approach so you develop a rough expectation of what to expect out of each cutscene you encounter. Babylon's Fall is not one of the clever ones. You can expect to be totally blindsided at random by cinematics that feature an equivalent level of movement to the 1966 Captain America animated show. (I am not exaggerating. Some scenes are genuinely comparable to that, paper-clip budget, show.) 

And that's just the gameplay itself. (I say just as though that's not the single most important part of a game.) Square Enix made the 'inspired?' move of trying to 'Agent 47 garrotte wire' the already-on-life support marketing efforts by revealing very early on that this was going to be a Live Service game. Yes, to put the half-digested cherry on top of this termite-filled rotten sand-cake, (ew, made myself gag a little with that one) Square Enix wanted to pull the ol' 'half finish the game and try to trap enough curious fans with greedy MTX schemes in hopes that they can personally bankroll the rest of development' trick. For some insane reason that sort of announcement never seems to go down well with people. And so it was, that a game which was already looking rougher than a Saturday night in Blackpool, managed to turn-off anyone gullible enough to even view it as a charity case. (Oh to have the traitorous Square Enix marketing team backing you up, all the while trying to shoot you in the rear.)

Now to be totally fair to the absolute troopers who were sent early review codes for Babylon's Fall; some people have stuck this mess out for the long haul. The rest of us just sniffed the trial gameplay and nope-ed right the hell out of there like Vergil from his parental responsibilities, but for some unfortunate souls out there it is quite literally their job to stare slackjawed at a game with the chromatic palette of a mud landslide. (At least they're getting paid for their suffering. No doubt that's one full paycheck for every eye vessel that burst itself in protest rather than enduring this sleepfest.) They mostly report that, incredibly, there is some progress to the challenge and even a little bit of depth in the game if you hate yourself enough to stick out the game for around about thirty hours. I doubt it's nearly enough depth to make the time spent feel even vaguely worthwhile; but there's the silver lining for your overcast day.

Square really isn't cementing the best of track records with their Live Service initiative, now are they? First they helmed a decent game with a seemingly unbreakable franchise behind it, only to ruin the whole thing with a business model that most critics agree is directly hurt by it's Live Service elements, in their Avengers game. Now they're beating a limping, sickly horse with Babylon's Fall. Both times all they wanted to do was magnify the profits of these otherwise singleplayer games with recurrent revenue buttons so they can subsist off the lifeblood of desperate hooked up fans like human batteries out of The Matrix. Is that so much to ask? Now these two financial bombs, (And seeing that Babylon's Fall is struggling to top 1000 concurrent players on Steam sort of indicates that this title is indeed, a bomb) makes it all the less likely that Square will ever deign go down this route in the future. Same with Platinum Games, who also flirted with swearing a deal to the same Milton-esque demon in their own statements.

 

All of this is a prelude to say: stop trying to make live services a thing, because you're just embarrassing yourself and the industry more and more with each attempt. Or better yet, at least try to make sure your game can't be classified as phycological torture in breach of international human rights laws before you tack your life-blood sucking hooks onto the product. Or even better than better; don't try and release your paper-weight action slasher game within the same week as freakin' Elden Ring; are you serious? Babylon's Fall is what happens when all cylinders are misfiring at the same time so that gameplay, writing, marketing, and basic common sense simultaneously break down to create that imperfect storm of 'bleurgh.' My only wish was that this total spew-of-a-game was more entertainingly bad so I didn't have to rely on a hundred similes in order to get through this blog without my brain rotting from lack of oxygen. So in short: 5/5 stars, best game ever, pick it up today!

Dark Envoy

 This is getting out of hand; now there are more of them!

I'll admit it here today in front of all; I'm not the be-all end-all when it comes to coverage of the games industry. I know, I know. Some things pass me by. In fact, quite a lot of smalls games pass me by and on some very rare occasions a few big ones do too. I literally just got a Youtube Ad trailer for some high octane Asian-themed first person shooter romp and my heart grew cold as I had to stop and go: wait, is this a trailer for Shadow Warrior 4? Only to realise it was actually for 3, which is apparently out now. How in the heck did this game not even get a mention in during launch week, from anybody? I mean sure; it's abject insanity that the team went ahead and launched in proximity to Elden Ring, they might as well have taken the game's week one sales out back and shot it in the head, but that doesn't excuse my reticence. Truly I am the deepest failure and should feel eternally bad for my shortcomings. Even more so, now that I've heard of 'Dark Envoy' several years late.

Here's a game that might have been announced during the game awards, or maybe E3; I'm playing with 'supposed's and 'maybe's because I have literally no idea. Again, I'm totally late to the trigger here. All I know is that this is a tactical RPG with topdown realtime party-based combat, being made by an indie studio and it wasn't already automatically on my Wishlist. (Who the heck do I think I am?) So yes, this needs to be rectified, right now; because there's no way I'm going to miss a tactical RPG no matter how deeply questionable I find it's premise. (Yes, 'Midnight Suns', I'm still not sold on your marketing.) There's just too many hits in this genre and not enough of them for me to pass up something like Dark Envoy for even a second, so please join me in my exploration of what this indie developer called Event Horizon makes of the every promising 'Tactical RPG' genre.

First of all, I need to start by saying that Dark Envoy is not what I thought it was at all. In fact, judging from coverage I've seen from a few years back, the Steam page is either outdated or this game has had a huge shift in development at some unknown period in time. I say this because I had a bit of struggle figuring out whether or not this game was single player or multiplayer. That's right! According to the gameplay demo the team were showing off for IGN a couple of years back this tactical turn-based RPG has both competitive and cooperative multiplayer built into it that seems to play a little like multiplayer X-Com, to touch on a somewhat recent wound. But then the Steam page of today makes absolutely no mention of the competitive multiplayer aspect at all, beyond a bit about playing 'with a friend' through the single player. Which, rather tellingly, does not seem to mention anything about potential hostilities. (The page still has the appropriate multiplayer tags however, so we can lean towards positivity. )

Another interestingly atypical mechanic hurtling towards this genre is the idea of procedural generation in some of the dungeon designs so that they shift up each time that you enter them. Now usually, tacked on procedural generation is a wholly bad idea for narrative-based single player games because unless the lionshare of development goes into developing the generation technology so that it's smart enough to create strong developer-grade content, the result is usually rather awkward and forgettable generations. However when we're talking about the dungeons of a top-down real-time combat RPG, I can see the potential. Dungeons for games like these aren't typically puzzle based or designed to the nines, at their core they are really just rooms with enemies in them, but if the composition of the enemy changes, and if this game has a core rule system strong enough to create enemies are more engaging to fight than just being damage sponges of varying hitpoint thresholds, then this could become a supremely cool system for keeping the spirit of adventure feeling alive and dynamic. Bring your bombs just in case you encounter a swarm, fire and acid for trolls, haste potions for the big-guys not because you know what's coming, but because you need to be prepared for anything.

In setting we have your basic enough concept of a world torn between magic and mana-based tech, coming to blows for some reason or other and creating a dangerous world swept with ancient relics and plunder that make for tempting lures for your loot junky main characters. Yes, there do appear to be two main characters in this game, which could either be very promising or very blunting for progression of the personal narrative. (This game does seem eager to sell us on the strength of the story, so I hope it's the former) A lot of the time CRPGs forget that the narrative should touch the main characters as well, so that players feel like they have a place in the world they are effecting and thus are invested to their decisions, it's the special juice that makes a 'non linear narrative' worthwhile, and having another character beside your hero might make for a great opportunity for the player to bounce off someone regularly; or that second character could just be another soulless husk waiting to be inhabited with the soul of a second player; it's really all up to the direction the team want to take. I've seen this idea kind of sqandered with 'Divinity: Original Sin', and I'd love an example of this done right. 

I've been coming back to comparisons to Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons a lot during this little inspection because it's very clear there's a shade of Baldur's Gate in this game's DNA somewhere along the line. (Even if they don't personally credit DnD at any point on the Steam page.) Although a slight improvement upon the offerings of those game's combat systems is the ability to slow down active combat rather than just pause it. Now personally I'm super excited by this little feature not just because of the cinematic thrill of watching slow-motion fire balls sizzle through the air, but because I can't count the amount of times I've stacked a bunch of orders in stop mode only for my PC to go off doing something stupid and leaving me with the arduous duty of reissuing all orders from scratch. With the prospect of slow-down, I can see when my moron toon decides it needs to stand in the way of an enemy AOE before casting his heal. A small addition, but one I could see myself using literally all the time.

The only part of this that has me dubious rather than curious is the class system, which the marketing has been very quiet on. We know there are 4 base classes with 'specialisations', and I just wonder if that is going to prove deep enough to encourage repeat playthroughs. I mean, that could very much mean a base of Thief, Warrior, Mage and... Monk? I dunno. And perhaps all of these specialisations will breathe with character and diversity like their very own smaller classes within those chief confines; or maybe specialisations will be limp stat buffs leaning you one of two or three very narrow paths similar to what we see in Dragon Age games. There's a lot of pressure points in this pitch that could be the difference between an incredible experience and an average one, and figuring out which way we're leaning is about half the fun, I guess.

Event Horizon, the indie developers on the scene here, have at least one previous RPG under their belts that you can pick up right now called 'Tower of Time', which seems to be generally positively received. (I'd never heard of it before but it came out in 2018 before I fell in love with CRPGs so my lack of knowledge is no great surprise.) Which is to say they're an indie studio with a proven ability to deliver polished role playing products and if you think that's enough to give them the time of day then you know where to look them up. Personally, I'm a sucker for any game that so much as sneezes in the direction of the word 'Airships' so I'm sold hook-line-and-sinker for Dark Envoy; this is going in the wishlist to be closely watched alongside that steadily growing list of worrying heft. (I'm never going to play a non RPG again, am I?)

Bethesda.Net Launcher is dead. Long Live Bethesda.Net Launcher.

 Actually, nah- leave it dead.

Not so long ago, at least in my warped recollection of the past few years, Bethesda really did have their angsty teen phase, didn't they? There was a coordinated cut-off from general communication with their consumers, (which has largely persisted to this day) Bethesda rather suddenly decided that they didn't like reviewers anymore and so stopped working with them, (which I understand in principle, most official review sites are corrupt ridden cesspits; but they're also kind of a necessary evil) and they followed the path most worn by their contemporaries and created their own game launcher. Although at least they didn't go full goth and cut off all possible purchases from other storefronts so that income could be funnelled directly into their company, like EA did and still does with 'The Sims'. This was all just another step in the industries' insistence on shoving innumerable launchers and storefronts and complications between buying games and playing them. And they want to try and up the industry standard price by £10 for the inconvenience? No thank you.

I think a great number of companies seriously misjudge just how much effort goes into making and maintaining a proper storefront, believing it to be the simplest thing in the world based on all those online retailers that litter the web-surfing experience. "If they can do it, why can't I?" Well, because a game launcher requires a bit more than your typical online shop does. It needs to facilitate hosting applications, integrate itself smoothly with the types of features one might require when playing a game (Such as custom controller support), match the bells and whistles of the industry leader, Steam, (Through offering features like achievements) and, let's not forget, feature a bloody search bar! (Looking you squarely in the eyes, Stadia...) More often than not, launching your brave new excursion into triumphant self reliance ends up playing out much as one would expect from embarking off a high-tide dock in a 10-foot long wooden dingy with holes in most of the planks. Which is to say it doesn't last all that long and even if they do manage to keep afloat, it's typically less than a successful venture.

Point-in-case being the Bethesda Launcher, which seems to have served as more of a confusingly irrelevant piece of software for most of it's life. Bethesda never took its games down from Steam, and you've never needed both Steam and Bethesda.Net to play one of their titles, so the utility of this whole operation is severely questionable. Actually I say that, although I've never played Fallout 76 on Steam and so it's entirely possible that 76 was the sole exception where needing this launcher was the case. Only people like me who wanted to mess around with Fallout 4's or Skyrim: Special Edition's Creation kit probably even has the thing installed. Alongside those who wanted to play the smash-hit card game: The Elder Scrolls Legends! (I still cry myself to sleep some nights thinking on how that game is dead. I know it wasn't exactly a unique creative swangsong, but I liked the thing dammit... it was taken from us all far too soon.)  As such, the prevailing takeaway from the recent news that Bethesda.Net would soon be no more is- 'Bethesda.Net is a thing?'

Indeed not many mournful flags have been waved over this passing, more joyous jeering at further consolidation of the PC playspace. And whilst consolidation is usually something of a cause for concern in this industry- I don't think the whole 'competing launchers' thing has ever been a benefit to the consumer. Epic Games, with all the money in the world, still can't put together a launcher that loads as consistently as Steam does- still! Yes, they have achievements now; yes, third-party support is finally somewhat decent; but goodlord, why must I wrestle the infrastructure everytime I want to see the new free game on the front page and then promptly bounce? Is it because you know I've spent literally no money on your platform and am actively punishing me for my reticence? Because if so then- yeah, actually, that would probably be justified. I can't really say anything to that. And Bethesda.Net never even had any features approaching what Epic is struggling to achieve, so again: Pointless.

Those who bought the 'hype', however, (if there was ever any hype for a perpetually redundant launcher) might be wondering about the type of sudden damage this end-to-the-Bethesda-verse is going to deal them. Because afterall, you could buy games through the Bethesda.Net store at a time, and now that store is going away some might be worried about what that means for their property. But luckily they have more to fear for the day when Origin inevitably goes under, because Bethesda have confirmed that all ownership can be transferred to Steam free-of-charge and most progress will be carried over too. The only game which definitely will not carry over progress is 'Wolfenstein: Young Blood'; but let's be honest, that's more of a boon than a drawback. It's a clear incentive to stop playing 'Wolfenstein: Young Blood'. How kind of them.

I would also imagine that those with modded versions of their favourite Bethesda titles might also need to be looking into alternative conversion processes, because I can just sense something going wrong in that whole equation. But let's be honest: if you were sold into the whole 'modding Bethesda games' world there's probably no way you were using Bethesda.Net to hold those games. (I don't even know if they hosted any of their wildly moddable games on that launcher anyway.) Personally, I'm excited for the prospect  of two creation kits coming to the Steam eco-system, as previously there was actually no way to use them outside of the launcher. Which was great given the launcher penchant for wobbly servers that could drop you like a stone. (Stop making launchers everybody; you're bad at it!) 

From all this I wonder at the role of developers and publishers in the industry and the ways in which they choose to expand upon their responsibilities (and thus, influence), because I think we can all agree this whole 'everybody has their own launcher' experiment has been a garbage fire. But then, what else is open to a company who wants to diversify their model? NFTs is you ask the gibbering buffoons running Ubisoft, crypto platforms for the inept. For me I'd have to take the uncharacteristically conservative stance and say 'nothing, just stick to what you're good at'. Imagine a movie studio coming out and starting a cinema chain that premiered only their own films; you'd rightly find that as a bit of an overreach and quite foolhardy, would you not? I know that Valve used to be a cutting edge developer too, but remember that they had to effectively torpedo all game design aspirations in order to keep Steam running and welcoming. Any other game studio who wants to match that level of commitment needs to, you know, commit!

So sayonara to Bethesda.Net and thus the last of the distractions between Bethesda and making that new 'Starfield' game of theirs which I've all but lost interest in at this point; maybe now that thing will actually be looking at a sensible launch date. (Although somehow I doubt it.) Alas, the need for a Bethesda account has not been exorcised from every one of their games, (so more dealing with those crappy servers) and we can expect many more questionably ambitious 'innovations' from the team in the future. Starfield Creation Club at launch? You betcha! At the very least I can hope that this trend hits off and we see Ubisoft retire their genuinely godawful launcher (Which I think you still need for Splinter Cell games), and EA's Origin get the axe. Then we can live on with the truly godawfully trinity of Steam, Epic and Rockstar Games. (Bloody Rockstar...)

What is up with Beyond Good and Evil 2?

 Beyond a joke at this point.

Maybe I just hit my head and the dizzied fragments of my concussion have been conjuring misremembered phantoms for me, indicative of some real troubling brain damage, or Beyond Good and Evil 2 was indeed, announced a while back and is still in development limbo. In fact, let me look it up quickly- Yep, guess my brain is still working, this title was announced back in- oh my god, 2008? Is it ever going to launch? Nah, I'm messing with yah. There was indeed a BGE2 announced back in 08, but that version of the project was quietly cancelled. Still, we've been waiting on this new-and-improved BGE 2 (which is actually a prequel to BGE 1, but let's not split hairs) for about 5 years now and although I'm not one to sit there tapping my watch when it comes to videogame development, I'm going to make an exception here: What the hell are any of those guys even doing? I mean seriously, we've had a whole new console generation pop up in the time since the 2017 announcement and now, with not even a single polished gameplay demo to show for it!

And to be clear, I'm not someone deeply in love with the 'exciting prospect' of a new Beyond Good and Evil game. I know the original is a cult classic, and I see it as an exceptionally fun 'Dreamworks/Miyazaki to Disney'-equivalent game for it's time, but I wouldn't be calling out any great injustice if the franchise was literally never picked up again. I didn't care much for the story, and the world might very well be best in the tiny dose of it that we were fed, who's to say. That being said, I'm not remotely against seeing any more of Jade and her adventures either. That world really was really bubbling with character and personality that almost felt like their own take on Outer Rim Star Wars at times, only with more thematic consistency. Some of the missions were pretty fun with cool and unique environments to explore, and the combat system was... well the combat was as good as you could expect for 2003 but I wasn't personally in love with it. There is potential with a sequel to really strive out and become a dose of fresh air to the gaming world, and Ubisoft really does need a fresh new idea that isn't a bullet in the foot of their own public reputation. (Despite how much I know they love their Crypto duties.) 

So then the question is: where is that sequel? In any form? At the time of the announcement, Ubisoft and the developers on this product in particular spoke a big game about creating a title that was going to revolutionise action adventure as we know it. A huge playspace that would encompass an entire foreign solar system, impeccably designed sci-fi cities just dripping with cultural influences and a procedurally evolving world that would be updated with seasonal content so that the game was forever offering new activities! Okay, so that last bit wasn't actually all that exciting and really just sounded like a Live Service, like it inevitable was going to be. (and which we've kind of seen reflected in other flagship Ubisoft series' since) but all that stuff about scale was mindblowing. Being able to fly your tiny ship into a huge flagship and jump from planet to planet? That's Star Citizen Territory! And maybe that comparison is less surface level than I originally believed because neither game displays any hope of being completed within the next decade.

There was even the Space Monkey Program, who remembers that? It was a emailing list that one could sign up to in order to be kept up to date on the progress of the project, and one which I don't believe has been updates since late 2019. That was where we were gifted some of those lingering snippets of rough-looking pre-alpha gameplay you might find floating around, all of which are excessively experimental but benefit from bubbly and passionate sounding team members cheering it's praises and promising us that something special awaits these gameplay chunks once the polish has been applied. And then they went dark, out of the blue, and we haven't heard a thing since. This is the kind of treatment you'd expect from a Kickstarter game with devs who have wholly jumped ship, not a division of the incredibly successful Ubisoft company- Where is all of that communication which the community was promised?

Well believe it or not, we have actually heard a mention of the game somewhat recently, (half a year back) curtsey of 'sentient chunk of lint-roller fluff', Yves Guillemot. Realising the monumental amount of angst shared by a community desperate for substantive news, he rose from his high castle, donned his finest BS tone and rolled up upon an earnings call with this diamond morsel to throw to us savages. "It's coming along quite well." Oh- is that it? two and a half years since we've heard a whisper of a murmur and all we're given is 'Yeah it's cool, stop asking'. I don't know if it's sensible for me to feel as insulted as I do by that. But similarly I can't really help myself, now can I? Yves: Ubisoft is not 'going well'; your business both inside, with the rampant abuse allegations warding away clients, and out, with your reputation among the wider community being similarly torpedoed, is not 'going well'; so how about you give us something with a bit for value to it concerning BGE2? So that we can see for ourselves just exactly what is, and what isn't, 'going well'.

What's more, why is Yves talking for this game on the developer's behalf? Wasn't one of the draws of the Space Monkey program being that the active team would be communicating with the consumers, safe from the corporate-buzzword filter of stuffy management types? Yet now we've got Yves as our sole spokesperson, undermining any progress or complications befalling the project with his handwaving platitude remark? You can't just feed crap to us in desperate hope that we'll just nod our heads and go 'that sounds about right' without looking any deeper ourselves. It's like a father going to school before prom and telling everyone exactly why they should invite his daughter; it's embarrassing and rank. (Don't think too hard about that metaphor, I really wanted to make it.)

The only other significant event to happen during the breadth of Beyond Good and Evil 2's life cycle is the exorcising of the game's director Michel Ancel. Yes, he departed the company during the wave of Ubisoft departures, and a French Newspaper who were following the developments of the company have attested that his leadership might have caused a lot of the problems with the development. With him allegedly being abusive and disorganised, thus leading to an unfocused vision for the game, so that it had to be rebooted several times over. So with him out of the way does that finally mean that BGE 2 is on track? Of course not, that just means even more delay as the project had to switch hands and maybe even some plan rearrangements because this game apparently wants to rival 'Duke Nukem Forever' in development hell miles. 

Despite all the misgivings that hound this game I remain confidant that it will someday come out. Will it be the same game that we were advertised back in 2017? No. Will it resemble that vision close enough that we can squint and pretend it's the same game? Possibly. Ubisoft has hit several nerves in recent years so it's essential for their own sake that they portray competence in making games, if not in supporting them, so I'd imagine that marketing will try hard to downplay the many shuffles around the game. My prediction: This year we're going to get another tease, maybe a whole new trailer, but it won't come with any gameplay, promises and certainly not a release window. And thus we will start this whole waltz with the void as we play the 'has it been cancelled yet' game once more. Welcome to the uncertainty train, BGE2, take a seat right next to VTMB2; we'll see to you in a bit.

So this Fallout TV show is definitely happening, huh?

 It's all over- but the crying.

Those TV executive leeches won't leave well enough alone, will they? And at this point, I think it's fair to say that we can no longer write off every new video game adaptation as hot-air nonsense, doomed to blow about in perpetual pre-production until it withers and dies. No, if the Uncharted movie made it to publish, then any movie can. Or TV show, for that matter. But this sudden reliability does no come with a provable stamp of quality, not even close. Still we have to deal with the hare brained ideas for game adaptations that make no sense, "Oh, let's adapt Uncharted into a film; you know, that game which is popular becomes it apes popular film-making techniques and translates them neatly into gaming language so people feel like they're playing the cool set pieces? Yeah, we're gonna do that but without the intractability." 'No', 'stop it' and 'why would you even think that was a good idea?'. And then there's the Bioshock movie. Yes, a gorgeous world that will definitely translate to the silver screen, but the knock-out punch of Bioshock was the story twist which effortlessly deconstructed the typical 'call to adventure' set-up that games had been taking advantage of forever, that twist will be pitiful in comparison when executed on any other medium! But at least we have the Fallout show.

Announced what feels like a couple of years ago, The Fallout show is absolutely still on the docket to be made by... Amazon? Oh crud. (No matter what we can't escape 'Netflix-adaptation Lex Luthor', can we?) My point is that this idea works, Fallout can absolutely make the jump to TV flawlessly without becoming lost in translation and if it does; audiences who have even never heard of these games before are in for an absolute visual treat. There's no other post-apocalyptic series out there that treats the after-earth with such recognisable style, and which skilfully teeters between absurdity, relatability and abject tragedy all across the breadth of personal and sweeping narratives. Fallout isn't about the end, it's about the after; and that is what makes it stand out so brilliantly even amidst the bevy of post apocalyptic games within gaming, let alone outside of it. Which is all to say that I approve of this project, and hope it scores a big one.

And it might have already done that, what with the casting of Walter Goggins- are you serious? An honest to goodness character-actor with the sort of face you expect to see, and often do see, from a western. This is the kind of actor you can just feel sliding into the Fallout world so well it's almost too good. Why was this singular casting choice made public? Is it to distract from something godawful in the works behind the scenes? They're not going to do the unthinkable and set this Fallout show in Canada, are they? Actually I would totally love to see somewhere outside of America in the Fallout series, I know the 'American Dream' is a big part of the set-up, but after 5 entries (Including 76) you've got to start wondering if the series has the legs to expand it's horizons. Besides, Bethesda have dibs on the East coast stories, Obsidian (Formerly Black Isles) has the West Coast; what's left for the TV show? The Middle states? Yeah, 'cause we'd love a Fallout series which consists of 8 episodes of wondering around irradiated corn fields, wouldn't we?

If there is one thing I want, nay need to be true when it comes to this Fallout series, and I know it's a long shot, but I want it to be an original story so bad. I know the temptation to adapt the Fallout 3 narrative is there, because of how its very set-up, child leaves the safety of the Vault to brave the wastes in order to track down their Liam Neeson Father, seems so gift-wrapped and tempting for the lazy writer out there. Don't steal it! That story, and New Vegas', belongs to the players. Weighing in on it with any sort of adaption will drop that poisonous mist of 'canonicity' into a world that so-far exists exclusively within every player's copy of Fallout 3,4 and New Vegas. For the same reason why a direct Mass Effect adaptation would be a terrible idea, we have to put our foot down and establish an adaptation etiquette, so Hollywood can realise that this isn't the same as just book adaptations. There are gaming industry unique variables to really consider and respects that should be paid.

Whatsomore, don't we deserve a new story? Something I've been thinking about for a while when it comes to Fallout is how much we've been denied the truly expansive universe that these games could have been, simply because we have to wait for an entire massive RPG to be made each time the universe is touched. Why not authorise some cool games of different genres from talented studios out there such as, and I can't believe I'm advocating for this, an RTS? There could be a smashing RTS Fallout game based on the 'Ceaser's Legion v NCR' war alone, or maybe new factions entirely! Bring us a new world with new vaults and new places to be excited about in this new show, make us fans who already love this series to bits, anticipate and speculate about the prospect of having our expectations exceeded. 

What I'm looking for is several-fold; I need a story that is going to introduce the key tenets of the Wasteland in a satisfying, timely way for the new fans. That means we're going to have to see the 50's soul in the design of the ruins and old world advertising, the relation to the tragedy of the lost America will need to be shown off in some way other than old terminals and holotapes and I want to see Super Mutants. I know mutants are a little overplayed in the series right now despite their specific role in the first Fallout, but now they've become a deeply ingrained part of the core identity and thus shouldn't be shunned. There needs to be a Deathclaw. The Brotherhood are too easy to misconstrue as defacto heroes, and so should be kept back until a Season 2 plot point. Oh, and the Vault Tec Vault experiment that features in this season should be really twisted, so as to convey the absolute twisted moral depravity of the series-iconic Vault Tec company.

I would like a Fallout story set sometime between the events of Fallout 76 and the rest of the Fallout canon (there's a good hundred years or so) with which we can tell the story of some event that is  sweeping, an event with consequence and lasting ramifications that shape this corner of the wasteland, wherever that corner ends up being. I'd love a totally new, imaginative, major faction to be introduced: and to that effect I think the one of the biggest post-apocalyptic tropes that Fallout hasn't adequately explored yet is sci-fi feudalism, so that's still open. Although a colonialism-themed post-war faction would be just as cool. Maybe there could even be shades of the Enclave littered throughout the narrative, just enough that we know they exist without becoming some overarching enemy, and I'd love a story that confronts the trauma related to living in this world and/or growing up as a Vault Tec lab experiment, as that's an angle we've never really had the chance to explore in any of the games, what with them being choice-heavy action RPGs.

With enough care and effort put into the script and casting, I genuinely believe that Amazon's Fallout could be a powerhouse series, totally shattering the curse of video game adaptations that we've taken for the norm for so long. It's just a ripe franchise with so much potential on the silver screen which you just know, with the right budget, would quickly grab attention and become a 'butts-to-seats' winner for the Prime service. I just hope that everyone is aware of what needs to be put in, financially and effort-wise, in order to achieve here, because if we seen a Supermutant waddle up in some rubber green mask, or T-45 Power Armour awkwardly jutting in weird carboard-looking angles (Like Master Chief's kind of does in the Halo show) it's going kill the dream before its started. After hearing definitively that Paramount is going to disrespect the series of Halo and drink deep from their own hubris in order to unmask Master Chief, (what makes you think you even have that right? Self righteous asshats.) the pressure falls now to this long awaited Fallout show to further legitimise gaming in the mainstream as a source of art. So no pressure, Amazon.

And... I'm playing Skyrim again.

I'm starting to dream in Dragon.

We all have those onerous backlogs of games that we swear to ourselves we'll get around to one day. One mythical day where we just pull ourselves up and play more hours than are physically within the day in order to complete literally every single game we've ever had a passing interest in, and it's a lie. We know it's a lie. Most of us are lucky if we've even played all the games that we own, let alone finished them; but it's a falsity that harms no one. Yet even that becomes hard for me to tell myself when I'm going around wasting valuable off-time playing my fifty thousandth Skyrim playthrough on Anniversary edition! (Someone stop me, I can't do it myself!) So I think it's fair that if I'm going to talk about gaming as it currently exists for me right now, it only makes sense that I bring everyone into my ongoing love affair with Skyrim and overmodding to just-unhealthy degrees.

First of all, I've just played through Skyrim's main story on Skyrim Special Edition, which Steam is telling me is the first time I've done that... ever. Which goes to show the amount of times I've dived into a playthrough and just gotten lost on the innumerable side activities, and large questmods that characterise playing PC Skyrim. Currently I'm playing with exactly 312 active plugins in my Skyrim game, and I've touched upon maybe half of those mods in a lot of playing time. Most of which I started the game with and a few I picked up along the way are mostly patches or appearance mods to replace one's that broke or which I forgot; all of which is the sign of a modder who is a little too experienced. Knowing pretty much exactly what I wanted to have in my game, what I needed to have installed right away, what I probably wanted to leave until the future is all recommended knowledge, of course, because mid-playthrough modding is typically ill-advised.

So what sort of mods am I rocking? Well I'm actually rather conservative when it comes to modifications to the core gameplay experience simply because I really like the way that Skyrim plays. It's not particularly dripping with pitch perfect weight or complexity, but it has enough going on to sustain a playthrough and at least feels impactful on swings, which is all I ask for. That being said, I do have a couple of gameplay effecting mods in there from CACO (an alchemy and cooking overhaul which I'd never tried before and figured would be worth checking out) and Wintersun. (a really cool mod that brings religion into the game as a meaningful mechanic.) And there are the tons of companion mods I download, because I love making friends, which almost necessitates mods like OBIS (Organised Bandits In Skyrim) otherwise I would just roll through every combat encounter like a train. (Because I need to have Inigo, Sofia, Lucien, Aurlyn, Vilja, Lydia, my Armoured Mudcrab I call 'Harry', a modded version of Meeko that's a white Husky and some rando NPC from 3DNPC that I stumbled on and liked their backstory, all in my party at the same time.)

My visual overhaul mods aren't too numerous, although I've very happy with the few that I've chosen. Jk's Skyrim does an incredible job remixing all of the settlements across the region to create something feeling very much in the spirit of Skyrim but with more personality and sensible scale to them. One of my favourite additions being the way the mod adds a whole graveyard of ruined houses around the back of Winterhold, using the environment to tell the canonical story of the city literally fell apart, as in- off a cliff, under dubious circumstances. Plus there's Obsidian Weather, which adds some small seasonal rotation to the game, but also just improves the sky box so much that there are times I'm just left stunned looking up at the celestial wonder of the sky. Which is very important, because with the many mods of Anniversary Edition I spend a lot of time walking the roads.

'Skyrim: Survival Mode' is one of the most enduring inbuilt mods I've kept in my playthrough rotation and only now, that I've completed the main game, am I starting to get annoyed by it. (New Vegas still maintains the best integrated survival mode in a Bethesda published Role Playing game.) Why disable fast-travel, no seriously- why? Fallout 4's Survival Difficulty is a hardcore challenge, a Souls-esque weighing of risk and reward where the brutality of travelling to objectives is a large part of the fun. But Skyrim, even with Survival Mode, is just not that. Having to eat and sleep feels like natural addendums to this world and the rate they build on you against the amount of ready food there is within the world doesn't feel the least bit imposing to me. This isn't one of those games where the struggle to survive desperately outweighs your ability to have fun and do what you want, the meters just add value to the otherwise ancillary food items which litter the game world. So forcing walking everywhere feels totally out of left field and leaves we wondering if the makers of this little plugin even understand what the purpose of the mod that they made is. (I had to install a extra-carriages in Skyrim mod just to resist the temptation not to turn the mod off.)

But what brings me back to the act of modding Skyrim again and again are those quest mods. Good lord do I never get tired of taking my Dragonborn on some of the craziest and grandest new adventures cooked up by the endlessly talented creatives all over the community. Terminally unbalanced, all of them, but still incredibly exciting. And just as with Morrowind where I spent weeks walking the streets of the mainland, or that communities interpretation of Skyrim, and fell absolutely in love with places like Necrom and the Hammerfell-Skryim border; the promise of great 'New Lands' mods also excite me. I haven't had the opportunity to explore a great many of them quite yet, but I'm enthused everytime I bump into a character who's a hook for Moonpath, or a recruiter for Vigilant, or get jumped scared by the lead-in to 'Gray Cowl'. (It feels uproariously wrong spelling it that way.) 

Of course, juggling a load order like that there are some precautions to take, and if you don't mind I'm going to turn this into a little bit of an advice corner for a second. Firstly, research all of the mods you're about to install extensively, obviously, so that you know what each of them does and if any of them have any special install requirements. Use a current mod manager, manual installation is absolutely out of the question. Check the 'LOOT' sorter tool, it tells you about any well known patches you might be currently missing in order to make some mods work better together. (And LOOT comes included with Vortex Mod Manager, by the way) And most importantly of all, turn off all autosaving and never quick save. Even if you don't have particularly script-intensive mods, autosaving and Quicksaving are going to get things tangled up and sooner or later you're going to get a corrupted save. Oh, and read the heck out of requirements. (That really screwed me for one mod in particular and had me scratching my head for hours.)

I remember a very long time ago when I was just dipping my toes into the RPG world and I used to follow someone online who seemed much more into all of this than me and was hyping up every insignificant news drop leading upto Skyrim. A lot of the marketing material was really cool on it's own merits, but this guy could blow it up into a dance number and sing the news straight the way into Valhalla with his endless praise-fuelled rants. When talking about decapitations, as shown in the combat trailer, specially, I remember him stating something along the lines of 'this will be a game you'll play for ten years.' And at the time that really stuck with me, as I pondered on it and thought: "I mean maybe, but isn't that kinda optimistic?" We're past the ten year mark, and look at me. Because of Bethesda, because of re-releases, but most of all because of an unbelievable community, here I am falling for Skyrim in 2022. Some things never do change.