With work kicked into high gear since the departure of two friends, this week’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! has unfortunately been delayed. I do, however, have some good news to share related to my nascent career as a writer.
I responded to an advert from Polymancer Studios which said they were looking for writers and would-be writers for a new publication related to tabletop gaming. I suggested a column about creative DMing, full of tips for the guy or gal behind the screen aimed at keeping things exciting for the players, from villains with deep motivations to the inclusion of politics in the lands through which the players travel. Polymancer liked the idea, and contacted me about coming aboard as a regular columnist.
Now that alone would be enough to excite me, but then Sandra from Polymaner said this:
I looked over your blog “The Blue Ink” and I liked what I read, would you consider writing for one of our fiction publications as well?
Would I? You bet your ass I would.
I looked through my little bits of fiction, teased out possible ongoing plot threads and character growth and finally settled on Captain Pendragon. Sandra showed it to the others at Polymancer, and…
We like your idea and would love to see this serialized as part of Polygraff’s content. How does that sound to you?
So, yeah. Watch this space. Good things are happening, slowly but surely.
In other news, if anybody wants to sketch the characters or settings in the aforementioned story, feel free. I can picture these folks and technology in my head but I can’t draw to save my life.
As my darling wife has mentioned (What’s that? You didn’t know she was blogging? Shame on you, go read her awesome posts, I’ll wait), there are several MMOs of various flavors on their way. Following her fine example, since she followed mine in getting a blog started in the first place, I’m going to take some time to talk about why I’m interested in playing some of them, and why some of them don’t interest me at all.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Woke up on the wrong side of the continent.
As a former WoW player (my weekly twelve-step meetings are going well, thanks for asking) I do understand the appeal of a new expansion. Some areas of the old world map have fallen quite behind in terms of quest quality, population and overall aesthetic. New dungeons promising better loot is a major draw as well, and tying in old threads from previous games in a way that’s loyal to the typical Blizzard atmosphere of a world going dark (Diablo, for example) isn’t all that bad.
When I wrote this section earlier I was focusing on the few bad experiences I had that turned me off to the repetitive dungeon grinding in MMOs in general and WoW in particular. I however had some good experiences as well, rendering this entire section moot as well as making me out to be a blatant liar. Therefore I have redacted this section and will be spending the rest of the evening in an act of contrition too horrific and stomach-churning to relate here. Suffice it to say it involves jumper cables, running water, a roll of duct table and no less than six very angry ferrets.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Nostalgically delicious.
I’ve said on several occasions that I used to love Star Wars, but George Lucas slowly and surely strangled all joy out of the original films and my childhood memories of them. The closest I’ve come to the pure enjoyment I once got out of Star Wars was playing Knights of the Old Republic. Both of those games had a heavy emphasis on story, being rooted in BioWare’s development mentality, and those stories were, unlike those in the prequels, very well told. The Old Republic setting, from the original graphic novels to those two games, painted a much deeper and more vibrant picture of both the Star Wars universe in general and the Jedi in particular.
When it was first announced that the Old Republic would be the setting for a new Star Wars MMO, I was excited. Despite some major problems, Star Wars Galaxies still had something to offer in terms of both gameplay and nostalgia. However, it’s diffcult to balance the classes when you’re pitting normal beings with high technology against space samurai with psychoflexus powers that can toss heavy objects and people alike around a room with almost casual ease. There’s also the fact that, as rich as the setting might be and no matter how much text BioWare will be dumping on the players, all of it is eventually lurching towards the time in the future when all of the Jedi will get murdered at the hands of a super-powered politician with a partially melted face and an asthmatic boy-man who spends most of his formative years stomping his feet and bitching people out over the unfairness of his life.
I feel like I want to vomit already.
Star Trek Online
If I’m going to deal with lag and bugs, I might as well have something nice to look at.
Star Trek, on the other hand, has had ups and downs in all sorts of flavors and colors, and I still think there’s lots to like about it. The MMO is set in the ‘prime’ reality, rather than the ‘alternate’ one created by Abrams. You know, the one people say craps all over Roddenberry’s dream of the future, which would be biting comments if they hadn’t been said about episode of Deep Space 9 or Voyager or Enterprise or some of the later films? Anyway, my feelings on that subject are well-documented and I’d rather talk about the game.
I’m working on a ‘first impressions’ that encapsulates my experiences in the open beta of Star Trek Online, but suffice it to say I’m liking what I’ve experienced so far. Fleet actions that work a bit like WAR’s Public Quests, skill trees that take the place of arbitrary levels, an Away Team system that ensures you have help when beaming into hostile areas and the ability to customize just about any visual aspect of both your character and your Bridge Officers are a few of the highlights of the game’s current build. I’m still toying with the Away Team AI, looking forward to more missions that don’t involve the usual straightforward “go to location X to kill Y hostile craft/creatures belonging to Z”, and curious about this Replicator system that allows me to sell random drops without having to visit a vendor. More to come on this, but up until now my experience has been positive.
Warhammer 40,000
Unprotected sex is heresy. Heresy is punishable by death.
I love the world of 40k. There’s a lot going on, plenty of diverse and dangerous cultures and situations and the overall grimdarkness of the atmosphere puts it far and away from the worlds of either Star Trek or Star Wars. Characters in crapsack worlds tend to be more interesting, which is why encountering people in Fallout 3 is a treat more often than not. However, I think a lot of people are going to look towards this game and try to find out if they can be a super-powered Space Marine.
Screw that, I say. Being overpowered and motivated by faith and loyalty alone gets really dull after a while. Ask most Jedi, if they’re not just interested in waving their dicks lightsabers around. I’ll take Ibram Gaunt over any Space Marine any day of the week. A former Guardsman pressed into service as a mercenary to try and make a living, the assassin masquerading as a nobleman to get closer to his targets, a Dark Eldar privateer looking for his next big score… you could probably come up with many more character ideas and possibly port them into the other sci-fi MMOs, but 40k’s world is so grim and so dark that it’s probably the best and most interesting sandbox in which they can play.
Final Fantasy XIV
Stole this one form the wife.
A few of the Final Fantasy games turned out pretty well. I particularly like games in the series that incorporate the Job system. Apparently, in this upcoming MMO, the system will be returning in a way that sounds intriguing. From what I understand changing your equipment is what changes your job. My wife covers the game a bit more in-depth and I’ve already stolen both the concept for this post and a couple images from her, so I’ll let her take it from here.
It seems like just about anything can be made into an MMO. My interest stays mostly within speculative fiction, however, so I’ll be keeping an eye on the aforementioned IPs. Hopefully the soulless corporate money-makers won’t try to make absolutely anything into an MMO. At least, I hope not. It’s not like there’s a Twilight MMO in the works.
NO. NO. NO NO NO JESUS O’ BASTARD WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE THERE WILL BE STABBINGS THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST BEGGING TO BE STABBED NO NO NO CHRIST NO.
I really, really need to see Daybreakers. I need to restore my faith in the fact that people out there know how to portray vampires that act like fucking vampires. For your own safety and the safety of others, await my review of this film. Help support me seeing it, and avert the oncoming torrent of hate-filled stabbity death.
This will probably be my last ‘Cooler in Space’ post for a bit. I’m going to do my utmost to focus on a single major project at a time. Certainly, if something comes along for which I’ll be paid, I’ll shift my focus there, but the point is that I should take something from beginning to end without interruption or schizophrenic and sudden gear-changes.
But before I put the RPG project on one of my many back-burners and move something else to stand all alone on the front one, I want to touch on something I happened upon in my addled brain that might give more focus to the RPG.
I mentioned in a previous post that Saturn could be a potential source of conflict. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Saturn and, more specifically, its moons are very nearly a campaign setting in and of themselves. People would come from both Terran and Jovian walks of life to stake, protect, jump or outright steal claims to the mineral-rich moons, the vast open land for colonization or developmental space and the hydrogen stocked atmosphere. Like the unclaimed areas in the Forgotten Realms, the various small moons in Serenity and the Outer Rim in Star Wars, there’s plenty of blank canvas upon which a game master can paint a campaign.
The home worlds of the players, then, become origin points, places where stories begin and possibly end. The bulk of those stories, however, would play out in unknown and unmapped places, lending an air of mystery and exploration to the drama, suspense and combat. That’s what I’m thinking, at least.
More on why this is getting back-burnered in the days to come.
Old book is old. Even the guy on the cover is old.
I have a dog-eared copy of the first Choose Your Own Adventure book, the Cave of Time, somewhere in my collection. I adored reading it over and over again, because every time I picked it up, something different was going to happen. Now, granted, I died more often than I succeeded, but I don’t think that’s any different from how most video games play out, especially those games called action/adventures.
To be honest, I hate the term ‘action/adventure’ when applied to video games. It feels like the term was dreamed up just to get applied to games that don’t fall conveniently into a single game-play type. Halo‘s a first-person shooter. Command & Conquer is an RTS game. Gran Turismo is a racing game. Assassin’s Creed? Action/adventure.
The thing about a game like Assassin’s Creed, though, is that the game isn’t just there to be a game. It’s also there to tell a story. Halo, for the most part, has a story that, while not the worst in gaming, merely exists to get the player from one arena filled with squishy targets to the next. A lot of shooters fall into this, and several hack-and-slashers as well (I’m looking at you, Kratos). I don’t want to seem like I’m ragging on games that exist just to entertain. Believe me, I’m just as amused and distracted by shiny objects, spurts of blood and full frontal nudity as the next guy. But a game really gets my attention when something else is going on that pulls me in.
For the sake of comparison, let’s look at Halo in contrast to BioShock.
No Brute ever gave me that “OH SHI-” feeling I got when I took on a Big Daddy for the first time.
BioShock is not without a few problems. It was advertised as a mix of shooting & role-playing but ended up leaning far more towards the shooting side of things. The morality system was an ‘either-or’ choice rather than a sliding scale. And the final boss is something of a let-down. However, I love BioShock in spite of its flaws because of its deep and interesting story. Instead of the typical badass X wading into situation Y with overpowered weapon Z, the player’s character is thrust into a situation in a completely alien environment and is unaware of both his potential and the dark secrets that await. In Halo, Master Chief knows he’s a badass, goes about things in his badass way, hefts badass weapons without any problems because he’s a badass, and goes about saving the galaxy in an almost nonchalant way as fits his badass idiom. I hope I’ve used the word ‘badass’ enough times to properly demonstrate how boring I find the stories in the Halo universe. Good concepts, mind, and a badass protagonist to be sure. But kinda dull in the execution. Then again, Halo seems more and more to be a vehicle for teenagers to shoot lasers at each other and teabag their opponents.
And maybe I’m just tired of having to wash that taste out of my mouth. Anyway, let’s move on.
Right up there with Xenogears in terms of ‘games that do dirty things to your brain’.
My wife recently played through Chrono Cross for the second time, and I have to say that I need to make time to play through it myself. In addition to suggesting someone make a time-travel MMO, she points out that the story of the game is not only well-written but the kind of thing that fucks with your mind. Now, it’s an older PSOne game, so the graphics aren’t as top-notch as they once were and some of the game systems look a bit clunky from the outside. Again, this is me, and I haven’t played it myself. However, seeing some of the story playing out and the depth given to the various characters pulled me in just as an observer. I can only imagine the experience that awaits me as a player.
I’ve never played The Force Unleashed either, but I don’t think I have to. The penance I must pay for liking the prequel films when I was younger is coming, and I know I must pay it because I am quite guilty of my sins. However, I’ve tried to mitigate the damage to the memory of my childhood, which I pray shall rest in peace after being thoroughly flash-liquefied by the blazing bonfire of ego put on the screen not once but three times by Lucas. I’ve avoided the CGI Clone Wars mess like the plague, only deigning to watch Confused Matthew‘s review of the film, and I refuse to play Force Unleashed. It, too, is something of a sweeping epic, but it is, by all accounts, full of wooden characters with flat dialog and pointless computer-driven action sequences that have little to no relevance to the story. If it turns out the case is otherwise, in comparison to Lucas’ other recent work, I would be very surprised. I hope the comparison is clear: both games deal with impossible feats (time travel and psychoflexus powers, respectively), both aim for expansive stories and both want to draw us into the lives of the characters. Just from observation, as far as I can tell, Chrono Cross is a shining success while The Force Unleashed is a bombastic high-energy failure.
It’s possible I’m being overly biased about this, and that I’ve been somewhat spoiled by earlier games that feature story in lieu of graphics and physics engines. I’ve covered what I enjoy about Mass Effect, and one of the things I talk about is its story. However, while there’s nothing wrong with having a linear story, and Mass Effect‘s is pretty linear when the side-quests are left out, I do sort of miss the ‘branching campaign’ system that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been used much since I first experienced it in Wing Commander.
Long before MMOs, I was wasting hours on video games. This series in particular.
I wax nostalgic when I think of Wing Commander. In a game that hearkens to the likes of Battlestar Galactica and Space: Above and Beyond, you’d think the main selling point for me would be the ability to hop into a space fighter and fire my lasers at antagonistic aliens. And while that’s always fun, especially for a space cadet like myself, the other thing that makes it stand out in my mind along with those shows is the intricate and well-crafted story. And instead of moving along from one plot point to the next regardless of your actions, the success or failure of a particular mission can take the story in an entirely new direction. I don’t know about you, but to me the idea that I can alter the fate of my shipmates and the entire human race I’ve been sworn to defend excites me. It makes me want to go back and play through the original Wing Commander games, 256-color graphics and MIDI music and all.
The difference between Wing Commander and Mass Effect, other than decades of development, advances in gaming technology and the fact that Wing Commander never got past the occasional on-screen kiss while Mass Effect doesn’t flinch at laying hot blue alien booty on us, is that Mass Effect‘s story kindly waits for the player to advance it. “Yes, the Geth are on the rampage and threaten to destroy us all, but go ahead and do a little mining, we’ll be here.” In Wing Commander there’s a different sort of urgency. The player needs to assist the story in determining where it goes next. It’s like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books, which didn’t bother with any sort of linearity other than what was chosen by the reader. I’m not saying that those books or those old games were flawless. In fact, some of the CYOA books could be downright inscrutable.
Reading: It’ll expand your kid’s vocabulary!
However, the fact remains that the more control the player is given over the story, the more invested they will be in taking that story to its conclusion. MMOs put the player in the role of storyteller, allowing them to determine how the growth of their character proceeds. Now, many MMO players might be more interested in the aforementioned grind/pwn/teabag environment, but for others, including myself, there should be more to a game than that, otherwise why should I pay someone a monthly fee to do something I can do on my console or PC for free, and have had the capability of doing for years?
On that note, I want to mention how much I’m looking forward to the Star Trek Online open beta. Once again, not only will I be running around space pew-pew-pewing at things, I’ll be helping to tell a story. Like those old CYOA books, I have no idea which way that story is going to go. And that idea, the notion that what is about to happen to me is completely unknown, is undeniably exciting. It’s exciting in ways that running around tossing grenades and crouching over the face of an irate 14 year old boy could never hope to be.
“Don’t argue with me. You’re the one who killed the last keg, so you’re getting us a new one!”
In preparation for the upcoming Mass Effect 2, I thought it would be appropriate to see how this new series of sci-fi role-playing games began. As a caveat, I played the first game on the X-Box 360. After playing Dragon Age: Origins (which I also hope to review soon) on the PC I believe I might be getting ME2 via Steam, partially because the PC control scheme seems more suited for RPGs and partially because GameStop no longer takes pre-orders for the Collector’s Edition. Jerks.
The year is 2183. Humanity is, as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, a new kid on the block and with their violent and xenophobic history, somewhat unpredictable. They’ve only just discovered the disparate ways of manipulating mass effects, which are phenomena of physics that allow what we understand as physical laws to be bent. On a personal scale, this permits certain adepts known as ‘biotics’ to manifest telekinetic powers, while starships with the proper equipment can interface with ancient mass relays to catapult themselves across the galaxy at speeds exceeding that of light. As humanity struggles to gain more recognition among the established democratic government of the galaxy, based on a space station called the Citadel, Terran officer & player character Commander Shepherd encounters a dire threat to all sentient life.
Stuff I Didn’t Like
“I said ONE keg, not THREE! How are we supposed to scale that cliff with all this extra weight?”
The Mako. I know it’s trendy to rag on the vehicle sections of Mass Effect, and this might sound like me baying along with the rest of the herd. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what went wrong here. It’s an excursion vehicle that allows the crew to cover a lot of ground on a planet’s surface, it’s capable of moving quickly over all sorts of terrain even in defiance of gravity, and it’s reasonably well armed. I think part of the problem is that it’s not terribly well protected, and when you hit the button to make repairs, the ENTIRE vehicle shuts down and sits there idle, just waiting for the Geth to shove rockets up its exhaust pipe. While the Mako sections could be somewhat tolerable if a tad tedious outside of combat, going from one plot point to the next in the thing whilst navigating a gauntlet of Geth had me nearly spiking my 360 controller on more than one occasion. It’s one thing for a game to be difficult, but Braid never made me want to break things and Mass Effect, while overall a good game, is no Braid.
As an aspiring novelist, I appreciate long passages of prose, and knowing that there’s some thought and foundation involved in the universe being created is, to me, both a comfort and an inspiration. That being said, a video game does not need to unceremoniously dump reams of text into my online codex just becase I glanced at a monitor in the course of the game. As fascinating as I find mass driver weapons technology and the concepts behind different forms of interspecies communication, I’m a bit busy trying to save the galaxy or at least salvage something cool from the nearby planet and don’t have the time to read all of this stuff. Save it for a wiki or online database. Unless you want to include a minigame of Shepherd on the toilet.
This is a minor nerd quibble, but the gravity on all of the planets I explored was apparently the same. Shepherd and the team never had trouble walking around the surface of a planet at their normal brisk pace, and the Mako was capable of scaling rock faces regardless of the planet’s location. Footage of astronauts on the moon showed that a reduced amount of gravity can change how humanoids move from A to B while on foot. Given the amount of work (and text) put into things like the red & blue shifting involved with faster than light travel and the particulars of the hand-held weapons systems, I would’ve thought somebody at BioWare would have taken the time to refresh their memories on how space exploration has been going so far.
The lack of a tutorial, the abrupt nature of some combat encounters and the sporadic way in which the game automatically saves means that Mass Effect has something of a steep learning curve. It’s also unapologetic in the occasionally brutal way it’ll kick your ass. Ignore a certain adversary entering the fight or forget to use a particular ability and whammo, Shepherd’s twisting in a grotesque way as the dire and deep ‘Game Over’ music plays. Some of my deaths might have been alleviated in the PC version of the game, given my experience with Dragon Age.
Along with lots of exposition, the game likes to dump scads of weapons modifications into your inventory. The micromanagement of equipment does allow the player to match the weapons of the party to the upcoming threat, but it’s rather tedious at the same time. It also means that whatever modifications you don’t need can be sold or broken down into the goop that repairs the Mako and hacks crates, which goes a ways to solving any money problems you might have.
Stuff I Liked
“If anybody makes another crack about Robot Chicken, I will turn this ship around!”
The SSV Normandy feels like a military vessel. It’s compact and sleek, clearly designed for speed and maneuverability. In comparison to dreadnaughts and other large capital ships, it appears small, almost tiny. I feel this is more appropriate for a game where you are a special ops agent and need to get from place to place quickly, rather than having the Powers That Be say, “Well, you’re the protagonist, so here’s our shiny new flagship that’s 172 decks tall and bristling with firepower. Try not to scratch the paint, now!”
The powers of biotics are well-realized and seem more grounded than the magic powers in some other games. You won’t be shooting lightning from your hands or setting things on fire with your brain, but tossing objects and people around, surrounding yourself with a protective barrier or stunning an oncoming baddie are all possible. The most potentially outrageous power is the creation of tiny black holes, but considering the powers tie into the manipulation of mass and whatnot, it’s not as far-fetched as the whole Force lightning thing.
Despite my annoyance at pausing the game to swap equipment around every few minutes, I like the weapons the party uses. The devices all collapse down to a portable form when not in use, and they’re light enough that everyone can carry a few at once. This means you can visually see a character swapping one weapon for another rather than it magically appearing in their hands. It compensates for the breaking of immersion by the micromanagement bits, and adds a feeling of dynamic action when you tap a single button and watch your character holster their pistol to reach behind their shoulder for the assault rifle.
Stuff I Loved
“Kegs are stowed and tapped. Set course for the nearest intragalactic strip club!”
The galaxy map is one of the best realized aspects of the game. Now, this might only be my opinion since I’ve been a space nerd since I was knee-high to a corn stalk, but seeing things like the Horse Head Nebula displayed in vivid color with different worlds of all kinds to explore kept me very happy for quite a while. I almost forgot about the impending doom of all peaceful life in the galaxy as I sent the Normandy from one system to the next just to poke around and see how many habitable or near-habitable worlds existed. I was reminded of days gone by when I’d play ‘Privateer’ until all hours of the night just taking cargo from one place to another because I wanted to see new systems. I think I’m going to stop on this point, however, because between this and the gravity quibble, I’ve just demonstrated how incredibly dull I am.
As much as it’s fun to give BioWare a rough time over the sheer amount of text they toss at you, the writing that they produce is always good. Mass Effect is no exception. I’ve heard some people complain that the games produced by BioWare are somewhat formulaic. I will admit that but I’d also ask the question of why it’s a bad thing. The last time Coke tried to drastically change their formula, things ended horribly. Applying archtypical characterization to different people in different genres isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. It’s like killing an established character – it’s all in how you do it. And BioWare has proven they do this quite well.
The conversation system is another key to the success of Mass Effect’s immersion. It’s one thing to hear an NPC give their exposition then choose from a number of responses ranging in tone from “Selfless defender of the downtrodden” to “Dickhead.” It’s another to pick a general mood you want to convey, and have the voice actor convey it for you on command. Not only does it maintain the flow of the story, it allows us to be surprised at Shepherd’s choice of words.
On top of everything else, the game looks fantastic, even on the X-box 360. The expressions of the characters perfectly match the excellent voice work. You get an appropriate sense of scale from the way things are put together and despite being a science fiction game, the ships and structures have a realistic feel to them.
Bottom Line: Since the game hovers around bargain prices in most places and is available on Steam, I say buy it. It’s some of BioWare’s best writing to date, with a compelling story, plenty of content and action… oh, yeah, and sex, too.
