Like I said on the show, E3 kinda snuck up on me this year. It had barely started when we recorded this podcast, but it’ll be basically over by the time this goes live. Whatever. I doubt people come to my site because my coverage is timely.
Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #347: E3 Approaches”
This week I sat down with Chris and we spent two hours talking about the Batman Arkham series, the Sony Spider-Man game that needs a subtitle, and even a bit of Resident Evil. It’s like a bonus Diecast. Actually, it’s like TWO bonus Diecasts. We also talk a bit about my attempt at a Bayonetta playthrough and how that ended.
Eh! Steve! Talking Batman and Spider-Man with Shamus Young
Also, Chris and I talk about superheroes that would be good for an Arkham-style brawler. I’ve played with this idea a lot over the years. It seems simple, but it’s actually kinda challenging once you get down to it. Let’s assume we PROBABLY want a hero that operates in the urban areas of Earth. I mean, yes, you can set the game in the wilderness or some fantastical other-world, but that is more challenging in terms of design and marketing. Audiences can immediately understand cities, slums, warehouses, and that sort of thing. That’s the classic superhero milieu, and marketing knows how to sell that.
Anyway. Let’s put together a pitch for marketing and see if we can get someone to green-light a game. Making a game on par with Arkham whatever isn’t easy. You need tons of animations, lots of varied foes, and a variety of environments. You can’t do this as a mid-budget game. We need AAA money to make this happen.
Here’s what we need…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Eh! Steve! Batman v. Spider-Man”
On the podcast a few weeks ago, Paul and I talked about the theory that different gaming communities were isolated from each other. Instead of “gamers” being a single amorphous mass, perhaps we’re really a dozen or so completely different hobbies that all happen to share a common set of hardware. Imagine if we took people that were into football, baseball, other football, lacrosse, rugby, and cricket, and acted like all of those people were into the same hobby. Maybe we’d call them “fielders” because all of their different games are played on a field.
That would be silly, right? But maybe that’s what we’re doing with “gamers”.
Now, the idea that gamers are broken into different silos is probably true to some degree. The difficult question is: What are the different silos, and to what degree are they isolated?
I was reminded of this yesterday when the new trailer for Battlefield 2042 came out…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Week I Played (June 2021)”
Link (YouTube) |
I’ve gotten several comments, emails, and messages asking the same few things. Rather than answer them one at a time, I’m going to do a brute-force info dump.
//BEGIN INFO DUMP: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Some Random Announcements”
Check it out! Dynamo Dream is out! Mess Effect is out! Issac’s old computer is out. BioMutant is out! It’s Memorial Day in the US, which means school is out. Elliot Page is out. Gas prices are out[rageous]. This episode of the Diecast is out! My patience with hand-holdy games is out.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #345: Everything is Out!”
So the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect is here. This means that millions of us will be taking yet another trip through Shepard’s universe, all the way from our initial drop point on Eden Prime to the baffling and disjointed conversation with the Star Child at the end of the third game. It’s a long journey and the voyage is filled with adventure, discovery, friendship, and brilliant character moments. But we know where it ends. We know how it ends. And sooner or later every player winds up standing in outer space with no helmet, arguing about robots with the hologram of a ghost of a ten year old boy.
And then the player asks, “How did we get here?”
The conventional wisdom is that the story of Mass Effect was great right up until the ending. The idea is that things were fine, except the writer went suddenly crazy in the last half hour and messed everything up. Critics of the series usually explain the ending in terms of plot holes. They’ve got a long list of unexplained contradictions, and so therefore the ending is bad because the writer didn’t explain things properly.
But I believe that the big problem with Mass Effect is one of structure. For me, the problems didn’t appear out of nowhere at the end of the third game. Instead they began at the very start of Mass Effect 2.
Link (YouTube) |
This is hard to talk about, because Mass Effect 2 is a really popular game. It’s the most popular entry in the franchise, and so you’re usually not allowed to say bad things about it. The Internet doesn’t know how to parse nuance, so everything is either absolute perfection or total garbage.
But if we’re going to talk about what happened to Mass Effect then I need you to at least be open to the idea that Mass Effect 2 had some non-obvious structural flaws. Yes, Mass Effect 2 features some of the best characters and sidequests in the history of the series. Mordin Solus is pure gold. Samara’s loyalty mission is a brilliant crime thriller told exclusively through dialog. Tali’s loyalty mission is an amazing courtroom drama with high emotional stakes. Legion’s mission offers the most interesting moral conundrum in the entire series, and that’s really saying something. But mixed in with those great stories and lovable characters is a story that creates tons of problems for anyone trying to write the third game.
But before we can talk about where Mass Effect 2 went wrong, let’s talk about the story that the first game set up. The story in Mass Effect is a really interesting hybrid of two different genres: Space Mystery, and Cosmic Horror.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 2 Broke the Franchise”
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
It's not a legend. It was real. There was a time before DLC. Before DRM. Before crappy ports. It was glorious.
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
T w e n t y S i d e d
