T w e n t y S i d e d
“I try to imagine what Twenty Sided would be like if Pat was running it. That would be a very different kind of website.” – Shamus, Jul 7, 2016
I don’t know about running it. How about some totally unprofessional hot takes on a beloved franchise, instead?
Shamus was an extreme introvert that could sit in front of a computer for hours, sometimes days. I was an extrovert who could not sit still for 10 minutes. Across the hall, in the basement where our rooms were, it was common for me to blast Public Enemy and drown out his 10k Maniacs.
I played hockey, he played Galaxy Quest.
Shamus didn’t go to bars, drink, smoke or imbibe FDA unapproved personality enhancers. He told me he got “tipsy” once, when he was 19, hated it and never tried it again. I had that beat by age 12, had the opposite reaction and didn’t stop until a few years after I was divorced and lost a gallbladder.
I could do this all day; you get the point. He and I had very little in common, but what we did have in common was stuff that mattered. We could talk for hours about nothing. And everything. We could have entire conversations using nothing but John Hughes movie quotes. Eventually it would always come back to games. Always video games…
Mom would say the Atari 2600 the best and worst gift she ever bought us. The best because it brought us thousands of hours of entertainment.
The worst because we did nothing but fight, scream, punch, kick, argue and quite literally beat the shit out of each other in the name of “entertainment”. Because brothers.
I chuckle when people wax poetic about Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart games that got verbally aggressive. Amateurs. I have a scar under my eyebrow from when Shamus slammed my head against the wall during a game of Warlords. Got 5 stitches. Shamus had a similar scar on his forehead from when I hit him in the face with a D-cell battery. I think that was after a round of tanks on Combat? Or was it Maze Craze? I’m not sure. Thanks to Atari we had post-concussion syndrome by 4th grade, so it’s all a bit fuzzy. That is unfortunately truer than it is grim sardonicism.
The Atari was the foundation for the rest of our brotherhood and made us best friends. The scars, literal and figurative, were emotional adhesive. 30 years after we ripped the box open on Christmas, hooked up that Atari to an 11” black and white TV, we still had inside jokes about who got the left or right controller.
But even in games we were different. Shamus would play several games at once, jumping into Thief II for a few hours, then a few hours of Morrowind. Maybe some GTA. I would play the same game, nonstop, for months. When San Andreas came out I don’t think it left my PS2 for a year.
As a programmer he experienced games differently. Shamus wasn’t just playing, he was judging. Learning. He once spent 30 minutes walking around Vice city just to see how a corona appeared through glass. I was trying to see how long I could survive with 5 stars using a flamethrower.
Shamus would spend at least a few hours on every major game released. I logged well over 1k hours on FFX alone.
But after 6-7 months of shooting Handsome Jack’s handsome face a few hundred times, or storming San Andreas police station wearing boxer shorts and armed with a purple dildo, or collecting 47 sets of power armor, I would visit him and chop up the last game. We would spend hours talking about how broken the Capital wasteland was, or how we should feel about Joel. Eventually I would ask “Dude… What do I play now?”
Last time he told me “Have you played Witcher III? Fuckin’ amazing!”
As usual, he was right. I’ve gone through 8, maybe 9 playthroughs? Every location, every side quest. It still makes me laugh; still find something I missed before. There are no flamethrowers or purple dildos, but I’ll spend an hour (or two) slaughtering a hundred Redanian guards in Oxenfurt because I’m in a bad mood and this fuckwit has the audacity to threaten a Witcher. Don’t even get me started on Gwent.
I did another playthrough last year and it’s still one of the best games ever. Honestly, I would feel comfortable calling it the best game ever made. At least the best game I’ve played, and admittedly there are a lot of really good games I haven’t played. If it were released today, it would be nominated by every meaningful critic for GOTY. Its still relevant graphically and cinematically. Voice acting is still industry leading. For an 11-year-old game? That’s unheard of.
Sure, other games have stayed relevant for that long. Blizzard proved you can stay relevant for decades. But still visually stunning? Still setting the standard for character and voice acting? After 11 years and still better than almost everyone else, in almost every way?
That just does not happen. In any profession, not just video games. Especially not games.
It’s times like this that I miss him the most. To marvel at Witcher III and how much better it was than anything else made in 2015. Probably spend 5 minutes wondering why CDPR can make something so spectacular, yet Todd Howard can’t form a coherent thought with twice the budget. How over a decade later it’s still better than what most studios are putting out. What does that mean, if anything? Have they hit a wall, and the next improvements in appearance, lighting or size will be incremental? He would know these things.
He didn’t know shit else, really. I mean seriously…. I love the guy, but he was the smartest idiot I have ever known. I had to explain to him that diesel trucks use different fuel, he thought they were just larger vehicles. He once tried to wash his dishes with laundry detergent because “soap is soap….. right?”
But he knew games, and he knew the industry. Now, 11 years later, Witcher III is coming out with yet another DLC this spring. At (rumored) $30 its kinda pricey for DLC, especially for a game that was released around the time people were freaking out over a black stormtrooper. Considering what we got from CDPR in previous DLC (Hearts of Stone $10, Blood and wine $20) I think we can trust a solid ROI. Some rumors have it as only an hour and a half long, but I find it hard to believe CDPR would bother doing anything that small, or charge that much for it even if they did. Just not their style.
He would be frothing for Witcher4. He made no secret he thought the industry needed more strong female lead characters, so CDPR moving Ciri to the front of the franchise would have made him happier than a new gallbladder and a lifetime supply of salt & vinegar pringles. Especially since, while he loved Witcher III as a game, he kinda hated Geralt. A lot. If Shamus were still around, he would have something to say and give it a write-up.
Probably? It’s also likely he would wander off and write a steampunk novel about an evil duchess trying to take over the world with ferrets, and the heroic team of librarians who try to stop her with balloons and Shakespearian prose. Or a barber shop quartet using mustache magic…. or some shit. Also something he would totally try to do.
But he isn’t here to do either, and since I don’t know anything about mustache magic, I’ll try to write about the new Witcher III DLC in a way that would make him laugh.
Or piss him off. I haven’t decided.
Netscape 1997
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Dear Hollywood: Do a Mash Reboot
Since we're rebooting everything, MASH will probably come up eventually. Here are some casting suggestions.
The Plot-Driven Door
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
Zenimax vs. Facebook
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
Whole article’s on the front page, boss.
See… stuff like this is why I stick to background sarcasm. I’ll figure it out and fix it.
Shamus did it all the time!
To be fair, can there be a better tribute to Shamus than accidentally posting the entire article to the front page?
In terms of day to day site function (seen through the lens of the comment section), it’s hard to top!
I haven’t played any Witcher since I tried the first game and liked it but stopped when it broke in the second act. Looking forward to hear about the new game.
(Typo’d my email but I assure it is I your usual intermittent Fizban. I should probably start using my current one instead of the one that’s been defunct for a decade anyway).
Ah, now that brings me back to ye olden days of 2002. My brother was more of a PC gamer, so while we didn’t fight over who could play on what console, we did fight a lot over who got to use the PC. A growing boy like myself needed to consume at least a few dozen internet forums and subversive but fun Flash games a few hours a day, after all. My mother also somewhat regretted that purchase, up until he saved up enough money to buy his own computer. By that time I hardly saw him out of his room until the day he moved out.
Sometimes I see an announcement and still think to myself “I wonder what Shamus would have to say about this”. He really influenced a lot of my thoughts on games, the industry and how I write.
Wow! It’s really nice to read about Shamus again after all this time. Thank you for sharing this, Pat. (Patrick?)
I always enjoyed Shamus’ video game analysis because we seemed to share very similar tastes and play styles.
I’ve played Witcher 3, but gritted my teeth through the sexism and dumb macho dialogue. Glad to see that the next Witcher will feature Ciri.
And I LOVE Pringles salt-n-vinegar potato chips!
Hello Patrick, been a while. Thanks for joining the site. I am so looking forward to this!
Wow, it’s like reading Shamus from an alternate universe! The humor is there, the wit is there, as is the sharp insight the former two were preparing you for. It’s so uncanny! I sincerely hope you like writing, and decide to do more of it here.
I absolutely love the Witcher series. I played the first game, read the books, then played every single game and DLC afterwards. I even played the standalone Gwent game. I love the world, the story, and I absolutely love Geralt!
Funny thing when I was reading the books – Books 1 and 2 are collections of loosely connected short stories. Books 3 onwards tell a single big story. My problem? The main character was Ciri! Throughout the entire thing, I felt absolutely cheated – if I buy a book about The Witcher, I expect to read a book about… The Witcher, not some random girl The Witcher adopted!
So throughout the entire thing, I really hated Ciri. She went through so much in those books, and yet I couldn’t give a shit – I was there because of Geralt, and every paragraph with Ciri meant I was getting less of what I had signed up for!
Still, what I did get of Geralt I truly enjoyed, and overall I really liked the books and the themes they explored.
However, come The Witcher 3, I was dreading the moment when Ciri would get introduced. And once we finally got to her…. I absolutely loved her! Maybe it was because I knew what I was getting into, or maybe it was because Geralt didn’t get sidetracked in his own story, but I really enjoyed her as a character. It also needs to be said that CDPR did an absolutely stellar job with every single aspect of the writing for that game. So that also definitely helped :D
I’m still kind of ambivalent about Witcher 4. You need a lot to get me excited about fantasy these days, and I’m just not feeling it with this game. I don’t know – I need to see more of the story and gameplay before I can really tell.
For one, I’d be interested to see how they handle Ciri’s power level. In both the final books and the game, she’s quite overpowered. That’s actually one of the defining features of her character – she’s basically Neo, but hotter :D Also, by the last book her arc was pretty much complete. I don’t really know how they could take her in an interesting direction. Maybe if they give her a love interest? More likely they’ll go the Jedi Survivor route and make the story about some other character Ciri is helping.
As for the upcoming DLC, I don’t know if I’ll be playing it – I’ve long since deleted Witcher 3 from my hard drive, and I definitely haven’t kept any of my save games. But if it’s even half as good as Blood and Wine, I’ll definitely check it out.
Regardless, I’m super excited about this series, and would love to hear your takes on it :)
There’s a book series called “Wearing the Cape” that seems to have had a similar problem and ended up with the same solution.
The world gets superpowered people all of a sudden. The author wrote about half a book from the viewpoint of Atlas, who was one of the first, and was getting burned out on “saving the world”. He couldn’t finish the book though.
Then he had the idea of changing the viewpoint to Astra, a novice. Atlas became the mentor figure. This fixed the problem the author had and he recently finished book 11.
If Geralt is the viewpoint, he’s at the top. He has no change, no arc. Ciri on the other hand is all about arc. She’s just a lot easier to write about.
Eventually though the character does get to the top. Astra does. I think the author is switching to writing from the viewpoint of other characters in that setting.
When Witcher III is the gold standard for character and voice acting, Legacy of Kain is still the above and beyond in that department. The last of them LoK: Defiance came out in 2003 – just 23 years old now.
I admit I never player LoK. Heard about it, but there’s a lot of games I never played. I am not one of those rabid gamers who plays everything, I more the guy who plays few games, endlessly doing playthroughs differently. I have gone through WitcherIII at least 8 or 9 times. I am admittedly biased. But I’ll take your word for it that the voice actors in LoK were better if we can agree that it wasn’t by much, and Witcher III has over 450 credits in the US version. LoK had 10.
My point wasn’t just that the voice acting was elite, it was that it was massive. Not many studios would have that much depth and diversity. They would pay the same 20 people to voice every minor NPC and background character. It wasn’t just quality, but quantity and commitment to not being cheap and taking shortcuts. Paying a few dozen people just to voice the peasants in Skellige is just not something most studios would do.
I totally agree. The Witcher III, or all of The Witcher is much, much bigger – and a huge effort went Everywhere! LoK is more a small Zelda-esque game with at most 10 named characters per game, but the character and voice acting for those ten is above and beyond.
In CD Projects history: They started as a localization and distribution studio to give games like the point-and-click adventure Ace Ventura a high quality Polish dub. Previously all of Poland had to go with originals even though “speaking English” was much less common in those parts of the world, thirty-plus years ago. CDP gave value and grew slow and steady, without loosing their origin.
Geralt is probably my favourite “who would win in a fight” contender. He’s got a good skillset that is powerful and diverse without being over-the-top and you can pair him up against a lot of thematically appropriate opponents.
Now this one is a bit of a wildcard match, but I’m thinking that Geralt vs. CJ depends entirely on whether CJ brought his jetpack and minigun.
In the other match, my money is on AI Patrick. AI Shamus may be larger but AI Patrick looks to be a scrappy fighter.
Jetpack while dual wielding uzis was my go-to. Unstoppable.
Excellent
Seconded, it’s nice reading about Shamus again. And about you, Patrick as well. And seeing some regulars as well, like Leslee and Lino. Frankly, I missed reading some longer form writing here, but maybe I’ll like the Girls und Panzer series.
When I was a kid, I had to kinda hide the amount of time I spent playing games from my parents..
I have a soft spot for the Witcher universe too, but I’ve also consumed pretty much everything out there from it so far, that I care to. I’ll probably buy the DLC and enjoy it – once, the Witcher games aren’t really repeatable. Witcher 2 would have been repeatable had it been easier to play, but I found its combat very unintuitive.
These days I tried to get back into retro gaming due to nostalgia, and found that the best way to experience, say, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs .. is on the PC. Much better graphics than on an arcade cabinet, and it’s free. And besides, at this point it’s very much beating a dead horse on my end, I’m better off exploring further my expansive steam library. At least I have the Max Payne remasters to look forward to, and am welcoming other noir recommendations..
I have a hard time being interested or investing time in new games. Maybe its the same part of the brain that keeps us listening to the same music from our 20’s. I know I’m supposed to be all excited about Elden ring or Hades….. but I’m just not. I’m 53. I think I’ve run out of brain space for lore, trivia and backstory.