NEWER POSTS

Achilles and The Grognard: Acting!

By Bob Case Posted Saturday Mar 28, 2020

Filed under: Video Games 60 comments
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The Grognard: The time has come to talk about tone.

Achilles: Is this going to be one of those discussions that ends up being about what words mean?

The Grognard: Yes. Tone is the way a game makes you feel. It comes from everything: visuals, gameplay, sound design, writing, and voice acting. It’s crucially important, yet also completely subjective. In short, the perfect topic for an argument.

It also comes from the ability to push goblins off of high ledges.
It also comes from the ability to push goblins off of high ledges.

Achilles: I don’t know about that. I only have one fairly short argument: the tone seems fine, and I don’t see anything obviously wrong with it. How can you tell, anyway, when we’ve still seen so little?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Achilles and The Grognard: Acting!”

 

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.

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Next PostAchilles and The Grognard: Time Limits and Temptation

60 comments

 

Rage 2 Part 10: Writing Matters

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 26, 2020

Filed under: Retrospectives 86 comments
Rage 2 Part 9: Tutorial Buddy to the Rescue!Previous Post
Next PostCivilization Part 1: Civ VI Hates Me

I’ve spent the last nine entries explaining the plot of Rage 2 and how I’d have done it differently. We might not agree on what needs to be fixed, but I think we can at least agree, in a broad sense, that it wasn’t very good. I don’t think this was actually a surprise to anyone. Properties created by id software aren’t known for their stories.  Developer Avalanche has never been known for their storytelling prowess. And over the last decade publisher Bethesda Softworks has become infamous for making story-heavy games with atrocious and cringeworthy stories. When it comes to storytelling and Rage 2, the publisher doesn’t value it, the developer doesn’t know how to do it, and the fans aren’t expecting it. Frankly, it would have been a miracle if this story turned out to be any good.

So why did I write this series? Why did I waste time whining about a story that was never going to be worth experiencing? Why not just skip the cutscenes like everyone else and move on? Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Rage 2 Part 10: Writing Matters”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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86 comments

 

Bethesda’s Launcher is Everything You Expect

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 24, 2020

Filed under: Rants 173 comments
I Don't Need Your Stupid Game BarPrevious Post
Next PostThat's a Brave Idea

It’s Wednesday March 18, 2020. Doom Eternal comes out in two days. I’ve watched a couple of reviews like this one, which gives me confidence that this game isn’t going to be another Bethesda-style shitshow. I guess I’ll preorder it.

I see on the Steam page that this game requires a Bethesda account. Ugh. I really hate this. You buy a game through Steam, but then then when Steam launches the game, it actually just turns around and launches another launcher that requires a different login. Microsoft did this with their infamous malware Games for Windows LIVE. Rockstar did it with their stupid Social Club. Ubisoft did it with Uplay.

I’ll say this about the Epic Store: At least they had the decency to make their own platform rather than attaching their system to Steam like a parasite.

I hate double-logins. HATE. Now TWO companies are in a suicide pact with “my” software, each of them eroding my sense of ownership and creating completely needless layers of inconvenience and risk. Now if anything happens to either company, either platform, or either account, I lose access to my very expensive video game. Maybe one of them goes out of business. Maybe, like Microsoft, they fail so hard that they decide to abandon the platform and leave the attached games in limbo. Maybe some future conflict, misunderstanding, controversy, or data breach will end with my account deleted, suspended, or stolen. It’s not likely, but that’s no reason to make it more likely. If I told you your risk of dying of cancer X was only 1 in 100,000, that would sound pretty safe, right? Does that mean that doubling the risk is fine with you?

I realize most people trust Steam these days, but Valve software and Bethesda Softworks are very different companies and there’s no reason to expect that Bethesda is going to behave like Valve just because they’re trying to run a similar service. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Bethesda’s Launcher is Everything You Expect”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I Don't Need Your Stupid Game BarPrevious Post
Next PostThat's a Brave Idea

173 comments

 

Diecast #294: DOOM Eternal, A Short Hike, Gorogoa, Gamestop

By Shamus Posted Monday Mar 23, 2020

Filed under: Diecast 109 comments
Diecast #293: Crunch Time, Indie Case Study, MailbagPrevious Post
Next PostDiecast #295: Haunted Router, Doom Eternal, Graveyard Keeper

Once again, I tried to make a show that wasn’t going to mention The Plague. But right now all the news is about The Plague, and it’s impacting everything, so leaving it out means talking around it. That’s awkward, so instead we get this.



Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast294

Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #294: DOOM Eternal, A Short Hike, Gorogoa, Gamestop”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Diecast #293: Crunch Time, Indie Case Study, MailbagPrevious Post
Next PostDiecast #295: Haunted Router, Doom Eternal, Graveyard Keeper

109 comments

 

Hypothetical ME4: Stalling and Retconning

By Bob Case Posted Saturday Mar 21, 2020

Filed under: Mass Effect 104 comments
Hypothetical ME4: What Not to DoPrevious Post
Next PostHypothetical ME4: Five-act Structure and Character Creation

We will now get down to brass tacks.

Some of you are now hearing Gilbert and Sullivan in your heads.
Some of you are now hearing Gilbert and Sullivan in your heads.

Let’s do the bad news first:

  1. The ending of Mass Effect 3 offered the player three primary options for defeating the reapers: destroy, control, and synthesis. It’s not clear what the exact consequences of each choice are, but the three are mutually incompatible outcomes regardless. The effects they would have on the game world are so big that anyone trying to make a sequel would almost have to make three entire seperate games to account for the three separate game states. And that’s just the three “main” endings – trying to account for the gajillion sub-endings is most likely impossible.
  2. For a series that likes to remind audiences that their choices matter, this is a tricky issue. It’s a tradition in Mass Effect to import your saves from the previous games into the new one. Reasonable or not, some people are going to expect to see their choices in the original series reflected in the new game.
  3. The ending destroys the Mass Effect relays and strands multiple species on unfamiliar planets in a way that would make survival an immediate and alarming problem. This particular element has been since been half-retconned into clarifying that the relays are only “damaged,” but there would still certainly be a desperate situation in the short-term.
  4. The primary antagonists of the series – the Reapers – are gone, and you’re going to have to find new ones. (By the way, don’t pull a Star Wars and just bring them back to life. Together, we can do better.)

Those are some pretty big problems. Especially the first two. If we can lick those first two, we can salvage this thing. Here’s how: stalling and retconning.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Hypothetical ME4: Stalling and Retconning”

 

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.

Hypothetical ME4: What Not to DoPrevious Post
Next PostHypothetical ME4: Five-act Structure and Character Creation

104 comments

 

Rage 2 Part 9: Tutorial Buddy to the Rescue!

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 19, 2020

Filed under: Retrospectives 72 comments
Rage 2 Part 8: What A Twist!Previous Post
Next PostRage 2 Part 10: Writing Matters

Here we are at the endgame. Walker has defeated General Cross, but then she stood around and got coughed on. So now she has this nanotrite virus or whatever. 

Walker falls over, and then Lily (remember her?)  appears out of nowhere and drags her to safety.

The obvious, surface-level problem is that Lily had no possible way to get here, no reason to expect that you would need her, and no way to extract you afterwards. The whole plot of this game was about acquiring the tools to get into this facility, so it comes off as absurdly lazy when another character gets in without any of those tools.

The more pressing problem is that this doesn’t work in a storytelling sense. We haven’t seen Lily since the tutorial and she hasn’t been an active participant in the story since then. It would be like having Trask show up and save the day at the end of KOTOR. We likely haven’t seen this character in ages and the writer hasn’t invested the time to make us care about them.   Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Rage 2 Part 9: Tutorial Buddy to the Rescue!”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Rage 2 Part 8: What A Twist!Previous Post
Next PostRage 2 Part 10: Writing Matters

72 comments

 

This Week I Played… (March 2020)

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 17, 2020

Filed under: TWIP 196 comments
This Week I Played... (February 2020)Previous Post
Next PostThis Week I Played... (April 2020)

I haven’t had a lot of time for games lately. I have a Jedi: Fallen Order playthrough I plan to start soon, and Doom Eternal will launch this Friday. So I expect to do a bunch of gaming Real Soon Now™. In the meantime, we’re house hunting and I’m trying to find enough time to balance my usual work with video production.

Is cloning a thing yet? Or time travel? I’ll take either one. I just need a few more hours in the day.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been playing… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Week I Played… (March 2020)”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This Week I Played... (February 2020)Previous Post
Next PostThis Week I Played... (April 2020)

196 comments

 
OLDER POSTS
From The Archives:

Free Radical

The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.

 

The Disappointment Engine

No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.

 

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.

 

The Best of 2013

My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.

 

In Defense of Crunch

Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.

 

What Does a Robot Want?

No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.

 

Quakecon Keynote 2013 Annotated

An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.

 

The Biggest Game Ever

Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?

 

Twelve Years

Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.

 

I Was Wrong About Borderlands 3

I really thought one thing, but then something else. There's a bunch more to it, but you'll have to read the article.