Borderlands 3 Could be in Trouble

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jan 16, 2019

Filed under: Column 46 comments

My column this week is a list of reasons why I think we should be worried about Borderlands 3. If you’re susceptible to clickbait behavior, I’ll tell you ahead of time the article gives five reasons. (Number 4 won’t be surprising at all.)

All of this brings us to the question, “So what would a good sequel look like?”

The series is in a bit of a tough spot. In the Telltale spinoff Tales From the Borderlands, some of the main characters are dead. I like the original vault hunters Brick, Mordecai, Lilith, and Roland, but some of them didn’t survive the events of Borderlands 2 and the rest have completed their various character arcs. These characters are mostly a collection of jokes and callbacks at this point. That’s fine, but we already heard those jokes by now. Several times. I’m not saying these characters need to be dropped, I’m just saying it would be a mistake to try to make them the center of yet another game. They can make cameos, but they should not be the main characters again.

Borderlands 2 demonstrated that what these games need is a solid villain. Handsome Jackass is dead, so we need someone new. The obvious, low-effort route would be to give us another colorful villain with a different gimmick, and have the player characters fight with him over the vaults. The previous gamePrevious in terms of chronology. showed us that there are tons of vaults on many worlds out there, so this game should probably have us hopping from world to world on an adventure.

Let’s talk about how I’d do it… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Borderlands 3 Could be in Trouble”

 


 

Andromeda Part 13: Breaking the Language Barrier

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jan 15, 2019

Filed under: Mass Effect 115 comments

For the first chapter of the game, all the Kett speak in gibberish and you can’t understand any of them. But then we run into the Archon and he speaks to us in English. In the next section we’re going to run into new aliens and it’ll do the same thing: Gibberish, then a sudden switch to plain English when we meet an important character.

In sci-fi, there are several ways you can handle the language problem:

Action Adventure: Everyone speaks / understands English and the audience isn’t supposed to worry about languages. Everyone can usually understand everyone else, even if the audience can’t. (Chewbacca, R2D2, Groot.)

Soft sci-fi: We have magical universal translators so we HEAR everyone in English, even though they’re speaking different languages. (Most of Trek.)

Hard sci-fi: Communication is difficult. If you want to talk to someone, you need to know their language. There are a lot of them, and not all of them are based on sound. Good luck.

Oh no! The aliens are speaking an unknown language! How can we communicate with them? Did the Initiative ever have a plan for this? As it turns out, we just land. Once we touch down, they all switch to English without anyone raising an eyebrow. If they already knew English, then why didn't they respond when we greeted them in English? What's going on? What are the rules here?
Oh no! The aliens are speaking an unknown language! How can we communicate with them? Did the Initiative ever have a plan for this? As it turns out, we just land. Once we touch down, they all switch to English without anyone raising an eyebrow. If they already knew English, then why didn't they respond when we greeted them in English? What's going on? What are the rules here?

I have no idea what Andromeda is trying to do. It’s obvious the writer doesn’t want to worry about it, so why did they introduce the idea of a language barrier in the first place? Why is the Archon suddenly able to talk to us? You’ve explicitly acknowledged that a language barrier exists, and then you’re not explaining how it was overcome!

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 13: Breaking the Language Barrier”

 


 

Diecast #240: AGDQ, Elite Dangerous, Road Redemption, Procgen Cities

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 14, 2019

Filed under: Diecast 110 comments

In this latest episode of our innovative and groundbreaking podcast, two guys talk about some videogames. But unlike those other podcasts, we don’t waste time talking about popular games that are relevant to your experience. Instead we focus on obscure indies or older titles. You’re welcome.



Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #240: AGDQ, Elite Dangerous, Road Redemption, Procgen Cities”

 


 

The Other Kind of Life – Sunday

By Shamus Posted Friday Jan 11, 2019

Filed under: Projects 51 comments

In an effort to get people interested in my book, I thought I’d post the first section. Technically Amazon does this for you, but Amazon’s system is broken and goofy. It only shows the first seven pages if you’re trying to preview the paperback version. It gives you more if you’re looking at the kindle version, but then it cuts off at a dumb spot.

I know I promised we’d do a spoiler thread on the book, but apparently a lot of people are still working their way through it. So let’s save the spoilers for later. This week I’ll post the opening. Next week I’ll post a section from later in the book. Then we can do spoilers.

Here is the introduction: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Other Kind of Life – Sunday”

 


 

Dénouement 2018: The Losers

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jan 10, 2019

Filed under: Industry Events 93 comments

I didn’t play a lot of bad games this year, so my “worst of 2018” list wound up being pretty short. I suppose that’s yet another thing that makes this the year of good news. In fact, even this “worst of” list is pretty tame compared to years past.

I guess I should give some sort of honorable mention to Mass Effect: Andromeda. It didn’t come out this year, but I played it this year, and it easily qualifies as the most frustrating waste of potential I’ve seen in ages. Bioware spent five years and a fortune to make this half-baked unfocused mess of jank and cringe.

Here are my big disappointments, in no particular order:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2018: The Losers”

 


 

Experienced Points: Building a Better Esport

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jan 9, 2019

Filed under: Column 163 comments

My column was on hiatus over the holidays, but now it’s back with a discussion of why esports generally make for lousy spectator sports. I say this as someone who has probably watched a hundred games of Starcraft 2 over the last month. I love watching these games, but only because I’ve clocked enough hours with the game to make sense of the gameplay. I don’t watch many other esports, but they all have more or less the same problem. Read the column if you want to hear why I think it doesn’t work and what a more approachable esport might look like.

So let’s talk about watching Starcraft 2 games… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: Building a Better Esport”

 


 

Andromeda Part 12: The Bad Guise

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jan 8, 2019

Filed under: Mass Effect 169 comments

Once the Eos colony is founded, we’re off to the next planet. Along the way we run into the Kett flagship. Figuratively, but also nearly literally. We drop out of warp just a few meters short of them.

Imagine two big game hunters roaming around a vast wilderness, completely unaware of one another. Each of them sees a target, and each of them aims their weapon and fires it. By accident, their bullets collide in mid-air. That sounds unlikely, doesn’t it? And yet that’s orders of magnitude more likely than two interstellar spaceships ending up a hundred meters apart by random chance.

If this is a chance encounter, then that’s ridiculous. But if this isn’t – if the Kett somehow saw where we were going and headed us off – then why don’t they ever pull this trick again?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 12: The Bad Guise”