T w e n t y S i d e d

It’s been a while since I played an MMO, hasn’t it? And I’ve never played one quite like this before. I’ve mentioned Black Desert Online a few times in the past and nobody really took much of an interest, so I suspect most of you are indifferent to this thing. But I’ve never let indifference interfere with my blathering before, so we’re going to spend a month with this game.

Over the past couple of weeks I had a blast in Black Desert Online, and then I stopped having a blast and the whole experience felt more or less like a waste of time for reasons I’ll get into later. But first let’s talk about what drew me to the game.

Familiar Yet Strange

Black Desert Online is a Korean MMO and almost everything about it is strange to me. The design is strange, the release schedule is strange, the business model is strange, the setting is strange, the interface is strange, and the dialog is strange. I can’t tell how much of the strangeness comes from the developers and how much comes from its home culture. Note that in this context, “strange” does not mean “bad”. It’s just, you know, unexpected.

I understand that Korean games are ridiculously grind-y by reputation. When I hear something described as “grindy”, I think of the ancient past of 2002, when I played Dark Age of Camelot and the most expedient way to level was to stand in the same spot and farm the same cluster of mobs for an hour. Black Desert might be grindy, but it’s not that sort of grindy. Maybe it’s grindy by the standards of kids today, or maybe it breaks from the norm set by other Korean MMO titles, but it’s not a grind in the sense of killing the same monster 60 times in a row.

The strange thing about the release schedule is that they didn’t immediately target the North American market. They went for South Korea first (which is pretty understandable) in 2014, but then in 2015 they released in… Japan and Russia? They finally got around to North America and Europe in 2016 and South America and MENA in 2017.

This isn’t a complaint or anything. It’s not like North America is automatically entitled to get stuff first. It’s just an unexpected choice because NA is often thought of as a very lucrative market so developers like to target it as soon as possible. Conversely, Russia is often a low-priority market because it has a reputation for being a difficult place to operate. I wonder if this unorthodox release order means the usual conventional wisdom is no longer true. Is Russia an easier place to do business? Is North America not as lucrative as it used to be? Or does Publisher Kakao Games have other practical / logistical reasons for pushing NA and Europe off for a couple of years?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Black Desert Online #1: Strange But Cool”

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.

So the gist of this mission is that Frau Engle flew the Ausmerzer to Hollywood California so she could appear on the Jimmy Carver show, which is obviously based on The Tonight Show with Johnny CarsonCarson took over the Tonight Show in 1962, which means this is about the right point in the timeline.. He’s going to interview her on the show and talk about the time she executed Terror Billy.

Based on this setup, you’d think she’s going down to the surface, right? Like, Carver must have a studio in Hollywood and that’s where she’s going. But when you get to the control room of the Ausmerzer you find out it has a copy of the Carver set. Or maybe Carver runs his show from the Ausmerzer? But then why did the ship need to go to Hollywood?

Revenge. Sort of.

This is one of the reasons the ending feels so abrupt. The “final fight” wasn’t telegraphed at all. Two nameless robo-Nazis drop in and we kill them with no ceremony or buildup. After that we sort of blunder into a TV studio and the end of the game without realizing how close we were to Engel.

BJ’s allies all show up. He’s taken control of the Ausmerzer and shut down the automated defensesApparently you can’t shut off the anti-air systems without an access code only kept on Venus. This seems like a TERRIBLE security system, but whatever., so the rest of the rebels can land their chopper on the roof. They all meet up in the TV studio and his allies point guns at the TV crew to make sure they keep broadcasting.

BJ slips into the theater. Carver and Engel are doing the show to an empty room. It’s just the band and some camera guys. The audience is all cardboard cutouts. BJ slips in and executes Engel with an axe to the face on live television. The good guys win. Game over.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Wolfenstein II Part 11: Beating a Dead Panzerhund”

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.