Let’s talk about little things that make a big difference.
The game was lacking something. It was just too static. The world didn’t move, didn’t animate, didn’t react. The screenshots looked good, but when you were playing the game it felt like you were flying past a painting or something.
So my first solution is dust particles. Here is a shot of them, zoomed in so everything looks terrible:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Good Robot #37: Get Things Moving”
The fix is in. I’ve finished playing a raw, unrehearsed, honest, no-save-scumming league, and the results are…interesting. The next two posts will share my results in the usual grim detail. But for now, an interlude:
What I’m ending on this manky barstool is a moderate type #45 Bad Night, with deep foundations of rotten karma, shades of last Winter when I’d gotten a molar yanked out by an indignant bookie, and a sassy garnish of migraine. All that’s drizzled with a rich sauce of humiliation and despair I’ve only begun to catalog since becoming manager of this team. I beg my sommelier to recommend a wine pairing.
“Dwarf moonshine,” says the barman.
Excellent choice.
Now that I’ve had one–let me set the scene for you. No full recap is necessary, no blow-by-blow. Elves have been ruining my life for so long it’s become its own genre, and the story I’m about to tell you is replete with cliché.
Flash back to a day ago. I was flush withâ€"let’s not call it victory. Let’s say I was flushed with the heady absence of defeat after my early-season draw with the Wood Elf team. So flush, in fact, that when I discovered I’d be up against them again for day two I was cautiously optimistic. “I have put my faith in the smallest and humblest of creatures,” I thought. “Because they desire neither power nor glory, but only superlethal doses of mayonnaise, they are truly the wisest among us and will ultimately prevail.” I would describe my state of mind as “stunned.” It couldn’t last.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Half Time CH6: Fat Chance”
This is the 245th column I’ve done for the Escapist, and I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I’ve ever discussed Pokemon.
Also we talk about DRM and how my thoughts on DRM remain unchanged, even when I’m putting out a game.
Saturday is our day to record the show. It was also Halloween this year. Everyone mysteriously went to fun Halloween parties instead of doing an internet podcast with an old man and hang on that’s actually not mysterious at all.
But we have a guest and we talk about games, so it still counts.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #127: Human Resource Machine, Life is Strange, SWTOR”
It’s hard to see how Oblivion could have ever gotten a fair shake. Halfway between two paradigms, the end product of an earthshaking hypetoberfest, it’s a huge credit to the game that anyone still plays or likes it in retrospect. And really–the game’s heart goes a long way. Whether or not it makes any sense or includes any interesting gameplay from moment to moment, it’s startling how much charm Bethesda could coax from four or five overworked voice actors and a few simple scripting tricks. They set themselves up with outlandish story hooks, bright colors, a camera that zooms right up on rubber-faced NPCs and lets them mug their way through scenes, and a huge pool of assets repurposed every possible way (in this game, painting easels alone provide: quest items, quest rewards, an easter egg, a doorway, a worldbuilding prop, background clutter). All this to ensure that the game’s energy, preserved at the expense of more thoughtful mechanics from predecessors, is spent going forward–never in circles. There’s always something worth finding the next room over.
I hope you’re beginning to see how every Elder Scrolls game since Arena can be viewed as the first “recognizable, modern” entry. Daggerfall crystallized the canon and brought staples like guilds and skill-based leveling to the franchise. Morrowind introduced custom-tooled storytelling environments and wonderfully responsive 3D, without which the exploratory and dungeon-crawling aspects of the game would have remained too abstract and repetitive to hook the player into the world. Oblivion fashioned from whole cloth the infrastructure of scripting, NPC invulnerability, quest arrows, and voice acting that has defined the moment-to-moment gameplay ever since. It’s hard to point at one of these titles and say that’s where the revolution happened–and it’s perverse, then, that this is exactly what I’m planning to do for Oblivion.
If it seems like my coverage of the level scaling and quest systems in Oblivion has been a little mild, it’s because, well, Oblivion is a little mild; it’s just that it happens to be mild in a very significant sort of way. It’s not until Skyrim emerges as a point of comparison that it becomes clear just how important Oblivion‘s subtler changes really are. More to the point: it’s not until Skyrim that Oblivion is outed as a successful experiment in creating a new genre of open world game.
I’m going to turn over to Q&A now. Ask any questions about Oblivion–or one of the other games, if you missed your chance back when–and I’ll write up my answers as soon as I can and link to them from the next post. Expect the first round answered by Monday morning.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 13: IPISYDHT#4”
Link (YouTube) |
Knights of the Old Republic lets you dual-wield purple lightsabers, which qualifies it for Game of the Year. No, not this year. Every year.
About 4 and a half minutes in, Josh tries to go to another planet and the screen goes blank. Chris says “Oh! We’re on Tatooine!” This probably seems strange, so let me explain:
Josh is streaming the game to the rest of us while he plays. KOTOR is ancient in terms of videogame technology, and it does not like our screwy setup. Sometimes it abruptly minimizes itself when trying to play a pre-rendered cutscene. Josh edits this out of the final video, but the rest of us see it when it happens. In this case, the game minimized itself and we found ourselves looking at Josh’s desktop, which features a desert scene.
Link (YouTube) |
Rutskarn is right: Glenn Close does indeed have a cameo in Hook. So do Gwyneth Paltrow and Phil Collins. I’m actually not a huge fan of Hook. It’s fun to see Hoffman and Williams do their thing, but I never thought it was a particularly fun or interesting movie. Then again, I was 20 when the movie came out, so I wasn’t actually part of the target demo. Maybe it’s just what 90’s kids wanted.
In this episode I commented that I didn’t remember the Wookiee noises being this unendurable. Looking back, I’m sure it’s because I was clicking through the dialog at reading speed instead of listening at talking speed.
I think Chris makes a good point: If they couldn’t engineer their own Wookiee talk, then perhaps cutting up the existing samples and piecing them back together at various speeds might have helped to give them greater variety.
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2015.
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
What is this silly word, why did some people get so irritated by it, and why did it fall out of use?
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
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