Link (YouTube) |
Welcome to Riften, where everyone is a dick to you for no reason, everyone insists on talking to you for no reason, and everyone is invincible for no reason. (No good reason, anyway.) It’s also ugly. It’s also the home of the Thieves Guild Questline, making this the most awesome concentration of awfulness in all of Skyrim.
Link (YouTube) |
“No, seriously guys. If I can’t make it, just do Spoiler Warning without me. We’ve got plenty of people. I don’t need to be in every single episode,” is clearly the most wrong thing I’ve ever said.
So enjoy this twenty-five minutes of listening to the lengthy exposition for a quest and then forgetting all about it, waiting for the arrival of an NPC who will never show up because they haven’t read the letter to begin the quest, going shopping and yet still not buying any health potions, stealing yet another horse despite how this has proven to be a pointless hassle in the past, dying in a pointless fight against random bandits that could have been avoided by simply staying on the horse instead of letting it wander off yet again, and finally bunny-hopping around the wilderness aimlessly murdering trash mobs with no clear goal in mind.
This is what I do on the show. I restrain this lawlessness and tomfoolery. I am the Nick Fury of this team. Except with no eyepatch. Or Trenchcoat. Or training. Or weapons. Or budget. And nobody listens to me.
“Shamus, you’re just looking for things to complain about. You nitpick every little thing.”
I get that at least once during every one of my long-form write-ups / deconstructions. It’s that time again where I have to explain why we do this. So let’s get that out of the way:
This is not a review. I’m not ticking off points to justify my love it / hate it / 5 out of 10 stars conclusion at the end. This isn’t supposed to be comedy.
We’re beginning with the premise that the story here doesn’t work. If it worked for you, then fine. But that means that none of this applies to you. Understand that I’m not trying to make you dislike the story. I’m explaining why I didn’t like it. And I can’t boil it down to a single plot element. This story died the death of a thousand paper cuts, worn down by a constant barrage of cutscenes and dialog that failed to form a cohesive whole.
I imagine most of us have gone through a story and left with the impression that it was “off”. It didn’t resonate. It didn’t work. We never felt emotionally connected. Maybe bits of the story bother you later and you can’t figure out why. For me, it’s cathartic to dig down and figure out where the story broke. Where did I lose trust in the writers and begin tolerating the story instead of taking part in it?
Also, it’s worth noting that the writers spent incredible piles of money on these cutscenes. They devoured resources that might have been spent on other parts of the game. Maybe the levels could have been larger and more interesting if so much time hadn’t been spent shuffling them around as the story changed. Maybe we could have kept fan-favorite Stephen Russel. Maybe there would have been time to iron out the unforgivable mess of an audio system. Maybe the gameplay could have been more polished. Whatever. There’s a lot wrong with this game, and a fortune was spent making a movie the fans didn’t expect, didn’t like, and which didn’t even make sense. I’m not nitpicking “every little thing”. I’m nitpicking one massive thing. If the writers didn’t want us over-thinking the plot, they shouldn’t have spent so much time and money shoving it in our face.
With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get back into this game…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Thief Autopsy Part 5: Change of Plans”
I should note that a great deal of the information from today’s column about the Oculus Rift came from the Dev Days presentation “What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be within Two Years” by Micheal Abrash. That was a talk given by Abrash back in January, before he left Valve to join the Oculus team. I highly recommend watching it if you’re interested in VR.
I’m really excited about VR. I’ve actually downloaded the Oculus SDK and read the docs. Both look pretty solid. I can see Carmack’s hand in it. The API has a tight and intuitive interface that makes it easy to set up a scene and track the camera. If you’re going to develop for VR, using the SDK won’t be a challenge. (Rendering twice as many frames at 60fps without dropping frames? THAT’S the stuff that’s going to keep you up late at night.)
I can’t test it (I don’t have a Rift myself) but it makes for an interesting read. What’s clear is that VR-based games are going to have a huge number of new human interface concerns to worry about. Extensive reading and a complex HUD is bad. Lots of abrupt, rapid motion is bad. Full screen distortions are bad. Grabbing the camera to show the player something is REALLY bad. VR is not something we can just hack into an existing game. To really take advantage of VR we need to build a game around it.
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Hosts: Josh, Chris, Jarenth, and Shamus.
Show notes:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #52: Goat Simulator, Burial at Sea”
Link (YouTube) |
At the seven minute mark when the dragon body teleports back up the hill: I have to think this is like one of those moments in a D&D game when players are screwing around, shouting random crap and the line between “wouldn’t it be funny if I did” and “I am actually” gets kind of blurry. After a couple of minutes the DM just ignores the mayhem and resumes the game as if nothing happened.
If you’re confused about WHAT HAPPENED in this episode, here is the best I can figure out:
Josh cast frenzy on a horse. This caused the horse to go hostile. Jenny then jumped in to his defense. Since the horse is a member of the Imperial Legion faction, This caused the whole camp to go hostile to Jenny. Once the horse was dead, Jenny looked for the next acceptable target and chose Ricki. So then Jenny and Ricki (both of whom are immortal) fought, with Ricki prevailing. Once Jenny was down, Ricky attacked the player. I’m not sure if this was because of the fight with Jenny or because Josh frenzied the horse.
After Josh ran away, he waited (standing in the same spot of the snowy wastes for several days) during which time the game spawned a bunch of thugs, who were ostensibly hired by Anise to punish the player for the crime of looting her cabinThese thugs are a scripted event, created when the player robs somebody. If you never steal, they never show up.. Since we looted it after we killed her, I’m not sure when this job was commissioned.
The three day wait apparently didn’t do anything to calm Ricki, who was still out for blood. The only way to placate her was to attempt to murder her, and after her defeat she went back to pretending nothing happened.
Also, while this is a great big pile of nonsense, I need to defend the game by pointing out that half the crazy came from Josh, who was behaving just as random as the AI.
Link (YouTube) |
If I wanted to argue that Skyrim should have been Game of The Year in 2011, I would use this video to make my case. If I wanted to argue that Skyrim was the worst game of 2011, I would also use this video. This is a perfect snapshot of why all the awful and stupid things in Skyrim are also kind of awesome.
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