D&D's Warlock and the "Dark Mage" Archetype

 Arguably, this could also be considered a Diablo post, given that the inspiration for this was the announcement of the new Warlock class for not just Diablo IV, but also Diablo Immortal and even Diablo II (which has a relatively recent remaster - they're not just rolling this out for a 26-year-old game out of the blue).

Anyway, when not viewed through the lens of any particular RPG system, the terms Wizard, Sorcerer, Mage, and sometimes Witch and Warlock are more or less interchangeable, though I would say that the latter two carry a certain tonal connotation.

When I was growing up, Witch and Warlock were more or less the feminine and masculine, respectively, terms for the same thing: a kind of dark spellcaster (this isn't particularly historical: while I believe most of the victims of, say, the Salem Witch Trials were women, there were some men also accused and executed, so "witch" is not strictly a female term). But I think that in this era, at least outside of the hyper-religious communities, there's been a real reclamation of the term "witch" to connote a kind of feminine mystical power that pre-dates patriarchal cultural impositions. The fact that witches are typically women, of course, has always carried with it this kind of implication that it's a power that doesn't fit neatly into the patriarchy, and so embracing "witchiness" as a rebuke to a culture that denies power to women makes a bit of sense.

Warlocks, on the other hand, being either ungendered or even masculine in connotation, can kind of safely live in that "truly dark" connotation.

The irony, then, for D&D players, is that Warlocks are not, actually, strictly "Dark" in the same sense.

D&D defines its spellcasters more by the manner in which the magic is attained and practiced than its aesthetic and association with any particular supernatural alignment. While the Warlock does, probably, have more dark-coded features (things like "Agonizing Blast" or the Pact of the Tome giving you a "Tome of Shadows") you can actually quite easily play an angst-free Warlock, such as one with an Archfey patron that might be, say, a benevolent fairy court, or even an angel.

Warlocks, rather, leave the door open for a darker, more cynical or scary source of power, in part because the assumption is a transactional relationship with one's patron. You can play a John Constantine-type character with a Fiendish patron while still being a good guy - you've worked out a deal in which you get that power, but it's possible that this deal had you outsmarting them, rather than submitting in some way to them. In other words, you might not have a soul bound for the Nine Hells through some infernal contract.

While I think that the direct relationship with your patron is a really exciting and interesting one for RP reasons, I also think that the relationship need not be totally direct: I think a Warlock who has uncovered a connection, or even stolen relics or secrets from their patron in some way can work well too: the key is that the Warlock has taken power from elsewhere - unlike a Sorcerer, it's not a superpower inherent to them (though I think you can blur the line a bit - if a Sorcerer didn't inherit their powers from their ancestry but got it by being exposed to some sort of energy, they could have a somewhat similar backstory to a Warlock).

The one challenge here, and one that I think can be tough to figure out as a new player, is that Warlocks are not an intelligence-based class.

In a lot of other fantasy RPGs, the warlock archetype is often depicted as the one who discovers secret, forbidden rites and rituals, magic that is banned by more respectable mages, and that it is the secrets that a Warlock knows that are really the thing that sets them apart from other casters, both in terms of capability and also social acceptability.

The truth, though, is that that archetype, the "Dark Mage" archetype, is honestly better handled by, well, the Wizard in D&D. Wizards are, of course, the "classic mage" class, and probably better than any other class fit that standard "magic user" archetype, with spellbooks and scrolls and such.

And so, our Dark Mage, the one that hold all these arcane secrets that are forbidden, for instance, by any reputable magical institutions (or are maybe only granted to those initiated into its innermost circles, in the case of a perhaps corrupted institution) is more, in D&D, of just a Wizard who picks nasty spells to learn. Certain subclasses lean into this: the Necromancer Wizard, of course, is a pretty classic "Dark Wizard," (though I'd argue the Necromancer is a slightly different archetype than the Warlock - you'll note that they are different classes in the Diablo series).

I do think Eldritch Invocations are meant to represent some of those "dark secrets" that the Warlock has access to, and indeed the entire strange nature of their spellcasting, unique compared to all other classes, is meant to make it feel truly different and transgressive, in a weird way. But the nature of the class, being a Charisma caster, means that it feels like it's less aligned with that "I know dark and hidden secrets" as a source of power.

Warlocks do have a handful of unique spells, some of which can be pretty good (obviously Eldritch Blast is designed to be the best damage cantrip in the game, though its benefits of course don't necessarily kick in until you invest in souping it up a bit).

In the early "One D&D" playtest, they toyed with the idea of changing which stat Warlocks used for spellcasting depending on their Pact Boon - Tome would actually not even get Charisma as an option, having to choose between Wisdom and Intelligence (my very first D&D character I came up with, with a Tome written into his backstory, would likely go Wisdom).

I honestly don't know that 5E really has the mechanics to fully embody, on a class-design level, this "Dark Mage" archetype. But the good news is that you can pretty easily accomplish it simply through RP, backstory, and flavoring your spells.

Frankly, a Conjuration Wizard (wonder when we'll see the revised subclass actually printed for 2024 D&D) could be a very good demonologist-type, perhaps picking up Summon Construct to start off with some kind of frightening-looking effigy and then getting Summon Fiend in tier 3, flavoring a spell like Fireball as hellfire and just having all their spells involve dark runes and blood on an aesthetic level.

RE4's First... "Boss" Beaten, and Exploring the Lake

 I had been worried after dying several times in the opening village segment of RE4 that I was going to struggle the whole game. To be fair, when a game has really captivated me, I've been willing to put up with a brutal wall, like Central Yharnam in Bloodborne, for example (though that might be the extreme - the oddity being that now, with so much experience in that game, I now find that opening pretty easy, even if I stop to fight everything).

What I'm finding kind of interesting is the way in which RE4 plays in both one-way paths and revisits. I came back to that starting village square, only for the bell tower (which is a bit of a trap even if you go in there the first time) and was able to use a key to get into one of the desks, but I think I still need Ashley to get into the damaged building.

I'm finding myself with more weapons than I can reasonably use - I bought the SMG but haven't actually used it. I'm currently focusing a lot on the Bolt Launcher and the starting pistol, which has such ample ammo that it always feels like a reliable option.

Comparing this to the other seminal survival horror remake I played recently, RE4 has way more "systems" than Silent Hill 2 did. This, combined with the more action-movie tone of it, has really made me feel less, well, horror than I did playing SH2, even when peoples' heads are exploding with some kind of big tentacle parasite thing.

I'm given to understand that in the original Resident Evil, the zombies you took down early in the game can rise up as "Crimson Heads," and so there's actually some incentive to, when you can, leave the zombies alive and just evade them. I don't think it's the same mechanic at play here, but it does seem that taking down a foe sometimes causes them to start wriggling, and then you can do a quick execute with your knife (which costs precious durability, of course) to prevent them from rising again.

This version, though, has them just a little more erratic and, you know, having to fight an enemy you've already killed. The new foes have their heads fully explode in gore and a bunch of horrifying lashing tentacles come out.

I don't love seeing Leon torn apart in brutal ways when I die. Gore is my least favorite aspect of the horror genre, and the one that honestly holds me back more than anything else when it comes to embracing it. Comparing this to Silent Hill 2 and Alan Wake II, those games were focused far more on the psychological horror elements (though I'd argue the story more than the enemies themselves in AWII did that. AWII does actually have some nasty gore when you blast away at Taken, but it's all kind of a surface thing - bits of exposed muscle and bone on their bodies but still all held in the same shape).

There are sidequests and minigames, and I'm not sure how much I'm going to have to invest in these to make it through the game. I took an elevator at the Merchant's lakeside shop and found a shooting gallery game. I was able to get B grades in each, which gave me enough tokens to get a charm for my attache case.

It's actually only now, on chapter 4, I think, that I've managed to hit a point where I'm running out of inventory space, though I also just bought another upgrade. I'm tempted to put another of my weapons in storage (I also just got a new pistol, but it's not upgraded at all, and so I'm tempted to stick to the starting handgun, which I've poured a fair amount into). I like having the rifle for long-range kills, and I like the Bolt Launcher/Thrower (whatever it's called) for its efficiency (though having only three shots per reload is not great - might upgrade that). The Shotgun I actually don't use as much as I expected to, but it's nice when I need to pour a lot of damage onto a dangerous target. I also think that blowing a foe's head off might prevent them from rising again.

The new issue, not related to the game, is that my PS5 controller has developed a very slight drift on one of its joysticks, which I only noticed when I opened the map and it started zooming out on its own. Sigh.

Saved by the Bell, and Onto Chapter Two in Resident Evil 4

 Well, coming back to it after my first several unsuccessful attempts seemed to do the trick. RE4 begins, famously, with an entire village coming after you, and you have to just basically run and evade as best you can, maybe taking out a villager here and there to make an opening, until the church bells ring and everyone suddenly becomes chill and leaves you alone.

Given my experiences with the Silent Hill 2 remake, I assumed I was on a somewhat linear path and would never return here, but after struggling to figure out how to get into a locked desk and up a wall into a high window in an otherwise-locked-off building, I realized that this was going to be a bit different: online, I saw the game described as something of a Metroidvania.

Tonally, it's funny: the game is certainly scary in a kind of physical threat sense, and I know that the body horror gets cranked up to 11 as the truth of what's going on here is revealed, but truly, coming off of SH2, this is far, far more like an action movie.

Following my first foray further into the chaos, I discovered a tied up man named Luis, the first friendly NPC since the doomed Spanish police officers who brought me here. Before we can even get him untied, Leon is thrown into a wall by a big guy in a priestly get-up and then injected with some horrific parasite.

Waking up, there's a quick section to help you hone your knife skills (I seemed to do it all right, getting a good parry off and taking the other two enemies in this area with stealth kills). Then, we finally meet the Merchant, and have something to spend all the money we've been collecting.

This felt like a reasonable stopping point, but I felt the drive to go and do a second of the Merchant's quests, taking out three rats in the previous small area. These evidently grant Spinels, which are traded to the Merchant for unique items.

It seems that scrounging valuables will be useful, as the guy can sell us ammo and even upgrade our weapons - I evoked Troy Barnes here and got a new rifle and upgraded the durability of my knives (which I was going through like crazy - I'm hoping/assuming this applies to all my knives and not just a single one, which would seem kind of pointless as an expense).

The key is that after that big village fight, the other combat encounters I've had have been far more reasonable, rarely more than like five foes to face. I'm sure that this ramps up over the course of the game.

The story is playing pretty coy: Leon has a woman in the chair back at "HQ" wherever that is, and even after he's captured they don't take his communication equipment. I know from pop culture osmosis that Leon's there to rescue the president's daughter, and that a good chunk of the game is a big escort mission, but so far his actual goals are left for us to wait for more exposition.

Anyway, getting past that first hump, I can start to feel the appeal of the game's core gameplay loop.

My First Resident Evil

 Having watched Monty Zander's series on Resident Evil, and especially after downloading and enjoying Marina Ryan's concept album made in tandem with Zander's video essays, and to top it all off, seeing that the RE4 remake was on sale for just 20 bucks on the PS store, I decided to finally dive in.

The game was a noted departure for the series, bringing in the 3rd-person shooter mechanics (and I think popularizing them across gaming) and moving out of the Raccoon City vicinity to a remote region of Spain.

The remake looks fully modern - the dark forest into which you come across the village the game starts in feels real in a way that old games could never really pull off. But at least mechanically, I'm finding that muscle memory from games made in the 20-odd years since this came out have been betraying me - I keep trying to dodge incoming attacks (like in the Silent Hill 2 remake) only to realize that that's not a thing - if I want to not get hit by foes, I either need to keep my distance or potentially parry with my knife - which has limited durability and thus is something of a precious resource.

Anyway, I'm stuck on the first big, famous set-piece, where an entire village of infected cultist villagers comes after Leon and I believe the goal is just to survive long enough for them to abandon the fight.

The most efficient way to take out enemies, as I understand it, is to stun them with a headshot and then follow up with a contextual melee attack, which will usually take them out and even sometimes other foes nearby.

It feels honestly a little embarrassing to have needed to take a break so early into the game, but after dying four or five times to the villagers, I found my frustration overcoming my excitement. I wonder if this will be one of those things where once I come back, it'll all click into place.

But hey, my first ResE game!

Remembering Expansion Launch Events of the Past

 I've played through every single expansion launch event in World of Warcraft's history. I started playing in fall of 2006, and given BC's relatively late arrival compared with the overall expansion launch schedule (normally they come out in late summer or fall of even-numbered years, but BC didn't come until January of 2007, after Vanilla had been out for over two years) I wasn't actually max-level for it, but I was able to see and be killed by the demons assaulting major cities.

Expansion launches are big deals for WoW. They're the official closing of the book on the past two years' (or in War Within's case, only one-and-a-half, making it the shortest expansion in WoW's history) story and the big excitement-building thing for the game's next era. We get class changes (sometimes, as we're seeing in 12.0, giving us somewhat incomplete versions of the classes, especially the new Devourer spec) and in the latter years of WoW, this is when we get the various stat-squishes (or Shadowlands' level squish).

But these are ephemeral events - even if you group them all together, an expansion launch event tends to go on about six weeks, or a month and a half. If expansions come out roughly every two years, that means that these events all together make up only 1/16th of the game's overall schedule.

Furthermore, expansion events, because they're tailored to the individual expansion, are something that we truly won't experience for more than those six weeks. This creates a couple of funny incentives:

It should have some reward that is unique and can be a reminder of having experienced it, but the rewards also shouldn't be so unique that people will feel really bummed out if they missed it.

It should be memorable and fun, but it also shouldn't take too much development time, because it's only going to be going for a short time.

We've had some really exciting and memorable events, and a few that were perhaps not quite as well-regarded. I thought, as a WoW elder, I'd go down memory lane and see how well I can recall those we've gone through:

Burning Crusade:

    As alluded to before, WoW's first expansion saw Doom-Lord Kazzak, who would later become a world-boss in Hellfire Peninsula, leading demonic assaults on capital cities (I remember Ironforge was definitely one of the targets, though I can't recall if it was all six existing ones or just that and, like, Orgrimmar. Back in Vanilla, due to its convenient location and before they added Stormwind Harbor in Wrath, Ironforge was actually the real Alliance capital). Now, there was also an event at the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands, but I was too low-level to get there at the time (by the time the expansion came out, I think my highest-level character was only 30 or so, and you needed to be 58 to go to Outland).

Wrath of the Lich King:

    Ah yes, I remember flying around Shattrath, seeing people angrily debating the recent electoral win of Barack Obama, while we had a couple quests. The Alliance, I believe, was primarily concerned with helping I think the Argent Dawn while the Horde was dealing with totally-well-intentioned Grand Apothecary Putress to try to create a cure to a zombie plague.

    The event combined what had been the patch-launch event (they did this back in Vanilla) for the Naxxramas patch (1.3 or 1.4, I wasn't playing yet) with its Scourge Invasions of various zones, but the big new thing was the Zombie Plauge, where, whether you were flagged for PvP or not, character of both factions could get infected and infect both other players and NPCs after turning into ghouls. I remember literally hiding out in the basement of the Darkshire Inn on my Warlock alt hiding out from the zombies - a bit of enforced RP that was honestly pretty cool. There were some who complained about how it disrupted gameplay, but wasn't that the point? Of course, the patch also saw the return of Varian Wrynn to Stormwind and the addition of Stormwind Harbor, which made travel to Darnassus and the Exodar much easier (you used to have to go to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands).

    I believe there was some kind of event in major cities, which included Garrosh challenging Thrall for his role as Warchief, only to be interrupted by the Scourge.

Cataclysm:

    This was probably the biggest pre-launch event just because so much of the game changed, and it had to come in kind of two segments: first was one that fully needed the old Vanilla world, in which the Horde had an event to take back the Echo Isles for the Darkspear Trolls, while the Alliance had an event to take back Gnomeregan (I believe the Gnomes' faction in the Alliance is now just "Gnomeregan," but in Vanilla-through-Wrath, it was the Gnomeregan Exiles). We also had elemental invasions - certain areas across the world (I think excluding Outland, though there was a story quest to go meet Thrall there). Finally, there was also a quest that had you infiltrate a doomsday cult with sandwich-board signs on them that seemed to be new recruits into Twilight's Hammer.

    We also brought Magni the Titan tablets that would wind up turning him into his diamond (apparently Thraegar) form, which was interpreted as his dying until he reawakened before Legion. I think this all happened before the revamp went live, which we then had available for maybe a month before the expansion actually launched, so I remember spending a lot of time leveling up my Tauren Paladin.

Mists of Pandaria:

    I think this remains the smallest launch event. Scenarios were the exciting new feature for Mists of Pandaria, and the destruction of Theramore was a major event to kick off the expansion (and explain why Jaina went from biggest advocate of peaceful coexistence with the Horde to the Alliance's biggest hawk,) so we got early access to the Fall of Theramore scenario. And... that was it.

Warlords of Draenor:

    Things were primarily contained to the Blasted Lands, where we fought Iron Horde incursions into the zone, but we also go access to part, but not the entirety, of the revamped Upper Blackrock Spire dungeon. For those who did not play before then, UBRS used to actually be part of the same instance as Lower Blackrock Spire, as one of the old level-cap Vanilla megadungeons (LBRS is still basically a mega-dungeon).

Legion:

    Probably the best-remembered launch event, we got a few things here: first off, if you had the expansion, you could create a Demon Hunter and play through their starting experience early, hitting level 100 (the pre-launch level cap) by finishing it. But for everyone else, we got the Legion Invasions.

    These were actually a lot more free-form than what we'd get afterward. A zone, I think Hillsbrad Foothills, Dun Morogh, Westfall, Azshara, Northern Barrens, and I think Tanaris, would get invaded by the Burning Legion, and everyone in the zone could spread out and kill demons all across the zone, eventually summoning a big legion commander boss that would drop good loot.

    I don't really think it was much more than that, but something about the way it worked just... worked really well. For one thing, Legion saw massive class overhauls that brought in a lot of fun mechanics, so it was fun to test those out. But I also think that because the demons' activity across the zone was so omnipresent that you could kind of choose the style of demon-fighting you wanted. There were legion structures you could fight your way into, but also, I remember just being on a road in western Westfall and taking out a pair of felguards there - it felt like you could have both the giant epic battles and the scrappy hero-versus-the-monster fights at the same time.

Battle for Azeroth:

    This one was a little bifurcated. The War of Thorns was a multi-stage series of quests in Darkshore, which culminated in the burning of Teldrassil, and one of the genuinely most affecting uses of the UI for storytelling I've seen in the game (for the Alliance, at least) where you were tasked with saving 100 Darnassus citizens, but only given the time to get, at most, like 30 before the smoke overtook you.

    We also had some, if I recall correctly, some repeatable stuff in Silithus, fighting the other faction for control of Azerite. But the more memorable stuff was the one-and-done story quests.

Shadowlands:

    Much as the Wrath launch event took some elements of the Scourge Invasion event from vanilla, Shadowlands brought back the Zombie Plague, though I guess given how much easier it was to spread out with so many expansions having come around, it didn't feel as pervasive as the first time.

    Other than that, there was an event in Icecrown in which various Scourge rares would pop up. The biggest deal, as I recall, was that you could get a larger bag than would be available until I think Dragonflight or even War Within.

Dragonflight:

    Here, we had the elemental invasions, which were more wide-spread (I can't recall every zone they were in, but I know Badlands was the one I most often went to, also I think Northern Barrens again). I can't recall if we could create Dracthyr Evokers yet or if we had to wait for the expansion's proper launch - I'd guess the former. Naturally, we wouldn't get the Augmentation spec until later in the expansion (I'm guessing they intended it for launch but still needed to figure out how it would work).

War Within:

    Hey, fairly recent, right? This was the one with the memories of Azeroth, found in Dragonblight, Searing Gorge, and... was it Un'goro Crater? Or Tanaris again?

    I actually liked this style of event because there was real variety in the memories that popped up, with different objectives.

Midnight:

    Well, this one is currently going on. It's probably the smallest event since Mists of Pandaria, with a very short quest involving the Twilight Blade and then just the rare spawns that pop up in Twighlight Highlands. You can get a bunch of Champion level gear pretty easily, though in this new era of Delves, I mostly have Hero-level gear on the characters I really play (and that's a fair number: see name of blog).

What's interesting is that this is the first expansion in which the primary territory of the expansion will be at least partially revamped old, existing zones. While Cataclysm was a big revamp, the high-level content all took place in new zones. I think the closer parallel might be Warlords of Draenor, whose world was a glimpse into the past of Outland (though also technically an alternate universe... boy did that expansion have conceptual issues). With Quel'thalas and Zul'Aman, we're getting a fresh look at areas that were added to the game 19 years ago, and not really changed much since. (Before Cataclysm, I remember taking my Orc Warrior to Eversong and Ghostlands to level just because compared to Vanilla, the questing was better. But it truly does show its age quite a lot at this point).

Of course, showing us that revamp early wouldn't really make sense - these are not to be the leveling zones for low-level Blood Elf characters, but full endgame (for now) zones to take us to level 90.

Twilight Highlands does make a certain degree of sense given that it's the home territories of the game's most prominent big evil void-worshipping cult (though one would think after the defeat of Cho'gall that they might have vacated the area, or maybe the Wildhammer Dwarves would have kicked them out by now). Still, I'm surprised that they've limited the event to just this one zone. For Shadowlands it kind of made sense given that the rift into the Shadowlands was formed right over Icecrown Citadel, but the void invasion is coming in over Quel'thalas.

Again, there's some logic to not putting too much effort into a launch event. But this one is probably going to be less-remembered than others.

Siblings and Resonance: Control Resonance and Canon

 What is canon in a universe where a writer can re-write reality?

2019's Control was the first game from Remedy Entertainment to commit to the idea of a shared, connected universe, doing so by making direct references to the events of 2010's Alan Wake. While Remedy did have a game between those two, 2016's Quantum Break, that time-warped narrative officially belongs to Microsoft, much as Remedy's first giant hit, Max Payne, has been owned by Rockstar Games (even making a third game without Remedy's involvement). Alan Wake and Control are the two franchises that are fully owned by Remedy (I can't recall if they got the rights to Max Payne back prior to starting work on the remakes or if that's a licensing thing).

The point is, at this point, Control and Alan Wake have each had significant crossover with other another, with the FBC playing a key role in the main story of Alan Wake II.

This year, we are eagerly anticipating the release of Control Resonant, previously presented as Control 2.

The way in which Remedy makes its games and tells its stories invites you to scrutinize every detail you're presented with, and I think right of the bat that the fact that Control's sequel is not simply numbered - something previous Remedy games have done (Max Payne 2 does have the sub-title The Fall of Max Payne) - is cause for curiosity.

Resonance is, of course, pretty key to the world of Control. Both the villainous Hiss and the helpful Hadron and Polaris, are resonances, less physical beings than a kind of frequency or pattern.

While the idea of anything of any real substance merely being a resonance might seem absurd on the surface, things like String Theory suggest that this might actually be the underlying nature of matter itself: Einstein came up with his theory of special relativity that linked matter and energy (the famous E=mc^2) and String Theory suggests that the base particles of matter are actually coiled strings of energy that vibrate in a certain way.

One of the big critiques of String Theory is "so what?" - a question as to how this model actually changes our approach to what these particles do. But in the speculative fiction realms that these games take place within, one could imagine that vibrations and resonance might make reality itself a little more vulnerable to manipulation and transformation.

One of the strangest interpretations of quantum physics is the manner in which things can exist in a superposition until they're measured: a particle acts like it has all manner of "spin" simultaneously until it is measured. Some experiments have shown that a particle can interfere with itself because of this, the two versions of reality bumping up against one another until we intervene to determine the truth. And thus, there's an idea that when we do measure the spin of a particle, we're actually creating separate realities, one that is spin up, one where it's spin down.

Apologies to the physicists who could explain this a lot more accurately than I can.

Anyway, this got me thinking:

In Control, we learn that Dylan Faden was being trained to become the next director of the FBC. One of the numerous meanings of the game's title is that Jesse acted as the "Control" in an experiment - two siblings with similar parautilitarian potential, but one was subject to constant intervention and training while the other was left to her devices to mature into adulthood on her own (alternatively, Dylan being kept in captivity and away from the influence of the outside world may have been the control subject).

Of course, things don't work out with Dylan, and he plays the closest thing to an antagonist in the game, acting as the mouthpiece of the Hiss. Even before the Hiss arrive, though, Dylan's shot at directorship is over, because he's evidently killed one of the scientists working with him.

But what if he didn't?

Through the many drafts and edits that Alan Wake makes to the story that shapes his reality, we get numerous versions of events. Indeed, the scene in which Jesse spies on Alan meeting with Tom Zane in Control's AWE expansion plays out very differently when we see the same scene in Alan Wake II. But it's definitely the same scene, playing out in a different way.

Tonally, and genre-wise, Remedy has taken multiple approaches to the same idea: a multiverse. Quantum Break is not canon, again, because it's owned by Microsoft, but some of its ideas and even characters seem to have been slyly brought into the Remedy Connected Universe. Warlin Door is clearly Martin Hatch - he was even initially meant to be played by Lance Reddick, only for Reddick's death to prevent that. Door exists simultaneously in all realities, and while that can mean the truly distinct kinds of realities like the Dark Place, the Astral Plane, etc., it also might mean that he exists across alternate universes where peoples' fates are different.

In Control Resonant, we aren't playing as Jesse, but are instead playing as Dylan.

My expectation remains that we're probably going to be playing in the same canonical timeline/universe as the first game, and that Dylan, freed from the Hiss, will likely be motivated by finding his sister, perhaps without the assistance of the FBC (and even maybe its opposition). Jesse is the FBC's Director, but she has also clearly developed some friction with The Board.

However, let's also consider what seems to be happening in the game: New York, at least Manhattan, is getting twisted by weird energies and flooded with monsters previously contained by the Oldest House - things like the Hiss and the Mold (boy, the Firebreak team does not seem like it was very successful).

Unless the RCU is going to be one in which New York is either supremely fucked up or at least the Manhattan AWE becomes an enormous historical event, something has to bring the chaos there to an end. And I wonder if that means that we're going to be looking at an alternate universe.

Sequels invite twin imagery - Alan Wake II gave us two protagonists, two worlds, two "books," even the Koskela twins. Jesse and Dylan have always been foils for one another, and it's interesting that this game appears to be flipping the script, with Dylan trying to find his lost sister, rather than Jesse looking for her lost brother.

What does it mean for it to be Resonant?

Does it take place within a different universe?

In Alan Wake II's Lake House DLC, we play as Kieran Estevez, and near the end of the adventure, we have an opportunity to go to the Oceanview Motel & Casino via a lightswitch cord - something FBC agents are not only aware of but even encouraged to do when they find a cord. Estevez shows up not in the familiar lobby we see when Jesse visits it in Control, but in some other hallway that leads to a door marked with a symbol that we've historically associated with Control 2. This seems to lead into the Oldest House, and Estevez passes through a hallway that honestly looks more like the Executive Sector (with portraits of the director that show Jesse and someone else, maybe Trench, overlapping in concentric circles) but must be in Containment because there's a sign taking us into the Panopticon. There, Estevez encounters a no-longer-in-a-coma Dylan, his hair grown back, but still locked up and evidently distressed, trying to convey a message to his sister that he's "sorry" and that he "really tried."

The visions Estevez gets before she arrives back at the Lake House are clearly linked to the events of Control Resonant, with the Hiss and Mold breaking out into an Manhattan that has twisted in on itself in kaleidoscopic ways.

But there are some oddities:

In the Control Resonant trailer, we see what appears to be Jesse at Dylan's bedside, taking up the object we'll know as the Aberrant and jamming it into his chest - evidently the ritual required for him to bond with it, as she is bonded with the Service Weapon.

Now, to be fair, Dylan could just be sleeping in his cell when this happens. Given the editing, I think we're meant to believe that the containment failure, the outbreak of the Hiss and other dangerous things from the Oldest House, has already happened, and that this is an act of desperation on Jesse's part.

But if Dylan is still in a coma when this happens, a big question about the timeline opens up - Estevez's adventure takes place during Saga's - probably during the "Local Girl" chapter, as that's the one that starts right after Alan comes out of the lake and sets of the FBC monitoring station and ends with Estevez showing up to take over the investigation after he experiences in the Lake House.

There are some assumptions being made here, of course, like the idea that Estevez' visit to the Oldest House is happening at the same time - it wouldn't seem that impossible for her to have unwittingly gone to the near future. We know that time shenanigans are afoot in all of this - Saga and Alan having their distorted meetings at the Overlaps when Alan's half of the conversation is likely happening years earlier and not in the same order.

But it does feel very possible that we're looking at different realities, or at least, that the Dylans we're seeing need not all be the same one as the one we're playing.

Another note of interest: Alan has been having an influence on New York with his visitations of Alice. While we're likely meant to think of his visits to Parliament Tower initially as just Alan's projection of his home, we discover later that his visitations have been real enough to alert Alice, and affect her behavior. Even stuck in the Dark Place, he has had an influence on the real world.

Is it coincidence that Alan is from New York? Might we actually go to the real Parliament Tower as Dylan?

Anyway, we still haven't gotten any further news about Control Resonant, but the release date is some time this year. You can be sure I'll be dissecting everything we get.

Planes, Layers, and Depth

 I love Planescape as a D&D setting.

I come to fantasy for the weirdness, the otherworldliness, and Planescape invites you to play D&D in settings that take you far, far away from familiar, mundane reality, even more than the usual lands of wizards and dragons.

But it does create this odd issue:

As I've written about before, the influence of some outer plane in a campaign set within the Prime Material Plane (as most are) is one thing: a villain's entire plan might be to allow the searing fires of hell to be unleashed upon the world, and in such a campaign, the way that the Nine Hells would likely be portrayed is as some unimaginable nightmare of fire, spiky metal, and tormented souls.

In a Planescape campaign, the Nine Hells is likely to be... well, yes, filled with fire, spiky metal, and tormented souls, but also shops and inns and NPCs you might do quests for.

Planescape allows us into these outer planes, these truly separate planes of existence, but in doing so, forces us to portray them as at least slightly familiar to our regular reality.

I wrote recently about my desire to start a Planescape campaign on the Plain of Infinite Portals, the first layer of the Abyss, and specifically have it start off in the "Worst Bar in the Multiverse." The prompt for each player is to ask what mistakes they made in their past to wind up in such a place, and then have them adventure across the wasteland, in a kind of Weird West/Mad Max-like environment filled with demons.

But again, there's a version of the Abyss that ought to just be endless incomprehensible horrors, like a constant nightmare, where even glimpsing it might drive one insane.

And this got me thinking:

Planes have depth.

There's an idea in those 2nd Edition Planescape books (I think? Come to think of it, I don't have the corresponding PDFs) where the Elemental Planes can be visited by mortals, but only in the shallow depths of them - the elements mix enough in the shallows that, for example, there's air to breathe, or earth to stand on, even if you're in the Plane of Fire. But that the deeper you go into it, the more pure it becomes, and basically if you're not an actual elemental of the corresponding element, there's no real way to exist there in the deepest parts.

I think this can apply to every plane. Except, maybe, the Prime Material Plane.

Funnily enough, in my homebrew setting, the denizens of the connected part of the Shadowfell and Feywild (those parts that overlap my world) refer to the Prime Material Plane as the Flatlands. And while that was just a way of saying "it's kind of nondescript or boring," I actually think it makes a lot of sense if we think of the Prime Material Plane as not having any layers or depth - once you're in the plane, it just works according to some fantasy approximation of real-world physics (I tend to say it's real-world physics unless I call out a specific exception).

In Baldur's Gate 3, the second act takes place largely in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, which have been touched by the Shadowfell. But we do, on a major quest line, go to the actual Shadowfell, and it's portrayed as a swirling vortex of shadow, with no realistic way it could be inhabitable.

The funny thing is that the Shadow-Cursed Lands look more like the way that I'd portray the Shadowfell itself in a game I ran. But what might BG3's Shadowfell be equivalent to (not counting Hades, which does, to be fair, share a lot of vibes with the Shadowfell).

The answer, I think, is that that's "deep" in the Shadowfell, whereas the just dark, spooky version of the Flatlands (it's so much quicker to type than Prime Material Plane) would be the shallow part of the Shadowfell.

And you know what's beautiful about this? It accounts for the Domains of Dread.

While the shallow Shadowfell is the weird mirror world to the Flatlands, the Domains of Dread are deeper in the plane, perhaps not strictly corresponding to any real location in the Flatlands, but resembling them until you notice the foggy border beyond which there doesn't seem to be anything.

Unlike the "Border Shadowfell" (much like the Border Ethereal in contrast with the Deep Ethereal - see, I'm not making this up out of nowhere), the Domains of Dread are a little farther in, a little farther from familiar reality as we know it, and a little deeper into the swirling darkness and mists of nightmare logic. Perhaps deeper still than the Domains of Dread is the kind of swirling endless darkness in which gods like Shar or entities like the Dark Powers reside.

Now, the Outer Planes, at least, have what's called Layers. I think the only outer planes without them are The Outlands (the true neutral plane, which most resembles the Flatlands until you notice that each element of the landscape is perfectly balanced - a deep ocean for every mountain, a frigid tundra for each burning desert) and Limbo, the Chaotic Neutral plane, where any such structure would be anathema to what the plane stands for (arguably it either has just one layer or a constantly shifting number of them).

Planar layers are a little weird - on a certain level, it allows DMs to cordon off certain parts of the plane or focus on particular regions and vibes. Often, the deeper one goes into a plane (though in the case of Mount Celestia, unsurprisingly, the "deeper" layers are farther up the mountain) the more extreme the plane's whole vibe gets. For example, in the six layers of Carceri, the first layer, Orthrys (named for the mountain upon which the Titans of Greek myth lived, in contrast with Mount Olympus) the string of planetoids are close enough that there are structures built between them (including the palace of the aforementioned Titans - another name for Carceri is Tartarus, also from Greek myth). However, on the deepest layer, the planetoids of the plane are so far from one another that you can't easily see the next from the surface, the sense of profound isolation taken to an extreme.

But in a certain way, I think that layers and depth might not be quite the same idea: for instance, the Abyss is reputed to have infinite layers (far more than any other plane) though some argue this is just that no one has been able to count them all. Various demon lords have domains that take up one of these layers (though some, like Juiblex and Zuggtmoy share a layer, while Grazz't has three layers all to himself and his minions).

These layers are given numbers, indicating their relative order, but this order is somewhat arbitrary. While the Nine Hells of Baator and the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia both prevent planar travel to anywhere except their first layer, forcing you to traverse all the layers between you and your destination on the plane, the Abyss requires no such travel - the Plain of Infinite Portals, the first layer of the Abyss, is filled with sink-holes that let you fall down into other layers directly (I really like making anything Abyss-related, like demonic temples, involve a deep, vertical shaft that one must descend).

Demogorgon's layer, the Gaping Maw, is not the lowest layer of the Abyss, even if he's (they're?) generally considered the mightiest of the demon lords.

So it's not a perfect, direct correspondence between the two concepts.

    Now, there's an alternate way of looking at this:

Player characters are, generally, mortal beings. While the creature types that you can play as have expanded considerably over time (Forge of the Artificer gives us our first official playable Aberration by redesignating the Kalashtar, and we also get Constructs and Fey in the Warforged and Changeling, respectively) I think we're generally meant to play these characters as being people first and weird monster second.

Thus, a way you could play the Outer Planes, or even just other planes in general, is that our perception of them is not necessarily what they are. We might see Avernus as a giant, blasted wasteland with an endless war raging across it because that's the closest comprehensible equivalent of what's going on that we can imagine. What does it mean for Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil to clash (in a realm that is the home territory of the former) in a philosophical sense? Well, that's hard to visualize, so instead we see it as clashing armies of regimented tyrannical brutes fighting slobbering hordes of pscyho-killers.

Even fiends themselves might not truly look the way we perceive them, because it turns out that the impulse to pursue one's reckless ambition at all costs doesn't really look like anything - except in this fantasy world, where we see it as a hulking demon with giant pincer arms.

    Still, I think you can get a lot of mileage about thinking of these planes as appearing more like reality on the nearby shores, but as one delves deeper into them, the experience becomes more impressionistic, more oneiric, more abstract.