Graphical Nostalgia and the Dawn of 3-D Gaming

I started playing video games in the SNES era.

I actually had plenty of computer games when I was little, perhaps the most prominent ones in my memory were a kid-oriented exploration game called Cosmic Osmo, and a somewhat more famous title made my the same pair of brothers a few years later by the name of Myst. But when I was 10, I got my first true video game console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. And indeed, I had spent a great deal of time at friends' houses playing games like Super Mario World, Secret of Mana, and Donkey Kong Country 2.

Maybe about ten years ago, 8-bit graphics, from the prior, NES generation, had something of a comeback in art and culture. T-shirt adorned with images of 8-bit Mario or Pac-Man started popping up, and you had things like Scott Pilgrim vs The World, a movie based on a series of comics that were both largely inspired by early video games.

In more recent years, I imagine as people more in my age group who might have been a little young to have played the NES when it was the current system have become content creators, it seems as if 16-bit graphics like those of the SNES have entered a similar space in terms of nostalgia. Capable of greater fine detail and a broader range of colors than the 8-bit era, the sprites and images of the 16-bit period are, to my mind, more aesthetically pleasing. In particular, the big RPGs from Squaresoft out of that era: Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana, had a uniform and effective art style that seems to be the best example of the 16-bit era's look.

But it got me thinking: will this nostalgia train keep rolling into the N64 era?

The N64 came out the year that I got my SNES, and though it feels as if they were very different times, I actually wound up getting mine a mere year later. The N64 was a revolutionary system, and really shepherded video games into the 3D era. The N64, along with the new Playstation, saw many of the game franchises we'd known for years as two-dimensional, sprite-based worlds translated into fully three-dimensional spaces. Sure, there was plenty of cheating, like how Final Fantasy VII largely had three-dimensional characters in front of pre-rendered two-dimensional backgrounds, but Super Mario 64 really wrote the rules on how to do a game in 3D, maybe most importantly in how they introduced the idea of having the player control the virtual camera (in the game, they justified it as a Lakitu hovering around with a camera.)

Translating once-2D games into 3D was the driving ethos behind the era, such that we wouldn't get another traditional side-scrolling Mario game for a decade.

And graphically, the old sprite system didn't really work when you wanted to be able to see objects (and more importantly, characters) from every angle. So graphics needed to shift into a totally new system. But it was a new process, and the power required to render these things in real time was pretty massive, meaning that we got blocky characters with low-resolution textures.

In terms of gameplay, this era was absolutely revolutionary. But in terms of graphics, it was, well, ugly.

It didn't seem like it at the time. I remember seeing a television spot for Ocarina of Time (which is now basically the Seven Samurai of video games - a standard choice for greatest of all time) and being blown away at how good it looked, but man, if you go back to it now, it's all blocky models and stretched, blurry textures. I think compared to other games of its era, it was a big improvement, but you'd never confuse it for, say, Breath of the Wild.

Graphics improved profoundly in those early eras - the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era saw things get a lot better - consider, for example, that Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee came out a mere two years apart from one another, and yet they seem like they come from different centuries (which is actually true!)

But, largely due to the way that you get diminishing returns with processing power - like how the difference between a 60-polygon object and a 600-polygon one feels huge, but the difference between one with 6000 and 60,000 is barely noticeable - graphics seem to have hit a bit of a plateau, or rather, the improvement has been in subtler areas like lighting.

Playing the remake of Shadow of the Colossus, it got me thinking about whether we'd ever have a nostalgia for that PS2 era of graphics. In terms of games, I actually have plenty of fond memories of that video game era. The PS2 was a period in which I felt a greater drive to try out new games, and it seemed as if that console had a massive library.

But while it was a massive improvement over the previous era (32-bit, 64-bit... the whole "bit" nomenclature kind of broke down) a lot of games from that period still look pretty awful by modern standards. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - the GTA game I've definitely played the most - looks way, way better in my memory than it actually does. I popped it back in a couple years ago and was totally shocked at how blocky, chunky, and flat it looks.

The Shadow of the Colossus remake, at least of what I've seen, basically does not change the gameplay at all. The Colossi are (I think) in the same places, and work the same way. It's really the same game, but in many ways, it now actually looks the way that the original looks in our memories.

So is there value to the old, chunkier version of the game? Or are we simply to move on and allow this remake to be the definitive version of the classic?

To put it another way: was the dawn of 3D graphics merely the first step toward photorealism that subsequent generations have only improved upon, or is there something there that modern graphics left behind that is worth preserving?

There's a Freaking Yawgmoth Card in Modern Horizons!

For someone who hasn't played Magic: The Gathering in over a decade, I'm still really invested in it. The whole War of the Spark thing was something I was excited to hear about, even if the only character from my days playing the game that featured in it was Nicol Bolas (my official "best card" I own, though it's the less valuable Chronicles version.)

Anyway, while the War of the Spark was a big deal, the original "holy crap" finale to a long-running arc was the invasion of Dominaria by the planar overlay of Rath, a plan concocted by the evil Phyrexians.

While the hero of that saga, Urza, was depicted in a legendary card that was merely "Blind Seer," the big bad of Phyrexia was a character named Yawgmoth - originally a human, he discovered Phyrexia and allowed it to corrupt him, becoming something like the Phyrexian god-emperor.

We've only had one card, recently, that even showed what Yawgmoth looked like, long after his transformation into a horrible flayed machine-colossus thing.

But there's a card in Modern Horizons - a new set that's basically a mix of crazy mechanics from all over Magic's history (and some, I believe, that never appeared.) It's called Yawgmoth, Thran Physician - depicting Yawgmoth as he was in the ancient, long pre-Urza Thran civilization.

That's all, really. I'm just nerding out.

Why I Love Warlocks in D&D 5E, Even If It's a Painful Love

D&D (ok, I should say TTRPGs in general) lets you craft a character around a story more than any video game-based RPG. Yes, there are mechanics, and there's a lot of fun to those mechanics, but as someone who really gets into video games to take part in a story that the mechanics are there to reinforce, Warlocks are just so freaking cool.

In D&D, the basis of what a Warlock is is that they are spellcasters who have derived their magic from making a pact with a powerful entity (usually a dangerous and often evil one.) While Warlocks are generally considered socially acceptable in the default Forgotten Realms setting, the nature of what you've given up (or promised to do) for your patron is a massive story hook, and the patron itself is potentially an interesting character for your campaign.

Patrons come in very different flavors, and so a Warlock who made a pact with a Great Old One (think Cthulhu) will have a very different feel than one with, say, a Celestial (like, an Angel or some similarly good entity) patron. Now, all classes have subclasses that let you customize things a little, but Warlocks have multiple avenues to customize around.

First, you have your patron at level 1. Then, at level 2, you start to get Eldritch Invocations, which I think are analogous to talents in World of Warcraft, modifying or adding certain abilities. You can then choose a pact boon at level 3, which has a somewhat minor bonus, but one that will likely set you on a very different path than the other options might give you.

And of course, you have spells to choose, though that's not so unique.

Now, there are downsides.

Pact Magic is a totally different feature from other classes' spellcasting ability. That means it doesn't add up if you multiclass, and it also has some tricky limitations.

Basically, you can only, even at max level, have four spell slots at a time. These all upgrade to 5th level, and then you get Mystic Arcanum, which gives you one spell of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level eventually.

But - you get the spell slots back on a short rest rather than a long one, which means that if your party is diligent about resting in between fights, you'll be able to potentially cast eight or twelve or even sixteen 5th level spells a day.

Still, it is a bit limiting.

A Wizard or Sorcerer might feel safe to burn a 1st or 2nd level spell slot on something to deal with an environmental or social issue. With a Warlock, you have to feel very confident that you aren't going to get into a fight before you can take an hour with a sandwich.

Now, Warlocks do have a few things to make that lack of spell slots less painful. Eldritch Blast, which is available only to them, is a really good cantrip. And you can use a lot of Invocations to boost it, by allowing you to add your Charisma modifier (which is your spellcasting ability) to the damage or having it knock enemies back, etc. One of their signature spells, Hex, is also designed to allow you to swap it from target to target with relative ease so that you get a lot of value out of a single spell slot.

And there are some invocations, like the ever-popular Mask of Many Faces, which gives you access to some of that utility magic (in this case Disguise Self) basically as a cantrip. Other invocations either give you powerful spells to use once a day (like the Mystic Arcana) or allow you to use a spell slot to cast it (effectively expanding your spell list.)

So I think the big challenge to them mechanically is rhythm. If your DM really has the whole adventuring day figured out, you can take advantage of short rests to reset your spells and a lot of your abilities (Hex, in fact, at higher levels, will often persist through a rest, meaning you effectively get a free spell that way.) But if you tend to have one big encounter in an in-game day, it might seem insanely unfair that you have so few spell slots.

Lorewise, however, it's just so profoundly cool. The conflicts it can generate, and the flavor that it lends to the story, is to my mind unparalleled. The transactional nature of your relationship with your patron makes it a more personal thing than Clerics or Paladins might have (though I think a DM can play with that too - I saw somewhere someone said Paladins are just Warlocks with good PR.)

And the customizability is really incredible. I've just rolled up a second Warlock character for Adventurer's League, and while my original is a very caster-focused Great Old One madman, this guy is a tough criminal on the road to redemption, whose pact with a Hexblade entity has made him into a kind of magical front-line fighter.

Obviously, if you have a good enough idea, any D&D character can be interesting. But I think there's so much inherent to Warlocks that makes them weirder and cooler than even super magic classes like Wizards or Druids.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh

D&D's latest adventure book arrived at my door today. I've now read through two of its adventures, Tammeraut's Fate and The Styes.

Both are very exciting premises and adventures that I could see running in 1-3 sessions (possibly longer depending on how RP-heavy your group is - so for me they might expand into like 5.) To give a basic gist without giving everything away:

Tammeraut's Fate allows you to do a kind of base defense, where the party comes across the dungeon mostly empty and is then forced to defend it as far too many monsters for them to handle at a given time without something to slow them down attack.

The Styes is heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft, with a decaying town or neighborhood of a larger city (your choice as DM!) playing host to a serial killer murder mystery, that, when investigated, leads into a far more troubling, alien, and apocalyptic threat.

These two are the last two adventures in the book - the former intended for players of level 7 to start with and the latter for level 11.

I'm going to read about the rules they've developed for sailing ships next, which appear to be quite substantial.

While I do love running my long campaign, I am finding some inspiration from these shorter adventures. While Tales From The Yawning Portal - Ghosts of Saltmarsh's clear antecedent - was focused on the very traditional dungeon crawls that define early D&D, I find that the adventures in Ghosts of Saltmarsh mirror much closer my own type of adventure design - pushing a little more for big action set pieces for combat and allowing the parts between to be a little more roleplay-focused.

Basically, you'll spend less time retracing intricate dungeon maps here than in TFTYP.

With my roommates heading out of town for their honeymoon, I'm considering running one of these with my other friends, given that our other games will be on hold. And, you know, because I'm going to be alone in this apartment for three weeks with only cats, and while I love those cats, I'm going to need an excuse to bring in some humans.

We've got a bevy of D&D books coming out. Next month the official Acquisitions Incorporated book releases (I've got my copy ordered already) and before the year is out, we should have Descent Into Avernus (which... I mean, come on, Mad Max in Hell? How could I pass that up?)

I've also seen rumors (not sure if this is officially confirmed somewhere) that the hardcover version of Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron will be out some time this year as well. I'm a little torn on buying that purely because I did pay money for the pdf.

But I'm finding the stuff I've read in this book pretty exciting, and definitely something I could adapt to my own setting.

Classic and a Refutation of the Ephemeral

Theoretically, the main appeal of an MMO is that you get to play with a broad swath of people in a persistent game world.

But that persistent nature is also sort of an interesting wrinkle. In truth, one of the things that is remarkable about MMOs is the way that the game world keeps evolving regardless of your participation. Yes, the vast majority of content sits static - even though Illidan has been brought back and then locked away at the Seat of the Pantheon, there's nothing stopping you from raiding Black Temple and letting him monologue for a full minute before you can fight him.

But there is change, and that goes from systems to graphics to the world itself.

I spent a ton of time in Undercity on my rogue, and now, barring some Bronze dragon conveniences, he can't go home again.

In releasing WoW Classic, though, Blizzard is playing with the idea of, at least in the instance of the game's first era (I'd say expansion, but it's obviously not actually an expansion,) turning back the clock and allowing something to truly remain static.

On one hand, that undercuts one of the major appeals of an MMO game world. As good as, say, Skyrim is, after eight years of playing through Tamriel's northern nation, you sort of want to move on. You want to see where the story goes from there.

Yet at the same time, you don't necessarily want to lose what existed before. You might have loved Avengers: Endgame, but that doesn't mean you never want to watch, say, Captain America: The Winter Soldier ever again. It will be a different experience to go back and experience a work of art again, now knowing where things were headed, and you don't necessarily want to be robbed of the chance to reevaluate it.

While Cataclysm is the biggest culprit in removing what had been Vanilla WoW (I'd argue that it was a mixed success in bringing something better - they just painted themselves into a narrative corner by actually making it built around the current events of Cataclysm instead of making something perennial.) In the current game, there's no way for you to hang out in a peaceful Camp Taurajo or to ride along the dry and dusty canyons of Thousand Needles. What came after has value as well (I personally love the whole steamboat system in the "new" - actually like nine years old - Thousand Needles) but being forced to give up the old is not necessarily a good thing.

Now, there are arguments for the ephemeral in art - performance art, whether it's the stuff you'd see in a museum or some public venue or more traditional performances like theater or ballet, has an inherently ephemeral aspect to it, in stark contrast with something like film, where the only way to experience the work is in its "preserved for the future" state. Some prefer live theater because each performance is its own, individual piece of work, and once a run is over, you've missed it. But if you have seen it, you've seen something special, and been placed in a club of a very small number of people to have gotten a chance to see that as it was.

Does this apply to games?

Vanilla ran from 2004 to the very beginning of 2007 (I think Burning Crusade was the latest launch within what would be established as WoW's two-year expansion cycle.) Until the release of Classic, it largely existed solely within that frame.

Admittedly, its elements mostly remained through the run of Burning Crusade. There were a handful of added quests (particularly in Dustwallow Marsh, which was something of a dry run for the massive Cataclysm revamp about three years later.) But even though all of its instances still existed through the run of BC, the fact was that most players had moved on, and the system changes - like those for classes - meant that even if you did decide to keep running Blackwing Lair at level 60, it wouldn't exactly be the same.

So it's an interesting experiment to restore a version of the game that hasn't existed since roughly early 2007 (actually it might be more accurate to say late 2006, given that I think the 2.0 patch launched before the new year.) What does this say about the need to preserve video games in general?

It's something I've been thinking about a bit while playing through the remake of Shadow of the Colossus - another one of my all-time favorite video games. SotC's remake is extremely faithful, basically a graphical upgrade with slight adjustments to controls. But does that eclipse the need to preserve the original version? What value is there in keeping the 2005, PS2 iteration of that game when we have this new one?

Well, consider how much Star Wars fans have wanted to see the original trilogy in its pre-Special Edition form. Sure, George Lucas cleaned up the movie, but also added scenes and a bunch of then-state-of-the-art mid-to-late-90s computer graphics. Does the value of seeing the films as they were when they first released apply as well to old games?

And even if we want to be able to experience them as they were, is there also value to not being able to?

How I Intend to Pillage Descent into Avernus

It's only just been announced, so obviously I don't have a copy of D&D's next big adventure book to look through, but already there are a few reasons I'm excited for it.

First off: it's the first adventure to take place in the Outer Planes. Yes, it's theoretically linked to Baldur's Gate, but I suspect the time you actually spend in the city will be brief. Of the published adventures, barring brief forays into various demiplanes and such, the only one I think truly takes place not in the Forgotten Realms is Curse of Strahd, which is in the Demiplanes of Dread and thus the Shadowfell.

But while the Shadowfell and specifically the Ravneloft setting within it are super cool with their gothic horror vibe, taking things to the Outer Planes will give us a chance for truly surreal high fantasy - not to mention that the vibe they're going for appears to be very strongly the kind of over-the-top stuff you'd see in a Heavy Metal cartoon.

Furthermore, it looks like it will be a kind of D&D equivalent of an open world complete with Infernal Warmachines that are inspired primarily by the Mad Max movies (especially Fury Road, which - confession - is actually the only one I've seen...) Basically, imagine riding the War Rig while a bunch of demons and/or devils are chasing you down, plus it's all in Hell.

That's pretty metal, right?

So, what to take?

Well, there's a region of my homebrew world that is actually largely inspired by Mad Max as well. Essentially, the world is a post-apocalyptic one, but it's been 20,000 years since the calamity that ended the old, technologically advanced (think Star Trek levels but for magical reasons they were never able to go into space) civilization. Most of the world has managed to rebuild and recover, and it got to a standard medieval fantasy level, where it stayed until about 20 yeas ago, when people started discovering a lot of relics from this old civilization and now they're reverse engineering things and undergoing an incredibly rapid industrial revolution.

But this one region, called Parthalia (after the lost civilization) has been kept largely unsettled, despite the fact that, unlike the rest of the world, the vestiges of this lost civilization were not cleared away during the post-apocalyptic "Reign of Madness." The secret reason for this (spoiler alert for any of my players) is that there's a group of angels there who have kept people away since "Deluge." But a few scrappy people have managed to eke out a life there, seeking to make their fortunes plundering the ruins, but of course also having to deal with the anarchy that exists there.

Now, this isn't my Lawful Evil plane or anything. But I think that I'll be able to steal the vehicle system and just re-skin it. Instead of Infernal Warmachines, I can just make them vehicles built out of post-apocalyptic scrap. Instead of fueling it with Demon Blood, we could have some ancient substances traded around the region.

Avernus will also apparently have a number of warlords who are each vying for power while the Blood War rages around them. That might be good inspiration for the kinds of characters one would find in Parthalia.

I'm eager to see more about this. While I'd have liked to see a sourcebook in the vein of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes or Xanathar's Guide to Everything announced, I'm really eager to see what we might get in this really crazy-looking adventure.

D&D's Next Adventure is Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus

At the Stream of the Descent (or whatever it's called) Wizards of the Coast has announced its next adventure book, which will be called Descent into Avernus. While the story will start in Baldur's Gate - the Gotham to Waterdeep's Metropolis, sort of - it will quickly send character as low as level 1 into, literally, Hell.

Well, technically the Nine Hells of Baator. But you get it. It's the Outer Plane of Lawful Evil, where players will get way in over their heads in the Blood War - the endless conflict between Devils and Demons, where Law and Chaos clash across the lower planes.

I believe this is the first 5th Edition adventure that takes us to an Outer Plane - Out of the Abyss was filled with demons, but the action took place in the Underdark. Here, however, we'll actually be going to the Hells and fighting (or bargaining) with devils.

Avernus is the first layers of the Hells - built originally as a paradise to lure souls to the Hells, it has become a blasted wasteland and the primary theater of the Blood War. Apparently part of this adventure will allow players to build Mad Max-inspired vehicles from the hellish machinery that the devils use to fight the demons, which suggests the following:

This is the most metal D&D adventure to come out for 5th Edition.

EDIT: As if to seal that deal, Joe Manginello's character, Arkhan the Cruel (the red dragonborn oathbreaker paladin who serves Tiamat) is an NPC in this.

I'm eager to check this one out, even though we haven't even gotten Ghosts of Saltmarsh or the Acquisitions Incorporated book yet. The adventure appears to be built for players of level 1-13 - very intentionally dropping underpowered characters into basically the most dangerous place in the multiverse.

Shadow of the Colossus (Remake)

I've never purchased a remake for a game I already own before. I did re-purchase Syrim because the complete edition was less expensive than the two pieces of DLC. Never did finish Dawnguard...

Anyway, Shadow of the Colossus was an eye-opener when it came out in 2005 or so. It's the reason I wound up getting a PS2. When I heard it was a game that was all boss fights, I initially thought that sounded rather silly, but upon seeing it, I was blown away. It manages to be epic in scope but mythic in simplicity.

The new version of it is not doing anything particularly radical. The game is the same, the world's layout also the same. But while the original looked great for its time, seeing this world rendered in current graphics is really breathtaking.

Having played the original, this experience brings back a lot of memories. I wonder, for those who were too young or perhaps just missed it, what they might think of this game.

It hints at a whole mythology and world, but very intentionally leaves things very open to interpretation. In a way, it reminds me of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but these games have a much more complex and fleshed-out world. Instead, imagine a world with the simple mythology of Zelda - where everything pretty much boils down to a few mythic elements - but in which we only glimpse the shadow.

The premise, in case you're unfamiliar, is that a young man (called Wander, though we never hear his name in-game) has come to a forbidden land with the body of a young woman who is clearly very important to him - maybe a love, maybe a sister, maybe just an important friend - and his faithful steed Agro. He comes to a temple in the center of this forbidden land where a disembodied spirit known as Dormin is said to be able to retrieve the souls of the dead.

Dormin, speaking as a chorus of voices (suggesting perhaps that it is both multiple entities and one) tells Wander that he will revive the woman if Wander destroys the sixteen idols in the temple. But the idols are indestructible unless the Colossus that corresponds to each of them is slain.

Thus, Dormin sends Wander out into the forbidden land to hunt down each of the sixteen colossi and slay them. Wander is just a normal human, and the Colossi are some of the largest video game bosses you'll ever see. They shake the earth with their strides, and indeed many fights begin with the colossus not even aware of your presence, you're so small in comparison.

The game is thus a kind of puzzle-platformer. You have to figure out how to get up onto these massive creatures and stab your magic sword into glowing rules that seem to seal their lifeforce. Meanwhile, they will try to shake you off and you need to hold on for dear life or you'll be thrown aside or crushed beneath them.

Despite being, effectively, a bit of environmental exploration and just sixteen fights, Shadow of the Colossus feels like a massive game - perhaps just in how well it pulls the premise off.

As a remake, I have little to note other than that it looks totally gorgeous. It feels much the same, though I believe the controls have been slightly changed.

It's fun to jump back into it, but at the same time, you can never play a game for the first time again. The original left such an impact on me that I remember most of the fight strategies, and the puzzle-like nature to the game means that this makes the fights somewhat less intimidating. Take, for example, the bird colossus, which is the one I have next. There was something thrilling and terrifying when I first realized I would have to let it swoop at me and jump onto its wing at the last second. But I already know that's what I have to do.

Still, a classic like this deserves this sort of graphical update - even though I have heard some arguments that preserving the original's look is also worthwhile, arguing for example that the original Star Wars trilogy had a certain charm with its muppets and miniatures that got kind of adulterated with Lucas' special editions in the 90s.

Final Fantasy VII's Remake

I think I've talked a bit about how the SNES era of Squaresoft RPGs is one of my favorite periods in gaming history. I started - appropriately enough - with Super Mario RPG, which was a relatively simplified version of the Final Fantasy model that added in some Mario elements. Secret of Mana was the other big one - my best friend and I would play cooperatively and hack our way through its monsters, and played it a ton when we were in Middle School (while the N64 had already come out by then, we went back and forth between SNES and N64 games,) ultimately getting stumped on the final boss because we couldn't figure out that you needed to cast both of the weapon buffs on the Mana Sword to turn it into its final form and be able to defeat the Mana Beast. (Much later, when we were both in college, I must have read about that online and we finally finished the game.)

I actually didn't come to Chrono Trigger until college, playing it on the PS1 port on my PS2, which was great even if there was a big pause whenever combat started. Oddly, of these games, Final Fantasy VI was the one I played the least.

But since I was a Nintendo loyalist, I didn't really have a chance to play FFVII when it was new. Nowadays, the game has a lot of the hallmarks of early 3D graphics, namely that they look kind of... bad. Actually, the grimy pre-rendered backgrounds of the game feel absolutely of a piece with the mid-to-late 90s video game aesthetics that I remember from... well, a ton of games.

Still, while FFVI had pushed for a less traditional medieval feel to its world, FFVII really came to define the series' total eschewing of traditional fantasy imagery. Here was a modern or even futuristic city with trains and motorcycles.

The remake, at least by today's graphical standards (and the improvement of graphics has been slowing down as things get closer and closer to photorealism) looks incredible. And while I know a lot of the big plot twists (both the one you're probably thinking of and the other one that's more crazy) I haven't really experienced the game for myself yet.

However, it looks like Square is remaking it not as a duplication of its original gameplay, but instead going with the newer combat system of more recent Final Fantasy games (I'm counting XII as "more recent," even though it's over a decade old.) Now, XII, which abandoned turn-based combat (arguably a little similar to Secret of Mana, to be fair) basically turned me off of the franchise entirely (the annoying teenagers thrown into the story didn't do a lot of favors either, especially given that most of the adult party members were actually pretty interesting,) and I worry that what I might get from this remake is something that looks really good but is a drag to actually play.

So it's a decision to consider.

In terms of other remakes, I've been really on the fence about another, somewhat more recent classic. Shadow of the Colossus was basically why I got a PS2 in the first place, and is, I think, one of the greatest games of all time - which is high praise from me as someone who generally likes big games that take a very long time to complete. But given that I have already played that game, I've been less sure I want to pick it up. I'm not going around converting all my DVDs to Blurays either.

But with FFVII, because I didn't play the original, I wonder if it would be preferable to experience it for the first time in this new, slick and modern form.

Thrall's Future Role in the Horde

Thrall was my first Warchief.

When WoW first started, the relationship between the Alliance and Horde was complex. Having fought brutally against one another in the First and Second War, the Third War not only saw the two cooperating against the common foes of the Burning Legion and the Scourge (which, at the time, were one unified enemy) but also saw both factions transform, diversifying and really gaining a new identity that way.

The Alliance incorporated the Night Elves and later, the Draenei, while the Horde brought in former Alliance races in the Forsaken (well, maybe not a former Alliance race, but people who were once Alliance when they were a different race) and the Blood Elves.

Tensions certainly remained, but Thrall's view was very clearly that he had no problem with the Alliance existing as long as there was peace between the factions. If Orgrimmar were permitted to survive, he saw no problem with Stormwind standing as well.

It is, after all, the very first step in establishing peace to simply tolerate another person's existence.

Thrall's focus was on forging new values for the Horde. He looked to the pre-Horde past of the Orcs and linked it with the spiritual traditions of the Tauren and the Trolls. The Horde would not be bent on conquest and warfare, but rather seek to find harmony with the land, to balance the elements and the honor of the ancestors. Thrall did not seek to make the Horde weak, but instead to discover different kinds of strength than simple military might. He wanted to see the Horde have a home where children could be safe and where its people could focus their attention on issues that didn't simply revolve around fighting some enemy.

His tenure was a mixture of success and failure.

Really, one can look to the existence of Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff as a testament to his successes. Mulgore, apart from a few stray dwarves and treacherous Grimtotem, is mostly a safe place for the Tauren people. Durotar may be rough and not exactly the most fertile land, but it's a true territory that the Orcs can claim as theirs without any real rivals who would want to take it from them.

The Horde has gone from invaders to residents of Azeroth, and their superpower-like status has, for the most part, lent a sense of security to its people such that people can, to a large extent, enjoy a normal life.

But the world hasn't cooperated very much with his vision. Between demons, insane dragons, and the undead, Azeroth is under constant threat. The Horde as Thrall built it has managed to resist these great evils. But Thrall was unable to completely shift its culture either. Indeed, he seemed to misunderstand his own culture (which makes sense, given that he was raised among humans) in appointing Garrosh as his successor, thinking only of the older, wiser Orgrim Doomhammer he had known in his youth as what the Old Horde had been, and not the brutal, fascistic warmongers they really had been, and how Garrosh chose to run things.

He also never quite managed to export his philosophy of reconciliation to the Forsaken. He treated Sylvanas with respect, even aiding her in taking back her city from Varimathras. But while he was espousing his progressive vision for the Horde, Sylvanas chose instead to build her society into a lockstep cult of personality. He sent the Kor'kron to monitor Undercity following the attempted coup, but once leadership of the Horde transferred to Garrosh, and once Garrosh and the Kor'kron fell, that oversight disappeared.

Garrosh is Thrall's biggest mistake, and it's one that the Horde can never really forgive. Even as Sylvanas has led the Horde into another era of aggression and warmongering, Thrall still bears that mark. And for that, even if he is popular with the majority of the Horde, he's not going to be Warchief again.

Indeed, one of the big questions about BFA's plot has been what happens if Sylvanas is removed from power. While Vol'jin made a ton of sense as Garrosh's replacement (and seemed to do well until his all-too-brief tenure ended,) there's less of an obvious choice now. Saurfang could do it, but he's a soldier, not a politician. Baine might get rescued in 8.2, but at this point the biggest thing he's known for is defying Sylvanas and arguably betraying the Horde to the Alliance.

Lor'themar so far seems too afraid of Sylvanas to stand up to her. And the rest of the Horde's leadership is too new, really (except Gallywix, I guess, though who the hell would want him in charge?)

Thrall taking up the Warchief job once again might be appealing, but I don't think it's what will happen. Thrall's done with it, and frankly, the Horde probably prefers him as Warchief Emeritus. But given that Sylvanas either needs to go or we need to find out that the real Sylvanas has been locked up in a dungeon all this time and the one we think is in charge is actually an imposter (which I think has about a 0% likelihood of happening,) it makes one wonder if the Horde should even have a Warchief anymore.

Frankly, you look at it, and Warchiefs seem to have a Targaryen-level probability of good and bad. Blackhand, Garrosh, and Sylvanas have all been brutes and monsters. Thrall and Vol'jin were good. Doomhammer was... a mixed bag. So at best, you've got half the Horde's Warchiefs being evil.

And let's remember that the whole structure of the Horde was created by Gul'dan. Sure, the Shadow Council isn't part of it anymore (we assume!) but maybe there needs to be a major reformation of just how the Horde works.

Would Thrall be a good person to help forge that new Horde? Like a James Madison type, writing a new constitution? Maybe. I doubt that Blizzard is going to get into the nitty-gritty of legal reformation.

Alternatively - do we think Thrall is going to die?

Right now, the Horde is fractured, unsure of what exactly they want to do regarding Sylvanas. But if she kills Thrall - as she seems to have just tried to do - would that be enough to convince an overwhelming majority of the Horde that she just has to go?

A Warchief is Pulled Out of Retirement in a New Cinematic

It used to be that the high-rez cinematics fro World of Warcraft would come out only every two years with the expansions' launches. We got a very brief teaser before the full Legion one, with Gul'dan discovering Illidan's preserved body in the Vault of the Wardens, but Legion was mainly exciting for giving us multiple pre-rendered but still in-game style cutscenes, ending each major raid (Cataclysm technically had a couple of these, but all within the final raid.)

But with BFA, we've followed Saurfang's story in a number of these, between his resignation before the Battle of Lordaeron to his release from the Stormwind Stockades, to now, his journey to a land we left behind a while ago, with a former Warchief who has (like his creator and voice actor) been sitting things out in a well-earned (and slightly shameful - for Thrall, not Chris Metzen) retirement.

In sort of classic 80s action-movie style, Thrall's done with that life. He's been living on a farm in Nagrand (our universe's version of it,) a simple, modest life of harvesting wheat. We see him sharpening a blade at one point, but it's not a weapon of war - it's a scythe, you know, for harvesting wheat.

Thrall is simultaneously glad to see an old friend, but also wary of what such a visit portends. He has a family now, and really doesn't want to put them at risk. He left all this behind and does not want to play that savior role anymore. He's basically ready to turn down Saurfang when, all of a sudden, a pair of Undead Rogues attack.

It's actually kind of exciting to see rogues rendered in a cinematic like this - their stealth ability is portrayed as true invisibility, rather than a kind of metaphor for sneakiness. As someone who has played a rogue - and an Undead one - for over a decade, it was pretty cool (though character-wise, my dude is way too much of an individualist to still be loyal to Sylvanas. The whole point of being Forsaken was free will, right?)

Thrall and Saurfang fight off the two assassins, and when the mask is pulled back, it's clear that they are Forsaken. Thrall is furious that Saurfang's presence has led them to his family, putting all their lives in danger - but Saurfang corrects him, saying that he followed them there, not the other way around.

Which means that Sylvanas tried to have Thrall killed. This, despite the fact that Thrall had very explicitly made the decision to sit out the current conflict. Why? Did she sense that Thrall would be a threat to her legitimacy?

After all, Thrall really only made one truly terrible decision while Warchief, which was choosing a horrible successor. While some have argued that it's really just how it was represented, it even seemed like when he was in charge, the Forsaken were less out-and-out evil (though that also might have been because their hatred was focused on the Scourge.) Thrall represented a new, progressive vision for the Horde, which recast them as heroes.

And given Sylvanas is worrying most of the Horde's old guard with the direction she's taking, nostalgia for Thrall could be a very powerful force to give a rebellion someone to rally around - and indeed, someone whose legitimacy as a potential Warchief does, actually, rival her own. Baine couldn't stand up to her without being punished because ultimately, she was the authority. Thrall might have given up his claim to power, but what he relinquished voluntarily is also something he might reclaim with plenty of support of the people.

Basically, if Sylvanas orders Thrall arrested, Thrall would have a decent chance of looking at the guards she just ordered and succeed in ordering them to stand down instead.

Now, naturally, the very fact that she sent assassins to have him killed means he's more likely to join the fight.

This could be really bad for Sylvanas.

But we could also entertain other possibilities. Maybe this was intentional. We don't really know what Sylvanas' end goals are here. She could be luring Thrall out - though I don't really see how that would be better than just having him killed, except maybe to demoralize the Horde. Another possibility is that it's not, actually, Sylvanas who sent those assassins.

Now granted, Sylvanas has been going full-villain this expansion, so if we see Forsaken assassins doing something, we can assume it's under her orders no matter who evil. But maybe this is actually some kind of N'zoth stuff?

I really have to believe that N'zoth has been pushing for this war between the factions - it's very on-brand. But while we know he's a big part of the expansion (and most likely its final boss) we still don't know quite what he's trying to accomplish, and to what extent he is using Sylvanas, if at all.

Anyway, Saurfang's cinematic journey has been cool, and I hope we get more of this kind of thing moving forward.

An Hour and a Half to Ravnica

I'm killing time waiting for people to show up for my Ravnica "1"-shot (the quotes are because we're all fairly certain this will turn into a larger campaign.) The game is starting at level 18, with all the local characters (one is an import from the Forgotten Realms, and I've got a whole plot built around that) with all the characters in guilds already at 25 renown, so this is going to basically skip ahead to the Avengers rather than start with the solo films, if that metaphor works (I also realize that that can be a dangerous move, like if you look at how things went with DC.)

Anyway, Ravnica's a very different world from the standard medieval fantasy of most D&D settings. I'm going to be leaning hard into the kind of Magepunk feel that Magic has cultivated for a while now. My version of Ravnica, while architecturally more in line with Prague, Budapest, or Paris, is going to feel very much like 1980s-Today New York City.

For instance, the adventure begins at an Izzet Lab that's between a Whole Foods-like Selesnya grocery store and the "Flaming Angel" bar and grill, operated by a retired Boros legionnaire. There'll even be a sad little "educational overlook" that looks out over Zonot Seven across the street that's owned by the Simic and has that kind of run-down, made in the 60s or 70s and not updated since kind of feel.

Personally, while I love fantasy as a genre, I think that the feudal medievalism is played out. I mean, I love Game of Thrones (even if the last season has been super rushed and because of that fact the recent turn in episode 5 felt not-quite-earned to me even if I do see how it was the final rug-pull coming all along) but to me, the Dark Tower is the biggest fantasy influence on me, with its mashup of Westerns, futuristic sci-fi, and late-20th-century urban creepiness.

Ravnica could certainly feel more medieval with a different DM - you might, inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, really highlight the machiavellian scheming and intrigue, as if Varys and Littlefinger were the main models for characters in it.

But I'm really more interested in seeing the medieval stuff give way to modern-by-another-path. Indeed, much as Eberron has that Magepunk/Dungeonpunk feel, I'm pushing that for Ravnica. And the fact that it's one big city lets me play a lot with the oddness of living in New York (I went to college there) and how when you're on Manhattan, it feels like the city goes on endlessly in all directions. In Ravnica, it literally does.

Obviously, big cities have existed since, like, Babylon. But I think that the density of this particular urban environment only really has precedent in the past few centuries, and perhaps deserves more inspiration from futuristic sci fi like Judge Dredd's Megacity One. Or, obviously, Trantor from the Foundation series or Coruscant from Star Wars.

The Guilds as the real powers of the city also mean that we can do away with Dukes and Lords and such - there's no king in Ravnica. Indeed, it's actually a place with theoretically high social mobility - though that seriously depends on your guild affiliation.

The general way I like to talk about my taste in fantasy is "fantasy with American accents." So much of the genre is born out of the Arthurian tradition, but while I love Europe and even particularly England (though recent politics both there and here make me depressed,) I feel a very strong effort to make really fundamentally American fantasy, and a large part of that is ditching the feudal and medieval environments that have come to define it.

Mind you, I certainly don't begrudge anyone who likes that. But for the stuff I create, which includes riffing on this established setting, I really want to try something different.

Getting to Play My First D&D Character Again

There's a D&D game my best friend runs at our apartment for co-workers, meaning that usually I can't play with them (the party is often seven or eight people, so I think it's totally reasonable to ask me to sit out - I get to play in other games, and DM one of my own.) However, when attendance is low (the party is massive but they never have everyone there) I've been able to sit in.

Tonight, I took my Great Old One warlock out and got to play him again for the first time in a good long while.

Conrad was the first character I rolled to play (I started as a DM, and it was years before I got to play a PC other than a single-session DMPC in Conrad's earlier incarnation as Alfred) and it just so happens he exists in the same world as this game, so it wasn't that difficult for there to be a crossover.

Anyway, while I've been able to play my Eldritch Knight a lot more recently, I really missed the warlock.

I think that if Warlocks got maybe one or two more spell slots, capping at, say, 6 (which would admittedly be pretty crazy when those slots are all 5th level) I'd have no problems with the class. The only real downside with them is that spell slots are so precious that you don't want to use them outside of combat.

Typically, I've used Hex and Armor of Agathys, though as our fight tonight allowed me to hang out by a window above the alley in which we were fighting a swashbuckler sent to kill the party's druid, I forwent the defensive spell and finally got to cast something I've had since level 1: dissonant whispers.

For each of his spells, I have a kind of casting animation I describe (at least the first time I use it in combat) and it was great to be able to use the one for dissonant whispers. The character's patron is either an extradimensional tower that is constantly falling apart but never actually completing its collapse or it's some entity that lives inside that tower (Great Old Ones, to my mind, should always be mysterious and sort of incomprehensible) and so my verbal component has him whisper out loud "The Tower stands, the Tower Falls" while using Awakened Mind (the GOO warlock's telepathic ability) to say "The Tower Falls, the Tower Stands," essentially creating such intense cognitive dissonance that the target suffers psychic damage (the spell actually describes the effect as a high-pitched tone, but dude: it's called whispers. Let's make it literally whispers that encapsulate a dissonant idea.)

Anyway, what's fun is that the character is actually a really good guy who plays things very close to the vest and is, well, weird. I managed to weird out the rest of the party in various ways that kept them guessing, and finally someone rolled a natural 20 on an insight check and got the following (accurate) description from the DM: "Yeah, you get the sense that he's a perfectly well-meaning guy, but he seems extremely disoriented."

One of the aspects of his story - that actually makes it very easy for him to drop into other campaigns like tonight - is that he experiences lost time. When I first started playing the character, his recent backstory was that he just kind of came to consciousness in a carriage that stopped in a small town where a room in the local inn had been rented in his name, so he decided to stay there until he figured out what the hell was going on (the other party members were tasked with looking in on the inn's "strange lodger" and that was how I got introduced to the party.)

I love my Eldritch Knight fighter, especially as he embodies the Battlemage concept I've wanted for over a decade, but I do have a very soft spot for my very friendly and kind, but ultimately batshit crazy warlock.

Dareth - an RPG Setting

When I started running a game of D&D, I created a world called Sarkon specifically in order to include a bunch of D&D stuff like the game's playable races and classes, and to give my spin on the medieval fantasy environment. Naturally, because it's me, I've got a world that has been that Medieval setting for a long time but is undergoing a rapid industrialization.

Of the "deep nerdy" setting, Medieval Fantasy (which, to be fair, has a lot of overlap with Ancient Fantasy - you can pretty easily use Greco-Roman temples and forums in place of medieval castles and the tropes still work,) Steampunk is the somewhat newer but quite popular alternative fantasy/sci fi setting. It's a divisive one, to be sure.

But I think I've generally found the kind of Mid-20th Century era as an aesthetic that I think could make for a really interesting fantasy setting. Obviously, the generation that founded RPGs is from this era, and so a time like the 1940s or 50s might seem less fantastical. But as someone born in the 80s, that period does have a kind of mythic quality to it.

For a long time I've found Noir and spy stories, as well as the conspiracy-ridden aesthetics of the whole UFO mythos to have the potential for some really interesting fantasy elements. My Otherworld setting is, technologically, basically at the same level as our modern world in the early 21st Century, but I think a lot of that mid-century aesthetic really appeals to me in its mundane weirdness. I think it's something that David Lynch has explored in really interesting ways in stuff like Twin Peaks.

Before I started building my D&D setting, and before I knew the rules of 5th Edition, I started brainstorming an RPG setting called Dareth.

Dareth, to be fair, is not exactly at a midcentury stage. It's really more of an Interbellum - the period between the World Wars. The notion is that there was a massive war in which magic and science were combined to create weapons far more powerful than had ever been seen before. But unlike in our history, where the first World War's primary fallout was national resentment and the Great Depression fueling nationalistic hatred, in this case the weapons unleashed have broken barriers to other planes, allowing horrible monsters of various different kinds to break through.

I've been thinking about how I might translate this setting.

I am far more familiar with D&D's rules system than any other TTRPG. I know there are a lot of other systems out there, and particularly those that might work outside of the medieval fantasy setting that is D&D's default. But I'm also tempted to take what I know and just apply it to this setting.

I think most of it could be the same - ability scores, proficiencies, and the basic rules of spellcasting. The real question would be specifics:

This would be a world in which gunpowder has been a thing for centuries, which historically has meant that heavy armor stopped being particularly useful. Yes, these days there's kevlar that can sometimes stop a bullet, but you don't see people walking around in full plate.

Admittedly, one could re-skin things like armor - maybe there's some in-universe armor that looks appropriate to the era but provides similar protection.

Another thing to consider is that melee weapons in a 20th-century-like era would be very rare. Some classes, like Paladins or Barbarians, are built entirely around the idea of fighting up close and personal with big weapons. So could you have a Barbarian in such a setting?

What I think would be tempting is to keep the abilities as they exist, but possibly create entirely new classes. You could cannibalize a lot of class abilities to create new ones - for example, you could have a "Soldier" class that borrows a lot of stuff from Fighters. Part of the lore of the world is a group called Crossbars that fight against the use of magic but actually use a bit of magic themselves, which could borrow heavily from Paladins.

The question is whether melee weapons and Strength as an ability really make a lot of sense in an industrialized world.

This would be a longterm project for me, to see if I can make this work in a 5th edition system. But it bears some thought.

Encounter Size and Planning in D&D

Early on, when we first started playing D&D, I tended to like to use the biggest, highest CR monster I could in a fight. The problem was that these fights tended to go way, way too quickly. If our Paladin got a crit and then did a divine smite (which they get to wait to choose to use until after the hit and it still benefits from the crit, as I understand it) I'd see some monster splattered all over the floor before I got to use any of their abilities.

As players get to higher levels, however, you have more options in how you want to lay out a fight. I started throwing more enemies but each with less power at them, and the fights started to get more interesting. Sure, you could easily smash a skeleton in one or two hits, but you had the other nine to deal with.

Most recently, I had the group fight five Martial Arts Experts, each challenge rating 3. The party is mostly level 8 (I think the Druid might still be level 7) and there is a total of six of them - a Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, Paladin, Monk, and Druid. But this fight went on LONG. Partially it was stressed by the fact that a player who was relying on me for a ride had to make an early night of it, but it also just seemed like the players were getting bored.

And there was a whole other fight planned after that (though to be fair, it was one that I was planning on cliffhanger-ing the session right before the fight started.)

Striking the balance is tough. I also think that there's probably something to be said for deciding which are going to be the long fights and which are going to be the quick ones.

The party didn't really have a clear signal that this was going to be a protracted battle. They had just defeated the two Bronze Golems (from Kobold Press' Creature Codex) guarding the monastery (it's in a steampunk-y gnome town up in the mountains - in fact, if you picture Narshe from the beginning of Final Fantasy VI you've got a pretty good idea of the feel of it.) That fight was embarrassing - the Wizard used Evard's Black Tentacles and the Druid further locked them down with Entangle, meaning that even if they pulled free of the tentacles, they'd have already used their actions and thus been unable to escape entangle, thus making them vulnerable to the tentacles again on their next turn.

Now, I love it when players kick the monsters' asses, but their strategy against the monks was not quite as clever - indeed, when the Paladin was put to sleep by an effect that's actually foreshadowing the "boss" of this adventure, no one woke him up, putting them at a disadvantage.

My sense, then, is that perhaps I want to try some fights with fewer combatants and higher CRs - I think health goes up faster than damage output for both monsters and players, and so a big bad monster might be tougher (or at least less susceptible to a single crit) at higher levels.

It's making me re-think the structure of how this adventure ends. Indeed, the big bad I think is now going to leave open a social option for dealing with him, potentially making him a recurring character. The party just discovered that their patron is a vampire (a genuinely good one, for the record,) and so they might think that this monster might also not be so evil (but he totally is.)

We'll see!

God of War (4) is Fine

There are aspects of the... let's just call it the Norse God of War... that I find really interesting and good. For one thing, I actually really prefer the over-the-shoulder perspective shift. I can't remember if the original games did this, but I also kind of find it interesting that there's a commitment to no loading screens once you're playing and that the cutscenes don't, well, cut. From the moment you're picking a difficulty at the start to the end of the game's journey, it's following Kratos.

I also like that it's showing character development. Kratos is still fundamentally Kratos - a grim, brutal, well, Spartan. He's decidedly unsentimental, but he's not controlled by rage as he was when he was slaughtering the Greek Pantheon.

One thing I'm on the fence about is the narrative of the game. There's something kind of audacious about the fact that the goal of the entire game - the whole point of the adventure - is that Kratos and his son are trying to honor his wife's burial wishes. I'll admit I'll cry at the drop of a hat, but as someone who carried his own mother's ashes to her funeral less than two years ago, the last part of the game hit me pretty damned hard.

What's odd is that the game's big bad is really incidental to the whole story. "The Stranger" (whose identity is not really much of a mystery given that it's got to be a Norse God given what game we're playing) essentially shows up as some raving asshole and then just periodically shows up to assault you. It's telling that once you beat the game's final boss, Kratos and Atreus more or less shrug and get on with what they had been meaning to do in the beginning.

And in truth, while there is a fair amount of territory to explore, it does feel a bit empty. There are fewer than ten characters with distinct personalities and voice acting, and much of the game teases an eventual confrontation with the heavy hitters of the Norse pantheon like Thor and Odin without letting us meet either of them. My guess is that they're planning on having this serve as the beginning of a kind of Norse trilogy to complement the original Greek one. There are also tantalizing hints at a broader God of War cosmology, suggesting that Tyr has been traipsing around, visiting Egyptian, Greek, and even Aztec gods. How many of them can Kratos go and slaughter?

Mechanically, combat is pretty good, though it takes a while to start getting the more nuanced skills and abilities that make it more interesting - the early parts of the game have you just kind of hack at things for a while until they die. I'll admit that I'm spoiled by Bloodborne/Dark Souls when it comes to combat systems, but once you get the hang of God of War's, there's stuff to like (even though I was halfway through the game before I stopped accidentally throwing my axe when I meant to use a Runic ability or vice versa.)

There's also a decently satisfying Metroidvania-style exploration/puzzle gameplay, where the various abilities and attacks you get allow you to make further progress in exploring the world. You'll see things like vibrating red sap or nasty, thorny vines covering a treasure chest and wonder how you can get through that obstacle until you get farther in the narrative. And there are some challenging but not infuriating puzzles (the only one I found frustrating was one that required you to solve it in within a time limit or you'd die and have to restart the whole thing once the game reloaded.)

In terms of difficulty, playing on "Balanced," there was only one time in which I felt compelled to lower the difficulty setting, after I had died far too many times with just a tiny bit of health left on the enemy. There were a couple other fights where I did get angry at how difficult they were, but I only lowered the difficulty that one time.

Returning to that idea of size: the game presents you with the ability to visit all nine realms of Norse myth (though some are either inaccessible or far from necessary to beat the game) but many feel very minor, with some realms feeling less like their own worlds or levels and more like a kind of late-game challenge zone so that you can get the best gear (that you don't really need to beat the game.) And some places, like Helheim, sadly feel devoid of a really strong visual identity or interesting inhabitants that could have made them feel like more of a place than a video game level. As always, God of War has its massive set-pieces, but these feel a little empty given that the world is so empty. Likewise, there aren't all that many different types of enemies - most are just variations on stuff you've seen from early on in the game.

Anyway, the story leaves off on a massive sequel hook with some ominous revelations about Kratos and his son Atreus, at least for those of you who know your Norse mythology. My understanding is that this game got a pretty good critical response and was popular, so I imagine we'll be seeing more of this new take on the series.

God of War (the New One)

Back in college, when the original God of War came out, I had heard very good things and so decided to pick it up. I've been a Greek Mythology nerd since I was a little kid, and given how good the game had been reviewed, I figured I would like it.

But in all honesty, I wasn't crazy about it. For one thing, it was one of those games that promised big but was oddly small in scope - most of it takes place in the massive temple where Pandora's Box is held. It also had a protagonist that did not really appeal to me. Kratos had reason to be angry, of course, but he just seemed like such an asshole, and the kind of nihilistic rage monster that seemed like it would appeal to a narrow age range of teenage boys - I was 19 at the time, but already I felt like that kind of "audaciously violent" character felt too immature for me.

I was wary of this new game when it came out, but it looked like it could be good. While I appreciated the colorful, cartoonish art style of the original (and this was before the "real is grey" movement that would take hold over the next couple years) I think the thing that stood out to me about this new one was the change in perspective, from isometric to over-the-shoulder.

Kratos, as a protagonist, is still kind of a shit, but he's a different, and I'd say more interesting kind of shit. Having left Greece after the events of the third game (I didn't play II or III, but my understanding is that the Olympians and Greece itself were left pretty much devastated by his rampage - so naturally he goes to a part of the world where the gods are, canonically, mortal,) Kratos is introduced chopping down a tree for his wife's funeral pyre. Kratos, of course, is always carrying the ashes of his first family on his skin, and much of this game involves carrying the ashes of his second wife to scatter them where she had asked him to.

Kratos' journey all along the way includes his son, Atreus, who - like Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite - seems to be one of those "yes, theoretically this is an escort quest, but you'll just be glad they're there" kind of characters. Kratos has shielded Atreus from his past as a pantheon-killing rage monster, but the result is that he's been a cold and distant father who gets easily frustrated with his son. Hell, he calls his son "Boy" more often than using his actual name, which tells you a lot.

On a personal note, while dead moms and wives are a trope that people reasonably complain about (largely because it's an excuse for male writers to avoid having to write female characters,) I can identify a bit with Atreus given that my mom died a little less than two years ago. Obviously, I'm not a little boy - though I will say that losing a parent simultaneously makes you feel more adult than you've ever felt and also makes you feel woefully unprepared, as if you should still be a child.

Anyway, while it's not a totally unique story, it is one that I find more compelling than the original game (to be fair, I don't know if the sequels told it better.)

In terms of gameplay, the first hour or two I found sort of passable, but not very interesting. There's not a great amount of tutorializing, and after a brief introductory adventure involving a hunt with Atreus, you get a three-phase fight with what I assume is the game's final boss that both lasts way too long and also would be a lot easier if the game explained to you about, say, running, dodging, and blocking.

But after a slow beginning, you eventually develop more interesting combat abilities and around that time you also get some more interesting visuals. A trip onto a lake in which you meet one of the incredibly massive creatures this series is known for reveals the game's major hub, which both opens the game up (or at least its potential - the hub lets you go to all the nine realms, but so far the only other realm I've been to is Alfheim) and also starts to bring in more of the fantastical elements after the early game is a lot of forests and caves.

The point is, I'm starting to enjoy the game more. So we'll see how it goes as I continue.