Neutrality in a historical setting: The problem with marketing Assassin's Creed 3

Firstly, just to show you my background for context: I'm American, born and raised outside of Boston (inside the Greater Boston Area.) I have ancestors that date back to the Mayflower. As a Bostonian, the American Revolution was always an important historical event whose essence is strongly felt in my hometown. I grew up walking the Freedom Trail, my parents taking me to Paul Revere's house, the site of the Boston Massacre, and the graves of many a founding father.

One thing I've always enjoyed about the Assassin's Creed games is that they don't go for the obvious historical periods. We're inundated with World War Two games, for example (there's never been a clearer-cut villain in history than the Nazis, after all.) So when I heard that there would be one set during the American Revolution, I was thrilled. (While brainstorming with friends, we came up with the French Revolution and the Civil War as periods that would be interesting as well. Maybe if Connor gets as many games as Ezio, we'll see him over in France. Ubisoft is a French company, though, so I have to imagine someone over there will push for it.)

There is a problem, though. America is a very proud nation, and the Revolution is considered the birth of the American identity (actually, this is not entirely true - the American identity arose first, and thus inspired Americans to revolt against a country to which they did not believe they belonged.) Patriotism is serious business here. In fact, it gets a little ridiculous sometimes, and during the more tumultuous periods in our nation's history (The Red Scare and 9/11, for example,) a lack of overt patriotism was often considered to be a sign of anti-Americanism. Now, don't get me wrong - as the oldest functioning democracy (let's not get into a debate about how well it functions - this blog's about video games, not politics,) I am proud to be from here. It's the country that said "screw you" to the very idea of kings and aristocracy, freeing us from the petty disputes of the inbred royalty.

And yes, I think that my ancestors who rose up against British rule were fully justified in doing so, and I think that overall, the world is better for it. If it weren't for America, there would probably be far fewer democracies in the world (and here I'll step outside of the American stereotype and share the credit for this with France, both for their help in the Revolution and the fact that their subsequent Revolution paved the way for the democratization of Europe - even if it took a really, really long time.)

So it comes as no surprise that the marketing for Assassin's Creed 3 has really played up the patriotism factor, despite assurances that the game is really about the conflict between Assassins and Templars, who straddle both sides of the war. They want to sell a lot of games in America, so waving the Stars and Stripes is an understandable move.

Here's the problem: British people are not evil.

In fact, the UK has, for about a hundred years, if not more, been the USA's closest ally (Canada would be if we remembered that you guys weren't just Americans living up in the freezing wilderness. Sorry, Canadians!) Anyway, not only are we close allies, but the language bridge allows for a huge degree of cross-polination culture. (You gave us the Office and a bunch of game shows, we gave you 99.9% of the movies you watch - even the ones set in England about English people)

I like the UK a lot, and of course, being one of those Mayflower descendants, I of course have a lot of English in me (though a larger portion of me is Irish, and on the other side of my family I'm a first generation Hungarian-American.) And I've been there, studied there, made friends there, and I've enjoyed actual beer there in its pubs.

So when I look at the ads for AC3, I wonder if my English friends are feeling really turned off by them. And it's not like they've got a more balanced ad campaign over there - it's still Connor slaughtering redcoat after redcoat (the live-action ad I saw that I believe is England-only is, if anything, more gung ho American.) Yes, I think there was a good side (Patriots) and bad side (Redcoats) to the Revolution, but you have to remember that compared to the rest of Europe at the time, the Brits weren't so bad. The Revolution was less about destroying an evil empire than saying "we haven't been part of Great Britain for a while now - we're just making it official" while England "but you're our colonies! We put you there so we could have an empire!"

Imagine, for example, if they had chosen the Civil War instead. Would we have Connor (I tried to come up with a better name for an Irish-American conscript and failed) slaughtering a Confederate soldier on the box art? I mean, yeah, that would be awesome (For the Union!) but I can't imagine it would be good for sales in the South.

The Assassins vs Templars conflict allows us to have a more traditionally black and white conflict, which can then be set against the backdrop of history that is far more morally grey. By choosing to focus so much on the Patriot's side of things, Ubisoft threatens to both misrepresent the conflict of the game (hopefully) and to alienate a huge market of English gamers who might feel a little weird about slicing their ancestors to pieces.

Still, all of that said, I'll enjoy chilling with John Adams and Ben Franklin (think he'll make us inventions like Leonardo did? That would be cool. Say, doesn't the Freemason compass look kind of like the Assassin's symbol...?) Any country's going to have some time playing the bad guy if they last long enough. Some day, someone is going to make a Vietnam War game and we Americans are going to have to deal with being the big scary empire fighting against the local rebellion.

We just have to remember who the real bad guys are: Solar Flares... I mean Templars. (Hey, how come the modern-day Knights Templar haven't complained about these games?)

Thoughts on the Mass Effect series

I just finished my playthrough of Mass Effect 3. Yes, I realize the game's been out for months, but my apartment didn't get it for a while. While this won't be a review, exactly, I will be going into detail about what I thought of it.

I should note that when I beat the game, we had already downloaded the Extended Cut DLC (which is free, in case you were worried about that.) So if what I'm talking about confuses you despite having beaten the game, there's your explanation.

SPOILERS AHEAD. BE WARNED.

Altoholism - making it official

Well, Altoholism started as a WoW blog only a few months ago, but I've made the decision to expand the blog to encompass all video games. WoW will certainly continue to feature prominently in it, and I'll be labeling those posts so that you can filter out all the other stuff if you so choose.

The Shadow Priest and class identity: A new option for characterization

I was reading this recent WoW Insider post talking about Retribution's seemingly non-Paladin role. The Paladin is almost by definition a good guy class (lore-wise, Paladins can only use their powers if they believe they are doing good with them,) and while slaying demons and the undead is totally in line with the Paladin's ideals (no soul? Nothing wrong with smashing it with a hammer.) Of course, Ret Paladins also kill other things.

Anyway, while WoW certainly has the mechanical underpinnings of an RPG and you have a degree of character customization, there's still not a lot you can do to really define your character in-game. The only class that really gets to totally redefine itself is the Priest. Holy and Discipline Priests are what you'd think of when you hear about Priests in other RPGs. Shadow Priests, however, are almost the complete opposite - the dark reflection of the "White Mage." Whereas pretty much all Paladins in-game are well-intentioned heroes of the Light (or equivalent source of Holy magic,) and all Mages are highly intelligent scholars who use their knowledge to blast things, Priests can, simply by switching specs, become members of completely opposing schools of thought.

What I would propose is a new mechanic - allowing you to choose at some point (much as you choose a specialization) between two opposing versions of your class. For example, a Paladin would choose between an Inquisitor or a Champion. A Rogue could choose between a Swashbuckler or a Spy. The idea, then, would be that the look of your spells and the way you interacted with NPCs would change to reflect the mindset your character had.

In truth, I'm not sure something like this could fit into WoW. The game is coming up on its fifth incarnation, and whether it's because of the nature of MMOs or just the way Blizzard does things, the roleplaying elements of it definitely not the focus.

That said, it would be cool to see such a thing in a game. Rather than having a single "good or bad" morality system that is applied to every class (something I think is generally done poorly outside of Mass Effect, as most games go with ridiculous moral decisions like "do you want to save this baby, or eat it?") you would have each class dealing with its own internal divide - its question of "what does it really mean that I am a Shaman?"

So, some examples:

Paladin: Inquisitor vs Champion (militant dedication to the one true church, or striking out as a knight errant to serve anyone in need)
Warrior: Soldier vs Barbarian (professional dedicated to discipline or wild man on the fringes, getting into bar fights.)
Death Knight: Death-seeker or Repentant (are you simply using your dark powers to become an unstoppable badass or are you trying to make up for what you did?)

Anyway, you can see the sort of things you'd be able to do with system like that.

Actually, about four years ago, a friend of mine and I starting coming up with an RPG idea that would be based almost entirely around this concept. The game would begin with four class options: Fighter, Scholar, Thief, and Survivalist. Every ten levels, the player would find their class branch off into two different ones (with a relevant shift in the story that accompanied it.)

So, for example, the first set of classes would break into:

Fighter: Soldier or Warrior
Scholar: Cleric or Sorcerer
Thief: Spy or Assassin
Survivalist: Hunter or Shaman

This class-splitting would occur two more times, ultimately giving you a selection of 32 classes (which I realize would be an absolute bitch to balance, but it would probably be a mostly single-player game,) so that halfway up the climb to the max level and the end of the game, someone who had chosen "Fighter" could be anything from the dual-wielding guns or axes "Anarchist" to the stronger-the-longer-he-fights "Paladin" to the nigh-indestructible "Arcane Guardian." They're all Fighters, but decidedly different flavors thereof.

DLC vs. Expansion Packs: The troubling future (well, present) of gaming

(You might notice that this entry isn't strictly WoW-related. If you read this for that specific content, I should warn you that I expect this blog to become more of a general gaming blog. That said, WoW is one of the games I play most, and I've certainly been playing it for a long time, so don't expect it to completely fall by the wayside.)

We like it when new content is added to our games. Games are devoured - we generally continue to play one until one of two things happens: we beat it, or we grow tired of it. Games with high replayability kind of force the latter, as there is either no true end to the game, or the game heavily encourages starting over. Yet often the reason we grow tired of something is that we run out of content. You can only slay Deathwing so many times before it grows old, especially if you've got the gear you want off him. So, for a very long time, game makers have found ways to extend the lives of their games.

Straight sequels, of course, are a tried-and-true method for this. Video Games are an odd medium in this regard, because while we tend to groan when we see yet another Austin Powers or Men in Black sequel (both of which were awesome original movies) a lot of the really exciting "triple A" games are part of decades-old franchises. Think how exciting it is whenever the new Zelda game comes out. That series started the same year I was born, and there have been (roughly) a billion entries in it.

In the days of Gamepaks, there wasn't really anything you could do to alter a game after it shipped, so if you wanted anything else, you just needed to hope for a sequel. Computer games, however, had the advantage of existing as files on your computer, so companies realized they could release "expansion packs," adding on significant amounts of content while still retaining the same basic framework the game was built on. It meant far less development time than a totally new sequel, and if it was the sort of game where you had an established character who had leveled up, you could keep all that progress.

But while the internet did exist then, it was not nearly as central to society. Everyone had crappy modems that often tied up their phone lines (if someone else picked up the phone to make a call, they'd break your connection. Now that most people who can afford to play video games have an independent internet connection - and indeed, that a solid internet connection is a more reasonable expectation among people of my generation than having a landline phone number - and also that consoles tend to have a significant amount of data storage, downloaded games and game content are becoming quite the norm.

Look at WoW, for example. I never bought the original WoW. I downloaded the demo version, which was limited to ten days and didn't let me trade with anyone, and when the time was up, I just kept playing and allowed them to start billing me for a subscription.

Anyway, the point is that while there's still a (shrinking) market for physical copies of our games, especially on consoles with their limited storage space, the realm of expansion packs is swiftly being taken over by DLC - downloadable content.

This is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, I think that theoretically, it's awesome. There's a quick, convenient way for you to get more of the game you enjoy.

The problem, however, is the way that DLC is produced. Understand that the original idea behind expansions was just that: it was an expansion of a complete product. If you play through, say, Warcraft III, the original, unexpanded game tells a complete story. You get to play as all four factions, and the entire Third War plays out under your command. The events of the expansion, The Frozen Throne, all took place afterwards - really fitting as more of a kind of half-sequel, one that focused in on a couple of characters and their specific conflict.

Now, however, a lot of DLC is built around the idea that the game isn't really complete if you haven't gotten it. Specifically, a lot of games are released with DLC already available: as in, they could have released the game with this stuff, but they chose not to so that they could charge extra.

The most egregious example of this is actually from one of my favorite games of the generation, Assassin's Creed II. ACII was a revelation - a vast improvement over the original game that also introduced a wonderful protagonist. But as you play through it, you eventually hit a gap where the characters literally tell you that there's missing memory, and that you have to skip ahead. The game, as it shipped, basically complained to you about not having bought the DLC.

Playing through Mass Effect 3 now (took a while to get it. Loving it so far, but let's see about this controversial ending) there's another weird little bone I've got to pick. After picking up Liara on Mars, she told me about her exploits fighting the Shadow Broker. She says that she lost a friend there, and that it would have been nice if I'd been there to help. But I wasn't, because the Lair of the Shadow Broker was DLC for Mass Effect 2, and I beat the game before it even came out. So now I've got a game making me feel bad for one of its characters because I didn't drop the extra cash to download this content. Mind you, the Shadow Broker was an established character all the way in the first game. There was no reason that he couldn't be worked into the series proper.

Look: games cost a lot of money to make, but they're also fucking expensive to play. I'm not complaining about companies that are inspired to add content on to their existing creations. What I am complaining about is a kind of, well, extortion. You've bought the game for sixty bucks, and then they tell you you've got to spend another twenty to get the complete package. It's like buying a chair, but then finding it's really only a stool until you buy the back.

The sad thing is that I'm pretty sure the game designers aren't behind this practice. Instead, I think that just as big film executives will force cuts in movies to, say, speed up the action rather than allowing the characters to actually have personalities, game executives want new sources of revenue and will force certain content into the realm of DLC. DLC is the perfect product - once you've made it, there's no more cost in distributing it other than maintaining a server from which customers can download it. Games are big business - in fact, they're as big or bigger than the film industry at this point. And as we all know, the bigger the industry, the more people will be working to get away with whatever they can do to maximize profits. So what recourse do we, as gamers, have? We who want to buy the game as a complete package?

The best solution I can offer is to wait. Popular games will often come out with a "million player" or some such edition, and often they offer you a second disk with the DLC on it at no extra price (well, except that the original game will have gone down in price by then.) Like any medium, we do like to play things on the release day, but if you want to get all that cool extra content that was extracted from the game in order to make you pay twice, your best bet, I think, is to wait.

One last note: Not all DLC is bad. Oftentimes, they are truly additions created after the fact, or even things that they were working on during development that would have been cut due to various restraints otherwise. And, admittedly, I can't tell you which sort of DLC is which. But if you think that no DLC is made by cynically removing parts of a complete game, I envy your optimistic worldview.

Power Creep or Versatility: The thing that draws us to RPGs is also their core weakness

Most games have RPG elements these days - that is to say, they use some kind of leveling system, or a way in which, as you play, you become more powerful. As you level up and grow more powerful, the enemies you face grow stronger as well, but in the good games, you're not merely on a treadmill of numerical difficulty - the array of powers you have changes your behavior and the enemies will serve to test you with more complex strategies.

This is not always entirely successful. While the world of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (haven't played Skyrim yet, so bear with me) is compelling in its freedom and size, every enemy leveled up with you, regardless of when in the story you were, so it became a totally viable strategy to simply prevent yourself from leveling up and simply deal with simpler, more easily vanquished monsters.

Remember that in typical side-scrolling Mario games, Mario never really gets any more powerful. Sure, you go back to old levels to "farm" up Super Mushrooms and Cape Feathers to prepare yourself, but ultimately the Caped Mario in Donut Plains is no more powerful than Caped Mario in the Valley of Bowser. The only thing that truly changes as you go through one of these games is that the levels get much less forgiving, demanding greater and greater perfection in your timing and reflexes.

WoW is an interesting animal in this regard. While perfect execution of your rotation does require practice, and each expansion makes subtle changes while adding new abilities, for the most part your character behaves the same once all the key abilities are in place. Despite the fact that, say, End Time is a level 85 dungeon demanding iLevel 365 gear, it's actually a lot easier than Magister's Terrace was. Everything does scale in WoW - someone in awesome gear at level 60 is going to be a dark stain on the floor if they try to fight someone with crappy gear at level 85. But - at least in PvE - it's not the numbers that make the fights challenging, it's the encounter designs. Despite everyone's obsession with gear, it's really not the determining factor of how well you do - it's just a barrier to entry.

Diablo 3 is a curious example, because there are aspects of the game I think are great and aspects of it that I hate. Diablo 3 is built on replayability. You only get halfway to the level cap when you beat the game on normal, and the expectation is that you'll then immediately soldier on to Nightmare difficulty, leveling up further and getting more loot. The problem I have with this is that it is truly a treadmill approach to leveling. The levels themselves are randomly generated, which does keep you exploring rather than just walking the path you've learned by heart, but it also means there's very little flow to the levels. You might encounter the toughest enemy in the dungeon just after setting foot inside, and the rest of it could be a cakewalk.

On the other hand, I think that the approach to ability Runes is pretty clever. It's kind of what Glyphs or Talents in WoW would be if Blizzard were to start over from scratch. None of them are inherently stronger than the others, and the fact that you have to choose one Rune for one Ability in a given key-bind (yes, I know you can technically reassign ability to other keys, but I feel this breaks the spirit of the design) means you have a very tough choice to make depending on the fight. The only problem is that the fights (other than actual bosses) are randomized, so despite the potential for a kind of puzzle to figure out the optimal strategy, you'll generally just sit with the same, versatile build and keep corpse-running until the elite spawn is dead.

I love RPGs, mind you, but in an ideal game, I think the plain-old power of your abilities and skills would remain at roughly the same level, but you'd be faced with more complex foes that require new abilities to take them down.

The Beta Problem

I'll admit, I haven't logged in to actual, real WoW in maybe a month. I'm not getting to a quitting point, it's mainly that the novelty of Diablo 3 and the Beta are drawing me away. My guild's been off-and-on getting enough people for actual raids, and I realize I'm not helping the situation, but I figure if I can't take a break from WoW, that's probably a bigger problem than if I do take a break.

The Beta level-cap is now 90, which as we should all know is Mists' level cap (I doubt we'll be seeing 10-level expansions again, at least until we get past level 100.) Beta Jarsus is level 88. Part of me wants to get him to 90 to start testing out the heroics and raids, but on the other hand, I think I might be at that point where I've done what I want to do in the Beta.

Obviously, the real reason anyone's in the Beta is testing. If you're not getting on the forums to report on issues you've come across, you're kind of doing it wrong. That said, there's literally over a million people who are at least eligible for the beta. The chance that the problem you've come across is one that no one else has is pretty unlikely.

I also don't really want to spoil everything for myself. Granted, as an altoholic, I'm going to be running through all this content on probably more than ten characters (every expansion I've had more toons at the level cap,) so by the time that I take, say, Torem, the Dwarf Elemental Shaman through, I'll be very surprised if I find any new quests, and there will be very little novelty left, but I've purposely left things a little spotty in my questing on the beta (well, I was pretty thorough in Jade Forest when that was all that was open) to ensure I do actually get to see new stuff (the Beta has actually been somewhat accommodating in that regard, given the missing and broken quests) when I play the game for real.

The beta's also got some frustrations. For example, several patches ago, when they implemented account-wide mounts, I lost a ton of them, including my precious Turbo-Charged Flying Machine and my Mekgineer's Chopper (the latter of which will remain character-specific - guess that answers the question of whether my Hordies will get the Mechano-Hog.) I made a forum post back when that first happened, but I haven't complained since because I'm sure that's something they'll work on before the thing gets released (if I lose my Chopper on live, though, you can be sure I'll complain. Before the release of Wrath of the Lich King, which introduced the Mekgineer's Chopper/Mechano-Hog, a friend of mine and I had literally been talking about a hypothetical video game we would make if we had any idea how to make video games that would involve, among other things, Paladins riding motorcycles.)

Probably the main reason I was interested in the Beta in the first place was to get my hands on the Monk. It's been very interesting to see how the Brewmaster's developed. I haven't actually tanked any high-level content with them, but it's definitely gone from a convoluted mess to something that actually makes a lot of sense and even makes Active Mitigation seem more interesting and less "you will now suck at tanking, suckers."

I'll probably still log onto the Beta on occasion, and I might even get Beta Jarsus to 90, and check out the Dread Wastes and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but (and don't hold me to this) I think I'm going to save the rest of it for the real thing.