I'm still sort of getting used to this idea of Nintendo entering the era of DLC, but when it comes to adding new fighters to Smash Bros, I can't think of a better feature (though I still haven't downloaded Mewtwo.)
This is all rumors, so take it with a grain of salt, but the leaked videos I've seen look very believable, so I'm inclined to think these are probably truly coming.
The first I'll mention is an old favorite - Roy from Fire Emblem.
Roy was a smaller, slower, but more powerful version of Marth in Melee. In Brawl, Ike basically took his place, and personally I always preferred Ike, but we'll have to see how Roy works.
I'm hoping we get a pretty significant reworking of his abilities, because Wii U Smash (I kind of wish they'd gone to the thesaurus again) already has Lucina, who is another Marth clone. I wasn't crazy about how Fox, Falco, and Wolf were all nearly identical in Brawl, and I don't know if we need three versions of Marth. Still, since he hasn't been seen since Melee (which, Jesus, came out fourteen years ago) it'll be nice to have the guy back.
The other R guy is Ryu, from Street Fighter. Now, confession time, I've never actually played Street Fighter, even though I know it's, like, the most popular fighting game there is (well, maybe Mortal Kombat is up there too.) But to be honest I was never all that into fighting games before Smash Bros, which is such a different take on the genre that it could almost be called its own thing.
Anyway, unless I'm mistaken and about to be burned alive by the collective scorn of the internet, Ryu has the famous hadouken move, and is certainly a video game icon, which is a big prerequisite for Smash Bros (well, unless you're already a Nintendo IP. I mean, has anyone ever heard of Dark Pit?)
I'd really hope for them to be able to bring back some missing classics. I'm sad not to see Snake this time around, and it's a damned crime that Ice Climbers are nowhere to be seen.
Anyway, it looks like Ryu will be coming with his own stage, which is good. I don't know what the actual count is, but I feel like the latest Smash has fewer original stages than previous games - like almost half are old-school stages. I'm totally happy with having the old-school stages, mind you, but I'd like to see more original settings (off the top of my head, how about a Maridia Metroid stage with rising and falling water levels, a Dark World Zelda Stage on top of a collapsing Pyramid of Power, or a Mine Cart-based Donkey Kong stage.)
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Friday, June 12, 2015
The Ebon Blade and the Jailor of the Damned
The Knights of the Ebon Blade were ostensibly created to wipe out the Scarlet Crusade, and at least in the Eastern Plaguelands, they were wildly successful, wiping out the Scarlet Enclave in what I consider canon to be a single day (basically in real time as you do the quests.) Of course, their real purpose was to draw out Tirion Fordring, the last founding member of the Knights of the Silver Hand and one of the greatest champions in the fight against the Scourge. And actually, they succeeded there. It was Arthas' error to think that he'd be able to easily assault Light's Hope Chapel, and the big backfire of the whole Ebon Blade plan is that the Lich King's domination over his death knights at Light's Hope was severed.
The Knights of the Ebon Blade didn't suddenly become automatically good guys - they still retained a lot of their ingrained, predatory personality traits, and worst of all kept the inflicted addiction to causing pain. No Death Knight is going to be able to return to a peaceful life (though that blind one who makes DK armor in ICC... I don't know what he does to deal with the addiction.)
Still, most of them, released from the will of the Lich King, decided to band together and dedicate their order to defeating Arthas and actually becoming the newly-formed Argent Crusade's biggest allies (kind of to pay off the debt of, you know, trying to kill them all.)
And the Ebon Blade succeeded. They aided the Heroes of Azeroth in ascending Icecrown Citadel, and while Darion Mograine wasn't there for the final battle, they certainly achieved their goal of removing Arthas.
Today, the Lich King is Bolvar Fordragon, who took the crown in order to keep the Scourge ona tight leash. Bolvar has a lot of advantages over Arthas - not only was he always a more even-headed Paladin than Arthas had been, but he also never touched Frostmourne, and thus retained his soul. Indeed, there's little reason to think that Bolvar has become evil at all - he withstood a solid year of torture and never lost his righteous will.
Bolvar does have a couple things to worry about, though. While Arthas seemed to consume the personality of Ner'zhul to become the real dominant identity of the Lich King, it's possible that the Helm of Domination retained some residue of that more malevolent personality. Also, we're told that Arthas was actually holding the Scourge back from just totally rolling over the world, which could suggest that even a righteous person as Lich King is, at best, going to still be a dark lord of evil.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say Lich King Bolvar is actually totally as good as we thought. After all, the Scourge has gone from being possibly the biggest threat on Azeroth to a minor annoyance restricted to the Eastern Plaguelands.
The Knights of the Ebon Blade have been searching for a purpose since the defeat of Arthas. With their revenge accomplished, what is there for them now? The Forsaken have had a similar crisis, but the Forsaken have an advantage, which is that they are still similar enough to the living that they can take on a semblance of normal lives - as farmers, scholars, tradesmen. They're also a key part of the Horde, and thus have investment in the wellbeing of their allies. Also, Sylvanas has given them a new goal to work for, which is the conquest of the Lordaeron subcontinent (which, you know, is not without its problems, like angry British werewolves.)
Bolvar might be a Lich King worthy of the Ebon Blade - his goal is not the destruction and domination of all life on Azeroth, but to draw back the Scourge. And who better to aid him than an elite corps of Death Knights who have experience leading the undead?
Admittedly, the Ebon Blade is pretty fractured at this point. Most of its members have simply returned to their home factions looking for forgiveness and some altered version of a normal life. But Acherus is still maintained by a garrison of knights, and Mograine himself still has some sway. Would it be anathema to the freedom they gained at Light's Hope to ally themselves with the Lich King once more? Or is Bolvar's cause exactly what the Ebon Blade needs?
The Knights of the Ebon Blade didn't suddenly become automatically good guys - they still retained a lot of their ingrained, predatory personality traits, and worst of all kept the inflicted addiction to causing pain. No Death Knight is going to be able to return to a peaceful life (though that blind one who makes DK armor in ICC... I don't know what he does to deal with the addiction.)
Still, most of them, released from the will of the Lich King, decided to band together and dedicate their order to defeating Arthas and actually becoming the newly-formed Argent Crusade's biggest allies (kind of to pay off the debt of, you know, trying to kill them all.)
And the Ebon Blade succeeded. They aided the Heroes of Azeroth in ascending Icecrown Citadel, and while Darion Mograine wasn't there for the final battle, they certainly achieved their goal of removing Arthas.
Today, the Lich King is Bolvar Fordragon, who took the crown in order to keep the Scourge ona tight leash. Bolvar has a lot of advantages over Arthas - not only was he always a more even-headed Paladin than Arthas had been, but he also never touched Frostmourne, and thus retained his soul. Indeed, there's little reason to think that Bolvar has become evil at all - he withstood a solid year of torture and never lost his righteous will.
Bolvar does have a couple things to worry about, though. While Arthas seemed to consume the personality of Ner'zhul to become the real dominant identity of the Lich King, it's possible that the Helm of Domination retained some residue of that more malevolent personality. Also, we're told that Arthas was actually holding the Scourge back from just totally rolling over the world, which could suggest that even a righteous person as Lich King is, at best, going to still be a dark lord of evil.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say Lich King Bolvar is actually totally as good as we thought. After all, the Scourge has gone from being possibly the biggest threat on Azeroth to a minor annoyance restricted to the Eastern Plaguelands.
The Knights of the Ebon Blade have been searching for a purpose since the defeat of Arthas. With their revenge accomplished, what is there for them now? The Forsaken have had a similar crisis, but the Forsaken have an advantage, which is that they are still similar enough to the living that they can take on a semblance of normal lives - as farmers, scholars, tradesmen. They're also a key part of the Horde, and thus have investment in the wellbeing of their allies. Also, Sylvanas has given them a new goal to work for, which is the conquest of the Lordaeron subcontinent (which, you know, is not without its problems, like angry British werewolves.)
Bolvar might be a Lich King worthy of the Ebon Blade - his goal is not the destruction and domination of all life on Azeroth, but to draw back the Scourge. And who better to aid him than an elite corps of Death Knights who have experience leading the undead?
Admittedly, the Ebon Blade is pretty fractured at this point. Most of its members have simply returned to their home factions looking for forgiveness and some altered version of a normal life. But Acherus is still maintained by a garrison of knights, and Mograine himself still has some sway. Would it be anathema to the freedom they gained at Light's Hope to ally themselves with the Lich King once more? Or is Bolvar's cause exactly what the Ebon Blade needs?
Thursday, June 11, 2015
POWER OVERWHELMING - Jumping into the Deep End with D&D
As a gift to myself (and eventually, the world,) I took the plunge and got the three core books for Dungeons and Dragons (5th edition - the latest, which I think is about a year old.) I've been in the process of creating a setting, and I hit a chapter called "Creating a Multiverse," and I was immediately taken aback - I've dug too deep. The power here - it could kill us all!
I am in nerd heaven (or should that be Elysium?)
Despite being a big fan of computerized RPGs from Chrono Trigger to Skyrim, I only in the last year had my first experience with tabletop RPGs, playing as "Maester Liom" in the Song of Ice and Fire RPG, joining the Night's Watch, shooting Wildlings with a crossbow while I stitch up my brothers.
And while it's a ton of fun, the world of Westeros is fairly grounded - our enemies are almost always humans (though I had the joy of attempting to do an autopsy on a corpse that rose as a wight in my infirmary,) and I wanted to push things a little farther into the fantastical, and I also thought it would be fun to run a game.
For the uninitiated, the three core books for D&D are the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual.
The Player's Handbook is more or less your basic rulebook, but also includes a lot of information on how to create a character, giving detailed descriptions of races and classes, as well as listing abilities, traits, and such for said categories. It actually seems like it wouldn't be too hard to create new versions of these (races probably easier than classes,) but as a novice, I'm going to stick with what we've got. The Player's Handbook tells you how combat works, and how various skill checks and such work, but also gives you models for how to resolve tons of scenarios - like how much harder it would be to cast a non-instant spell on a ship that's being rocked by waves, or the effect of cold weather on your progress through a landscape.
The Monster Manual is the simplest of the books - it's a list of tons of different kinds of creatures for your players to fight, explaining their backgrounds, stats, and usually having a picture to give you an idea what they look like. Lots of monsters have variants (the section of Dragons, as you might imagine, is pretty huge.) It also looks like an experienced DM (not me) could definitely do some tinkering to change their levels or create whole new monsters.
The Dungeon Master's Guide does have a lot of stuff describing how to build a dungeon and how to construct combat encounters that are an appropriate challenge for your players, but a huge swath of the book is basically a fantasy storytelling guide. It's amazingly comprehensive, and while there are certain elements that you'll generally need to stick to (like ensuring that there' are appropriate deities or religious movements dedicated to various values like Light or Trickery that have mechanical expressions in-game,) it's very open-ended. They explain how you could use the rules of the game to describe anything from their own established Forgotten Realms setting to a stagecoach drive across the Wild West. The book includes formulas for coming up with NPC characters that honestly are similar in comprehensiveness to a lot of writing classes I've taken.
Anyway, I've spent the last day and a half constructing the world of "Sarkon" and I've begun to reach out to my tabletop friends. I'm sure that I'll post more about the progress of the game as it goes.
I am in nerd heaven (or should that be Elysium?)
Despite being a big fan of computerized RPGs from Chrono Trigger to Skyrim, I only in the last year had my first experience with tabletop RPGs, playing as "Maester Liom" in the Song of Ice and Fire RPG, joining the Night's Watch, shooting Wildlings with a crossbow while I stitch up my brothers.
And while it's a ton of fun, the world of Westeros is fairly grounded - our enemies are almost always humans (though I had the joy of attempting to do an autopsy on a corpse that rose as a wight in my infirmary,) and I wanted to push things a little farther into the fantastical, and I also thought it would be fun to run a game.
For the uninitiated, the three core books for D&D are the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual.
The Player's Handbook is more or less your basic rulebook, but also includes a lot of information on how to create a character, giving detailed descriptions of races and classes, as well as listing abilities, traits, and such for said categories. It actually seems like it wouldn't be too hard to create new versions of these (races probably easier than classes,) but as a novice, I'm going to stick with what we've got. The Player's Handbook tells you how combat works, and how various skill checks and such work, but also gives you models for how to resolve tons of scenarios - like how much harder it would be to cast a non-instant spell on a ship that's being rocked by waves, or the effect of cold weather on your progress through a landscape.
The Monster Manual is the simplest of the books - it's a list of tons of different kinds of creatures for your players to fight, explaining their backgrounds, stats, and usually having a picture to give you an idea what they look like. Lots of monsters have variants (the section of Dragons, as you might imagine, is pretty huge.) It also looks like an experienced DM (not me) could definitely do some tinkering to change their levels or create whole new monsters.
The Dungeon Master's Guide does have a lot of stuff describing how to build a dungeon and how to construct combat encounters that are an appropriate challenge for your players, but a huge swath of the book is basically a fantasy storytelling guide. It's amazingly comprehensive, and while there are certain elements that you'll generally need to stick to (like ensuring that there' are appropriate deities or religious movements dedicated to various values like Light or Trickery that have mechanical expressions in-game,) it's very open-ended. They explain how you could use the rules of the game to describe anything from their own established Forgotten Realms setting to a stagecoach drive across the Wild West. The book includes formulas for coming up with NPC characters that honestly are similar in comprehensiveness to a lot of writing classes I've taken.
Anyway, I've spent the last day and a half constructing the world of "Sarkon" and I've begun to reach out to my tabletop friends. I'm sure that I'll post more about the progress of the game as it goes.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
A Compromise on Flight Coming for 6.2
It's always a little tough to figure out which side actually represents the majority, or at least the larger of two sides, in a vast internet debate. There are vocal opponents of flight in WoW, but there are also many people who are big fans of flight.
Being one of the latter, I think it's important to note that different people are fans of flight for different reasons. Some really do just want the convenience of popping in, slaying the monster, and popping out, or being able to travel across the world without danger.
I, however, have always thought that flight in WoW contributes to, rather than detracting from immersion. Flight opens the world up to a true three-dimensional space. And the world of Warcraft has had flying machines and such dating back before World of Warcraft. The thought that we intrepid adventurers wouldn't want to take advantage of that existing technology or fauna is a bit much.
I know I've made this point before, but I think one needs to remember that you couldn't do a zone like Storm Peaks or Icecrown without flying. You couldn't have the Tempest Keep dungeons floating up in the sky - with no bridge or stairway to lead to them - like that without flight. Flight has allowed the designers of the game to do really cool things.
There are a lot of inbetween solutions one could come up with to keep people from abusing flight to make quests trivial (though let's be honest, leveling quests haven't really been a challenge in the game since maybe BC.) You could simply put flying mounts on a one-minute cooldown, so you'd have to hang out on the ground while your gryphon circled back to pick you up or something. Or you could give a lot of quest areas some sort of air defense that you'd only shut down after completing the quests there.
The solution they're going with in Draenor seems relatively reasonable. This is certainly subject to change, but right now it looks like you'll need a few achievements to contribute to a meta: One is to find 100 Treasures of Draenor (which won't be too hard what with exploration missions rewarding treasure maps that can also be bought for crated artifacts.) You'll also need Loremaster of Draenor (which again, isn't so bad. The leveling quests in Draenor are the expansion's best feature.) You'll also need "Securing Draenor," which requires that you do all of the Daily Assault areas (though I think you only need to do the solo ones - could be wrong there.) Finally, you'll need to have the three Tanaan Jungle reputations to Revered.
All in all, that doesn't seem to bad, as long as the reps in Tanaan aren't totally obnoxious to level up. Let's think more Council of Exarchs than Shatari Defense.
The achievement (which I believe is called Pathfinder of Draenor) will be account-wide, so you'll only have to do these things on your main. I suppose the question is whether the flight will kick in for level 90 players or if it will still require the level cap (and for that, I think I'd go with level cap - not that I think there's no place for flight in the leveling game, but the quests of Draenor were clearly not designed for that.)
I know this debate will continue, and a lot of people will see this as caving (while others will think of it as "seeing reason.") But this is the first expansion since BC that hasn't had airships in it, and that's a damn shame.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
The Dimensional Nature of Demons
Well, a tweet from Alex Afrasiabi just dropped a big ol' bombshell regarding the lore of Warcraft:
" Archimonde is a demon whose demon soul is anchored to the Nether. The Nether transcends all realities. That is all."
In other words, if I interpret this correctly - the Archimonde that we are fighting in Hellfire Citadel is the Archimonde - the very same one that was defeated at the end of the Third War.
This has massive implications for the lore of the Burning Legion and the nature of this alternate Draenor. I'm also, frankly, not sure it entirely makes sense - but let's see if we can figure out a way that it will!
We've known since WCIII (which is when the Legion was introduced if I recall correctly) that demons - at least the most powerful ones - tend not to actually enter the physical world when they appear. Instead, the demons we face when defending our homeworlds are really a sort of Avatar - the demon's soul remains within the Twisting Nether, and what we are seeing is really a kind of physical projection. Thus, when we kill a demon, what we're really doing is shattering the construct that they've been using to fight us, forcing them to build a new one. Essentially, the demons have been using drone warfare against us - you can blow up the drone, but the pilot is sitting comfortably within the twisting nether. It's still a victory, just as it would be victory to shoot down a multi-million-dollar aircraft, but the mind behind it doesn't suffer any longterm injury.
Notably, this also seems to be the way that Elementals work. We killed Ragnaros in Molten Core, but his true essence remained in the Firelands. We were only able to destroy him for good by entering his realm.
This raises an interesting question: Have we actually managed to kill a demon? Like, ever?
In Felwood during the Third War, Illidan was leading Night Elf forces to oppose the Legion's advance, but the dreadlord Tichondrius kept coming back. Arthas then appeared to him and suggested that he use the Skull of Gul'dan to become a demon himself, which we're told allowed him to permanently kill the dreadlord.
So far, this has seemed permanent. But another event, earlier in WCIII, seemed pretty permanent too. Arthas, immediately after getting Frostmourne, used the cursed sword to kill Mal'ganis - and given that Frostmourne's whole deal was that anyone killed by it would have their soul drawn into the sword, you'd think that Mal'ganis would be gone for good (or at least until the shattering of Frostmourne at the end of Wrath of the Lich King.) Yet we see Mal'ganis in Northrend, definitely before Arthas' death, as the dreadlord has possessed the corpse of the Scarlet Crusade's Grand Admiral, bringing about the Scarlet Onslaught.
It's here that I do have to sit back and remember that sometimes, Blizzard just fumbles the lore a bit. I'm glad they did when it comes to the history of the Eredar, as they gave us one of my favorite playable races, but it happens.
The point is, these demons are apparently the same ones - Archimonde, Kil'jaeden, Mannoroth. I'd also guess this applies to Titans as well, given that there's probably just the one Sargeras.
This does make the stakes a bit higher. Yes, there's an infintie multiverse, but the Legion is capable of being a threat across its entirety. It means that, maybe, a defeat of the Legion on Draenor B will actually help us on Azeroth A.
But it's also a bit confusing. First off: when are Draenor B's Archimonde & Co from? Let's say we didn't actually travel through time, but Draenor B just kind of started 35 years later, and we've been running along parallel, but misaligned timelines. That means that Kil'jaeden, Archimonde, and Mannoroth would remember all of our past interactions with them. It means that when we meet Archimonde in Tanaan Jungle, he should remember us as those time-travelers who helped defeat him at Mount Hyjal. It means the Mannoroth who died in the opening cinematic also remembers Grom killing him during the Third War, and probably has a pretty frustrating flashback when he sees the big ol' orc flying through the air with Gorehowl about to go into his head.
If we have time-traveled for real, then they wouldn't remember these things happening, but it would also mean that there's two versions of events going on in their heads at once - one in which a shriveled Horde is fending off an attack on Tanaan Jungle, and another in which everything's going according to plan and their Horde is invading Stormwind as we speak.
But either way, the demons are currently dealing with many different realities at once. How? Well, if you think about it, it's not that hard. If they can create one demon avatar, why not two? Why not a dozen? Why not one for every single universe. Each avatar of Archimonde is being controlled by the same demonic mind (which is a hell of a multitasker,) but expressing the demon's will in multiple universes.
This is a real trade-off kind of revelation. On one hand, we haven't really gotten any in-game hints that these demons already know us, but it also suggests that the multiple universes are fundamentally connected, and that our efforts on Draenor might not just be irrelevant when we get home.
(Now as an afterthought - consider that a lot of these demons, if not all of them, were once mortals. Archimonde was presumably physiologically the same as the modern Draenei before he became a demon. Are there mortal Archimondes out there who declined Sargeras' gift? Or was Archimonde's first task to go around and wipe out every other version of himself, like Jet Li in "The One?")
(Second postscript: Afrasiabi explicitly said that the Old Gods are a different sort of thing, and so this presumably does not apply to them.)
" Archimonde is a demon whose demon soul is anchored to the Nether. The Nether transcends all realities. That is all."
In other words, if I interpret this correctly - the Archimonde that we are fighting in Hellfire Citadel is the Archimonde - the very same one that was defeated at the end of the Third War.
This has massive implications for the lore of the Burning Legion and the nature of this alternate Draenor. I'm also, frankly, not sure it entirely makes sense - but let's see if we can figure out a way that it will!
We've known since WCIII (which is when the Legion was introduced if I recall correctly) that demons - at least the most powerful ones - tend not to actually enter the physical world when they appear. Instead, the demons we face when defending our homeworlds are really a sort of Avatar - the demon's soul remains within the Twisting Nether, and what we are seeing is really a kind of physical projection. Thus, when we kill a demon, what we're really doing is shattering the construct that they've been using to fight us, forcing them to build a new one. Essentially, the demons have been using drone warfare against us - you can blow up the drone, but the pilot is sitting comfortably within the twisting nether. It's still a victory, just as it would be victory to shoot down a multi-million-dollar aircraft, but the mind behind it doesn't suffer any longterm injury.
Notably, this also seems to be the way that Elementals work. We killed Ragnaros in Molten Core, but his true essence remained in the Firelands. We were only able to destroy him for good by entering his realm.
This raises an interesting question: Have we actually managed to kill a demon? Like, ever?
In Felwood during the Third War, Illidan was leading Night Elf forces to oppose the Legion's advance, but the dreadlord Tichondrius kept coming back. Arthas then appeared to him and suggested that he use the Skull of Gul'dan to become a demon himself, which we're told allowed him to permanently kill the dreadlord.
So far, this has seemed permanent. But another event, earlier in WCIII, seemed pretty permanent too. Arthas, immediately after getting Frostmourne, used the cursed sword to kill Mal'ganis - and given that Frostmourne's whole deal was that anyone killed by it would have their soul drawn into the sword, you'd think that Mal'ganis would be gone for good (or at least until the shattering of Frostmourne at the end of Wrath of the Lich King.) Yet we see Mal'ganis in Northrend, definitely before Arthas' death, as the dreadlord has possessed the corpse of the Scarlet Crusade's Grand Admiral, bringing about the Scarlet Onslaught.
It's here that I do have to sit back and remember that sometimes, Blizzard just fumbles the lore a bit. I'm glad they did when it comes to the history of the Eredar, as they gave us one of my favorite playable races, but it happens.
The point is, these demons are apparently the same ones - Archimonde, Kil'jaeden, Mannoroth. I'd also guess this applies to Titans as well, given that there's probably just the one Sargeras.
This does make the stakes a bit higher. Yes, there's an infintie multiverse, but the Legion is capable of being a threat across its entirety. It means that, maybe, a defeat of the Legion on Draenor B will actually help us on Azeroth A.
But it's also a bit confusing. First off: when are Draenor B's Archimonde & Co from? Let's say we didn't actually travel through time, but Draenor B just kind of started 35 years later, and we've been running along parallel, but misaligned timelines. That means that Kil'jaeden, Archimonde, and Mannoroth would remember all of our past interactions with them. It means that when we meet Archimonde in Tanaan Jungle, he should remember us as those time-travelers who helped defeat him at Mount Hyjal. It means the Mannoroth who died in the opening cinematic also remembers Grom killing him during the Third War, and probably has a pretty frustrating flashback when he sees the big ol' orc flying through the air with Gorehowl about to go into his head.
If we have time-traveled for real, then they wouldn't remember these things happening, but it would also mean that there's two versions of events going on in their heads at once - one in which a shriveled Horde is fending off an attack on Tanaan Jungle, and another in which everything's going according to plan and their Horde is invading Stormwind as we speak.
But either way, the demons are currently dealing with many different realities at once. How? Well, if you think about it, it's not that hard. If they can create one demon avatar, why not two? Why not a dozen? Why not one for every single universe. Each avatar of Archimonde is being controlled by the same demonic mind (which is a hell of a multitasker,) but expressing the demon's will in multiple universes.
This is a real trade-off kind of revelation. On one hand, we haven't really gotten any in-game hints that these demons already know us, but it also suggests that the multiple universes are fundamentally connected, and that our efforts on Draenor might not just be irrelevant when we get home.
(Now as an afterthought - consider that a lot of these demons, if not all of them, were once mortals. Archimonde was presumably physiologically the same as the modern Draenei before he became a demon. Are there mortal Archimondes out there who declined Sargeras' gift? Or was Archimonde's first task to go around and wipe out every other version of himself, like Jet Li in "The One?")
(Second postscript: Afrasiabi explicitly said that the Old Gods are a different sort of thing, and so this presumably does not apply to them.)
Friday, June 5, 2015
Should Open-World Games Have a "Main Quest?"
Fallout is, unsurprisingly, a game that is coming up in my thoughts more recently - not only was Fallout 4 just announced, set in my own hometown no less, but I also saw Mad Max: Fury Road not too long ago, so the idea of a post-apocalyptic landscape is kind of... not really zeitgeisty, but something that I've been thinking about.
Fallout 3 was a great game, but it had its flaws. And one of the biggest flaws (spoilers for a rather old game) was the way it ended. After tracking down your father's water-purification project, the Enclave tries to sabotage you and you basically are forced to sacrifice yourself in order for the project to start up - you're bathed in radiation and die. This was made all the more frustrating by the presence of a supermutant follower, who is immune to radiation. Wouldn't it be far easier to just have him enter the code?
I'm led to understand that some DLC fixed this - allowing you to recover afterward - but it's really an odd idea in the first place - to have an open-world game... well, end. Games often have linear narratives, but this makes sense for some genres more than others. In linear games, it makes sense to have a story that hits plot points in a straight line. But the open-world game is more about setting than plot. Plot and characters inform that setting, to be sure (all the elements of storytelling are pretty inextricably linked anyway,) but the core engagement with your open-world games is a sense of freedom and exploration. The danger of having a main quest is that you essentially tell players "you can do anything here! But remember that if you aren't on this single path, you're on a side quest."
Now perhaps that isn't so bad. In Skyrim, I've created assassin-type characters who really just do the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild chains and basically feel complete (Dark Brotherhood especially.) But I think there are ways to tell compelling stories that don't push a single one to the forefront.
Probably the most culturally relevant fantasy work at the moment is George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, which you probably already know is the series of books upon which HBO's Game of Thrones is based (though the show and books are deviating more as the show has caught up to or passed Martin's writing.) While there's every possibility that the various plot threads will ultimately entwine to give us the series' endgame, for much of its run there have been wildly different events going on - all of which are certainly important.
The two most important supernatural forces in the story are separated by thousands of miles. Jon Snow, up at the Wall, is desperately trying to work out a peace deal with the Wildlings because of the necromantic Others (White Walkers in the show.) Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen achieved a miracle in bringing three fossilized dragon eggs back to life, and has her legitimacy as a conqueror and liberator backed by her status as "Mother of Dragons."
These are both hugely important things happening in the world, but the meat of the series has been more concerned with political intrigue in King's Landing. But that's not all - you've also got the chaos in the Riverlands, possible treachery in the Iron Isles (something the show hasn't dealt with all that much,) and a religious order of badass, terrifying assassins across the sea in Braavos.
The point is, Game of Thrones isn't just one big fantasy epic - it's like ten of them all happening at once.
And an open-world game could work that way.
World of Warcraft actually manages this, somewhat as a consequence of its periodic structure. Each expansion has focused the story somewhat, but generally, we move on to fairly different threats each time we go somewhere new. The Lich King and Deathwing were both existential threats to life on Azeroth, yet they felt very different and involved totally different "major players."
The leveling experience in the old world, even post-Cataclysm, really embodies this idea - you'll start in your own racial starting zone (and the fact that there are so many allows you to have quite different experiences even early on,) and while you can see how the various plot threads are connected, you can have a pretty different kind of adventure depending on where you go.
Is this all that different from how games like Skyrim work already? Perhaps not. The question is whether games would work if the makers tore up the signs that said "this way to most important plot." Does the main quest act as a crutch - a little linear game to provide structure lest people be overwhelmed by the freedom they're given? And would taking that crutch away make them fall? It's certainly possible, and I'm definitely an armchair game designer here.
But it might be cool to play a game where you really don't know which of the world-ending threats that pop up is the biggest one.
Fallout 3 was a great game, but it had its flaws. And one of the biggest flaws (spoilers for a rather old game) was the way it ended. After tracking down your father's water-purification project, the Enclave tries to sabotage you and you basically are forced to sacrifice yourself in order for the project to start up - you're bathed in radiation and die. This was made all the more frustrating by the presence of a supermutant follower, who is immune to radiation. Wouldn't it be far easier to just have him enter the code?
I'm led to understand that some DLC fixed this - allowing you to recover afterward - but it's really an odd idea in the first place - to have an open-world game... well, end. Games often have linear narratives, but this makes sense for some genres more than others. In linear games, it makes sense to have a story that hits plot points in a straight line. But the open-world game is more about setting than plot. Plot and characters inform that setting, to be sure (all the elements of storytelling are pretty inextricably linked anyway,) but the core engagement with your open-world games is a sense of freedom and exploration. The danger of having a main quest is that you essentially tell players "you can do anything here! But remember that if you aren't on this single path, you're on a side quest."
Now perhaps that isn't so bad. In Skyrim, I've created assassin-type characters who really just do the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild chains and basically feel complete (Dark Brotherhood especially.) But I think there are ways to tell compelling stories that don't push a single one to the forefront.
Probably the most culturally relevant fantasy work at the moment is George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, which you probably already know is the series of books upon which HBO's Game of Thrones is based (though the show and books are deviating more as the show has caught up to or passed Martin's writing.) While there's every possibility that the various plot threads will ultimately entwine to give us the series' endgame, for much of its run there have been wildly different events going on - all of which are certainly important.
The two most important supernatural forces in the story are separated by thousands of miles. Jon Snow, up at the Wall, is desperately trying to work out a peace deal with the Wildlings because of the necromantic Others (White Walkers in the show.) Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen achieved a miracle in bringing three fossilized dragon eggs back to life, and has her legitimacy as a conqueror and liberator backed by her status as "Mother of Dragons."
These are both hugely important things happening in the world, but the meat of the series has been more concerned with political intrigue in King's Landing. But that's not all - you've also got the chaos in the Riverlands, possible treachery in the Iron Isles (something the show hasn't dealt with all that much,) and a religious order of badass, terrifying assassins across the sea in Braavos.
The point is, Game of Thrones isn't just one big fantasy epic - it's like ten of them all happening at once.
And an open-world game could work that way.
World of Warcraft actually manages this, somewhat as a consequence of its periodic structure. Each expansion has focused the story somewhat, but generally, we move on to fairly different threats each time we go somewhere new. The Lich King and Deathwing were both existential threats to life on Azeroth, yet they felt very different and involved totally different "major players."
The leveling experience in the old world, even post-Cataclysm, really embodies this idea - you'll start in your own racial starting zone (and the fact that there are so many allows you to have quite different experiences even early on,) and while you can see how the various plot threads are connected, you can have a pretty different kind of adventure depending on where you go.
Is this all that different from how games like Skyrim work already? Perhaps not. The question is whether games would work if the makers tore up the signs that said "this way to most important plot." Does the main quest act as a crutch - a little linear game to provide structure lest people be overwhelmed by the freedom they're given? And would taking that crutch away make them fall? It's certainly possible, and I'm definitely an armchair game designer here.
But it might be cool to play a game where you really don't know which of the world-ending threats that pop up is the biggest one.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Fallout 4 Officially Announced
Like many, I'm sure, my experience with Fallout started with Fallout 3 - the game that came about after the title came into the hands of Bethesda, the makers of the Elder Scrolls games. Now, I'm no expert - I never played New Vegas, the quasi-sequel (akin to Brotherhood and Revelations to Assassin's Creed II - essentially a huge expansion pack, as I understand.)
I enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot, though it never felt like it had the depth of the Elder Scrolls games. There was plenty of exploration to be done, but not a lot in the way of major quest lines. Now admittedly, there's something kind of freeing and exciting about a world in which there's no quest marker pointing you where you should go, but instead just discovering little things along the way (the Vault that was nothing but "Gary" clones was simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. The one with the "Blue Gas" was just pants-crappingly terrifying.)
Still, the world definitely didn't feel as large as Cyrodiil or Skyrim, but given that we know this company is capable of doing such things, I have high hopes for the next entry.
Fallout 4 will be set in the ruins of Boston, which is really exciting for me as I grew up in a Boston suburb. Two things immediately stand out to me: The first is that there's a lot of footage in the trailer that shows the world before the nuclear war. It's even possible that the player character lived through that war, which I believe would mean that this game takes place earlier than the other games. Given that the trailer shows events occuring in that pre-war time, some have been led to speculate that we may, in fact, get to play through some of that - though whether it would use time-travel or flashbacks or what is anyone's guess.
The other thing that could be exciting is that the area seems better populated than the Capital Wasteland. In the Fallout timeline, MIT became "The Institute," which seems to have become a beacon of continued scientific progress within the post-apocalyptic world, and I imagine that if that's the case, they probably have a relatively safe perimeter to work within.
Fallout 3 was a lot of fun, but it was also a poster-child for the frustrating "brown is real" trope in art design. Everything had a kind of desaturated quality to it, and while that may be true of a real post-nuclear wasteland, I firmly believe that colors are good.
Indeed, ruins are all well and good, but I think what's exciting about the post-apocalyptic genre is not the misery and death, but the idea that new structures and cultures would rise up out of the ashes. Fallout of course derives a lot of its aesthetics from the Mad Max series, and I think what's appealing about that series is seeing the new social structures that grow out of the breakdown of the old ones. A lot of stuff might have been cobbled together out of old parts, but there's a human urge to create new things, and with the old rules broken down, people have the freedom to be very creative.
Another notable aspect of the trailer is that good old Dogmeat is greeted by the presumed player character, and he greets the dog before they head out on the road, and we hear his voice. I wonder, then, if this will be a game in which the player we control is a predetermined one rather than one we create ourselves. I generally like being able to create my own character, but I also recognize that having a set character opens up a lot more dramatic options for telling the story. Just having a voice is kind of a big deal (Mass Effect I think did a good job of hybridizing between total character creation control and a predetermined personality.)
Anyway, if this can be the Skyrim to Fallout 3's Oblivion, I'm super, super excited to see how it turns out (at some point I'm going to have to buy one of the new consoles other than my Wii U.)
I enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot, though it never felt like it had the depth of the Elder Scrolls games. There was plenty of exploration to be done, but not a lot in the way of major quest lines. Now admittedly, there's something kind of freeing and exciting about a world in which there's no quest marker pointing you where you should go, but instead just discovering little things along the way (the Vault that was nothing but "Gary" clones was simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. The one with the "Blue Gas" was just pants-crappingly terrifying.)
Still, the world definitely didn't feel as large as Cyrodiil or Skyrim, but given that we know this company is capable of doing such things, I have high hopes for the next entry.
Fallout 4 will be set in the ruins of Boston, which is really exciting for me as I grew up in a Boston suburb. Two things immediately stand out to me: The first is that there's a lot of footage in the trailer that shows the world before the nuclear war. It's even possible that the player character lived through that war, which I believe would mean that this game takes place earlier than the other games. Given that the trailer shows events occuring in that pre-war time, some have been led to speculate that we may, in fact, get to play through some of that - though whether it would use time-travel or flashbacks or what is anyone's guess.
The other thing that could be exciting is that the area seems better populated than the Capital Wasteland. In the Fallout timeline, MIT became "The Institute," which seems to have become a beacon of continued scientific progress within the post-apocalyptic world, and I imagine that if that's the case, they probably have a relatively safe perimeter to work within.
Fallout 3 was a lot of fun, but it was also a poster-child for the frustrating "brown is real" trope in art design. Everything had a kind of desaturated quality to it, and while that may be true of a real post-nuclear wasteland, I firmly believe that colors are good.
Indeed, ruins are all well and good, but I think what's exciting about the post-apocalyptic genre is not the misery and death, but the idea that new structures and cultures would rise up out of the ashes. Fallout of course derives a lot of its aesthetics from the Mad Max series, and I think what's appealing about that series is seeing the new social structures that grow out of the breakdown of the old ones. A lot of stuff might have been cobbled together out of old parts, but there's a human urge to create new things, and with the old rules broken down, people have the freedom to be very creative.
Another notable aspect of the trailer is that good old Dogmeat is greeted by the presumed player character, and he greets the dog before they head out on the road, and we hear his voice. I wonder, then, if this will be a game in which the player we control is a predetermined one rather than one we create ourselves. I generally like being able to create my own character, but I also recognize that having a set character opens up a lot more dramatic options for telling the story. Just having a voice is kind of a big deal (Mass Effect I think did a good job of hybridizing between total character creation control and a predetermined personality.)
Anyway, if this can be the Skyrim to Fallout 3's Oblivion, I'm super, super excited to see how it turns out (at some point I'm going to have to buy one of the new consoles other than my Wii U.)
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