In Defense of Dragonspear

So, it's been a couple years, but I'm back to post again!

Recently, the crew over at Beamdog finally released their first full, original adventure for the Baldur's Gate Games (that wasn't an arena-bash): Siege of Dragonspear. Taking the Baldur's Gate setting into the modern age is a daunting endeavor, and I believe they accomplished it hands-down.

Giving Safana a voice, and introducing several new, interesting characters breathed a breath of fresh air into a game that was otherwise beginning to grow a little stale. One can only play through the Bhaalspawn Saga so many times before growing sort of bored with it. To top it off, they also introduced a new class, and several new Cleric specialties. The new class, called the Shaman, is essentially a Druid with spontaneous casting and replacing it's largely useless wildshape with the ability to summon uncontrolled spirits (as well as use axes, which will be wonderful for good aligned Shamans in BG2!)

The new UI is much easier to navigate in a lot of ways, though the quest Journal Entries do leave a lot to be desired. Beyond that, however, I would have to say this is a well-crafted, and wonderfully fun adventure and a solid addition to the Baldur's Gate canon.

And I stand by that, despite all the stupid controversy surrounding a side-character with almost no impact on the story what-so-ever. Mizhena, somehow "infamous" for being a transgendered character in the Baldur's Gate world, who reveals as much if you engage her in conversation. Cries of "SJW agenda" and "Oversharing!" have followed, but this leaves aside the fact that pretty much every side NPC with a conversation tree that you meet overshares their background if you talk to them.

Are there better ways that Beamdog could have introduced Mizhena to the game? Maybe. They could have made Mizhena a full party member. Or maybe you would have to have several conversations with Mizhena to find anything out.

While the first option is great, it would have meant leaving out Glint, and that would have been a shame. The second option also misses the fact that most conversations people are going to have with Mizhena open with "Can I get healing?" and directly going to "Good bye" after the needed healing has been administered. Mizhena's conversation is there for those curious enough to ask questions, and little else. If that really bothers you so much, then perhaps the Baldur's Gate games are not right for you. Go pick up Ice Wind Dale, or better yet, boot up a game of Diablo. That might be more your speed.

Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Bioware's Return to Greatness

Hey everyone! I'm back again, with a review of Dragon Age: Inquisition to hurl in yo' faces!

Dragon Age: Inquisition is the third instalment of the Edmonton-Based game studio, Bioware. In it, you play the Inquisitor/Herald of Andraste, and fight against a world gone mad after a conclave meant to bring the Templar-Mage war to a halt was destroyed in a magical explosion, tearing a hole between the world of mortals and the world of demons. You have a mysterious mark that allows you to close these tears in the veil that have opened in the wake of the Breach, and this lands you as a key member of the reborn Inquisition.

But before we can discuss the story, lets get the technical shizwa outta the way. Inquisition is built on a new engine for Bioware. Before, they typically used the Unreal engine, but for their latest game they've switched over to the much more powerful Frostbite engine, and it shows. Animation is much smoother, and the physics are much more visceral and engaging. So many times, I've had my warrior smash apart a cart just because it happened to be behind an enemy I was slamming through it, and my hits really feel like they connect. The gameplay is somewhere between the Action-based RPG of Dragon Age II, and the more tactical combat of Dragon Age: Origins. However, unlike both games, it's managed to succeed surprisingly well at both. The tactical camera mode has an option to allow you to advance time only a short distance, allowing more tactically focused players greater control. The decent computer AI allows players who prefer more action-based combat to let their party members make generally decent decisions while the PC focuses on hack-and-slash. Combat also makes tactical positioning and combat more varied and emphasizes its importance. While in the previous instalments, things like flanking and positioning were important, the gameplay never really emphasized this except with the melee-built rogue in Origins, who received a backstab bonus and . However, in Inquisition the bonuses for flanking are much more obvious, as some enemies are extremely difficult to fight head-on due to their defenses.

But the game is far from perfect. There are a number of conversational glitches, such as with many of the scenes involving two spoilery-characters. They'll often stop talking in the middle of the cut scene, and not resume talking unless you skip through the scene, causing you to miss a lot of details of what's going on. This only seems to happen with cut-scene conversations, however, and the contextual conversations work very well. There's also some issues in cut scenes and even the main game with clipping, such as a dual-wielding dwarf rogue wearing the Inquisitor's Hat, as your daggers stick up through the brim of the hat. It looks hilarious but it can take you out of the game a bit.

No more murder-knife in Inquisition as well. Your character will use your equipped weapons in cut scenes (with one exception, but it's story based), rather than some mysterious super-knife like in Dragon Age II, or some sword your warden picked up off the ground as in the final scene of Origins.

The characters, however, are where Inquisition really shines. Where in the previous two games, relationships often felt a bit forced or like something you just needed to earn enough points in to win some sort of prize, in Inquisition the relationships feel much more organic. This is helped by the lack of an “approval” bar somewhere. You're still informed whether or not someone approves or disapproves of your actions, but there's no numbers attached. This also helps the romances a great deal. Unlike in previous games where, once approval was high enough or you flirted enough or whatever the characters would throw themselves at you and you'd unlock a sex scene, romances in Inquisition are much more involved, frequently requiring side quests and your character going out of his or her way to win their companion's affections. One of the romances even involves a duel! It makes them feel much more realistic and organic, and above all earned than in previous games. Also, you can't be stealth romanced in this game. You'll know right away if you're getting involved, and you have multiple opportunities to abandon a romance. There's a reason this game's version of the Paramour achievement is for “Committing to a romance.”

Inquisition is a massive, sprawling game with easily 80 or 90 hours of gameplay for the most dedicated of players, and no two playthroughs are ever going to be exactly the same. There are no “right” or “wrong” decisions in this game, and there's no perfect playthrough like in previous Bioware games. Above all, it feels like a return to Bioware's standards of excellence that we saw with Origins and even Baldur's Gate 2. If Bioware keeps this up, there will be only good things ahead for the studio.

The Last of Us Remastered, by Naughty Dog Productions

Hello, readers. Been a long time, hasn't it? Yeah, that's my fault. I got caught up with school, work, and a bunch of other stuff. I simply haven't had the time to watch the movies I wanted or to play the video games I've wanted. But that's done, now! And today, I come at you with a new review!

June 2014 marked the release of a game by Naughty Dog Productions, the makers of Uncharted. The Last of Us was a tonal departure from the more light-hearted, adventure oriented series the studio had made it's name on, but still focused on adventure and story telling with a smattering of action. Violent, gory, and dark, The Last of Us earned it's name not for it's unique take on zombies or the few survival-horror elements it put in (which are indeed few and far between, surprising for a zombie apocalypse game) but for it's two lead characters: Joel and Ellie, played by voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson. Both delivered powerful performances, bringing the two leads to life.

But before we talk more about Joel and Ellie and what I think about the story, let's talk a little bit about gameplay. The gameplay in The Last of Us is very similar to Uncharted 3 (I have not played the other two instalments, but I imagine it's fairly similar) combining quick time events with a party-assisted puzzle solving and exploration, something I very much enjoyed in Uncharted 3 and found equally immersive and entertaining in The Last of Us. Combat is a combination of stealth and cover-based, with different zombie enemies having unique mechanics surrounding how to take them down. While many scenarios allow you to sneak by without engaging opponents, I found many of them also forced you into conflict. However, the stealth sections of the game are particularly exciting and surprisingly well executed, with Joel's ability (and in the few sections where you control Ellie, her ability) to focus his hearing to detect the position of enemies so he can either evade them or take them down from stealth.

The gameplay is fast moving and entertaining, and whenever I did mess up, I always felt like it was my fault and not the fault of the controls, but there are some issues with the Party AI. Rather famously, Ellie and other party members that might be following you don't seem to be bound by the same rules of stealth that you are, which can be immersion breaking if you're trying to sneak through a room full of Clickers—zombies who use echolocation to spot you—and Ellie is busily running back-and-forth right in front of one. However, I was playing the remastered version and only saw this happen on my second playthrough, as for the most part despite being followed by Ellie and others they generally hang back off screen during stealth scenarios. During Combat, Ellie and others will help you take down enemies, and sometimes require your aid when locked in melee grapples, though it's during puzzles that your party members become most involved. Sometimes, you give them boosts to reach higher locations so they can help you up, or they might hold a heavy sliding door open for you while you crawl underneath. You may need to help Ellie across bodies of water because she doesn't know how to swim, or she might help you find a board or ladder as a form of in-narrative hint if you're taking too long to solve a puzzle.

The puzzles are usually simple and the game is good about moving you along if you're taking to long to solve them, so even at their most frustrating they never serve as the roadblocks that they did in older generation video games.

Graphically, The Last of Us Remastered is complete eye-candy. The skin in particular looks fantastic, moving far away from that past-over-wireframe look of games on the PS3, and definitely using the PS4's improved hardware to the fullest. And that brings up one of the major technical problems I do have with this game. As this was the first game I owned on my PS4, I honestly thought something might have been defective with my console, as the fan would run extremely loudly while playing The Last of Us. However, upon doing some research I was surprised to discover that this is actually a common problem with copies of this game. The game is so intensive, it really pushes the graphics and processing cards, causing them to heat up more than usual and as a result the fan runs faster and louder than it would on, say, Zen Pinball. That said, it's a minor annoyance at worst, and the console itself doesn't seem to be getting dangerously hot. In fact, I've had laptops that run hotter than my PS4 does, meaning that the fans are loud simply because they're doing their work well—cooling the console.

Finally, that brings me to the part of the game that I am honestly most torn about. The story.

As I mentioned, The Last of Us follows Joel and Ellie. Or, rather more appropriately, it starts out by following Joel and make no mistake that this game is Joel's story. Ellie is an important character in Joel's story, but it is his story.

Joel is a grizzled, angry white man with brown hair. He's a character we've seen time and time again. He has a personal tragedy when the world ends, and he can't quite get over it making him into an angry, bitter old man. There's a brief prologue where we follow him through his tragic backstory from the point of view of his daughter, at least until his daughter breaks her leg, then we're controlling Joel as he carries her to safety. The game starts in earnest 20 years later, as we're introduced into the militaristic society of the Quarantine Zones, and after some shenanigans, Joel is tasked with escorting Ellie, a fourteen year old girl who happens to be immune to the mutant fungus that turns people into zombies.

Ellie, as a character, is fantastically written, fresh, and a unique take on the character in her role. Normally, younger female characters like her when cast alongside our obligatory grizzled angry white guy are passive, ideal daughters who will break through that crusty exterior and give him something to live for again. Ellie subverts this by being a crass, violent teenager who can handle her own. In many ways, it's hard to focus on Joel's story because quite frankly Ellie's story is just so much more interesting, but this is NOT Ellie's story. This is Joel's story, and thus Ellie exists narratively to highlight something about Joel. Namely, despite being crass and violent, she exists to break through Joel's crusty exterior and give him something to live for. Now, I personally feel this is actually quite subverted and turned into a dark twisted reflection of itself at the end, but you'll have to play through the game to find out why.

That said, the game sometimes falls to hard on the Big Tough White Guy saves the Princess archetype too quickly. For instance, after we see Ellie slash a guy's brains out with a machete, Joel rushes in and pulls her off his dead corpse and she breaks down sobbing in his big tough-guy arms. Now, given other facets of the game and it's DLC in particular, I don't think it was their intention to further the stereotype of the “sobbing survivor” of female characters (an archetype brought to the fore in the latest instalment of Tomb Raider), rather I think their intention was to highlight the loss of innocence being suffered by a child in a world where she has to, yanno, slash a guy's skull open with a machete. The only problem is them introducing this scenario so late, as before she was managing just fine stabbing guys in the jugular vein with her pocket knife. It worked better when Joel and Tess killed the guards that Ellie thought they were simply going to disable when she stabbed one of them in the calf, or when Ellie saves Joel by shooting a man in the head. It simply comes too late in the story, and if it had come earlier the theme of Loss of Innocence, rather than simply sobbing survivor who just needs a big strong man to make her feel better would have been delivered more strongly.

In the end, I think the story would have been better if it had been Ellie's story, rather than Joel's. There is a silver lining here, and something that makes me thing Naughty Dog was just afraid to take too much of a risk too quickly. This is first seen in the character of Bill.

Bill is a xenophobic scavenger who lives by himself in a little town outside of the Boston Quarantine Zone. He likes to set traps, is good with a shotgun and a bow and arrow, and is extremely resourceful. He lost his partner, someone he cared a lot for, after an argument about whether or not they should leave the town. Bill didn't want to. His partner did.

His partner was his partner. As in, the man he lived with. What I'm saying is that Bill is gay. It's surprisingly well handled, as it's never really made a big issue of. Bill is gay, it's just a part of who he is. His sexuality has no bearing on the story—aside from the back story, but even that's delivered mostly through implications by Bill and small notes written to Bill by his partner. It's a small part of the game, but it's something that Naughty Dog did a fantastic job handling. But handled even better was Ellie's sexuality. See, Bill isn't the only not-strictly-heterosexual character in the game. Ellie is, too.

This is revealed in the DLC Left Behind, where we see what Ellie was up to while Joel was unconscious after having a piece of rebar shoved through his guts, as well as being delivered through flash backs the events surrounding Ellie being bitten. According to Naughty Dog, the DLC was meant to be a romance story, and quite frankly they delivered it fantastically. The flash-back story surrounds Ellie with her friend Riley, as Riley is fraught with indecision over whether or not she should leave to join a resistance group in another city. The story displays an intimacy between the two characters without coming straight out and describing what their relationship is (or was). During this, we also see Ellie as she goes through a different mall, trying to find first aid supplies to help Joel. The story is told exceptionally well, and is proof positive to me that the main game should have been about Ellie the entire time. Her story is simply more interesting than Joel's.

Joel's story was better handled in Tell Tale Game's The Walking Dead Season 1, which follows a lone survivor trying to hang onto the last rays of hope in a world gone mad. He, like Joel, finds himself taking care of a young girl who gives him the hope he needs to hang on and survive. But the story is handled in a much more intimate and unique way than The Last of Us handles Joel, who suffers the fate of being a type we've seen done time and time again, in everything from Metal Gear Solid to Dead Space, or even Resident Evil if you make him slightly more effeminate looking. Joel doesn't really bring us anything new to the gamepad, but Ellie brings more than her fair share.

Over all, The Last of Us is a landmark game if only because of it's DLC, which is the first Triple A release in which you the player control an openly non-heterosexual character (I'm not entirely convinced Ellie is fully gay). The gameplay, graphics, and for the most part story telling come together to create an entertaining expierence, and it's certainly worth checking out.

Random Aside: Stats for Xan made in Fate Core

Hey everyone, today's blog post is not a review. Instead, I'm going to try something fun with two things I did reviews for, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition and Fate Core. I'm going to take my favourite companion NPC from Baldur's Gate and make him a character using the Fate Core rules.

First things first: What defines Xan enough to be his High Concept? Well, what we know is that Xan is an elf from Evereska sent to Nashkell to investigate the happenings at the mines. He's a rather dour, sarcastic and pessimistic fellow, doesn't get along well with Eldoth the bard and often wishes him ill (even showing a brief moment of happiness should Eldoth fall in battle), nor does he get along with Ajantis whom he sees as having an over-simplified worldview. Xan also has a powerful Moonblade, and is a Greycloak (a sort of magical law enforcement agent) of Evereska. Additionally, Xan was chosen by the Moonblade to be it's wielder--this hints that he's probably going to be someone important later on.

Most importantly, however, Xan is a Lost Greycloak of Evereska.  That tells us how he fits into the game universe.

For his trouble, I'm going to take a quote directly from his voice set. Our Quest is Vain. Or perhaps We're All Doomed might be more fitting. Our Quest is Vain has a little more zazz and proactiveness to it, so I'm going to go with that one.

Xan's Moonblade is a pretty powerful item, as well as something indicative of him having an important role later not (never happens in BG or BG2, but if the BG:EE guys are reading this... Baldur's Gate 3? Maybe Xan should become someone important!) and something that defines his position in Evereska, so for his background aspect, rather than going with his capture by Mulahey, I think his Moonblade should get its own aspect. Chosen by the Moonblade has a lot of clout to it, especially once you realize the importance of the Moonblade beyond being an awesome item for a mage to haul around.

Xan having as many lines as he does for Ajantis and Eldoth makes him stand out in Baldur's Gate, so I think we can assume those would make good aspects as well. Ajantis Lives in a Black and White World is a pretty catching aspect, I think, and really establishes his relationship with the paladin squire.

As much as I try to stick to his dialogue for these aspects, he doesn't have a really snappy line that defines his thoughts on Eldoth, so I'm going to have to make something up. We know he doesn't like Eldoth because he views him as crude, unnerving, and just plain mean-spirited, so lets say Eldoth Should be Locked Up, as I think that pretty much sums up why he can't stand the guy. Aside from Eldoth being evil, he's also quite unashamedly criminal, and Xan is a law enforcement officer.

That covers Xan's 5 aspects. Next, we're going to cover his skills.

As Xan is an enchanter, Lore is quite obviously going to be his peak skill at +4. Xan is also an investigator, so Investigation and Empathy should fit nicely at +3. I think he'd be pretty good at telling when people are lieing, and he is an enchanter. Next down we have Will, Contacts, and Rapport at +2. As pessimistic as he is, he's also the only person who can keep Ajantis from just randomly attacking evil party members. Finally, I think Notice, Fight, Athletics, and Resources. He can use that Moonblade if he has to (I mean, sure he's a D&D mage, but I'm not going to let the mechanics trump story here), and he's pretty good at keeping out of trouble. If he were back home in Evereska, I think he'd have more resources at his disposal than he does here on the Sword Coast. As an investigator, he's kept his eyes trained, but that's not his main method of investigation.

As for Stunts, I'm going to give him the stunt Arcane Enchanter. This lets him use Lore to Create an Advantage by casting mind-affecting spells such as Sleep or Charm. If I were trying to translate him as a D&D mage, I'd also let his magic attack, but I always used him purely for Crowd Control. I mean, he is  an enchantment specialist, and he's darned good at it, so I think this is a fairly simple stunt for him to have handy.

Next I'll give him the Practiced Investigator stunt, which gives him a +2 to Overcome aspects meant to hide a criminal's trail of clues.

For his third stunt, I think something concerning the Moonblade would be appropriate so, I'll give him a stunt Chosen by the Moonblade, which grants him a +2 when using Fight to attack in melee with the Moonblade. Some might think this gives him a +2 all the time, but then they forget that something as simple as having the "Unarmed" aspect put on him by a foe, or the GM being mean and compelling his "Chosen of the Moonblade" aspect to mean he left his moonblade at home will deprive him of this +2.

So, to recap:

Xan
Lost Greycloak of Evereska
Trouble: Our Quest is Vain

Other Aspects:
Chosen of the Moonblade
Ajantis Lives in a Black and White World
Eldoth Should be Locked Up

Skills:
Lore +4
Investigation, Empathy +3
Will, Contacts, Rapport +2
Fight, Notice, Resources, Athletics +1

Stunts: 
Chosen by the Moonblade (+2 when attacking melee with Fight if wielding the Moonblade)
Practice Investigator (+2 when using Investigate to Overcome advantages intended to conceal a criminal's trail)
Arcane Enchanter  (Can use Lore to create an advantage by casting a mind affecting spell such as a sleep spell or a charm spell. This can be defended against by Will.)

Mass Effect Overview, or Why The Mass Effect 3 Ending Wasn't That Bad (And why I'm Excited for ME4)

To anyone who knows me, it comes as no surprise that I love the Mass Effect games. I'm a complete and total Bioware fanboy, dating all the way back to the original Baldur's Gate games. I even wrote my business letter to them for my junior high language arts class. So one can understand why the vehemently negative reaction to the Mass Effect 3 endings kind of irked me.

"But!" I hear you say, "It completely invalidated all our decision through out the games! Without my own unique personalized ending, everything I decided was worth nothing!"

Well, first of all, that's complete BS. If you make it the bottom of the dungeon and get the Orb of Zot, no decision you've made up till that point matters at all. All that matters is you got the Orb of Zot. When you beat Bowser, it doesn't matter if you took a warpzone or not. The only thing that matters is that you beat Bowser. 

I think this mindset serves to demonstrate very powerfully just how much Mass Effect has mastered the illusion of choice. Because in the end, there are actually very few truly meaningful decisions. Up until Mass Effect 3, decisions you made had very little impact on the actual plot. The biggest impact was mostly on who would survive and who would die.

For instance, lets look at Mass Effect 1. This game is an absolute rail road. You get to Eden Prime, no matter what you decide you end up saving the opposite gendered human from you, and getting blasted by the beacon which gives you whacky visions. After that you have a few choices on where to go next, but ultimately no matter where you decide to go next the story plods along exactly the same. All the missions end the same way. There are a few instances (like with the Thorian Beast, or more memorably at the Krogan Breeding Facility) where you get to make decisions about who lives and who dies. But in the end these decisions have little impact on the actual plot of the story. You will still end up in a crazy fight against Saren. 

And the side quests don't really lead anywhere either. Scanning all the keepers gets you an Acheivement, and a little e-mail in ME2 that tells you "Oh yeah, by the way, keepers? Totally some kind of like thing that takes care of the citadel and used to be connected to some kind of alert system" which tells you nothing new about the keepers that you didn't already learn from Vigil. A few side quests get you some neat cameos in 2 and 3, but for the most part these side quests don't really net you anything--in fact, the simple fact that they net you resources in ME3 which can be used to help you get all the 3 endings is a vast improvement from the complete lack of impact they have in ME2, except to get the Asari business woman to recognize you rather than be stumped as to who you are. 

So, after two games in which your story had little to no impact on the actual plot, what, exactly, where people expecting out of the Mass Effect 3 endings? Did the original endings fail to tie things up? I think that's pretty reasonable. They didn't provide the sort of denouement that we wanted after spending so many years with these characters. Is it a reason to complete hate the game? I'd say "NO". The game itself was very well polished, took risks with the ME3 story and provided exciting and dynamic game play that the series had been crying out for since the original, which had stiff controls and confusing cover mechanics, and nearly impossible to aim guns.

That's another complaint I've heard. That the game play has "Sucked since ME2". What. A. Joke.

Mass Effect 1 couldn't decide if it wanted to be a Real-Time Sci-Fi ARPG with some third-person shooter mechanics, or a Cover-Based Third Person Shooter with some ARPG level-up mechanisms. It was poorly designed from a game play perspect, it's dungeons were all the same dungeon just with different rooms locked and unlocked (*COUGH*DRAGON AGE 2*COUGHCOUGH*), and movement mechanics that were baffling at best, and killed you off at worst.

ME2 was a vast improvement. The cover mechanics actually made sense, aiming the gun was far easier, and it had finally decided how to get that balance between RPG elements and cover-based shooter in such a way that it felt like it had a cohesive game design. Each of the classes was unique in its own way, but operated in such a fashion that everything made sense.

This illusion of choice, however, put unrealistic expectations on the endings of ME3, which for whatever reason drowned out the stellar gameplay, world design, and the rest of the ME3 story telling. 

A lot of people are now accusing EA and Bioware for "Milking" the Mass Effect series because of the announcement of Mass Effect 4. I'll admit I can't honestly see how furthering the series will work unless its assumed only the Red or Blue endings are canon, as the green ending was a little bit too weird admittedly, even with the expanded endings.

Ultimately, I'm excited to see where they take the Mass Effect stories from here, and I can honestly say I'm looking forward to it.