Monthly Archives: October 2011

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid

So it seems the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer is sadly going to be less Marx brothers focused, and more creating custom characters to fight on different and unique fronts in the war. That makes a lot of sense; as Jonathan B mentions in the comments Mass Effect (like the vast majority of RPGs) includes side quests aplenty, and we (like the vast majority of people who plays RPGs) have commented several times on the absurdity of wandering around a village/space station performing INCREDIBLY VITAL tasks like delivering packages, sorting out petty crime and trimming shrubs into beautiful topiary shapes while the WORLD(/galaxy/universe/multiverse) ITSELF is in MORTAL PERIL and there ISN’T A MOMENT TO LOSE.

Replacing optional side quests with optional sections from another character’s point of view that still tie in and contribute to a bigger story seems so obvious that some other RPGs must surely have tried it, though I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Half-Life does something similar with its Opposing Force and Blue Shift expansions seeing you take on the mantle of different characters experiencing the timeline of the original game, and occasionally crossing paths with the other protagonists. Steven Moffat’s Coupling used several unconventional narrative techniques to great effect, and they’d be well suited to something like the framing device of Dragon Age II, events being related by a not-necessarily reliable narrator. I suppose a significant problem is that structuring multiple simultaneous points of view is difficult enough at the best of times when you can precisely script the actions of all involved, give a player control and the complexity goes through the roof. It doesn’t really matter, so long as there’s a galaxy to save. But first, I’m just going to help Mrs Prodger complete her ornamental teaspoon collection…

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads.

The locomotive of my MMO enthusiasm has finally run out of steam, for the time being at least. The once huffing-puffing funnel is cold and still, and the roaring firebox –burnt out– now smoulders silently, where even a vigorous stirring of hype elicits nothing more than a gentle ember glow. As the running gear of my fervour slowly seizes, resistance to resuming my journey along that straight, bland, unchanging MMO track builds inexorably. A number of us are still keen on playing together, and as such we have all clambered like the Keystone Kops onto a single handcar, which we propel perilously down the MMO track, our arms flailing, but hanging on against all the odds nevertheless.

City of Heroes is the game we find ourselves enjoying at the moment, primarily, I feel, because it is one of the least MMO-like MMOs around. Oh, it still has all the standard MMO tropes, I grant you, but what it lacks is many of the border guards, barking dogs and machine gun posts of the traditional MMO regime, whose only purpose seems to be to stop you getting together with the people of your own kind, whose company you enjoy. CoH used to be excellent for getting a group together, now I would say that it is probably unsurpassed. I’d proffer that its whole purpose is to delight those who use it, but that would be inaccurate; its purpose is to be ignored entirely by those who use it. In short, City of Heroes’ grouping system works like this: invite people to your group, pick a mission, have fun. Everything else is taken care of. It’s the Jeeves of MMO group mechanics: useful, helpful, discrete, empowering, facilitating and, sadly, an incredibly rare find.

I tried to enjoy Lord of the Rings Online’s latest expansion, but outside of the absolutely stunning cosmetic items the new content provides, there’s nothing new there that excites me. If I were already chugging happily down the MMO track, then this would undoubtedly be solid fuel to keep the big wheels turning, but there’s simply not enough originality there to kick-start a seized and stationary locomotive of enthusiasm. I think I am, perhaps unfairly, disappointed that the latest expansion doesn’t really include any fresh system which drags the game in new and interesting directions: despite how players may feel about the skirmish and legendary item systems, they were at least attempts at something a little bit different. This latest expansion includes an implementation of phasing, a technology which Blizzard has already successfully proven doesn’t really work as intended, often breaking the immersion it is supposed to enhance, and sometimes inadvertently becoming one of the barriers to grouping with friends. I hesitate to say that this expansion was lacklustre, but to my mind it seems as though Turbine may be dedicating resources to their own Titan, because although they are clearly not neglecting LotRO, there just doesn’t seem to be the desperate drive to impress that was present in the previous paid expansion, as though LotRO will not be the flagship in Turbine’s fleet for much longer.

In the meantime I’ve switched tracks and find myself hurtling along in the game train, whose tender is overflowing with rich fuel. So far I’ve shovelled Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Space Marine, Gears of War 3 and Bastion into the firebox, and the pressure of choice was so great at one point that my boiler was in danger of bursting. I burnt through those games in short order, however, and now I’ve picked up the latest DLC for Dragon Age 2, because despite all the raging Internet forum complaints, I still found the game enjoyable enough to run through it twice. Mark of the Assassins has added Felicia Day, which is never a bad thing to my mind, or to the minds of the majority of Internet nerds, upon which I’m sure Bioware’s marketing department is relying. Somewhere in the recesses of Bioware Marketing HQ, a big tick is being slowly and firmly scribed with a squeaking whiteboard marker against the name Felicia Day, ensconced as it is alongside the names Jennifer Hale and Claudia Black, beneath the double-underlined heading “Voicerotica for nerds”.

It’s good to be back on the game train, something always worth doing from time to time: often, when you play MMOs exclusively for too long, you forget what the simple pleasure and satisfaction of playing a game actually feels like.

The Shepard Brothers Save the Galaxy

Confirmation of some form of multiplayer component in Mass Effect 3 is prompting feverish speculation. How can Bioware possibly explain three Commanders, all called Shepard? We might just have the answer in these exclusively fabricated scenes that certainly won’t appear in Mass Effect 3: Salarian Crackers:


[Opening scenes of the game]

The Illusive Man: We’re at war. No one wants to admit it but Humanity’s under attack. Three very specific men might be all that stands between Humanity and the greatest threat of our brief existence. We need three leaders, and we need to surround them with the brightest, the toughest, the deadliest allies we can find. The team will have to be strong, their resolve unquestionable.

Commander Groucho Shepard: Well that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself.

Commander Chico Shepard: What has a trunk, but no key, weighs 2,000 pounds and lives in a circus?

The Illusive Man: That’s irrelevant.

Chico Shepard: Irrelephant? Hey, that’sa that answer. There’s a whole lot of irrelephants in the circus.

Commander Harpo Shepard: HONK!

Miranda Lawson: Please, Shepard. Shepards. I know you distrust this organisation but you must believe me, Cerberus is dedicated to the cause of Humanity.

Chicho Shepard: Cerberus? Cerberus up some lemonade, maybe we can talk.

Harpo Shepard: HONK!

Groucho Shepard: Why, you’re the most beautiful NPC I’ve ever seen, and that’s not saying much for you. Will you marry me? Do you have any side quests with good rewards? Answer the second question first.

Chicho Shepard: And-a marry me as well!

Miranda Lawson: I can’t marry both of you, that’s bigamy.

Groucho Shepard: Yes, and it’s big of me too!

Harpo Shepard: HONK!


[The Shepards and Miranda are pinned down by enemy fire while investigating a research facility]

Groucho Shepard: Hello, Normandy? Three men and one woman are trapped in this building. Send help at once! If you can’t send help, send two more women! No good, they’re not receiving. Someone has to flank those heavy weapons and take them out.

Chico Shepard: I wouldn’t go out there unless I was in one of those big iron things, go up and down like this… What do you call-a those things?

Miranda: Tanks.

Chico Shepard: You’re welcome.

Harpo Shepard: HONK!


[The Shepards confront the gravest threat the galaxy has ever seen]

Reaper: We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom. You cannot even destroy any part of us.

Groucho Shepard: Oh yeah? One morning I shot a Reaper in my pyjamas. How it got in my pyjamas, I don’t know.

Reaper: My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation – independent, free of all weakness. You cannot grasp the nature of our existence.

Groucho Shepard: Yes I can, you’re just some alien vessel.

Chicho Shepard: An alien what?

Groucho Shepard: Not an alien what, an alien vessel. Don’t you know what vessel is?

Chicho Shepard: Sure I can vessel!
[Starts whistling]

Harpo Shepard: HONK!

That’s no moon.

Tamel Coe

It’s amazing the number of Easter eggs you can find in MMOs, as well as the variety. Such variety.

Take this statue of a Grace Jones look-alike in City of Heroes’ Atlas Park district, for example. Now, I’m not normally one for looking out for such details, especially considering the fact that most female character anatomy is already flaunted and displayed in games with the alarming casual detachment of an inveterate horse trader showing off his prize mare, but it’s hard to miss such a swell example when you fly right into a six foot high rendition while your attention is otherwise occupied in talking to a friend.

And so I draw your attention to the statue’s seemingly rather well defined lower lady parts being thrust in the viewer’s general direction.

You may allow your monocle to fall from your eye… now.

I hope you had it on a chain, those things are expensive!

City of Heroes has badges for every achievement under the sun, so when said friend asked if I’d got a badge for discovering this hidden pearl, I was somewhat disappointed to find that I hadn’t. I suggested to them that it might be called the Vadge Badge, but the conversation quickly clammed up after that.

I have seen the future, and it is fuzzy

I haven’t bought a PC magazine for a while now. They used to be invaluable for news and reviews, packed with adverts (in a good way, when they were one of the few ways of finding hardware and software and comparing prices), and cover discs were mysterious emporiums of delight and temptation in an era when getting online incurred the wrath of the rest of the household for disconnecting the only phone, stretching a tripwire of a cable down the stairs, and running up enormous phone bills just to see, slowly appearing line by line, a very low resolution image of… I mean, just to download some terrible game you could’ve typed in quicker from a magazine listing.

For some people cover discs might still be a last lifeline to multi-gigabyte demos and the like, but the rest of us have progressed a fair way through the 101 Uses for an AOL CD (remember them?), so the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine has dispensed with the DVD in favour of additional content plus a couple of gifts for readers, a Team Fortress 2 hat (very snazzy, but I haven’t played TF2 for years) and 30 days free access to the OnLive PlayPack.

I don’t think we’ve covered OnLive here on KiaSA, barring one aside if the search function isn’t lying through its teeth, as frankly it sounded too good to be true. Playing a game over the internet? Inconveivable! The service has just launched in the UK, and after listening to the discussion about it on the latest PC Gamer podcast I was intrigued, and picked up the magazine. You can sign up for free to OnLive, the PlayPack just gives full access to more games, but I figured it was a bit rude to keep enjoying the PC Gamer podcast for nothing.

Obviously a magazine can’t rival the quantity and timeliness of gaming internet sites, but with so many of them worried more about the frequency that keyword-littered posts can be cranked out than what’s actually in them and an ever-filling news feed then cherry picking the best stuff and “printing” it on some “paper” suddenly seems like quite a good idea. Of course you lose the benefits of a “Comments” section, but you can always leave a blank pad of paper and some crayons in a pub around closing time and sellotape the results under the articles if you really want (of course contributors to this little corner of the web are fine, splendid and valued for their wisdom (especially you), and on occasion comment sections can enhance or even supplant the story under which they reside, but every now and again it’s nice to have a little bit of quiet time). I don’t think I’ll be subscribing to PC Gamer, but I’ll be keeping more of an eye out for it, especially if they’re giving out more hats.

OnLive, though; it seems to actually work. Fire up the application, connect, click a couple of buttons, and within moments you can be playing American football with dogs (I may devote an entire post to Jerry Rice and Nitus’ Dog Football, but first I have to check it actually exists and wasn’t the result of feverish hallucinations). No download or installation (apart from the very compact client), no patching, straight in there. It might just be the future. Not the present; running the application at full screen everything is rather fuzzy around the edges like a low resolution YouTube clip, you’d want a rock-solid internet connection with decent bandwidth and usage allowance before contemplating OnLive as your platform of choice, and the library of available games isn’t that impressive (dog football aside), but that it works as well as it does is undeniably impressive. For one thing it’s the ideal replacement for a magazine cover disc as a mechanism for demos; instant access, easily controlled by either available time or content, giving you a good idea if a game is worth picking up. As with PC Gamer, not something I’ll be subscribing to just yet, but well worth keeping an eye on.

Putting a ding in the MMOverse.

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them […] by the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” –Steve Jobs

Which certainly has a ring of truth with respect to World of Warcraft’s success, and is possibly why it is failing to delight its players now.

Like many high achievers, Burrell likes challenges so much that he actually seeks them out and consciously creates them

“Why intentionally ‘make a mess?’ So you can get really good at ‘cleaning up!'”– Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld

Although EVE Online may be the one to have apologised to its user base for losing sight of what makes the game great, it’s still worth any MMO developer remembering why MMO players often become passionate about a game: the truly great moments in MMOs are often not about the challenges you create, but are instead about the challenges that you enable the players to create.

Let your players make a mess, then give them the tools to clean it up.

Output of the overmind.

Bit of a case of the lurgy at the moment, so the usual verbose verbiage is in short supply. Instead here’s a quick dump from my brain sphincter, until more solid content is forthcoming:

If you consider free-to-play MMOs to be a bit of a purchasing minefield, try navigating through the world of mobile phone tarrifs, which isn’t so much a minefield as a field full of weasels with mines strapped to their backs, so that they can chase after you if you try to escape.

If real life imitated MMOs, we’d only spend a few years in a town before moving to the next one over because we’d done everything there was to do in our previous town. By your mid thirties you’d be living in a town at least two countries distant, never having revisited your home town, and scared to go on holiday anywhere else because you’d have to single-handedly kill all the indigenous wildlife around a hotel before they’d deign to let you in.

The first super villain who works out how to switch on collateral damage will win City of Heroes approximately three and a half seconds later.

If you think about it, for saving all of Middle Earth, Frodo obtained a short sword, a cloak, one piece of epic armour, chronic depression and a debilitating mental weariness which forced him to leave the land forever. Perhaps Tolkien was ahead of his time and was foreshadowing Lord of the Rings Online all along.

Final Fantasy XIV was the first game in the series to almost live up to its name.

Rumour has it that the reason Blizzard’s next MMO is taking so long to come to fruition is due to legal wrangling with the Pratchett estate over Blizzard’s world design. Titan is a flat world balanced on the backs of four e-peens which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant shoulder pad which flies through space. The Pratchett estate claims that simply taking the ‘s’ out of the name of their famous series –on which Blizzard’s world is based– doesn’t really differentiate it enough from their trademark.

If you took all the people who have spent more money on MMOs than they have on other forms of entertainment, and got them to form a line from New York towards London, you’d find that most of them had drowned.

Sources close to KiaSA suggest that TERA Online is having difficulty in beta testing with regards to balance. Engineers are still adamant that they’re not going to reduce the boob size of female characters to correct this, however, and have suggested the lore be updated to reflect the fact that the females of the Exiled Realm of Arborea naturally develop a second set of ‘ballast breasts’ on their backs instead.

Apparently, according to at least one website, Melmoth is a bit more snarky when he has the lurgy.

Thought for the day

With Google+ and Facebook enforcing the use of “real” names (whatever they might be; Charlie Stross has a fine take on it all), perhaps this is the beginning of the end of nicks, handles and “Cool Internet Names”. Unless the social networks can somehow tap in to biometric data and government records, though, I’m not sure they can do much about “Not Technically ‘Real’ But Entirely Plausible Internet Names”; I wonder just how many Luther Blissets are signing up…

Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

Ever had that dream where you’re standing alone in a school corridor which stretches off to infinity, your back to the main door, when the silence that saturates the air around you like a fog is blasted away by the sudden clanging crescendo of the home-time bell. You stand in front of those closed doors, their imposing nature warped and exaggerated through the magnifying lens of the dream, so that they seem to arch overhead like cloaked villains, threatening to swoop down on you, a tidal crest of terror ready to break.

Smaller doors to classrooms, which line that corridor unfathomable, burst open in unison and unleash a savage swarm of students, chittering and clamouring, rolling and washing, down the hall towards you. You search about in desperation for sanctuary from the approaching horde, but the main doors remain resolutely closed, and the corridor is a blank and featureless barren box, save for the uniform doors which pour forth a churning torrent of children.

In an instant of dream-time the stampede is upon you, the doors which restrained you now burst open under the weight of the stomping masses, and you are carried tumbling along at the head of the lowing herd. Glimpses of the world break through the cloud of dust that envelops you, and spin around in nauseating fashion as desperately you claw and grasp and clamber to stay afloat on a flooded river of backpacks and blazers. All too soon you sink and are trampled by this uncaring oblivious force, battered and broken by a surging sea of self-interest.

Finally the deluge dwindles, and as the last trickle of students makes its way erratically down the entrance steps where your broken body lies, a few of them stop to make sure that you don’t have anything of value on or around you, before peeling off in various directions and disappearing into the streets surrounding the school.

It’s funny how I always seem to have that dream when I start playing a new MMO or expansion.

In other unrelated news, I’ve decided to hold off on playing any more of Lord of the Rings Online’s Rise of Isengard expansion for the time being, due to a combination of general MMO weariness, and the fact that the first few weeks of any new MMO seems to be the breeding season for screaming wild-eyed zealous boy-band fans, and locusts. Together. They form some sort of ungodly hybrid pig-tailed insect swarm, and it seems best to simply stay out of their way, especially if you like your MMO with some of its content intact, and your soul with some of its hope for humanity intact.

Release: that magical time in an MMO when a large portion of the player base spends a week or so stamping one another into the mud in order to be first to be bored at the end-game.