Monday 30 March 2015

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind

Fantasy RPGs are like buses, you wait two and a half years then three turn up at the same time, though technically one has been around for a year already but just dropped its subscription fee, and another one came out last year but I still haven’t finished it, and none of them are replacements for train services due to ongoing engineering works enhancing passenger accessibility, we apologise for the inconvenience. With hindsight the entire Fantasy RPG/bus comparison was fundamentally flawed from the start, but there seems to be a vacancy for a presenter on Top Gear so I’m trying to work in more automotive content, just go with it.

Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian’s Kickstarted spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale & co., was released last week; I even saw an actual boxed copy in GAME, after wandering past the shop and performing the traditional Inspection of the Shrinking PC Section (down to two shelf units now, one entirely devoted to game cards for F2P titles). PoE is universally acclaimed on Metacritic, and certainly filled me with the warm glow of nostalgia (much like the electrically heated front seat option on the new Vauxhall Insignia Sports Tourer 1.4i) during character creation. It looks fantastic, but upon finishing the prologue (or possibly just the introduction to the prologue) I decided that before embarking on a new big old epic fantasy RPG, I really ought to finish off Dragon Age: Inquisition, the slightly older big old epic fantasy RPG I haven’t quite got around to completing yet.

DA:I has a strong start, but bogs down a little if you spend too long doing simple box-ticking quests in The Hinterlands, picking up again as the story moves on after that. Being something of a completionist I was thoroughly investigating every zone, and got rather bogged down again (if only I’d opted for the Subaru Forester 2.0D XC with symmetrical all wheel drive and Lineartronic CVT). I was popping in most weekends for the multiplayer events, but as The Inquisitor couldn’t really be arsed to go and close more rifts or tidy up other MMO-esque busywork. Pillars of Eternity has given me the kick I needed to just get on and finish the story (I seem to be closing in on the final act) while I still have a fighting chance of remembering what’s going on; if I leave it too long, I fear the dramatic tension of the climactic confrontation could be slightly undercut as I nudge my companion and whisper “Who’s that again? And why does he want to kill us? And whose pig is this? Also are we an item, or was that in a different save game? Ow! Ow! Don’t be like that, of course I love you. I think. I could’ve sworn I picked the elf… Oh, you *are* the elf! Sorry, couldn’t tell with the helmet on. Ow! Ow! Look, can we talk about this later, this gentleman/sorcerer/demon is presumably trying to take over the world. Or destroy it. We’ve got to stop him, anyway. Or help him. Oh come on, someone must have been keeping notes…”

Completing the triumvirate, with The Elder Scrolls Online newly subscriptionless I thought I’d take another look at it; I say “another” look, my first glance on release didn’t even make it through the pre-order head start before I got distracted by something else. The introduction didn’t entirely grip me; there seemed to be good dollops of what Mark Kermode would call “hobbity tosh“; “… actors saying things like ‘The Narf is coming out of the tree followed by the Scrunt, but the Iggledy-Piggledy is hiding in the Biddly-Bong'”. Obviously a certain amount of that comes with the fantasy RPG territory, but for some reason it stuck out a bit more in TESO, possibly due to one of the key Basil Exposition figures being voiced by Michael Gambon (possibly driving a reasonably priced car). Once out in the main world I adopted my standard Elder Scrolls character, The Adventurer With A Five Second Attention Span. “I should investigate that temple? Of course, I shall go there immediately, straight to the tem… hello Mr Farmer. What’s that, you’ve lost your tools? Fear not, I can go and retrieve them from this… whoah, a spectral figure! Demonic books, you say? Crikey, I’d better hunt them down, I’ll just… yes, we should destroy those wards with all speed, lead on and… oh, wait, my backpack’s full of iron ore and insect parts and flowers and four identical iron swords and some cutlery and bread and a set of portraits of the Emperors of the Septim Dynasty, I’d better get back to town and find a shop, I really need a vehicle with exceptional boot space like the Mercedes E-class Estate.” I don’t think I’ve completed the main plot in an Elder Scrolls game yet (apart from possibly Daggerfall, I can’t remember how far I got there), I’m not sure I’ll get very much further in TESO. At least until I finish Dragon Age: Inquisition. And Pillars of Eternity. And, all being well, Series 23 of Top Gear.

Wednesday 18 March 2015

In Memoriam Terry Pratchett

So. Farwell then Pterry.
Or should I say
HELLO

It seems rather redundant to write anything about Terry Pratchett, with so many other tributes on Twitter, the wider internet, and even (shockingly) things that aren’t the internet. I saw him give a talk at university, and in the Q&A afterwards my friend asked him about the Discworld game that was either in development or had just come out, and if he enjoyed adventure games. Seeing as he was a Proper Grown Up and everything I was rather expecting him to give qualified praise, or dismiss computer games entirely; this was the mid-90s, before everyone was a gamer. Instead he told us that the type of game he really liked was the one where you got to shoot demons with a shotgun. He’d heard of Doom! He *played* Doom! He continued to talk about one of the most interesting things he’d seen, a group of kids playing the Alien Total Conversion of Doom on networked PCs, co-operating with each other to fight the monsters, a fairly mind-blowing notion at the time.

A rather lovely movement has started to add an X-Clacks-Overhead header to web servers, and if all is working as planned kiasa.org should be joining in. As another article puts it: “the encoding of Pratchett’s name into the fabric of the internet seems a fitting modern homage, as though millions of computers were whispering his name, and chuckling softly to themselves.”

GNU Terry Pratchett

Sunday 15 March 2015

War Thunder Community Magazine

I’ve started doing a spot of writing for the War Thunder Community Magazine from the folks at GameOn, a few World War II facts in Issue 2, and a slightly beefier piece about the guns of the RAF in Issue 3, released today. There’s lots of good stuff in the magazine, in my humble and entirely unbiased opinion, including tutorials, reviews and interviews. And a word search.

There are other Community Magazines for WildStar and World of Warcraft, the now-official SMITE magazine, as well as the main GameOn magazine and assorted special issues, plenty to browse. Do take a look!