Telling Stories: Enhance both experiences
Tabletop roleplaying isn’t the same as roleplaying with people online. And not just for the obvious reasons where you can’t all be sharing a pizza around a table and spend a bunch of pre-game time chattering about whether or not you enjoyed the last episode of whatever television shows are airing now. Is Game of Thrones still a thing? I don’t have cable.
But really, even beyond the obvious gaps of personal interaction, there are a lot of differences between a gathering in the real world and just roleplaying in an MMO. The systems are different, the environment is different, even the way that the games play is different. It’s a lot easier to roleplay in the middle of a dungeon when the entire world stops and starts based on what the player characters are doing, after all, compared to your average online game where the game is going to keep moving whether you like it or not.
But that’s the thing – there are some good lessons to be learned from online worlds that you can apply to your tabletop sessions. So don’t discard one out of hand! A bit of time in an online game can make your game that much better.
Thoughts on the E3 2014 presentations
IT LOOKS A LOT LIKE THE PRESENT AND FEATURES LOTS OF STUBBLE-DUSTED WHITE GUYS
Oddly, despite having worked in “the biz” for nearly five years, I’ve never actually been to E3. Part of this is due to my distance, part of this is due to my general distaste of being crushed into a convention hall, and part of it is because there’s a minority of stuff that’s relevant to my particular slice of “the biz.” If you want to talk MMOs, there are other venues that give you better options.
Still, as everyone who is reading this is well aware, I do things other than play MMOs. (Other game-related things, I mean. This is not going to be my recipe for taco burgers.) That means that I’ve still wound up watching and keeping track of most of this year’s conference, and as I trim this up not too long before it goes live, we’ve seen most of the big stuff that companies have on display. Some surprise reveals happened, some reveals took place that were kind of predictable but still nice, and a lot of it is worth analyzing.
We’re also not seeing another Mega Man game on the horizon, but that’s sort of a predictable disappointment by this point.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 2
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Easy come, easy go. After a quest to retrieve an airship that took all of ten seconds, you are deprived of your first airship shortly thereafter. Yes, your constrained little world opens up by smashing your airship into a rock, revealing a much bigger world than you had thought you occupied. This is a regular theme in this game, as it happens; you think you know what the world looks like, but soon thereafter you get something bigger. It’s also the first of many airships that you ruin, but let’s not talk about that.
The important thing is that this opens up a path to head south and to Cid’s hometown, where he promises that he can conveniently build you a replacement airship if you can just get him an engine. So we have a long-term goal, and astonishingly it doesn’t really involve the crystal at this point. Sure, we’re supposed to be saving the world from darkness, but it’s not yet clear how we’re going to go about doing that. Is there darkness in the optional little side-dungeon in Kazus (which I’ve been calling “the second town” the whole time because of laziness)? Nope, just some Mythril Swords and a chance to wear out that job sickness.
Hard Project: Silent Hill
The hills are alive with mist monsters and nurses.
I have a deep love of Silent Hill. Part of this is due to being from New England; sleepy little resort towns being drowned by mists are less “unexpected horror” and more “standard window dressing” around here. I am fairly certain I’ve driven through towns that could fit the description of the eponymous town with one or two details changed.
But that’s not the heart of the reasons, obviously; what I really love about the series is its slow, grinding, oppressive psychological horror. It’s that sense of wrenching and grinding awfulness, the idea that you’re trapped in a town that is actively malevolent, wearing down your defenses and your sense of boundaries until you no longer know what you’re trying to do. The whole thing just wears at you, player and character alike, leaving you with the slow rolling burn that’s so valuable in horror.
Unfortunately, the series has been faltering in recent years. Silent Hill 4 started a downward trend, and of the four subsequent installments the only one that’s received fairly strong praise is the remake of the first Silent Hill. So why is this horror franchise so difficult to keep alive, especially when it’s got some of the strongest horror games ever as a foundation?
Demo Driver 8: Din’s Curse (#273)
Go kill the things down the hole, you jerk.
Sometimes a game’s biggest problem isn’t itself, it’s the market. Which is really sad when just a few years earlier, you could have really been a contender.
Din’s Curse is a game very much in a familiar vein, plumbing the depths of the graphical roguelike that Diablo plumbed first oh so many years ago. Just from that description alone you have an image in your head, I’m sure, and I’m going to tell you right now that it’s largely accurate. Beyond that, though, it also does a good job of putting its own spin on exactly how class mechanics and the like work, and it was released at a time when the genre hadn’t experienced a big resurgence.
However, right now it’s in a field with Diablo III and Path of Exile and Torchlight II and Marvel Heroes and so on. The net result is that a game which could have been a real charmer is placed up against a number of competitors that it just can’t, well, compete against. Not solely by virtue of quality, but because its weaknesses show through.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 