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.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 1
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Final Fantasy III is why this project is what it is.
We’re now entirely out of the realm of repeats from stuff I’ve written before; everything going down in these columns is totally live, so I’m not yet sure how long we’ll be exploring the world of whatever-planet-this-game-takes-place-upon. But we’re doing so on the note of exploring a game that had, easily, the most convoluted trip across the waters of any title in the Final Fantasy franchise. Which is a little weird when you consider that it more or less finished the foundational work started by Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II.
See, Final Fantasy III never came out in America. Sure, Final Fantasy II took a long time to come over in the form of Final Fantasy Origins, but that version of the game was a strict graphical update and the mechanics were identical. The original form of Final Fantasy III, however, has never been released – and at this point, odds are low that it ever will be, because the remake sort of has two sequels and is the general port of call. I told you this was convoluted.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 