Boardgate: Hearthstone Edition
Hearthstone is releasing a new expansion next week called Perils in Paradise, but they aren’t releasing a new board along with it. And this is heralding the beginning of the end. Possibly.
As with most things, it’s not about the game boards themselves, but what they represent. Every Hearthstone expansion has had a new game board – there are 30+ of them – so the absence of one is notable, especially given this year will be the 10th (!!) year anniversary. Of course, this is the same year that Blizzard discontinued the Duels mode and enacted some boneheaded changes to the quest system in an apparent attempt to inflate engagement metrics.
It doesn’t help when the official Blizzard response plays right into everyone’s fears:
We hear your questions on what’s changing and why, including why there is no new board for Perils in Paradise.
Hang tight, as we’ll be sharing an update next week on that, along with what the team is focusing on for the future.
Why not just, you know, address it this week? Because the $50/$80 preorder bundles are still going until next week. There may be a less cynical argument that discussion over future Hearthstone changes is more appropriate in an flashy expansion release post. On the other hand, there have been plenty of those teaser-esque posts in the weeks leading up to the expansion, and Blizzard community managers have been bobbing and weaving the “where board?” questions for just as long. All the delays accomplish is elevating the doomsaying ahead of what should otherwise have been talk about the expansion itself.
Incidentally, when Blizzard removed Duels it was spun this way:
As we think about the future of Hearthstone and where the team can best focus their efforts, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue support for the Duels Mode. […] This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact, including Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more.
Looking at the current state of Hearthstone more generally, it’s difficult to identify what “focusing efforts” has accomplished. Game balance in Standard mode is amongst the worst it has ever been; power is no longer creepin’, it be runnin’. Battlegrounds has re-introduced Buddies (presumably for a limited time), which is worst of the three types of historic meta-shakeup mechanics. Battlegrounds Duos is a mode no one asked for, is rife with trolling, and basically a content-creator dead-end. What could the devs possibly be focusing on, aside from updating their resumes?
I suppose we will see more next week. My guess is that they will start offering Premium Boards in the shop as another channel of monetization. Which, whatever. That, at least, would be less problematic than them coming out and saying “we’re only making one new board per year so we can focus on other things” and then those other things never materialize because it was shareholder value all along.
Impressions: Once Human
Once Human is an open-world survival crafting MMO whose Beta details I mostly received filtered through the amusing lens of Bhagpuss. Based on those posts, I wishlisted the game and promptly forgot all about it. Then Tuesday came along and now its officially released. I played for almost six hours straight on that first evening, and not because it was, as my 5-year old terms it, a “stay day.”
Nor, incidentally, because the game necessarily deserves it.
Let’s start with the Pros, I guess. First, the game is free to play and not obnoxious about it. By that I mean I did not seem to get prompted to buy the Battle Pass every time I opened a menu, or had a red exclamation mark on my UI until I opened the shop, or the myriad of similar design disasters. Indeed, there is a Wish lottery mechanic (for cosmetics) somewhere in the game, but I was not actually able to find it. Maybe it unlocks later? I found a few vendors who require obscure currencies for vague items, but near as I can tell, none of them were extra bag slots, carrying capacity, or the like.
Second, Once Human does seem to support a rather robust survival crafting experience. You are encouraged to build a base immediately once out of the tutorial, and you can do so almost anywhere not already occupied by other players and/or the pre-existing set pieces. I also really appreciated the ability to go into “flight” mode when building, rather than having to awkwardly maneuver your character every which way. Collecting resources from trees/ore nodes is not too onerous at this early point, and you are overall encouraged to revisit points of interest to collect junk items that you then break down into smaller components to craft new items.
Then it struck me: Once Human is basically Asian Fallout 76.
Viewed from that lens, the veneer started to peel. Is the base-building better than Fallout 76? Absolutely not. Crafting? No. Quests? Nope. Environmental storytelling? Nonexistent thus far. The feeling of collecting and hoarding resources? Not even close. Both are post-apocalyptic, both have cryptids, and Sanity is basically Radiation – both reduce your maximum HP until healed and, hilariously, grant you special abilities if you accumulate too much (Whim vs Mutation).
I originally didn’t want to complain about the Once Human combat system in these early stages – tutorials going to tutorial – but it’s… trivial. Every creature died to 2-3 hits with a torch, and having access to guns makes it even more ridiculous. Presumably mobs will sponge more bullets later on, and there is a dodge-roll button, but the fact that Once Human will be releasing on mobile phones in two months does not inspire confidence. The boss (or mini-boss?) fights were more interesting, and seem to be where the devs spent most of their imagination capital. Not saying that Fallout 76’s combat system is groundbreaking or anything, but it nevertheless has a heft to it even early on that is definitely lacking in Once Human.
Again, it’s possible this is all a bit unfair this early in the experience. The map looks huge, they give you a motorcycle within the first few quests, the Deviation (pet-ish) mechanic seems akin to Pals from Palworld, which could be interesting. The notion of Seasonal world resets and ever-changing “scenarios” is fairly unique in the survival space, and could go a long way in keeping the experience fresh. Time will tell.
Time will also tell if I don’t just end up reinstalling Fallout 76 and playing that instead.
Impressions: Keplerth
Not going to lie, the name “Keplerth” was both intriguing and ultimately accurate.
Keplerth is a top-down survival crafting game reminiscent of Terraria, with art assets straight stolen from RimWorld. Other reviews mention this as being a post-apocalypse knock-off of Necesse, if you know of that one. You will punch trees, create crafting benches, craft gear, and then tackle bosses to unlock the next tier of equipment, resources, and mobs. Rinse and repeat.
There are some interesting innovations to the formula though. For example, there is no XP here. Instead, you unlock new genes based on special resources that drop from basically everything in the game, e.g. plants, mobs, minerals, etc. The genes start simple, with stuff like +5% Evasion or +10% Attack Speed. Towards the beginning of the game, you have plenty of room to “equip” every gene you unlock; later on, you have to choose amongst them and their potential synergies.
I also appreciated how equipment bonuses work. Essentially, each piece of gear has a random set bonus and a random set bonus score (+0 through +3). So, the leg armor you craft might have bonuses to +Defense or +Pet Attack instead of the +Melee you were looking for. And even if it does have +Melee, the final set bonus may only trigger when you have 7/7 equipped and the piece you rolled grants +0. While random can be frustrating sometimes, many survival games are kind of rote in that Iron armor is Iron armor, and thus you only need 22 Iron ingots total to kit yourself out on that tier. This at least means you need to collect a buffer amount of resources. Later on, you get the ability to spend other resources to “reroll” the tier bonuses, so it is not too frustrating for long.
Where Keplerth struggles is… kinda everywhere else.
A lot of the mechanics feel half-baked. One of the early tutorial quests involves you attracting other survivors to your base with a communications tower. What the game doesn’t tell you is that the survivors… don’t really do anything. There is an entire elaborate construction station to create fancy furniture, but ultimately the survivors need 1 (one) recreation item (hot tub) and their heart meter will eventually fill and you click on them for money. That’s it. They do not defend your base, work the fields, or anything. You can also have farm animals like cows, chicken, horses, etc, and they will reproduce asexually as soon as their food meter hits 100%. Cooked food does require a variety of meat and plants for pretty useful buffs, so there is a point to all this, but it doesn’t always make that much sense. Like why have Horse Meat in the game when eggs are really the limiting factor for advanced food?
The special material mechanic I praised earlier is also a bit uneven. A lot of it felt natural at the time, as you just pick up all the things and new stuff seemed to unlock every 5 minutes or so. Eventually though, once your gene grid fills up and you start needing to examine what’s left, you start to realize that 5-6 of the missing genes require Thorns or Apples or some early-game stuff. Luckily the grind isn’t too bad since you can chop most everything down and replant it near your base to more quickly get additional chances when harvesting it – as opposed to having to wander around for more natural-occurring spawns – but the amount of things tagged to Thorns specifically is a bit odd.
What kind of broke the game for me though was one of the mid-tier boss drop weapons. Up to that point, you may have some melee weapons, bow and arrows, some early guns, and so on. Even with guns, there were some trade-offs with damage versus shooting speed. Then you get a 100% drop of an energy beam gun that deals constant damage with zero ammo. While it technically is out-classed in DPS later on, the utility of being able to trigger knockback, certain genes (“each hit adds X effect”), and the lack of ammo makes everything else feel dumb to use in comparison.
Later bosses also get into SHMUP/bullet-hell territory, which forces you to turtle up with your genes and equipment, which makes the fight last ages because you are no longer specced for damage.
Having said all that, I did end up playing the game for ~25 hours or so, somewhat obsessively. Keplerth definitely hit a stride for me after about the 2nd boss, once you unlocked the ability to tame battle pets, get some better weapons, better genes, and start finding other human settlements to spend money at. It is unfortunate how that petered out in the endgame, but what else can you do?
Play something else, I guess.
Space Saving
When I bought my new computer a while back, I splurged on a 2TB SSD to ensure I had enough space to install a large(r) number of games. I get in certain gaming “moods” and thus need to ensure that I have certain flavors available, lest I do something dumb like watch YouTube Shorts for hours instead. Unfortunately, not even 2TB can save me forever.
After installing Folder Size Explorer, I found the top offenders:
- Red Dead Redemption 2 – 120GB
- Diablo 4 – 45GB
- Starfield – 127GB
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order – 51GB
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – 130GB
- Control – 50GB
- Death Stranding – 63GB
- Alan Wake Remastered – 38GB
- Baldur’s Gate 3 – 142GB
- Day’s Gone – 60GB
- Elden Ring – 48GB
- Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey – 78GB
- Assassin’s Creed: Origins – 49GB
That’s definitely a Who’s Who of backlog shame.
Now, of course, none of this is a problem-problem. I don’t actually need to have SW Jedi Survivor installed when I haven’t completed the first one. Starfield can probably go too, since I already played it for 65 hours and am unlikely to go back prior to the expansion coming out (or at all). And not sure why I have any of the Assassin’s Creed games installed. But… You Never Know™.
Of the list, I am making the most current progress on Control and Diablo 4. Which is tragic, in a way, given the installed alternatives. But what I really want to be playing right now is some dumb survival crafting game. I am not playing one due to the fact that I have basically played them all aside from the ones not currently on sale. Mercifully, the Steam Summer sale starts on 6/27, so I can get back to vigorously scratching the eczema that is a predilection towards punching trees and hoarding resources.
…although, I’m just now realizing that I will actually need, you know, space to install these games.
Oh my. Better get back to it.
Forever Winter
Going to be adding Forever Winter onto my list of games that look cool that I’m probably never going to actually play:
I say that because it’s being described as a “co-op tactical squad-based survival horror shooter.” I have zero interest in playing with randoms anymore, let alone in a scenario that allows for an entirely novel way of griefing, e.g. making too much noise and getting caught by AI horrors.
Conceptually though? Game is Badass with a capital B.
While the above trailer looks amazing, it was actually this video that hit hardest:
In short, it seems like most of the people that are working on the game are concept artists that finally get to implement their concept art. A battle tank draped in bound, naked corpses? Flamethrower troops in spacesuits with American flags draped over their face? Yes, please. Granted, I did not quite see any of those in the gameplay reveal trailer, so who knows if they actually follow-through.
It will be interesting to see how the game ultimately shakes out. I’m a big fan of grimdark, post-apocalypse looting. Having to be weary of getting into fights that are impossible to win is also compelling. But there will need to be a real trick on how that translates into long-term fun. Will there be a story mode or overall plot? The trailers seem to indicate you may end up fighting “bosses” eventually, which provides something of a “why” to grind out whatever resources. But if the whole of the game lends itself to not attacking things, and possibly punishes you for doing so, it will be tricky to land the transition without feeling like the game itself turned into something else. Sort of like when you have a stealth game that suddenly has a stealth-less boss fight (Deus Ex: Human Revolution), or a traditional FPS with an annoying stealth level (too many to mention).
Regardless, I will be following Forever Winter with interest.
So, You Want An Above-Ground Pool
[Note: I wrote this last year, but never got around to actually posting it at the time. Since I recently set up my pool again, it became a bit more topical. Enjoy.]
One of the reasons I haven’t been playing many videogames this past month is because I was setting up an above-ground pool. In the spirit of my other apropos nothing post about shipping PS1/PS2 games, let me chronical the struggles I had with getting mine set up. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes, maybe you just enjoy the schadenfreude.
Step 0: Do you really need one?
No, seriously, do you really need one? I got mine on the cheap, but a yearly pass to a sorta nearby pubic pool would only have run me $200, at worst, per year. By the time everything is done, you are likely going to be spending $1000+ and who knows if anything you bought is going to survive the five years (or more) it takes to break-even. Now, you are probably going to use a pool in your backyard on a whim more often than getting into a car and driving somewhere, but just acknowledge the math involved.
Also, do not bother with any of this late in the season. Like in August. That’d just be dumb.
Step 1: Survey your domain
It’s very important that you look at what you’re dealing with terrain-wise before you even consider pool options. Do you have a good space for one? Is it near trees? How tough is the soil? Are you going to try do everything by-the-book and actually get a permit for your pool, to include all the things the permit requires? Some of those things include having a fully-enclosed, self-locking fence, being X distance away from the home, and so on.
For me, my house already had a “dog run” area that was fully fenced up:
The grass looks sketchy, but that was because I had just mowed on the lowest setting. What is not obvious from the picture – or even looking at it in person – is how the ground isn’t level. Like, not even a little bit. But I’ll get into that in a minute.
Step 2: Secure a Pool
The retail price of an above-ground pool varies, but the 9’x18’x48″ pool we settled on is $800 normally. I bought mine for $100. How? Warehouse resellers. Sort of like eBay for items that people returned to Amazon, who then sold to warehouses for pennies on the dollar. I’m not going to give out the name of the one I used, but basically I saw some pictures of a very beat-up box online but the pool liner still looked wrapped in plastic, so I rolled the dice. Spoiler alert: it worked out.
Step 3: Prep the field
Do not install a pool in August. I repeat, do NOT install a pool in August.
So anyway, there I was, installing a pool in August like a moron. I borrowed a 25-year old mini-tiller from a neighbor and started to work on the 9×18 area where the pool would be located. Phase 1 was just clearing the grass out. If you have a sod remover or other fancy equipment, use that. Otherwise, make sure to till and rake that top layer of dirt/grass away and compost it elsewhere or whatever.
Step 4: Level the playing field
Mentally accept that 80% of the work in setting up an above-ground pool is leveling the ground. Don’t cut corners, don’t say “fuck it, that’s good enough,” don’t do this in August when your pasty ass is sweating buckets within the first 15 minutes of being outside.
The dirt needs to be level. I used a 3ft level taped onto a wooden 2×4, but that was sketchy. You can (and should) buy a contractor level, with longer being better – they are expensive on Amazon, but my local hardware store had a 6ft level for like $15. In any case, I took my level and… realized that the cleared area had a significant slope. Like 3 inches or more.
I recommend digging down rather than filling up. The idea is to use a tiller to get the dirt nice and frothy, and then shovel it over onto the lower end. Two birds, one shovel. The problem with just buying a bunch of topsoil and raising the low end is two-fold. First, it’s difficult to know how the topsoil is going to behave once compressed. Like, even if you tamp it down, I noticed it springing back up in a way four feet of water per square inch was not going to allow it to. Secondly, keeping the dirt and topsoil where it is supposed to be becomes tricky. If it’s just in a big pile, erosion might see the sides start to lower and things becoming increasingly uneven.
Step 5: Measure twice, dig once
Once everything seems level, measure everything again. Read the instructions, look at pictures.
My pool is 9×18 so I leveled a 9×18 area. Had I looked at the goddamn box one more time, I would have realized that while the bottom of the pool is indeed 9×18, the side support beams actually extend out another 1.5 feet on both sides. While we ended up just rolling with it, this means the side walls are bowed in and who knows if there is any permanent damage to the steel pipes or what sort of extra wear that will have done to the liner. All of which could have been avoided by looking at the box.
Step 6: Get some help setting it up
The instructions say 2-3 people can set up the pool in 30 minutes. Get at least that many people and budget 2+ hours. I’ve seen videos of people doing it themselves, but not when it’s August.
It is also important at this point – and probably before this point – to understand where things are going to be located. For example, where are the holes for the pump? Where is the drainage port? It’s a huge pain in the ass to move anything once those supports go in, so avoid having to make corrections.
Step 7: Fill and (hopefully) enjoy
At a certain point, you won’t know if everything worked out until you actually start putting in water. You are going to want to try and smooth out any wrinkles in the liner when there is less than an inch of water inside. It’s also very important to walk all along the bottom to feel for any errant rocks or pokey things that might cause issues.
For me, we ended up fully filling the pool and then had to completely empty it because the water level was a difference of 4 inches. The pool instructions say “no more than 1 inch difference” but most of what I read online suggested 2-3 inches would be fine. The issue was more than just the water level though, as we also had the side wall concern I mentioned earlier. So, after it was emptied, I put in a bunch of topsoil under the low side, dug 1-2 inches down on the side supports and filled it back up. It’s not perfect still, but we’ve successfully used it for two weeks now and it just needs to make it a few more before the likely end of the season. Next year, I will relevel things properly.
Not in August, of course. Because that would be dumb.
Addendum
To help protect the bottom of the pool, we used a giant tarp underneath. A tarp will not prevent rocks from poking your feet from inside the pool and otherwise being a hazard. No, I don’t camp a lot, how can you tell? Also, I do recommend rolling up the ends of the tarp so the support poles don’t push on them. This is primarily so you don’t have a little mosquito puddle just sitting there.
Buy and cut some treated wood for your supports to stand on and dig them into the ground a bit. I briefly thought about using paver patio stones, but was worried about what would happen if the stones snapped. A few of the wood boards are already in rough shape, so I’m glad I stuck with wood.
If you end up with wrinkles in the bottom of the pool after there is too much water in there, one lifehack solution is to buy a new old-school plunger. You know, the ones that are flat on the bottom and are terrible for plunging toilets. According to some clever Youtube videos though, they work just fine in lifting up the pool liner to help smooth out wrinkles.
Those chlorine tabs you put in bobbers are for maintaining a given chlorine level. Pool “shock” is super-concentrated chlorine to raise levels high enough to be safe. You can really optimize different chemicals (pH, alkalinity, etc) if you want to, but it’s all in service of keeping proper amounts of chlorine.
I recommend two different types of water testing kits. The first one I bought was all fancy with eye-droppers and little bottles of chemicals. Kept saying I didn’t have any chlorine though. Bought the test strip kind just to confirm and, hey, actually I had 5ppm chlorine in there. It’s possible that there was user error involved with the fancy test, but that issue is still resolved by having two different testing kits.
Solar covers do indeed work. The one I bought looks basically like a 22-foot diameter heavy-duty piece of blue bubble wrap. Threw it on, cut it into a rough oval shape with scissors, and will hopefully get another few weeks of reasonable pool use this Fall.
Guarded About Veilguard
There was an Xbox Game Showcase 2024 recently that revealed a lot of trailers for upcoming games. One of those trailers was for Dragon Age: Veilguard, formally known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. You can go ahead and watch it yourself first:
Now, the trailer is getting mercilessly shit on by Reddit. There are a lot of Dragon Age: Origin uberfans still kicking apparently (of which I am one, technically) that are appalled at “what the series has become.” Which is funny, considering Origins came out in 2009 and the series has spent more time being something else than it ever has as Origins. All the complaints about EA destroying Bioware is similarly asinine considering A) by all accounts Bioware does this to itself, routinely, and B) who is still even at Bioware 15 years later? That is a topic for another day, though.
Most of the criticisms seem to be leveled at the trailer’s Marvel and/or Fortnite crossover energy. It reminded me more of the D&D: Honor Among Thieves trailer, honestly, but I get it. Dragon Age started out as a sort of gritty, grimdark fantasy RPG and that has… mellowed over time. But it did get me curious about trailers for the prior games.
- Dragon Age: Origins – “Warden’s Calling” and “Sacred Ashes.”
- Dragon Age 2 – “Destiny Extended“
- Dragon Age: Inquisition – “The Breach“
I don’t actually expect you to watch all those, but the summary is: most are pretty damn similar, minus the Borderlands-style name introduction. Yes, there is less blood and more… rizz. The thing about trailers though is that they don’t really matter. It sucks when they suck, for sure, and can definitely dampen the enthusiasm and hype. And, yeah, they can also be indicative of a truly terrible game. But it also goes the other way, right? There are plenty of trailers better than the game they represent, or misleading at best. Just think about the best parts of any of the Dragon Age games to you, and then point me towards where that is represented in its trailer.
I’ll start:
That’s right, Scout Harding. The worst part about Dragon Age: Inquisition was that you couldn’t romance Harding, and now? A decade later you (presumably) can. Game on.
Impressions: Diablo 4
They brought back the grimdark.
I have been generally enjoying my time with Diablo 4, all the way up to level 30 40 as a Necromancer. I tend to gravitate towards Necromancers in any game that offers it (including MMOs), and I definitely remember rolling one the first time I started playing Diablo 2 right as I moved to college. It’s kind of a difficult design to get right though. If your minions are too strong, you end up not pushing buttons and simply walking around the map melting bad guys. Conversely, if minions are too weak, they may as well not exist. Plus, you can generally get punished for having a minion-build during boss fights, as the boss will kill them quickly and there may not be any corpses around to bring them back.
I’m happy to report that Diablo 4 solves the issue is an interesting way: a draining basic attack that creates corpses every few seconds. Things can definitely go downhill quickly if you aren’t paying attention to your skeleton crew, but I appreciate the novel solution. It also enables the frequent use of Corpse Explosion, which has a very satisfying aural element to it. Killing the first enemy and then chain-popping dozens more feels good every time.
What kind of shocked me though is how you are limited to six buttons.
I legit had to look back to Diablo 3 and Diablo 2 screenshots to see that, yeah, it’s been that way for decades. Which is fine, I guess, but became real annoying once I realized that the Golem takes up one of those buttons. Was that always that way too? I suppose it’s as good a balancing mechanism as any, but it also reinforces the whole “walk around the map doing nothing” angle even more. It also makes me question why these other Skills exist with longer cooldowns. I’ll probably come across some meta build that farms the endgame in 20-30 second increments, but it’s baffling thus far.
Of course, everyone knows the “real game” doesn’t happen until you start getting decked out in Legendary gear. I can already see how some Affixes can radically change basic abilities; perhaps that is the secret sauce for making 6 buttons still feel like enough agency. Diablo 4 does allow you to scrap Legendary items and then add their special ability to future item you want, which is fantastic. If Borderlands 4 doesn’t have something similar, it’s going to feel miles behind.
I will say though, playing Diablo 4 has given me a greater appreciation for V Rising. I said multiple times that V Rising’s ARPG angle fell short, and you should “just play Diablo 4” instead. While that is true from a loot perspective, I do have to say that V Rising feels way better from a gameplay perspective. Didn’t quite realize how much I missed WASD movement than when I was left-clicking around in Diablo 4 and either halted to shoot when I wanted to move, or moved when I wanted to shoot. Yeah, you can hold Shift to stay still, but that gets awkward when the game wants you to keep your fingers on 1234.
Anyway, so far so good. My focus is on the story, doing some random dungeons/side quests along the way, and raising the World Tier difficulty as it become available. There is likely a zero percent chance I’m spending hours farming endgame-endgame gear for the giggles, but it’s fun enough for now.
In An Age 
Bad Romance
Jun 26
Posted by Azuriel
Avowed is an upcoming Obsidian game that is, perhaps unfortunately, being more defined for what it’s not. As in, not Skyrim, not Baldur’s Gate 3, and so on. Instead, it’s… basically The Outer Worlds set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Which is a thing they can do, I guess.
But one of the things the developers intentionally left out is causing some discussion: romance options.
For the record, this is generally how Obsidian rolls anyway. Fallout: New Vegas didn’t have romanceable companions, the original Pillars of Eternity didn’t have any, and The Outer Worlds teased a bit but didn’t have any either. At some point though, you have to wonder if it’s more a philosophical viewpoint, personal preference, or… a lack of experience.
On Reddit however, the thread turned into a deeper commentary on romance options in games more generally. The topic did give me some pause, as the two “camps” were not necessarily in direct opposition. On the one hand, you had people who said:
And then you have people who respond elsewhere:
I would say both things can be true at the same time. Crafting a believable game romance is difficult, and yet a paper-thin attempt is often better than nothing. Now, obviously, no one really wants it to be paper-thin, and a lot of this is predicated on the devs being able to craft companions that you care about to begin with. We’re also kind of hand-waving away what counts as a “believable romance.”
Anyway, there are some baseline improvements all devs can make who do include romance in their games. For one: how about not having the relationship start at the last Save Point before the final boss? It’s a fairly common trope in basically all media, and I understand the function, e.g. it allows players to head-cannon their own happily ever after. And, sure, sometimes whether two characters get together is the entire plot; basic relationship maintenance is much less exciting. But I would really like to see more attempts like Cyberpunk 2077 wherein you have more interaction with your bae over time. With some RPGs that might end up too complex – imagine having to script hundreds of branching combat dialog depending on when and with whom you are smooching – but even the little gestures would make things feel more grounded in-game. Again, like with Cyberpunk’s little chat messages and such.
The one argument against romance options I do not respect though is the whole “it’s usually just a checklist of dialogue choices, a quest then fucking,” therefore why even bother including it. There might be a broader conversation to be had about how media depictions of romance may lead some to incorrectly believe real-life relationships are a matter of putting in enough gift tokens until sex pops out or whatever. But also… no. As someone else more elegantly countered:
Games are gamified with game mechanics, news at 11. Love bombing an NPC with gifts until they marry you is indeed not realistic (although…). But it’s not as though the player often has any choice in the language of action available in the game. You cannot wink, joke with, twirl your hair, casually touch the shoulder of, or any of the myriad of ways we clumsily indicate and/or reciprocate romantic interest IRL. If the only way you can interact with the game world is pressing E and picking a dialog, then yeah, those are the parameters on how romance happens.
Can devs do romance better within the confines of the medium? Absolutely. I really appreciated in My Time at Sandrock how there was a clear dialog option which indicated your romantic interest with an NPC, which opened up more flirty dialog later; that would prevent the sort of (now infamous) misunderstandings with Gale in Baldur’s Gate 3. Going further, my idealized “solution” would be for the player to be able to select in a menu somewhere that you are romantically interested in character X, and then subtly enhance all your interactions (body language, etc) towards that character. That may alleviate some of gift-spamming and perfect dialog choice concerns and help the relationship progress feel more natural. Or as natural as you can do via a controller and game menus.
And, yeah, writing deeper characters with more interesting personalities works too. Obviously.
Obsidian is, of course, free to sit things out if their writers aren’t feeling it. I haven’t played Pillars of Eternity 2, but I’ve heard the romances there were especially bad, and thus the devs may be feeling it’s not worth trying again. It’s also true that not every narrative needs or is appropriate for having romance options. But I do think it’s okay to be asked about romance in any game focused on developing “meaningful bonds” between characters with dialog choices because that is a thing that happens. And many players, myself included, enjoy it even if it’s at or below trashy romance novel levels. Sometimes especially if it’s at that level.
As to whether Avowed works without it, we shall see.
Posted in Commentary
2 Comments
Tags: Game Design, Language of Action, Obsidian, Romance, Romance All the Things