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Alan Wake 2 Thoughts

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Morning Folks! I hope you had a most excellent weekend. This weekend I decided to take a break from my Path of Exile and Audiobook norms and play through Alan Wake II. Currently, the game is available on consoles or for PC on the Epic Game Store… given that EGS helped publish the game I am questioning if it is ever going to make its way to Steam. I guess some background… while I enjoyed the story of Alan Wake, I did not suffer through playing it all the way to completion until the Control DLC hooked me enough to want to see it for myself. I had issues with some of the fiddly gameplay more specifically the flashlight gunplay. At this point I have played Alan Wake Remastered, Quantum Break, Control… and because I was super hooked on the Remedyverse Alan Wake II was probably the game I was looking forward to the most this year.

Does it stick the landing? Yes very much so, but I will warn you the beginning of the game is a bit of a slog as you are going to be back in Bright Falls fumbling through the twilit darkness with a pistol and a flashlight. This time around you are alternating viewpoints between Saga Anderson an FBI agent and partner to Alex Casey (aka Max Payne but Rockstar owns that character), and Alan Wake while trapped in the dreamlike malleable reality of the Dark Place. You can in theory play ALL of the Saga segments aka “Initiation” or all of the Alan Wake segments aka “Return”, but I chose to shift back and forth between the two of them… essentially doing one Saga and then the next Alan Wake until I reached a point where the game warns you that you are reaching the end segment.

One of the things that Remedy has been playing with in all of their games, is the seamless integration of full-motion video with rendered action sequences. Alan Wake II is the game that finally nails this formula as you are constantly subtly blending video and game sequences constantly. Sure there are still world televisions and projectors showing short-form video, but the game goes so far beyond this. Unfortunately, I can’t really give you the most concrete example of this because it would likely spoil the experience. There is one Alan Wake level that might be the best thing I have ever played through in any video game. The Ashtray Maze from Control was a thing of beauty and a real masterclass in level design… but the “We Sing” mission takes this to a whole new level. It will be an absolute shame if this game does not take home several awards at the “Keighlies”.

Remedy learned a lot of lessons while creating Quantum Break and Control and you can see these out on display here. Sure the gameplay isn’t necessarily as tight as a dedicated shooter, but it works so much better than the fumbling attempts made in 2010 with the first Alan Wake. The set design, however… is phenomenal. The Alan Wake segments center around him attempting to rewrite a book in order to find his way out of the Dark Place. As a result, he can go to his “Writers Room” and change set pieces and motivations, which then trigger transformations of the scenes that you are playing through. While extremely surreal, this leads to some truly interesting puzzle-solving behaviors as you are trying to figure out which version of the world you need to be in to progress past obstacles.

Saga has something similar in the form of her “Mind Place” a spot you can return to at any time and sort through details she has collected. You place these on the wall in the stereotypical thumbtacks and red string manner, but correctly placing elements end up unlocking dialog elements and changes your current in-game objectives. This is either going to be something you find really cool or something that frustrates you endlessly, because without placing certain items on the investigation board… you won’t have specific interactable objects appear in the world. There are dialog prompts that will not appear unless you have done the work in your Mind Place in order to reach the logical leap that triggers Saga to ask it. I do somewhat wish there was an “autoplace” option, because if you have somehow fumbled your way to a solution without using the investigation board… the game will do this for you to close out a case.

The best thing for me personally about the game is that it continues to expand out the shared Remedyverse. For example, there is a lot of involvement in the plotline by the Federal Bureau of Control, which gives hints towards the current state of that game universe as I am sure we are heading to Control 2. There are plenty of name-drops from the history of the past games… and I am pretty certain that Sherrif Tim Breaker is supposed to be Jack Joyce from Quantum Break, and similarly Warlin Door is a reference to Martin Hatch from that game as well. The awkward thing about the Remedyverse is that some of the ties will always be a bit tentative because Remedy does not own the rights to a handful of games. Max Payne for example is owned by Rockstar and Quantum Break by Microsoft… and while everyone is pretty certain that Alex Casey is Max Payne that revelation will never quite be as concrete as we might want.

The highlight of the game for me however is the return of Ahti the Janitor. In Control, we ended that game pretty sure that Ahti was some sort of god or at least a multi-dimensional being. Alan Wake II does nothing to dissuade us of this line of thinking as Ahti appears both in The Dark Place and Bright Falls interacting with Saga and Alan. Ahti is a hero from the epic poem The Kalevala (also name-checked in the game) and Ahto is the Finnish god of the sea… so I feel like the Ahti we interact with is somewhere between these. In Control Ahti talks about wanting to go on a much-needed vacation, and I am wondering if the events of Alan Wake II are in fact that “vacation” because he knew he was needed here to see both sides of this tale to its conclusion.

So the question I have been asked already is whether or not I feel like you can enjoy Alan Wake 2 without having played through the rest of the Remedyverse. On a surface level yes, I think you could enjoy yourself or at least enjoy it from the aspect of a very well-designed game. However, it won’t mean as much to you as it has to me, given that you will be missing a bounty of subtle references to the greater Remedyverse and the events of the past. I don’t think this game requires the understanding of these to make your way through the story. It explains enough detail as needed because a lot of your perspective comes from Saga an outsider to Bright Falls and Alan Wake who has had his memory damaged and is very much an unreliable narrator. What you are left with is a very well-crafted and honestly scary game, but if you have bounced off other remedy games… then Alan Wake II might not be for you.

While I am taking this break from Audiobooks, I plan on playing through a handful of other narrative games but for the moment… this is absolutely my game of the year. I mean as I said before I am already sold on the Remedy style of storytelling and feel like this is probably their best game to date. While I enjoyed the action combat of Control more, the storytelling here is phenomenal. They really have nailed blending live-action sequences with game sequences and making the combination greater than the parts. The game as a whole is very much an experience that needs to be played to be truly appreciated.

What Zelda Was Actually Like

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Hey Folks! I’ve mentioned a few times that I have been playing around with Yuzu and while I purchased Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch… I didn’t really get into it until I dumped the game and started playing it on PC. Essentially “Breath of the Zelda” series has one fatal flaw as far as I am concerned… weapon durability. I hates it… I hates it so much… and it ultimately destroys my enjoyment of the game. So on the emulator, I can apply a “patch” of sorts to simply remove that problem. I did not make it all the way through Breath of the Wild until I played it on Cemu, so it isn’t shocking that the same seems to be playing out with Tears of the Kingdom. You also have the side effect of playing at a higher frame rate and with slightly improved graphics.

All told I think I like this entry a lot better than I liked Breath of the Wild. Both games started you out in a sort of “starter island” experience, with Breath of the Wild being a plateau that you could not leave without access to the Glider and Tears of the Kingdom being a literal island in the sky. You are set forth with only the vaguest of directions and left to sort of bumblefuck your way around the island and figure out exactly how you should go about traversing it. At first, this felt grossly inefficient, especially given that you only end up with one shrine marked on your map and you sorta have to guess at the location of the other two. Each shrine is effectively unlocked by the power you’ve learned from the previous one, so by the time you leave the first island you get a feel of how to use the new combining powers to their fullest.

A few months ago Kodra set forth to play some Tears of the Kingdom and found the experience disappointing which led to a discussion on the podcast with me relating my feelings about Diablo IV to his feelings about the latest Zelda entry. The end result is that we thought maybe Breath of the Wild was a good game but not necessarily a good Zelda game. I think the challenge is that we are looking at the game through the lens of multiple decades of living with this series. I personally consider A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda game in the entire series and I think for Kodra it is Majora’s Mask. As I have been playing Tears of the Kingdom I have begun to re-evaluate that conversation in my head. I think maybe I was misinterpreting my modern view of the series with what the series originally was at its core.

Thinking back about the very first game… I similarly was left to bumblefuck my way around it and failed to make much progress until I got my hands on the above image. Nintendo of America released this magical tome called the “Official Nintendo Player’s Guide” and it contained detailed maps and boss strategies to take down almost every game in the arsenal at the time of publication in 1987. In the original Legend of Zelda, that first dungeon is super easy to find and then the second dungeon requires you to just roam around aimlessly around a ton of territory to actually find it. I am pretty sure originally I had fought these dungeons out of order and did three long before I finished two. So when I got ahold of the maps… I was finally able to strategically knock out the dungeons in order. Similar to Breath of the Wild, I only had the vaguest of directions to go on… that I know Dungeons exist and that I should clear them.

The outrageous options that you have with Tears of the Kingdom and building took a bit of getting used to. Last night before I logged I was held up in a shrine that required me to make hot air balloons to do “something” but that objective was not entirely clear. It was fun as hell though to slap a fan to a minecart and watch it zoom along a track out over a chasm. I’ve built several different boats to varying degrees of success and can see the potential to make gliders that are powered by a fan and can let me cross great distances. Last night I helped repair a cart and tame a horse to drive it. The objectives are what you make of them, and there is often a simple solution… and then a way more convoluted one that you could take if you are so inclined.

I also now get why folks were telling me that weapon durability was not as much of a problem in this game as it is in Breath of the Wild. One of your powers amounts to the ability to take shitty weapons and glue strong components to them… to make less shitty weapons. For example, I glued a fire emitter to a shield and now have a fire-breathing shield. Similarly, I have a Boss Boko horn that is curiously sword blade shaped… glued to a random tarnished sword that I picked up and have turned into a rather effective piece of gear. Per the lore… every weapon in Hyrule has decayed as a result of the opening moments of the game and the only way to make them viable… is by crafting something with them. I still greatly prefer not to have durability turned on however so that when I land upon a weapon I like… I can just keep it indefinitely.

I’m in no real rush to get through this game, but I do find it rather relaxing to play. I’m trying not to let it bother me how general or vague the objectives are. If I see a shrine along my path… I go attempt it. If I see something off in the distance that catches my eye… I go explore it. I am however mostly going in the direction of my next objective marked on my map. However, I was given four equal objectives… and I just happened to choose the one that seemed like it was the correct one. All in all, I think Tears of the Kingdom is probably a more compelling game than Breath of the Wild. The world already feels more vibrant and alive. It also feels like less of a retread of the rote Zelda story we have experienced in one form or another before. There are more new elements being woven into this tale.

I am honestly surprised by how much I am enjoying the game. After the conversation on the podcast, I sort of thought that it would not be for me. I am pleasantly surprised that has not been the case. It is also shocking how much more I enjoy playing Nintendo Switch games on a PC than I ever did on the console. That is entirely my problem, and I wish there was a way to pass saved data back and forth between the two. I might look into this… or I might just get Yuzu up and running on my Steam Deck as that might be simpler. Hopefully, you are having a great week. At this point, I have gotten three certifications this week and will be wrapping up the fourth today. Then by Friday I should have my fifth and be done for a while. I am so ready to return to being alone in my office plugging away in lieu of being in person. The experience has been fine, but by yesterday at lunch, I was done with human interaction.

AggroChat #432 – Breath of the Jedi

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Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

This show was one of those times when random discussions that we did not plan happened.  Firstly we had a bit of an impromptu discussion about the Dungeons and Dragons movie which also led to some non-movie discussion.  From there Bel talks about his life as a Path of Exile Vendor as he has become increasingly immersed in the trade market as a seller.  Tam and Bel talk quite a bit about Jedi Survivor and how it is a more open game and might even draw some connections to Breath of the Wild.  Kodra talks about Lone Fungus and Ash about Everspace 2.  From there we fall into some unplanned discussions about how games seem to be moving away from Holiday Season release schedules, and then we get off on this tangent about the Gameboy.

Topics Discussed:

  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Bel’s Life as a Path of Exile Vendor
  • Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
  • Lone Fungus
  • Everspace 2
  • Games Moving Away from Holiday Releases
  • Arguing about the Gameboy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Mixed Feelings

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This morning like so many mornings I have been feeling largely uninspired in my attempt to find something to write about.  In Star Wars the Old Republic I am in an odd space of doing some miscellaneous clean up before moving on to the Knights of the Fallen Empire content.  This is enjoyable but not exactly the sort of thing that makes a good blog post because it doesn’t necessarily reveal anything worth mentioning.  As a result I have spent way too much time looking at twitter, and almost like a miracle a tweet came across my timeline.  It seems that Secret World Legends is releasing on June 26th, which is admittedly way sooner than I was expecting.  It seems like it literally just went into beta about a month ago, which means one of two things.  One either the beta has gone so amazingly well that they are moving up their time tables… or two that they were always going to launch on the 26th regardless of what happened in testing.  Admittedly I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game relaunching.

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I have a lot of love for The Secret World…  but much in the same way as you might love that one movie you saw back in your childhood that you through was really damned cool and remember fondly as a sequence of memories.  It will probably always be one of the best story driven MMO experiences I have had.  They also did some interesting things with the deck building style ability system that let you mix and match actives and passives until you crafted a character that fit your specific play style.  For example I fell in love with Blades/Shotgun which was this amazingly fun build with a mix of ranged and melee abilities that let me adapt to pretty much any open world situation.  The problem being that these extremely custom builds all fell completely apart when you entered the end game.  The game saw every single one of my circle of friends, having to abandon whatever path they were on to choose something new and group friendly to be able to even start to make a dent in the nightmare content.  This is the point where most of us checked out, because we loved being whatever character fantasy we had built for ourselves…  and having to abandon that just ruined the game experience.

All of that said… my twitter time line is full of moments when I broadcast the game out to my friends in an effort to get everyone to experience it.  Each time it went on sale I talked about how good of a deal it was.  I love the setting and I love the challenge of some of the quests that force you to figure out how to do silly things like decode things from base 64 encoding.  In the trailer above they talk about switching the game from an MMO to a shared world action RPG…  which largely sounds like marketing nonsense.  They are switching the game to be reticle targeting, which can be a positive if all of the movement and interaction keys work nicely with it.  In many ways this could be an attempt to make it a more console friendly design, because that sort of a control scheme seems to simply work better with a controller than it does with mouse and keyboard.  All of the individual weapons seem to have a mini game aspect.  About a month ago Elemental was shown off on the dev stream to have a “heat” mechanic that you are trying to keep in check.  This makes me wonder however how well custom builds like my beloved Blades and Shotgun will work in this scenario.  Will we have to choose a single weapon and stick to that?

Mostly I think I am going to have to fall into the “wait and see” camp at least until I get my hands on the game.  I want it to work well, because I would really love to see a game like The Secret World succeeding.  It did a lot of interesting things that no one else is still doing, and presented a game setting that is unique and interesting.  The big problem however is all of that interesting bits came in a package that never quite worked as well as I thought it should.  The user interface was always a bit of a disaster that you learned out to work around, rather than something that really reinforced the enjoyment of the game.  Similarly the combat was scattered with a bunch of really great ideas that never quite coalesced into something that felt really good to play.  There were elements of sheer brilliance, but those were what helped you get past all of the things that you found yourself barely tolerating.  My ultimately hope is that with Secret World Legends they can go back and fix all the bits that never quite worked right, and then arrange the copious amounts of story they already have into a cohesive narrative.  If they can do that and give me fun moment to moment play…  then without a doubt I will be playing a lot more Secret World in the near future.  They are however launching during a super tight window following ESO Morrowind on the 6th and FFXIV Stormblood on the 20th.  That fact means without a doubt that while I might be playing this game… it is not going to even come close to being a primary game for me.