Over the last few nights I have been playing a game called The Technomancer. This was the game released a few years before Greedfall by the same developer, and in part I wanted to experience more by them. I am beginning to see a pattern with Spiders the studio behind these titles. The first is that there are numerous technical issues with the games, namely with the way that the interfaces work as compared to the global norms for an action adventure game. However there is something else there that keeps me compelling in that I think they are games that are striving to be more than they were technically able to deliver. There is an inspired nature in them that keeps me playing through the frustrations because they really are striving for greatness while falling short of it.
Based on all of the data I have found available to me, Spiders is a company of around 20 employees working out of Paris France. All of their games use something called the Silk engine which was built in house and designed from the ground up for the sort of games that they want to create, which for lack of a better term seems to be a “Mass Effect Like” game and I am not even sure what better name I could give the genre I am trying to describe. There is something they are doing that very much feels like they are following the trail that Bioware originally blazed and there is a heart present in the games that is missing from a lot of modern fare that I have played. The only challenge is that somewhere in the design process they made different decisions that have lead to a slightly different interface. The closest example I can give is the Elder Scrolls Series versus the Gothic series… both are games beloved by their fan base and both provide vastly different experiences.
So far I think the thing that Spiders does better than most companies is set the atmosphere of the games. Technomancer which I believe is a direct sequel to Mars: War Logs a game from 2013… is set in a Mars controlled by oppressive corporations and military powers. The setting is straight out of 1984 and represents a society that is deeply stratified between the “haves and have nots”, with your character somehow walking the balance between the powers. The environments are render in such rich detail that it is easy to overlook a lot of sometimes awkward dialog when the setting itself is adding so much to the story. The same was true for Greedfall, with extremely interesting colonial backdrops and hidden native grottoes.
What I see in spiders as evidenced by these two games is a company that is striving for something big and exciting and each time getting a little closer to the goal. 2019 released Greedfall was almost there minus a few frustrations, and the 2016 released Technomancer is a little big more janky than that but I can see a progression of ideas happening. I have a feeling that if I make good on my thought process and move back to Bound by Flame released in 2014 there will be a similar dissolution happening of big ideas lacking the fidelity to really carry them forward. I’ve read and listened to a few reviews of these games and they seem to either fall into two categories. The first simply dismiss them as buggy junk never quite seeing what makes them unique. The second category can look past the frustrating foibles and see the attempts at genius lying just under the surface, and I guess I am falling along that second line of thinking.
After seeing how much improvement was made between these two games however, it does give me a lot of hope for whatever the next project Spiders undertakes ends up being. It feels like they are on the cusp of a truly breakout hit, and that is not to discount their back catalog of titles as I am finding a lot of enjoyment so far in playing Technomancer. I played through the various Larian Studios games which prior to Divinity Original Sin suffered from the same greatness hindered by some confusing design choices. It is funny that apparently this is a thing that I do… in that I latch onto a studio and try and play everything they have released. Admittedly the catalog was shorter, but I just tried to do this with CD Project Red.
I think I might be craving complicated experiences. So many AAA titles these days don’t take much in the way of risk and as a result do nothing to really push the envelope. While I enjoyed Mass Effect Andromeda for example, there was nothing daring about anything that they did and it was effectively the by the numbers version of every other Mass Effect game that had released. It became mired in the technical difficulties because the story and character interactions were not strong enough to really get the public to look past them. Games like Greedfall and Technomancer are far from perfect, but they are striving to create something that is unique and interesting and for that I can ignore a lot of jank. It does however make me wonder how many deeply interesting but flawed experiences have been out there waiting in the back catalog of Steam that never quite break through to the surface.