Open World RPG

A Land Without FOMO

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Do you ever find yourself not taking action because you can’t wrap your brain around exactly how you want to do something? This is something that has plagued me my entire life as I sit back and overanalyze a situation and end up just postponing actually doing anything. If I am under pressure I am extremely good at making snap decisions, but when I don’t feel that sense of pressure… I tend to sit on something indefinitely without actually ever taking action. So much of my life, I put myself into situations that artificially cause that pressure and tension… so that I actually go through with things.

For example I’ve had an additional camera for our security system for two years now, but never quite got around to figuring out how I wanted to mount it. Yesterday I decided that I would mount it by the end of the day… and in truth, it took me all of ten minutes to do it. However, I spent two years at least once a week mulling over what angle and position I wanted to mount this damned camera when in truth it doesn’t really matter that much. Its entire purpose was to let us watch Tripod, the three-legged calico that has been living in our backyard for going on three years. I put it up and it is finally serving this purpose… and also letting us know that apparently Splotchy, the cat that is patiently waiting on Tripod to finish eating… is back hanging out in our yard again. I think while phantom (the cat we found his original owners for) was around he had made himself scarce.

Last night I made marinated boneless pork ribs and stovetop stuffing and sat down after dinner to play some more Quantum Break. Yesterday I have to admit I was not entirely sold on this game but felt obligated to see it through to the end. Yesterday however the game hooked me and by the time I got through the fourth chapter I am honestly on pins and needles to see how this all shakes out in the end. I have to give credit to Remedy for a handful of things. Firstly they make extremely interesting landscapes for your characters to roam around in. Even in Alan Wake which was basically a blue-toned rainy woods simulator… there were some absolutely stunning setpieces. Control was a visual feast and each time you discovered a new area you were introduced to some situation that should not be able to exist in the real world.

The other thing that I have to give them credit for is creating very interesting stories. A time travel story is something that has been done so many times, but they managed to figure out a way to make this feel fresh. I guess another aspect of this is that they seem to be able to capture really great acting performances both with in-camera live-action sequences worthy of a high production value show and in the orchestration of assets to create very believable digital actors. I mean I have been impressed by acting performances in games before, but always it was in the voice-over delivery… never really in the digital manifestation of those actors in video game form. Sure there is a noticeable difference… but it feels natural when you shift between the player-controlled digital sequences and the live-action denouement at the end of each chapter.

It is extremely likely that I am going to wrap this up in a few hours this evening, and now I am not really sure what I am going to roll into next. Right now I am thinking probably Ghost of Tsushima, which I left in a very partially completed state on the PlayStation 5. My goal for today… like my goal of putting up the camera yesterday… is to stop calculating how to do it… and just move my PS5 setup downstairs to live beside the Xbox Series X. Ultimately this NEEDS to happen before Horizon Forbidden West launches next week. Essentially most of this single-player gaming has been me in a holding pattern until that game releases, but I have been greatly enjoying this time.

One of the core problems that I have playing MMOs is the constant sense of FOMO that they instill in the player base. There is always some new thing that is coming around the corner and will only be available for a limited amount of time. Be this a new season in Destiny, a holiday event in FFXIV, or the feeling of needing to do your daily chores so that you don’t fall behind in World of Warcraft. It is the aspect of those games that I like the least and honestly, over the last few years, it has been one of the major turn-offs. Instead of making me want to engage and no-life something until I have ticked all of the boxes… it makes me want to check out completely and not even participate.

Playing all of these single-player games has made me realize that more or less they are completely immune to FOMO. The game exists as it is and the experience will more or less be the same if I play it tomorrow or if I play it three years from now. They are experiences that happen on my schedule and on my terms. There is no need to rush around and make sure that I get this thing done by this deadline… because the game will always be there waiting on me. That is not to say that I don’t want to play MMORPGs anymore, but this week and watching the zeitgeist scurry around Lost Ark has made me realize that maybe just maybe I am done for a while. I greatly enjoyed the story of Endwalker and I do want to return at some point and play more… but I also don’t really feel like I am on a specific timetable for that.

Exploring Ancient Greece

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I don’t have anything terribly exciting to talk about this morning. I spent my evening as I have spent a lot of evenings recently exploring ancient Greece. There is a kind of game that has rapidly become my favorite things to play, which is in the lineage of Witcher 3. Essentially I love wandering around these big sprawling worlds with lots of pockets of detail for me to navigate and explore. I like that they live in this duality of both being quest driven when I want to have structure, and completely open ended when I just want to run amok and take out a camp of soldiers. It feels like I am inhabiting the world and after a very “on rails” experience like Guardians of the Galaxy, it is refreshing to be able to get off the beaten path.

The thing is… there is an awful lot to see in these game worlds. While it is absolutely certain there is a lot of sameness, especially when it comes to set decoration… there is just enough variety to keep things feeling fresh for me. I especially love finding the vistas that serve as teleportation points in Assassin’s Creed games. They give you this big sweeping view of the world from the eyes of your bird and give you a better understanding of the lay of the land. Often times it is through these that I spot things off in the distance that I want to go explore later.

When I play a game like this I feel like I live in this constant tug of war. It creates this cycle of pushing forward the narrative of the main story quest, and then roaming around for awhile trying to make sure I have seen what there is to see in a specific area before pushing the narrative forward again. There is most definitely a feeling that you are at risk of missing something and that it is highly unlikely that you are going to make it back this way again as the story keeps moving you forward to new areas.

With Odyssey however I see this mix changing up a bit in ways that it did not in Origins. There was some online interaction between the game and the presence of other players. I remember there being targets that would spring up that you could kill to get revenge for another player. This time around there are player driven missions that have been created that you can explore, or you also have a series of daily and weekly bounties that you can partake in. This serves to further MMOize what was a largely single player experience. While there does not appear to be actual players roaming around the world with you, there is quite a bit of bleed over as the game resents you with screenshots that players have taken of specific areas.

If the discussion points that I have heard are to be believed, it sounds like maybe with Valhalla UbiSoft pushed this dynamic too far into the MMO direction. For now most of the things in Odyssey seem to have improved upon the things I liked from Origins. I am sure at some point I will make my way to Valhalla and it will be interesting to see how these dynamics have shifted again. Ultimately I am hoping to make Odyssey keep my attention for the next few weeks until Horizon Forbidden West rolls out. Greatly enjoying my evenings roaming around the ancient world.

Kassandra the Pirate

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Traditionally I had never really been a fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, but that changed in 2017 when the entire thing pivoted hard. I feel like the modern incarnation of the series is very much UbiSoft attempting to capture the magic of The Witcher 3 and duplicate it. So if you too had bounced off early titles, but also love big open world adventures… then maybe AC is a series you should check out again. It took me awhile to really attach fully to Origins, but when I finally did I loved the game and greatly enjoyed playing as Bayak of Siwa. Then the sequel released and brought us to Ancient Greece and while I picked it up… I never actually got around to playing it.

Since I seem to be rolling through a series of single player games and after coming off Guardians of the Galaxy, I decided to remedy never getting around to this game. I had started the game but never really got very far into it, so I picked up from the original save and kept going. I had heard from many people that Kassandra is the far better option as far as the game goes, and is a more interesting character. I’m already a big fan and I am looking forward to see how this character evolves over the course of the game. I had some “free” outfits waiting on me, so I have dressed my Kassandra is Norse outfits that I am guessing I got around the launch of the next title in the AC series.

I am not super far into the game but have essentially completed most of “tutorial island”. There are a lot of things about the game that feel like they have improved since the previous outing. There are quality life life improvements like the ability to just crank up your walk speed to where you are running all of the time. Essentially in an open world game like this… I don’t love using horses. I am not sure what it is about horses, but I always just end up running around everywhere and my pinky finger gets tired mashing the shift key. I think part of it is that I feel like I miss a lot while mounted, because I live for random combat encounters as I move from point A to point B. Additionally it allows me to pick up all of the random iron and wood that I happen across along the path.

When I stopped playing for the night I was finally out on the open waters with my ship and crew. I learned how to do me some open water piracy and such. This series has always done a better than average job of ocean combat, and I greatly appreciate how they have improved a lot of aspects of it. For example you can just hit a hotkey to board the ship, and it will align the ship so you can jump across and do some deck to deck combat. Similarly you can just hit a hotkey to “dock” the boat when you get close to land. Things things were always somewhat fiddly in Origins and I am always on board for improvements.

This is a pretty huge game, so I fully expect to be engaged in this one for awhile. Maybe even long enough for Horizon Forbidden West to come out next month.

God of War Thoughts

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Good morning friends. This morning I am going to talk about the thing that I had originally planned on talking about yesterday… before the Blizzard news broke. I am about four years late to the party, but God of War is a pretty damned phenomenal game. On Monday I wrapped up my play through of the game and I have to say the characters have all grown on me. I went from feeling sorry for “Boy”, to wanting to throttle “Boy”, to feeling genuine love and affection for “Boy”. The game takes you on a ride and for anyone who has missed out on the memes surrounding this game, it focuses on a very grizzled and world weary Kratos and his son Atreus that becomes collectively referred to as “Boy”. Moments in to the game Faye dies, the mother of Atreus and we embark upon a mission to take her ashes to the highest peak in the realms.

This simple quest drives the entire game, but as we attempt to complete it… there are certain obstacles that keep getting in our way that we must deal with first. The flow of the game feels extremely natural as we are besieged immediately upon setting forth on the quest, and hunted the entire way by forces that we do not quite understand. We also find friends along the way that help us on our journey, and the entire narrative structure feels very much like one of the epic poems of antiquity from which we base the mythology that makes up this series. There is no straight path through this game but instead one that weaves and loops back on itself constantly as we slowly discover what still remains in our path keeping us from our final destination.

I’ve been jokingly referring to this game as “Bad Dad Simulator” on twitter, because so much of the game is actually really revolving around the relationship between Kratos and Atreus. We get the impression that Kratos really did not know what to do with “Boy”, and had mostly shunned him. We learn that Atreus was a sickly child and Kratos spent most of his time off hunting or doing other busywork to provide for the family. Atreus does not fit the mold of what a man should be in Kratos eyes, and throughout the journey he keeps trying to batter him down into the pattern that he is most familiar with, that of a Spartan warrior. Through this journey however I truly feel like the pair come to a point of acceptance with each other. Atreus has skills and gifts that never would have fit within that role, and Kratos is not the cruel immovable object that the son thought he was. The two understand each other and I think really come to love each other… as opposed to the resentment that is very obvious at the beginning of the game.

One of the things that somewhat shocked me about the game however was how short it ended up being. All told at this point I have put in 22 hours of gameplay according to steam. I’ve completed the main story, all of the major highlighted side quests, and a few of the hidden objectives. There is still an awful lot of scouring that I could do to tick off the last few checkmarks and hunt down the last few things to kill or collect. That said I think I have picked most of the meat off of these bones and am left with the competitionist busywork that every game has these days. The reason why I am shocked is pretty early on in the game you are presented with this screen, the Realm Travel system that includes 8 realms plus Midgard. For those who are not familiar with Norse mythos you have:

  • Alfheim
  • Helheim
  • Muspelheim
  • Niflheim
  • Jotunheim
  • Svartalfheim
  • Vanaheim
  • Asgard
  • Midgard

So upon seeing this screen I thought wow… I have only really been to Midgard so far and it seems huge, I cannot wait to see these other realms! The truth is… any realm that is not Midgard is tiny by comparison. Alfheim is involved in a single quest early in the game, Helheim is involved in two quest chains and cannot really be explored, Niflheim and Muspelheim are realms that each feature a specific mini-game that you can grind for zone currency that lets you craft specific things, and then Jotunheim is used for a single quest near the end of the game. The leaves Vanaheim, Asgard, and Svartalheim completely inaccessible and the vast majority of the game taking place in Midgard… that actually seems entirely focused around the lake of the nine and areas immediately adjacent to it. While I greatly enjoyed the journey, it does immediately hit you how small of a game this actually is in comparison to other “open world” offerings.

All of that said, it is an extremely enjoyable experience and mechanically the Leviathan axe now joins the pantheon of truly epic video game weapons. That seems like a really hard ask these days, to create a weapon for a game that feels unique and memorable enough to really break into the list of the greatest, but Leviathan absolutely earns its place. Similar to Mjolnir, you can throw the axe and summon it back to your hand no matter how far away it actually is. It also has the elemental effect of freezing certain objects, which allows you to use it in order to complete certain puzzles. When you finally get back your Blades of Chaos from the previous games, these also have their own puzzle uses which makes the weapons not only mechanically enjoyable in combat but also strategically interesting for traversal.

Ultimately this game is going to appeal to two sets of players. Firstly if you love a very interesting and well crafted story, then you need to play this game and experience it for yourself. Secondly if you are a player that really enjoys open world brawlers with RPG elements that allow you to fine tune that combat, then this is also going to be a game for you. Additionally if you really enjoyed the original God of War games and can handle the shift to the third person perspective, then you are probably going to enjoy this game as well. I personally am glad that I waited for mouse and keyboard because it felt extremely easy to dive into this title with a control scheme that felt familiar. Like I said at the beginning, I am four years late to this party but I am glad that I finally completed God of War and look forward to Ragnarok.