Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

An Appreciation of Spiders

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Mars: War Logs – May 2013 – PC

The earliest evidence I have of Developer Appreciation week is 2010, but it might have been taking place prior to that. Unfortunately the original site of its creator Scarybooster no longer exists, nor does even the social media evidence as his twitter account was hacked some years back. Whatever the case it has been going on for awhile and with Scary’s falling off the blogging wagon, we tried to start integrating the practice of taking a moment out to appreciate the folks that are behind the scenes creating the games we love into the Blaugust proceedings. This has morphed a bit to include content creators since I feel they also need some appreciation as well, but for this very first post of the week I thought I would bring things back to its roots and talk about a game studio that might not be that well known.

Prolific Release Schedule

Spiders is a French Game studio most recently known for the huge sweeping RPG adventure Greedfall that I have written about at length on this blog. However if you have not been reading the blog it is probably likely that you may not know about this studio or many of its games. I originally became aware of them when Technomancer released, because I thought it looked extremely interesting and it happened to be one of the games that Steam suggested to me through its discovery algorithm. However they have been cranking out ambitious games for awhile now, and it is highly likely that you have at least heard of several of them.

  • Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper – 2009
  • Faery: Legends of Avalon – 2010
  • Gray Matter – 2011
  • Of Orcs and Men – 2012
  • Mars: War Logs – 2013
  • Bound by Flame – 2014
  • The Technomancer – 2016
  • Greedfall – 2019

The games utilize a custom in case variant of Sony’s PhyreEngine that they call the Silk Engine, and it seems to have allowed them to crank out a pretty prolific release schedule. Until Technomancer they were seemingly releasing a new title every year, which is fairly impressive. I’ve played through four of their games to date and finished three of those four. I ultimately decided that Bound by Flame just was not for me, but I deeply enjoyed Mars: War Logs, Technomancer and Greedfall. In fact Greedfall was on the AggroChat games of the year show and it really was one of the darlings of what was an otherwise packed year of games.

Flawed But Ambitious

Technomancer – June 2016 – PC

In an April or 2019 Article, CEO and Co-Founder Jehanne Rousseau spoke a bit about their motivations and why they seemingly keep creating the same sort of games over and over.

We’re 35 in our team, with 40 at the moment working on the game. We are developing this because we love the type of game. There aren’t that many studios doing this type of games today. I mean, even BioWare have stopped doing it and I’m very sad because it’s what I like to play the most.

Jehanne Rousseau, CEO of French studio Spiders

That really is the thing that drew me to the games the most, is that they are in fact creating games in a genre that seems to be dying. There is a blind ambition in each of these titles that is impressive, but the negative side of that is said ambition sometimes outstrips their technical prowess. They seem to constantly be grasping for greatness and often times end up a few steps short of it. There are numerous things about the games that I would consider a bit buggy at best and poorly designed at worst, in each of the games that I have played there is something magical about them that kept me coming back for more. If you take the sequence of games Mars: War Logs, Technomancer (its direct sequel) and Greedfall there is a clear growth and improvement between each of the games.

The stories that they are telling are simultaneously huge and expansive while at the same time managing to include some deeply personal encounters. There is so much world building happening that feels fresh and interesting, and these worlds are populated with characters that are worthy of them. Where the games fall short however is on the technical execution. Combat often times feels a little stilted and control schemes often feel a little awkward. However much like going back to Dragon Age Origins which also suffers from many of these issues when compared against a modern game, the story and the characters are engaging enough to get you to look past those blemishes.

A Bright Future

Greedfall – September 2019 – PC

The reason why I chose to talk about Spiders this morning, is that I am extremely excited for whatever comes next. After having played a sequence of games and seeing the improvements between each of them, I have to say Greedfall was without a doubt their most polished experience. It came extremely close to being a perfect game, at least in my eyes. It had some mechanical issues still, but the amount of improvement made between it and Technomancer for example were impressive. It is like I am watching a studio flirting with greatness so many times and Greedfall really was the show case of those abilities.

This makes anxious for whatever game comes next, because I feel like whatever title that is will be their big commercial break out. Greedfall was still very much a niche title for the people “in the know” about such things, but across the board it seemed to review extremely favorably. In hindsight it was probably my favorite game of 2019, and while based on their current schedule I don’t expect to see another game until 2021 at the earliest, I am pumped to get my hands on it and play it. Spiders is exploring one of my favorite genres of games… the Bioware style action RPG, and sadly it is a genre that not too many companies seem to be making. I think more than anything I want to keep pushing recognition of this studio out there, because they are doing some really interesting things. Over the last year they went from a studio that I knew next to nothing about, to one of the ones I am watching closely for any tidbits of information that might be announced.

If you are curious about some of my other posts related to Spiders games… you can find the various categories associated with them below:

Riding the Buff

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This is one of those mornings when I contemplate not writing anything. I am just not feeling it, and as a way of pushing through I tend to post a few photos of whatever I happen to be playing and chat about it for a bit. There are going to be days when you just aren’t feeling it and as far as I am concerned you have two options. The first option is of course to just say you are not going to be posting anything that day and come back the next day renewed. However more often than not I tend to take the second avenue which is to just start writing until a post magically appears before you. Granted with option two you are not always guaranteed that the post is going to be interesting or even worth reading.

So this morning I am going to talk once again about the ridiculous speed of leveling in World of Warcraft right now. For those that are unaware there is currently a +100% buff to experience gained and this seems to stack with all of the other sources of buffs like heirloom gear and the darkmoon “whee” buff. However in my case the only additional buff that I have are the heirloom slots which add up to I think an extra 65% experience gain or something like that. At the beginning of the night last night I was sitting at level 47 in Tanaris, which admittedly is ONLY the second zone I have been in on my Druid. At the end of the night I had wound my way over to Ungoro Crater and closed the evening at 54. The pace of leveling was greatly impacted by the amount of travel time between objectives, and because of that it felt like I was completely flying through the levels.

I’ve more or less been focused on pushing up as many of these Horde characters as I can until either the resolve of purpose or my desire to be playing World of Warcraft fades. At the same time I am still cycling through my 120 characters to see if there is any World Quest upgrades that I can snap up easily. This more or less is my ideal way to play WoW because I am focused on the casual stuff in the game, and don’t get so bogged down in my frustrations. I have a mountain of frustrations with World of Warcraft, because honestly you can’t play anything for almost sixteen years without finding the things you find maddening. The game is exceptionally good at giving you something amazing… but also sorta making one or two aspects of it horrible. I have long joked that Blizzard can’t give you anything that is just universally good for the players.

However saying that… this buff seems to be one of those occasions when it is just good and as a result I am soaking up as much of it as I can while it is still in place. I remember the crazy leveling elevator that was the pre-Legion launch events, and during that time I managed to get every single character Alliance side that I had up to 100. I would love if the buff stayed in place until the launch of Shadowlands, because then I might manage to get all of my Horde characters up to 120… and maybe even a few more Alliance for good measure. I am nowhere near close to unlocking the BFA Allied races for the Alliance and I would rally love to play through the game as a Dark Iron Dwarf of some sort. I just can’t seem to bring myself to grind out the reputation on my single 120 on that side of the house.

… and there you have it. I somehow willed a post into existence. I wanted to take a pass on actually writing something today but I knew that once I started typing I would begin to find a bit of a groove. At the very least I would find enough traction to begin and wrap up a short post. I hope you all have an excellent day and that you are happy and healthy out there in pandemia.

Dinosaur Druid

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Good morning everyone. I need to order a new keyboard because the one I have been typing on randomly seems to repeat characters. So if you ever see a word with one too many of a specific letter I am going to blame it on this phenomena. This week in Blapril is “Get to Know You” week, but I am not really sure what I can tell you that I have not already told you in the other 2312 posts on this blog. I’ve always tried to be open with my readers and share large swaths of my life. There are of course a few edits here and there to hide the identities of the innocent, but the core truth is always there. Anything prior to about 2013 makes me cringe massively when I have attempted to re-read it because I think it was written by a very different version of me.

I will tell you one thing I have been kicking around in my head is whether or not we should do an actual Blaugust this year in addition to Blapril or not. I think there are positives and negatives to it in both ways. That might be a little too much blogging and togetherness in one year, and at least for the folks who are actively participating in Blapril it might feel a little weird to turn around and do it again in another four months. All of that said who knows if we will be getting back to normal by August or not. I will say five weeks into isolation mode, a new sort of normal is starting to settle in and I am not entirely certain if I like it or not.

The only analogy I have for what I am feeling is that I go through something when my wife has a work trip. I go through a day or two of enhanced freedom mode, where I order pizza exactly the way I want to and do other minor random acts of defiance… before I am mostly just wanting her back because I am not sleeping right without another body beside me in the bed. The first few weeks of remote work were really fun… until it set in that this is now the reality rather than the escape from it. There are a lot of days where I would much rather drive into the office and be present there, than work remotely. Like I have said before I have a brand new respect for folks who have been doing this for years. All of that said I am probably way better suited to deal with this than a lot of folks given how generally solitary I tend to be by nature.

On the gaming front I hit 120 with my Hunter and have gotten his item level up to 380ish. The hardest part are the weapons and the trinkets, and I am largely just gearing through soaking up free world quest gear. On the 8th I was sitting in my 70s and on Sunday night I dinged 120. I am not sure how many total hours it took me but it absolutely felt faster than it has any right to be. Legion and Battle For Azeroth were the slowest part, largely because a lot of the quests that you end up doing are more complicated and simply take more time. I am finding that I am really enjoying the Beast Mastery Hunter, and I am contemplating doing further nonsense and trying to farm up missing set pieces from a few Hunter sets.

As far as my next victim goes… I decided to start pushing up my fresh Zandalari Druid. The entire goal here is not necessarily to gear out a single character, but to abuse the fact that leveling is insanely fast right now to build out my stable of horde characters. I spent a decade exclusively playing Alliance characters, so it makes sense that I have one of everything over there above the level of 100. On the Horde side however I have a bunch of “youngins” that my goal is to get several up to the cap before this buff runs out. I spent the better part of last night running around the Barrens doing quests that I have not done in quite some time.

I have to say it is hard to explain how much better the post Cataclysm version of the Barrens is than the World of Warcraft Classic version. This really is driven home by the fact that I spent so much time leveling in it last August during the crush of Classic. The flow of the quests just works so much better and there seems to be much less randomly ping ponging from various corners of the map back to the Crossroads. What is also making this exceptionally fun are the really cool dinosaur druid forms. I am not sure exactly what I am when I am in “cat form” but it looks badass and I am all there for it. I also randomly decided to make my Druid my Alchemist, so I need to spend some time working on that at some point.

I am having a lot of fun leveling random things in World of Warcraft, which is about the level of engagement that I need right now.

Ode to AggroChat

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Over the extended weekend I played an excessive amount of World of Warcraft. Namely I leveled my Tauren Hunter from 70 to 120… which sounds more impressive than it actually is. There were a lot of those levels that took me only a few minutes and in most cases I never managed to finish the starter zone of any expansion thanks to the bonus currently in place. I’ve been working on creating a stable of horde characters similar to those I have on the Alliance side after a decade and some change of playing there primarily. I now feel significantly more comfortable playing Horde than I do Alliance and as a result I am feeling the absence of that army of alts and have set it into my mind to fix that.

Last week I set forth to tame Arcturis the Spirit Bear and managed to get him on my first attempt. He was just sitting there waiting on me to tame him, and over the course of the weekend I realized something. I was essentially playing with the perfect avatar of Ashgar, who tends to personify with mystical shape changing bears. As a result I thought it would be fun to name my pet Ashgar, and weirdly the act of doing so made me care way more about never letting him die. Weirdly it also made it feel like he suddenly got better at AOE tanking. I know this is all in my head, but it did send me down a rabbit trail of wanting to name pets after my friends.

In my travels trying to find some of the other Spirit Animals, I happened across King Krush… which is probably as close to Godzilla as you get in World of Warcraft. It is an irradiated looking green devilsaur, and since this is also probably as close as you get to a proper Kaiju that is tameable… this personifies my friend Grace. Also I really just like the concept of a giant Devilsaur being named Grace. I just wish it had kept the size of when I originally tamed it, because that would be even more perfect given how tall her Roegadame towers over me in FFXIV.

This is a bit of cheating because I have had this own in my stable for quite a while. I tamed it because it reminded me of the Great Owl from Secret of Nymn. Pulling it back out of the stable made me think of how much I have always personified Thalen as the wise Owl of our group. He was our mastery of strategy back in the Duranub raiding days, and I’ve always considered him to be a source of sage advice. He also never really gets rattled and approaches most situations with a calm and rational head. So it seemed deeply fitting to name this great owl after him.

Kodra required a bit of research, because he is known for the garish color schemes of his characters. In fact he is the reason why we have the Purple/Pink and bright Green color scheme that we do for AggroChat. I set forth searching through pet models that were available on Petopia and landed upon this particular basilisk that is green with purplish pink highlights. So I flew over to Zul’drak and tamed one specifically for the honor of Kodra. The thing about basilisks is that they are tough as nails and make really good protectors… which are also traits that I would align with Kodra as well. Anyone who used to chat-roulette to have political conversations for fun, can take on just about anything in the world.

I will admit, Tam was really hard because there are so many aspects of him that I have gotten to know over the years. However in World of Warcraft terms I will always think about his rogue, and the one that got away. During the heyday of the opening of Ahn’Qiraj, Tam set forth to questing and farming his ass off chasing the goal of being the first person to actually open the gates on our server. I remember contributing a little bit to the cause and going out to Silithis a few times to farm with him, namely because I also needed bits for resist gear. He worked his ass off and the grind broke him, an broke his enjoyment of the game… especially since we ultimately were about five hours too late in pushing across the finish line. However in my eyes, he will always be the Scarab Lord and since he truly is good as gold to every single one of his friends… I had to track down a Golden Scarab Beetle and name it Tamrielo.

Ammo was a situation of trying to figure out which of the many options I would go with. If you know her even a little bit you know she is a tried and true cat person, so without a doubt I had to choose that family. Other things you should know about Ammo is that she is an amazing artist and responsible for most of the artwork associated with Aggronaut and AggroChat both. However there is also a certain low key shyness that she has anytime someone mentions how damned good she is. So in my search for the perfect cat I with with this gorgeous Indigo Purple mana saber… that also spends most of its time stealthed and trying to blend in quietly to the world. In my head at least this fit my good friend Ammo perfectly and hopefully you will all agree.

While I didn’t set forth on this mission for the purpose of doing something for the anniversary of AggroChat, that also sorta just happened along the way. Today marks the release of our very first show titled “Finding the Format” back in 2014. The show is super cringey to listen to these days, but as we near our 300th episode I find it staggering just how long we have kept this ball afloat. It is a thing that has sorta morphed and changed as we have. I am super thankful to have this awesome group of individuals to call my friends, and I also want to thank all of the people who have guested on the show over the years. Here is a quick rundown of the various folks who have joined us:

  • Dallian
  • Inky
  • Nephsys
  • PizzaMaid
  • Rae
  • Shiana
  • Vexa
  • Warenwolf
  • Weiward

Now Dallian and Rae get special shout outs since they were involved an awful lot in the early days of AggroChat. Dallian was sorta the pinch hitter for a long time and was that guest I kept snagging any time it looked like we were going to be short some folks. Waren, Shiana and Neph are semi regular extras because they may or may not be hanging out on the voice chat server we record on and it feels real bad to lock them out of the podcast channel. We have a big village of people that make up the extended AggroChat family, and I am thankful to have all of them in my life. Who would have thought that six years later we would still be doing this thing.