Genshin Impact

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Yesterday a game launch happened that was not even on my radar. Genshin Impact is a new action MMORPG from Shanghai based developer miHoYo. The sub text of their studio logo says “Game Otakus Save the World”, so it is not shocking that Genshin Impact is super anime style. I had seen the game advertised to me on Google Play but honestly didn’t think much about it. What ultimately interested me is the fact that the game is available on a number of non-Mobile platforms and reported features cross play across them all. Since the Genshin Impact website is nonsense here are some direct links.

One word of warning is that this downloads and patches notoriously slowly. The above image appears to be about the worst case scenario that I have seen. The image is snagged from a friend of mine that posted it on twitter. For me I saw between 2 MB/s and 5 MB/s and the PC download completed in about an hour and a half. I just want you to go into this expecting that it is going to take a long time to complete the client. If you are playing on mobile, the game downloads quickly but you are slapped with an almost immediate 6 GB download, so make sure you are doing this on WiFi to keep from getting exorbitant mobile charges.

Genshin Impact is the sort of game where you collect a large number of characters who each perform slightly differently. Then you make a part of four out of that larger stable of characters. I’ve been lead to believe that playing through the main story campaign will ultimately unlock a total of six free characters, and then additionally characters are “summoned” via a “gacha” mechanic. For those not used to mobile games there is almost always some sort of a summon or “draw” mechanic that allows you to spend a currency that can be purchased or often times very slowly accumulated in game in order to get random chance at getting something good… aka like a gachapon/gashapon capsule machine. This is ultimately where these games make their money because a lot of players won’t want to wait for the currency to build up but instead spend money outright for a chance of getting new characters.

The game starts with a sequence that makes absolutely no sense, and the game does not attempt to explain it. You are fighting some sort of a god with your sibling and you the player are given the choose of which sibling to play as. I chose the male sibling which set my main character and also sets the key goal if the game… to save your sister. This is a well trodden trope for this sort of mobile game. In Dragalia Lost there is a very similar opening sequence where someone is captured and the goal is in theory to get strong enough to be able to find and get back this person. Shenanigans ensue while trying to make this happen, and I figure the same will be true with Genshin Impact. I am just wondering if they will set up my sibling to ultimately be the eventual end boss of the game as they become perverted by whatever force captured them.

Like so many of these games there is a rock paper scissors style elemental buff and resistance scheme going on. Each character you will have access to has some sort of an element associated with them. Your named character will end up being able to wield the power of wind, and the first character you encounter is an Archer that can use fire attacks. Each of these are weak or strong to various other elements. The above chart is the best I have seen as of yet, created by a beta tester. I am hoping as this game becomes more popular someone will create something that is a little more straight forward and easier to read. You can do interesting things like combo two elements together… like if there is something on fire and you cast Swirl a wind ability it will turn the Swirl into a sort of Fire Tornado.

So far the game feels very much like what would occur if you took Dragalia Lost and combined it with Breath of the Wild. In fact the game borrows an awful lot from the most recent Zelda game in the way you traverse the world and even in the way chests appear from solving simple puzzles or defeating a camp worth of enemies. Very early on you get a glider and it has a stamina bar just like in Breath of the Wild. Additionally you have surfaces that you can climb which also depletes your stamina meter, and other metal walls that you cannot traverse in such a manner. There is also a very similar cooking mechanic that takes place at campfires allowing you to convert everything that you collect into various stat buff foods.

Instead of Shrines there are various temples that you will need to delve in order to complete puzzles and get to the other side. These puzzles might involve lighting something on fire or freezing water to create a bridge. They are nowhere near as clever as Breath of the Wild but it gives you a very similar feel. Instead the temples are a number of hidden chests that you can unlock and these become more out of the way and often require you using your elemental abilities in interesting ways to get to them.

I’ve not played much of the game yet as it launched last night around 8 pm CST, but I did play enough to get a general feeling for the game. So far I am enjoying myself greatly, and the world is extremely fun to traverse. If I understand correctly the first world you visit is the world of wind, and then as new areas open up in the game they will each be themed off of an element. Much like Breath of the Wild there are a bunch of side objectives, like finding shrines of the seven gods which serve as Sheikah Towers and give you visualization into a region of the map. You have a level associated with each character and another level that seems to be associated with you the player called an adventurer rank. Doing random stuff in the world seems to make this one go up.

There are of course a ton of videos out there talking about the game and how to optimize this thing or that thing, but of the various ones I watched yesterday I found myself enjoying DemoneKim the best for delivery. I am sure I will be writing about this game some more as I figure things out, but right now it is extremely fun just to roam around and explore. If you have ever enjoyed mobile MMOs and wished you could play them on a PC… then this might be a game for you. If you find yourself easily frustrated by Gacha mechanics… then maybe give it a pass.

The game uses a friend code type system called your UID, which can be seen at the bottom of the screen in all of the screenshots I have taken. If you find yourself exploring this game over the coming weeks, feel free to throw me a friend request at 600023101. I have no clue HOW friends work as of yet, but usually there is some passive mechanic in this sort of game where it is beneficial to have active friends. Also if you are playing this game I would love to know your own thoughts. Drop me a line below in the comments to let me know what you think so far.

AggroChat #316 – Microsoft Buys Your Memories

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

Tonight we have a show that basically is Bel carpet bombing the trello with current events topics.  First up we talk about the acquisition of Zenimax by Microsoft and our thoughts about that.  From there we discuss the wildly tinfoil hat theory that Microsoft is going to acquire Sega next.  We also talk about how poorly the Xbox One performed in Japan and how it seems Microsoft is attempting to fix that with their TGS 2020 showing.  Kodra talks about playing Pokken with his son and how it is a fighting game that allows you to look awesome without frustrations.  We end up spinning off a side discussion about Fighting games in general and how they expect you to learn the characters.  Ashgar talks about Monster Hunter Rise and how the main line Monster Hunter series seems to be borrowing heavily from Monster Hunter World…  also Doggos.  Finally we talk briefly about the flaws in the RTX 3080 design, at least in some of the add-in board partner cards attempts to save money.

Topics Discussed:

  • Microsoft Acquisition of Zenimax
    • Rumors of a Sega Acquisition
    • Xbox Series Sold Out in Japan
    • TGS 2020 Microsoft Show
  • Dreamhaven founded by Mike Morhaime
    • Spotty track record of Blizzard Spinoffs
    • Irvine Area Studios
  • Pokken with your child
    • Fighting games are bad at teaching fighting games
    • Fighting game story modes
  • Zendikar Rising Commander
    • Extreme Value but likely not a permanent change
  • Monster Hunter Rise Announcement
    • Hunting with Doggos
  • Flaws in the RTX 3080 third party cards
    • Why we should maybe wait a bit

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Excellent Warcraft Lore Primer

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I realized I tweeted this out yesterday, but it is Friday and I am not sure what else I was going to write about. Yesterday I was thinking about the Warcraft movie and the Tweet by Metzen that folks are taking as acknowledgement that there is a second movie in the works. The truth is I remember very little about the early lore of the Warcraft universe apart from a vague sketch of the flow of the timeline. I played the hell out of Warcraft II, but mostly in multi-player and while I am certain that I played through the campaign I remember very little of it. When Warcraft 3 came out I was already deeply engaged in MMORPGs and either playing Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot and never quite got around to playing it other than in office LAN parties.

That means there are large chunks of the story that I only know from the perspective of how World of Warcraft presents that information. Doing some googling I stumbled onto this recap video by Drew Peezick aka @dpeezick / lawllypop. What I particularly like about the video is that it takes either real or created Hearthstone cards to represent the major players and presents the story in fairly simple terms. Warcraft as a universe is this sort of self contradictory mess that has evolved over time and rewritten bits as needed to support whatever the new story initiative happens to be. We are in truth heading into this territory as we approach the Shadowlands expansion and the lore that is being spun up about the pantheon of death.

I had originally arrived looking for the lore of the first two games but found that this is apparently a sequence of videos that carries forward with the first chapter being “before warcraft 3” the second chapter being “Warcraft 3” and then moving forward into classic World of Warcraft and through each off the expansions. It is funny that for even not playing the game Warcraft 3 I found myself familiar with a lot of the lore that was presented. I guess this comes as a result of playing the game for some sixteen years and having bits and pieces of it fed to me in a very slow drip through quest lines. World of Warcraft is a game that has regularly strip mined its past in order to present a path forward.

I think the thing that I really enjoyed the most while watching these videos is the way that they attempt to weave modern and past lore together into something that makes a reasonable amount of sense. Things get messy at times when you try and figure out the actual canon story of the dungeons and raids since these are ultimately multi-player experiences. The videos however do a really good job of shifting back and forth between the perspective of the Horde and Alliance and weaving our way around some of the key plot points that ultimately lead to the phases of the Classic wow release schedule and the key conflicts that were involved in each. For now a large amount of the Troll lore has been pushed off to its own video in the future.

I really enjoyed the Burning Crusade video because having not played horde during this era, I found some of the motivations of the Blood Elves to be a little obtuse and how exactly Kael’thas, Lady Vashj, Akama and Illidan fit together other than just being large set piece battles for us in the raids. I’ve never been a fan of Night Elves so I was turned off pretty early when I attempted to read War of the Ancients, so I greatly appreciate all of the lore bits from the novels, game and other canon sources woven back together into something that makes sense. Nobbel does an excellent job of deep diving into specific segments of lore, but what I was craving was an overview to understand how all of these disparate pieces are supposed to fit together… or at least a narrative that weaves them into something that makes sense. I think there exists a need for both types of content and I am happy to see that this channel is approaching it from a primer standpoint.

When we get to the Wrath of the Lich King, I think is where lore starts to become extremely cogent given that Shadowlands in essence feels a bit like a return to the themes of this expansion. Legion felt in many ways to be a return to the themes of Burning Crusade, so it makes sense hat we would have an expansion that attempts to continue the story forward from Wrath as well. Most of this lore I was already familiar with because I was actively raiding during this time and also I think in Wrath the way the stories were presented did a significant better job of pieces together the bits into a cohesive narrative. That said there were still a good number of things that I learned along the way and the video was well worth a watch.

With Cataclysm we reach the end of this journey so far. This video came out on September 19th, and I am certain that the creation of these requires a significant amount of time. The Pre-WC3 Lore video came out a year ago, Warcraft 3 9 months ago, Classic WoW 4 months ago, and then it seems like things have accelerated considerably with BC, Wrath and Cata coming out roughly a month apart. I would love to see a new video each month, but that still seems like an awful lot of work considering how much sifting through storyline it has to take and then the creation of the really cool Hearthstone style assets. It did remind me however that there were absolutely bits of story that I used to love about this game, and that while time and layers of story on top of it have muddied the water, the core is still enjoyable.

Even though the cosmology of this World of Warcraft has shifted and changed over time, I find it terribly interesting to at least mentally revisit the stories from its past. I think this video series does an amazing job of simplifying things enough to make it all work together. I think this is in essence what Blizzard has been trying to do over the last few expansions, is meld everything that came before with everything that is happening currently and attempt to lay out the cards in a manner that makes sense. All of that said I think these videos do a better job of presenting the core thrust of these expansions, and while there are hundreds of important side bits that blur our perspectives I greatly appreciate the way these present backstory at the moment it is important rather than trying to lay everything out in a strict chronology. I highly suggest you check it out and I greatly applaud someone who can make the nonsense that was the comic book series blend cleanly into the timeline. The entire playlist of six videos is just shy of two hours, and I personally consider that to be time well spent.

Microsoft Aquisition of Zenimax Thoughts

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It has been a few days and the dust is starting to settle, but on 21st the game world was shocked by the announcement that Microsoft was going to acquire Zenimax the parent company of Bethesda Game Studios. What this practically means is that Microsoft will be the publisher of the Elder Scrolls series, Fallout series, Doom series, Quake series, Wolfenstein series and Dishonored series among others. Bethesda itself has gobbled up a number of studios in a bid to compete with other major second party studios like EA and Ubisoft. It is somewhat uncertain however how this is going to change the calculus of how business is done in Maryland.

The initial concern is of course that this is going to lock Bethesda titles to being exclusive to the Xbox, XCloud and Windows PC platforms. At least in the short term there are a number of games that have already signed contacts for PlayStation timed exclusivity and it seems like those are going through as planned. Immediately this is going to mean is that the Bethesda games will be making their way to XCloud and Game Pass which makes me wonder how exactly something like and Elder Scrolls Online will work in this world. The truth is I am optimistic about this decision because I can’t necessarily say that it has been bad for other studios that have become acquired.

I’m a big fan of the State of Decay series and Undead Labs and for the most part what acquisition has brought is a seeming stability. There are a lot of names that I see associated with that company still all these years later that I talked to in person at Pax South. They’ve become a company with a single franchise unfortunately, but they have done a good job of supporting State of Decay and its sequel without having to load it up with heinous microtransactions and are prepped to bring the third installment to the Xbox Series Whatever. Admittedly they started off as a company on Xbox Live Arcade on the 360 and for the most part have always supported Xbox and Windows PC so it wasn’t likely much of a transition to move to being a first party studio.

Another studio that got gobbled up is Double Fine a studio with a notoriously independent streak. Tim Shafer has talked candidly about this quite a bit and for them it was largely a move for stability once again. Wildly paraphrasing, he has talked about in the past how tight the independent development cycle is and how rough the finances have been and Microsoft represented a huge font of available cash. You can’t acquire a studio like Double Fine without a full realization of just how quirky they are and how unique the products that they make are, so I would like to think that Microsoft is more or less just going to allow them to continue doing their thing.

Microsoft has been on this acquisition spree, gobbling up game studios and then seemingly letting them do their thing. A prime example is the acquisition of Mojang studios and with it Minecraft which brought a massive rewrite of the game that it desperately needed. However this new version doesn’t support the modding capabilities that the original Java client did, but they have seemingly continued supporting the old kludgy mess along with the new hotness. As far as I can tell the only thing they have done is bring a sort of regularity to the update cycle and the churning out of new features. The clients for “rival” consoles have languished a bit but they are trying to join them all together under a shared Bedrock edition. Basically it has not meant the end of Minecraft and I don’t think this acquisition will really change much for the day to day business of making the next generation of Bethesda titles.

This acquisition made sense for Microsoft for a lot of reasons. I have talked about this generation being a battle of business models. Microsoft is going hard on the game pass model and the recent deal with EA Play bringing it to the platform only underlines this point. Game Pass is massive for the players and I went on a whole twitter thread about this the other day. I use the hell out of it to try new things out, and it still floors me that games are available on day one to download and even pre-load ahead of time. Star Wars Squadrons is a huge game that is coming out soon, and I am probably going to wait to play it through the Game Pass because me and flight sim type games don’t often get along. It gives me the opportunity to test something out before I commit to it, which I find myself doing a lot more.

This generation really seems to be defined by Microsoft who are leaning hard into platform as a service with a reoccurring monthly/yearly subscription that unlocks access to a significantly library of games. Sony on the other hand is for the most part pushing a single platform with their own exclusives and the key decision being made is if you go digital or disc with those purchases. Xbox as a platform seems not to care what system you are playing the games on and appears to be supporting console, pc and mobile via xcloud equally well. It is really that last offering that I would love to see them flesh out some more with the addition of clients for other platforms like PC, Mac, and maybe even some consoles like the Nintendo Switch. If I could play my Xbox library on the Switch I would be so freaking into that.

What I wonder however is if all of the Intellectual property that is being gained in the form of Bethesda games is just icing on the cake. Last year at E3 Bethesda introduced that they were working on a new technology called Orion that had the ambiguous goal of making games run better on streaming platforms. The tests that were shown were all involving XCloud and Doom 2016, but the results were supposedly phenomenal. It makes me wonder if this acquisition was at least in part a way to lock down this tech and make it exclusive to Xcloud and serve as a market differentiator between the streaming options. Microsoft is putting a lot of eggs in this basket and it would make sense that they want XCloud to have every advantage possible.

I’ve talked a lot about the potential positives here, but here comes the big negative. I don’t forsee a world where we do not see new Bethesda/Zenimax games coming out exclusively on the Xbox platform which includes Windows PC and mobile via Xcloud. I am not sure if this is going to be a timed exclusive or a true exclusive, but whatever the case something like that is going to happen and you aren’t likely to play Starfield or Elder Scrolls 6 on team blue. Sony has its own stable of first party exclusives and that is the reason why I will probably always own a Sony PlayStation. Does this Bethesda exclusivity negatively impact me? Not really because I will always favor the PC when given an option of how to play my games and Microsoft has shown that they are willing to treat console and PC as equals.

Does this suck a lot for players who are console only and own a PlayStation? Yes, yes it does. Do I think platform exclusivity is a good thing? Not really and I honestly find it pretty freaking annoying. However it has been the rule of the land since the Nintendo Entertainment System era, and I don’t really see that changing any time soon. Do I think Microsoft is finished acquiring companies? Probably not and I think both Sega and Capcom look like potential targets. Capcom is going to be a little awkward to acquire, but the controlling interest is only 22% which seems highly vulnerable to me. For the players however I think the things that Microsoft is offering at the price points they are offering it is deeply compelling. Game Pass is a phenomenal deal for the consumers, but I guess time will tell how good of a deal for the studios it ultimately is.