puzzle

Ginger, Jollibee, and Pragmata

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Good Morning, Folks. This is Ginger, and we became friends yesterday, while I spent an hour milling around at my mother-in-law’s house waiting for someone. I had an exceptionally busy day that involved travelling about two hours away to sell my RV… that had more or less been sitting and rotting in my mother-in-law’s yard for the last decade unserviced. That was a phase in our lives, largely dictated by my wife and wanting to spend time with her sister… but when said sister passed, we just never used it anymore. Given that my mother-in-law had passed along several suitors looking to buy the RV, I took the hint that she wanted to get it out of her yard. It needs four new tires, a new battery, two new skylights, a resealing of the roof, and probably some work on the slideouts… so I figured I should probably get what I can while I can. With everything else going on in my life, it was so inconsequential that I did not even think about it. I forced my mother-in-law to take a third of the money because she needs it more than I do, and I told her to call it “lot rent”. I would have given her all of the money, but I knew there was no way in hell she would have accepted that.

Last week, we had the Anaheim FanFest for Final Fantasy XIV, and with it came a whole slew of new announcements. The highlight of this, however, was the above cat race. I would love it if we could play as this race… but I sincerely doubt that will be a possibility. Just know that I love these critters and will be spending lots of time in their town. FanFest did what it needed to do and rekindled a spark in me for Final Fantasy XIV. Dawntrail was weird, because while I mostly enjoyed it at the time… the longer it has sat with me, the less I actually liked it. It felt too much like a beach episode in an Anime, because it was wholly disconnected from everything that we had cared about to that point. Maybe it is just that Endwalker stuck the landing so thoroughly that anything after that… was going to feel like a letdown. With the announcement of Evercold, though, we are returning to the FFXIV that I care about… nonsense surrounding the reflections, this time going to the world ravaged by Ice. I am super interested in this whole FFXIV meets Northrend vibe that it has, as well as the Shadow of Colossus thing going on with the Kaiju-sized Automatons roaming around.

Another highlight is seeing this Jollibee Lovely cosplay, which was amazing. I wish we had Jollibee restaurants around here because I have always wanted to try it. The closest ones are five hours away down in Texas. This means I will miss out on getting the charming “Eat Chicken” emote, unless I want to pay the scalpers on eBay who are selling off emote codes. I am really interested to see what the evolved form of the classes that I care about looks like, specifically Warrior. I am honestly kind of amped about the whole concept of only needing to care about item level for one class, but still being able to play all of the others. I always liked leveling all of the jobs, but hated the process of gearing them, so any streamlining of that is going to be phenomenal. The one thing that I did not hear that I wanted to hear badly… is that they were doing away with the way that glamouring currently works. I want a system that collects the appearance when an item drops and then allows me to get rid of it immediately so I can clear out my retainers.

I jumped back into the game and started working my way through the post-Dawntrail content. I have to say it doesn’t really land super well yet, mostly because I did not love the place where the expansion left off. I am hoping that given enough time, I will start to vibe with the content again. One of the things that shocked me, though, was how fast the muscle memory came back. I have not tanked anything since 2024, and after the very first pull in the first dungeon, I was immediately going through the rotations like I knew what I was doing. I guess once those mental pathways have been burned in thoroughly after over a decade of playing the game… they are stuck that way forever. This is going to be something that I poke at over the coming weeks and months because it is not like I am in a massive rush to finish things up, given that we have until January. I might, however, join in the shenanigans on Thursday nights as folks chase moogle tomes.

I’ve also started playing Pragmata, and my lord this is a charming game. Imagine Brock Sampson from Venture Bros… having to keep track of a very precocious child that is always getting into trouble. Essentially, it is the best Resident Evil game I have ever played… if you replaced the zombies with robots. I say that mostly because it is a game about managing resources. You are given very limited quantities of things that hit hard and can take out things quickly, and this is paired with a hacking mechanic that requires you to really think your way through combat encounters. Over time, you get tools to speed this up in the form of an overload that buys you some time to deal with the robots individually, and another mechanic eventually that allows you to autohack things, but this is less efficient than manually hacking. Before long, you are able to chain attacks on every single robot in the vicinity and effectively take them all down at once.

What makes the game so damned charming through is the whole father/daughter relationship that develops between Hugh and “Diana”. Every so often, Diana even draws you pictures of your adventures. In your conversations, there are various things that are said that Diana takes note of. Like one of the first things you teach her is that high fives mean you did a good job, and then from that point forward… she wants high fives after everything. There is also this whole side mission of collecting what are effectively STL files to reprint objects from Earth so that she can learn about them. She is a completely blank slate when you first find her, and through your interactions, she grows and becomes a way more potent teammate as you take down the constant cavalcade of bots.

There are a lot of hilarious moments. Take, for example, the way that Diana learns knowledge by biting down on what are effectively giant SD Cards. There is another thing that regularly happens where, during hacking sequences, Diana will scream a sequence of zeros and ones at the boss. It is a game that does not take itself terribly seriously, but is also quite a bit of fun to play. I think I am probably about halfway through the game, or at least based on the map shown in the game, I am halfway through the known destinations. There is a lot of extra exploration that opens up once you have cleared an area, and at some point, I want to go sweep some of the zone that I have already been through, looking for more collectables and STL files to print stuff for my base. Unfortunately, I am probably going to be putting this game to bed for a few weeks, because I think it will require too much dexterity, and I am going into another chemotherapy week.

With that… I have no clue what my posting schedule is going to look like over the next few days. Round Two was way worse than Round One… and tomorrow I start Round Three of Eight. I am HOPING that things don’t keep scaling as they did between the first two rounds. I know that I am also going to start getting Iron Infusions with every round of Chemo, which should, in theory, slowly improve the anemia. I just know that by Friday of the coming week, I am going to be dead to the world, and the worst days will be Saturday and Sunday…. and slowly I will begin to climb out of that hole next week. I did everything I needed to do to batten down the hatches for another week of lethargy, and I am running out at lunch today to pick up some fresh goods for the coming week. I guess I am saying… I will see you when I see you.

Advanced Spellcraft

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I’ve talked about quite a few things that I experienced at Pax South, and this mornings post is going to do some more of the same.  I feel like this year more than others I walked away with a treasure trove of things I wanted to talk about.  I guess in theory it is because I approached the convention significantly differently than I have in past years.  In the past I largely only stood in line to play the games that immediately seemed to be in my wheelhouse, and as a result I am sure I robbed myself of a whole slew of interesting things.  The game I want to talk about this morning is a prime example of not being able to rely on our instincts and tastes.  If you have read my blog for any length of time you will know that I do not handle “finger wigglers” that well… or to clarify my own personal slang…  spell casters.  So when I walked past a booth demonstrating a game where the main character is slinging spells left and right, my first instinct is to keep moving.  However as a group we stopped and listened to the intricate tale that CEO Louis-Félix Cauchon had to weave.  Admittedly what make this game so interesting is just how detailed the spell system is.  We got to watch a twenty minute demo covering nothing but how the spell system works, before even getting into the awesome pedigree of the storytelling.

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Functionally your character has four spells, which in itself doesn’t seem like a lot.  However each spell can be modified with what I have been generically calling “mutators” to change the way it responds.  So you might have a spell that at face value is a small point blank spark, however by equipping a a behavior you can make it fire out like a fireball…  or by equipping an augment you can make it veer to the right after firing it.  If you suddenly decide that you don’t want to throw fireballs… but instead iceballs, you can simply go in and change the base element of the attack.  Over the course of this demo of the system we got to see personal shields turn into charge attacks, and glorious cascades of rock from the ceiling in place of a traditional blizzard spell.  Now you might ask yourself why on each you would need this level of detail for a spell system apart from the simple “wouldn’t it be cool” aspect.  Functionally the magic not only serves as a weapon, but also as a complex puzzle system.  So there might be switches that you cannot reach unless you modify your fireball to arc in a certain way in order to hit the trigger.  The spellbook also allows you to save off several different configurations of a spell, and in the final version you will be able to give them unique names allowing you to quickly recognize which version of a given spell is your avalanche and which is your frost barrier.  The only immediate limit to building insane combination spells is your imagination, and of course your mana bar.  Each trait that you give a spell increases its cost, and while it was described that this matters less and less as you go through the game… it does limit your early tinkering.  Additionally as you play through the game you find modifiers along the way, meaning your palette of abilities starts small and grows as you progress.

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Up to this point we have literally just talked about the technical spell casting system, which in itself is a pretty amazing game.  On top of this however they have added what is sure to be a pretty great story.  Ed Greenwood of Forgotten Realms fame has penned the story for this game about epic spellcasters, which only makes sense given that he gave us the character of Elminster.  Functionally I heard the game described as Harry Potter meets Zelda and that seems fitting, with a huge alteration in that there seems to be a lot more physical puzzle solving with your spells.  I find it so bizarre though that I am looking forward to the release of a game about magic users, and that includes absolutely zero armor clad characters for me to bash baddies in the head with.  At face value this game is traditionally far out of my wheelhouse, but it was also quite possibly the freshest feeling game concept I saw on the Pax floor.  We’ve done so much for martial combat and making it feel interesting and nuanced, but have done so little to bring that same level of nuance to weaving complex spells.  Most games give us the option of push button throw fireball, or push button create bubble…  but this is the first that I have seen that lets you take that bubble and then project it outwards or trigger another spell after the bubble casts.  I have this feeling that in many ways it will have an almost metroidvania feel in that each time you unlock a new ability to give you spells it is also going to open up new ways to solve puzzles and allow you to move deeper into the content.

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The game right now is targetted for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One and does not have a firm launch date… but we heard March or April mentioned which I largely translated into a “Spring” launch window that might be plus or minus a month.  They are doing something extremely interesting to get us into the world ahead of the launch by releasing a comic that updates Tuesdays and  Thursdays and explains the world and setting.  I love it when I experience a game like this, not necessarily because “woo spellcasters” or anything of the sort, but because this is clearly the love child of a bunch of folks who care deeply about it.  Talking to Louis-Félix Cauchon within second it was clear to see just how passionate he was about this game, and the work and imagination that went into creating it.  That in truth is what makes the convention experience special.  You get to meet the creators face to face and see just how much they love what they are doing.  In many ways it feels like Pax South recharges the spark inside of me each year, and gives me fuel to keep going throughout the year.  We spend so much time on the negatives, the little details that bother us about this game or that.  However seeing a game like Mages of Mystralia shows me instantly that there very much still is magic out there…  pun only slightly intended.  I would definitely add this to your watch list and check it out when it ultimately releases.  I find it so bizarre that of all of the games I have experienced, this one ranks insanely high on the list of “wish I had early access” titles, if for no reason other than to play with the spell crafting system.  This is the first release from Borealys Games, but if they can pour this much passion into every project they are going to be a studio we see lots of amazing things from in the future.

Empty Island

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This is one of those days where Bel is struggling to exist in the world.  As a result I am not exactly sure how cogent of a post you are going to get out of me.  In theory I went to bed early last night, but in practice that does not seem to have actually helped.  In fact this morning I feel more sluggish than I have in a long time.  So I wobbled through the house, fixed a cup of coffee… and then immediately fell into an internet hole as my brain tried to do literally anything it could do to keep from writing a post this morning.  As a result it is like 30 minutes past the normal time I sit down and begin writing, and I am still finding I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to talk about.  Last night I did two things… Invasion and Witness.  I feel like I have talked about the Invasion to an extremely length, and there isn’t really much there to discuss… especially since it goes away in a very few days.  There are issues right now with players leaving after phase 2, in order to reset the event back to phase 1.  This is making phase 3 a little hellish, but all in all it still provides a silly amount of experience, and I am still attempting to get the Horde Warlock up as far as I can make it before the event runs out.  I also have the AggroChat show devoted to The Witness this week, so I am playing it in spurts as well.  I am not really sure what exactly I can say about it other than that.

The game is extremely beautiful, and I like the world it is set in.  Much like Overwatch however I just wish it was a different game.  Ultimately I went into this game expecting Myst, and it is definitely not that.  I am realizing that the reason why I enjoyed those games is that the puzzles felt like I was uncovering a story.  In Myst you were essentially chasing Atrus and unraveling what happened to the different ages and what exactly was happening with Sirrus and Achenar.  In 7th Guest and 11th Hour you were solving mysteries and the puzzles lead to giving you clues about what was going on in both of those games.  Witness on the other hand seems to just be puzzles for the sake of being puzzles, and the truth is after solving thirty five or so last night… I am already bored with it.  The biggest problem is…  what I thought would be some story payoff for the puzzle solving just turned out to reward me with a super pretentious video of James Burke from 1978.  I guess that is the problem I am having with this game… it exists to be itself.  There just doesn’t seem to be a point, or at least any glimmer of a point has yet to reveal itself.  Which is I guess a bit sad given how generally good the game is at teaching you how it wants you to solve the puzzles.  There is just enough friction there to make the moment it all clicks to be enjoyable…  but it also doesn’t feel like it is leading to anything.

The other problem I am having is that the game seems to want me to visit locations in a certain order, but does nothing to actually restrict my movement.  As a result I wound up at a puzzle long before I was supposed to be there.  There were a series of screens designed to teach me the lessons I needed to know to unlock said puzzle, but I didn’t find them until I had already completed the puzzle that used those elements.  So I feel like this is a game where my general desire to get off of the main path… is going to cause me a significant amount of trouble.  Right now I am not a huge fan, but I am going to continue playing to see if that changes.