Fallout 76, Bethesda’s new MMO game, has its issues, but I’m greatly enjoying exploring this post-apocalyptic wasteland. Fallout 76 hits many of the right notes for me. The engine and gameplay are familiar (since I put many hours into Fallout 4, a game with many more flaws than Fallout 76 IMO). Plus, Fallout 76 brings enough new things to the table to entertain me, with interesting ways in which the game can be expanded in the future.
I’ve pulled together some of my thoughts below. This is not really a review. I can say that if you got any enjoyment out of Fallout 4, you’ll probably like Fallout 76. I also encourage fans of open worlds that encourage you to make your own way and create your own stories to give the game a try.
Strangely, this wrecked world is beautiful
Setting the game in rural West Virginia allowed the developers to break from regular Fallout convention and give us a world where the clichés of post-apocalypse design (ruined buildings, green radioactive clouds, broken concrete, piles of trash, etc.) are augmented by verdant nature and intact structures. In the game’s lore, WV escaped much of the nuclear fallout, so it still possesses lush forests and recognizable settlements. This is a nice break from the rather monotonous gray palette of Fallout 4 and its setting of wrecked urban Boston. There’s enough rusting metal in Fallout 76 to still give the impression of destruction and decay, but it’s possible to find beautiful places the bombs never touched.
The zones of the world are distinctive and very well done. Even the decimated areas hold some beauty. Generally, environmental effects and audio are utilized well. “The Forest” is dense with nature that appears familiar, but hides much. “The Mire”, on the other hand, contains nature warped by nuclear mutation, and is an atmospheric, shadowy land where footfalls are muffled, darkness contains dangerous creatures, and you can barely see several feet in front of you. The designers achieved something special in this area. The “Ash Heap” is a blackened zone of ecological disaster where you can feel the poisoned air and heat. Easy to miss (and fall into) gullies zigzag through the “Cranberry Bog”, evoking the trenches of WWI in a place where you fight waves of mutated enemies. The map is large, and feels large. For someone like me who loves to just wander and explore, it is a interesting game world to adventure in.
The design helps you create your own stories
Some players balked at Bethesda’s decision not to include any human NPC’s in Fallout 76. In most games, human NPC’s are the quest givers and facilitators, often standing around in place ready to drop some exposition or give a reward for player assistance. Sometimes they may have a scripted life that allows them to move between locations depending on time of day, work schedule, etc. In Fallout 76, however, when you emerge from the vault, every other human is dead. The game encourages you to try and figure out what went wrong (besides the nuclear holocaust). That is the mystery at the heart of the game’s main plot (such as it is).
Since the designers encourage players to explore at their own pace and in any direction (which I love), they have used the buildings, props, and landscape to offer hints of narratives. While wandering out in the wilderness, I might come across a staged scene. For example, while wandering through the forest I found a few walls, a podium, and chairs in a clearing. Every skeleton near the chairs clutched a bottle, and the walls were covered with strange, mystical symbols. I could find no documentation here, but this place had all the narrative trappings of a doomsday cult, a mini-Jonestown out in the middle of the woods that reacted to nuclear annihilation by choosing suicide.
As with everything in this world, I was too late. The action and the stories had already occurred by the time I arrived. All I could see were echos for me to interpret. (As a side note, as an archaeologist, this is what I’m trained to do so I love this aspect of Fallout 76.) The game has many examples of this sort of thing- suggestions of narrative- which makes exploring the world a treat.
Depth is there for players (like me) who enjoy it
Sometimes, game design is taken to an absurd level to compensate for not having human NPC’s to provide exposition and direction. There’s a heavy reliance upon “notes left behind” that you can find, including recorded messages. More than once, a computer who has become sentient functions as a quest-giving NPC. A core quest involves multiple silly examples of “if you’re hearing this recording I made before I died, that means you accomplished the task I gave you in my last recording- good job!- and now here’s your next step” design cliché. The developers of Fallout 76 did not implement grand redesigns when faced with the reality of “no human NPCs”, but rather doubled down on standard systems already used to deliver directions, exposition, and narrative thrust to games like this.
But the thing is, I enjoy experiencing those systems, even if I can recognize their (sometimes over-) use. I like reading all the backstories present on working terminals and left behind as “ephemeral” notes and recordings. It helps that for the most part the voice-acting is top notch. Sometimes the emotion of a NPC on a recording I discover is a bit too-real, especially when they’re narrating their imminent death. I’m reminded that my character is going through a world filled with recent death and pain. I’d much rather read the diary of someone I’ll never meet than charge out and try and kill more deathclaws for fat loot because in games I’m more drawn to the narrative. Action has its place in a game like this, but the nicer moments for me involve quietly learning backstory that evokes an emotion.
The absence of human NPC’s also, conveniently, solves one of the biggest missteps of Fallout 4: playing factions off each other. The faction system in Fallout 4 was a core component of its narrative, but in practice was poorly implemented, unrealistic, and silly. Basically (no spoilers), the endgame of Fallout 4 involved choosing one of a handful of factions to champion, a decision that would please, anger, or destroy numerous other factions. However, the choices were unrealistic and artificial, the factions looked cartoonish in their morality, and the decisions closed off quest avenues that seemed arbitrary. Even further use of one specific companion became impossible if the player chose to champion one of the factions, without warning or logic. There are factions in Fallout 76 (including some recognizable from earlier Fallout games), but they are not at odds. The player is also not in a clichéd savior narrative, tasked with choosing between allies. In fact, the overdone and overwrought “you are the chosen one” story structure is jettisoned for a welcome emphasis on the player belonging to the Vault 76 collective. I’m not destined to save the wasteland, merely survive in it.
It doesn’t feel like a typical MMO, and that’s okay
I suspect a lot of the negativity surrounding Fallout 76 is how it handles player vs. player combat (PVP) and other multiplayer aspects. Bethesda did not have deep multiplayer tools implemented in the game from the start, but I expect some of them to be deployed in the near future.
Almost every MMO and MMORPG I’ve ever played and enjoyed (Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, Elder Scrolls Online, Asheron’s Call), I played solo. I never spoke to anyone. Other players existed in the world, but apart from participating alongside them in anonymous group events, I forged my own path. Sometimes content was blocked because I could not do it on my own (it’s been 6 years and I’ve still not completed the final Guild Wars 2 quest because it can’t be done solo). I generally ignored “dungeon” content that forced grouping. I had no interest in trying to measure myself against other players in combat (and have always viewed PVP suspiciously because I suspect it’s has toxic roots and attracts noxious gameplay).
In MMO’s I do not seek to pair with random strangers for a multi-player experience. I learned long ago that, to paraphrase Sartre, the worst part of an MMO game is other people. A few times, I’ve been on the receiving end of random player kindness. A passing player has stopped to revive me if I go down in a fight. I even once was given a great weapon for free by someone I didn’t know before they disappeared into the ether. But the negative experiences, as in real life, always wreck the gaming experience, and the systems present in most MMO games often facilitate the negative. They provide a stage for the worst actors to perform.
Because Bethesda inexplicably shipped Fallout 76 without a push-to-talk button and voice chat defaulted to “on”, my first steps into the game were accompanied by some random guy’s racist and anti-gay screed that I could hear at full volume as I created my character. Many people, especially those with no skin on the line, might shrug and say, weakly, that such talk is to be expected online. I reject that I must accept a threat to my own humanity just so I can play a game. I immediately opened the settings menu and turned off all voice chat. I’ve reached level 65 now without turning it back on (although push-to-talk has now been implemented in the game).
The PVP mechanics of Fallout 76 mostly thwart the trolls (something I also think has produced critical pushback of the game). You can’t gank and “one-shot” another player, and PVP combat has to be mutually agreed upon. For me, this works just fine. I even have “pacifist mode” turned on so in the heat of public group events, there’s no issue if I happen to accidentally hit another player while I’m aiming at a monster. Playing solo allows me to experience the wasteland at my speed and become self-sufficient.
I can live with the game’s group content
I find the group events in Fallout 76 a mixed bag. They are similar to the group events in games like Guild Wars 2. They occur randomly (although in Fallout 76 they seem to heavily rely on a player entering an area to trigger, which can make fast travel a bit annoying). Anyone can join in and receive a reward. Many can be done solo at high level, although there seems to be less scaling of difficulty based on number of participants as in Guild Wars 2. Even the end-game events like the launching of nuclear missiles at parts of the map are technically well executed and impressive, if morally suspect as a game mechanic.
I appreciate the anonymous nature of these group events. They’re not dungeon runs with strangers where party roles must be adhered to and strategies must be employed (usually impossible to learn before hand and where inexperience is rarely tolerated). They are dip-in, dip-out events. I’ve only had one experience in Fallout 76 so far where I joined in an event and had a bad experience. Two clearly partnered players were already present in the designated area and tried to intimidate me by pushing against and standing close to my character, presumably only to harass since the event’s rewards would be individually distributed. Most times, other players simply do their own thing, sometimes giving a “thumbs up” emote after we successfully complete the event. That’s a pleasant default level of interaction.
I can (mostly) ignore the survival mechanic
I’m not a fan of survival mechanics in games, where you have to keep topping up food and water. It’s supposed to be a stab at realism (in a game where you fight 9-foot-tall mutant crustaceans), but it’s really just a game system designed to force resource use and impose artificial limits. It’s annoying when I have to pause in whatever quest or activity I’m doing to go forage for berries and vegetables, and I would much prefer a version of the game without survival mechanics (neither Fallout 3 or 4 had this mechanic, although mods could add it). I’m willing to tolerate it because thematically it fits the game. We are meant to be scavenging for resources, even if I always find the implementation of this system annoying. Plus, we have the ability to grow limited crops at our base which can be used in an emergency. I can live with it.
I’m happy enough with character creation
I’ve written before how important flexible and deep character creation is to me. Mercifully, I can craft a character in Fallout 76 the way I want free of a pre-set narrative. I no longer have to endure (and care about) a protagonist searching for his dad or his son, or mourning his wife. I have an ongoing story for my character in my head, which evolves as I play based on my actions and experiences alone. My avatar can come to the game world unencumbered by a narrative fashioned by Bethesda writers (who I suspect are nothing like me). I can be truly S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
I’m also keeping my fingers crossed that at some future date, Bethesda will allow modding in Fallout 76, which would open up further avenues of appearance customization.
These are some of the concrete ways I’m enjoying playing Fallout 76. No game is perfect, but I like where this game seems to be going. Time will tell. In the online games I’ve played, my best moments have come along when the game systems have given me freedom to play how I want. I currently see a lot of that freedom in Fallout 76, along with an engaging world.
Fallout 76 is a new online multiplayer game developed by Bethesda. It launches this month and I have taken part in a couple BETA testing events. Bethesda as a game company has had a mixed-to-negative history on inclusion and representation of gay characters in its games, particularly in the Fallout series. In the last iteration of the franchise, for example, all players were forced to play a straight character at the game’s start. They could then seek to “romance” a handful of same-gender NPC’s later in the game with no real insight, connection, or consequence to the larger plot.
Human NPC’s are mostly missing from Fallout76. Disaster befell all humans before the players arrive, emerging from nuclear bunkers. Corpses are scattered around the landscape, and messages (both written and recorded) survive, but the only moving humans in Fallout 76 are the other players. Romancing NPC’s, therefore, is not possible (and the cynic in me wondered if this could be one way for Bethesda to sidestep having to be “inclusive” with same-sex relationships at all).
Non-hetronormative expression is still hard to find in the game, but I did discover one small example embedded in a core systemic role that many players will encounter (if they are paying attention). In a quest designed to teach the player about the “mobile camp” system in the game, the player travels to an airport where, until recently, a small group of human survivors had created a base. If a player takes the time to investigate notes scattered around the area belonging to an NPC named Miguel Caldera, they can learn a bit about Miguel.
We first read on his computer terminal that he “met someone,” a fellow refugee in the post-apocalyptic setting. A second journal entry suggests there is a romance, because Miguel’s ever-present pet robot, Mr Fluffy, stands next to him all the time and is “really ruining my sex life right about now.”
When things begin to go badly at the base, Miguel plans to leave. He wants to go off into the woods with his special someone that he finally mentions by name: Garry.
A few notes the two lovers left to each other can be found around Miguel’s robot workshop. In one, Miguel calls him “My sweet Garry bean” and says he’s going up to his camp in the woods where he’s looking forward to relaxing in the “great outdoors,” adding, “I love you, dear heart.” In another note, a to-do list, Miguel mentions he needs to buy Garry a gift “for his next visit.”
Garry returned to the camp but could not find Miguel. He left a note saying he was looking for him and signed it “Find me! I miss you!”
Unfortunately, this is Fallout and no stories end happily. We learn from a final entry on Miguel’s computer that while he was away at the camp, a of monster overran the base and killed Garry. Miguel buried his lover on a hill overlooking the base. Then, heartbroken, Miguel went back to his camp in the woods.
The players are eventually directed to find Miguel’s camp. And there they also find the body of Miguel Caldera, now watched over by the ever-present Mr. Fluffy.
It’s a sad story, and ultimately has no effect on the game at large, but the inclusion of Miguel and Garry’s doomed love affair is a nice addition to Fallout 76.
As a game, I thought Far Cry 5 got a lot of things right:
The sandboxy, open world is enjoyable and amusing
The physical setting is gorgeous and nicely rendered, with a good deal of hidden detail for those who like to investigate the game world deeply
The cult members, who make up the bulk of the disposable foes, mostly feel like a suitable challenge, and it feels good when you defeat them
Sometimes it’s an adrenaline-fueled adventure just getting from point A to waypoint B, especially in the early game when the highways are often no-go areas swarming with enemies and their reinforcements
As you help the resistance in fictional Hope County, liberating cult strongholds and turning them over to the everyday resistance fighters, there’s a nice sense of progression and the map changing, bit by bit, to favor your side
The companions, which Far Cry calls ‘specialists,’ are on the whole well thought-out with some very amusing dialogue
Even most of the side quests, when they’re not the vanilla ‘fetch this’ or ‘kill this’ kind, are fun to do with nice emotional rewards
Unfortunately, as with so many other games, the main narrative thrust of Far Cry 5 is a mess. It becomes muddled in order to shoehorn in (often regrettable) game mechanics. The story quickly becomes clichéd, even when it attempts to be self-referential, and ultimately collapses under the weight of its own cumbersome, artificial structure without any emotional payoff. Dan Hay, who worked on a previous game in the Far Cry series, acted as producer of this game with Drew Holmes as Head Writer.
I’ll unpack what I see as the narrative failures of its main story below. I will investigate and critique to hopefully train myself to be a better writer by recognizing the game’s narrative failures. I also provide some thoughts on how the game’s writer and producer could have avoided or fixed these problems. My analysis includes significant spoilers if you’ve not played and finished the game.
The Basic Plot and Gameplay of Far Cry 5
A doomsday cult, led by a preacher named Joseph Seed, has taken over a county in rural Montana. They’re preparing for an upcoming unspecified armageddon by kidnapping, murdering, brutalizing, pillaging, drugging, and terrorizing the locals, presumably to increase their numbers (although the goal is no much beyond “they’re evil psychopaths”). They speak in a lot Dominionist clichés with some Biblical verses thrown in, especially from the Book of Revelation.
Joseph has three siblings (although the sister is not really related to him) who each control a third of the game map. John is a psychotic televangelist type who runs his own torture dungeon. Faith manufactures a powerful hallucinogenic drug called “Bliss” which she uses to create mindless living zombies she terms “Angels.” Jacob is an ex-soldier raising a fanatical army through abuse, psychology, and a lot of coded mens’ rights speeches about rejecting “soft” modernity and returning to a more pure, primal state.
The player takes the role of an unnamed deputy (also called “rookie”) who travels to Hope County with a federal marshal to arrest Joseph. Things go wrong and everyone in the arresting party is captured and imprisoned by one of the Seed siblings. The player character is rescued at the last minute (one of many such rescues) by a doomsday prepper veteran named Dutch who takes the player character back to his bunker. Dutch starts the player character on a journey to lead the resistance against the cult.
The player is then turned loose on the map and can travel anywhere (except back to Joseph Seed’s compound). Most game activities involve attacking the cult, often by destroying or capturing their resources or eliminating their regional strongholds. Every defeat the player deals to the cult strengthens the local resistance, made up of newly militant civilians, and draws the attention and ire of the three Seed siblings (depending on the region affected).
The meta-narrative of the game encourages the player to escalate attacks in a single region at a time, forcing a show-down with each sibling culminating in the sibling’s defeat and liberation of the region from the cult’s influence. Once John, Faith, and Jacob are all killed, the player can finally confront Joseph and end the game.
Problem: Capture and Re-Capture
Each Seed sibling reacts directly to the escalating actions of the player character at least three times (Faith is more attentive). The player triggers these interactions by reducing the influence of the cult in the regions.
Almost every single interaction with the siblings requires the game to concoct scenarios involving the capture and disabling of the player character. The old ‘villain captures the hero’ cliché is hugely overused, robbing the player of autonomy and control simply to allow cut-scenes where the villains can gloat and provide exposition in person. It’s also an incredibly lazy writing tool used to manufacture a reason to repeatedly get the player and villain in the same locale. On my play through, the irresistible, immersion breaking, borderline ‘magical’ ways the story achieves these captures also resulted in rolled eyes far more often than dramatic tension.
In John’s region, the player character is captured three times by ‘magical Bliss projectiles’ that render the player helpless so they can be captured and taken away to be brutalized by John in three different cut scenes. After the first, the player is rescued by the Resistance. After the second, the bound player is able to escape (through sheer luck), find a weapon, and fight their way out of captivity. After the third, the quick-thinking of an NPC and a cut-scene attack leads to another round of combat and a chase resulting in John’s death.
The many times Faith intervenes to harangue the player character over their actions, all she has to do is giggle, say “Welcome to the Bliss,” blow a Bliss kiss, and the player is transported away from the map to a magical dreamscape. Most of the time in static cut-scenes, the player can only listen to Faith yammer on. The few times control returns to the player, the player is only allowed to perform a specific action to return to the map. Twice this involves rescuing another captured NPC, and once it involves watching the murder of an NPC while being unable to prevent it. None of this involves any player choice or agency, and only serves to violently slam on the breaks in a game when we’ve been up to that point kinetically running around shooting cultists and blowing things up. Each time I put down the controller, sat back, and simply waited for Faith to shut up.
Jacob is perhaps the most remote villain, mainly barking orders during the player’s brief time with him. His encounters are also forced through more unavoidable ‘magical Bliss projectiles’ shot at the player once they accomplish enough prerequisites. Military-themed indoctrination and brainwashing occurs, although not to the extent that the player is unable to return to the main world of the game and pick up where they left off before they were whisked off to Jacob’s château by unseen hands. After the first encounter, Jacob merely has to play a song to render the player ‘captured’ again and subject them to more lukewarm brainwashing. Out of the three siblings, Jacob is the only one that seems to have a goal in mind: to get the player to kill an important NPC. The player can in no way can resist this killing, rendering any drama or regret at the action moot since it’s merely another unavoidable beat in the script. (In my playthrough, I had barely met the NPC before I killed him under Jacob’s nefarious influence, so the intended emotional stakes were even less relevant.)
In all of this capturing and re-capturing, there’s no clear reason why the player character is not simply killed when they are incapacitated by the villains (the old Bond Villain Cliché). Joseph has some vague lines suggesting the player is special and that their coming was “foretold,” and by joining the cult the player character can atone for their sins, but since pursuing this option this would mean not actually playing the game as designed (liberating regions, killing the siblings, etc.), it is not a meaningful course open to the player.
So instead, the player watches as their character is captured, and recaptured, and captured again, placed in danger where there is no moral danger (Joseph does not want them killed), without the option to refuse or accept whatever salvation is on offer. It’s simply a “wait until the cut-scene is over” situation, followed by a convenient scenario that sometimes necessitates a “shoot-em-up” escape.
In the end, the main quest narrative of the game over-relies on this capture/interrogate/lucky escape narrative cliché to the point where every single encounter with the Seed siblings uses it simply to force an encounter. And more often than not, the encounter that results is simply passive and tangentially related to the actual business of playing the game.
What could have solved this problem:
Limit the number of capture/escape scenarios so they did not occur at every interaction with the siblings
Really—just don’t use capture/escape scenarios as they’re incredibly lazy clichés and also often immersion-breaking
Find other ways to get the player character and the villains into the same location
Don’t remove player control simply to advance the plot
Don’t tease player options (“You can be saved.” “You can reject a leap of faith.”) where there are no options
Problem: The Bunkers
Each Seed sibling has a bunker fashioned out of a nuclear missile silo (although Faith’s is also possibly in the Bliss dreamworld, it’s unclear). Once the player kills a sibling, they must then infiltrate these sanctuaries, rescue prisoners, and destroy the bunker while fighting against random cult soldiers (who don’t run away even when the bunker is collapsing around them). This is the final step toward liberating a region.
It was an odd narrative choice to ultimately divorce the bunkers from the siblings since all three are already dead by the time the player breaks in. This renders the bunkers simply obstacle courses full of anonymous, disposable baddies.
The bunker missions all also strike the same narrative beat: First the player frees hostages (in John’s bunker it’s random locals, in Faith’s bunker it’s the Sheriff who was somehow captured off-screen, and in Jacob’s bunker it’s a brainwashed deputy). Then the player winds their way through a maze of rooms, shooting cultists, while the place collapses around them (but not enough to harm the player, another action-movie cliché). There’s little variety and all three bunker sequences seem repetitive in structure and intent. With the villains missing, they feel anti-climatic, rendering the final fight in each region not with the sibling that’s been menacing the player during entire game, but with a group of interchangeable cult drones.
What could have solved this problem:
Flip the order of bunker liberation and the final combat with each sibling
Remove the same infiltrate/fight/destroy/“escape while place falls apart” trajectory of each bunker narrative
Give each sibling something other than a bunker as a symbol of their power in their region
Problem: The Bliss
The Bliss is supposedly a powerful hallucinogenic drug manufactured from white flowers and brewed by the cult. Nebulously defined and used, it becomes the mechanism for whenever the game narrative wants to remove control from the player, which the game does quite often.
While out in the wild in Faith’s region, animals and enemies will suddenly appear in a puff of green smoke, often morphing into another hostile entity. There’s no explanation for this other than “it’s the Bliss,” although attacks from Bliss-spawned enemies hurt just as much from normal enemies in gameplay mechanics.
The Bliss lacks any limitations to its power. It’s like a magic system in a fantasy novel that is not very well thought out, with absolutely no consequence for the bad characters that rely on it. It also happens to work exactly as the narrative needs rather than from any external sense of logic, structure, or method. Its magical properties sit at odds with the realistic, albeit satirical, world of Hope County. Bliss becomes merely a lazy crutch to move the main plot forward, especially in Faith’s region.
What could have solved this problem:
Turn “Bliss” into something realistic, or at least give it concrete parameters that fit within the world of the game
Problem: Faith Seed as a Villain
Faith’s backstory is buried in the texts scattered around Hope County, inside her own dialogue, and within the spoken musings of random NPC’s. It suggests Faith is not her real name, and that she is merely the latest in a line of women to occupy her position as the female sibling in this cult. But she’s also often referred to as untrustworthy and a liar, casting doubt on whatever the player can glean from her words. Ultimately none of this really has any bearing on her role in the game as the main antagonist of a hostile region who must be defeated. At no point can the player utilize anything they learn about Faith. In order for the game to progress, she must be overcome and killed.
Every singular encounter with Faith begins with a flirty giggle and blown Bliss kiss toward the player. She often grasps the player’s hand and pulls them through her Bliss dreamscape world. Her white dress and expression of seductive purity is meant to contrast with a scarlet backstory that teases references to sexual assault. In short, Faith seems written to appeal to a certain straight male gaze. She is embodied in a manner unlike any male antagonist. She is always framed in soft focus and allowed to seductively touch the player character in every encounter (John only touches the player character once, to attempt a drowning, and Jacob not at all).
I at first thought, or hoped, she might represent a critique of how sexualized purity is used within the Dominionist community (Purity balls, etc.), or the interchangeability of women in real-world examples of Christian cults. This would at least suggest something was at work with Faith other than straight male fantasy, but I soon found absolutely nothing there except her direct role as seductive temptress in a game written by straight males.
Her final boss battle is ridiculously reductive. Faith suddenly becomes able to launch (easily avoidable) projectiles at the player character, who needs to only run around and keep shooting her, backed up by stockpiles of ammo that appear in her Bliss dreamworld for some reason. We’ve seen this artificial, repetitive mechanic a million times in games and it’s never satisfying, especially from a narrative point of view.
Also, in one of the final encounters with Faith, I don’t buy a Montana hick suddenly giving a lesson about the ancient Greek goddess Nemesis to make a point the dialogue writer wants to use as context for an unavoidable plot point.
What could have solved this problem:
Make Faith’s backstory (really the only significant backstory given to the three siblings) relevant to her role in the narrative
Allow the player to choose how they react to Faith (not every player is a straight male)
Make the final showdown with Faith something other than a cookie-cutter boss battle from a Nintendo game circa 1999
Problem: The Silent Protagonist
Following on from the problems with Faith Seed as a character is the problem of the character the player spends the most time with. A narrative choice was made to craft the player character as a blank slate. This is usually done in games (such as the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Dragon Age series) so the player can map onto the player character the personality they wish to play (within the framework of the game world).
Far Cry 5 conspicuously removes any ability to create a personality for the player character. Many NPC’s talk to the player character and comment about actions accomplished (usually attacks on the cult), but apart from three occasions all leading to the end of the game narrative, choice is never allowed. To play the game, the player must simply attack the cult through activities across the map and follow quest markers.
The player character therefore seems more like bland cipher which NPC’s are, inexplicably, drawn to compliment (if part of the resistance) or despise (if part of the cult). Playing the game becomes a carnival ride for a camera. Often the player character is literally strapped down, watching the narrative chug forward on its own path.
In my playthrough, my player character never interacted with John, Jacob, or especially Faith Seed in a way I would have chosen, but I had no option other than to watch passively as a cut-scene showed my character performing what the writer wanted me to do.
The head writer for the game is a straight male and his viewpoint creates the only allowed viewpoint inside the game. This is clearest in the game’s depiction of Faith Seed, but also colors every narrative strand in the game. Apart from one easily-missed note, gay people are entirely absent from this world. Players choosing to play a female protagonist report dissociative experiences going through the game’s narrative in a female body:
“In a scene in which your character is interrogated, their shirt is being ripped apart to expose (presumably) the chest. If you were to play a male character, the way the scene plays out would not be extraordinary. Playing a woman, this scene feels incredibely (sic) disjointed and out-of-place… You play a silent protagonist, but everytime my character grunts, screams or is visible I am reminded by this profound sense of dissonance that pervades my experience of playing Far Cry 5. It’s like my character doesn’t belong into the world she saves and influences so thoroughly. The way other characters interact with me, the way they look at me and the way they refer to me does not match the person I am playing as.”
The game fails to include gay people or adequately prepare for the experience of female player characters. The writer seems to have constructed a narrative and game with himself, and his outlook, as the only possible default. His choice to only allow the player to experience this singular narrative was, by definition, a political choice.
In Far Cry 5, I had no autonomy, and therefore at the end of the day, did not really care if my player character succeeded or failed. I neither knew him as an individual nor recognized him as a representation of myself.
What could have solved this problem:
Hire diverse writers able to conceive and write narrative views that are not their own, or simply wish fulfillment by proxy
Craft meaningful options into your narrative to personalize even a blank-slate protagonist
Problem: The Shallow Theme
Critique of the writing of Far Cry 5 generally falls into two main categories: thematic and structural. I’ve mainly focused on the latter, but should briefly address theme.
“On paper, the premise (of the game) sounds terrifying, something that could result in an unapologetic, bold portrait of American home-grown terror of modern times. A game that could look upon controversial subjects such as gun rights and the intersection of religion and violence with an unwavering, critical gaze… However, the problem with Far Cry 5 is that it doesn’t do the groundwork for the terror and paranoia it supposedly seeks to inspire.
“The game spends a large amount of time telling you that you should feel a certain way instead of actually trying to get you to feel that way… Instead of letting you see the means to which such groups trap people into their way of living, Far Cry 5 is content to rely on lazy tropes, like drugs being used as a way of mind control…
“The cult followers you fight in Far Cry 5 are functionally no different than the pirates you fight in 3 or the fascists you fight in 4. They either run at you screaming, firing blindly, or they stick to cover and shoot at you. They’ll insult you. They’ll say they’re giving their life for Joseph Seed, so on and so forth, the kind of barks you expect from all first-person shooters. You don’t really get to know any of these people or the cultural symptoms that made them the way they are. You’re just expected to believe what the game tells you: that these people, through one way or another, came to be a part of Seed’s cult and now they have to die. I understand that the genre requires you to see these people as targets more than characters, but given the deadly serious subject matter, that Far Cry 5 doesn’t bother to try and humanize the cultists, to try and make you understand why they’ve fallen under the sway of a madman, is a fatal flaw in the game’s attempts to create an unnerving, bleak world.
“Instead, Hope County is a strange, hollow playground. It’s a land where, one moment, I’m looking up at a dead man hanging from a billboard, his guts spilling into the street, and in another, I’m cutting off a bull’s testicles for some hick festival. Far Cry 5 wants to be wacky and fun, wants you to kick turkeys to death and ride ATVs off mountains while, (and) all in the same breath, point a finger at America’s decayed institutions and have some profound realization that never comes, because, again, the game hasn’t done the legwork…
“Far Cry 5 has no stance, has nothing substantial to say about cults, religion, politics, or the world at large. It’s simply a run-and-gun exercise through a poorly built nightmare world.”
I generally agree with Javy Gwaltney about the tonal disconnect between the serious issues the game wants to use as narrative instigators, motivations, and mechanics, and the real-world corporate need to produce a game with the tongue-in-cheek style of the series. It is perhaps a tension that was never going to succeed in a AAA game. This results in a story that plays with edgy themes, but only uses those themes as shortcuts to communicate shallow elements of the plot. As with the game’s lack of engagement with sexuality and gender expression, the decision to not engage with the political ramifications of its theme was a political choice.
Problem: Joseph Seed as a Villain
At first glance, Joseph Seed ticks a lot of villain boxes. He is clearly a religious psychopath who has scarred his own body. He speaks with a muted intensity, and his yellow glasses draw focus to his eyes which are often disturbingly trained on the player character (Greg Bryk, the actor who voices, and presumably did the motion capture for Joseph, deserves kudos for his portrayal). Joseph is clearly modeled on David Koresh of the Branch Davidians religious cult, and brings that nefarious, real-world baggage into the game for those who recognize the connection.
Unfortunately, Joseph is kept in the background for most of the game, only occasionally appearing in a passive cut-scene to recite a menacing soliloquy at the player, then disappearing back to his compound to wait until the player kills his siblings and liberates the three regions. His motivations are also not clear. He speaks often of hearing God’s commands, but this is in itself a vague incentive that the player is encouraged to disregard and disbelieve. And certainty the sheer brutality, violence, and suffering he is responsible for in Hope County is reason enough to wish him defeated.
When he is finally brought forward in the finale, he becomes only a bullet-sponge boss, zipping around the battlefield with the aid of Bliss until the player shoots him enough times to be brought down. No realistic reason is given why it takes so many bullets to do this. His hushed intensity is discarded in order to turn him into a maniac with an automatic weapon for the duration of the final combat. As with Faith Seed, narrative characterization is abandoned and the main instigator of the story’s conflict devolves into just another end-level obstacle.
As an aside, I also suspect the reason why Joseph is so often seen shirtless in the game is to unfortunately associate his male body with homophobia. In a similar way that Zack Snyder utilized the uncomfortable nudity and effeminacy of Xerxes in 300 (2006) to embody a barely-subliminal threat to a certain type of straight male viewer, Far Cry 5 repeatedly puts Joseph’s lithe, marked male body on display to make what it considers its default viewer uncomfortable.
What could have solved this problem:
Instead of making Joseph all powerful, show his weaknesses, or possibly how matters with the cult got out of hand and veered away from his intentions
Give his plans depth and his characterization nuance
Provide Joseph with likeable qualities so he is not such a cardboard cut-out baddie
The story may also have benefited from Joseph being the only villain, as currently he is judged alongside John, Faith, and Jacob and because he is only in the background for 90% of the game, does not fare well in comparison
Bring him forward in the narrative so he is not simply lurking in the background, and when he receives focus, keep his portrayal consistent (and not simply turn him into an end boss)
Allow the player to defeat him
Problem: The Ending
Few aspects of Far Cry 5 have infuriated and incensed players as much as the three possible endings to the game.
The first is possible within ten minutes of starting the game. The player can refuse to arrest Joseph with the federal marshal and credits roll, but this is mainly a glorified trolling on behalf of the developers before the gameplay even starts.
At the end of the game, after dispatching all three Seed siblings, the player travels back to Joseph’s compound to face him. A simple binary choice is given, either to resist Joseph’s murderous, barbaric, psychotic take over of Hope County, or to walk away. The game mechanic only sets up one possible choice as valid, since “walking away” after spending 40+ hours mowing down cult members is a ridiculous option that makes neither narrative nor gameplay sense. Again, artificial choice is not a legitimate choice.
Once the player chooses to resist, the camera pans around to show the player character’s friends emerging behind them. These are the quest-giving NPC’s and companion “specialists” the player has been unlocking and adventuring alongside the entire game (and which the game mechanics conveniently strip from the player when the player has to face Joseph and his siblings). At this final stage, it doesn’t matter what camaraderie or affection the player has developed for these characters because… (heavy sigh) they all have green Bliss-induced clouds dancing around their heads. Somehow Joseph has managed to corral, enslave, and transport all of the significant NPC’s to his compound just in time for a final boss battle.
The mechanics of the boss battle are, ridiculous, tired, and uninspiring. The player must shoot the Bliss-induced NPC’s (with actual weapons) which doesn’t kill them (as actual weapons actually would). Instead, downing an NPC with a weapon breaks them out of their Bliss stupor and, after you revive them by helping them stand back up, they fight alongside you as you try to shoot as many bullets as you can into Joseph, who is running around trying to shoot you. Pumping enough damage into Joseph causes him to disappear in a puff of green Bliss smoke for a few seconds until he reappears and resumes his assault and brings in another wave of Bliss-induced NPC’s. Until he stops respawning and you finally down him, packing his body with so many bullets that he’s reduced to crawling on the ground on all fours. Then it is time for another cut-scene!
This final boss battle has no narrative function. Joseph’s use of Blissed-out NPC’s has no precursor, rationale, or explanation beyond “we need enemies for this fight.” Bliss is once again used as a magic wand without rhyme or reason to create a game scenario, a scenarios that is immediately nullified by the easy way the player can remove the Blissed state of the NPC’s.
The writing wants to use the player’s emotional connections with the NPC’s to create an emotional stake in this final battle. It doesn’t, but if it did, that would also only detract from the emotional stakes that are supposed to be in the final battle between the main antagonist Joseph and the player.
It’s a mess.
But there’s worse to come.
A downed, bullet riddled, but somehow still capable, Joseph Seed spouts some more religious pabulum in a cut-scene, then three nuclear explosions go off in Hope County. Mushroom clouds arise over the mountains.
No clear explanation is given for these explosions. One possibility is that Joseph set them off (somehow, remotely, on cue). The only previous references to nuclear weapons in the game come from one of the bunkers (John’s) which was a missile silo at some point, so presumably the cult could have access to nuclear weapons. Some other commenters have suggested that the explosions represent an external attack on the US (on rural Montana for some reason) that occurs exactly when Joseph wants it to, proving him right about armageddon (if not proving the need for his cult’s widespread murder, kidnapping, animal brutality, and forced drugging). Neither alternative is clear in the writing or the experience, and neither makes sense to the larger narrative.
Control is returned to the player for one final run through an obstacle course. The player has to drive the screaming cop NPC’s and a now-handcuffed Joseph through a hellish landscape of falling trees and burning deer. This evokes, for the fourth time, the repetitive scrambles through the collapsing bunkers earlier in the game. The car flight will ultimately end in an unavoidable crash that conveniently kills the NPC’s and, even more conveniently, results in the tenth (at least!) capture and incapacitation of the player character.
A shirtless Joseph Seed, having survived all of the bullets the player put in him, a nuclear attack, and a car crash that killed three people, is able to drag the unconscious player from the wreckage, break into a bunker (handily located nearby), kill its owner Dutch, and bind the player. Upon waking, the player has to listen to Joseph explain how this was all foretold, including everything the player did, and declare that with his other siblings dead, the player character is now his new family. Credits roll.
All three endings lead to a victory for Joseph and the cult and a defeat for the player. Far Cry 5 is a game designed to pit the player against a doomsday cult, facilitating all manner of violent combat alongside a narrative story of resistance, which is impossible to win.
Unfortunately, this means Far Cry 5 is not a game. Like many of its long cut scenes, it’s only a vehicle for passively experiencing the written narrative with occasional bursts of futile agency. Ultimately, nothing you do in the game matters. You can not win. After all the hours you spend in Hope County, and after all of the story you are shown, there is no catharsis. There is not even on a meta-level a Brechtian attempt to subvert catharsis to provoke definable real-world action. The game simply ends. The player loses. Always.
It is incredible to think that the production team and beta testers at Ubisoft played through the game’s main quest with its instances of the player character being captured over ten (!) times and approved the main narrative, but that is what seems to have happened. This is so unfortunate because in many other ways Far Cry 5 is an enjoyable game, but only in spite of its narrative. I only felt happy I’d purchased it when I ignored the main quest, something the game itself often prevented me from doing.
The game’s story, with all of its false illusions of choice, is riddled with narrative failures. It is nihilistic, bloated with cardboard villains and video game clichés, ridiculous in its internal logic, cowardly in its choices, tonally schizophrenic, and uninclusive.
I’ve played many, many hours of the post-apocalyptic adventure game Fallout 4. I’ve finished the over-arching main quest and hundreds of side quests. I’ve saved the bombed-out Commonwealth around a destroyed Boston and become powerful. Although games like this give you the feeling (sometimes the illusion) of being open-ended where you can do whatever you want, I thought the main quest of Fallout 4 was ultimately quite controlled, cliched, and disappointing. It was certainly the least rewarding part of the time I spent with the game.
After some time away, I got the itch to return to Fallout 4, but knew I didn’t want to jump through the same hoops with a new character. So I decided to use player-created mods (scripts you can add to the game to change parts of it) to make a new way. To ignore the badly written main-quest and just enjoy the game mechanics, side quests, and fun of running around in an interesting and compelling world.
One of the things I also wanted to do was make the game narrative more LGBT-friendly. The company that makes the Fallout series, Bethesda, has a mixed history of creating inclusive and diverse games. Their handling of non-heterosexual sexuality has always been clumsy, and their handling of gender often ridiculous. I hope to use mods and other tools to overcome the many limitations Fallout 4 imposes upon the player character regarding identity and sexuality.
With this return to the radioactive Commonwealth of Fallout 4, I began to think about how I could create my own narrative in the game. Freed from the overarching narrative imposed by the company that made the game, how would I anchor my character’s decisions and actions? Games like this encourage exploration. Going out and finding your own adventure. How would I tell my story?
I decided to record my play through and provide narrative commentary. I’m still quite new to this, so the first couple episodes I’ve recorded are a bit more about the game mechanics than building a narrative, but I’ll hopefully hit my stride soon. I’m looking forward to using the game to tell short stories– to use my character as a protagonist and explore narrative through game mechanics (and the language of video editing).
How to Watch: If you would like to watch what I’ve done so far, you can find the videos on this YouTube Playlist. I’ve given the series the title “Carousing Through the Commonwealth.” I’ll post more as I embark upon a new (for me) way of creating narrative.
A brief twitter thread chat between @RandomiseUser, @Endo_Chick, and myself got me thinking about character appearance in games. I set out to put some ideas down as to how games structure this, and why I’m so drawn to character appearance in the games I enjoy.
Cool games that force me into the skin of a pre-made, pre-packaged protagonist, quite frankly, annoy me. Those set player characters rarely interest me deeply, and have never been close to any real concept of who I would prefer to be. So the experience often becomes one of merely driving around an avatar designed by someone else, and ultimately enacting someone else’s story (no matter how many narrative ‘options’ the game design gives me). In the end, I really don’t come to care about those characters.
But of course, this mirrors real life. We don’t choose to have the skin, complexion, sex, hair, eyes, shape, or attributes we’re born with. We have some control over some aspects (increasingly even those once thought immutable), but we all learn to deal with the design we’ve been given. Or we seek to tweak. There’s a role for games that purposefully inject you in another sex, body, or race as part of a larger narrative or moral goal, but I’m speaking purely about games that pre-design the protagonist primarily as your vehicle for experiencing the game world.
Playing modded Skyrim in Roman armor
In the triple experience of gameplay, narrative, and character, I usually gravitate to character the most. I can forgive a lot of crappy gameplay in good faith (too much grind, clunky mechanics, repetition, etc.). As a writer, sloppy or clichéd narrative bugs the shit out of me, but to be honest, we don’t turn to games for well-written stories with nuance and depth (although there are some exceptions, such as Bioshock Infinite). But if a developer puts genuine thought and effort put into customizable player creation, I come back to that game again and again. It holds meaning for me.
Games I enjoy make this work in a few different ways, both single-player and MMORPGs.
Guild Wars 2 (Human, Norn, and Silvari)
Some have a limited template of designs (hair, faces, shapes, etc.) that you can mix and match in various combinations. It’s the bare minimum of customizing your player character, and sometimes causes the unfortunate circumstance of running into your twin in the world as you encounter someone with the same look as you. I suspect some rendering limitations in that game’s engine are the probable technical reasons behind this choice. Often, good games will help temper this with providing a wealth of outfits for your character, usually in the in-game store. MMORPG Guild Wars 2 has innovative but limited physical forms for your avatar, but a huge range of expanding options for clothes, weapon types, and accessories. It has a consumables system that allows you to apply any unlocked look to any armor or weapon you use, so you don’t need to surrender your look when you upgrade your gear.
The Secret World MMORPG
Similarly, The Secret World (the best MMORPG you’ve probably never heard of or played) has hidden “combat armor” and allows you to present your avatar dressed however you want given a wide palette of options, reward clothing, and purchased looks. Weapon customization is not as flexible as Guild Wars 2, but it exists. As a serious game that uses a modern, real-world setting (albeit one infused with Lovecraftian monsters, aliens, and secret societies), you might think it would skew toward prioritizing modern, Western fashion. But no, it’s quite common to see people dressed like Roman soldiers, future robots, death’s-head demons, and killer squirrels running through the world hubs. Players in The Secret World often wear the dream cosplay outfits you expect they would wear in real-life if they could.
Dragon Age 2, pre-make Hawke (left) and my Hawke (right)
Elsewhere on the spectrum of customizable character creation is the pre-made protagonist character that you can “make over.” In single-player Dragon Age 2, you play Hawke, who has a mostly-linear story-line that you can influence, but you also have the option to mold his appearance to better fit your imagination. The same is true for the female Hawke option. The Dragon Age series aims for an immersive fantasy experience, including scripted romance between your character and some of your companions, so I find it a welcome option to be able to craft your avatar’s appearance.
Saints Row IV pre-made protagonist (left) and mine (right)
On the flip side is Saints Row IV, an amusing (in its own right), tongue-in-cheek parody of games like the Grand Theft Auto series (which have no real first-player story physical feature customization and force you play as pre-made characters). But the generic Slab McBulkhead main protagonist of Saints Row IV can be customized as in Dragon Age 2. This is a welcome expectation of a free-wheeling game that also allows you to fight with guns that launch toilet plungers and elastic dildo bats.
First-person only view in Bioshock Infinite
The final category I’ll briefly mention is the first-person only games that coyly prevent us from viewing or customizing our character in third-person. Booker in Bioshock Infinite is a fully fledged and voiced character, but his appearance remains off-camera (except for a few brief glances). Such first-person shooters have a genre history of keeping player appearance vague, but the same mechanics are on view in the new No Man’s Sky and other exploration games. One might think that keeping things first-person would foster greater self-identification and immersion with the player, but that’s not the case for me. Since the action is always happening on a flat plane (my monitor), I experience such a game as I would a movie. My life-long conditioning with this structure has been to disengage and observe. However, when I can rotate the camera and see my avatar fully embodied in a 3D space, running around the landscape as a body and not just my gaze, my own self-identification and immersion is actually greater. There’s still a screen between us, but that screen is not built directly into the mechanics of my gaze.
The Sole Survivor in Fallout 4 (you may have noticed a theme or two)
Not everyone prioritizes character design. It’s not something that matters to all (most?) players. There’s a long list of games offering only a bland, interchangeable, and ultimately disposable character model for the player, where the developers have given only cursory thought to appearance. However, I do give it a great deal of thought, and effort, and I’m probably seeking a mix of comfort, self-identification, wish fulfillment, creative input, and a pleasant objectified gaze when I play a game with a custom character.
A friend of mine once described the kinds of games I like as “Barbie for boys.” I love character building and appearance crafting. Along with all the fun stuff the game lets me do (fight monsters, explore space, survive in the radioactive wasteland…), and a strong narrative journey I can help enact, I’m drawn to the creative process of character design. It doesn’t matter if I’m just goofing around and causing vehicular havoc in downtown Los Santos with friends or slaying the great dragons of Tamriel alone, I’m happiest if I can join with the effort of the game designers who have already crafted the world and the adventure. I’m eager to bring the main character.
I’ve been playing the beta of the new Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) since last year and have seen its development. I’m a huge fan of the single-player Elder Scrolls games, and was greatly looking forward to a massively-multiplayer version of Tamriel which drops this upcoming week. Unfortunately, while the game basics are fine (if not all that different from other MMORPGs), the storyline and quest dynamic fails like many multiplayer games before it. In short, no attempt has been made to explain why there are hundreds of other people running around your world.
The main story (no spoiler warning needed, you find all this out in the first five minutes of the game) falls back on that tired and trite fantasy cliché that YOU are the chosen one. Only YOU can save the world from great evil. This is a canard I wish all fantasy writers could finally expunge from their narrative repertoire, but apart from being a lazy way to infuse a plot with meaning, it taps into our deep-seeded desire to be special (and not just one of 7 billion other people on the planet with no real exceptional talent or chance to be remembered).
We all know this is a cliché. We are familiar with books and films about the extraordinary hero who is the only one who can defeat the great evil because of something special he (or rarely she) possesses: an ability, a power, a special weapon, etc. This was even true in Skyrim, the latest single-player Elder Scrolls game, where you not only had special powers, but you were also singled out among all others by virtue of your birth (only YOU are the Dragonborn). While clichéd, this narrative device mostly worked in Skyrim because you (the player) learned about your fate and your abilities as your character did, and the other characters in the game began to treat you as someone who was indeed special.
In ESO, you learn that YOU are special in a (rather rushed) prologue teaching you the basics of the game. At first, there is the suggestion that there are others in your situation. A massive prison escape (a prison-oriented beginning is a staple of the series) suggests that there are others like you that have special abilities because your soul has been stolen. They are all running around with you (as NPC’s until you finally get into a full combat area). But then, within the first few minutes, you are waylaid by a beautiful woman warrior (cliché) who enlists your aid in saving a Prophet (cliché). To get to him you have to do some uninspired fiddling of gates and monsters, talk briefly to John Cleese in a wasted cameo, and open the prophet’s cell. The beautiful woman sacrifices herself to save the Prophet (cliché). The Prophet, voiced by Michael Gambon (certainly a typecasting cliché), tells you how to escape the prison and thereafter he sits in his hidden HQ (cliché) and is the guide (cliché) and deliverer of exposition (cliché) on your adventures to overthrow the big baddie. The big baddie himself stems from the breaking of a fellowship (another common cliché in games that I sense stems not only from Tolkien but also game designer’s fond memories of their old D&D parties, see Guild Wars 2s Destiny’s Edge too).
So far, so Skyrim. You will play the game and improve your character, preparing, with the unique help of the Prophet, to defeat the great evil that has descended upon the world. An evil only you can defeat because YOU are special (here “the Vestige” instead of the Dragonborn). A standard fantasy plot line, even if it is stitched together from left-overs of most every other fantasy fiction out there.
However, as you travel and explore and quest in the new world where you find yourself- helping citizens in peril, rescuing NPC’s in danger- you see a bunch of other people running around too. They’re in the landscape with you, sometimes frustratingly claiming that randomly spawning crafting resource or treasure chest before you can get to it. They’re in the same quest zone as you, killing that monster or enemy before you can do it, and sometimes just standing around to pounce on a re-spawning boss, the same one you need to kill to finish the quest and get your reward. Sometimes they’re also donning a disguise and infiltrating the same bandit camp as you to rescue the baron and his family which they find…. Wait, why did the guard captain send me to do this if he’d already sent six other people? Why didn’t he tell me about them? If four other players are standing around me, why is the baron thanking me for saving him?
In short, this is the narrative failure of ESO (and, it must be said, most MMORPG’s). No provision is made to accommodate (or even address) the other players around you outside of pvp. Many times while playing the beta, I got to the end of a dungeon or quest area and other players had already taken out the big boss I was supposed to take down (the feared necromancer, the bandit chief, the head orc, etc). Most of the time I just had to tap my foot and wait for an artificial respawn, although once the quest “completed” by just standing there. Many a “secret passage” taken to sneak into a captured keep or hidden headquarters was heavily trafficked, with other players running and jumping past me. An orc teamed up with me to help on an adventure, and we ran around with half a dozen other people who all also happened to have an orc companion with them.
One quest had me crouch down and receive a magic spell that made me glow (illogically) in order to secretly follow a villain as he walked through a town, noting who he talked to and eventually searching the building he stopped at for clues to uncover a conspiracy. I counted ten people, all also glowing in crouch mode, doing the same thing at the same time. We all ran into the building together filling it, and rifled through everything, eventually finding an incriminating document helpfully left behind in plain sight. Then we all hurried back to the official who sent us on our super-secret mission, presumably to tell him that no one had spotted the small glowing army conducting its subterfuge in broad daylight.
As one player said on zone chat once while I was playing, “This is like playing an Elder Scrolls game where everyone just gets in your way.” ESO kept many of the same quest structures of a single-player game (go recover this thing, sneak in there, kill that leader…) without acknowledging the multitude of others around you doing the same things. Some MMORPG games, like Star Wars The Old Republic and Star Trek Online and parts of Guild Wars 2, choose to hide people through instanced areas (where you only see yourself and any teammates) in an attempt to “explain” other players. But in ESO, with the plot and game mechanics, the developers have produced a clichéd, static narrative that asks you to kindly ignore and accommodate everyone else’s actions on your solitary journey for no real reason, while clumsily expecting you to pursue your special destiny. As a savior, it hardly seems a world worth saving.
Guild Wars 2 (published by ArenaNet)
Fantasy-themed MMORPG
(free-to-play once purchased, around $50)
Few MMORPGs possess as much fun, whimsy, challenge, and sheer breadth of opportunities that Guild Wars 2 does. I had never been much of a fan of the first Guild Wars, but I’ve taken GW2 to my heart. Most gamers know about this game (it has been out since 2012) but it was this year that I finally adopted it. With continually updated content, a huge world, and a wide range of things to do inside the game, GW2 easily became one of my favorite games of 2013.
Players in GW2 choose one of five races that thankfully think outside of the standard fantasy game tropes. Each one also comes with their own look and fully realized culture:
Asura (rat/mouse like people obsessed with magical technology)
The classes are more traditional, although each has its own general play-style and learning curve:
Guardian (defensive melee)
Warrior (flexible melee)
Engineer (guns and turrets)
Ranger (bow and pet class)
Thief (complex flexible chain builder)
Elementalist (utilizing four different types of magic)
Mesmer (offensive and defensive magic)
Necromancer (magic pet class)
Although, all classes have aspects of what is normally thought to be a hybrid class, and all players have a range of heal self and/or others abilities for maximum flexibility in play style
Each playable race is given a linear main quest line that takes them all around the sizable world. Quest oriented cut scenes are done cleverly with attractive visuals and full voice acting. Mostly these are engaging. A few times along the main quest story arc the different races’ stories merge which means some repetitive play if you play several different characters. This is a minor complaint (although if I never drive the undead away from Claw Island again in my GW2 career I’d be very happy). A more serious annoying feature of the game is the fact that all of the main quest episodes can be soloed (when of the appropriate level) but the finale goes out of its way to require you to find a partner or party to finish. As a player who enjoys the solo experience, and can not easily find someone else to adventure with, this has stopped cold my quest progression on all characters. They are stuck at the penultimate stage with no chance to complete the last quest on their own (despite soloing everything up to that point). It is a great annoyance.
Speaking of grouping, as to be expected with a game called Guild Wars, a lot of careful attention has been paid to give players who want them the tools to create public and private guilds for group play. This system is seamlessly incorporated into the game itself.
Adventuring through the GW2 map is often a dynamic experience. Along with static quest-givers, every map has many ‘automated events’ that run independent of any player interaction. Players can join in and help with the event, allowing for a degree of spontaneous cooperation without having to formally group. Another aspect of the game that helps cultivate a collaborative environment is that anyone who assists in any combat receives experience and treasure, preventing any kill-stealing. Similarly, crafting recourses on the landscape persist until each player receives their share.
The art direction of GW2 is often stunning, although sometimes it veers close to World of Warcraft type cartoony-ness with huge unrealistic melee weapons and absurd armor (and the female armors tend to skew toward the busty and revealing). The maps are varied and a range of climates and terrain types hold some amazing vistas. One of the most detailed and impressive is one that the players get to learn well– Lion’s Arch, a city lovingly constructed out of decommissioned ships and other naval vessels. The first time you encounter Lion’s Arch with its buildings made of ships piled atop each other, sails still fluttering, it is truly a jaw-dropping sight.
Guild Wars 2 always gives you a range of activities you can tackle. There are standard quests and combat, but also many jumping puzzles, games of skill, and opportunities to make items. Almost everything you do in the game gives you experience. You could level up (albeit slowly) just by gathering materials and crafting. Every day the game also gives you a random list of about 10 activities you can complete (kill so many veteran monsters, revive so many fallen allies, collect so many craft items, etc.) for bonuses and special treasure items, encouraging the player to tackle this ever-changing list, and see it through to the end every time they are in the world. A built-in achievement system possesses a wide range of rewards for succeeding at a variety of tasks.
Combat is both intuitive and simplified without seeming dumbed-down. Every weapon type has usually up to 5 special “attacks” that can be unlocked depending on how it is used (main hand, two-handed, off-hand, ranged, or underwater), and the class of the person using it (i.e. an elementalist can do something different with a dagger than a thief can). This allows a good deal of changeup based on class, play style, and monster encountered, and some weapons complement each other when used together. Additionally, and this is something that tends to blow your mind when first encountered, GW2 has underwater combat, with a range of underwater weapons and equipment. When fighting underwater, combat exists in 360 degrees, with the ability to move in any direction, and requiring brand new strategies. It also helps that the underwater vistas are beautiful, and the transition between the dry and aquatic worlds handled very well.
The world is constantly updated and expanded. Sometimes this involves completely altering a landscape, as was recently done when some signature monsters cooperated to take over, and transform, previously lush rolling grassland in their own twisted way. Regular content updates also sometimes change or improve areas of the world you may have not visited since you were low level, necessitating a new visit and providing new experiences.
As with many MMORPGs, holidays receive attention, usually with numerous special events, treasure, and activities. For example, GW2 created a very fun game for Halloween open to anyone of any level. A group of about 12-15 players were placed in a maze-like build without weapons or armor. One player started as a ghost, possessing powers that could kill other players. Scattered through the maze were several items that the non-ghost players (called “villagers”) could pick up and use against the ghost (balls of gunk that could be thrown to block visibility, sticky webs to slow pursuit, big hammers to fight back, etc.). When the ghost killed a “villager”, that player became a ghost as well and joined in the fight to chase and convert the remaining “villagers”. After a time limit, special prizes were given to “villagers” who survived and ghosts who converted the most. It was a well-thought-out, fun game and was only one of several themed events for that month.
Finally, Guild Wars 2 has been the only game I’ve played where I found any enjoyment fighting other players. GW2 has two kinds of this content- world vs. world (WvW) and player vs. player (PvP). WvW consists of four maps filled with keeps, castles, supply camps, and other strategic points where players from three different servers can contest against each other, and ultimately provide server-wide bonuses for everyone. This is often fast moving with a healthy dose of teamwork. Although it does not offer as much reward as direct combat, I found great fun using siege weapons to attack rival castle while the rest of my team battled to break down the front door. Players from different servers are blocked from communicating with each other, or even seeing each others’ names (although Guild names are visible). This keeps the experience team-focused, which is probably why I enjoyed it. I dabbled in the regular PvP but found it, as always, full of petulant “hard-core” players who either screamed and yelled at team members for not doing this or that correctly, or who were just interested in killing you and being a dick about it. PvP is where the 13 year-olds (real and metaphorical) hang out so I tend to give it a wide berth. I did find WvW enjoyable, however.
Crystal Desert is the unofficial LGBT-friendly server in GW2 and where I play my range of characters (illustrated in this post). Several LGBT guilds call it home as well. Come find me there in Guild Wars 2!
Fallout 76 is a new 
