Ready Player Re-Done

Tags

bioshock infinite, dragon age, fallout 4, games, GTAV, guild wars 2, saints row, the secret world

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.

(Go follow @RandomiseUser and @Endo_Chick for deeper and better game analysis than mine.  You can follow me at @gmdevore.)

 

 

 

 

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The Narrative Failure of Elder Scrolls Online

Tags

Elder Scrolls Online, games

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.

Best Games of 2013: #3- Guild Wars 2

Tags

games, guild wars 2

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)
• Charr (warlike cat-like race)
• Norn (large spiritual shape-changing Nordic Vikings)
• Sylvari (nature-loving living plant people)
• and of course humans.

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!

Best Games of 2013: #2- State of Decay

Tags

games, state of decay

State of Decay (published by Undead Labs)
Zombie post-apocalypse sandbox-style game
(currently $20 on Xbox and Steam for PC, DLC “Breakdown” is $6.99)

State of Decay is both an amazing game experience and sometimes an amazingly frustrating game. I am usually not a big fan of zombie games (and I am often wary of their bloodthirsty fan base), but I really like State of Decay, and it was definitely the second best game I played this year after The Secret World.

Also like The Secret World, I only stumbled upon this game by accident and got hooked early. Unfortunately, being an early adopter meant that I was also a victim of State of Decay’s many early bugs and errors which should have been fixed before launch (some of which still persist), as well as some annoying imposed restrictions and hoops the developers inserted into the gameplay. But what fun gameplay State of Decay has when all things work well!

State of Decay is meant to be a zombie post-apocalypse sandbox-style game. You manage a group of survivors who band together in a fortified building and scavenger for supplies- everything including food, building materials, medicine, weapons, and of course ammunition. You gather supplies by heading out into the zombie infested towns and countryside that make up the game’s 16 square mile map. There is also the chance to find special weapons and tools that can increase your community’s chances of survival.

Most of the time, if you’re paying attention, taking out one or two zombies on your own with just a pipe wrench is no problem. But of course, zombies like to congregate in groups, often forcing you to become creative. The player that just storms into a ‘deserted’ house looking for supplies will probably not last long, as all that noise will attract wave after wave of shambling undead. Special mutant zombies also add to the difficulty, not to mention the need to manage the personalities and tempers of your group of survivors.

You don’t control a single character in State of Decay, which is understandable because all that scavenging and fighting is tiring. You can switch between characters that you have ‘befriended’ through helping them out, and renew the search for goodies while a tired character catches some much-needed sleep back at the homestead. During the day, searching for supplies is always harrowing. At night, the number and strength of the zombies ramp up as the darkness encroaches. You can never let your guard down while playing, even if you’re just taking an abandoned car across the map to check out an old factory. The game gets the balance between survival horror and progressive gameplay right.

And if your character dies at the hands of a roving zombie horde, they’re gone forever. All the time you spent to level up their abilities is moot. You can only now switch to one of your other community members, and hope your people don’t now begin to panic at the loss. Similarly, once a house or factory or store is searched and cleaned out of supplies, that’s it. The building remains empty for the rest of the game (although some zombies may move in– zombies, unlike supplies, are infinite). All supplies, including cars, are a limited resource. In the main game, a central quest line urges you to find a way to escape the valley (and certain death) before all the supplies you can get run out. In the DLC that has just been released, called “Breakdown”, you can play the game without the main quest and ‘renew’ the map with increased difficulty (number of zombies, frequency of harder mutant zombies, fewer overall resources) at each incarnation.

The art direction of the game is really great (although the character models could use a bit more diversity in style- although a healthy dose of diversity in race and gender is thankfully included). The landscape, and the attention to detail in the builds, is phenomenal. There are some issues around lag and texture popping (memory limits were pushed for the original Xbox release, and not much optimization was made for the PC version), but you can play around these limitations for the most part if you’re cautious.

Special praise must be singled out for the game’s sound direction and music. You must play with the sound on because often the noise of a zombie approaching is the only warning you have before you’re attacked. Also the way in which the game uses audio is amazing. The music is by legendary game composer Jesper Kyd and both perfectly enhances State of Decay’s visuals and evokes a range of moods including terror, pathos, humor, and of course, hope. The soundtrack can be entirely previewed on Jesper Kyd’s site  and purchased on iTunes and other places.

One negative aspect of the game is that when you stop playing and shut off the game, the action still continues. The survivors in your community still venture out into danger to look for supplies, still consume resources, and sometimes still act in bizarre unhelpful ways (like running away and hiding somewhere on the map when they get scared). This goes on for as long as you are away from the game (although not exactly a 1:1 ratio of hours). The developers have never really given a helpful explanation as to why they implemented this feature beyond just purposefully imposing events that are out of the player’s control. They say this would just be like managing a real life group where you couldn’t control everything, but in the end it just frustrates the careful player who can log on and find (especially in the early days of post-launch) all the work done to stabilize the community completely undone with dead characters and destroyed group morale. This feature also hampers both the player that can play a lot (diminishing the results of many straight hours of effort) and the casual gamer (who gets penalized for the time they are not in game, and punished by the offline consumption of resources). Thankfully, much of this feature has been neutered in subsequent updates, so large was the initial outcry from players, and now is just a minor impact, which usually can be tempered with smart gameplay. But from the beginning it was a bonehead feature that provided no real benefits only penalties.

The team that put out State of Decay, Undead Labs, is small, which probably contributed to the fact that the launch game had lots of game-breaking bugs (I once logged in to find one of my survivors had shot and killed the radio operator who gave me quests. She was dead on the floor of the safehouse, but was still talking to me on the radio. That game had become borked while I was offline, and all previous work wasted). Over the past months, many of those bugs have been solved, although there are some (the dreaded “Seek and Rescue” bug that will permanently wreck a character’s mood if you actually go and find them when they run away) that inexcusably still persist. Launching on Steam also seems to have introduced some others, usually with work arounds if you search their forums.

But with all of its unpolished nature, and all of its persistent bugs, nothing comes close to the joy of sneaking around a small deserted town, trying to find a decent weapon and some food for you ragtag group of survivors holed up in the abandoned trucking warehouse, while roving hordes of zombies attempt to find you and make you lunch. All players have stories of that time that they barely escaped the grocery store after being surprised by a horde, only to run into a feral zombie down the street. Piecing together the clues of what caused the apocalypse (the game does not tell you directly) is fun and most of the characters are interesting. With enough raw materials, resources such as gardens, machine shops, and even libraries can be built into your base. You can see your enclave evolve in real time, and your stable of ‘heroes’ become lean, mean, zombie killing machines.

And as an added bonus, there’s even a (very brief but memorable) same-sex relationship portrayed positively as just another aspect of life after the apocalypse (Jacob and Eli above).

While State of Decay has its issues, it also has fun by the barrel-ful for those interested in a hybrid of a sandbox resource gathering game with relentless zombie smashing combat. And it’s only $20 on both Xbox and Steam (for PC).

Best Games of 2013: #1- The Secret World

Tags

games, the secret world

The Secret World (published by Funcom)
Free-to-play MMORPG after purchase of the game (currently $30 on Steam)

This is the best game you’re probably not playing/never heard of.  I only found it myself by doing a random search on Steam.

The premise of The Secret World (TSW) is that worldwide secret societies, conspiracy theories, mythological tales, are all true.  The player joins one of three secret organizations (the Templars, the Illuniati, or the Dragon) and plays through a clever and well-written main story line.  Players battle H.P. Lovecraft inspired monsters that have taken over a New England town, an ancient evil in the deserts of Egypt, and resurgent vampires and werewolves in Transylvania.  Artfully done cut scenes with impressive voice acting set up each quest, which is usually its own mini story.  Players can only focus on a single quest (and up to three side quests) at a time, which helps with the immersion.  The art direction is top notch, with vistas and builds that you spend your time admiring, not just running past on the way to the next objective.

Perhaps The Secret World’s most impressive feature (amid a whole host of impressive features) is it skill system.  There are no classes, no levels, and no armor.  You can wield up to two weapons at a time:  blades, hammers (including axes), hand weapons, elemental magic, blood magic, chaos magic, pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles.  Each type (melee, magic, or gun) has a whole host of unlockable abilities, and it is possible (like in an Elder Scrolls game) to use any combination of types, and even eventually unlock them all.  In addition to active attack or support abilities, there are a host of passive abilities available to unlock, and you can ‘slot’ on your hotbar up to 7 active and 7 passive abilities at a time.

The key is to find combinations that compliment each other.  For example, my favorite is elemental magic combined with pistols.  I can cast a spell that (hopefully) traps a monster in an electric cage for a few seconds, enough time for me to lay down a ring of fire around them.  A passive ability I’ve slotted gives me a brief bonus to my critical damage when the ring of fire is active.  This allows me fire off my dual pistols five times, building enough focus to then unleash a special ‘covering fire’ ability that sprays bullets.  By this time the monster has usually broken free and is charging me.  Time for an icy frost spell that will freeze him in his tracks for a few more moments, enough time for me to do a back flip to get some range again, and start the ring of fire/pistol combo again.  This strategy doesn’t work against all enemies, so I might even have to switch to a sword/elemental magic build I’ve assembled, which keeps the combat fresh and fun.

With no armor, players are free to outfit their character however they want.  Some dress in contemporary clothes, others adopt outfits that make them look more like a superhero, goth, ninja, pirate, or even Roman soldier.  Unlocking abilities and earning achievements also unlocks special outfits that can be combined to a unique look.  My white sport coat with electronic current symbol details (which glow in the dark) is my favorite so far.  I got it by unlocking all of the pistol/elemental magic abilities, and many achievements give outfits.  “Armor” comes from invisible talismans that the player can find or create, and then augment to compliment their playing style.  My only artistic gripe is that the choices for designing a character’s face/hair/etc. are rather limited.  I’ve run into doppelgangers several times because we all chose the same visual combo.

The secret world tries (mostly successfully) to step outside the static and generic MMORPG model, and does so with stunning art direction, engaging and well-written stories (which are also often very funny), impressive gameplay, and a healthy dose of open-ended character creation.

The game does have PvP functionality, but I usually ignore this aspect of MMORPGs.  There are smatterings of interesting gay characters you encounter in your adventures, although my favorite has to be the May/December romance between Oxford archaeologists investigating ancient curses in an Egyptian valley of tombs.

Come find me on the Grim server and join in the conspiracies of The Secret World!

The best games I played in 2013

Tags

2013, games

Along with being an archaeologist and writer, I am also a gamer (well gaymer actually).  Over the next few days, I’m going to post my impressions about the best games I played this year in my opinion.  It is an end-of-year summary that hopefully will also introduce you to some games you may not know about or haven’t yet tried but are very worth your while.

Not all were released in 2013, but this was when I played them.  In descending order I’ll be posting reviews and impressions this week about the best of the year, my top seven:

1.  The Secret World
2.  State of Decay
3.  Guild Wars 2
4.  Dragon’s Dogma
5.  Skyrim (modded)
6.  Star Trek Online
7.  Asheron’s Call

As well as a summary of the ones I was less happy with in 2013, my bottom five:

8.  Lord of the Rings Online
9.  Neverwinter
10.  Star Wars Online
11.  Dishonored
12.  Batman: Arkham City

As always, opinions are mine, but I hope to explain well what I found redeeming or lacking in the games I encountered in my spare time this year.

Playing as a Roman in Skyrim

Tags

games, roman, skyrim

One of the best things about one of the best games out there, Skyrim, is the ability to use mods to personally tailor the PC gaming experience.  I have played around with creating some of my own mods (like this waterfall house), but my absolute favorite, and must-have mod was a Roman Imperial Armor and Weapons one made by Jedo Dre.

On the whole, we are poorly served by adventure games set in the Roman world, despite there being a lot of Roman themed games out there.  Rome Total War is a decent strategy challenge, but gameplay is mostly set battles and a mix of Risk/Civilization resource micromanaging.  There have been a few city-builder games using Roman architecture, but none actually allow you to play as a Roman.  There was a short-lived independent MMORPG called Roma Victor that attracted some attention (especially from the Nova Roma types), but another called Gods and Heroes was cancelled before launch.  Fallout New Vegas had a Caesar’s Legion faction, but joining it required playing as an amoral character, which I never do.  According to the trailer, the upcoming Ryse: Son of Rome, with its depressing Call-Of-Duty-esque macho posturing and over-the-top violence porn, looks absolutely dismal.

So, for folks like myself who love open-world games, Skyrim is king, and with mods I  have the ability to adventure dressed as a a version of an ancient Roman.  Since one of the major factions in the game are the Romanesque Imperials, it was relatively easy to justify the costume in the world, adapting it to the fantasy setting.

When I play a game like Skyrim, I want to identify with and develop a strong fondness for my character.  I’m not always sure game devs realize this, given the often unattractive character design options included in such games (or specifically straight devs with regard to male character design, since the female characters are always buxom and beautiful while the male skins are usually cartoonish or ugly).  Vanilla Skyrim is definitely an example of this (with a huge discrepancy between male and female attractiveness in appearance choices), so modding also allowed me to improve the look of my character, as well as giving him a set of fantasy-inspired Roman armor.

Below is an image gallery of my adventures as a Roman throughout the world of Skyrim (each image opens as a larger version):

The stealth archer

Atmospheric snow covered ruins

Taking down a centurion (the other kind)

Surveying Skyrim

Guided by a favorite firefly lantern mod

Roman in Skyrim

Decided not to jump

Another view of the firefly lantern mod

Tomb hunting

Looking out over a very cold sea

My friend the crow

Not sure if he’s friendly or not

The stunning vistas of Skyrim

I built a mod house atop this waterfall.

Bloody bandits

Walk or teleport?

Catching salmon in the river

Playing with an “animal friend” mod

Playing with an “animal friend” mod

“Animal friend” mod does not work on dragons

Running away from danger

Even the ugly scrubland is beautiful in Skyrim

I amassed a huge collection of wonderful bows

The Roman, the vampire, and the troll

The Roman mod I used also changed all the imperial troops’ armor to lorica

Soon before the proposal

Cleaning up the dirty city of Riften