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Gary Devore

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Gary Devore

Tag Archives: the secret world

Ready Player Re-Done

16 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by Gary Devore in Games

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

characters9

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.

characters1

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.

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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.

characters3

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

 

 

 

 

Best Games of 2013: #1- The Secret World

08 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Gary Devore in Games, Links

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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.

Torchwoody_picture002Perhaps 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.

Torchwoody_picture173With 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.

Torchwoody_picture067The 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.

Torchwoody_picture120Come find me on the Grim server and join in the conspiracies of The Secret World!

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