As Always, Assume Spoilers The Thoughts in Question The Forgotten City was on my backlog for a LOOONG time. Never played the original mod, but it was one of those things that got the usual Voices talking. Took me longer than it probably should have due to my general antipathy for Roman aesthetic, given that “moral relativism,” “high concept mystery,” and “social discovery/manipulation” are pretty high on my list of bait. I finally knocked it off during a couple long plane rides, and here’s what we got. ...

As Always, Assume Spoilers The Thoughts in Question Priors Some excessive months back, a buddy of mine bought me Avowed. Turns out life was going to intervene, so I only just got around to it. Shame, as I’d been looking forward to it for a while - throughout my foundational years, Black Isle and Obsidian studios were a huge influence on me. To me, an Obsidian game represented a jank wrapper around a larger ambition than they could deliver - but no one else was bringing to the table what they brought. New Vegas has been canonized as a classic, and I’ll go to bat hard for Alpha Protocol (yeah, that’s right, me and three other fuckers remember that game!). In a land of homogeneity, a fresh (often biting) voice feels refreshing and the price of entry being the entire scaffolding being rickety. I had also done my time in the Bethesda mines, starting with Morrowind and getting increasingly disappointed with the direction the studio has been taking. So I went in not expecting the world, but I was intrigued to see Obsidian do an interesting riff on the classic structure. Well, I got something. ...

This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds (thought I believe I solo’d this one). As Always, Assume Spoilers Having beaten Event Horizon: Zero Dawn (the main game, just barely started the DLC), I have assorted opinions for people to chew on if they give a damn (alternately, someone tell me to shut the fuck up). Not sure if they come to anything collectively. ...

This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds (though I believe I solo’d this one). As Always, Assume Spoilers Finished Vampyr the other night. The whole thing ended with a whimper and the writing is still weirdly disjointed. I was learning big terms and my character was using it like he knew what it meant and then ten minutes and two characters later I could finally ask what it was. I literally don’t understand what the main plot device WAS. Major thoughts as follows in order to get them out of my brain. ...

This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds. As Always, Assume Spoilers After years, I have finished Undertale! Well, the first run anyway. I only killed one person (who the game sorta forces you to, more on that later), and got a real terrible unsatisfying ending before being told to replay the whole thing correctly - and fuck that deal. ...

This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds. As Always, Assume Spoilers Game Segments Mia’s Section Dropping you right in the action is good. The first cutscene is a hook, and makes me want to explore the house. . . . Isn’t “my dead wife might be alive and here’s the message to prove it” literally the exact hook of Silent Hill 2? I liked the idea of the video tape sequence (although who uses VHS tapes any more?). It built some tension (although I wanted everyone to die by the end because they were so annoying). I thought they were going to show me something horrific and then make me go there, but instead it’s just a mandatory hint to progress. Feels like a missed opportunity The aesthetics feel pretty Rob Zombie, and that’s a compliment here. Minus Mia, who is clearly skewed towards a Japanese style and feels a bit off as a result. I think this is the tutorial sequence? The game keeps taking control away from me and I can’t tell if it’s a quicktime event or a tutorial. As a result, I can’t tell if I’m learning anything. Especially when in at least one case you can only fail. They definitely cheat on space a couple of times - Mia teleports about at least twice. Kudos to the level designers for making most of it make spatial sense, even if the timing in nonsense. Related: maybe let me spend some time going slow instead of fast? Instead of constantly jumping me? Extremely linear - I never felt like there was anywhere but one place to go. The boss fight is straight up trash. The room is too small to do anything with, and there’s zero feedback. Even once I figured out the strategy (headshot, back off, headshot, etc) it can only ever be boring at best. I figured the plot would be largely nonsense, but damn if Ethan Winters isn’t the stupidest man alive. He acts like he’s in a horror movie in the worst way, always asking the wrong questions that no one would care about. I kinda expected more puzzles. The only one in this section is more just a linear set of gates and keys. No thinking required. Survival Horror usually builds tension out of limited resources and using them wisely. This entire section has nothing to use resources on so maybe they’re not going for that? Not sure what the gameplay focus is here, if any. I wonder if the designers are worried I’ll be bored, because every three minutes something loud happens. Let me appreciate your atmosphere! Okay, Ethan’s hand is more abused than the average teenage boy’s. There’s three instances of violence against his left hand in particular, one after the other. Any one of them was enough. Favorite beats: the disgusting fridge, Mia climbing up the dark stairs. Jack/Daddy’s Section Don’t even commit to Ethan losing the hand for 30s, I guess. While playing, I’m a bit less impressed with the dinner scene. Mostly because it flies by a little too fast and the only one with any real personality is Lucas, that dick. Also, the face stabbing scene is way less effective after nonstop gore. And I can enjoy gore more than most! Does Ethan just have crazy healing powers? HE GOT STABBED IN THE FACE! Grandma just vanishing in game for the player to notice is actually a very good subtle touch. I dig it. The game will just not let me think for myself! At one point Jack literally traps you in a one way corridor with no escape and just walks the other way. It just shows the designer’s hand that it had to all be planned because there was literally nothing else Jack could do without trapping the player. This cop is literally the stupidest cop I’ve ever met in a video game and I’ve played Oblivion! Didn’t we just have a boss fight? Okay, it’s another one I guess. Wait, now he’s driving the car, WTF? (two deaths later) Oh, it’s not a boss fight! It’s a LucasArts Adventure Game™ with a shovel wielding manic! Jack gets “killed” twice in this boss fight alone. I get it, he’s immortal. Why does he blow his own brain out after all that? No idea. Not that Jack has a consistent personality beyond “angry”. Is this still the tutorial? I’m still stuck in linear sequence. No brain required. Okay, the main hall feels better. There’s a couple of spots of interest. Actual puzzles, thank god. Dammit, Grandma, you voyeur! (I approve of this touch, Grandma repeatedly pulling a Batman is actually creepy) The cartoon doors are massively aesthetic breaking and illogical, but they’re highly memorable? Not sure how I feel about this. Well, now that Jack is chasing me again after three whole rooms of exploration, I can confirm that there is no stealth mechanic and he is psychic. Why do I even have this gun or this knife, everyone is immortal! I thought he’d be chasing me through my exploration, but I guess not. Time to force me in the direction the game wants me to go! Oh my god, it’s been literally hours and I finally encounter my first “normal” enemy! What the hell? And with no music or anything. Great, these enemies are bullet sponges. Takes me about ten shots to kill one (5 headshots, 5 body shots or misses). I get that it’s a thing with survival horror, but it’s not fun. The basement sections actually feel like survival horror - exploring, managing resources, taking down enemies. That morgue puzzle is so incredibly dumb. I solved it first try, but it makes no sense how it even works in the “real world.” I ran out of ammo and healing, which is frustrating because I hadn’t cleared the rooms with multiple enemies. I find it very weird that the game has spent the entire time teaching me that ammo is fucking useless only to demand that I have a ton of it all at once. The combat learning curve is a right angle. I learned that the knife might be better than the gun for single enemies. It can chop off limbs. Still no idea why I would ever use the stab. The block is horrible. After the slash there’s dead space in the animation that cancels your block. Enemies can attack during your attack before you block. Blocking always reduces damage, but sometimes damage goes through anyway. No idea when. I expect some inelegance of combat, but clear feedback of your actions is a must. I do like that enemies have multiple spawns within a room after the first time. So, I just kept kiting one offs into different rooms and slashing them Doom style. It took me forever but it worked. Except the last room, which I ran through to just get ahead. This section feels like it should have been the real tutorial of the game, honestly. Also, we should have been taught the knife instead of the gun first, because it’s the weapon you always have. The Jack boss fight: Maybe the worst so far? It’s a cheap cutscene grab, with really unclear rules. There’s pretty much no time to attack him. He’s almost unbeatable until he randomly opens the chainsaw cage. The chainsaw fight is confusing as fuck, because there’s no feedback and the UI is covered in sparks. I died several times and I still don’t know why - mostly because the chainsaw turned off with no warning. I would have thought it was another puzzle, but the death screen hint literally said “use the item in the room.” And I have no idea why a chainsaw would kill him harder than car crashes, being impaled, fire, or bullets to the brain. But he’s treated as dead this time for some reason. Low point: did he say “Groovy?” Did Ethan really respond: “Not Groovy” in a bored voice? Ethan, it’s a murderhouse! KEEP THE CHAINSAW! I wasn’t able to use a shortcut door afterwards like I thought. Weird. Shotgun: I got it, I feel like I was supposed to have this for the previous section. Which I guess was possible? I feel like Jack would have trapped me in the room with the broken one and killed me. Haven’t used it yet because now there’s nothing to use it on. The gameplay loop doesn’t seem stable enough that any tool I get is useful outside of the narrow area I get it. Stupid moment: the clue to get the shotgun says you have to use the scorpion key to get it. Which is exactly the kind of clue that only makes sense to the player and no one in-story. I mean, yeah, you need the scorpion key to get the broken shotgun, but wouldn’t they just tell you to get the broken shotgun? Mia’s Tape: The woooorst . . . Forced stealth with no mechanics for it, walking along a linear path you have to guess at. The whole point is to not get caught by the mother, but she catches you at the end anyway? This section brought to you by completely pointless. I was pretty exhausted by the time I got through the Three Headed Dog door, mostly by frustration. I told my partner this is like the Call of Duty of horror games - every twenty minutes it’s some new spectacle. No time for dread or atmosphere. So I guess the Rob Zombie comparison is apt. I wonder if the devs understand the difference between uncertainty and confusion. Because I’m only feeling the latter, and rarely the former. So far I’m not really loving this game. Mostly because it’s really convinced that I just want to walk around a linear funhouse getting cutscene’d. It’s not actually survival horror except for those five or so rooms in the basement. There’s no gameplay flow, the puzzles are weak, and the boss fights are incomprehensible. I’m actually kinda surprised at the degree to which I dislike almost every choice. I really don’t understand how this got good reviews at all. But it has fans, so . . . Someone likes something. Favorite beats: Grandma, plus there’s a way for you to quickly escape Jack on the second floor by jumping to the first and then he bursts out of the wall in front of you. Legitimately great jump scare. Margarite/Mom’s Section Nice trailer Is it weird that Ethan looks at a random bra and says “must be Zoe’s?” I think it’s weird. Oh, that’s what the coins are for: unlocking bird cages with upgrades. What? Why am I learning basic mechanics at what feels like 25% of the way into the game? I bought stimulants because reload time isn’t my struggle. Remembering to reload is. Currently saving up for the Magnum. I’ve just kind of accepted at this point that there’s no real coherency in the game. Oh, that’s why Mia’s tape existed - to give you insight into the layout of this area for clues. This just in: no puzzle was hard enough to justify giving those layout clues. Although the room for the light puzzle being reversed is interesting? Now I have a flamethrower. This seems like overkill. I’m very heavily armed for a random dude in the woods. Still linear as fuck . . . Why did we need the tape again? Most annoying section: the jump scare that throws you in the pit (other than the fact it involves Margarite cheating and teleporting). I died here like four times just trying to figure out how to solve it. I eventually just shot her out of frustration, and hoped the flinch meant something. I don’t know how/if anyone figured that out the first time. The lack of feedback is incredibly rough in spots like this. Creepy kid section is fun. Good walking simulator moments. WTF, why am I getting an arm from a hidden room shrine? And a head later, I guess? It looks cool enough that This part feels like the original RE “science horror” intruding on what is otherwise a hillbilly horror. Don’t particularly like the monsters on the way back, but at least it feels like they’re skippable Okay, credit where credit is due: the reveal of Margarite’s new mutant body is actually very good. The surprise long arm creeping out behind a wall sparks curiosity and nervousness, and also reveals the new route. Plus, you know she’s down there and don’t want to go. I . . . Didn’t realize that the greenhouse was going to be just a boss fight. So I went in with no flamethrower, and just a shotgun. I used about twenty shots of shotgun ammo and two with the pistol. It worked, but it was clearly just a dull bullet sponge fight. Did she have weak points? I spent time shooting her in the head and mutant gut. No idea if the second one is crit or body shot. At least this boss fight has an arena. It was minimally competent and not based on a gimmick like the other guy. Honestly, this whole section feels like it should have be the tutorial level. It’s much truer to the gameplay. Still weak as hell but it had clarity of design. Favorite beats: The creepy kid legs running away, insect mom grabbing the lantern. Interlude I took a break at this point to go back and look for the treasure in the pictures. Found 2/3. Honestly? Best part of the game. Suddenly I’m balancing risk vs reward in the form of the resource loss I might incur. Which . . . Isn’t that the whole point of survival horror? Going back also recontextualized new areas I had been before. Made me be able to plan routes And the loot was actually interesting enough to make me feel like it was worth it. Lucas’s Tape is the best one so far. Not really any story context, but just a random Saw-like adventure game room. I didn’t find it super satisfying or meaningful, but at least it works as gameplay. I haven’t found any new coins in so damn long . . . I want that Magnum. The coin collecting definitely feels uneven. I think enemies have resistances? I can put down a big mold man with the flamethrower in half the time it takes to roast a crawling one. But using the pistol it feels reversed? Uncertain what purpose this vagueness serves. Then again, I’m just uncertain in general what the point/focus/goal of this game is. I realized that I wished I had picked easy instead of normal for the wrong reasons - normal is the same actual difficulty as easy for me, but it takes way, way longer. My patience is challenged more than my twitch skill or resource management. The enemies should have 50% less health with 50% less resources. Same tension, less boring. Favorite beats: most of the things I did here? Lucas’s Sections Okay, literally every single possibly helpful female character gets damsel’d at once? Come on! Just kill Zoe! The two keycards thing is bizarrely forced and nonsensical but it lets you revisit areas, which is nice Lucas feels like the only character with personality. Pity his personality is “annoying dickbag,” but at least it’s something. Lucas’s section feels like the only one actually trying to use the gameplay to build paranoia. The normal explosives give a resource choice (health or bullets) and makes the player squint for them. The ones in boxes are just peak “fucking with the player” and I enjoy it. Still linear as fucking fuck, but at least there’s tension and -gasp- choices for the player to make. The pit fight is interesting I guess. I made it rain shotgun bullets and went through it pretty quick. I don’t really get the fat guy attacks, they hit sometimes but not others. I bought the Magnum! But I only have six special bullets. Hopefully I can craft more. “Time to get rid of all your gear” - this is literally a stolen moment from Silent Hill 2 again! Huh, the puzzle room is just the puzzle over again but you can be smart enough to not set yourself on fire. Which opens a weird plot hole where I don’t see how Ethan can know the password if he didn’t watch it. Very confused how they expected this to make sense given the odds of literally being forced to save scum. Oh come on, the boss fight isn’t even Lucas? It’s Jack again? Really fucking weird. I knew it made no sense for him to be dead before. But Marguerite is dead permanently. No idea why. This is one of the most video gamey bosses so far, and the design is what I think of when I think RE bosses. Which is to say, “anime bio-horror Zelda.” SHOTGUN ALL THE EYES! WTF is this save Mia or Zoe bullshit? There’s nothing logically behind this choice, and I’m pretty sure that Ethan is also infected (they’ve implied it a couple of time and I’m pretty sure Zoe just directly said it). I saved Mia because it felt like what Ethan would do. Plus, Mia’s tied to the story whereas Zoe is just kind of a “go here next” voice. Favorite beats: definitely a chain of boxes I shot up that punched back. I wasn’t even pissed, it was just my bad luck. The Ship/Mia Round 2 I can’t remember if this is a known wreck, but who the fuck misses an entire tanker crash? How does no one know about this? The initial exploration is long and slow and kind of pointless feeling. Man, letting Mia voice shit was a weird call because the voice actress is miles better than Ethan. So Mia is a scientist experimenting on children? WTF? Shoulda saved Zoe. The feel of the flashback sequence is closer to what I expect from “classic” (1-3) Resident Evil. Science labs, klaxons, and some light milsim for flavor. This isn’t a tone I personally care for but it does go better with the gameplay. Goddammit, way to fuck your pacing, game. I just finally get enough resources to have the ability to enjoy actual survival horror, then you take it all away, then you give me back a new gun for one level, then you take it all away so I can start over ever without a knife. Argh. I don’t really understand what I’m doing. Why is Ethan getting abducted and held there? He’s supposed to be the new dad now? Why is ghost Jack talking to me? I wondered if it was some infection hivemind thing, but Jack is definitely dead by this point. They made a huge deal out of it. Is this just a really lazy writer? Why is Eveline just letting Ethan go? I never got the machine gun, I found Evaline before I found the key. And they cheat and don’t let you use the lockpick on that. The “modern day” level gives the illusion of openness, but since you spend most of it without a weapon it’s still pretty linear because of the enemy placement (I got lost here for a while and definitely watched them cheat with the spawns to guide you). No boss? Thank fucking god. Favorite beats: Anything involving multiple Molded and a remote bomb. The Mines/Finale I kinda liked the mines? Just you, your current resources, and a slew of varied enemies to burn through. I finally felt like I was making choices and switching weapons based on enemy type. Would have been nice to be less linear, as ever, but finally I felt like missed shots mattered rather than pointless because I didn’t have enough anyway. Baiting enemies into explosives is fun, I’m glad I can be clever here. I used my six Magnum shots here. It wrecks faces. Burned most of my shotgun ammo on the two big boys. I would call that a boss fight. Not really a deep one, but an functional one. Did they forget about Lucas? What happened to him? His boss fight is hiJACKed (sorry) and then we never hear from him again. They pretty much state in the docs you find that Eveline is likely just an abused kid committing evil to try and get love. And yet, it doesn’t feel like they want her to be tragic at this point, just monstrous. I really hate Mia at this point, whose backstory and motivations it seems like they’re just not going to acknowledge. Should have saved Zoe. Ethan has to be infected, because the notes say that you have to be in order to see freaky Evaline. I guess it explains why his hand still works. Pity Ethan’s too stupid to realize any of this. I don’t understand Evaline’s motivations. She wants you to join the family but also wants everyone to kill you? Why? Because “you didn’t want to be the dad?” What was wrong with the previous dad, Jack, and why does she think you rejected her before you even knew she existed? Final boss time! Time to kill scared, vindictive kid! That everyone keeps calling a bitch! (Seriously, what the hell, I insult kids left and right but this feels so uncomfortable) The first boss fight phase is terrible! How was I supposed to know that blocked psychic abilities works to the degree that it stops an almost one-shot? The devs have to leave a blatant hint on the loading screen. Also, it’s so hard to tell that running works here since it barely works in the rest of the game. I guess Evaline is grandma, which doesn’t feel like a reveal that makes sense and also makes my inability to punch Granny all the more frustrating. How was she teleporting before? Did she say “damn you all to hell?” That’s weirdly out of character. The second boss fight phase is terrible! Just unload all the bullets or get eaten in one hit. Final bosses are often let downs, but this is fucking nonsense. The Mia fight at the beginning is better than this, and that was just the world’s slowest maypole dance. The third boss fight phase is terrible! In multiple ways! Holy shit where do I even start . . . !? Eveline was cartoonish enough as a giant face. Now this “more grounded” RE game that started with hulking cannibals has a four-story ugly anime monster. I was laughing at the lack of restraint. Where did the choppers come from? Dear god, they couldn’t even keep the non-milsim tone for one whole game. (I’ll forgive Mia’s section, as it’s more of a diversion). Who are these guys and why are they here? Why was I just thrown a pistol with six bullets by a random dude? Throw me a rocket launcher or something! (There’s a tradition in RE going back to 1 of using rocket launchers on the final boss) The player is literally not allowed to move during this segment. It’s effectively a cutscene where I can shoot three of four times. I would have preferred this to be a cutscene. Okay, enough bitchin’ about bosses. None of the Redfield or Umbrella stuff makes any sense to a first time player. It’s weird to have the climax be “remember the rest of the franchise” to the point of overshadowing the main character. Why is Ethan magically reconciled with Mia? On the boat ride he was suspicious of her (a bit before he should have been), and it seemed like their relationship was rocky without the hand stabbing. Were the devs too scared to have a sad ending in their fucking horror game where everyone dies? Video game climaxes are notoriously “lowest effort” (and, honestly, I get it) but this was pushing it. It felt like there was a lot of effort put here, just nothing good came of it. Favorite beats: I got nothing, this whole section felt like trash - both on a gameplay and story level. End verdict Resoundingly meh and kinda exhausting in a stupid way. I have no interest in the DLC (which I did not buy, thankfully). Feels like the sales pitch was Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets some Silent Hill meets F.E.A.R., but nothing really works together. The core mechanics are thin but not actually bad. Most of the weaknesses are terrible level design, honestly. They don’t show off the strengths of the system and actively distract from it. Each level does improve on the last, but it feels like the designers took a tutorial and an intro level and stretched it out for a whole game. Most early-2000s games that they reference would have had a lot more (arguably too much) escalating design. I’m honestly not sure why we had to run (almost) every level twice? (Even if the first is truncated). It’s an interesting idea, but they never seem to get it to work. I still don’t think that “classic” bosses work in this genre. The two fat men felt climactic without being as artificial as Jack 3.0 or as bullet spongey as Margarite. Apparently the Mia/Zoe choice is just a good/bad ending choice. If you “save” Zoe, they both die anyway - Zoe up front and Mia later on the ship. That makes no sense! And after getting to the end, I like Zoe better anyway because she’s not working for a secretive lab that builds chemical weapons out of children. I’m very confused why saving Mia is the good ending, that’s actually kind of reprehensible. I wonder if the multiple endings are ways to encourage replay but honestly there’s nothing worth replaying - nothing new to find, no real power fantasy, no real story depth. If this was an indie studio I’d give them a chance on a sequel, but I’ve seen RE8. It’s a different set of sins. Some points are stronger, other weaker. But it’s the same core. The real issue is definitely the over focus on spectacle. This is horror for the attention deficient and easily bored/distracted. The real verdict: I uninstalled this minutes after completing it. Personal Verdict, based on why I play games: Story - The story is entirely an excuse plot to get from zone to zone. Whatever. Exploration - Except for a couple of moments, basically none because it’s so linear Player Expression - None, except maybe the mines. The constant cutscene-ing works against this. Discovery - Actually kinda decent? Just not enough of it. Aesthetics - Beginning of the game is strong, even if hillbilly horror isn’t my thing, thanks to focus on the grotesque. By the end it’s complete incoherent nonsense. Emotional Invocation - I didn’t feel fear, I didn’t feel tense, I felt frustrated and constrained. I don’t think this was on purpose. I felt trapped by the devs, not the gameworld or situation.

This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This was written up about the base game of the first installment - I never played any of the expansions. As Always, Assume Spoilers Backstory: One god (Eothas) started a war by creating an avatar and then taking over a kingdom, and then invading another kingdom. A bunch of people working for another goddess (Magran) made a magical nuke and blew up Eothas There’s also a goddess running around in exile (Woedica), who no one seems to like? I think the game’s pretty vague on how Woedica. Also, in one country (the one you’re in), all the babies are being stillborn because they aren’t getting souls. Souls apparently get reincarnated in new bodies after death in this universe. Story premise: You, the main character, get punched by a magical wind and can now interact with souls. In practice, this is mostly “see history” on people. Fun concept, not really amazingly explored beyond flashbacks, mind reads, and some ability flavor . Also, you keep getting dreams of a previous life. Structure is very BG2 (Ed: Baldur’s Gate 2, for the children) - there is a bad guy, he did something bad to you (although here it’s dubiously bad, other than weird dreams), now you have magic powers and he’s doing bad thing, hunt him down. Game lets you RP how/why you hunt him down. Most of the game is generic pastoral fantasy. Go to place X, kill everyone in the dungeon, disable some traps along the way. Roleplaying options are mostly “do good” or “demand more money” or “be a pointless dick.” First third of the game involves try to get to a city, doing some pretty traditional fetch quests along the way. The second third is doing some weak faction quests and getting scraps of information about the villain - ends with the city in riot mode because literally everything you do in game gets fucked by the villain in a particularly lame way (we’ll get to this). Last third involves basically a running theme of “here’s what all the gods think about shit” and belatedly getting you familiar with all the deities, who have just been vaguely in the background until now, while you prep for the final fight with the villain. Right before the final fight, you meet some ghost lady from your nightmare who delivers the “twist”: “The gods aren’t real.” That is literally what she says and everybody gasps in shock. I have to listen to a bunch of otherwise smart characters act hurt and betrayed before pointing out that the gods exist, I’ve met them, this guy over here is literally a cleric who gets his powers from the gods, and you yourself are being tortured in the afterlife by the fucking gods. A whole conversation later the writing finally makes it clear that what she actually means is “there are no natural gods, these gods were created by an ancient civilization to enforce morality.” Okay, I guess that’s interesting, but we’re locking into the final dungeon at this point and can’t do anything interesting with this information. Made even weirder by the fact that several (at least half) the gods are portrayed as dicks (seriously, one of them leads slavering cults that sacrifice random civilians, one preaches extreme Darwinism, and that one guy started invading other countries!). So morality is a bit of a stretch . . . This whole thing is made stupider by the fact that she found all this out not by investigation, but by basically a bunch of people who were initially evangelizing for the created gods basically talked about the plan one room over. And yet no one else ever figured this out? (I guess others might have, but she’s the only figure in the game lore to come near this perspective). Long story short, this is a vaguely interesting idea who’s presence as a last minute twist robs it of all justification. Saving most of the god stuff for act 3 doesn’t really help either, because their existence isn’t a big focus of the game up to that point. The core weakness is that the villain’s (Theos) plot is basically “lol, whatever.” Basically: Sadly, he’s almost always off screen, and has no real personality in his appearances. His first appearance is just operating a big weird machine. He leads a crazy secretive cult, as in no single member knows more than two other members. No idea how he recruits them or what they want. He’s one of the initial guys who created gods. Supposedly because he thinks that atheists are incapable of morality without fearing an afterlife (this is only revealed at the end, after you know the twist). Of course, he also worships (kinda?) the gods. Nevermind the fact that the gods that were created are basically the kind of gods people were making up anyway (he literally says before they made the gods people were fighting over). He also literally brags about causing several Holocaust-level catastrophes to keep the issue going, although he doesn’t explain how those terrible things helped anything? He just says shit “I stabbed this good ruler and replaced him with a famine causing tyrant” because somehow that was better than atheism? Like, how cartoonish is this guy’s view on atheism, given he would have been agnostic/uncertain of what gods existed according to his own admission (that the ancient civ was looking for gods with magic and found none). He’s working specifically with Woedica specifically, the god that no one else likes and got herself exiled (although what that really means is unexplained). It says she’s his favorite because she doesn’t follow rules when they’re inconvenient (I think she’s the god of law and vengeance, which is weird). But he’s basically super invested in this one goddess. There’s another line that implies they’re just mutually using each other for their own goals, but his are kinda vague in this case, because I have no idea how this helps him. Anyhow, his whole plan is to use these ancient machines to trap the souls that are supposed to reincarnate into babies, and then send them straight to Woedica as a power source. Debatably making her the ultimate villain of the game, but she’s so backgrounded it doesn’t matter. Okay, cool. This part is fine and could work great, although the god-atheism bit muddles it all. Along the way, he tries to blame “animancers” (basically necromancers) for the stillborn plague. The way he does this is a combination of mass raising undead corpses, and possessing a sanitarium inhabitant so he can fuck with a scientist enough for a magical accident to happen (the details here a vague, and it’s super jarring to find the main villain possessing a guy locked in a cell). It’s vaguely implied that this is because the study of animancy might lead to the discovery that the gods were handmade, but it’s an implication of an implication that animancy was how the gods were made. In the course of the second act, the PC fucks up the whole animancy plan. The end of the act involves just going to see the city’s Duke and convincing him to allow/disallow animancy in the city. I never got to see his verdict because after you’ve laid out what’s going on, Theas just walks in while possessing an animancer and fireballs the Duke, kicking off riots. This could have really been done at any point and leaves open the “why go about this is such a roundabout way?” Especially because animancers are being superstitiously blamed for the spellborn plague without his intervention. He also would need the Duke to ban the study. Of course, Act 2 is the only time he really does things. His only appearance in Act 1 is to turn on a machine, and in Act 3 he does nothing! In the ending he’s just there to trigger a larger, scarier machine. Weird implications that annoy me Literally all the cool stuff is in the backstory (god bombs, treacherous queen, avatars of gods causing wars) I really like the idea of a villain who thinks we need a god to be moral, but it only really works in the context on a monotheistic “god is good” religion. Petty squabbling Greek gods don’t really work like that. I guess the “bad” ones are meant to be threats, but they have so many worshippers it’s comedic. You can’t disrupt the god status quo. Endings where you wave your middle finger at a god involve them blighting the land. Really weird. It leaves the player with food for thought, I guess.

This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds. As Always, Assume Spoilers Finished Inscryption. My opinion remains about the same as I reported earlier. There’s a few too many horror themes going on that clash, and the meta-story is far too cute for no real payoff. Also the ending is both somehow too terse (OLD_DATA has no payoff) and too long (a long padded goodbye to EVERYONE). I was left both vaguely confused, unsatisfied, and very tired. ...

This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds. As Always, Assume Spoilers The Breakdown Okay, I have finished Firewatch. I liked it a lot, although I think it overplayed its hand at a few key places. Basically the characters, dialogue, voice acting, atmosphere, and theming were all excellent. Setting is good. The plot itself is . . . Fine. It’s a cardboard cutout holding up the rest, and while you can get it to make sense it requires a lot of work. ...