Tyler F.M. Edwards's Blog, page 17

Deep Space Nine Revisited

It has been my experience that the majority of Trekkies consider Deep Space Nine to be the peak of the franchise. Ever the outsider, I have tended to hold the opposite view. It’s always been my least favourite of all Trek shows; I’ve found it mediocre at best, unwatchable at worst.

[image error]I’m not sure what came over me, but recently I decided to give it yet another try. This time I would sit down and try to watch the series from beginning to end, to give it an honest shake.

Well. Sort of.

I knew from experience there was no way I’d make it through the whole series watching every episode. There’s just too much cringe. Therefore I watched in order, but only episodes that were important to the plot or that seemed especially interesting to me (the latter category consisting almost entirely of Dax episodes). I knew from experience that anything focused on Quark and the Ferengi would send me screaming for the hills, so I avoided those episodes like the plague.

With this strategy of selective watching, I managed to make it through the series. I noted that while my choices for what to watch didn’t change, I watched more of each subsequent season — in other words, it got better with time.

I still have a lot of problems with this show, and it will never be my favourite, but I did find a lot more to appreciate than I had in the past, and I will acknowledge some parts are truly excellent. Rather than viewing it as irredeemable, I now see it as a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde experience. At times it approaches true brilliance. At others it’s just painful to watch. Even being selective, I still came across some true stinkers.

I think perhaps the worst thing about DS9 is how it can reach such depths of true offensiveness, arguably beyond what any other incarnation of Trek has achieved. I don’t mean offensive in terms of poor writing or bad story-telling (though it’s got plenty of that), but truly awful messaging that no one should be putting out, least of all the supposedly inspiring universe of Star Trek.

One obvious example is the second season episode “The Alternate.” In it, we meet the Bajoran scientist who is effectively Odo’s father. The entire episode makes it brutally clear the doctor is an abusive narcissist who has left Odo with deep emotional scars, culminating in Odo having a full on psychotic break, and the “happy” ending is for Odo to… apologize for acting out and try to repair his relationship with the monstrous doctor.

[image error]My reaction to that ending is best summarized in this YouTube clip. It may be possible to have a worse take on emotional abuse, but it would require a greater imagination than mine to think of how.

Odo in general makes me uncomfortable. There’s always this underlying feeling that he’s “the good one” because he tries to behave like a human rather than embracing his identity as a Changeling. Or maybe I’m just disappointed one of the most alien characters in Star Trek history thinks, feels, and behaves pretty much exactly like a human. Such wasted potential.

But it gets worse. I know this may be a controversial opinion, but I’m going to go on record as saying that I think “For the Uniform” is probably the single worst episode of Star Trek ever filmed.

It’s just forty-five minutes of Sisko committing actual war crimes without any consequences at all, capped off with him and Dax joking around like it was just another day at the office.

Star Trek has dabbled with the “captain as Ahab” story at other times, but it’s generally a cautionary tale. First Contact makes the point that Picard is wrong to endanger his crew by obsessing over taking revenge on the Borg, but DS9 is over here like, “Isn’t it great that Sisko went on that deranged murder spree? Revenge is so great.”

It is a complete and total betrayal of everything Star Trek is supposed to stand for.

One final point on DS9’s problematic stories: Sisko as the Emissary. Now, in general I find the story around the Prophets and Bajoran mysticism one of the greatest flaws of the series. Star Trek has always been about science and skepticism, and then DS9 comes along and is all like, “lol, jk, magic is real.”

[image error](And not only is it a fantasy story shoe-horned into a sci-fi setting, it’s also bad fantasy that wouldn’t work very well even in a magical setting.)

But what makes this relevant to my point about DS9’s offensive stories is the idea of a human as the Bajoran messiah.

I really like what Star Trek stands for, and I really believe in the message of a hopeful future it tries to spread, but Star Trek’s morality has always had one Achilles heel. Most of the time, moral issues are explored via corrupt or misguided alien cultures, with the (overtly Western) Federation swooping in to teach them the error of their ways. Even when the message is worthwhile — and it usually is — there is a subtle whiff of colonialist condescension in Star Trek’s formula.

It gets less subtle in DS9. Of course the Bajorans can’t be their own saviours. Of course these simple aliens need an enlightened human to show them the way. Ick.

To be fair, though, DS9 was also a lot braver than its predecessor when it came to showing the Federation as less than perfect. The results may have been mixed, but the intention is commendable.

Believe it or not this post was intended to make the point I’ve developed a new appreciation for DS9, and it’s kind of gotten away from me. I swear I do have good things to say, but I’ve been holding my tongue about all it does wrong for years, so bare with me as I continue to tear it a new Bajoran Wormhole for a few more paragraphs.

DS9 ruined Gowron as a character. He was always a bit morally ambiguous, but DS9 made him a full-blown villain. That’s not the problem, though. Gowron making a heel-turn isn’t what I would have chosen, but it’s not far-fetched. The trouble is DS9 makes him an idiot. His schemes are cartoonishly, self-destructively villainous and obviously doomed to blow up in his face. He was never a saint, but he was always smart. DS9 made him a complete buffoon for the sake of some cheap drama.

[image error]Similarly, the Romulans on DS9 are morons. They’re supposed to be the galaxy’s master manipulators, but throughout DS9 Sisko and Section 31 just keep playing them like fiddles. As a major Romulan fan, I’m honestly glad DS9 didn’t do more with them. If it had, I think it would have killed their mystique in much the same way Voyager robbed the Borg of their fear factor.

Finally, I will say that as much as this viewing improved my opinion of the series in many ways, it actually lowered my opinion of the two things I’ve always praised about Deep Space Nine: Sisko and Dax.

Mind you, I still like them, but I definitely like them less having gotten to know them better.

The whole “I massacred a whole bunch of Maquis without trial and poisoned some planets cause Eddington hurt my feelings” thing notwithstanding, my real issue with Sisko is that, like Janeway, I don’t feel they ever really established a clear identity for Sisko as a captain. Kirk is a man of action, Picard is a wise but somewhat cold moral paragon, and Archer is the lovable idiot who made all the mistakes so those that followed could be better, but what is Sisko (or Janeway) about?

I realized that what I really like isn’t Sisko. It’s Avery Brooks. He imparts such a fiery passion to the role that it’s easy to overlook how thin and inconsistent the character actually is.

I think that’s true of a lot of characters on DS9, actually. Gul Dukat is a paper thin mustache-twirler. The only thing that makes him work is the sleazy yet undeniable charisma that Marc Alaimo imparts to the role. Garak isn’t really that original of a character, either, but he still manages to steal every scene he’s in purely on the basis of Andrew Robinson being absolutely and utterly delightful.

As for Dax, I realized it isn’t Jadzia I like so much as just the concept of Joined Trill. The pseudo-reincarnation idea is a really fascinating concept for an alien race, but the execution is rough.

[image error]The trouble is they never really seemed to define a clear identity for Jadzia. She just kind of ricochets between a few different personas for a while, until about halfway through the series when the writers appear to just give up and turn her into a clone of Curzon, who for whatever reason seems to be the only Dax host the writers were interested in fleshing out.

I hate to say it, but I actually like Ezri a lot better. They did a much better job of making her feel like a complete person, rather than just a vessel for past lives.

On that note, one thing that surprised me is that at no point is any personality ever established for the Dax symbiont itself. I eventually came to the conclusion that Trill symbionts must not have personalities — and perhaps not even true sentience — and are just vessels for memories. Which is fine — actually a cool idea — but they could have communicated that better.

So what did I like? Well, as I already touched on, there’s some great acting on this show. I do think Garak deserves the universal acclaim he receives, and that is almost entirely down to the talents of Andrew Robinson.

DS9 clearly tried to be a more mature take on Star Trek (an attempt that many subsequent incarnations of the franchise have made, with varying degrees of success), and the results are hit and miss, but I admire the effort.

DS9’s most successful attempt at showing a darker side of the Federation was Section 31, I think. The Starfleet coup d’etat earlier in the series was too sudden to be believable, but Section 31’s existence as a secret society allows it to exist in Roddenberry’s utopia without breaching credibility, and the stories with Section 31 are all quite enjoyable.

There are some great standalone episodes, too. “Duet” is an obvious one, but the best has to be “Rejoined.”

[image error]I had read about this episode before, but never actually watched it. I’d heard it was another attempt at an allegory for the struggles of queer people, and I’d assumed that it was as limp-wristed as The Next Generation’s half-hearted take on conversion therapy in “The Outcast.”

Boy, was I wrong. It’s an incredibly powerful episode, and quite brave for the climate of the time. As a straight man, I’m an outsider to the issue, but from my perspective at least this seems a nearly perfect metaphor for the struggles of the often stigmatized LGBT community, and quite heartbreaking. All the more so because you can’t really blame Lenara for being too scared to stand up to her people’s taboos. She would lose so much in doing so.

Of course, Deep Space Nine is most memorable for the Dominion War. I find the war itself as inconsistent as the rest of the series. At times it feels genuinely epic and thrilling, but most of the time the show seems scared to show the real impact of war. Aside from Nog losing his leg (which is basically forgotten after just one episode dealing with the fallout), there’s never really an impact on the main characters. The war feels distant and abstract.

The Dominion themselves are very interesting, though. The fact that they are three races (plus many vassal peoples) adds a lot of depth and makes them feel more convincing as rivals to the Federation. I particularly enjoy the chilling inhumanity of the Jem’hadar.

And of course, Jeffrey Combs is always delightful in everything he does.

They’re a useful foil for some good stories, too. Much as the TNG fan in me doesn’t want to admit it, Worf fighting the Jem’hadar in prison is probably that character’s finest hour.

Finally, while I’m not a particular fan of the Cardassians generally speaking (they’re pretty much just Romulan knock-offs with a weaker backstory), I do enjoy how their arc ended.

I can’t help but compare it to Shadows the Apt (spoilers for those books ahead — beware). When that series at last drew to a close, the Wasp Empire — cruel imperialists very akin to the Cardassians — never face any punishment for their long history of war crimes. They lose a few of their conquered territories, and their pride is injured, and that’s about it.

[image error]I reckon the intention was to avoid glorifying revenge by having the heroes sack the Wasp homeland, and I can respect that, but it also feels like the villains got off scot-free. It was very frustrating and unsatisfying.

By contrast, having Cardassia leveled by the Dominion was a masterstroke. It gives us the comeuppance we’ve all wanted to see the Cardassians get virtually from their introduction, without the need for the Federation to compromise their merciful values. Instead of glorifying revenge, it feels more like it’s sending the message that evil actions inevitably bring evil consequences.

So having said all that, what do I think of Deep Space Nine now that I’ve finished it? Well, it’s a great show… as long as you ignore about 60% of it.

Season seven was really good. By then it felt like the show had finally found its footing, and I can’t help but wonder if all the people heaping praise on the series are mostly just remembering that final leg.

I’m still never going to agree that it’s the best Trek show, not by a long shot, but I think I am prepared to stop calling it the worst. All apologies to Discovery, which takes over that slot, but hey, you’re still not as bad as the Abramsverse, so that’s something!

Song of the Month: Wolf Alice, Moaning Lisa Smile

A few years back, Wolf Alice enjoyed a few months of regular airplay on my local radio station, and then they seemed to just sort of dropped off the map, at least in this part of the world. I wasn’t really a fan back then — I found them vaguely interesting, but nothing more.

A funny thing happened recently, though. Something — I don’t even remember what — reminded me of them, and I listened to a bunch of songs on YouTube, and I decided they’re actually not half bad. Admittedly it’s still just a couple of songs that have caught my eye (or ear, I guess), but I have been listening to them quite a bit lately.

So anyway, here’s some Wolf Alice.

Song of the Month: Everlast, What It’s Like

Earlier in the month I talked about my homebrew RPG, Wyrd Street. In it, I said that I felt like Wyrd Street is essentially the song What It’s Like by Everlast translated into a fantasy RPG. That also gives me an easy choice for June’s Song of the Month.

In the unlikely event anyone still cares in the current climate, fair warning there are NSFW lyrics ahead.

This song isn’t exactly the usual style of music I go for, but it’s nice for what it is, and I’ve always admired the message expressed through its lyrics. I think right now especially we could all do to put ourselves in the shoes of those less fortunate than us, but really this is a message that will always be relevant.

Review: Nordic Warriors

After being intrigued by the demo, the developer of newly released RTS game Nordic Warriors was kind enough to give me a review code for the full version of the game.

[image error]Nordic Warriors is obviously intended as a spiritual successor to Myth: The Fallen Lords and its sequel, a wildly unique series of real time strategy (or real time tactics, as they were sometimes dubbed) games from the 90s that I absolutely loved back in the day. There’s really been nothing like them before or since.

Until Nordic Warriors, that is.

This style of games lacks the economic gameplay you see in most RTS titles. Instead, you’re simply given a small number of units and an objective. With no reinforcements outside of certain rare scripted events, every unit is precious, and every death is felt.

This is further enhanced by the fact every unit is named, with a kill counter that persists across missions. Even without any actual character development or personalities, they can start to take on a life of their own.

In one mission, I sent one of my shieldmaidens, Iona, on what I believed to be a suicide mission to hunt down some enemy casters. She was already wounded, but after I successfully dodged the casters’ projectiles and slew them, Iona managed to evade hordes of enemy soldiers and make it back to my lines with about 1% health left. I had my shaman heal her up, and from that point on I did everything I could to keep Iona alive in all subsequent missions. She’d earned it.

Myth and Nordic Warriors also share a strong degree of realism, with projectiles following real physics. NW seems a bit less stringent about realism than its predecessors — I didn’t notice shrapnel doing any damage, and arrows seem less likely to be blown off course — which is a mixed bag. On the one hand it takes some of the character out of the experience, but on the other hand I did lose a lot less units to friendly fire, which I can’t complain too hard about.

[image error]The best and the worst thing about Nordic Warriors is that it so closely replicates the experience of Myth.

It’s good because it’s a good formula that deserves to be repeated. I keep saying it, but there just aren’t any other games that feel quite like this, and that’s a crying shame. There’s a unique tension and thrill to these hyper-realistic virtual battles against overwhelming odds.

The downside is that it is perhaps too slavish in adhering to Myth’s formula. It basically is just playing Myth with modernized graphics, and much as I love Myth, I would like to believe after twenty plus years the formula could be refined somewhat.

I know this was made by a very small development team with a very limited budget, so there’s only so much you can expect, but there are a lot of things that could be done to enhance this style of game. Maybe we could have the option to choose our units before each mission (within limitations) or customize our troops somehow, or perhaps the physics engine could be further enhanced to include terrain deformation or the like.

Nordic Warriors also brings back the rather punishing difficulty found in its predecessors. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, it can be a stressful game, requiring precise play and constant vigilance. I grant the sense of danger is part of what makes this formula work, but I would have liked to have seen a balance struck to make things less taxing. It’s fun, but it’s not relaxing.

The other big downside to Nordic Warriors is that a huge part of what made Myth special was its incredible story and world-building, and that’s something that NW just can’t replicate. It’s not their fault, but I can’t stop missing the originality of Myth’s setting.

[image error]To be fair, considering the low budget and obvious lack of a dedicated writing staff, the story-telling in Nordic Warriors isn’t half bad. The plot’s nothing remarkable, but it captures the feel of Norse mythology pretty well — aside from depicting Helheim as fiery rather than icey, anyway.

I do appreciate that this game presents the ancient Norse as actual three-dimensional people rather than the cartoonish savages so much of our pop culture makes them out to be.

I also like that some effort has been made to show the relatively high level of gender equality in ancient Norse culture. There’s a decent selection of female units and characters, which was definitely a major blindspot for Myth back in the day.

All in all, Nordic Warriors is a solid game and an impressive effort by such a small dev team, but I wish more had been done to improve on the Myth formula. This is a genre that is capable of so much more, and I worry this won’t be enough to attract new fans.

Overall rating: 7/10

Dungeon in a Box Year Three Arrives

Aways back I mentioned a new job writing 5E adventures. Today, I can begin to reveal some of the details of that.

[image error]I’ve been contributing to the third year of adventure subscription service Dungeon in a Box. The new season featuring my adventures, Voyage of the Fallen Star, is now live and available to subscribers, with a discount for people who sign up in the next few weeks.

Year three begins a new story arc featuring an epic journey across the sea in search of a magical treasure of incalculable value. My first contribution is episode four, Madness of the Mother, which features a race never before seen in D&D, with a rich and unique culture of my own devising. I’m also currently beginning work on another episode that will appear later in the season. New subscribers jump directly into year three, with no catch-up required.

Each month’s box comes with an adventure book containing multiple sessions worth of story and combat encounters, unique monsters with custom stats and terrifying new powers, high quality maps, and DiaB’s own “Skinny Minis.” Starting in year three, boxes will also include custom sculpted minis and 3D terrain.

Each box also includes everything you need to run the adventures online (very useful in the current climate), and if you prefer, you can subscribe for the digital materials only at a significant discount.

Subscribing also grants access to a library of “Wondrous One-Shots,” shorter adventures not connected to the main story. My own Wondrous One-Shot, Treasures of the Savage Lord, is currently in the final stages of production.

If you want to know more about my work as a table-top RPG designer, check out my recent post on my own game, Wyrd Street!

Words of Wisdom from William Adama

I think there are more important voices than mine that need to be amplified right now in regards to current events, but I just wanted to offer some words of wisdom from one William Adama.

Take a Walk on Wyrd Street

Recently I discovered an absolutely amazing online tool for making fantasy maps called Inkarnate. I was so impressed by the free version I paid for a year of subscription the very first night. I’ve always loved drawing fantasy maps, but I lack the artistic talent to do them with any quality. Inkarnate lets even someone like me make fantastic looking maps.

[image error]I swear they aren’t paying me to promote them. I just really, really love this tool.

One of the first maps I made was a map of Wyrd Street, the titular setting of the table-top RPG I’ve been designing for about a year now.

I’ve mentioned Wyrd Street in passing before, but it occurs to me I’ve never really taken the time to go into any depth. Now seems as good a time as any.

It’s still a work in progress — it’s more or less “feature complete” in terms of races, classes, and core systems, but it still needs a lot more content — so I don’t want to say too much about it right now, but I can give a general overview.

My two favourite ways to describe Wyrd Street in a nutshell are “if that bit at the start of Dragon Age 2 where Hawke iss a nobody just trying to feed their family was the whole game” or “if the song What It’s Like by Everlast was a fantasy RPG.”

Or if you want the long version, here’s the blurb I have at the start of the core rulebook:

The world moves toward war. The armies of the Seven Holy Kingdoms of Tiahn move south, subjugating all in their path in the name of their divine law. Xandria and the Rusty Peaks have already fallen, and now the Holy Kingdoms turn their attention to the Free Holds. On both sides, legendary heroes rise to determine the fate of the world.

You are not one of them.

In the slums of Morhold, refugees from the war mingle with the city’s own poor. Here, a small haven has been carved out among the desperation and the gangs. Here, all outcasts and rejects have a home.

In this place walks a different class of hero. Brawlers and Scoundrels, Drifters and Fortune Tellers, Quacks and Street Preachers, Dreamers and Heretics. No songs will be sung of them, but it is they who bring hope to the hopeless, who defend the innocent from those who would exploit them. Not everyone can save the world, but anyone can save someone’s world.

This is Wyrd Street. This is your home, and you will do anything to protect it.

It’s a game of (relatively) ordinary people doing their best to protect those close to them. While the option to create your own characters exist, the game is built around the idea of playing pre-made “Iconic” characters who have close ties to each other and the world around them. You’re not fighting to save the world; you’re fighting to feed and protect the people you love.

Mechanically, it’s a fairly standard D20 system, but with some tweaks. I wanted to fix some of the things that frustrate me when I play Dungeons and Dragons.

For example, in D&D, I don’t like the wild disparity between classes when it comes to decision-making during combat and the action economy.

Personally I can’t play a D&D character without spell slots. I like making choices between casting a spell or not, and if so which spell. As a more physical character, you just attack nine times out of ten.

In Wyrd Street, every class uses focus, a resource analogous to spell slots, to activate their most powerful abilities. Class identity is established by how each class interacts with focus.

For example, Fortune Tellers and Scoundrels have very low maximum focus pools, but they have multiple ways to quickly regain focus, so they’re encouraged to spend it almost as fast as they earn it. Meanwhile, a Street Preacher has a larger maximum focus pool but doesn’t get focus back as quickly, so while they can use a lot of focus-spenders, they have to be a little more strategic about it. And a Brawler has a low focus pool and low regeneration, but they have access to a lot of powerful passive bonuses, so they don’t necessarily need focus to be a terror.

The unbalanced action economy is also something I find frustrating in 5E D&D. A monk will use a bonus action almost every turn, but paladins almost never have any use for their bonus actions.

To address this, in Wyrd Street the concept of bonus actions has been eliminated entirely in favour of simply giving every character two actions per turn by default.

Other features of Wyrd Street include a unified system of buffs and debuffs for greater clarity and eschewing traditional subclasses in favour of giving every class a choice of multiple new abilities at each level. You can still build towards certain specialties — a Drifter can focus heavily on their pets, or split their abilities between improving themselves and their pets, or not use pets at all — but it’s more flexible.

The exceptions are Quacks and Vigilantes. Uniquely, those classes each have a choice of two distinct subclasses that define their playstyle from level one. Quacks can specialize as an Anatomist (a melee burst damage build) or a Chemist (a ranged support build), whereas Vigilantes may gain some support abilities by choosing the Pursuit of Justice and wielding the Beacon of Hope, or maximize their damage and terrorize the wicked with the Brand of Hatred by choosing the Pursuit of Vengeance.

Even racial abilities are based on choice. Everyone can choose one of three abilities unique to their race once they hit level three.

There are other unique features too — like missed attacks being converted to more of a glance system so turns are never fully wasted — but I think that covers the broad strokes.

But at the end of the day, Wyrd Street is about the stories and the people more than the mechanics. It’s about outcasts doing their best in a hard world.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with another excerpt from the core rulebook:

Wyrd Street is different from other popular table-top RPGs in that the focus is less on grand heroics or world-changing events and more on intimate stories of ordinary people doing their best to protect their homes and the people they love. The heart of the game is found in the bonds between characters and the intricate details of the setting.

An effort has been made to make the cast of Wyrd Street as inclusive as possible in the hopes that anyone can feel represented within this world. If there is one rule in Wyrd Street that trumps all others, it is this: Anyone can be a hero.

Gaming Round-Up: Adrift

Do you ever find that when you finish a long game that you really love, you have a hard time getting into anything else for a while? That’s been my experience since finishing We Happy Few. I’ve tried a lot of things, but not much is sticking.

[image error]I did finish the Reign of Terror mod for Grim Dawn, which recreates Diablo II, but to be honest it ended up feeling like a bit of a slog. Even with the updates provided by the Grim Dawn engine, the gameplay hasn’t aged that well, and even the story is a lot more shallow than I remember it being.

I did get to experience the story of the Lord of Destruction expansion for the first time, not having played it back in the day, and I think I liked it a bit better than the base game’s, but even then it wasn’t exactly thrilling.

A few weeks back, both Conan Exiles and Fallout 76 ran simultaneous free trial events, and even though neither is a game I’ve really had on my radar, I decided to give them a shot for curiosity’s sake. We Happy Few did leave me with a bit of a craving for more survival mechanics.

To my great surprise, I actually ended up enjoying Fallout 76 quite a bit. It does have a lot of jankiness — the combat is weak at best, the character models are hideous, and the PC interface is an unmitigated disaster — but even so I was actually rather sad when the trial ended. I’m tempted to pick it up on sale at some time.

I miss my CAMP. I had a lovely spot on a mountain peak between two forested valleys. I was growing a vegetable garden in the back. Player housing can be really fun when it’s a meaningful part of the game and not just a place to decorate once and then forget about.

[image error]Exiles, on the other hand, I didn’t enjoy at all. Whereas F76 was occasionally annoying due to bad design, Conan Exiles feels like it was designed from the ground up to be constantly annoying. I get that they’re going for a savage world where danger is constant, but when even the sheep treat you as KoS, you’ve just lapsed into the realm of unintentional self-parody. To say nothing of the nightmare of inventory management…

And honestly, even if you fixed those problems, it still wouldn’t be a very interesting game. Crafting is somehow even more gameified and mindless than in the average MMO (a bizarre choice for a game that’s almost entirely crafting), and there’s just no point to anything. No story, no meaningful goals.

After that I dipped into a few titles from my backlog. First was Far Cry: Primal. I really like the concept of the game, but the reality of it just didn’t click for me. Too much of a grindfest. I don’t understand why so many single-player games want to be bad MMOs these days.

I did enjoy the animal companions, though.

Next up was some strategy games — Surviving Mars and The Hive — but neither grabbed me. I give The Hive credit for an original concept, but in practice it was a pretty generic RTS, and it just didn’t feel like it was bringing anything new to the table.

Speaking of RTS, though, one highlight that did crop around this time is a game called Nordic Warriors I tried via a demo key given to Massively Overpowered. It’s a single-player game, so I wasn’t able to cover it on MOP, but it did impress.

[image error]The story of Nordic Warriors is based on Norse mythology, which is always a good way to get my attention, but more importantly, the gameplay is an homage to Bungie’s Myth games from back in the 90s.

Anyone who’s followed this blog for a long time knows I loved Myth back in the day, and there’s just nothing like it even now. Its hyper-realistic real time tactical strategy is a style of gameplay that simply doesn’t exist any more. Anything to bring back that kind of gameplay has my support.

In some ways, Nordic Warriors shows its low budget — the entire development team is just three people — but all things considered it’s an impressive effort at bringing back the Myth experience. I will definitely be picking it up when the full version goes live later this month.

In the meanwhile, that still left me without a game to fill my lonely days. Right now, I’ve gotten back into Elder Scrolls Online. Not for Greymoor, though. It looks like a pretty underwhelming expansion to me, and to be honest I almost forgot it was even a thing. Instead, I’ve finally started on the previous expansion, Elsweyr, which I bought on sale ages ago but never got around to playing.

I won’t lie, I didn’t go into this with a lot of enthusiasm. On paper ESO is my dream MMO, but in practice it tends towards being merely adequate. I think a lot of it is just down both the writing and the combat being fairly mediocre. I like the Khajiit, so I was curious about Elsweyr, but my expectations were low, especially after the disappointment of Summerset.

It’s early days, but while I may not be blown away, I will say it’s growing on me. It already feels better than Summerset, at least. Dragon fights might not be wildly original as public events go, but they’re definitely a lot more exciting than just reskinning Dolmens.

[image error]While the meat of the story is still kind of underwhelming, the world-building is interesting. Unlike most of the game, Elsweyr feels genuinely fantastical, and I am enjoying meeting all the strange and bizarre subraces of the Khajiit. And if nothing else, Khajiiti NPCs have vastly more personality than the Altmer.

Something has gone badly wrong if even I find Elves boring.

I’ve also switched to my warden rather than my main for a change of pace, which may be helping a little. She certainly kills things faster; normally I’m not a fan of mowing down mobs without any difficulty, but given ESO’s combat isn’t exactly a delight, I’m more okay with it right now.

I’d like to start a necromancer, but then I’d have to deal with having an untrained mount again. It’s a shame that ESO is so alt-friendly in so many ways, but that one mechanic just feels so punishing if you try to switch to a new character. Weird how MMOs work against their own designs sometimes.

I’m not convinced I’m not going to lose interest and jump onto something else before long, but so far at least I find myself warming up to Elsweyr. Mayhap it may tide me over until Nordic Warriors releases, at least.

Then again, there is also a part of me that’s hankering for some Age of Empires…

Song of the Month: The Naked and Famous, Death

A new release today, hot off the digital presses. I always find The Naked and Famous a bit hit and miss, and the slow trickle of songs from their upcoming album have been no exception, but based on first impressions, I think I like this one.

Given current world events, I know death is maybe not a topic people want to be reminded of, but I’m sure it’s clear by now I have no issue with morbid music. And in its way, this song is a strange sort of uplifting.

I’m reminded of that line from Night Vale: “Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”

Review: We Happy Few

We Happy Few is a stealth/survival game taking place in a dystopic alternate version of 1960s England. In this reality, the Germans occupied Britain during the Second World War, and though the occupation only last a few years, the British were compelled to do terrible things in that time.

[image error]To cope with their shared trauma, residents of the village of Wellington Wells turned to Joy, a powerful drug that causes users to forget anything unpleasant, leaving them in a state of mindless euphoria. Being sad is now a crime, and “Downers” are exiled into the wilderness, or disappeared entirely.

That premise intrigued me from the moment I heard it, but stealth has never been my cup of tea, so I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy We Happy Few or not. I opted to wait until it went on a deep discount on Steam before buying it.

I kind of regret that now. We Happy Few is an amazing game, and I would have happily paid full price if I’d known it would be this good.

WHF’s reliance on stealth was an issue early on. However, the saving grace is that stealth in this game is not mandatory in the sense that being caught will cause a fail state. You just have to fight more if you’re bad at sneaking (like I am). I had to restart the game on a lower difficulty to survive the many, many fights I kept getting myself into, but once I did that I was able to start making real progress and truly enjoying the game.

The combat in WHF is a bit simplistic, but it’s enjoyable enough, and it gets the job done. I was also really surprised by how immersive and enjoyable I found the game’s survival and exploration mechanics to be. We Happy Few stands as one of the very few open world single-player games that I feel actually justifies its open world, rather than using it as a crutch to pad out the game.

[image error]I was especially impressed by the quality of the side quests in this game. Side quests are usually something I endure more than savour, but in WHF nearly every side quest was interesting or entertaining on at least some level.

My favourite involved a cult of lunatics worshiping a supposedly divine yam. The premise is great, but the execution was better. I was amazed by how elaborate the quest was. They even repurposed a lot of actual pagan prayers for use by the yam cult.

The amount of effort and research poured into such a silly and ultimately irrelevant side quest is a testament to the passion and devotion of We Happy Few’s developers.

For more of my thoughts on We Happy Few’s open world and survival mechanics, stay tuned to Massively Overpowered for an upcoming MMO Burnout column on the topic.

But while I did largely enjoy the game mechanics and exploration content of We Happy Few, it’s the main story and the themes it raises where this game really shines.

I’m not normally a fan of dystopic fiction, for a variety of reasons. However, We Happy Few aces two things that dystopic stories tend to ignore.

[image error]One is that this is a fairly appealing dystopia. The Joy-fueled haze experienced by the citizens of Wellington Wells may not be quite so brilliantly seductive as the selective memory editing of Remember Me, a similarly powerful dystopic game, but it isn’t too hard to imagine a world where people have been seduced by the promise of eternal happiness. It’s more believable than the openly horrific settings of other dystopias.

The other is that We Happy Few acknowledges something a lot of similar stories ignore: dystopias don’t work.

We Happy Few is less a story of plucky heroes rising up to throw off their shackles as it is that of a broken system collapsing under its own faulty premise. Absolutely every aspect of life in Wellington Wells is falling apart; Joy is poisoning the entire town, literally and figuratively.

There’s this terrible lie that pervades our culture — including our fiction — that evil may be unpleasant, but it gets things done. Efficiency and decency are seen as opposite ends of a spectrum, where one has to be sacrificed in the name of the other.

But that’s not true. We’re told that torture may be wrong, but it yields useful information (it doesn’t). We’re told that strongmen may not be lovable, but they get things done (they don’t).

In reality, oppressive authoritarian regimes are almost invariably riddled with corruption, incompetence, and inefficiency. Justice, equality, and liberal policies almost always lead to better results across all sectors of society.

[image error]And We Happy Few understands this. Wellington Wells isn’t run by evil geniuses. In so much as it has any leadership at all, it’s run by cowards and idiots.

I will also say that a lot of themes of this game resonate with me on a very personal level, having spent much of my life on a rollercoaster of various sedatives and antidepressants, most of which just made things worse for me.

While I acknowledge that drugs do help some people, the way medication is often sold as a cure-all is deeply disturbing to me.

Something that really struck a chord with me is the fact that Joy comes in various tasty flavours — chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, blackberry… I was reminded of a time many years ago where my doctor gave me some free samples of an antipressant. They were chewable and had a delicious mint flavour.

I don’t even think I want to know what they put into those things to make them taste so good. I don’t even like mint, normally.

I’m not shaming people who take antidepressants. If any of them actually worked for me, I’d take them happily. But I think we can all agree something has broken in our system when doctors hand out candy-sweet happy pills to anyone willing to ask for them.

[image error]It also struck me that although the core theme of We Happy Few could boil down to “things suck, and there aren’t any easy answers,” I still managed to find it a fairly uplifting game.

One of the many things I’ve dabbled in to try to treat my mental health issues is dialectical behaviour therapy, and WHF is a great lesson in two of DBT’s core principles: validation and radical acceptance. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge that yes, things suck, and it’s okay to feel bad.

Sometimes trying to cheer up — or having others try to cheer you up — isn’t helpful. It can even make things worse. Sometimes you just need to face the fact that things are bad, and there can be a certain relief in that.

I can poke a few holes in We Happy Few’s story here or there — it’s a bit slow-paced, and it doesn’t answer as many questions as I’d like — but its strength far exceeds its weaknesses.

If there’s one place WHF stumbles, it’s the DLC. Even then, none of it is actually bad; it’s just not as good as the main game. The first two DLCs — They Came from Below and Lightbearer — are just jokey side-quests, though they do feature some clever game mechanics.

The final DLC, We All Fall Down, returns to the main story and is all around a lot more enjoyable, though even then it suffers a bit from feeling somewhat disconnected from the events of base game.

[image error]Despite somewhat underwhelming DLC, though, We Happy Few is the most I’ve enjoyed a video game in quite a while.

Overall rating: 9/10