Tag: Narrative

Thoughts on The Last of Us Part II

Izlain

Somehow I’ve let the better part of a month go by without writing anything here, and I think I’m just in one of those creative dry spells. Whatever the case, I did spend some time playing through The Last of Us Part II and I thought I could at least put a post together about it. First of all, if you aren’t familiar with the developers of this series, Naughty Dog, you should look into their games. The Uncharted series has been long running and each game is definitely worth playing through. Somehow Naughty Dog has figured out how to push the systems their games run on to their maximum capabilities, along with pushing the boundaries of storytelling in video games. Adult themes, beautiful locations, graphic violence… it’s all here, but it elicits emotion in ways that only the best films of Hollywood can. I’ve never felt tears welling in my eyes from playing a video game until I indulged in their stories, and I cannot recommend these titles enough. The first game in this series was gut wrenching as well, but you grew to love Joel and Ellie and carrying them through to the end of the timeline was an amazing journey.

The sequel starts you off playing as Joel again, coming back home from some journey, and home being a settlement somewhere in the western portion of the United States. One thing I should notate now is that I plan to talk about various parts of the game including the finale, so spoilers will be present. You probably should skip the rest of this article until you’ve completed the game. But hey, if you want to see if the overall plot even interests you in the first place, read on! So this game puts you into the direct control of various characters, all of whom have a tale that directly intersects with the others. From what I remember about the first game, you only played as Joel save for a short bit playing as Ellie, but this game puts you in the shoes of Joel, Ellie and Abby, and at the same time jumps around on the timeline. There are flashbacks to where Ellie was a younger girl, ditto this for Abby. Joel is really the most limited character, because after playing him at the beginning, you’re given control of Ellie, and soon enough Joel is dead. That’s not entirely a spoiler I suppose as we all knew that was coming, but it was still sad and I’m glad there were some flash backs of him throughout the game because he was a really great character and I missed him after a time.

Joel’s death was fairly traumatic. This settlement where these folks live is still a part of this post apocalyptic setting, so there is still the ever present threat of the infected. We see plenty of examples of how they have evolved throughout the game as well, because various new forms exist in the sequel. Due to the need for supplies and the need for living people to protect themselves, this settlement has several outposts nearby, and groups of survivors head out to them regularly to keep the area infection free along with grabbing anything of use they might find. They are not the only bastion of society though, and soon enough it becomes apparent that some of the other humans in the area are not so friendly.

Those who played the first game might recall the main plot, where Joel who is a smuggler, was paid to smuggle a girl (Ellie) to a “Firefly” (one of the new world factions) outpost because it was determined she was immune to the virus as she had been bitten but never turned. It turns out that what the Fireflies needed from her to make a vaccine would kill her. When Joel found that out, he broke into their lab to rescue Ellie, and inadvertently killed some of the Fireflies. Well, turns out that one of the scientists he killed was the father of this girl Abby, and she has been looking for Joel for a long time. Rumors made it up to Seattle where she was staying, and her and some cohorts headed south to find Joel. They do find him while he is out with Ellie and his brother Tommy, and they seriously injure both Tommy and Ellie while Abby beats Joel to death. They let the other two live, as she felt she had her revenge, and they head back north while Ellie and Tommy decide that they need to avenge Joel in a similar way. Tommy ends up leaving without her though, and through some other story bullet points, Dina joins Ellie in her journey to Seattle. This is probably the point that many people took issue with, as the now main character enters into a lesbian relationship with another character, and I heard the SJW’s ruin everything cries from the mountaintop. Whatever your preference or orientation, this is still good storytelling and fucking get over it already.

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There are some seriously intense moments throughout the game. As I said, there are a bunch of flashbacks and moments in time where you play the game through Ellie’s perspective and then Abby’s. First there’s the journey to Seattle with Ellie and Dina, but then as you progress you eventually play as Abby and see what she has been going through with her WLF companions and we’re also introduced to a local fanatical faction that are called the Scars. They are more tribal and less dependent on technology, while the WLF (Wolves) are militaristic. Conflicts are abound between humans and the infected. Eventually Ellie kills off a few of the people who were present when Joel was killed, and also follow’s Tommy’s trail, finding more dead. She eventually kills off a couple more and then finds Abby. Abby ends up shooting and killing some of Ellie’s friends, and nearly kills Dina, but shows mercy due to the Scar kid she’s been helping. She agrees to part ways and never wants to see them again, and you’d think that would be the end.

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In what I first thought was the epilogue, we see Ellie and Dina in a farmstead along with an infant. We can presume that Dina managed to have the baby and they’ve started this new life. Presumably this is not far from the settlement they stayed at near the beginning of the game, because Tommy shows up and says that he’s found Abby again, this time in Santa Barbara. Dina chases him off saying they’re done with that, but soon enough you’re having visions of dead Joel and can’t help but want to track her down again. Dina warns you that she won’t wait around, but you head out anyway.

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This final sequence sees you tracking down Abby, getting caught by some other faction that had already caught her, fighting your way free, and then sneaking into their base to rescue Abby. You find her put up on a stake in this harbor, a cruel death awaiting her. Letting her down, she then cuts down the Scar boy (Lin) and they head off for a boat to escape. It’s this point where you fight her again, and though you win the fight and could have drown her to death, for some reason you let her go, and she takes off. In a strange twist, each of these characters had someone kill their people, became obsessed, had the chance to kill each other for revenge multiple times, and then had a change of heart when it came down to it. I suppose we all are still human after all.

The true epilogue happens next. Ellie returns to the farmstead and finds it empty save for her stuff in one room. Dina and the baby are gone. You play Joel’s guitar one last time, and then head off into the wilderness, presumably to find Dina, or perhaps start yet another new life. It was a sad but fitting end. I hope that we are not done with this world, but perhaps there are new characters and stories to explore. Whatever the case I thoroughly enjoyed this title and I highly recommend picking it up.

Wildermyth Early Access

Izlain

Wildermyth popped up in my Steam discovery queue at some point in the last few months, and when I see games I find interesting I tend to add them to my wishlist for later. Quarantine is definitely one of those “for later” situations, and as the game is only running $20 I pulled the trigger on it. I’ve been jamming through some games during this period of the wild indoors, but I’ve been looking for varied experiences to keep me engaged. As such, I’ve actually been looking into playing some of the games in my backlog that are different from what I’ve been playing lately. First person shooters will always be a love of mine, but sometimes I want something more laid back and story-rich. Wildermyth caught my attention because of its colorful art style and tactical RPG combat, a style of game I tend to gravitate towards. What sets it apart from other RPGs I’ve played in recent memory, is the fact that a portion of the game is procedurally generated, which is also something I tend to enjoy when it’s done well. Wildermyth is currently in Early Access, but as the description says, it’s mostly done and fully playable now. Features are already there, it’s just more polish and additional implementation and they seem sure that they’ll be releasing this year, and I’ll agree that they’re pretty close.

Like any party based RPG, you’ll start out with a group of youngsters that aren’t quite adventurers but are thrust into dealing with a world-ending problem. There are only three starter classes to choose from, but as the game progresses some expected and some unusual paths present themselves to give you additional strength and powers. The characters are randomly assigned names, character traits, appearances and you are forced to start with a Warrior, Hunter and Mystic. Sub classes naturally evolve from these and there are various build paths that I explored during my first game. You can take things further by fully customizing the characters but I let things pretty much lie after a few rerolls.

The entire first campaign is essentially a tutorial, but it took me a little over four hours to complete, so that’s more of a starter campaign than anything. Still, it is a good practice to roll through because by the end you understand the systems of the game but still see the potential for further adventures and this in itself is exciting. I haven’t had a game get its hooks into me so easily in quite some time, and were this already a finished title I still think it would have been good enough. I’m looking forward to see what happens with further development. So most of your time is spent pretty evenly between an over-world map where you move your heroes around and perform various tasks, while periodically getting story interruptions. Many of the story bits lead into encounters, and then you’ll shift to a randomized battlefield and participate in a turn-based battle. This controls as you would expect, with action points allowing you to move attack and sling spells. There are some unique facets to combat that I’ll cover shortly. Besides moving to new areas via the map, you’ll also need to build bridges, defenses/tile improvements and periodically need to repel incursions of enemy forces. You’ll also periodically gain access to new heroes via recruitment, and soon enough you’ll be training additional characters and have a full party of five and then some.

Combat reminds me of early iterations of D&D. The characters are sort of 2D paper figures that stand in a 3D space. They move as if they are on bases and someone is tapping them in each square as they progress. Attacks are pretty basic in their animation, but this gives it more of a feel of playing a well-penned D&D session that also has some pretty fun combat. There are only so many tricks that are thrown at you, but combat is still pretty satisfying. I was happy with how my characters developed, got new gear and new abilities and all along the way there was still challenge but also the sense of becoming more powerful.

Combat doesn’t always go like you would like, and characters can die or get maimed, but that adds some charm to the game. You don’t lose someone powerful that you have grown attached to, but they might lose an arm. This comes with some benefits as well, as one of my hunters ended up losing an arm, so he could no longer use a bow, but had a cool hook hand that he could use to attack with as well, so he became a stealthy dual-wielder instead. One of my Warriors ended up being enchanted by a crow spirit and got a crow’s head that provided a “peck” special move, and later I’d get the opportunity to further transform, gaining a crow’s claw that provided a strong attack. It’s stuff like this that’s a little off the wall but also really cool and reminiscent of D&D stories.

This campaign was split into three chapters and was the story was set up to have a specific villain. Each chapter closes when a main story objective is complete, however individual characters periodically ask more help with tasks and further their growth. You’ll be rewarded various crafting materials for how many territories you control on the world map and also gain a certain number of years worth of peace. During peace time, you’ll get little glimpses into your characters lives and even recruit your own progeny. My hunter’s son was trained as a warrior and already started with higher tier gear than normal recruits.

The third chapter leads up to the final battle, and because the passage of time occurs no matter what actions you take in the game, they grew old over the course of one session. The final battle was quite the challenge, but I managed to beat it while only losing one character who I believe was killed permanently, but it’s sort of irrelevant. The game is designed to give you compact stories in short-ish sessions. I imagine all three chapter games will take approximately the same amount of time to complete, while the larger five chapter games will probably add a few more hours per game. The Legacy system allows for some of this to continue on. At the end I was able to choose one of my characters to sort of have a second life, though they don’t go into detail about how this happens, but it means they start off a little more powerful for the next go-round. People that you memorialize carry certain things over as well, so there is a sort of rogue-like account progression that affects future games. From what I understand they are a ton of different encounters already programmed into the game, with more coming down the pipeline, and they’ve added a campaign creation tool as well. So Wildermyth might just be the next best thing when it comes to playing D&D. I really enjoyed my play session, and I look forward to playing it some more. I may look into making my own campaign as well, which could provide an additional creative outlet. Whatever the case, if any part of this sparked your interest I might suggest checking the game out. It’s fully worth the coin, and should only get better.

Thoughts on Beyond: Two Souls

Izlain2 Comments

I spoke very highly of two of Quantic Dream’s games already, and had mentioned that I would also be diving into a third game that came out in between Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. That game, is 2013’s Beyond: Two Souls. This is going to be a relatively short post on the subject, because unlike the previously written about games, this one didn’t sink its hooks into me like the others did. I’ll now attempt to explain why.

Graphically, the game leans more towards the Detroit side of the scale rather that the first game, mainly due to the fact that the latter two games came out on PS4 while the former came out on PS3, so that explains the difference in fidelity. That isn’t to say Heavy Rain looked bad, it was just a sign of the times. It still had a better story line than this game, as did the third chapter. You begin play as a little girl, and there are various current time frame and flash back scenes that lay the ground work for the story. It seems that as a little girl, your character has an “imaginary friend” that ends up actually being some sort of entity that has a link with her. It’s not so much that she has control of it, but more so that she can ask it to do things. In gameplay terms, yes,  you do control this entity at certain points, and are able to choose to listen to commands or not. There’s still branching dialogue choices and things you can do that affect the story, but the story itself was less grounded in reality and I think suffered because of it. I realize that robots becoming humans is also currently far-fetched but still something I anticipate could happen whereas this spirit/entity is complete bullshit and made it harder for me to suspend my disbelief.

I do however, think it’s cool when games get fully motion captured actors and portray them as themselves in games. Willem Dafoe ends up being the girl’s “handler” so to speak, and it appears as time goes on, she becomes more than just a girl with a pet, and more of her own CIA spy bad ass. That’s cool and all, but it’s less cohesive with all of the jumping around the game did. Heavy Rain ended doing some flashback stuff but it made sense when they did so. Detroit: Become Human ended up making more of a beeline to the end of the story but you played multiple characters so you could tell it was all happening simultaneously. Beyond: Two Souls ends up making a stack of layers that when unshuffled makes sense, but otherwise seems like a mess. This is probably why they included an option to play the game in chronological order, but I wanted the “authentic” experience.

What frustrated me the most was controlling the entity. Early on you have to fly through walls to “cheat” and see what card a person is looking at so that you can match it to a card on the desk in front of you. Then Willem Dafoe asks you if you can do anything else (at this point they seem to think she is psychic/telekinetic) and you can throw shit around the room. Like the other games though, this is controlled via QTE/weird button combinations and it just didn’t do it for me. There’s some forced stealth with an invisible spirit and that’s where I drew the line. It just simply didn’t hold my attention like the others. As it stands now, I can’t recommend this one, but if you are a fan of their other games, you might be able to power through it. That’s all I have to say about it, so I’ll see you all next time!

Thoughts on Heavy Rain

Izlain

Back in July, I wrote a post about a surprise hit for me, Detroit: Become Human. It happened to be a free release via Playstation Plus that month, and I decided to try it on a whim. I usually try out the free games each month, but oftentimes they simply aren’t for me and they get uninstalled. No harm no foul, considering no money spent (unless you count that $60/year fee, but it’s awesome value no matter how you look at it). It turned out that this was a game that would hold my interest, which isn’t something that happens very often to me anymore. Besides the base game, the Plus offering included a digital artbook, soundtrack and a copy of the company’s first Playstation title, Heavy Rain. We already went back in time a little bit with Detroit: Become Human (released last year), but end up going even futher back to 2010 with Heavy Rain and to some degree, it shows. This is the same style of game, but it’s not nearly as pretty. The controls are a little clunky as well, but the story is good, and that’s really what matters in this genre. Actually, part of what I said about Detroit: Become Human applies to this game as well:

Regular readers will know that I’m a fan of narrative, story-rich games that don’t necessarily have a lot of game play so to speak. These types of games range from adventure titles to interactive story books. I’ve been a fan of some of the TellTale Games series, though now that the company is defunct it’s unlikely we’ll see more of those unless another company picks up the reigns. Another recent game of this style The Council was very good and had basically no game play whatsoever — yet the story was intriguing enough that simply controlling a character through a story arc and making some minor decisions was fine by me. Detroit: Become Human lines up pretty well with this assessment — I’d go out on a limb and call it a QTE game, because outside of dialogue all of the action is controlled by various timed button presses and other motions with the controller. Honestly this is one of the first games I’ve seen that uses the controller motion technology along with the touch pad on top of the normal controls — that part was pretty cool, but also kind of annoying at times.

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Unfortunately, with games like these requiring you to be on the ready to quickly press buttons at any moment, so taking screenshots ends up being sort of difficult. As such I tried to include some pictures that show of some of the neat features of the game, but those that wouldn’t really spoil anything. But, the game is nearly ten years old, so if you haven’t played this you probably don’t have any interest. Whatever the case, there is an intriguing story here that I’d love to spoil but I won’t. Suffice to say that you can play as four different characters, and each have their own part to play in the story, along with interacting with each other before the game is over. There are branching parts based on your decisions, and clearly there were places where I could have chosen to go another route, but unlike Detroit, you don’t get the branching graph that shows you exactly how things could have gone. Obviously that was something that was thought of later on in the company’s game repertoire.

A true detective story, Heavy Rain is doing its best work while trying to convince you who the killer is. I really didn’t suspect the character who ended up being guilty, but as the story unfolded I wasn’t disappointed with it. I suppose there are other ways things could have ended up, but I don’t really see the point in playing through a thousand times. I made my choices and I enjoyed the ride, but I don’t intend to go back for more. The same happened with their other game, and I don’t feel bad about it.

One other note: I didn’t realize that Beyond: Two Souls (2013) was also produced by Quantic Dream, and it was also a free Plus game a while back. I went ahead and downloaded that one and intend to play through it soon. So expect more about that later on this month.

Thoughts on Detroit: Become Human

Izlain5 Comments

Sony announced this month’s lineup of free games via their Playstation Plus service, and it was lackluster at best. One arcade racing game reminiscent of, I don’t know, Pole Position? And a Soccer game that wasn’t FIFA, not that I’d care either way — nobody likes Soccer. There must have been some sort of critical mass of outrage thrown at them, because at the last moment they swapped out PES 2019 for Detroit: Become Human. Konami wasn’t even told it was going to happen. Nonetheless, I was more interested in trying out a newer Sci-Fi game rather than boring ol’ Futbol so I went ahead and downloaded it. I should mention too that the other game, Horizon Chase Turbo is actually pretty fun, but that’s all I’m saying at this juncture.

Detroit: Become Human was hyped up before its release. I remember hearing good things about it, but from video it didn’t really appeal to me and honestly I would have never played it were it not for getting it for free. Apparently, I was wrong when I judged this game by its cover, because it appealed to me on many different levels.

Regular readers will know that I’m a fan of narrative, story-rich games that don’t necessarily have a lot of game play so to speak. These types of games range from adventure titles to interactive story books. I’ve been a fan of some of the TellTale Games series, though now that the company is defunct it’s unlikely we’ll see more of those unless another company picks up the reigns. Another recent game of this style The Council was very good and had basically no game play whatsoever — yet the story was intriguing enough that simply controlling a character through a story arc and making some minor decisions was fine by me. Detroit: Become Human lines up pretty well with this assessment — I’d go out on a limb and call it a QTE game, because outside of dialogue all of the action is controlled by various timed button presses and other motions with the controller. Honestly this is one of the first games I’ve seen that uses the controller motion technology along with the touch pad on top of the normal controls — that part was pretty cool, but also kind of annoying at times.

Graphically the game looks amazing. I honestly think it’s one of the best looking games I’ve seen on the Playstation 4, top five at least. The animations were stellar, there was no hitching, it ran well, looked beautiful and contained more heart than I would have expected. As the story goes, it’s the middle of the 21st century and Androids have become a large part of human society. They perform tasks that many would not want to do for themselves, including cleaning, manual labor, and even taking care of their own children. It seems that they are the perfect utility machine for everyone, and affordable enough for the average family to own one. Ironic that the game takes place wholly in Detroit, Michigan, a city that was known for its prosperity during the automotive boom of the 1900’s, but is more known as a ran down and broken city in more recent years. It seems to have regained its prominence in the nation in this game however, as these Androids are all created here in the city by a company called Cyber Life.

I honestly cannot go further into the story because it has so many branching pathways and spoilers that I’d have to play through it a couple more times in order to see everything. I don’t want to spoil that for you if you haven’t yet played it. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did, and I played through it in just a couple of days which isn’t something that usually happens with me and games these days. The story is compelling — you’ll take control of several different Androids with different agendas and there are plot twists and turns along the way. Fuck up on some QTEs? You’ll have to live with the consequences (I did earn a trophy for not losing a single fight throughout the entire game). The same goes for your dialogue decisions. Things will happen, and it will be your choice how they happen. Just don’t expect everyone to like your choices.

If you have a PS4 I highly recommend you download this game right now and play it. Definitely for fans of Sci-Fi stories with artificial intelligence, detective work, dystopian futures, the love of a family, hero’s journeys and freedom.