Game Thoughts

==Far Cry: Primal==
A few years ago (must've been late 2015, looking at some announcement date figures) I got on a stone age documentary kick. Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, Prehistoric Park, anything that featured mammoths. And wouldn't you know, it was just at that time Far Cry: Primal was announced. I was interested at once, but as I knew even when riding high on that stone age fascination, the interest had passed by the time the game was released. It remained on my "always wanted to play" list for quite a while, and I happened to get through both Far Cry 3 and 4 in the intervening time. When it came up on sale shortly before I left Seattle and its excellent internet speeds, I downloaded it for my eventual playing while I was in the boonies.
Having finally played through its campaign, I can't say it quite scratched whatever itch I was looking for, but that's mostly on me. Far Cry: Primal feels like the series' procedure for generating open worlds with some variables tweaked for the caveman fantasy, and that's exactly how it should feel. Primal is a spin-off of 4 the same way Blood Dragon was a spin-off using the tech of 3. I think it's something that should be done more frequently, a la Halo 3: ODST, where the devs make minor tweaks to proven systems to create something unique with a minimum of development worries and hassles (though it probably ought to be in the same genre, given how Fallout 4 asset reuse went for Fallout 76). The issue I had was it resulted in feeling more like a formulaic Far Cry title than something trying to immerse me in the feeling of being a paleolithic tribe leader. Being familiar with the systems at work underneath hurt my ability to accept the fantasy.
Chief among what reminded me this was "a Far Cry game" was the frequency of random encounters and animal placements. Every time I loaded up the game, there would be a "Wenja Event", where the player is tasked with rescuing one of his people from one of the two rival tribes. At first, that was great. You've got a population meter for your village, and the game provides you with an immediate way to increase it. But almost as soon as I'd complete or pass out of range of one, another would appear nearby on the map. I didn't feel so much like I was lost and alone in a prehistoric and unknown wilderness anymore, it felt like I was bumping from hassle to hassle systematically placed between me and the next main plot step. Very quickly, I realized I could skip these without any real loss.
That willingness to skip the Wenja Events hurt twice-over because it cheapened what the player's character, Takkar, should probably care most about: the Wenja people. Takkar's tribe have, at the start of the game, been broken and scattered by a rival tribe's advances. Takkar's most central goal is to reunite and rebuild the tribe, but since I so frequently want to skip these events, I as the player start thinking of the Wenja as a bother. The rewards on the Village Population meter could've been a good incentive to counter it, but all they give is up to three sacks of resources in a communal dump for you to access each day, which wasn't enough for me to take time for the distraction amid the open-world questing.
So the first changes I know I'd make to Primal to up my investment in its fantasy: decrease the frequency of Wenja Events so when they do pop up, I feel like I have a rare opportunity to up my count (Rare Animals were an infrequent enough event for me to chase them down for the Rare Skins needed for crafting, so about that rate would've been good). Further, to make me care about getting them, change up the levels of Rewards for population count. Even including marks on it for what tier it took to open certain Hut Upgrades for the main NPCs would've made it seem more important. Lastly, include random events where my existing populations were under threat, and I could potentially lose small numbers on my count. Far Cry 4 tried to do something with enemy forces attacking the Outposts you'd taken, which could've been a starting point.
That'll bring me to the named NPCs, which I think Primal did nicely on. Each one fills an archetype distinct from the otherrs while easy to quickly grasp (Gatherer, Shaman, Huntress, Craftsman). Their personalities were also well-defined, from the excitable mad Shaman with one blind eye to the Gatherer struggling with the trauma and desire for vengeance (against those who broke their tribe) which she herself can't fully comprehend. Since the random Wenja Event rescues bear no names, I feel like there should've been more of these characters added and more content given to them. It took me a while to realize their eight individual stories were the gateway to the driving story (something that really hurt my early game as I felt lost looking for a main quest besides driving the Village Meter up) since they don't seem to really interact.
Interaction between the few NPCs with any real depth would've helped me care about them all the more, but that seems to have been an opportunity missed. When I've finished the main quest to kill a rival tribe's leader through one NPC's series of quests, the others are mostly unaffected. Why not have the "main" quest of one NPC's line only progress once you've got another's up to a certain point, and have pieces in each that need acquiring to drive the main quest? This would've been especially easy to do given two of your NPC tribesmen are captives from each of the rival tribes. The most we get, however, is the Gatherer showing up in the Udam man's story (in which she incites your fellow Wenja to try and execute the Udam man since the Udam are the ones who killed her tribe), and the Udam man's story only wrapping up after you kill his old chieftain. Double down on this since these are the only real characters for the player to connect to.
The other parts of characterization I can really say Primal does well on are the two rival tribes: the Udam and the Izila. The Udam are Neanderthal-ish people who survived an ice age through cannibalism, and their culture is a stereotypical (but easy-to-intuit) brutality. You learn they're dying of some unspecified illness, though what it is and how it works exactly isn't clear. Maybe it's better a caveman never figures that out, but it could've hinted at whether the cause was a disease from the berserker drugs they use or a genetic issue because of their cannibalism so the player can make conclusions of their own to understand the hows and whys of their story.
The Izila are fire-worshippers who make human sacrifices, another easy-to-grasp seed idea for building their identity around. What I probably most enjoyed in the game is the vision of them the Shaman gives you, in which you're a god of some kind whose bow gets a power-up for every five Izila killed. A god killing humans to gain power effectively turned into a mechanic for powergaming feels really good, especially when the quest needs you to get those power-shots in the later stages to shoot down the moon. Unfortunately, this vision of their religion doesn't quite have the connection to the game's waking world I was hoping for. The vision is a prophecy of the end of the world, but no world-ending threat ever arrives in the game's world to compare it to. Would've been nice to have the Izila know of, without properly understanding, some impending doom that you then face for them. Closest I can come up with is perhaps you are this deity, and the doom they predict is just that of their own clan (but the Shaman's words seem to refute this).
Last thing I can think to give a comment on is the environment itself. Naturally it's all good-looking (though I distinctly remember the opening looking better at E3, which is the first time I personally have noticed it enough to have a problem with), but I really think I expected less flourishing pine forest. Maybe all the mammoth documentaries screwed up my expectations for that as well; the Udam's furthest reaches are the snowy, barren parts of the north I expected, and the Izila's realms in the south turn nicely into volcanic sulfur springs, but in the middle is so much perfectly livable land. I guess I was expecting more harshness to make the fertile valley where the Wenja's rebuilding village is placed so much more valuable.
So would I recommend purchasing and playing Far Cry: Primal? At a much-reduced by now price, sure, but only if you're looking for more Far Cry than say, Gennedy Tartakovsky Primal.
==Unto The End==
Of all the games to be teased in Xbox's July Showcase event in 2020, I think the only one that left a lasting impression was Unto The End. To be fair to the other titles, it's awfully difficult to leave any impression at all when two-second snippets are being rapid-fired at you, but Unto The End's visual style stuck so well I remembered it nine months later when I noticed it'd come to GamePass, and knew I'd give it a shot no matter how long the download took. The brief snippets showed off stark white environments, less a landscape covered in snow than hints of a landscape coming up from under smothering white. Dark trunks jutted from slopes around their bases, and brilliant red slashed across the snow around bodies the lone player character happened upon. When all you've got is a few moments, the contrast really helped make it stick.
There's a minimalist look to the game. Characters lack eyes or most other definition in the face, which made me think of Inside, but Unto The End is genuinely 2D in place of 2.5D, and really uses it as an advantage in setting up pleasing vistas while you're in the outdoor sections. Each is differentiated well enough by the views of distant peaks as you ascend mountain slopes or lose sight of the horizon as you plunge into claustrophobic forests, but the overwhelming amount of snow starts to wear thin when the opening sends our hunter off a field blossoming the light green of spring.
The half of the game you aren't out in the cold has you delve into underground complexes of caves, which is where I start having issues. The dark rock fading into blackness where no paths are available works as well as I've seen it in other places, but I repeatedly found myself hitting issues with knowing where there was a ledge or when a jump was all I needed to progress and couldn't figure it out. Granted, part of the point of some of these tunnel sections is to get lost, map out the cavern in your head, and work out the right route, but sometimes I was stymied by searching each area and having no sense of what the game wanted me to do next. It's wonderfully atmospheric the first time; after falling in as you chase a deer like a mere mortal, seeing the glowing eyes of supernatural creatures had me feeling that my character should be spooked, and I should act accordingly. I'd have recommended pushing just a bit more here with the foreground and had some of the monsters moving about there once in a while, even if as no more than blurry shapes, heightening the paranoia about the place. By the third cave series, though, there didn't seem to be much new to excite me with, just another dark section to traverse. I suppose beautiful environments are kinda what I was expecting with this game, and I got them, but not in the grand variety I'd hoped the teaser gave us only a sample of.
The one notable break, which is made all the more memorable by how different it is, is the sparring tutorial available when you rest at a campfire. Since you can only access it at a campfire, it feels like something your character is remembering, which makes sense because that tutorial is framed as being at home with your wife and child, practicing combat on a field of spring grass with your longhouse in the background. After basic movement and attack training, the wife joins in a practice battle with an affectionate laugh at whatever the outcome. This is where I think the facelessness of the characters is especially effective; the memory is hazy, the figures indistinct, but everything you're left to piece together points toward a feeling of home and comfort and happiness. This is what's driving our character to survive and return home, and it's worth struggling to reach.
NPC interaction in its own became a game of apprehension. You'll encounter half a dozen characters or groups either wounded or in a context-lending place, and have the option to offer them something in exchange for potential rewards. Offering the wrong item, however, can lead them to turn hostile. I completely missed the first offering point and ended up fighting the potential allies, and the way they'd hesitated where others hadn't gave me nagging doubts I could've done something different, which led me to look harder for other options later. Sometimes, though, what the right offering is can be a guessing game rather than piecing together clues; your first wounded enemy will take an herb you use for your healing items, but someone you spook later who hurts themselves turns hostile if you offer an herb, and needs a bone for some reason. Naturally I shouldn't expect every potential trader to take herbs, but I could've used stronger indicators if I was expected to succeed (which given he provides a unique item, the game probably wanted me to so I could see what content it unlocks). Because none of the NPCs have comprehensible dialogue, however--being from different tribes or even species--I appreciated that there was a degree of uncertainty and suspicion with these strange beings you've crossed paths with. You might not be here intentionally, but they don't know that, and you don't know if these guys are going to attack you like the last ones who look like them did.
The first time through, I felt a bit left on my own to work out how some things were done, but given how short it is, I feel now as though there's an expectation of replaying to justify it. Yeah, I made it home to my wife and kid, but I have far from mastered the combat system and I haven't seen all the game has to offer, so why not make another run through? I don't know that I will in the near future, but I'm sure I'll feel nostalgic for it at some point and traverse those beautiful environments again. If you can deal with a unique combat system that takes time to master, I'd definitely give this title a recommendation.
Things I'd do differently:
*Add foreground animation to the toolset
*Combat was a little frustrating for myself personally, but the system totally makes sense. Maybe I should've slowed combat down the first time through by a bit, but when later enemies just broke a block I managed to put up, I turned a little apathetic.
==Gears 5==
Why did I enjoy Gears 5 so much more than Halo 5?
I didn't start out wanting to review these two things comparatively, but as I started writing these thoughts out, the comparisons just kept creeping back in. They're the two biggest in-house properties for the Xbox brand. They're at comparative points in the life of their respective franchises--beyond the same number, they're both the second chapter in a second main trilogy. And quantifying exactly why I didn't like Halo 5 has proven kinda difficult for me at times, so comparing to something so similar that I did like might, I think, help me bring that into focus a bit better. So here we go.
Midway through the campaign, I actually did say to myself, "wow, I think Gears of War is a better franchise than Halo at this point." That's something I never would've considered saying in the Gears 2 and 3 days. Yeah, Gears has consistently had decent character work, but this is the chainsaw-bayonet franchise. How seriously it took itself was just part of the joke that made it ironically enjoyable. And yet, Gears 5 absolutely shone by comparison to Halo 5 in my own thinking. Its campaign had a plot which derived from its characters, which were strongly developed enough to support a story. There were homages and interactions with far-flung corners of the franchise, which made me feel like they actually cared about this franchise and its artifacts going forward (which in turn makes me feel like the things it comes up with will continue to matter, driving my investment in the immediate events). Part of me wonders if one of Microsoft's two biggest in-house franchises learn from one another, and if Infinite's upcoming "semi-open world" design is anything like the two open levels of Gears 5, I think the answer is a yes. But I imagine Gears 5's development must've started much too early to see Halo 5's mistakes and change those integral things which make it so much more enjoyable--namely, Gears 5 has characters who get enough individual screentime to properly set up who they are and what their deal is, which they must've started with.
Alright, so, why exactly did I enjoy Gears 5 so much? Strong character work I mentioned above, but it's still a box I gotta check. And that means more than just distinct personalities--yeah, I love Nathan Fillion too, but Buck in Halo 5 is just interchangeably reacting the same as the other Team Osiris members with a slight drawl. Kait is at the mercy of mental attacks by the Swarm, and the result is she's understandably frightened, since she has no means of stopping them, or of stopping what they do to her at the Outsider camp. JD gets much more interesting once his all-AmericanTyran good boy act is broken by realizing he committed a war crime, and he's always been such a favorite that his response to people finding out is literally "hey, come on guys...", and withdraws after. Del is kind of a weak link since he doesn't have much baggage he's bringing to the drama table, but in being a supportive friend helps the story keep in touch with normalcy. Comparing him to Mickey from Doctor Who would be too much credit (since Mickey is actually shown making a sacrifice of his own feelings for the sake of Rose where Del has apparently nothing going on in his life that might be upset by running off into the wilderness with Kait), but it's a similar vein. Fahz is only a distinct personality, but that's okay since he's a supporting character. Halo 5 seemed afraid to make any of its 8 player characters outshine the others, and that unwillingness to prioritize led to 8 bland characters where Gears 5 has good characters at both levels, perhaps because it knows which category they each belong in.
Building off those characters for its story makes for a plot just as strong. Kait's need to break her connection to the Swarm drives the plot post-Act II, and takes the story to places both new and familiar. Though, the creators definitely had an interest in doing exactly that. Act 1 starts out in Azura, the excuse for which is kinda flimsy seeing as Azura was just a retreat for the COG elite, but hey, the environments are gorgeous and distinct from later chapters, so I'm not complaining. We revisit the skeleton of the Giant Worm killed by Delta to find a settlement living in its bones, the New Hope research facility to clarify exactly what the connection between Seran humans and Locust are, and later Old Ephyra, though I haven't played Gears 1 in a while, so any callbacks to Ephyra, the East Barricade Academy, or other touched on environments is lost on me for the time being. And the Vasgar chapter gets to show off some of what all these callbacks to the distant history of the Pendulum Wars was going on about.
So, why am I so eager to gush about how great those are when I feel completely cool about, say, Meridian, or Argent Moon, or even Sanghelios in Halo 5? Well... what happens when Blue Team goes to Argent Moon in 5? Chief has a dream and Blue Team goes AWOL with him without complaint or doubt--or much of anything, really. Maybe if Fred and Kelly had at least expressed what the weight and risks of doing so were, even if they just immediately ignored them because they're such loyal friends to John, it would've had a lasting impression, but as of now it's just where Chief goes because he's ordered and has a dream. Azura is where Delta go to reactivate the Hammer of Dawn network, aware what a bad idea it could be, but desperate enough JD risks is and Del's life in a last-ditch attempt to get it running when they're all under fire (and it narrowly works, leading him to think a stupid risk will pay off next time, when it doesn't). Things happen in Gears 5's locations, characters make their own decisions there, rather than just go to the next waypoint. And it doesn't hurt we go from tropical island to frozen tundra to desert, where Halo 5 goes consistently between Argent Moon's human industrial space to Meridian's human industrial space.
A last note on locations, things like the Assault Derricks and Delta's Centaur in Gears 5's Mount Kedar mission are just some of the little callbacks I mentioned early on. Details that, while maybe inconsequential for the main plot, are just something I feel good about being able to recognize as someone invested in the franchise. That it feels like there's some payoff for recognizing these things, even if it's just so stupid as being able to pat myself on the back for remembering the shape of the outside right-L courtyard you run through for two seconds at New Hope.
And gameplay... well, maybe it was a trick they banked on, but the skiff in Gears 5 really is a lot of fun. Like, Warthog on the beach in Assault on the Cartographer type of breath of fresh air. Now it just needs a gun and something to shoot at, seriously. Stealth sections aren't vastly complex in Gears 5, but they can function as navigational puzzles in some instances, which are fun enough. Maybe double down on that next time, make us figure out how to drop a bridge to cross over and stealth-kill the next inactive Reject in sequence. Meanwhile, did Halo 5 offer no variation? It did, but... well, we've done Warthog runs and tank crawls before. They weren't bad, they just weren't as fresh as the skiff was. Halo 4's trench-run wasn't spectacularly new, but it was some kind of variation. Reviewers are right to call out Halo 5's section of using two Forerunner vehicles while two run along the ground and grav-lifts, because that's a great way to organically force the party to split up. More of that, please. Imagine if that'd been the lead up to a fight with the Warden as a final boss. And... let's just not even talk boss battles. There's never been a comparison between Gears and Halo there. I'll take a million Matriarchs on ice before another Warden.
As a final aside, DLC... I have to say the Hivebusters campaign felt noticeably weaker than the main campaign, on story and gameplay fronts. I have trouble realizing when I'm not actually having fun sometimes, but I did catch myself getting tired of wave defense or platform ride sections in Hivebusters. And playing through as Keegan, I feel his Ammo Regeneration ability was genuinely a mistake. In Horde, stocking up your favorite weapon and getting a different set of enemy types each round is fine, but in the campaign, I would consistently get my hands on a classic chainsaw Lancer and a Longshot, apply them to everything, then pop my ability and wait around until I was full up and could go on to the next fight with the same. In the main campaign, I still clung to my Lancer like a shy child, but if my Longshot was down to a shot or two, of course I was going to trade it out for a fully-stocked Marzka or a Boomshot, and that changed up how I played and fought the enemies presented. Forcing that variation by depleting my ammo was a good thing, and Keegan's ability just allowed me to turn on infinite ammo. Yeah, I could've ignored it, but why would I do that when I could just use it? This is why players need protecting from themselves and their own habits. Last, I feel like this campaign made me realize I'm getting weary on the Found Family trope--at least when the characters involved don't do anything to earn that status. They're genuinely angry at each other in the early chapters, which I'm behind, but about Chapter 3 they flip a switch and start calling each other brothers. Why? They've been through a few gunfights together, but there's been no development of the characters or their relationship before that. For me to buy in, there needs to be some change in perceptions between them and perhaps apology for past behavior, which we got none of. I really hope the Found Family trope doesn't sour for me on account of stories like this not earning it.
So, summing up. What did Gears 5 do right, what lessons can we take from it?
*In a franchise work, caring about the details and giving them payoff makes me feel like those details matter, and makes me more invested in the details being revealed right now. If I'm paying attention because I think they'll come up later, I'm invested, even if it doesn't matter all that much in the end.
*Characters are the center of a story, and when they have complex enough issues to drive a plot, your audience will care about the plot. This is practically writing 101. But seriously, learn to prioritize who's a main and who's a supporting, or you'll have Fireteam Osiris.
*"Fresh and new gameplay additions" is a buzzphrase, but there are reasons it's good to have. Just as we want to see new characters, and new facets of existing characters, experiencing the world around you in a new way is just the character development of gameplay. Put that on a motivational poster.
*What a player can't do is sometimes as important as what they can for driving fun through variation.
==Anthem==
It took me a little while to realize it, but I got into Anthem because I wanted to answer something: is Anthem a bad game on its own, or did it suffer from following trends the games audience was tired of by the time of its release? It kinda sounds like I'm answering my own question there: if a game's design is dictated by following trends which the publisher wants to chase without realizing the audience will be bored by the time the project is finished, it's already tainting the game because the game doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's no death of the author here, the audience will be tired of the genre whether the finished product is a good entry in the genre or not. But that was the distinction I wanted to clear up for my own sake: is Anthem, taken in total isolation, a good or bad experience?
I was primed to find that answer out since I've basically not touched live service games since the first Destiny. I was excited for it, got my copy on release, and proceeded to play it with a couple friend groups. And it was fun for... a bit. But the further I kept going with it, the longer I was waiting for that plot hook and deep story I expected to crop up. And it never did. I finished the main story, tried to do some raids, we failed them, then they did it when I couldn't happen to be online. They moved onto tougher raids, and alone, I was left with lines like:
:The Speaker: "I could tell you of the great battle centuries ago, how the Traveler was crippled. I could tell you of the power of The Darkness, its ancient enemy."
:Player: "That sounds great. Could you actually, y'know, do it?"
:The Exo Stranger: "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain."
I still haven't forgiven Destiny for wasting my time like this with pointless busy work, grinding at the max normal level without the ability to simply grind my way up "Light" levels. I expected so much more out of the game, and I'm not wasting a second more on that franchise. I don't care that it does have characters now, they can't patch that in retroactively.
Anthem, from the start, promised what I'd been looking for with Destiny. Characters who change and grow in the course of the story, who have opinions on things and act beyond standing around functioning as named MMO store NPCs. I forgot, however, this is by Bioware, the company that gave us the open-world exploration of Mass Effect 1. To answer my original question early, Anthem did, I feel, get screwed by the hate for live-service games since there are things in here to like I don't see getting brought up, but at the same time the good things don't stack up favorably to the drawbacks--which are caused by being designed for live-service social co-op.
A quick disclaimer: I don't particularly care to join up with randos over Xbox Live for co-op experiences, so I went solo for most of the main story. This has, I fear, colored my perception of its gameplay, a bit unfairly. I'll try to point out when my decision to play against the designers' intentions might bias me, but ultimately the game lets me have a sub-par experience playing my way, so any criticism which comes in as result is fair game to me.
So straight to the good stuff, what does Anthem have that's worth playing to find? The cast, first and foremost. No "The Speaker" and "The Stranger" here. Haluk, your old team leader, was the greatest Freelancer of his generation, then the events of the prologue happen. An operation fails, the people who trusted him die or lose faith, and he can't fly his suit anymore. That all but breaks him. He's stubbornly trying to go back to the site of his failure, to complete that mission, doing one more tune-up so his suit will fly for him again. He won't admit how bad it's gotten. He's a broken hero. And he's a far more compelling character than anything I remember in Destiny. This was what I wanted out of these games' NPCs, and Anthem delivers.
Faye is a little harder to sympathize with, since your player character isn't a cypher like her and doesn't understand what makes the Anthem of Creation so great to hear, but she does her best to explain it and get across to you how hypnotic it is, and how it becomes an obsession for a cypher who hears it, her included. And she plays a nice blue oni to Haluk's red. I think there could have been a bit more doubt in her storyline, about fear of losing herself in the Anthem to help make the payoff of her hearing and resisting it more impactful, but the jist of the ideas are gotten across and it serves. Owen, your partner and wanna-be apprentice after the prologue would be the character I expect a fanbase to hate, but I did empathize with his feeling sidelined and understand why he betrays you, steals the super-suit, and goes rogue. Hell, he only joins the enemy to spare your country being destroyed by the enemy, and when they cast him out, he comes back briefly to warn you. I wouldn't have minded seeing him again and watching where his relationship with the player character went.
Other side characters lack the depth of these main three, but as side characters, that's just how it usually goes. They do each get a token bit of development, though, and change that sticks. One even splits into three copies of himself and, against tropes, they don't merge back together at the end; each goes on to start forming their distinct identity based on aspects of the original they inherit. There's just a lot of missed potential for growth that I really lament. There's an interesting split in not just role, but ideology between the Freelancers (Javelin pilots who range beyond the walls of strongholds to scout, attack, and assist the caravans traveling between) and the Sentinels (who... stand sentinel). The two sides are wary of one another, and dismissive of each others' approaches even when both admit cooperation is needed.
The divide had two perfectly-placed advocates readily in hand at your home base of Fort Tarsis: Commander Vule, the Sentinel captain of the Fort who is deliberately standoff-ish with you in just about every interaction, and Yarrow, an older Freelancer who's just sort of stepped in to fill the vacant role of coordinator among Freelancers around Fort Tarsis as the most senior. Yarrow's the one who gets an actual associated mission string, but in just a couple dialogues you get with him, Vule comes off stronger by advocating for the Sentinel point of view. He doesn't trust Freelancers since the events of the prologue shatters any organization they had. They're scattered mercenaries now, and he wants his Sentinels to step into the void they left behind to tackle things further outside the settlements. It's more than just tribalism, and as result blatantly doesn't share information he has with you. Yarrow could have expressed interesting counterpoints about Freelancers' expertise with survival and tracking beyond the wall (which would've been perfectly backed up by all the times you save Sentinel patrols in-game), but his story's too concerned with day-to-day operations, generic "stronger together" lines, and eventually a rising enemy among the Outlaw faction to have much ideology put into it.
A last note to hit for friendly NPCs is the vestigial "RPG" binary dialogue choices given to you as the player. I... appreciate that they kept these in there, but only as a way to choose how you characterize your Freelancer. You'll be asked if, for instance, you think caution or charming recklessness is more your style, and you can define yourself however you like with these since they have as much apparent impact as FGO's dialogue choices--and in one case, I think might unintentionally convey a harmful message. You run into a minor NPC who's under the delusion you are their child, who dreamed of being a Freelancer and whom they watched die under rubble in a battle years ago. You meet them several times, and each time have the choice to play along with their delusion to hopefully spare their feelings, or try to keep reminding them of the truth you're just not who they think you are. They do eventually realize it and start coming to terms with this. The problem is, by this point, you know your dialogue choices don't matter. So it feels like whether you feed into these delusions or not, the person gets better. I'm not a therapist, but it seems to me like feeding into the delusion isn't the way to help someone mentally ill or experiencing trauma get through their issues, and I feel the game was wrong to have rewarded both choices equally there.
The only place the lack of depth really hurts is with the main villain known as the Monitor, but by now I'm so jaded towards game villains just being the next thing to fight I'm not disappointed. I probably shouldn't be, and asking for better villains instead of lowering my bar, but Destiny 1 didn't do any better, so I'm not deducting points there. And we know the Monitor's a pilot-cypher who's heard the Anthem of Creation before and developed that obsession, so we at least have more than a name and ominous theme music, which is more than I can say of some game antagonists. He does torture Owen at one point, but it's after Owen's betrayal, so it's hard to hate him much based on that. 
Unfortunately, that brings me to Anthem's other antagonists, which are where the real griping begins. The three enemy factions' mobs are a chore to go and fight long before the halfway point of the game. Every single encounter consists of a boatload of weak mobs and some faction-specific special enemies. The special enemies do manage to be interesting enough: Outlaws have dishonored lancer pilots, Scars have shield-bearing large boys and some boss mech-things, and Dominion have their own lancers and some mind-collared hounds and other creatures to throw at you. If these encounters were varied up at all, they could be interesting. Fight a rival team of Dominion or Outlaw lancers, for instance? But don't get your hopes up. Every. Single. Fight. In this game. Is a bunch of mobs with a few of these special enemies. And it's because Anthem wants to be a social live service game.
They want to put enough enemies on-screen for four players to contribute to mopping up, and as result, every firefight is filled with the most basic enemies with point-and-shoot AIs that aren't interesting to fight on their own. They walk around like Mass Effect 1 goons, plinking away at the player in groups. I hate the chore of fighting through them. Is this where my dumb decision to play through solo comes into play (not that I had a choice since the few times I did try to make my games public, the servers were so empty no matches were found)? Not in this case, since the enemies themselves wouldn't have been any more intelligent or challenging, and by thirty or so hours of campaign finished, I'd definitely have noticed all the same. If you took those basic (and identical between factions) enemies out entirely, the fights might've been more engaging, but they just. Dragged. Everything. Down. And it's because they wanted to provide enough cannon fodder for four players to tackle together. 
That's where being a live service game hobbled the experience for me, since these types of fights are 90% of combat encounters. There are the occasional solo bosses, the ursix and titan, but that's not going to save the 90% of the game you spend fighting these other boring things. Maybe these would be tolerable if they weren't so casually thrown at you. The side-missions provided to you by NPCs nearly all follow the same exact formula:
#Get the briefing from the NPC.
#Go into the wilds
#Fight a bunch of mobs with a few special enemies
#Finish the objective you were briefed on. But wait, now do two more groups of mobs a long distance away!
The real sin therein is the copy-pasting of the encounters isn't so well-hidden by context fed to you as story. That's what Bioware is supposed to be good at! Making the identical dungeons (which you will find in Anthem as surely as that hook-left mine in Mass Effect 1) at least tolerable because there's a different story objective to fulfill there. But they don't! The three combats are often entirely unrelated to what the previous one was about, and there's no apology or attempt to obscure that! I had never felt from a Bioware game before so much like I was being given boilerplate busy work. Even if the NPCs giving me these missions were interesting, I started feeling antipathy towards them because I knew inevitably, they were going to just send me on my next complete-three-firefights mission.
And that's where I finally got proof of something I'd suspected for a while now. Strong characters alone aren't enough to carry a game. I'm a proponent of character-based stories, thinking good character work can make up for a lot since we're all human and human drama and the working out of relatable issues will always form a good core. And it does, even here, but it's not enough to excuse or make tolerable all the shitty hours I spent fighting copy-pasted mobs. I suspected this was possible, but it took Anthem's millions of dollars of budget to prove.
To put my conclusion out early, while I do think Anthem has good things in it and people haven't given the game a fair chance to find out about them, I can't recommend the slog of a game it is. It's stretched out by the need to be a live service game, copy-pasting firefights filled with boring enemies to plonk down. The characters are good, but you can get their highlights from a cutscene movie on Youtube.
Before I'm done, though, I have to mention the real star of this game for me: Fort Tarsis itself. As a location, I love it. I care about it far more than I ever have or will Destiny's Tower and its stupid, desperate attempt to make it a social space by throwing in the showing-off-of-basic-physics-engine-tech beach balls. Why? First off, just the architecture and environment has character. The tapered-shape windows that read to me as Indian-inspired, the rich colors of the tentpole market stalls--whether the sun's making their woven tarps vibrant or the soft lanterns illuminate them at night. The neighborhoods beyond the work spaces which make it feel like a lived-in mess. Destiny can show off life in the Last City all it wants in concept art, but Anthem put it in the game thank you very much. And because it was there, I wanted to get invested.
For Tarsis is introduced as run-down; there are few Freelancers here, making it harder for convoys to reach it, and being reliant on food imports because enemies have moved into the surrounding valleys, that means the place is dying. The NPCs remark on it with regret, and the fountain's an algae-filled pool. You meet NPCs who've grown up here or dedicated their lives to defending it, and they feel loss now that it's being given up on. That sense of loss makes me as a player want to fight to build something up again from it. I want to get involved, I want to help with renovations, even if that means more complete-three-firefights quests. Unfortunately, we only get one instance of that. A particular NPC keeps saying he's going to fix the fountain, and I thought at one point he had, but nothing changed, so I figured it was either a glitch or just not bothered to be programmed in. Then once the main quest completes, you can talk to him and (possibly) convince him to stick around the place (the dialogue choices seem pretty definitively like you can convince him to stay or go to the far-off capital where he'd be more appreciated, but it'd be weird if this was the only dialogue choice with real consequence). If he stays, he actually fixes the fountain, and I can't tell you why I was so goshdarn ecstatic that the fountain I'd been passing all these times actually worked now! It was this one little piece of the Fort I felt I'd directly helped make better, and that was the reactive world I'd been hoping for from the beginning.
If there's anything I can take from Anthem, it's those last paragraphs. The most rewarding thing was never the new guns (same as the old with bigger numbers), it was having an effect in the game world, small as it was. The combat was a chore, and I didn't even touch on what an ass the customization system is since you're given thirty options for the same gray and no actual colors from the start, but I love that fountain. 10/10, best fountain in gaming.
I see why the game has hard-stopped development. Players aren't interested in sticking around when the gameplay is boring because they designed the game to have enough shitty mooks for live service players to stick around for. It's not a game I'd recommend, and not one I'll be sticking around to play. But I'll still take it over Destiny. Because of that fountain.
Lessons learned:
*The best character work in the world won't make up for shitty gameplay if the shitty gameplay is 90% of the player experience. No amount of context is going to solve that.
*Impacting the setting even superficially can be an excellent player reward. Give players quests that, when completed, add or restore something in the home base (and not just purchased with currency from a bunch of quests, have it be specifically a quest reward).
*Have the quest chains of NPCs intersect; finish three quests for these two characters, and their goals intersect and interact in some specific way. A lot of the side mission strings in Anthem felt insulated from those of other characters. Also, have the quests effect them enough to make them move to other locations in the game hub. Yarrow could've responded to the results of one routine patrol by going to the bar to meet a contact, and have you meet him there for your next quest's briefing.
==Mass Effect: Andromeda==
Having watched hour-plus length reviews of this game, I don't think there's much I can say that would add to the discussion when I'm not looking to do full-length essays. But, per the page title, that's not what I'm here for anyway; I just want to call out the things done well or poorly that I can use as teachable moments for myself of what to do or avoid were I making my own game. So let's try to sort that out.
Why didn't I like Mass Effect: Andromeda? Not as a product--even after years of patching, I encountered immersion-breaking, amateurish problems with animations, quests being bugged, and absolutely pathetic attempts to portray events with stock animation when they were built up to by their context (thinking of you, Krogan boxing match). These, I want to set aside. I understand Bioware Montreal were given this project as their first task, with limited time, and expected to create something in bigger scope than ever before. That's a recipe for failure if ever there was one, and blame rests with EA for a lot of it. To criticize that isn't useful for what I want to analyze here (Mass Effect 1 had plenty of clunk I overlooked to get to the story I cared about), but it's hard to separate the two. Poor concept and execution of ideas which were meant to reach out and make the player care are due to the short development cycle at EA's behest. Maybe these ideas would have had the time to be refined, and the bugs certainly would've been ironed out a lot better. But ultimately, here's what EA and Bioware agreed on to release to the public instead of delaying. So the shots on it get called as they're seen.
From the first hour, I felt resistant to investing in Andromeda, its story, and its characters, and it's taken me up till now to even put a reason why into words. Could be next week I'll have a different answer, but here's what I feel now: Andromeda came at me with an un-earned sense of familiarity. Here's your squadmates, we're sure you'll like how quirky they are, pick a favorite to romance. This is a Bioware Mass Effect title; the series staples and claims to fame are nuanced squadmates for you to invest in, would you expect anything else? But here, I think, the expectation became a problem. Back when Mass Effect 1 released, the formula wasn't so established yet, and each squadmate had to endear themselves to you without your own foreknowledge that "endearing themselves" was exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Mass Effect 2 codified it, and had arguably the best process for it with recruitment and loyalty missions to provide each with stages for their own individual development and attachment to the player. By Mass Effect 3, I think this was starting to be taken for granted. The only non-returning faces were James and Javik, and neither hold favorite spots in the polls I've looked at for squadmate popularity. To put it shortly, I think Bioware forgot how to introduce and build up psychological attachment to characters.
I feel like this problem rears its head visibly in Andromeda. In the first interactions with nearly every squadmate, there's a Flirt option. These characters haven't shown any interest in the player, I as the player didn't know how I felt about them yet, and I didn't feel comfortable imposing my interest on them so quickly. Compare this to Ashley, Kaidon, and Liara in Mass Effect 1; there had to be build-up and time with a few dropped hints before Romance became an option to pursue. And, what's more, each had a psychological appeal. A Shepard who begins romancing Ashley will act comic against her tough girl persona, noticeably different from the confident, reassuring way Shepard acts while romacing Liara. A sly manipulation of the player, maybe, but absolutely effective for investing myself, at least, in the character and romance I pursued. Andromeda lacks this--it offers you a ton of choices immediately without drawing you in first. I finished my playthough of Andromeda without romancing any character, and while I think my experience lacked an expected piece of the narrative for that, it's on the game for failing to woo me into wooing a character.
The second big obstacle to getting myself invested also seemed to stem from this being set up as an obligatory franchise entry. You're expected to have enemies to fight; this is a shooter/RPG hybrid. Well, what kind of enemies will we have to fight? Humans, of course. Except this is Andromeda, where no man's gone before. So, uh... pirates. But they just came along with the Andromeda Initiative to be pirates here.
This setup... sucks. Hard. And not because it's inane, which is the literal no-effort point zero. This goes into negative territory because it dehumanizes characters given an inherent backstory, which itself is deserving of sympathy.
The explanation behind human/Milky Way enemies across worlds in Andromeda is because they came with the Nexus, a space station meant to be the advance home base of the whole Andromeda Initiative's exodus. They arrived early to build an infrastructure to support the arrival of the populated Arks after. Except, when the Nexus collided with the space coral of the Scourge, the project's leadership died. Those who survived were left to pick up the pieces, and plainly weren't competent enough to handle it. Rationing led to people hoarding, starvation and panic ensued, martial law led to rebellion led to anarchy. At its end, the Director used krogan muscle to put it down, and the rebels were exiled from the station to make what they could of life in an inhospitable new galaxy, likely expected to die out. These were technicians and scientists, engineers and biologists--who without the Initiative, were left after a 600 year journey to gather in slums and eke out a life eerily similar to the slums of Omega.
That, to me, is a truly tragic story. Thousands of hopeful people looking to remake their lives in a new galaxy, only for unexpected problems and mistakes born from them to cast them down. Sloane, protagonist of a prequel novel, goes from a dutiful Alliance soldier to a crime boss ordering beatings for those late on their protection money. It's led me to revisit philosophical views on human nature--a quiet, studious person given training and equipment might become a brilliant microbiologist might be able to work at curing disease, but put that same person with no survival resources on an inhospitable world, and he'll have to scrabble and cheat and beg to survive. Environment dictates so much of what we're able to do.
But Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't interested in that. This was all just setup to explain why you've got a squad of enemies to shoot to complete this side-mission. Fuck you for caring. A couple missions allow the possibility of bringing some Exiles back to the Initiative, but they're far from center stage and the big question of whether exiling them in the first place, or bringing them back now that situations aren't so dire, is never raised.
Instead, the main plot is saved for the Kett and the Remnant, a who-cares villain and another disappeared ancient race. Forerunner, Prothean, Remnant, whatever--I wish this trope would just die. The revelation of ancient alien life is rarely impactful on characters and usually just drives an external plot event. Ho-hum. I will give it this, however; rather than just being the key to some "powerful technology" which isn't going to do anything in the story, the Remnant tech actually has a discernible function in terraforming worlds and making them livable. But most of the time, it'll just mean fighting boring robot enemies without interesting motivation to fight you.
A third faction of enemies exist in the Roekarr, a faction of anti-alien extremists among the native Andromeda race called the angarans. These actually have some legitimate cause to suspect outsiders from another galaxy. I like to think there was a version of this game which ejected the Kett and Remnant completely to make their leader, Akksul, the main antagonist. A story about reconciling people divided by bad choices, first contact with the angara, and balancing diplomacy and force to respond to the Roekarr. Unfortunately, that's not the game that exists.
So on the story side, we have interesting setups and factions ignored to put forward boring tropes. Glad I wasted so much time on that, so I'll quick-fire off some final thoughts on mechanical things that worked and didn't work.
The scanner: fun in theory, and a naturally-fitting concept as part of the established omni-tool. I thought I might scan so often I imagined my character having grown up a nerd, walking around scanner first everywhere. But then came the missions where I'd have to scan something to progress, and I would walk around the same space for 15 minutes unable to find what it was. I have seldom had more boring and frustrating sections in a video game, and had to bother looking up specific sections now and again. This is the same problem I've had wandering fruitlessly in search of some reference point on a riddle in Sea of Thieves. Having had two of these scavenger-hunt style experiences in games so recently, I can tell you now, never include these in a game.
The dialogue wheel re-vamp: Raycevick covered this in his review, but it bears repeating that the four-humors style of characterization doesn't work when opting for one and having it strike a completely different tone from whatever you usually go with makes your character seem inconsistent. But, at least once, I saw the potential to do something I remember being very interesting from Witcher 3: making order of investigation options matter. In Witcher 3, you can ask Yennefer after she uses necromancy what she did, and if she's okay. Asking in that order will get a reproachful "now you ask if I'm alright" response, which does wonders for me in thinking how reactive it is. In Andromeda, on the loyalty mission for Vetra (a reformed criminal), you have multiple options to ask if she's hiding anything from you. I opted not to ask, as she'd been dutiful to that point and thought it would be insulting. Having a post-mission conversation include a trigger where Vetra either recognized you didn't question her, or is upset that you did, would have similarly been a rewarding inclusion. (A player could ask other investigation questions and not that one and be recognized, while a player that does no investigation questions could be called out for not caring)
==Mass Effect (Legendary Edition)==
A replay of the Mass Effect games had been on my list for a while, even before picking up Andromeda happened along. Truth be told, though, I wasn't likely to actually go through with it. While it always sounded like a great idea, I knew starting it off would have to begin with Mass Effect 1, getting all my ducks in a row for the consequences to play out in 2. And that... was not an exciting prospect for me. I remembered even when I played it first in... 2009? Or Maybe 2013, it could be that I only played the first one to run the second (that or Witcher 2 to get set for Witcher 3, one of the two I played in my Freshman year of college to set myself up for the next one). Anyway. I remember even then how tedious the quests could be. I did not want to scour the galaxy for Matriarch Dilinaga's writings. I did not want to spend an hour with a checklist of my own make to scan all the keepers on the Citadel. I. Just. Didn't.
And then a friend got a copy for the Xbox only to buy it on the PC while waiting for it to be delivered (thanks, Actene!). And, having just come off of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time, I wondered if it would impact my experience much replaying. As it turned out, less than I thought. And was the game tedious? Yes, but again, less than I thought. So here we go.
Having now watched/played both pieces of media, I'm not sure why I mentally associated Mass Effect with Star Trek in the first place anymore. "Future setting, alien races diplomatically coexisting, generally optimistic, heroes are a starship crew who wear pajamas and do away missions" was about as far as my train of thought went, and that's pretty surface level. In delving into both, I was surprised to notice the differences more than similarities, and I think that might owe a lot to the behind-the-scenes processes (being from entirely different mediums, who'd have thought?). In Star Trek, the costuming department would be coming up with a new species for the crews to encounter every week, as a means to explore the next episode's themes with whatever crazy power or wild political structure the species de jure happened to have. The result, as I probably touched on in my TNG thoughts, is a patchwork galaxy of disconnected stories and species. Only in DS9 did I get a sense of distinct and ongoing, evolving relationships between species with Bajorans and Cardassians. Even the Klingons and their political turmoil storylines often felt like they existed in their own sphere. Sure, a Cardassian or Romulan agent might be gaming the struggle, but we only saw those agents. We didn't have a feeling of the governments or people on the other side they represented.
By contrast, Mass Effect's species feel much better integrated with one another. Each has a history tied to the others by major developments in the setting. Not all are on an even footing, and the grudges and prejudices are a constant to be addressed (whether by a character holding them as the norm, or not holding them as the exception to be pointed out). I can't help but feel this is because BioWare couldn't devote resources to making models and animating denizens of a hundred different worlds where Star Trek's costuming department could mold some slightly-different forehead prosthetics. And it's turned out for the better! I couldn't tell you the names of... wow, any one-episode Star Trek species off-hand. The major ones, sure, but I remember the dynamics ever-present between Mass Effect species. 
The Council races are the best example of this. Asari are long-lived and beautiful; they play the part of wise and emotionally robust peace-seekers, most of the time. Councilor Tevos is the one always asking Shepard to see things from the other perspective. Sha'ira the Consort provides more than just physical comfort to Citadel inhabitants, she's a sort of Greek muse. Liara, then, becomes a counter-example because of her youth an inexperience with relationships. Turians, by contrast, are the warriors. They're antagonistic to humans because of the war they had when humanity first encountered aliens. The Turian councilor is always quick to invent a fault with the choices Shepard makes. Members of their species lead C-Sec, the early NPC we meet is a general, and they're the only two other Specters we see in the first game. Salarians, while underused in the first game, are the intellectuals. Scientists, intelligent while colder than the likewise intelligent asari. The few salarian NPCs we meet are doctors or administrators, while Captain Kirrahe is the exception giving a speech about how before diplomats and scientists, his people had to have soldiers like himself. I could go on with drell and hanar and quarians, but I think the point is made that because Mass Effect as a game had to focus on using a few species (because of how much work it is to create more; every non-human minor NPC usually has their face reused in a couple places, and every Volus and Elcor uses the same model for their species) the races came out with stronger identities. 
The subject matter of the main plot also sets it apart. Naturally, as a one-entry story rather than an ongoing, episodic setting to continual use (and boy, wouldn't that bite them in the rear when they wanted to franchise beyond 3), it can go for the galaxy-shifting (and galaxy-ending) events to put you through. The threat and eventual return of giant robot krakens from beyond the galactic rim puts a dark undercurrent to the experience. The knowledge of what's coming, and how all these people and their small struggles will fall away when the Reapers come to wipe the galaxy clean of organic life again puts a pressure on the story. The philosophical questions of Star Trek aren't the focus so much as the haste to avert disaster. So many dialogue options Shepard gets, especially in the main plot and with the Council, are about how "this doesn't matter when the Reapers come back". Weird to have that message center stage when the game, as an RPG, is all about making choices in all these little side-story squabbles.
And that's where I can conveniently segway to the most Star Trek section of the first Mass Effect game: the open-galaxy exploring. I'm in command of my starship, I'm jumping from system to system and landing on worlds, not sure what story I'll find but certain there'll be some situation to render judgement on at its end. And while a lot of the tedium I remembered from that section of the game is still there (the Mako still just baits me into attempting to scale near-vertical mountainsides, wasting time grinding to a halt and falling back as I try to reach that objective as a crow flies), it's also what I ended up enjoying most in my replay. Each planet has the potential to show me a new facet of the Mass Effect universe. It could be the Turian pirate who wants vengeance for Shepard stopping his pirate fleet at Elysium in their backstory, or convincing a crime lord to dissolve her illicit organization, or killing an asari whose criminal endeavors are politically inconvenient for a ranking diplomat on the Citadel. Sure, I knew from previously playing the game how these turned out, but it was still exciting to see what random order they would come up in, not knowing which story is waiting in that base on some uncharted world. They weren't always the most deep in their choices, but they all contribute something to show how many different lives and story angles can be incorporated. I'm sure this was partly intentional as setup for the planned sequels; look how much Cerberus expanded from a flat background group in side missions to the main faction in 2's story.
Going back, it's weird how the main story then feels simplistic. Some things I have a better grasp of now--the Conduit being a Prothean invention and not another Reaper technological artifact, and how the Protheans blocked Sovereign's signal for this new cycle, for instance--but romances in particular feel cut and dry. I've known for a while that each Romance option in Mass Effect is tailored to suit a particular psychological niche. Shepard acts different romancing Ashley than he would romancing Tali later, being the funny make-her-smile type to Ash's uptight soldier where Male Shepard will be a more experienced and reassuring figure to the younger, uncertain Tali dealing with a first crush. They're not terrible, mind, but I think I see behind the curtain more with them now. Given how her overall romance through three games goes, I think Liara might have the best-written of those available, now. Her ME1 romance mirrors Tali's, with Liara's interpersonal inexperience mirroring Tali's later. But Liara has the benefit of the timeskip to 2 changing her character, and introducing that to the relationship dynamic in 1 allows for recriminations and more complexity than the fantasy-fulfillment of other characters.
I'm still romancing Ash, though. You can't stop me. I know my comfortable psychological niche and I'm not budging just because I think another option is written in a more mature way.
Overall, still enjoyed it, but for completely opposite reasons than my first time playing. The main quest felt so much more like obligatory setting of ducks in a row, where in side-stories I had freedom to explore, reflect on what the themes they included said about the rest of the universe, and see where my judgements on some of the issues they raise changed. I didn't just try to save everyone this time around; I actually judged a few NPCs and let them die because I felt they deserved it. Fuck you, Jeong, you corporate Exo-Geni piece of crap.
==Mass Effect 2==
The sequel has always been the one I remembered most and the hardest to access again--due to feeling the need to play Mass Effect 1, to set every domino up just right. I remembered ME2 feeling deeper, more personal, drawing me in better than other entries in the series, and in replaying I definitely found that true. It didn't hold me quite the same way as it did, er, however many years ago I played it, but I can only attribute that to knowing the twists already, or perhaps my mental state today. Whatever the case, I'll try to sing its virtues while remaining at least half analytical; gotta remember, I'm writing this to try and put my finger on why I enjoy what I enjoy so I can replicate it, and why I didn't enjoy other aspects of things.
First thing I have to call attention to: presentation. Good grief, this is miles ahead of not just ME1, but having jumped ahead a little bit to play the first couple hours of ME3, its successor as well. Every scene in main quests and character recruitment/loyalty quests has had a lot of forethought put into them. They take place in environments that lend mood to the characters involved, and cinematography has been considered even in individual dialogue lines from branching choices, not just the scripted paths conversations return to. Jack's silhouette against the red light cylinder (its inclusion obviously wasn't to further its pretensions toward hard sci-fi) towards the fore of the under-deck area as she waxes ominous about her hard life is forever engraved in my mind, but thinking back it's just the tip of the iceberg. Samara the warrior-monk seated before the stars through the wide observation window in an ascetic lounge. Sudden, almost unique use of whimsical a mobile camera as Mordin sings a stage tune. The cinematographer, story, and level design teams would have had to collaborate to even make these things possible, and the forethought pays off. Video games are as much a visual medium as film, and presentation like this is key to characters and their given moments having an impact, doubly as important to nail when ME2 is all about characters.
Most of ME2's main story consists of zipping around the galaxy to far-flung places, tracking down an interesting person to recruit (with a neat scene of them doing their everyday thing--see Thane assassinating someone and Samara hunting down a target while stopping for every jaywalking perp), then getting to know them so you can join them in a personal venture to secure the "loyalty" as a game mechanic. To get the "best" outcome, players of the game are incentivized to engage with these NPCs. How it makes the main character's goal align with the goal given to the player is just about perfect.
That said, there is one weak point in this. Well, two. The DLC characters. They don't get a full recruitment "mission", just a quick conversation during their pickup hinting at their loyalty mission, which are then immediately available. And that last part throws off the whole timing consistent between the ten other available squadmates. For the rest, Loyalty missions don't become available until at least Horizon, by which point you've probably engaged in a couple familiarizing conversations in their given rooms on the Normandy. You have to earn their trust a little through the course of picking up more wacky characters, and only then do they offer the chance to be buddy-buddy on a life-changing mission. Kasumi and Zaeed sorta throw the balance off. You meet them, invite them aboard, and (can) immediately pursue their mission. This is one of those moments the devs should've saved the player from themselves by inventing a reason their Loyalty missions would wait until after Horizon with the rest. You can end up with them being the first loyal of your early crew and 0-60 in terms of meeting to being BFFs while your first squaddies are still warming up to you. And yet, more frustrating is that between, the only opportunity to talk with them is by listening to their monologues, not interacting with a Dialogue Wheel with Investigate options like any of the rest. Why the heck not? Even if they were like Engineer Adams and only had a few options that repeated all the way through, or worked like Wrex in ME1 or Drack in Andromeda where asking for "an old war story" gives you the different stories Zaeed has at random after each press, it wouldn't come off like this frustrating refusal by these squadmates to engage with you. Was this done because they were DLC and they weren't able to flesh them out as much? I'll never know, unfortunately, but worth noting that their addition came with drawbacks that impacted the whole. Not ruined it, but definitely impacted.
Something else only 2 seems to do effectively is background characters; their movement seems more realistic somehow, and I'm not quite sure why. It's not just animation work (although 3's is pretty janky for backgrounders and 1 had everyone stand like a gormless MMO quest giver, so low bar to beat there), but somehow the smaller NPCs are just placed better and when they appear in cutscenes, seem to be doing something logical. They disappear through a door as they flee, or if they're standing around they're waiting in line or guarding something. It's not like 1 and 3 lack this entirely, but somehow I can't help feeling the NPCs on the Citadel, Illium, and Omega are part of a more vibrant setting in 2 than elsewhere. Maybe it's down to more of them being named? Small people like Diana, the mother of Morinth's latest victim, or the Merc Company Leaders in Garrus' mission getting names and personalities through their interactions and even how others talk about them. ME2 has an overwhelming focus on populating its sets with people that have names and agendas where 1 had to be barebones and 3 was constantly focused on the big, impersonal fight to be had. Caring about the little things and the little people is what makes me more attached here, from the dramatic, quiet, personal scenes with squadmates to a mother grieving her child who liked art.
Is that character focus all it takes? Must be, because I haven't got much more to speak on with the main campaign. But hoo boy, I get to complain about more DLC. Project Firewalker. This isn't just a bad Mass Effect DLC, I feel like running its missions is taking a break to play something that isn't Mass Effect. No characters are there to interact with whatsoever, it's just run around the environment in this vehicle which is only introduced in this mode, and restart the level entirely if you die. This... did not need to be here. I don't think anyone really cared about it, it was just some kind of unnecessary lip service to the lack of the Mako. And despite what I said about that adventuring in 1 actually being better than I remembered, it did not need the homage. Throw these missions out an airlock.
I thought I'd have much more to say about one of the games I remember most fondly from my first playings; I know I did at least two characters, and more than one playthrough with one of them. I do feel like I might've goofed in some of the interactions, like there was some perfect choice I made then which I missed now. Whether that's my recollections being rosier than they were or because then I had more patience to go through and find the ones I most wanted, I can't be sure. I admit, I am playing this trilogy a little hastily to complete as an experience, not wholly to enjoy for the playing in the most puristic way. I have to consider I'm not going to have the most enjoyable of experiences when I'm rushing through and looking to be critical at once, but I guess I'm at a point in my life now where I don't want to do things just for the joy of them. I want to get something out of it. Perhaps I need to turn that energy to something more than video games.
So, tldr, character good in game all about interacting with characters. No-interaction vehicle flying which tests your ability to control a vehicle with no bearing on the characters or main plot, bad. Forethought in planning environments that can be used in conscious manipulation of the camera to effect presentation of those crucial characters in positive ways, very good.
==Mass Effect 3==
It's strange to feel so relieved to be done with a series I once loved so much. Mass Effect 3 isn't an out-and-out bad experience, it's just one that sours the whole of its trilogy with the intentionally unsatisfying options it culminates in. Yes, we're dredging up Mass Effect 3 Ending gripes for the finale.
I somehow managed to duck the outrage back in 2012-2013. Maybe it's that I wasn't in any dedicated Mass Effect circles. Maybe it's just that I didn't have a sense of good or bad developed--I still don't, for most things. I generally take things at face value and give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, which is part of why I've started writing these as a way to think more critically about why I liked or disliked certain things. And doing so with Mass Effect 3's ending, boy, I feel like I'm living through a shade of the outrage the ME3 Ending controversies kicked up, because I'm realizing I dislike all possible endings. I see why Bioware rushed to patch in an "Extended Ending" to cover their asses.
The ending tries to put forth a moral dilemma. A good one will have choices with pros and cons for each, making one face regrets and perhaps go back to see if another option plays out more to taste, and ME3's endings have that. But the cons to each just leave such a sour twist on things that none leave the player, who by now has put 60+ hours (and significantly more for the completionism the series encourages) into 3 games to reach this point, with any satisfaction. The only way to really explain that is to do the thing where we list each, so:
*Control Ending: Follow the main villain (no, Harbinger doesn't count as 3's main villain, he doesn't even have a single line)'s plan to dominate the Reapers, subjugating them to a factional human (though allegedly destined to become detached from all sense of what race you were) intelligence to make an enforced peace throughout the galaxy. Face value, already unappealing because you put yourself in line with the domineering asshole the Illusive Man was, and possibly using them to secure human-centric dominance of the galaxy. Sorry, alien friends we made along the way (which are frankly the better characters in the roster), I want this to be 40k. There's not a bright, rosy future for everyone here. The longer-reaching implications are that you're just going to end up like Catalyst one day, forgetting even the assholery of human supremecy (if you include that in your reading of Control, which can be debated) and trying to retain order in whatever system was set up. Not an option the player wants to take.
*Destroy Ending: Complete the original goal and use the big ancient superweapon to blow up the Reapers. Satisfying at face alue (hooray, big explosion movie ending), except that the weapon kills all synthetics, including EDI and the geth. A galactic EMP. It makes sense in an internal-world-consistency way, no complaints there, but it really is a gut punch. This is the ending most people would choose, as it fulfills the original plan Shepard's had all along. It's also the only one available if Shepard's war score is low. It's safe to say, even in development, the creators knew this would be the most-selected (being most readily available) of the possible endings. The drawback was put in by design so people wouldn't just default to it without considering the alternatives the game wants you to consider, and thus ask yourself the questions the game wants you to (about what larger, long-term and philosophical impact these choices have). But the way it interacts with the world you've explored so long just makes it feel like an insult. Set EDI and her stupid robot body aside (skipping the commentary about how reductive it is to only see AI as alive if they have a physical, humanoid body when ME2 nailed EDI being a character without one), and think about the Geth. If you cared enough to max out either Paragon or Renegade, made the right choices through two games, and done everything to keep two specific NPCs alive, you can successfully reconcile the Geth and their Quarian makers, brokering peace for a three-century-old war. It's probably a more difficult result to achieve than Tuchanka's best possible result (with Wrex and Bakara alive), and you don't achieve it by accident. I think that puts it at the most hard-won result in the games, and the payoff is big. A squadmate you had to care about to save until this point sacrifices itself to prove peace between organics and AI is possible at a whole cultural scale. And if you pick Destroy, well, fuck you for caring, because they all die too. This is worse when you consider this is only ending some people had as an option, though I suppose they figured if someone had low enough war score after three games to not have an alternative, they wouldn't care about sacrificing just the geth and EDI. But then, this game also seriously handicaps you if you don't play the multiplayer which was only accessible with the code from a new copy of the game (effectively gating out story content if you don't pony up for a new copy or buy an online pass on top of the game and Xbox Live/PS Plus, then play the first AAA multiplayer to use lootboxes. EA: [our greed]'s in the game).
*Synthesis ending: Let's be honest, the one they want you to pick. Transcending the moral binary blue/red options, a green pillar in the center to combine organic and synthetic life, giving organics little green circuits and giving synthetics green optics to show they're alive, now. Which we already kinda got for EDI, and the geth if they survived Rannoch. This... makes a lot more sense as a short story subject for submission to a sci-fi magazine, and would probably be rejected there. Also makes the Reapers big friendly squids now, helping rebuild. Ignoring that their innards are the slush of a million dead races' collective bodies. Everyone's cool with letting these giant things that were just murdering their comrades seconds ago continue walking around, blaring giant fart noises as they help paint rainbows on sidewalks. And the husks, the decayed corpses of your friends fitted with so many cybernetics that the rotting brain is redundant, are all green and organic-circuited too. You forget the Reapers killed and impaled your friend, and that he now looks like a nightmarish cross between a zombie and a flayed Terminator, and smile as you each pick up your... digitized coffee each morning. This was a half-baked idea at best. It should not have been the intended cap-off to each player investing $180+ and as many hours of their lives into.
*Tantrum ending: Something Bioware felt they had to add in the "extended edition" ending, because they realized from the blowback no one liked any of the choices presented. Shepard brings the whole galaxy to bear, talking about how it's their one shot and they have to take it... and then doesn't. Shepard literally sits down, as if crossing his arms and pouting like a child, while the galaxy burns and continues into another cycle where it will all very likely happen again another million times before someone comes close to being where they stood again. It's telling of how the writing team saw people who didn't want to take one of their other endings.
The problem here is not that each ending leaves you with regrets. A good choice should; Witcher comes to mind for me as a place where there are pros and cons to each choice in some situations, and the regrets motivate me to go back and check out the other options. But with Mass Effect? I've spent 180 or so hours setting up each choice just right, making sure everyone survives, doing quests in the right bloody order so everyone shows up in all the scenes they possibly can (very easy to miss Miranda in the Citadel DLC, for instance), and I'm absolutely not doing it again to see the galaxy glow a different color!
It almost makes me question if Mass Effect's core appeal is a mistake; that being, the choices carrying across game-to-game. I remember it seeming revolutionary ten years ago, but now, having played through without the level of obsessive care needed to go back hours and make one dialogue choice slightly different so everything fits in the right place like a jigsaw puzzle made of my wasted time, I have to say it's a drawback. Any game with meaningful choices already has consequences carry act-to-act, so broadly speaking carrying data between titles isn't that much of a difference. It just ends up sprawling out so long that if the player wants to make one small change in the first chapter, they have to re-do two whole games to see the result. No one has that kind of time anymore. Or at least, I don't, and yet the small things niggle away at me like Kelly Chambers not showing up at all in 3 because I was loyal to Ash and didn't flirt with her. Guess she went on serving Cerberus and got turned into a Phantom or something.
Alright, perhaps I've worked out my ME3 Ending Controversy issues ten years late now. Can I touch on other things?
The new engine they used for 3 still bothers me. I had a vague hope coming back to it while already familiar would make it seem less plasticky, but no. The transition from that used in 1/2 is too sharp. Not that the first one was great, but it was consistent. It was a tool the production team seemed to get more used to, learn tricks with, and could get more out of in the way Halo 3: ODST did. But instead, they pushed (or were pushed) to use the latest new technology they had no experience with, and the result feels... a bit more like plastic toys in combat. The camera angle when walking around is changed so you end up looking down all the time in ways you don't in 1-2, and maybe it's the field of view causing everything to look thinner, but it's just not helping presentation. It distracts the player, and learning the new tools probably distracted the development team, which is why all those nice, considered-ahead-of-time scenes with thought put to cinematography aren't present here. The only time I really noticed the camera used in interesting ways was with Citadel, the final DLC. I truly have to wonder what a ME3 with the old engine would have looked like. Concerns at that time by producers and publishers about it getting critiques for looking dated would probably have been valid, but what things the team could have spent time polishing instead, I can only dream about.
Running out of steam after all that Ending Controversy nonsense. So, the last thing I'll touch on is the frequent use of dialogue interaction without entering the 'shot/reverse-shot dialogue wheel' setup used all throughout. The quests where you scour the galaxy, come back to the Citadel, and hit A once to drop off something with someone. I get the feeling these were done to try and expedite the process of these quests? Like, you won't have those instances all too frequent in ME2 of visiting an NPC, they say hello, you realize there's no new dialogue option, and tell them "I should go." But the result is these quests have no branching choice, not even a slightly-different Paragon and Renegade line to differentiate your reaction, and the result is every one of these is just a fetch quest. No interaction, no interesting thought you have to do, just go here and come back. Busy work. Made even more egregious in two ways.
Firstly, the quest log here is actively detrimental to your experience. Quests appear at points either before you can find the fetch item, or before you can turn them in. You need to continue the main story to complete them. The quest log does not tell you this. And because some quests disappear by a certain cutoff, it means I scoured the Citadel time after time looking for a drop-off so I could get the last little side-quests out of the way before doing the next main mission, only to realize it's what I needed to do anyway. Or, I would be leaving the game, breaking up by narrative-driven, story-heavy experience with Googling where and when to find the fucking C-Sec officer to give Cerberus Codes to. 1 might've had shades of this problem with Mission Logs that don't point you to the next step very well. But the worst that ever got was fast-walking around the Presidium until you find the right NPC. The lack of informing the player you need to advance the main story to open up the next step in this side-mission means I waste infinitely more time looking for the NPCs with this. I would wager almost a fourth of my time in ME3 was chasing these things down. That's a fourth of my experience filled by totally aimless, brainless fetch questing. No wonder ME3 has such a bad reputation.
Second is that this method carries over to Squadmates/Allies/important NPCs, and here it becomes a new problem. Imagine, if you will, romancing the Virmire survivor, waiting for them to come back to the Normandy in the latter half of the third game, and when at last they do, you wait through an elevator loading screen to go talk to them, and... they blow you off with a non-interactive dialogue line. No Dialogue Wheel, just a few contextual one-siders before "Shepard." "Shepard." "Shepard." It feels like an active rejection, and that stings. Maybe I would've gotten into endless cycles of "Hey there." "I should go.", but that would be preferable to feeling like this character I, as player, cared about not wanting to interact. Booooo to this.
So, how would I fix this, or see it done better in a game of my own? Well, to not do it, obviously. Don't fill the game's time with pointless fetch quests (use the time to make quests where your player can experience new facets of the world and express themselves through choices); have a quest log that's even remotely useful (Witcher 3's checklists for quest steps comes to mind; oh wow, another place Witcher does RPG better); and always have NPCs give you the face-time so it feels like they want to engage with you. To avoid a "Shepard."/"I should go." cycle, give them a few lines to use at-random after all the main quests are done. Hell, have an option to play a mini-game of checkers with them! Something! (Actually, Witcher 3 also had this issue before DLC where when you completed the campaign, you were left with a profoundly empty feeling as all NPCs disappeared from the world; let them hang around and have those silly dialogue loops if it just makes the player feel like they get to hang out with all the cool characters they saved during the main campaign.)
Maybe I should do a total series overview at this point. I could analyze the romance options (given each one is tailored to a specific psychological appeal, I think the only complex one is really Liara's since it doesn't conform to your expectations between 1 and 2 as she's grown into someone different while you were separated), but having only ever played Ash's for myself, I don't think there's much I could say beyond that. And beyond that... I'm just tired of Mass Effect now. I played through it, enjoyed it enough, but didn't have the care this time around to go back hours and set one domino in a slightly different place. That unwillingess added up to missing little things I did care about over time, and by the end of 3 all the little problems had added up to souring the experience. I've used that word several times now, I know, but it feels like exactly the right word for things. This time through, I threw Shepard into the dissolving beam instead of letting him breath again at the end of the Destroy ending, because I don't want Shepard to keep going. I wanted a finality so I didn't have any lingering thread to keep investing in it, no desire to experience the continuation of ME4 one could only get by picking up an old save.
I just want out, man. And that hurts to say about it; I enjoyed the franchise once, and even playing through 2 again I was excited enough by the feel of the galaxy to invent a character to roam around in it. The dynamics of so many races that have each been expanded out enough to have a distinct identity make for rich grounds for new characters and stories--which further makes it such a shame 3 cuts it off by having such finality and irrevocably changing the status quo, whichever color you make the mass relays explode into. I will lament my personal loss of Mass Effect, but I won't be returning to it again.
== GreedFall ==
I don't think I'll ever count GreedFall among my favorite RPGs, but it might just be the one that cemented my desire to make RPGs, if I ever manage to break into that side of game development—for its successes as much as its flaws. Seeing such a niche genre setting get a full-fledged virtual world to explore through traversal and interaction is inspiring. While some elements of gameplay detract from the overall experience, they make it feel as if this level of production is attainable outside a multi-billion dollar budget, and that excites me. It makes me dream up solutions to implement from the start in a game of my own, and that's exactly why I started writing up my thoughts on games I play.
So, when I say "niche genre setting", I'm talking about the "Fantasy New World/Age of Exploration" world it presents; a sort of alternate world 1600s instead of alternate-world medieval or dark age in Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age--practically any fantasy RPG. I've only ever seen one other piece of media in it--a short story from a sci fi/fantasy magazine about a soldier in a colonial war while giant Thunderbirds and other monsters known only from the stories of the native population prowl the hills. The company behind GreedFall, Spiders, have something of a pedigree with niche premises, and I recognize more of their catalogue than I'd have thought. They produced Bound by Flame and Of Orcs and Men, both titles I found interesting from their cutscene films and what brief parts I chanced to play.
The former was a (medieval, per usual) fantasy RPG that never broke out from the crowd of those which existed on the Xbox 360, but seemed set itself apart in my mind by having the player's avatar character be relentlessly corrupted by a demon inhabiting their body. In a way, it felt like the protagonist of Bound by Flame was more of a unique character than Elder Scrolls' or Dragon Age's "You are X, hero of Ydania" moniker for the player that accepts any input. It's like a character losing a limb and going forward with the change instead of rerolling--you didn't conceive of your character being possessed by a demon, but now here's this situation and your character has to deal with it. There's a risk with that complication of alienating the player. "I don't want to play a character with one limb! I don't want to play a character possessed by a demon!" But adapting to that change, accepting it into the character as a new part in their existing dynamic, makes for great roleplay. It's like improv's rule of "yes, and" bringing new and unexpected elements to the collaborative table.
Of Orcs and Men, meanwhile, was interesting for some of the same reasons I loved King Arts Games' The Dwarves. Take a stock fantasy race, and explore the setting from their perspective, using the things unique about them. Their Orcs were looked down upon as brutes--possibly justified, given this is a generic enough fantasy world we want to consider all of fantasy canon as informative of the setting--and after the heroic humans overcame the dark lord employing them, they were left marginalized. But there are intelligent beings among them, just as there are malicious aspirants to the stereotype of the brute. If you prick them, do they not bleed green? Of Orcs and Men actually did a better job of exploring the stereotype, I think, than The Dwarves, since the latter's story was a fairly generic hero fantasy. Add a foot to Tungdil's height and it wouldn't be much different.
And I can't help but admire Spiders for making both titles. By potentially alienating players who don't want a character possessed by a demon, or want to bring their meta-built half-elf character to an all-orc party (there's always one in any D&D group), they effectively slash the potential audience willing to buy into their games' premises--and that's within the already niche audience out there for fantasy RPGs! Like these before, Greedfall trying out a New World/colonial age fantasy setting wasn't going to reach the mass-market success of the next Dragon Age or Skyrim where you could RP as any race you want in a story that accepted all options as blandly equal. I don't think EA or Activision--the game companies one most readily associates with AAA games as an industry space--would spend their time on an RPG that doesn't stand to make all the money. That willingness to put a full production behind a niche interest is what I'm starting to love about Spiders and their level of production. Not over-bloated, and able to take a risk on interesting creative choices.
That said, the limits of a AA-level production are noticeable in this game, and they do actively pull the player out of believing the world--one of the most important things for an RPG to do. Much is said of "muh immersion", but the fact is it's important to suspend disbelief to invest oneself in the world and stakes. If I want my player to ask himself the question central to a quest (such as, for example, is it right to let the one die for the many?), I need them to care about the NPCs effected by their decision, and that's predicated on them taking the world seriously. So, when Greedfall has its characters all practically A-pose 90% of the time, it reminds me these aren't actual humans with lives and feelings; it makes me think they're more like dolls, each in different outfits, but based on the same proportions and animations.
There are two places I think this could have easily been addressed. The first would have been adding more idle animations to the minor NPCs filling out the world. Looking at one of my favorite RPGs, The Witcher 3, I see characters doing more than going on their traffic loops or standing around; they are hammering a wall to fix a door or put up a poster, speaking with one another, cutting timber to build boats, etc. They also react to the player's presence by either looking at them as they run past, or stumbling back if Geralt bumps into them. This was also something I think back to with the original Assassin's Creed; you felt like Altair had a presence in the street because of how these NPCs reacted to you. Greedfall lacks this, and it makes me feel like I'm walking through an empty cityscape. The second, smaller but even more crucial, is how your party member NPCs stand idly in your ambassadorial houses in each of the main cities. There are chairs right there in those environments, even in the same places between the different buildings. Let someone sit down! Let them seem to be at leisure, or holding a discussion, or playing some in-universe game of dice or cards, instead of standing rigidly to stare at the stairs opposite their corner. When I see three party NPCs standing in line in the exact same pose, I remember these are dress-up dolls and not the people the game's quests want so earnestly to portray them as.
What separates the RPGs which, to my mind, do a better job of making a world feel lived in? Well, my go-to example for great RPGs will probably always be The Witcher 3, so let's look there. First thing that comes to mind? When you bump into a nameless citizen NPC in Novigrad, they stumble back and shout or complain before returning to their business. It doesn't hamper the player or require them to deal with a hassle as they run to the next objective, but it contributes to feeling like you don't walk around in the overworld consequence-free. Even Assassin's Creed as far back as its first entry incorporated this, and thinking about it now probably contributed to pulling me into its world. It's a simple trick, but one I think pays immediate dividends. Second: varied animations for random characters at rest. So many NPCs in Greedfall stand around A-posing at the end of their routes, which becomes easy to spot even when they stand around something like a shop and tugs at the stray threads of my suspension of disbelief. It's not enough for NPCs to exist and walk around; they need to be doing believable things. Hammering nails into the side of a building as some kind of repair, gesturing to one another as they talk like they're bartering (instead of A-posing at each other to assert dominance), bowing their heads in prayer as they listen to a street preacher (San Matheus could have used half a dozen of these given its religious focus).
Third: a peppering of incidental quests or interactions with these denizens. If the NPCs in a city do nothing but walk around in the slightly different hats of their faction, they're not different as far as the player's interaction goes. We need something more from them. The briefest of quests in Novigrad in Witcher 3 would have us meet members of the population effected by the big forces shaping the setting. Give us some insights into the daily life of the average San Matheus citizen who has a kid out of wedlock and how their religious society treats them. Have us meet the failed inventors on the streets of Hikmet. Show us the problems and advantages of these contrasted societies for the people who live within them. From them, I can start to think about how these same rules effect the whole population, and get a better sense of why they're really different. Not just the hats.
The funny thing is, I know the studio is capable of supplying the love and attention needed for this level of interaction. But it seems clear to me the attention has been misdirected to other areas, places that didn't necessarily need it. The environment artists and modelers clearly had everything they needed, as we get miles of unique wilderness maps and varied architecture between the steeples of San Matheus, burgh houses of New Serene, and shaped towers of Hikmet, but each of these three settlements share the same capital building! These are perhaps the most important buildings in each location, and definitely one of the places most-visited in each because of how many quests involve speaking to their respective governors. And yet their only difference is color of wallpaper and choice of hanging pictures! This was where the effort of the environment designers needed to go; each should have been the best place to exhibit those architectural distinctions between cultures, and we got a copy-paste like the tunnels and bunkers of Mass Effect 1! Meanwhile, some side quests that really didn't need them got whole unique caverns dedicated to them. I would ask Spiders' environment designers next time to consider where players will spend most of their time, and focus on granting unique assets accordingly.
Speaking of, I need to get to the main complaint I seem to find about the game online, which is unfortunately true: there is way the heck too much walking point-to-point in this RPG. I know RPGs are the genre of fetch-questing and running back-and-forth, but the genre's not exactly new. We've had examples of strategies to do this better in released games, and anyone making new entries to the genre should learn from them. The environments, once again, should have been able to help this a bit. Was there a reason we needed to walk in, cross the whole room, go upstairs, turn around, and cross the whole throne room to talk to each of the faction leaders in the three cities each time? Could we not have done the throne room downstairs so we didn't have to walk quite so far each of the dozen times we need to see each of them? I try to think of the most frequent quest-givers in Witcher 3, and think of the Bloody Baron, Djikstra, maybe Crach an Craite. The Baron was nestled deep in Crow's Perch without a close-by Fast Travel Point, true, but after his first interaction all the way at the back of his bathhouse (which builds him up as we see his business on the way to meet him), at least Djikstra moves to an office closer to the door.
*How important it is to incorporate character and setting information in the course of the main plot line, instead of leaving it in totally optional menus the players will skip. All the more if this information is important to understanding the world and the balance of its factions.
*Side quest string length; long strings of side quests with no on-screen marker to celebrate a completed chapter of the string makes for tiring sessions. Compare length of Witcher 3 contract quests.
*Waiting mechanics when you need to run back to a distant camp/waiting spot
*No incidental character encounters in cities makes for a lot of people standing around who might as well be t-posing; opportunities the incidental encounters provide to characterize the people of a city or other location; importance of NPCs--think Prey (2017)
*Percentage chances of dialogue options working vs (2/3) values in Charisma/Intuition/Charm options; how it encourages reloading time after time inevitably because the player wants to succeed. Only counterexample I can think of is how Thronebreaker locked in those choices and only allowed an autosave.
*
==Banner Saga 1==
Banner Saga turned everything I thought I knew about RPGs on its head, for good and ill. I've become used to thinking RPGs are, ultimately, about self-expression in accomplishing a goal, expanding out an invisible tree of choices. Banner Saga, instead, pares down your viable options through objective right/wrong choices, punishing your mistakes with a lack of capability down the line that can be frightening and downright defeating—and that's not an inherently bad thing. The game's ruleset is effective in creating an emotional state in the player. The particular emotional states it creates need to be used with vision.
To set the stage for my experience, I played the game through twice; once blind, and once with a guide. And for analysis purposes, I'm really glad I did both. If I'd jumped straight to using a guide, I wouldn't have experienced what the game intentionally puts forth for you: blind choices with objectively optimal and sub-optimal results, with little real indication of what choice will generate or cost what resources. The game does provide a narrative context for why you're making the choice, but I find in looking back there was very little I could've done to anticipate how those choices would play out.
For instance, at many points during your caravan's journey, you might be approached by a group of strangers on the road. Any possibility is on the table; are they genuine refugees asking for the safety in numbers of joining you? Are they bandits waiting for a moment to betray you? Are they going to pull swords the moment you go to speak with them? Unfortunately, with the extremely short-form snippets of text given ahead of making these decisions, I feel I'm not given enough information to make a good decision. If I'm cautious one time, it ends up alienating a potential ally and I lose out. If I'm trusting the next time, someone runs off with their stolen supplies and I lose morale. This could just be down to me having terrible instincts and being bad at the video game, but the result was anxiety each time a choice like this came up because I felt the consequences hidden behind each option was totally random, as far as my ability to think through the problem was concerned.
I have to consider that this may've been the game's intention. The story puts you at the head of a refugee caravan traveling through territory unknown to you, an endless horde of brutal and uncommunicative invaders covering the world, and you're left to deal with the impossible situation as best you can. Events shouldn't be predictable in a situation like that, and a wrong choice can have nasty consequences. The game's certainly effective at making those consequences feel harsh. I bought into the game's premise eagerly; I've been given the responsibility for the people in this caravan, and every time the numbers go down, it means lives lost. So I took it hard when the options I thought were best, or most fair, resulted in misery and death. Though I'm not sure if that speaks more to the game's success at making the player buy into the fantasy, or my own readiness to buy into a given fantasy.
For every choice, there's three to five options; in keeping with the game's themes of survival in adversity, there are better and worse options. Naturally, you don't want laughing off a civil disturbance to have the same effect as tying the perpetrator down to a stake and beating him. But the result is there's an optimal and sub-optimal set of choices. Picking the wrong one feels like losing.
Compare this to, say, Mass Effect; when I replayed the trilogy, I felt comforted by the certainty that certain events were going to play out regardless of what I did. The choices left to me were how to characterize those events, whether through throwing out a witty bit of banter dialogue, or choosing a Paragon/Renegade locked option that might save a character's life. Combat was an afterthought; an arbitrary "pass/fail and re-test" that only needed to be repeated until I passed once. In Banner Saga, a loss in combat sticks and has both mechanical and possible story repercussions. As soon as you enter combat, a bad set of tactical choices could mean you lack the population down the line to make certain choices available. That loss of control is a daunting prospect.
The problem I had with this optimal/not set of choices was that, when I got to the endgame, I'd managed to save as many of the lives available to me as I could--and it wasn't enough. In the final holdout, fighters and kinsmen bled away with what felt like no means of doing anything about it. I know there were ways, consciously, by picking the right option from the list beforehand. But picking from a list was all the recourse I had, leaving me either clueless or playing "guess what the designer thought was the best option". Seeing the choices I made result in those lives being lost day after day was truly despiriting, and soured the experience for me at the game's end.