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Presence

As I pull the head-mounted display towards my face I glimpse the new world in front of my eyes, just before I’m enveloped in darkness.  Yeah, this is pretty fucking awesome.  It’s like when Corvo puts on that mask in Dishonored, or like suiting up in a jetfighter.  I’m like Master Chief riding a motherfucking motorcycle.

The Building of a Dynasty

You know that feeling, when you’re drawn in to a strategy game so much that you act like a maniacal despot.  A madman who believes he is actually there.  All of a sudden you’re babbling, spluttering at the screen and barking orders at essentially non-sentient entities made up of ones and zeroes.  You start talking to yourself, the first sign of madness apparently, or maybe the only way to be sure of intelligent conversation.  Ok, so maybe that’s just me.  But when it happens, that’s when I know I’ve found a great game, one where I feel a sense of real presence and agency in the world.  That moment of very personal madness when I first played Dune II in 1992 was when I knew it was great.

Interdiction

After returning to the civilised systems from an exploration jaunt, I’d swapped my long-range Adder for a Cobra, taking the distant trip to Lave with the hope of trading rare goods.  Other people had millions, yet comparatively I was some kind of intergalactic peasant.  I knew Lave and its surrounding systems could be dangerous and so outfitted my ship with some appropriate protection; a half decent shield generator, though like a knock-off Durex bought from a pub toilet it would probably do me more harm than good.

The Musings of a non-RPG Player

What’s clear from the outset is that Pillars of Eternity appeals to a certain type of player.  It’s almost the stick-waving, not-in-my-day, thirty-somethings that I like to imagine as fans of it; and I at least, fit one of those criteria.  Its look is distinctly late 90s, early 2000s, yet with a sheen to it that gives it a contemporary feel.  Its world is sumptuously detailed, rich with inviting warm colours and yet it still manages to appear ‘retro’.  It has a look of Diablo II or its ilk about it, yet with a gentle contrast, a soft vignette on its borders where your line of sight ends, and an ambience that oozes an ominous atmosphere.

New beginnings

Your ship, a Viper, is a small yet well-armed, powerful combat ship.  You’ve recently made enough money – running courier missions and plying the goods market between systems – to trade it in from your Sidewinder, a small all-rounder ship.  But it’s now time to take off the shoes of an intergalactic Alan Sugar and put on the gloves of a space Maverick to go kick some pirate ass for lucrative bounties.

Whenever I hear ‘The Blue Danube’, Johann Strauss’s classic waltz, my mind is instantly transported to that mesmerising space ship docking sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  That scene captures the wonder of the depth and breadth to which human progress has achieved by its enormous contrast between a scene of early man and its rapid cut to the display and majesty of technological and cultural achievements of spaceflight, music, and communication.   And there’s another place my mind goes to from there, and that’s to memories of Elite. 

Azeroth, is a beautiful place.  Sure it’s a subjective point of view, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder but honestly, it really is beautiful. I’ve been sat here taking screenshot after screenshot like an Orc on holiday in the Bahamas.  This is fine for landscapes but I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried to get a bunch of marauding demons who want nothing more than to eat your liver, to stop chasing you and pose for an ‘action’ shot. 

Novi omnis impetum , deliqui

Which roughly translates to ‘I selected all, I charged, I failed’ and is just one of the many maxims I’ve had to learn playing real time strategy games since my first foray in to them in the early nineties.  And I say ‘roughly translates’ because, yes, I did use Google translate for that one, I’m not a Latin scholar I’m afraid.

J.R.R. Tolkien never liked the idea of his books making the transition to the world of screen.  You would hope then, that Peter Jackson’s trilogy would have dissuaded him from this line of thinking.  It breathed life in to an already well-loved set of books and fascinatingly detailed world through the entirely different medium of film.  Unfortunately Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R.’s son, has apparently stated his disapproval of Jackson’s conversion of his father’s books stating “They gutted the book, making an action film for 15 to 25-year-olds.”

Impressive

The announcer’s voice rings out like he’s perpetually introducing a Michael Bay film.  It would have probably given me a whiff of nostalgia too if it hadn’t been used and reused so much over the years in various guises (people who make those annoying mods for Counter Strike being a prime example). 

With the slew of modern games mostly revolving around beating ten tonnes of shite out of something, someone or even each other, it’s refreshing to know that we do have a few alternatives.  The kind of games for those off-days where we feel like slipping in to a hypnotic coma and waking up to a repetition of colourful lights and custom music.

It’s been a long time coming, but finally there is a sequel to Jagged Alliance 2. And I say sequel, when really I mean re-imagining. Jagged Alliance – Back in Action takes you back to the island of Arulco where the evil Queen Deidranna has imposed her tyrannical dictatorship on the local populace and it’s your job to take it… back.

I should have been writing today, but instead I got distracted by Photoshop, my love of Starcraft II and everything Blizzard, so I decided to create this wallpaper art… I’ve even supplied versions in various resolutions for you all, you lucky bastards you.

A few weeks back a friend of mine discovered that I dabble in EVE Online.  I’m reluctant to use the word ‘play’ in this regard and would much rather use ‘dabble’.  It seems these days that anyone using the word ‘play’ in regards to an MMO such as EVE or World of Warcraft is instantly stereotyped as some fat, balding loner who immerses themselves in the same virtual world 16 hours a day, pissing in to a nappy and outsourcing their character to someone in China while they sleep so they can technically play TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY.  Unfortunately, all of the above does actually apply for some people but it’s pretty much the same as saying “What?! You drink beer?!  You must be an alcoholic!!”

You Will Poo Yourself

I remember as a child reading a set of Ladybird Well-Loved Tales books that all came with an accompanying audio cassette.  There were plenty in the series including The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk, to name a few.  There is quite a dark side to children’s fairy tales however, and the two that I found most harrowing were The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids and The Three Billy-goats Gruff.  Something about the imagery in those books, the sinister plotlines and the style of painting – so different from the cutesier modern day look of children’s books – made my hair stand on end.  At one point, during a car journey, I remember turning a page of The Billy-goats Gruff to be confronted with an image of a lurking Troll waiting in hiding under a small bridge to eat the goats.  I was so scared I actually vomited all over the page.

One of the games I’ve recently been playing, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is scarier. 

In 2006, a self-proclaimed investment banker walked away with 120,000 US dollars that did not rightfully belong to him.  This money had been invested by clients of the bank under the assumption that it would accrue interest; it did not.  Instead, the owner of the bank waited until there was a sufficient amount to satisfy his needs, took the money, and ran.  Interestingly, the banker’s actions were completely legal, no crime had been committed.  The authorities did not get involved, and nobody even reported the incident to the police.  The bank in question was in fact, part of an online virtual world known as EVE-Online and although the money was virtual, it had a real world value of 120,000 US dollars.