40 Ounces, 1 Game » adventure-mode

Considerably More Than 40oz With: Risen

d4niel — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:43:22 +0000

As a general rule, I dislike boss battles. Mostly, I dislike them because they feel so disjointed from the rest of the game experience, and final, endgame-level encounters often seem to violate this more than standard bosses – especially if the game doesn’t have boss encounters in the traditional sense.

In some games, boss battles are great, and often serve as the pinnacle of the experience; what would the Megaman X and Zelda games be without boss battles? Arguably, the great joy of the games are in exploration and discovery, but in these cases, the boss at the end of a dungeon or level seems to provide a great capstone for the experience. I understand that some games, like Shadow of the Colossus, contain nothing but boss battles.

And then there are games like Risen, for whom boss encounters seem inevitable but somehow alien to the experience. Having just completed Risen, I found it to be one of the finer open-world RPG games I’ve played in awhile – and it was brutally difficult, often punishing a slight mistake with a player death. For me, that level of difficulty made the game engaging – for the majority of the game, I felt like I was the weakling shipwreck survivor that the plot told me I was. After tens of hours digging through ruins and working my way up the monster badass food chain, I eventually felt – both through getting damn good at sword play and attaining the sweet loot of the ancient world – that I could kill anything on the island.

It was at this final moment that the trouble with boss encounters began to plague Risen. The sweeping majority of the game is spent fighting beast-type monsters or humanoid-type monsters, with the latter carrying weapons and the former using tooth, claw, and brute force. Each of the variants demanded a different approach; wolves and stingrats require a shield to block, guys with swords quite effective parrying and lunging, and ashbeasts require well-timed dodging and precision strikes with large weapons, as shields are useless against them. For the most part, this system worked well – it required a flexibility on my behalf that wasn’t usually immediately obvious, and only trial and error could defeat various enemies.

Unfortunately, none of the lessons that I had learned as a castaway served as it became clear what was required to defeat the final encounter. It isn’t that the encounter was bad – I found it entertaining, if painfully easy and quick – so much as that it wasn’t like the rest of the game. As the thing did not lunge, I had no use for dodging. As the thing could not swing a weapon, I had no use for parrying. As the thing could not move, I had no use for the fancy footwork and swordplay I’d become so adept at. All that was required was holding up a shield and jumping over disappearing floor-bits, and striking the thing when I reflected his own fireball back at him. Once it became clear what was required to slay the thing, it was a simple matter of paying attention, and within moments, the encounter was over. Disappointing, disappointing.

It felt as though all of the work I’d put into the game was for naught, all of those deaths at the hands of giant sword-swingey types a pointless lesson. It strikes me that a final encounter really ought to be a culmination of every skill a player has acquired in the game, and in this, Risen is a miserable failure. Magic has no use, alchemy has no use, being clever and reading the opponent has no use. It’s a good thing that the rest of Risen was so damned good, as even though the final encounter was unrewarding, learning to effectively kill everything else was great fun.

Even the very first beast encountered – an evil, cruel-looking and overlarge sea-vulture – was initially challenging. Blind, over-aggressive swinging resulted in pecked-out eyes and blood on the sand. Wolves, when attempted without a shield, lead to being killed while trying desperately to parry. Hell, even gnomes – which look astonishingly creepy – were enormously difficult initially.

This difficulty level is only enhanced by the visuals and sound effects of the game; while neither are quite top-notch, they lend the game a grim and bleak atmosphere seldom done nearly so effectively as in Risen. Really, the entire experience of the game reminded me of the ruined and blasted feeling of being in Tristram in the first Diablo game. That somber, moody guitar-twanging is even present often in the music while exploring the island of Risen, and the generally-depressed and angry human citizens even further crystalize this feeling.

And they really are depressed and angry – the vast majority of interactable NPCs encountered are assholes, often cursing at you and occasionally picking fights with you. Their attitude never quite seems forced and never quite feels trite – often, it simply feels believable, which is quite a testament to the writers over at Piranha Bytes. Most people were believable with what seemed to be legitimate struggles. Surprisingly – mostly because it seems to happen so rarely – I never quite felt like somebody’s bitch when I was off running errands for them, and my taking up of their quests often seemed the best thing to do. Not just because of the potential for a reward, but rather because it sounded fun.

While there didn’t seem to be a great deal of optional, side-quest type stuff to Risen, the quests presented had just the right amount of variety, mood, and adventuring to keep me thoroughly engaged throughout. Often, I was more interested in questing for people more to see what they would do than how it would benefit me. Some were entirely social; solving a murder in the Volcano Monastery meant interrogating monks, digging up graveyards, and even becoming a drug dealer. One notably long quest required the befriending of a bar maid, an imprisoned lord, uncovering a smuggling operation and, finally, traipsing around the island with a treasure map, digging up the bodies of mutineers. Although these quests were ultimately of the “Go here, find item, bring it back” variety, my reasons for undergoing these quests were varied enough that it didn’t seem problematic or, more importantly, at all boring.

For all of the wonderment that Risen brings to bear on a narrative and thematic level, it only really falters from technical considerations; jumping is stuttery, movement is slow, and things often never quite seem to fit together correctly. Exploration – arguably the most important aspect of an open-world game like Risen – is hampered often. Risen also likes to force the player to endure unnecessarily long cut-scene type moments whenever a chest is opened or ore is mined. Fortunately, the actual combat mechanisms were great – sword and hammer-swinging felt real, with sequential swings flowing naturally from the first, and the weapons often struck each other realistically. That is, unless one tries to use magic spells in an encounter – attack spells are merely the shootey variety, and the delays encountered when readying one of these spells can often be fatal. Other spells – such as healing and levitation – are used by way of pre-made scrolls, which sometimes works well and sometimes does not.

There were also a few plot and item problems; I was never really at all clear on why the main plot device of the game – rising ruins – occured, nor why they were populated by the race of monsters that they were. Even the guy that proved to be the central player in the plot never made this clear when illuminating the other mysteries of the world. Although the player can mine, I never found much use for the raw quantity of ore acquired after making the initial items and jewelry; there weren’t many options at all. I also never figured out what in the world either the wisdom stat (which grew to ridiculous levels thanks to how it is raised) or the “Seal Magic” category on my character page was for; at the end of the game, it sat at a steady zero of four possible points. While Seal Magic clearly wasn’t necessary, it would have been nice to know what in the hell it was for. Maybe it’s time to load up an older save game.

Overall, Risen is a fine and glowing experience; short of a few problems, the game speaks volumes to what is still possible in the world of PC gaming. Not that Risen wouldn’t work just fine on a console – but rather, Risen is the traditional experience of the PC RPG, and it succeeds here on spades. Deep character interaction, compelling plot twists, and a fundamentally sound swordplay system that was fun to play make Risen exactly what the PC needed: a damn fine game.

Scoring can be found here.

Horse-Based Stabbery, Part I: Securing a Standard

d4niel — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:05:38 +0000

To borrow a device from Kieron Gillen: Ser1s was the first one that made it.
I had spent the gaming hours of the better part of a week before I had managed to create a character in the wonderful Mount & Blade that survived for longer than a week of in-game time. Ser1s’ creation – which was done quickly, as I assumed that she would be destroyed as quickly as any of the tens of others that had come before her – achieved two things that her priors had not, and each lead equally to her survival in Calradia.

1. The accidental selecting of the Save-Anytime-You-Like option:

This allowed me to quit the game without saving it – and reload an older save. Although an old, time-proven method of cataloguing game progress and repairing terrible player errors, I initially chose “Realistic Mode” during the creation of each character. Some motivation about challenge that it turns out I wasn’t quite up for.

2. The choosing of character creation attributes based on how entertaining they sounded rather than the stat benefit they provided.

In Mount & Blade, character creation is accomplished by way of a series of questions pertaining to how you spent certain portions of your life. For example, choosing “Son/Daughter of an Impoverished Noble” will not only net you strength, but also a sweet emblem that would appear on your banner and on the shields of your soldiers. Initially, I’d built my characters around either strength or agility. Windir, for example, began the game with as-high-as-possible strength score and solid skill development in pretty much all weapons – although very poor, with nary a cent nor fur to his name. He, like so many others, more or less died in captivity, poor, depraved, and without companionship.

Choosing instead to be the child of a merchant proved to be .. profitable. Ser1s began with a selection trade goods in her saddlebags, which were immediately be sold to raise funds. This enabled her to recruit more troops and buy better gear than her elders, which was important because of how quickly the aggressive-NPC population grows in size – although the bandits and looters present when the game begins come in groups of 4-5, they quickly balloon to 15-25, making victory much more difficult. It was of crucial importance to establish an army of at least 20 soldiers as quickly as possible, including several “Characters” – essentially NPC’s that grow in level and gear quality with experience – so that you can stave off the mugging, thieving, and enslaving thug hordes that will attempt to destroy you. This lesson had been beaten into the man playing the string of failed characters preceding Ser1s time and time again, and he was not keen to fail in it this time.

Note that killing wasn’t listed among the terrible acts of barbarism that the NPC hordes just loved executing upon my poor, earlier characters. That’s because they couldn’t – instead, upon losing a battle, the defeated character is captured and taken hostage, and forced to move around with the brigands for a period of days. Although not necessarily a bad thing on its own, the effects are terrible – you lose a great deal of money, items in your inventory and, worst of all, your Characters and soldiers leave your group in varying degrees. While it’s possible to find them again, it is not always easy – they return to a certain city, at which they will appear at random, and it can be a pain to track them down.

If the player is captured several times – or even only once very early in the game – then that character becomes more or less ruined. Without money, one cannot recruit an army, or even pay the one that you have. Without money, one will not be able to replace the horse that the bandits surely stole. Without money, one cannot have success in Mount & Blade.

So victory on the field depends on a wise hand at the coinpurse – and at least something of an initial vault to pull from. However, all of the money in the world wasn’t going to save Ser1s from a string of kidnappings and thuggery. What would was being able to screw up and not necessarily have to deal with the consequences.

Ser1s complained to me that it felt like cheating – I tried to convince her that it was rather hedging our bets and taking necessary precaution. She tried to tell me that by removing the potential sting of defeat from losses, motivation for performing at peak output levels was diminished, and all hazards in foolhardy gambles removed – which, according to her, diminished the brilliant flavor of victory when it came. My response to her was that I was more interested in experimenting and seeing what I as a player could accomplish, and that being annihilated for seeing if I could prevail against four-to-one odds seemed unreasonable without at least getting a second chance.

The two of us managed to come to an agreement: there would be no repeated attempts at non-crucial battles and events, like tournaments held in cities and major conflicts with enemy states. We agreed that, in situations where she was fairly likely to lose, then multiple attempts could be had – if only to attempt to find a solution to the riddle of steel. It was determined that, in the interest of fairness, quest failures and botched financial gain attempts would not be attempted multiple times. Where we did not come to an agreement, however, was concerning financial loss. Not the sort that comes from stealing trade goods from villages and getting caught, but rather the kind that comes from prolonged imprisonment.

Ser1s began her glorious campaign humbly and perhaps barbarically: by hunting down small groups of brigands and, instead of slaying them, knocking them unconscious. This enabled her men to capture them, whereupon they could be sold into slavery. This provided finances far and beyond those necessary to pay and recruit soldiers, and Ser1s quickly had a reasonably large amount of money. With the peace of mind that comes from limited wealth and expanding power, Ser1s decided that the life of a thief-catcher and brigand-slaver was beneath her. Ser1s wanted nobility, lands, and peons.

And lands she would have! Ser1s set out to Reyvadin, seat of King Yaroglek, and swore fealty to him. Well, she tried to – the king would have none of it, having only heard of Ser1s in passing, and did not believe that Ser1s would be a noble and righteous addition to his coterie of lords. So she did what any good soldier does when faced with layers of beauracracy in their way: she went straight to his wife. His wife, Lady Seomis, had been grievously offended by another lord of the kingdom, and needed a champion to clean her good name. Righting the wrongs done to her would bestow some prominence upon Ser1s, and she set out for Castle Rhadogir to seek the craven scum.

Lord Vlan presumably had brutally oppressed his people and neglected their needs – every town under his control was miserably poor, and brigands roamed the countryside just outside of the viewable range of Castle Rhadogir. Gaining entry into the castle, Ser1s laid out the rules real clear and calm-like for Lord Vlan – apologize publically to the Lady, or be humiliated by a commoner in a trial of arms. His arrogance, which I had been warned of, came through in spades – he wouldn’t even consider an apology, and even insisted that he had nothing to apologize for, claiming that every word he uttered about the Lady was a truth. Ser1s does not deal with insults well: she removed her iron gauntlet, swung it brutally across his face, and left his hall and went straight to his tourney grounds.

Lord Vlan did not disappoint her, and made himself present in the tourney grounds shortly after.

He should not have, as he was defeated soundly – although his horse was of excellent meat-stock and his lance of top-quality oak, he brought the wrong weapons to bear against Ser1s. A natural with a greatsword and warspear, she made short work of the lord – Ser1s and the lord charged one another atop horse at the beginning of the trial, and Ser1s’ lance proved to be the more true, outright slaying Lord Vlan’s horse from beneath him, sending him tumbling. She then refused him the dignity of fighting him on equal ground – although it is customary to unmount oneself after dehorsing an opponent, Ser1s felt that Lord Vlan deserved no such honor. She instead circled the tourney grounds multiple times before charging him and running him down as a dog.

Lady Seomis was quite pleased – so pleased that it made her husband, the King, quite pleased. After running some errands for him and killing a few escaped enemies of the crown, he was ready to accept Ser1s’ oath of fealty – and, perhaps more importantly, was ready to grant Ser1s the right to bear a device of her own choosing.

She chose the resplendent unicorn affixed over purple, and was given the town of Fisdnar.

Having sworn fealty to the Vaegrian Crown, it was now Ser1s’ responsibility to not merely be a vaguely decent and noble woman before the gods of Calradia and the crown, but also to wage war against her enemies – most notably, the Nordic Kingdoms, and to never rest until the foul King Ragnar had been slain.

The king must not be too serious about the no-rest bit, because Ser1s reined horse at her fief, Fisdnar, and took a much-needed rest before going to war.

Next: Horse-Based Stabbery, Part II: King Ragnar Must Die!