Installation: went OK. It did that thing where the progress bar just sits there at 100% and you're sitting there wondering if something went wrong, but this is just my lack of faith in machinery. Once it was done doing its undisclosed things, it was ready.

Manual: Memorized the keys while it was installing, skipped the flavor bits so I could come into the world fresh, although I've already seen the movie Stalker a few times and am reading the Strugatskys' novel, which I know are only distant inspirations given the game's back story, but was trying to get in the mood.

Startup: Watched the intro movie, which has a different dialog than the subtitles, which I found funny, even though I know how this sort of thing can happen in localization. Could have been a bit less full of explanations, but at least I understood what my character's role was by the end.

Graphics Fiddling: took the greatest amount of time of anything here. The screen was wavy, I think because we still use a VGA cable. Any people familiar with current age video stuff? I'm betting if we upgrade the cable it'll make it look less burbly. I wound up dropping a lot of the settings just out of wanting the game to run smoothly.

Graphical Settings: I finally settled on something middle-to-low, but I'm not sure it made much of a difference to the wavy screen now that I think of it.

Experience: Walked forward through the low-textured landscape; the grass waving about was good despite my low graphics settings, and I told myself I'd get used to the compromises I made once I got into the game. I reach the crest of a small hill after trying desperately to climb up the sides of cliffs that surrounded the starting area, finding two dudes who are in the middle of a steaming crater. After accidentally dipping a foot in a chemical bath, which seemed to cause some damage, I walk up to the first dude. I don't bother to look up if I can hit a key to talk to the one who is staying back. He's encouraging another guy to go forward into the crater to measure something, so I follow measuring guy, then walk past him, and my chunky body promptly flops to the ground, dead.

Aftermath: I play a full game of Solium Infernum.

Returning to the game now. Hopefully I can make a sturdier mind-game connection or I may wait until I get a better cable. I'll learn the lesson from my predecessor and not be excessively curious. :)

Edit: Getting much farther now. Graphics still troubled, probably due to my machine being passable when the game came out, but have managed to find the starting Stalker base, and pop out now and again to die in all kinds of ways. Still can't figure out if there's a way to sell common junk, though. I'm secretly hoping not since it's a bit crazy to run into a vendor who will buy EVERYTHING.

My Knights of the Old Republic 2 is the first Old Republic game I ever played. Played it before the original Knights, and I played the XBox version, which could not be patched (or if it could it didn't matter since I was never online with this thing). After finishing the Bounty Hunter story mode in the MMO version I thought I'd go revisit this game, which I hadn't played in a very long time... many years.

Having just got off a MMO treadmill it's refreshing to do plunge forward without worrying as much about my level, the game was hard in places but the proper application of tactics got me all the way, in just a few days, from the beginning to the place where a shuttle crashes AGAIN, this time into the snowy polar region of Telos. It was nice to actually GET what the story was behind Telos is now, as with the Mandalorian wars, Revan and Malak, the whole bit. Makes KOTOR2 feel a little less isolated. The writers at times are very inventive and seem less stodgy than the KOTOR 1 counterparts, the latter seeming to desire to make everything fit a rhetorical pattern at times, though this organic feeling to conversations also makes things more prone to odd behavior. I do find a bit of joy in not being hedged into Good and Bad choices, even the good ones ended messily for me in the orbital station, and I got to be bad by proxy as a droid running around extorting money from innocents.

Of all the Old Republic games, KOTOR2 also does the best when it comes to modding and character builds. Even if SWTOR has more overall builds possible, you are given a lot of different options in KOTOR2 when it comes to breaking down and building items, and building characters. It really adds to the replay value, even if you're like me and just want to have someone shooting a gun rather than using Jedi magic.

I haven't crashed the shuttle on the polar caps yet... I get the feeling it's right there that things start to become a bit buggy and absent. Maybe it's not so much that the game is better in a lot of ways, but it is DIFFERENT, it shows what others might do with the same system and that's refreshing.

I'm not looking forward to the mess that's coming, and I'm not happy with all of their choices (at times they seem to channel more Star Trek than Star Wars), but it's a palate cleanser after all the Bioware stuff I've been playing this past year. I'm thinking of doing a comparison of the two KOTORs and SWTOR, I think all three are clear enough in my mind right now that this seems like an easy enough exercise.

Anyone out there try the modded KOTOR2?

...

Although I know others have modded the game extensively, I more meant this new one which seems to be more complete in its additions and fixes: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-sith-lords-restored-content-mod-tslrcm/downloads

I've been asked by the illustrious ArbitraryWater to check out two different games in recent memory, Might and Magic 6 and Temple of Elemental Evil.

When I try to approach either of these games, I've noticed that something inside of me holds me back, even though I'm curious about both of the titles. I think I've begun to figure out what it is: I'm a bit wary of starting a large endeavor. Same goes for books, where I'm less likely to start a big tome unless I feel I already have enough momentum going in.

My history with RPGs is long, but many of the actual anecdotes are of me being intimidated by the size and scope of something, all the things I have to learn to make it work. SWTOR worked despite it being arguably NOT very much an RPG by the traditional standards simply because the depth in the game was off to the side. I was invited to explore and, oh yeah, learn a few mechanisms along the way. It's funny how much a character creation screen can acclimate you to one of these lumbering monstrosities; by personalizing your avatars you create a bridge between yourself and the machine, saying that this is how you want to interact with it. Somehow it makes it easier, and probably one of the reasons I'm suspicious of big games without some sort of customization.

Still, I think I'm afraid of getting into bigger games now because I'm afraid that the amount of effort that I put into it may not be reflected in what value I get out of it. I'm reminded of how often as a kid, when presented with something like Zork or Wizardry 7, that I'm so wary of diving full-on into something that's more than a trifle that I seek out something with less involvement instead, almost as a defensive reaction.

I was told once by one of my parents that I think too much sometimes, and maybe they were right. Sometimes trying a big game is a declaration of love. You decide to plunge-- take a step or two back, starting running straight at it, and jump in. Maybe that's why fans whose expectations aren't met are especially angry when they find the game was less than advertised; they're more willing than most to get completely enveloped in the world presented. It's sort of like encountering a demigod creating a pocket plane, then finding it's skimping on the breathable air. You're bound to be a bit pissed when you start turning blue.

Yet I do, often, get stuck in big games. Skyrim isn't a slouch, as shallow as it turned out to be in so many ways, Grimrock is demanding only because we don't see this sort of game very often, with puzzles and navigation that aren't simple button presses (thankfully). I guess it comes down to mood, meeting the right frame of mind that helps push you forward. I lack the ability to summon that up at will; I almost have to trick myself into trying something sometimes.

Since I recognize that, maybe I'm further along than I would be otherwise.

How Free-to-Play Will Impact My Playing Style (by and large, it won't)

So, my Star Wars: The Old Republic account is closed, but my particular account going down comes right when whoever-it-is-who-ultimately-makes-decisions-for-SWTOR announced they're moving in a free to play direction. The breakdown of what will be free and what will cost in-game currency is here.

On that list, story content is free no matter what... so, if I want to play any of the other stories I haven't seen yet I can do so with some inconveniences as far as transport and storage, as well as the loss of some of the stuff I've earned playing. I look at that and I know that the reason they chose these things to be restricted is because their stats say people really like to go through the same flashpoint over and over again...

OK, I said "like" just now, but that's not accurate. People do it. I'm not sure that they like always losing loot rolls, or needing to group up with strangers and spacebar through conversations for social points, going insane when someone doesn't hit that spacebar, and doesn't run straight for the exits. I didn't care about the loot so much but skipping the story and getting to the grind is about the craziest behavior combination I can think of in gaming. I doubt so many people like doing it; I get the feeling that they're less annoyed when things sort of go their way, and by contrast that feels like you like it.

If you tell me that I get to BYPASS this obsessiveness with the pressure of a subscription gone, to just play things for story at my own pace and not get charged, it makes me feel a bit isolated, like I'm not understanding the game correctly, and I also cease to be a customer and just become a user if this is true. I'll feel a bit guilty, but maybe this lack of understanding on my part makes me a minority player, something I'm totally used to, spending a lot of the time just exploring the map, finding secrets, and doing a bit of RP to practice my mad making-stuff-up skills.

I'll go back, group with my old friends, finish up the other stories that I want to see first-hand, maybe look a little boring, maybe having my inventory fill up too fast, but I can live with that. I'll even do the flashpoints solo, each once, to see what story I missed and feel like a badass as I'm cleaning the clocks of bad guys way under my level, pretending it's a movie or something. The production values of the game are quite high, so... it leaves me wondering if this will work out for them.

The Specific Differences of Free Accounts (doesn't seem to bother me much)

I'll itemize the list now, and give my reaction to each of the elements on that list as I experienced them, and whether the monetization matters to me:

Story Content: Players can play their full class stories from levels 1 to 50.

Free for both. Since this is pretty much the stuff that matters for me, I think this is an odd choice. You can also do a bit of RP, as crazy as it feels at first, to add a bunch of content that's created between players. Not everyone's into that, and if you'd told me even a year ago that I might be into having in-character conversations I'd have told you misread my nametag, but there are enough slow-walkers on the RP server I played on to make that vulnerability extra fun. Couldn't do it all the time, can't stand bottling up my meta references too long, but it's a nice break from treating the game like a ladder made of numbers.

Character Creation Choices: Some character creation options, such as species, are limited to subscribers.

I'll admit I'll be a bit annoyed if some of the aliens I made will become unplayable, but these nuances can be overlooked. I suppose this is how you can spot a leech like me, we'll be wearing the same boring garb and sporting one of a few haircuts. People are competitive by nature, so we'll either want to conform to what we think is appropriate or wildly non-conform, both of which are behaviors that fall in line with increased customization options. But I tend to non-conform in non-optimal ways, mixing and matching stuff I should probably discard. I imagine I annoy players who are into optimality. Doesn't bother me one bit, and limitations are always a good framework for creativity... so whatevs.

Warzones: Free-to-Play members will have limited weekly access to Warzones.

This is the massive PvP arena stuff, with contextual things to complete to succeed. I never played one of them, as far as I'm aware.

Flashpoints: Free-to-Play members will have limited weekly access to Flashpoints.

Flaspoints are exciting, especially when you're desperately battling an end boss and things work out. They're intensified by the group dynamics, and the stories tend to be more heavy-hitting and cinematic. But they're also made not to take too long, even if your group's willing to take the time to let you respond how you want to things, and explore a bit. It depends on how limited, but even doing each flashpoint ONCE for a given character would be cool enough for me, with maybe a few repeats to see how other people react to conversation options. If they're not severely limited, even a limit wouldn't affect me all that much.

Space Missions: Free-to-Play members will have a weekly cap on Space Missions.

I played these quite a bit, but I can't imagine a reasonable cap would affect my playing these at all.

...What's starting to dawn on me is that once you hit level 50 or whatever, you'll maybe want to do more with your character, but a lot of that will be limited. You're maybe getting an extended free trial with some limitations on growth and customization... but for me what was most fulfilling was the story, with an ending, and you get that. It feels like an ending, even if missions come later. It's almost a design misstep, but I can't bring myself to say that BECAUSE games like these benefit profoundly from endings. What they need to do is make the post-ending content feel compelling, and still personalized, rather than generalized to fit all player characters. Anyway...

Operations: Only subscription members can access Operations.

I'm unclear on the extent of what operations are, but I think they're the equivalent of raids on world bosses and the like. Fun, but not something I'd miss terribly. I'm also unclear on how you'd be able to prevent players from at least indirectly contributing to the open world versions of these.

The other operations that take place in blocked-off, unique areas... I never did experience those. I guess they're like Flashpoints only with tons of people. Sounds like it might be interesting but I never did reach that point. Just reached level 50 when it was time to quit.

Travel Features: Subscription members have access to all travel functionality, making getting around the world easier.

Annoyingly vague here. I did use the quick-travel quite a bit, but that was due in part to the pressure of having a subscription. Without that pressure it may take me a while to get around on Hoth, but I'll be more inclined to enjoy the scenery since I know there's no need to be there RIGHT NOW.

Game Login: Subscription members will always be in login queues ahead of free players.

Nice if it's a problem for you, I guess.

Galactic Trade Network: Subscription members can post up to 50 auctions for sale.

I played capitalist with the market system, it was one of the highlights of the game for me selling rare stuff at a premium. Will be irritating not to use that fully, but if it means I save real world money I think It'll be easy enough to bear this advantage in mind. I'd definitely miss the market, though.

I feel like these limitations are largely targeted at someone else. I'll likely take up the game again and, I hate to say it, barring compelling evidence that I'm not getting the best out of the experience, there's very little I'd be spending the in-game currency on.

An Overdue KOTOR Comparison

And as an addendum, addressing the old argument about whether or not this game is a new KOTOR, it's... well... let's play a mental game here. If I imagine this game's mechanics without the Old Republic trappings:

It does have nice conversation customizations, but comparing this to KOTOR's one story, different branches, it doesn't quite have the same impact. There are eight stories with some variations, but they don't feel quite as personalized as they did in KOTOR. The NPCs feel more like slaves than buddies (ok, admittedly, they felt creepily slavish in KOTOR too, especially the second, where you're supposedly able to psycho-analyze them into being force users, all the while here I am just wanting to play a blaster- wielding non-force user having adventures. Silly me.) Alignment choices feel more like grinding for light side or dark side loot than they feel like rational or in-character choices. If you aim to go dark side but can't stomach killing a kid's dad, the game effectively tells you it'll take longer to get that shiny relic you're working toward. You might get a nice email from the dad later on thanking you for helping him, which is actually rewarding in a way that is probably discounted by those who prefer everything to be voiced, but it feels like you're working against the machinery placed in front of you because in the end you'll have to work longer to bring your alignment up to where you want it.

The combat cannot be paused, and the item modification and loot system doesn't really feel anything like either KOTOR. If you're playing at your absolute best, you get incremental increases to your stats and that's it. It's actually more fun for people who don't play optimally, but loot and mods don't really add a whole lot to your capabilities. You'll also get loot that cannot be used by you or your NPCs, at least not effectively, meaning they're very shiny vendor trash, trade items, or something you dump on the market and hope someone buys. If you're a Bounty Hunter and you pick up an item with Willpower or Strength as the prime stats, you don't benefit from those bonuses at all (I think there may have been some difference during Beta, but most of the people I talk to tell me not to worry about those stats even if Strength is supposed to help melee attacks). You can still use the equipment, but it's likely that you'd benefit much more from something that'd fit your class. The prime stats are largely meaningless, just there to force you to focus on increasing that prime stat, balanced against a few others, as high as possible.

Character abilities can be nuanced with the extensive skill trees, but only rarely does this mean a new ability, unlike in KOTOR games where your choices changed as you progressed, with new abilities being unlocked that alter the way you play. Here they do that, but they're pretty much given to you. There were other builds that I could have used on my Bounty Hunter that could have changed things significantly, but these differences weren't important enough to make it feel like I was going in a starkly new direction.

Both KOTOR games were messed up, one famously, and at the very least I know that issues in SWTOR will eventually be resolved, at least major ones. SWTOR has bugs, but it's a lot less fucked up than other games I've seen, online and off.

I don't like how quests sort of come to you, and how your choices are largely dependent on the creativity of the particular quest writer. You reach a new area, questy people beg you to solve your problems if you decide to talk to them, but it feels like it revolves around you a bit too much. There are quests you stumble upon in the environment, which I like, but you never discover solutions before the questions are put to you. I got to the point where I'd start making role-playing decisions on a lot of the quests, telling someone who wanted me to kill a bunch of innocent people to go fuck himself rather than treat it as a chance to level my character up. This wasn't a role-playing choice as far as the game was concerned, it meant that I was simply denying myself that particular wad of advancement. Great.

I came away from my Bounty Hunter's story satisfied (the fact that it's a Star Wars game where you don't have to play a Jedi makes me like it, in that aspect, much more than the KOTOR games' assumed Jedi fantasies). I think my satisfaction was due to it being an actual ending, and I felt like my character had enough of a personality of its own to feel like I owned a bit of that ending, happy that I had the chance to put my spin on what was not an altogether complicated story. Still, with eight separate storylines with wildly different tones, you're bound to feel some inconsistency. There were a few times I wasn't sure who I was going after when I'd taken a bit of a hiatus, and at times my character said things that in no way reflected my attitude toward the subject (happens a lot in dialog choice systems, though Bioware's practice of writing one thing and your character saying another often creates schizo moments of complete incongruity). The use of the alignment system, with Force points, was often weird... sparing one person is good, sparing another is bad, often with tenuous contextual justification. This sort of thing wouldn't be considered a bug by most people, but it bugged me anyway.

The game is beautiful in music, acting, and visuals (there's a reason Voss is my page's background right now), and makes me dread revisiting either KOTOR with their very limited character models. Maybe you liked the 3 lines someone speaking Huttese would say, but I'm happy there are many languages, many species, many many humanoid faces in SWTOR. You see patterns, but it's not like there are five low res guys in the entire galaxy anymore. The voice acting, though, is a MASSIVE liability for them. Creating new content means getting the voice actor to come back and do dialog. It means recording that dialog, paying the actor, and integrating it properly into the game. Every time. Every damned time. Voice acting is nice, but sometimes text is better for games. Text can be made by one person who knows what's going on. Audio involves several people, and in a game this massive, that's a big several, with many inconsistencies piling up on themselves. A huge cost, just so we don't have to read.

KOTOR and SWTOR are fundamentally different in a lot of ways. If you valued KOTOR's stories, and want to see the continuation of those stories in a land where Jedi and Sith are everywhere, then you'll probably dig this more than someone who wants a Dungeons and Dragons, fully plausible tactical combat with light and dark side options that make sense on a single character and NPCs with a bit more to them. The game's main storylines are ostensibly completable as a solo player, but I benefited greatly by having friends who were more into it than I was to show me what to do and accompany me through rough spots that were a bit tougher than my character was. The mostly helpful general chat also let me figure things out instantly. Grouping brought some of the best experiences when you see how someone who's from a completely different mindset tackles their character building and conversation options... in that way the world revolves less around you than it does in KOTOR, which is a relief, though you're ultimately told in private story moments that you're super awesome. The two don't quite exist easily together, but that's not the kind of thing that's ever really bothered me.

If you do decide to try it out and you decide to play it alone, you'll be able to do it, though you may have to view it as a more casual thing than you'd get in KOTOR. If you want to hammer through the game as fast as possible, you'll need help or you'll need to master systems and do a lot of quests. My friends and I have discussed starting from the very beginning and just experiencing all the stories in a run-through from beginning to end, with the aim of getting the grouping bonuses. That actually sounds like it could be fun, and is totally possible given how the game is laid out.

Once the game goes free, this particular household may come back, and we may spend an hour or two playing every once in a while. We'll be keeping it on our hard drive, looking at what the specifics of the free-with-coins stuff, maybe even get a month's subscription to go back to the full game if we actually find we miss it. I don't know if they'll like to have us around since we're unlikely to buy anything, but this is how they're going to try to boost their numbers. I wish 'em good luck.

In the meantime, I've been neglecting Skyrim and Grimrock...

Been playing SWTOR a lot in the run up to our subscription expiring. I was given a 3 month subscription as a Christmas gift from my employer, and had started up after that employer had been dissolved by a rather familiar publishing house. For a good portion of that subscription I wound up not playing at all; my other half was more involved than I was. Toward the end though, I guess I realized I wasn't going to be playing after the sub, at least unless we decided to come back later, so I am pushing to get my Bounty Hunter to level 50 in the time I have left.

Then comes the news, long foreseen, about SWTOR clipping on a free-to-play model. From what I understand, this will include pretty much all the stuff that I actually enjoy in the game. The stories, the conversations, the different narrative paths for each of the classes seem to all be included. They will naturally try to limit exposure to these things somehow, the details aren't clear (and maybe they're still working out the details) but to me it seems like my playing style may not be affected much at all. Which is a bit crazy, but I guess my profile may be exactly the kind of person they're trying to keep around.

There are limitations to SWTOR that, when you compare it to the KOTOR games, are a bit pronounced, but if your primary goal is to experience a Better Star Wars, like KOTOR allowed for many of us, it's good. I wish I could say I love it, but I'm not sure it's precisely my kind of game. I still love exploring environments to find hidden objects, I like advancing the class stories, and I actually engage in some multiplayer, which I usually don't do. The community is in general fairly helpful, so I've managed not to enrage anyone as I bumbled through Flashpoints I hadn't seen before (Flashpoints are fast-paced mini stories used to get better items, quick alignment gains and things called social points). When I got to about level 25 I started to burn out, partly because I felt like the game was merely adding to my list of chores rather than giving me a new compounding of interesting things. It may be the pressure of trying to finish up, but that doesn't bother me much anymore, and I'm not very close to level 50, and a planet away from finishing my class story.

Understanding the system and what it has to offer helped me appreciate what there was. I'd avoided flashpoints for a while because of their multiplayer component; they still give me performance anxiety in a way that grouping up to do a mission rarely does, in part because they often involve more puzzle combat and prior knowledge of the scenario to optimize play. But with flashpoints you get a good chunk of interesting mini-plots, like about the fate of that murderous HK droid, Darth Revan, and the Exile from the KOTOR games. Many of the characters we recognize from the old games are referenced, and I think that's where the game tends to be more fun. Some of the very basic side quests in the main game tend to be a bit un-heroic, and the Imperial side pushes distasteful for me, often being about murdering the locals. Still, what I do appreciate is that, thematically, the Republic is filled with its own corruption and dissent, and the shades of gray that help enrich what is admittedly a thin universe is much appreciated. My Bounty Hunter is about as good-aligned as you can be for any character class, although I do occasionally punch jerks in the face and sass Sith lords.

If I was a big fan of SWTOR this might read more like an advertisement, but I still feel that a lot of my game-engine choices are merely nuanced versions of the same things. My current build means I'm strong in defense, but can get higher critical damage (important because I get automatic criticals on railgun blasts). Yet when I'm modding my equipment I feel like I'm getting only slightly better, rather than a big leap in functionality that you'd feel in the KOTOR games when you uncover a goofy looking but very useful pair of goggles. Appearance is a lot more important to the designers of SWTOR, although that's a bit of a relief. You can often have a certain look translate all the way up to level 50 without it changing if you don't want it to, if you have gear that can be modded. I still wish the mods were more like in the old games... here they're just extra ways to push stats in a certain direction.

Those who enjoyed how skills were used in KOTOR will find SWTOR's approach to be very different, often geared more toward creating better-than-level gear for yourself and your companions, and your companions don't really contribute to your three chosen skills except in crafting; in the field, you can sometimes access objects if you have the right skill, but your companions share your skills with you, rather than contributing unique, contrasting abilities. They're primarily there to provide combat and story stuff.

The companions are definitely spice in the mix, and it's always nice to hear what a new character has to say about an old place, although I find I run into the same problem I have with most Bioware games in this regard, since I CAN'T have all my companions with me at once, I wind up just wondering what the others would have said. Despite my being better at the game, and probably capable of racing through it on a replay to hear what one character would say in a situation, I don't think I'll play through as the same class too often. The companions are also fairly contained within the game system. Sure, there may be lasting story consequences for a given character, but you will always have access to them; they're too integral to your ability to make stuff, to have a fling, or to guard your back when you're on a mission. They're less-than-characters in that way, always subordinate to the main character's progress. Very versatile, very flavorful pieces of equipment.

And every time in the story they reference something I specifically chose it's great, but more often than not it's a very Bioware-level of narrative control, with dialog options leading to the same result (and some voiced dialog repeating itself) except for the major decision gates. There ARE references to what you've done later, though the gameplay impact of these specifics is usually not terribly pronounced. And because it's a shared universe, the turrets you blow up regenerate after a while, the caged prisoners you DON'T free by the time your quota is filled are still stuck there, monsters pop back into existence (and so do treasure chests) if you wait long enough. The encapsulated stories feel final enough, but the game feels more permanent than your choices do. You have to already be enjoying the story for its own sake, I think, rather than testing the limits of its reality, because it's pretty clear this game is more about experiencing things within a relatively versatile game engine than having a strong narrative where unpredictable and devastating things can happen.

What I do get out of it is the grandeur of a given location, the wealth of little details, and the sense of ownership over my character. I DON'T miss KOTOR's repetition in terms of environments and NPC designs; SWTOR is thankfully leagues more varied. So much so that it's frankly a bit weird to see others' characters of the same class and sex speaking with the same voice as mine, since it feels like only MY character should be using that voice. I like the stories for the most part, even the ones that feel a bit rote are still fun to follow through to the end, though, like I did with the Jedi Consular, I just watched someone else play (who explored nearly every dialog option before committing). Watching someone else play, I also get a sense that the battles are often quite dynamic and interesting to watch in a way that you're not always aware if you're busy pressing buttons. The game is quite generous, flaws and all, and it helps me to appreciate it even when it annoys me.

I do think this game is unfairly maligned, probably because of its initially reported price tag. Now that it's going to be open to whoever wants to try it, I guess it'll live or die on its own merits as a game and an experience, which to me seems fair. When the game's machinery are laid bare it can feel a bit rough to continue, especially if you're not into the environments or the story. About halfway through my character's advancement I felt pressured to always have the best equipment and to jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. Some of the criticisms of SWTOR are justified, in that I still feel like the time it takes to do something is stretched with less interesting bits in a way that the KOTOR games didn't have to worry about. I do miss that dynamic element at times, though in other ways I feel like it's an incremental improvement of KOTOR, especially how dialog is handled.

As far as my own SWTOR experience I got over the hump, I guess. I'm enjoying it enough to keep playing now that the mechanisms are clearer to me. And now that what is apparently ALL of the stuff that I enjoy is going to be free, I guess I might still stick around even if I don't manage to finish my Bounty Hunter's story before the subscription lapses.

It DOES help to have people to play alongside, whether it's a casual meet-up or people you know well, and my experience was probably better for that. As much as it supports single player play, it's more fun with others. There's something about waiting to see if your group will make light-side or dark-side choices in a flashpoint that is still suspenseful, even if you've done it a bunch of times already. Though there's always the occasional asshole, people are willing to explain stuff and tell you the best way to do things even if you're not in a group with them, which makes learning the system a bit easier for people like me who prefer to be told what needs to be done rather than read about it or hope that a random internet site knows what it's talking about.

I'll go back to playing now. Maybe in a few days I'll be able to say whether or not the Bounty Hunter's story had a satisfying conclusion...

Any questions about the game, or criticisms of and reflections on your own experiences, are welcome.

Slender is an exercise in terror (not so much horror as I've often seen people say) using the Unity engine. If you're curious, get it here. Otherwise, or afterward, I'll talk about it below.

Rather than go into Slender itself, which is pretty simple in its setup, I'll mention a particular state I entered into while playing it.

Most cultures have monsters, but none come to mind that don't have warnings about them, observations on behavior, or methods to defeat them. What is hidden behind this seemingly completely irrational tendency for us to anthropomorphize the unknown is our ability to find patterns in it, and thus find weaknesses.

If anyone wonders why human beings have managed to extend the average lifespan, and come up with complicated machines that help make life easier (and end life quicker), you might look at how we beat the small monsters through the use of holy symbols, prayers, silver bullets. We tell ourselves there has to be a way, and in fiction there inevitably can be. We use fiction as a practice run in protecting ourselves, and outrunning death, that undeniable real-world monster, just a little longer.

In fiction, though, you can also simulate hopelessness. You can tell the reader the rules, then imply that there is no hope no matter how hard they try. As pat as it is to have the good guys win, and while the specific definition of what a good guy is is arguable, it is important not to lean on this hopelessness style too much. I believe we learn real-world skills even through made-up worlds, and it's strange in light of this to teach us to give up.

Still, we have all sorts of entertainment that simulates this freefall into death. Roller coasters come to mind. We plummet, scream, but smile while we're doing it because we know, most of the time, the cart won't crash into the ground (unless you live in the universe of Roller Coaster Tycoon).

While playing Slender I found that I was trying to ask the game, through gameplay, if there was any hope, or if things were just going to get worse and worse the more crayon drawings I picked up. It's easy enough to plop you with a dimming, narrow-beam flashlight in the middle of a pitch black forest, and zing you with orchestrated jump scares even though you know you're not exactly in this situation and can quit at any time. But as I played I felt as though what the game was trying to do was to see how far I'd go, what I'd be willing to put myself through, despite the story context being so minimal that I began to scrutinize the graphics, wonder why I couldn't scale the fence, wonder where this game I was interacting with was intending to take me.

I tried to see if there were methods for evading, ways to clip through walls and try to get around boundaries and then, 4 pages in, I decided to beat the game. While running from my pursuer I found that the truck I'd found early on counted as an obstacle that would prevent me from being affected by my pursuer's gaze. The glass of its windows counted as a solid object, so I was safe to look. I did, using the game's strange zoom function to get a closeup of the creature's boxy, pinched face. It stood there, dumbly, waiting for my screen to be filled with static, not knowing I wasn't affected, but unwilling to move because I was facing it.

Then, I quit. In this case, as the machine said, "the only winning move is not to play."

Again, stay away if you're even vaguely interested in playing, or haven't yet completed it. I'll also be talking about a lot of the permutations that one-time-through players may not realize, so bear that in mind too if you want to revisit it and try out other things.

A bit like Bastion itself, my knowledge of the game came in bits in pieces. Early on I was warned away from spoiling the game for myself by diving into the promotional materials, though I did skim a few thankfully tangential reviews when it finally came out. I never watched Building the Bastion, and I avoided the damned thing so well I'd forgotten about it, if I'd ever known it existed. The most I ever participated in the feed was Jeff Gerstmann's attempt to dethrone Brad in the "arena", with the narrator's voice down low and the subtitles off.

Now I've played through to the end, doubling back to finish the third of the back-story areas and seeing what happened if I reversed the damage instead of my initial choice, to move on and forge a new life. This new choice felt so melancholy to me that I decided to play the last part AGAIN to leave it where I wanted it, on the original ending I'd chosen.

A story told well does not have to be new, or even pretend it's trying to be new; all it has to do is honor the tradition of storytelling to become an explosion in the mind of the reader/viewer/player. "Less is more" is one of the keys to that, I believe, and Bastion does this very well, with its partial descriptions and hints that make the world feel bigger than the screen. There comes a point toward the end where I'd grown a bit tired of this, that I became a bit frustrated with what felt like red herrings flitting about, still, after things were so close to being done. I think part of the problem was that I'd heard that the narrator was unreliable-- it was something I'd already picked up on my own, but progressing further knowing this from someone who'd beat the game changed my perception of what was going on, having me wonder if there was still some other twist lurking beneath that would force me to re-assess what had come before. Didn't really work out that way, so there are a few things I'm still unclear on. I think I figured out the most, though, and despite my suspicions, it seems like most, if not all, of the characters aren't really related. I still wonder if Rucks and the Kid are connected somehow, and I wonder if the Kid was somehow connected to the Calamity itself, which is suggested by some cryptic mid-to-early game words from Rucks. Not sure, though. Maybe it'd be clearer if I play the game again.

I'd also learned that there were choices to be made, but not knowing where or what they were, I tried my best to make choices from the very beginning. I avoided scattering the ashes of as many of the dead as I could, to try to preserve them in case that would have some bearing on what happened later. During the last few areas the tone changed and I was asked to kill Ura soldiers... and I couldn't stomach it. Not sure if it was intentional but it worked well; and so I wound up avoiding as many of them as I could, especially at the end of the game when I got tons of use out of the roll, zipping past everyone to get the narrative, activate new regions, and recover the shard. Made me feel a bit better, though I did have to kill a few to stay alive.

One surprising effect that touched me was the death of two of the rescued animals when the Ura attacked. This was done very well, though I don't know if it's always fated to happen, and it's the only long-term consequence, at least that I noticed, that can happen as part of the action game itself. I was frankly expecting more of this, though it was rewarding that this was even a possibility.

Another moment, the exact moment when I'd been enraptured for a moment by the spell this game was weaving, was upon discovering Zia in the garden. John Walker from RPS had a similar reaction during that point which he mentioned in his review. It's easy to make a moment like that haunting if done right, but like I said, you don't have to pretend to be doing something new to do something right.

When the choices came, I saved Zulf, and got what I feel was the better of the two results on that axis. The game again asserted its narrative strength to me when the Ura let me live. And when I was asked to either rewind the world, or set that possibility aside and start anew, I felt the idea of possibly repeating things forever with no chance to change was a bit too horrifying to contemplate. Rucks had talked about the chance to do things right the next time, but I didn't feel it was strong enough a belief to base my character's future existence on. When a game has you digging into philosophy, I think it's succeeded on a level beyond visceral mechanics.

Those two choices combined may have doomed Zulf to a life of unhappiness, but it set Zia free, and meant that the world could continue in its own way.

That's what I've settled on, at least, but at the time I was rather annoyed that the game was asking me to make these decisions without knowing quite why I was making them, and what the consequences might be, though some might argue that the vagueness was part of the reason the restoration choice wasn't the obviously good idea. I wished a bit more of the running narrative's conclusions had been encapsulated somehow, so I didn't have to rely upon my memory and the interpretation of every word to hash out what I wanted to choose, though, especially since some of the narration was happening while I was desperately fighting to stay alive. Ultimately the two choices were satisfying when I put them in their respective contexts, and neither of them are wholly "right." Checking the other path, Zia was unhappy and Zulf was reunited with his fiancee, though who knows how long the couple would have? Would Zulf still lose her?

Playing a bit of New Game Plus helped me realize that there may be a bit of a renewal, an overlap, but given that you start with the Calamity all over again... yeah, I made the right choice the first time, I think :) Still, as John Teti said in what I think was the only review I read before I played, the endings are such that the player actually chooses what the whole game was really about. I couldn't have put it better.

The game mechanics themselves, now that I feel I've explored a good chunk of them, are fun, though I doubt I have the hyper-kinetic skill to be perfect at them. I gave up on the shield challenge, and didn't complete that bazooka challenge, but otherwise I'd at least beaten the 3 side-stories and all the other areas. I kept a few of the idols active, but found the game to be a bit too much for me with most or all of them switched on. Might be better if I start from the beginning with them on, just to ramp up the difficulty a bit better, but I predict there might be an ability ceiling waiting for me if I stubbornly try to play the whole game that way.

The difficulty system is quite elegant, like many of the features of this game, as is the weapon customization. There were times, though, when a new weapon was thrust into my hands, that I'd find my character a bit crippled, without a special move after its corresponding weapon was switched out. Not very fun to have to deal with that. And some of the side-story arenas were crazy frustrating at times, though since I've beaten all three it stings a bit less.

It's strange to be talking about an action RPG, and not mention the actual mechanics all that much. I'd say that this is a good thing, because they are the decent vehicle that the ideas ride on. I can't imagine this game coming together any other way, which is the definition of a classic.

But I don't think game producers need to rest on this idea, necessarily. I hope more and more people play this game and see its magic, but I also hope that it'll be an inspiration for us to take the next leap forward in how games tell stories. Bastion has its share of rough edges, but you barely notice them: This is a game that washes over you like rain.

Thanks to RagingLion

As many of you are aware, when living part-time in a niche culture you get the worst of both worlds. You're not quite passable as a normal person, because you sometimes use a specialized vocabulary, and get at least some of the references to geeky subjects that out you as One of Those. Yet at the same time you're never quite accepted by Those because you don't know every damned little thing that they happen to know.

With the exception of maybe a few games, I can honestly say I don't know any game well enough to be an absolute authority on it. I just don't have the patience to dwell whole-heartedly in the magical world of Fester's Quest for example, yet one of the first memories I have of this half-in, half-out nonsense was when a then-girlfriend's brother was haranguing me for not playing the game well enough. As if that was the reason I was visiting their house.

It's not just games, of course. An old friend of mine was an absolute Star Trek fan, read all the books, knew the movies and episodes front-to-back. It wasn't a real world for him, but it might as well have been. One day even he ran afoul of the nerd police when he was chatting with a random jerk at a Star Trek convention, who yelled at him for not knowing the REAL reason Klingons suddenly had bumpy foreheads in the movies.

I guess we all need our island to stand on, and human beings in general seem to believe, individually, that they're secretly on to something the rest of the world doesn't quite understand. Hell, I'm just as likely, I know-- But I'll be damned if I'm going to pretend I know something I don't, and I'm still be willing to talk openly about that, and learn about stuff I don't currently know, rather than spend weeks researching before I bother to start typing. That means that I'll occasionally be outing myself as not a perfect geek, or a perfect normal, or whatever goddamned label people enjoy using.

I tolerate the pedantic because I'm interested in learning more about stuff I don't understand yet, as long as they're willing to realize that there's a bigger world beyond their little islands.

Parley concluded. Now, bring us your finest meats and cheeses.

When people keep talking about having to see something for yourself, having to play a game/see a movie/hear a performance, when people don't try too hard to explain what they saw but just tell you to see it for yourself, you know there's a good chance there's something special beyond that curtain.

I don't know what it is exactly, but I think it's the subtlety of Bastion, its generosity, AND its confident willingness to hold back, that hits me. I think I see what people are talking about, although I'm not really done with the game just yet. All the way through, though, I've enjoyed both its mystery and its charming use of the narrator.

The gameplay is clean enough, and the options fun and versatile, that it never feels monotonous, like many games that use a similar gameplay style. I feel like this game won't go as long as other games in this genre, but the fact that it still feels generous in spite of that means they're blending things correctly. I've seen games with much more "content", a word I'm not too fond of for reasons I'll go into some other day, that felt stretched out, pre-programmed, and half-hearted. Bastion has just the right amount of spice for me.

This game is damned beautiful, in many, many ways, and I think the strongest impression it made on me was its pacing. Even though I controlled the pacing, as we do in most games, it still set it up so well that arriving in a new place still struck a beat. That's so rare in games.

I'm going to savor this one, I think.

I figured my embarrassment at not knowing about all the features here on Bastion helped shame me into downloading the game and trying it out. It's fairly easy to understand, but the text doesn't seem to be helping me in this regard. Not sure what happened, wonder if anyone out there had a similar problem and knows how to fix it. Namely:

I added the WTF, but all the text in the game that isn't subtitles has filler text (Latin) and variable names (like LoadHint_Roll above) rather than the text itself. I wonder if this has something to do with localization, but I have no idea. The only real problem when actually playing is that the instructions are all crazy wrong. Another example:

Any help would be appreciated, including pointing me to a relevant post or FAQ or something. Thanks!

Postscript:

Thanks to Wordfalling for the solution! Thanks to most of the rest for your comments :)