Don't be Stupid! Be a Smartie!

This past weekend, I finally got a chance to really dive into Wolfenstein: The New Order. (I know, the game has been out for a while, shame on me.) I think that Jim Sterling put it best when he said that Machine Games iteration on the Wolfenstein formula was one that "likes being clever, but loves being stupid." He meant it as a compliment, and I do as well. The bad B-movie camp of the game is played so straight that one could almost be forgiven for thinking that it is bad writing rather than an intentional design choice. (One look at the game's art book will assure you they knew what they were doing.) That said, I couldn't help but identify a certain, subtle dissonance between the game's story and the Nazi dystopian background of the setting.

 One of things that immediately struck me about the game was how over the top, cartoonishly evil all of the villains are. (I know, many real life Nazi leaders were over the top, cartoonishly evil.) I felt like I was encountering another deranged sociopath at every turn, and it felt over done and disingenuous. Was Machine Games worried that I wouldn't get that the Nazis are bad? Why wasn't "They are Nazis" enough of a reason for me to be killing the bad guys? Why did I need elaborate mini-games where I get tested on my Aryan-ness or tortured for laughs? Especially given that Captain B.J. Blaskowicz is about the most Aryan mother-fucker in the entire game. Seriously, he's a blond haired, blue eyed gorilla of a man.

I'm Not Kidding.

The longer I played the game, however, the more I started to notice a strange kind of dissonance in the story telling. For those who don't know, The New Order takes place in an alternate history 1960's where the Nazis won World War II, our hero has spent the past fourteen years in a catatonic state and awakens to discover that not only did the allies lose, the good ol' US of A is no more. For him, the war is still fresh and real. For the rest of the world, certainly most of Europe, the Third Reich has been ruling the roost for almost two decades. He doesn't hesitate for one minute to return to killing every Nazi soldier he can get his hands on, because in the world he knows, that's what a good, red-blooded American soldier does.

Here's the thing: It's been fourteen years since the end of the war in Europe. Twelve years since the United States surrendered. There is no war for B.J. Blaskowicz to return to. He's very clearly told that the resistance doesn't exist anymore. Nobody is fighting. It's over. The Nazis have won and everyone, everywhere, is doing der Guten Tag Hop Clop.

His response is to bust any surviving resistance members out of prison and start the resistance anew. The thing is, all of the members of the resistance are people who have been fighting against or had beef with the Nazis since the war happened. There are no young resistance fighters, they are all old soldiers with old beefs. If you chose to play the Fergus Reid timeline, he'll even call you out on it: "Who's going to take over when we're too old to strap on the holsters?" Even your new girlfriend, Anya, the nurse that took care of you while you were a human vegetable, has old reasons to hate the Nazi's, she had to drop out of college because of the war. But she, at least, has a somewhat fresh reason to be angry... the game starts in earnest after a group of Nazi soldiers "purge" the hospital she works in.

That's where, for me, things start to get strange. During the purge of the asylum, the head doctor and nurse (conveniently, Anya's parents) resist the Nazi soldiers and get shot for doing so. On the surface, this seems like a normal, cold blooded Nazi way of dealing with resistance: Kill them All. The problem is that the follow on dialog between the soldiers paints the incident in a very different light. One soldier asks the shooter, "What are you doing? We weren't supposed to purge the staff!" The shooter responds, in a panicked tone of voice "They attacked an officer on duty!". This is a case where a young, inexperienced soldier reacted to an unexpected threat with excessive force. It's something that comes up in our news all the time, though usually with police officers, and is something that many veteran soldiers and peace officers can identify with: the kid panicked.

Now, you might be tempted to say "But they are still bad, right? They were murdering innocent patients in a mental hospital!" Yes, you're right, that is bad. That is terribly bad and not something I would never condone. But think about this young soldier in context: the morality that says "anyone who is 'subhuman' should be killed" is likely the only morality he has ever known. He, nor any of the soldiers in that scene or most others in the game, know any different. That is their normal. That is the new normal for the entire Earth. What isn't normal is killing innocent civilians, like the Doctor, and that causes the kid to feel panic and remorse.

The disconnect becomes even more strong if you make a point of reading all of the random news clippings scattered around the game levels. In the past fourteen years, the Nazis have more or less eliminated violent crime, they have eliminated homelessness with their new "super" concrete, they have developed clean forms of energy, they have developed technology for cleaning up the radiation damage of nuclear weapons (which the game suggests will make using nukes more reasonable, but who are they using them against, themselves?).  The world is not only settling into it's new order, but it is a world which is (in some ways) quantitatively better than the world that actually existed during the real 1960's. Sure, it's a warped and dystopian Nazi world, but it's a world that has peace.

And needlessly high tech knives.

Remember what I said about the resistance fighters all being old hats at hating Nazi's? The thing is that almost all of the crazy, ridiculously evil Nazi leaders you encounter are also old. War veteran old. Original, die hard, we're creating a new world order old. They are the true believers. If you listen to the random bits of flavor dialog between the enemy mooks in the game, they aren't nearly as committed to the cause as their leaders are. They're actually kind of easy to understand and identify with, they are soldiers and police officers who are just trying to live the best lives they can in the fucked up world that they live in, and here you come, old world relic B.J. Blaskowicz, to kill and maim and torture your way through them, trying to win a war that is long over. And to what purpose? Even if the resistance does kill all the Nazis (which isn't even their goal), they wont bring back the world that existed before. They can't.

The (literary) problem with Nazis is that you can't ever have them doing things that are too normal or mundane. If you have a Nazi do normal, mundane, everyday things, people might just catch themselves identifying with them. If you're going to have a Nazi butter toast, they need to butter that toast in the most sinister manner possible: with a bloody dagger, from butter dish made from a human skull, on bread toasted in a crematoria. Because if you don't go to that ridiculous of an extreme to make it obvious that the guy is evil, somebody is going to think to themselves "Hey, I like buttered toast too! What a swell guy!", and the moment they realize that you just "tricked" them into identifying with, nay, liking a Nazi, they will hate you forever.

Or you can make them absurd, so nobody takes them seriously.

The problem with The New Order is that if you think too much about it, the "good" guys start to seem like bad guys and the "bad" guys start to become sympathetic, which is bad, because, you know, they're Nazis. Think about that for a minute, Machine Games made a game with sympathetic Nazis. The reality of the game world may be a grim dark dystopia, but it's a world that is forever changed from the world that was. The soldiers that you so casually kill for no other reason than that they are Nazi's are just people trying to make a living. They aren't monsters. I wonder if that's why they felt the need to so freakishly exaggerate the villains and to do it often, so that we don't make the mistake of identifying with the bad guys. I'd like to give them credit for that level of philosophical subtlety, but it's more likely an unintended side effect of the game's campy-ness.

Afterall, the game only likes to be clever, it loves to be stupid.

Strange Loyalty: The Paradox of Fiction

We were under attack, and the attackers were my brothers. It wasn't something I was consciously aware of as I gunned them down, more of a nagging sensation in the back of my mind. My priority was survival, I didn't have time to think about fratricide. The attackers were momentarily repulsed, so I moved out into the tunnels to finish them off. I picked them off with well placed shots of my rifle, acting without thinking, running on adrenaline. As I reached the end of the tunnels, they stopped coming. I crept to the top of the stairs to see if there were any left. That's when I saw him.

He was standing in the middle of the church, feet planted square and head held high with an air of dignity and authority. He was waiting for his knights to return and only I knew that they wouldn't. At that moment, the gravity of what I had just done hit me: I was a traitor. I was a traitor, but the die had been cast and I needed to finish my job. 
      
 I raised my rifle, carefully placing the crosshairs on the eye lense of his helmet, finger just caressing the trigger as I prepared to take the shot. I felt cold, disconnected from reality, this was so surreal, how could this be happening. My heart raced, I knew I had to take the shot before I lost the nerve. I fired, putting a .50 calibre round directly through the eye of his helmet and out of the back of his head. 
   
Immediately, I paused the game, hyperventilating, eyes filling with tears: I had just killed Paladin Brandis.

Fallout came out in 1997, I was ten years old. Right from the start, I was enamored with the game. It has been my favorite franchise since that time, always holding a special place in my heart, and he thing I loved most about it was The Brotherhood of Steel.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Fallout series, it is a post-apocalyptic simulator set in the aftermath of total nuclear annihilation. It takes place in an anachronistic setting where history diverged from our own sometime after World War II and is a satirical depiction of the "World of Tomorrow" as envisioned by mid 20th century Americans. 

The Brotherhood of Steel is a quasi-religious, pseudo-knightly technological organization that traces its origins to the remnants of the United States military. Their core belief is that the nuclear apocalypse was brought about through the uncontrolled use of technology and that ensuring the survival of mankind means destroying technologies they deem dangerous to humanity and controlling everything else. The aren't concerned with governance, or even rebuilding, just prevention of another apocalypse.This doesn't mean they wont protect the people, or even provide aide when and where they can, but they don't let in interfere with their mission. Their mission statement can be summed up as follows: The most important thing is humanity, The Brotherhood protects humanity by controlling technology.

Admittedly, as a child I didn't care about all of that philosophical stuff. I liked them because they stomped around in giant suits of powered armor and carried massive guns. While my love of those things hasn't changed any with age, I have also gained an appreciation for the ethics of their position. They are, in my opinion, the most ethical group in the Fallout setting, with the most noble goals. Their dyed in the wool pragmatism about the necessity of their mission often leaves them seeming like bad guys, but that is the lot of everyone who takes on the burden of the hard decisions. Die a hero or live long enough to be the villain and all that.

When I began playing Fallout 4 there was no doubt in my mind that I would side with Brotherhood. I finished the main story as a Brotherhood member twice before I decided to give one of the other factions a try. For my third time through, I chose to join the Railroad, an underground organization dedicated to the salvations of synthetic humans or "synths". The Brotherhood considers synths to be a technological abomination that could destroy humanity, so naturally, there comes a point in the story where they attack the Railroad headquarters. 

I didn't hesitate to kill the attacking Brotherhood soldiers, not for a moment. They were shooting at me and I shot back without question, survival was the name of the game. But when it came time to finish off the attackers by killing their leader, Paladin Brandis, I found myself hesitating. This man was a paragon of the Brotherhood, a hero who I had personally rescued from a life of seclusion in the wilderness and convinced to return to the fold. Now, I found myself faced with having to end his life. Doing so broke my heart.

This experience of having strong emotional reactions to works of fiction is a philosophical problem known as "The Paradox of Fiction". The Paradox draws attention to the way in which people can be emotionally moved or develop very real loyalty to things which they know do not exist. It was originally proposed by philosophers Colin Radford and Michael Weston in 1975 and its basic format is as follows:

1. Most people have emotional responses to characters, objects, events, etc. which they know to be fictitious.

2. However, in order to be so emotionally moved, we have to believe that these things actually exist.

3. But, nobody who takes these things to be fictional at the same time believes that they are real.

The Paradox is that all three statements seem to be true but that they cannot logically all be true at the same time. If any two of them become true, the third must then be false.  

We've all experienced the paradox at some point in our lives, unless you live under a rock. We've all felt emotionally moved by or attached to a fictional person or setting. Sometimes the things we become attached to are things that we would find ethically reprehensible in real life (Pokemon), or that are realistically horrifying (Fallout, Warhammer 40,000), or that are depressingly internally inconsistent and overly idealized (Star Wars, Star Trek), but that doesn't stop us from being die hard loyal to and emotionally invested in them. Sometimes, we even take these feelings and attachment to bizarre extremes (I'm looking at you, Bronies.)

I had never experienced the paradox as strongly as I did in that moment, the moment when I slotted Paladin Brandis. I had never literally had a panic attack and devolved into a whimpering, crying man-baby over something in a fictional setting before. I had felt highs before, I had even been moved to tears, but this was something different. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I was heartbroken. 

"Fandom" is a term used to describe a subculture composed of fans characterized by a sense empathy and camaraderie between people who share a common interest. I had never really considered myself a part of a fandom before, I generally feel socially disconnected from others even when we share interests, but this experience has changed my mind about that. If there is such as a thing as the Fallout Fandom, I am a member. I'm certainly a member of the Brotherhood of Steel Fandom, and I'm proud to say that.

What Paradox of Fiction experiences have you had? Do you consider yourself to be part of a fandom? Share your stories in the comments.

Ad Victoriam!

Fallout 4: Survival Mode? -or- The Adventures of Rocko Thundercles!

This is what happens when your four year old designs your character. 

I love Fallout. It is is, decidedly, my favorite game franchise of all time. I played the older games back when they weren't so old, and I have played the heck out of the new ones too. I'm in the small camp of old school Fallout players who actually prefer the new games, I like the fact that they are more immersive. Needless to say, I've been enjoying the ever-living crap out of Fallout 4. This past week, I decided to finally give the new "survival mode" a shot. I was highly disappointed by the survival difficulty of New Vegas, but I everything I had read led me to believe that this time would be better.

It isn't.

It seems pretty clear to me that the team at Bethesda isn't very clear on the meaning of the word "survival". I was expecting to be spending the majority of my time hunting for food and water. I was expecting to spend a lot of time avoiding combat in order to preserve my fragile existence. I was expecting farming and settlement building to become a necessary element of getting through the game. I was expecting to have to struggle to make it through each day, let alone pursue the storyline. Rescue Shaun? How can I do that when I can't even keep myself alive? I was expecting a challenge!

Instead I got minor inconvenience. Purified water is abundantly available from Vault 111, just take some empty bottles in there and fill them up. Food is equally easy to come by, the radiation levels on most pre-war items aren't that high and hunting and cooking are pretty easy. Having to sleep to save the game seems like a huge inconvenience at first, until you realize that you also need to sleep to avoid fatigue, so you save pretty regularly anyway. I will admit that gradually taking damage from being over encumbered is a nice touch, but there's enough alcohol and Buffout around to boost your strength whenever you want to. The biggest inconvenience, I think, is not being able to fast travel.

Survival Mode? More like Inconvenient Mode!

In "Survival Mode" I was still able to do all of the same things I'd do in non-survival mode. I felt no noticeable increase in the difficulty of accomplishing my goals. The "Survival" elements proved to only be annoying. "Hold on, let me drink some water! OK, game on!" By the time I'd gotten to Diamond City I was asking myself "Why bother?" 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who complains about the overall difficulty of the normal game. I'm comfortable with how difficult "Very Hard" mode is. If I wanted a Dark Souls style level of challenge, I would play Dark Souls. I like the current generation of Fallout games for the atmosphere and the story and the fact that I get to feel like an unequivocal badass, not because I want a challenge. But I wanted more from something called "Survival Mode". I wanted to struggle. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to have to actually work hard at surviving. Instead I got "Fallout 4: Now with Annoying Debuffs".

Oh well, I guess I'll just go back to waiting for Far Harbor to release.

Tangent: Pacific Rim 2 Worries Me. It Worries Me Quite a Bit.

People who know me will tell you that I will forgive almost anything where giant robots are involved. I am an admitted fan of Battletech, Warmachine, and Warhammer 40,000. My second favorite anime is Big O. I play Terran in Starcraft. I supported the Kickstarter campaign for indie miniatures game Mechadrome for no other reason than that it involved robots. I saw all 4 Transformers films in theater, opening night, even though I knew the later 3 were going to be crap. I'm a firm believer that as long as you halfway give a shit about your product, it's hard to go wrong with giant robots. Which isn't to say that I'll give anything with giant robots a pass, sometimes no amount of heavy metal can polish a turd.

I'm looking at YOU, Robotech.

Needless to say, I loved Pacific Rim. The 2013 robot punch-fest was a pet project of amazingly awesome visionary director Guillermo del Toro. It is a fantastic example of everything that I love about the giant robot genre (I refuse to call it "mecha"). It's fight scenes pretty much kicked all of the ass, which quickly gained it a cult following. It managed to clear almost double its budget at the box office as well, which made it seem pretty likely that we would see a sequel. 

Del Toro has spent a significant amount of time and money fighting for that sequel, but it seemed like the film was going nowhere fast. Legendary Pictures and Universal Studios were going through a rough patch so, despite del Toro's best efforts, the film was stuck in development hell. Imagine my joy when they announced that the movie was finally going forward. Imagine my horror when I learned that Guillermo del Toro had been kicked off of the project.

That's right, they decided that a film that really only succeeded because it was the product of a visionary director could succeed without that vision. Not only that, but they have decided to throw out del Toro's script in favor of one penned by Prometheus scribe John Spaihts, because that movie wasn't a giant turd. Del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham are going to be credited for having created the characters, and that's that.

Admittedly, to say that del Toro was "kicked off" the project is a little dramatic. He is still going to be one of the films producers. How much influence he'll actually have, though, will be in question. I'm going to try and remain optimistic, but it's hard to believe that sequel will retain the charm of the original without its creator at the helm. 

I guess all I can do for now is follow Guillermo's advice: Dream of Kaujus and Mecha. 

Random Thoughts

Wow, I haven't posted in two weeks. When I started this thing the goal was to post once a week. I guess I didn't realize how easy it is to lose track of time.

Honestly, I was a little burnt-out after that string of Grim Dawn posts. Partially because, for me, it was a lot of writing. Partially because I was a little discouraged by the reactions I received. But hey, nobody writes on the internet to make friends. At least negative reactions are reactions, right?

I don't have anything specific in mind to write about today. I just wanted to get something up here again to keep me motivated to write. I have had a few random ideas floating around these past two weeks, none of which have evolved into much yet. These may or may not become full length posts in the future.

The Significance of Story
Several people reacted to my last post about Grim Dawn with the assertion that RPGs aren't meant to have stories. In their words, RPGs are all about the stories you create while playing. I agree that organic storytelling is an important part of good RPG design, but I disagree with the premise that the game doesn't need a core plot to tie it all together.

Cinematics and Cutscenes
There was also a lot of kickback regarding my belief that a few more cutscenes would have greatly improved Grim Dawns storytelling. I understand that that is a controversial idea, many games take cutscenes and such way too far. I believe that there is a proper way to use cutscenes and cinematics, one that changes the overall experience of a game for the better.

Most Impactful Cinematics and Cutscenes
One respondent made the claim that they had never, in their entire lives, played a game where a cutscene or cinematic improved the experience. They claimed that cinematics and cutscenes only ever ruin games, they don't make them better. My initial reaction was to blow them off as an idiot, but after some thought it occurred to me that I don't know anything about them, their story, or their struggle. Maybe they have a very legitimate reason for feeling that way? Anyway, I want to compile a list of in game cinematics and cutscenes from my gaming experience that I feel did enrich the experience.

The Blank Slate Fallacy
Another response that I saw a lot was that the player character in Grim Dawn and other RPGs isn't meant to have a background story. I want to address this idea.

A Return to New Eden
I recently returned to one of my great gaming loves, Eve Online, after a multi-year hiatus. I want to discuss my feelings on going back to a game that has such a rich backdrop and tight, active community. The things that, to me, have changed or not changed and why I decided to go back.

Anyway, those are the barest glimmer of article ideas that I have been mulling around these past two weeks. Maybe I'll expand on them, maybe I wont. I guess we'll see what shakes out next week.

Grim Dawn Review Part II: A Struggling Story

Whenever a story is told in an episodic fashion, it is important to ensure that each individual portion is it's own complete adventure while still contributing to the overall narrative arc. In this way the storyteller can continue building up momentum for the extended plot while continuing to give the audience a feeling of satisfaction. When it simply isn't possible to give a complete story to each installment, due to time constraints or what have you, it is important to always end with a sufficiently powerful emotional cliffhanger to keep the audience interested.

As much as I loath to compare everything to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back is a perfect example of how to pull this off properly. It is a complete movie in itself. You don't need to have seen A New Hope to fully enjoy it, nor do you feel dissatisfied at the end even though you know it's only part of a longer series. The individual story arc of Luke Skywalker being trained as a Jedi so that he can avenge his father's death, only to discover that the one he blames for his father's death is, in fact, his father is emotionally compelling. It's partner story arc of Princess Leia and company running from the Empire only to get captured and be used as bait for Luke, is also interesting and provides a romantic plot line that we would never be able to get from Luke himself. When the movie ends, we know that there is more to come: we wonder what Luke will do with his new found knowledge and we wonder how or if the companions will track down and rescue Han Solo, but none of this detracts from the satisfaction of knowing that our heroes have escaped and that the Empire's plans have been foiled, even if they are the films clear victor.

If The Empire Strikes Back is an example of how to do installment storytelling properly then Grim Dawn is The Matrix Reloaded. It is incomplete, it is unsatisfying, and it fails to convince me that I want to see more. This is all the more tragic for the fact that the Crate team has created a world that begs to have stories told about it. It's further painful because the skeleton of a story that they do have could actually be quite good if given a little more effort. I don't know if the problem is a lack of story telling skills on their part, a decision to sacrifice story for game play, or if they simply didn't care, but the fact of the matter is that the cult status of Titan Quest is only going to get Grim Dawn so far. Sure, you've got a lot of TQ veterans coming to play your new title, but you're only going to attract new gamers by selling an exciting adventure. New players come for the story, they stay for the excellent ARPG mechanics and loot grinding.

Here are my biggest gripes about the story so far and my suggestions for how to fix them:

1. I don't know who I am.
The player character has, essentially, zero characterization beyond what class build I chose to use for them. Sure, it is established that I was previously "taken" by an aetherial and that I have amnesia, a convenient way to avoid giving a back story, but that's about all we get. We aren't even provided with a decent reason why our character should be motivated to go on our quest, after all John Bourbon flat out tells us that we're expendable to him, why should be risking our lives for the people who just tried to kill us? Occasionally we are given opportunities to make dialog choices or make minor moral decisions about saving or killing various NPCs, but at no point does it seem like these decisions actually effect the story in a meaningful way. Some of the readable lore notes may or may not provide bread crumbs as to the players back story, but they are far too indistinct for there to be an certainty

How to fix it:
Make my choices matter. If you don't want the player character to have definitive back story and you plan on sticking with the amnesia story, fine, but if you're going to give me choices then they damn well better make a difference beyond what loot I get or how much experience I receive. If I save someone, just having them say "thank you" when I get back to town isn't really enough to make me feel like it mattered. Have them start a quest chain, or provide me with valuable information, or open up a new area of the map. Have them join the town guard and help fight off attackers. Have them do anything that makes it seem like my choice made a difference.

If it's not your intention to stick with the amnesia story and you do have a definite story for my character, then make the bread crumbs more than bread crumbs. Make it clear that the information I'm digging up has something to do with me, my past, and my unique circumstances. Also, start introducing those breadcrumbs early. I need to know that my unique story is, in fact, part of the overall narrative and that I'm not just conveniently placed to save the world just because. Giving the player character the personal quest of rediscovering their own identity would also fix the issue of lacking motivation. If John Bourbon enlisted me by saying "Look, we know the zombies are coming from Burial Hill and you also came from that direction, maybe by killing them you can learn something about your past?" I would be far more motivated to help him.

2. Key plot points aren't clear enough.
When something of major significance to the extended narrative of Grim Dawn happens, there is very little to indicate it. As far as I can tell, the entire first act only serves as a means to have the player accidentally bump into Ulgrim. Sure, there's the element of stopping the Aetherial attacks on Devil's Crossing, but the game could really jump right into act two without much suffering. There are some rare few bits of lore to be found that could later become relevant, but the problem is that the only way to get them is by carefully reading the notes that can be found in the world. Again, the issue is that of bread crumbs or of needles in haystacks. It's hard to discern what information is really important and what can be harmlessly skipped.

How to fix it:
Key plot points could be highlighted with the addition of a few more short cinematics. The game into cinematic has a very distinct and charming artistic style and isn't so long that it's painful to watch. Additional videos of similar style and length at key points in the plot would really make them stand out and help players build an outline of events that really matter in their head. Being able to go back to those cinematics for review later would also enable people to sort out aspects of the story that they might have gotten confused on earlier.

These cinematics could either be done from a first person perspective, with the characters speaking to the camera, or they could fully involve the player character. The later would be better, but would require the Crate team to make versions for both the male and female character. As an animator myself, I understand that this could lead to a significant increase in work but I really do think it would be the most effective option. Sure, they could simply decide that one or the other was the intended character and leave it at that, but as I said earlier and in my post about Grim Dawn character design: If you give the player a choice, make that choice matter.

Highlighting the bread crumbs of information in the world could be done by giving lore notes that are actually important to the plot voice over readings. I know, I know many people hate, or at least profess to hate, audio diary type devices in games. The fact of the matter is that they keep being used as a means of providing background to complex stories because they are effective. Hearing a voice over kick in the moment I click on one of the notes would give me a reason to pause and pay attention to what is going on. Any notes that don't contain super significant information would be there for the benefit of the hardcore lore hounds that just have to know everything and could go without the voice overs.

3. I don't care about the right characters.
Ulgrim and Creed are apparently two of the most important NPCs in the game when it comes to the story. I would have never guessed it though because they spend most of the game being little more than talking heads. At the end of the game, something happens to one of them and the dialog boxes seem to suggest that I'm supposed to care, but I don't because I've never had any reason to develop a rapport with either of them. Two characters I do care about, because the intro shows them to me as more than just quest hubs, are Captain John Bourbon and Sahdina; they apparently don't matter at all after act one.

How to fix it: ***Spoilers Ahead***
More cinematics would go a long way toward fixing this. Giving the player interactions with them that go beyond being quest hubs would be another. At this point, both Ulgrim and Creed just kind of stand around and talk at me. A few of the things they say are kind of relevant to the plot but the dialog suffers from the same problem as the lore notes, which is that there isn't much to separate the stuff that matters from the stuff that doesn't. Furthermore, as evidenced by my expectation that Bourbon and Sahdina would actually be major characters, just putting a character in a cinematic makes them instantly more human to the audience than if they are just man shaped blobs that give us our objectives.

For Ulgrim, making his introduction stand out from the other random NPCs you meet in the wilderness would go along way to making a difference. I personally think that he would have much more impact if he were a prisoner in Warden Krieg's chamber, rather than a random wilderness encounter. He could still come at us with the same story about being a nobody who just happened to get captured, but it would at least plant the seed that he's someone important. After his true nature is revealed, it would help to develop him as a character if there were sections of the game where he accompanies the player in accomplishing tasks. Random interactions and witty commentary would develop him into a more complete person and could even result in our having a reason to like him. That way when he disappears, we'll actually have a reason to miss him. On the topic of his disappearance, that would sell much better if it happened in a post boss fight cinematic rather than in the middle of the fight. As it is, I barely even noticed he was gone.

As for Inquisitor Creed, giving him a more dramatic introduction would also help. After reading all of his journals, a well done cinematic intro could have given him more of a heroic status in the view of the player. Creed should feel like a person we look up to and seek for guidance, a Grim Dawn version of Deckard Cain, if you will. Instead he's just kind of an awkward extra wheel. Having him become a companion during the push to Fort Ikon would be an awesome additional way to develop him. As it is, he sends me to clear a path to the fort, but is already there when I arrive, as if he got there by some form of teleportation. Additionally, where previously the developers only give us bread crumbs about things, they seem to be giving us bread slices in trying to convince us that Creed isn't really to be trusted. They are so heavy handed in their approach to making him to be suspicious that their efforts are almost suspicious. Either they are making it so obvious that it can't be missed, or they are trying to distract us from the real threat. In either case, the effect is rather off putting; patronizing in the least, and condescending at worst. It's all the more annoying because if his betrayal should indeed prove to be both sudden and inevitable, I wouldn't care, because they've given me no reason to trust or like him in the first place.

4. My actions don't matter.
I totally get that a major aspect of ARPGs is that the world mostly resets for each play session, otherwise how would we grind for loot? This doesn't mean that when I do something that is supposedly significant to the plot that it should make a permanent difference. I think that the perfect example of this is when Captain Bourbon sends me to secure the Burrwitch Village Portal. Ostensibly, my reason for doing so is that it will enable Devil's Crossing to retake the village, but when I succeed, no effort is made to follow up on that.

How to fix it:
If you send me to secure a portal so that you can clear a village, you better damn well send troops through to clear the village. As it is, the entire first act comes across as if everything you're doing for Bourbon is just a minor convenience that he doesn't really care about. "Oh, you actually managed to secure the portal? To be honest I was kinda hoping you'd just get killed and be one less mouth to feed!" Sending a few Devil's Crossing militia through the secure the area around the portal would help to alleviate this problem. When a player goes to great lengths to accomplish a task, make sure that there is a clear result of the task being accomplished.

5. There is a lack of escalation.
While the enemy mobs do indeed gradually become tougher, there isn't a real sense of rising action to a climactic end. There was no feeling that something intense was about to happen leading up to each of the story boss fights. I never realized I was in their chamber until I was already into the encounter. I didn't even realize that Loghorrean was the final boss until the game told me I had unlocked ultimate difficulty. I knew that he was bad, for sure, but I didn't know he was the end. It didn't help that the mini-boss right before him was actually a much harder fight.

How to fix it:
It's all about ambiance. For the most part, the areas leading up to the encounters with the story bosses don't look any different than the rest of the zones they are in. This samey-sameness takes away from the feeling that anything important is happening. That kind of casual level design works great for a game where you have to unlock the boss room, because the act of bringing the key to the door to unlock it has it's own sort of intensity. It doesn't work for a game where you can just stroll in. The environment should reflect the fact that something wicked this way comes, and at this point it really doesn't. Loghorrean is an exception to this rule, as his zone is full of eldritch tentacles, but because none of the other bosses had intense build ups, it kind of went by unnoticed. When all else fails, nothing works better than an intense upswing in enemy numbers and difficulty, and anyone who has ever played a final fantasy game can tell you the benefit of having awesome boss music.

In conclusion:
The Crate Entertainment team have done an amazing job of creating an immersive world for us to play in. The skeleton of a story they have laid out could be phenomenal if they would have just bothered to keep it more in focus. If you aren't a person who cares much about story, then I suppose you would be non-plussed, but I think it's a shame that such a rich world isn't getting the sort of narrative outing it deserves.

All of that aside, Grim Dawn is a delightfully solid ARPG experience. More well known reviewers than I, are right to call it the first true successor to Diablo II. It is that good. Any minor complaints I could have about loot balance and the difficulty curve, are things that all ARPGs take time to work out. Afterall, even Diablo II is still getting patched after all of these years. I think that Crate Entertainment is to be commended on an excellent first outing. I only hope that Grim Dawns inevitable expansion content will continue to be excellent where they already are, and will improve where they are not.

Grim Dawn Review Part I: Excellence in World Building.

Slogging through the sparsely wooded highlands I observed a gaggle of Bloodsworn Cultists around the entrance to some ancient ruin. I charged, intent on wiping their demonic taint from the world. Having killed the sentries, I delved into the ruins, determined to leave no cultist survivors. Initially, I was surprised to discover little resistance, until I discovered that the Bloodsworn have also been attacked from within. The ruin was a tomb; the Bloodsworn had angered whatever rested there. I soon found myself knee deep in ghouls and skeletons intent on my destruction, but my curiosity had been piqued. If there are undead here, what treasures must they be defending? I Hacked and slashed my way through the rotting hoard until I reached the burial chamber, only to discover that it was the last hold out for the cultists. In their desperate effort to survive, they had summoned a greater daemon of terrible power; I induced vitality sapping chaotic energies and lightning to envelope my ax as I prepared for the fight of my life.

Grim Dawn takes place in a beautifully realized Edwardian Gothic setting that takes it's cues liberally from H.P. Lovecraft, Greek Mythology, and the Warhammer Fantasy mythos. The developers have succeeded in creating a believable, breathing world that provides a sense of immersion that is often lacking in action role playing games. They have achieved this through fantastic attention to detail and micromanagement of the game resources to create a bevy of both scripted and organic narrative moments, like the one described above.

The worlds of most ARPGs, such as the Diablo franchise's Sanctuary, are perpetually stuck with their doomsday clocks at one minute from midnight. Not so for Grim Dawns world of Cairn; the bell has long since tolled, and mankind is merely struggling to survive as their world becomes a battleground for otherworldly powers. The disembodied Aetherials and eldritch Chthonians have long been at war with one another and Cairn is their new battlefield. The first seeks to use mankind as a resource, while the second is intent on wiping us out before that can happen. Their conflict, however, is not merely a background plot device; throughout the game we can observe armies of Aether-warped mutants and Chthonian daemons battling one another. Most of the time, they'll actually ignore the player until one of them is destroyed. We're simply too unimportant to be a priority.

We're unimportant, that is, until we prove ourselves to be a genuine threat to their goals. In addition to a well fleshed out reputation system for friendly factions, Grim Dawn has a reputation scale for the various enemy factions as well. The more members of an enemy faction you kill, the more they start to realize that you are a threat, and the more likely they are to focus their ire on you. Raise your hostility level high enough, and they'll start sending more of their heroes and champions to try and take you down. Mechanically, this has the benefit of providing more opportunities for high quality loot, but it also gives a real feeling that there is an intelligence behind your foes.

The enemy factions grow and change in other ways as well, modifying their tactics in response to both the player and each other as the game progresses. In a cynical way, we could just view this as the developers escalating the difficulty level of the monster tables, but the thing is that it's done so well that we don't feel like that is what's happening. I was particularly pleased to watch the progression of the Aetherial forces as they shifted gears from armies of weak human zombies supplemented by a few mutants, to armies of mutated trolls supplemented by possessed spell casters, to finally adding in heavy support in the form truly terrifying mutant abominations. It makes one feel like they are actively learning about their new environment and finding ways to take advantage of its resources, even if, terrifyingly, their idea of a resource is human flesh.

Unlike many ARPGs, Grim Dawn eschews procedurally generated maps for ones that are entirely hand drawn. This choice reduces the random replay factor of the game zones, but it provides for a high level of developer control over the places and events that the player sees. The Grim Dawn team uses these strengths to their advantage by creating beautiful set pieces that show us the terrible cost of the eternal war. Ruined villages, with meals still warm on the table, are crawling with Aether spawned zombies and mutants, while cultist camps in the wilderness send out raiding parties to gather up blood sacrifices for their Chthonic "gods". In the Black Legion castle of Fort Ikon, we see ranked arrays of steam powered tanks which could help turn the tide in mans favor, if only our limited resources weren't so necessary for survival. These dour images provide a very real feeling of despair and help to place in stark light the terrible futility of mankind's hope.


Another element that contributes to the excellent world building in Grim Dawn is the fact that the game oozes lore from it's every pore. From the mastery selection screen, which explains how science is mistrusted as simply a new form of magic and therefor explains how a world with Edwardian cultural sensibilities lacks Edwardian level technology, to the conversations to be had with just about every NPC about the way their lives were before the grim dawn, no opportunity to share the worlds back story is wasted. There are also "lore notes" to be found throughout the world which not only provide information about the grim dawn, the Empire, and the core narrative, but provide experience bonuses for reading them. The game actively rewards you for showing an interest in the back story, something I think that more games could benefit from.

Unfortunately, for all its world building excellence, Grim Dawn is not without its flaws, the largest of which is its stunted and poorly presented core story. The games central story arc, about a possessed human regaining control of their body and then waging a one man war against the forces arrayed against mankind, suffers in quite a few areas.

Check back later for part two of my Grim Dawn Review where I will tackle the flaws in the game narrative and propose solutions to the same.