Tangent: Han Solo and The Force Awakens

So I've heard a lot of chatter recently about certain events that take place in Star Wars Episode VII and I've decided to chip in my own two cents. Though I feel like it's been long enough for just about everyone to be up to speed with what happens in the movie, I guess I'll still give the obligatory spoiler warning.

***SPOILERS FOLLOW***

Han Solo dies. He's killed by Kylo Ren who, as it turns out, is really Ben Solo, Han and Leia's son. He tries to convince Kylo that he doesn't have to be an evil dark Jedi and that he can just come home and Kylo kills him. There's a little more going on than that, but I'm not going to try and capture all of the emotion wrapped up in that scene here when you can just go watch the movie.

The thing that I've heard a lot recently is that the scene in which Han dies ruins the movie and they blame JJ Abrams for ruining the movie for true fans. Some are even spreading a rumor that Harrison Ford asked JJ to kill off Han and that Harrison is really to blame. (While it's true that Harrison Ford did once want George Lucas to kill Han, that's not the case here at all.) The fact of the matter is that no matter how you slice, the death of Han Solo did not, in any way, ruin the movie. Unless of course Han Solo is the only reason you watch Star Wars moves, in which case... I'll leave that alone. In fact, that scene is the scene that took the movie from "passable action movie that will succeed just because it's Star Wars" to actually being a good movie.

You see, it's the only scene in the movie that actually has any emotional weight.

Try to imagine the movie without that scene: we see Han and Chewie set the charges to blow up the base and then instead of Han confronting Ben, they just leave. The charges go off. Poe Dameron destroys Star Killer Base. Roll credits. Now think about how you would feel about the movie if that's the way it had gone. (Because let's be honest here, Ben deciding to turn back to the light would have killed the need for two more movies.) Chances are you'd have been pretty disappointing. Sure, the film had some decent action scenes, one or two good laughs, but other than that one pivotal, heart wrenching scene, there really wasn't much to feel about any of it.

Except maybe this guy.

"Why?", you ask?

Because Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is two hours and 16 minutes of exposition.

Think about it: the new Star Wars trilogy is all about Rey and Ben Solo. Sure Finn, Poe, Phasma and Hux will do things and Chewbacca, Leia and Luke will be there to give us our nostalgia kick, but the interaction between burgeoning Jedi Knight Rey and wanna-be Sith Lord Ben is where the meat of the story really sits. And what did they do in this movie? A whole lot of nothing is what.

We spend the entire movie getting to know Rey and Kylo Ren. We see Rey as the tough as nails orphan scavenger scraping out a living, we see how she's a genius with technology and find out she's powerful in the force, but we don't really see her do anything interesting until she decides, at the end, that she needs to find Luke Skywalker. We see Kylo Ren as the menacing military commander, then discover that inside he's actually an insecure kid with daddy issues, then we learn just how committed he is to his path when he kills his father. Apart from that, the most interesting thing he does is offer to train Rey. They really don't do much.

They really don't do much because the whole purpose of this movie. the first movie in a trilogy mind you, is to set up for the story of the remaining two movies. The whole point of The Force Awakens was to introduce us to new characters using the familiar plot and set pieces of the original Star Wars as a comfortable backdrop for the audience. Without the death of Han Solo, there would be absolutely no emotional fuel behind our desire to see the next film. We would say, "Well, that was an okay Star Wars movie, better than the prequels I guess." And even then, Han Solo's death is a nostalgic call back to Ben Kenobi's death in Episode IV.

The fact is that in Episode VII as far as our heroes go, Rey and Finn are pretty much just getting swept along by the current of events. If anything, they are spending most of the movie trying to avoid doing anything significant. Kylo Ren doesn't even really read as a bad guy to us, partially because of his tantrum throwing, until he really commits to it by killing Han, which wouldn't have happened without them coincidentally running into one another. It's all most as if some all powerful cosmic force is controlling their destiny...


As for Finn, well... don't get me started on that... oh, what the heck, I'll write about that tomorrow.

Grim Epiphany

Full disclosure: I'm pretty bad at Action Role-playing Games.

I love playing them. There's nothing I enjoy more than the click-click-click-squish-loot style of game play they offer. I spend entire play sessions at the edge of my seat, literally perched right on the edge, excited to see what cool loot I'll get next. I love the visceral, non-stop nature of the combat. I love having to constantly be prepared for an unexpected change in enemy mob composition that could totally ruin your day. Or the boss level monsters that just come out of no where to break your face. I actually get a thrill out of the fact that at any moment, one tiny mistake could lead to my character being dead.

None of that changes the fact that I'm bad at them.

You see, good ARPGs, like Diablo 2, Titan Quest, and of course, Grim Dawn, have complex character development systems that are heavily stat based and rely on a deep understanding of the game mechanics and how those complex stats synergize with one another. Even merely decent ARPGs, such as Diablo and the Torchlight series, where a deep understanding of the stats isn't necessary but can result in crazy powerful character builds, have layers of rules and numbers that you need to get a grasp on for the most satisfying results. Then of course there's Diablo 3, which sort of has a stat based system... but really you can kind of just do whatever you want and get straight to the action. D3 isn't bad, mind you, but it's an ARPG for people who don't math good.

I'm good at Diablo 3.

This all came to me last night as I was playing Grim Dawn. You see, in Grim Dawn the player character has three basic stats: physique, cunning, and spirit. Physique makes you tough and allows the use of heavy armor and weapons. Cunning improves physical damage and allows the use of better guns. Spirit improves magical and elemental damage and allows the use of caster gear. From the first time I loaded up the alpha-build of the game I have been attracted to the "Demolishionist" class. They are primarily based around guns, grenades, and traps so I made the logical assumption that their most beneficial stat would be cunning. I couldn't figure out why my Demolishionist characters were struggling so much. Last night, I had a moment of clarity.

You see, the majority of Demolishionist skills revolve around dealing fire damage. Sure, you fight with a gun, and having a more powerful gun is good, but the base damage type for the Demolishionist class is fire. That means that spirit, the elemental damage stat, is far and away more important than cunning. This realization felt like a slap in the face. It also kind of felt like the heavens had opened and choirs of angels were singing. It was a "light bulb" moment. I think we all love those.

Now, this on'y really seems strange and significant to me because I love playing table top war games like Warhammer 40,000, Warmachine, and Malifaux. Table top war games also have layered rules and complex stat based systems. Creating truly powerful army lists requires a deep understanding of those rules and being able to create synergy between the different parts of your army in order to achieve victory. I'm pretty good at table top war games, so why am I so bad at ARPGs?

I think the answer lies in accessibility.

When I play a table top game, just getting together with others to play requires a significant amount of planning. There is a lot of time to just sit and think about the game while not playing the game. I've spent days at a time studying rule books and crunching numbers for no reason other than, at the time, it was the only way to get my Warhammer fix. All that time spent thinking about playing rather than actually playing, gave me time to assimilate the rules and really grasp how everything fits together.

When I play an ARPG I'm able to jump right in. I don't need anything other than a little free time and my computer to get into hacking and slashing. I'm so focused on the action aspect of the game that rather than processing the rules and numbers, my brain just blows a raspberry and says "Whatever, let's go kill stuff." I don't spend any time thinking rather than playing, which retards my ability to master the rules.

I wonder how many other gamers struggle with, or simply don't play, ARPGs because of this. Is it that, like me, they jump right to the action without thinking the system through. Or is it that they simply aren't willing to put in the effort? How many of the people who are awesome at ARPGs consciously think about what their doing and how many of them intuitively grasp the mechanics and just roll with it?

Either way, I think that, from now on, I'm going to do a much better job of thinking about and learning the rules when I play ARPGs. I expect that before too long, I wont suck at them anymore.

Click-click-click-squish...

Grim Dawn and the Un-sexualized Female Character

Grim Dawn, the new Action RPG offering from Crate Entertainment, is phenomenal. For those of you who don't know, Crate is mostly made up of the same team that once composed Ironlore, the studio that produced the ARPG cult classic Titan Quest. For their sophomore outing, they have demonstrated that they still have an amazing grasp of the delicate stat balances and complex character creation systems that make for an amazing ARPG.

The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic Lovecraftian Steampunk setting. Both plate armored skirmishers and gunslinging grenadiers stalk the battlefields and magic isn't an entirely unheard of thing. The story mostly revolves around an ancient race of beings called the Aetherials who claim to have once been the denizens of the game world, now returned to take back what belongs to them. So basically, the main story from Titan Quest only worked into a new world.

I was an early adopter of the game, having supported Crate's Kickstarter campaign a few years back. I had occasionally fooled around with it in several of it's development builds, but I didn't take a serious look at it until it left early access this past week. I decided that for my first official character, I would make a female shaman. The first part on a whim and the second because it was the only class I hadn't tried yet. On the former is where I feel decidedly let down.

I'm not going to beat the dead horse that is arguments against sexualization of female characters. I'm pretty sure that we can all agree that that is a bad thing. If we can't, you're reading the wrong blog. It is important, however, that if you're going to give the player the option of selecting their character's gender, that there actually is a difference between the two genders. Men and Women are, in fact, different, and good character design should communicate that fact.

 The female character model in Grim Dawn essentially amounts to a slimmer version of the male character with long hair, and not even very long hair. It's like a bob or a pixie cut. The character animations are exactly the same as the male characters. Once she puts on armor, she completely looses all of her body shape, looking for all the world like a small man wearing over sized clothes. While it's true that you can rotate the model on the character screen and see that in profile, she does in fact have breasts, the presence of any feminine physical characteristics is completely hidden when viewing the character from the games normal, isometric camera angle.

This is, quite simply, bad character design. The solution: improved body language, feminine clothing, and a better character silhouette.

Improved body language would make the most significant improvement in the character model. Completely reworking the animations to make the character more graceful and effeminate would clearly communicate to the observer "Hey, this is a woman." Simple things like cocking the characters hip while standing at idle, or while firing a hand gun, can make a huge difference. Making the character more light on her feet would be another. The idea is to provide visual cues to the characters gender that require no changes to the model itself.

Feminine clothing is the next step in the equation. The starting outfit that the female character comes with is, in fact, feminine. She has a scarf tied around her waist, and the vest she is wearing accentuates her bust. This is sharply different from the loose fitting jacket that the male character is wearing, and it really sells the difference in gender. Unfortunately, that difference in attire is carried through the rest of the gear. Let's be clear, I'm not asking for chain mail bikinis here. I'm talking giving the existing clothing a female cut. Give the jackets darts and three quarter length sleeves. Make the gloves more fitted looking and less like bulky work gloves. Make the boots come over the calf instead of being ankle boots. The fact of the matter is that an absence of female armor says more about the game world's cultural attitudes towards women than making the armor overtly feminine would. Clearly, they didn't have female soldiers if women are now forced to wear cast off men's clothing.  When it comes to communicating character gender, adding a little lace trim to a jacket goes a long way.

The final, and perhaps least important step, if the first two are followed, is to give the female model a more distinctly female silhouette. This is also probably the most controversial, and definitely the easiest one for the artist to over do. The idea is to exaggerate female traits without either making her look cartoony or like porn star. Quite frankly though, given how androgynous the model is now, it wouldn't take much. Make her hips a little wider, her waist a little smaller and her shoulders more narrow. Wide hips and a narrow waist communicate more femininity than a large bust, so that can probably stay where it is. Besides, improving the gear models will accentuate those anyway. Change the pixie cut to a pony tail and you would be in business.

We all know that women come in all shapes and sizes and with all types of personalities, I would never suggest otherwise, but from the perspective of good character design, it is important to convey things like gender clearly. If it was the designers intent to give us an androgynous character, than they should have given us one androgynous model to play with. They didn't. They chose to give us a choice between two genders. Failing to make the character models reflect that fact isn't just lazy, it's bad design.

Sunless Sea: An Existentialist Journey

Once upon a time, Role-Playing Games were hard. They had steep learning curves, bizarre rules, and took place in worlds that completely and utterly didn't care about you. The player had to dig and scrape for every advantage. The games didn't have in game journals, you either remembered everything or you learned to take notes. The in game economy existed for it's own sake, not to support the player. Everything was earned, nothing was given.

In February 2015, Failbetter Games released "Sunless Sea", a rougelike RPG that takes place in the their award winning Victorian Gothic fantasy setting of Fallen London. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure that "roguelike" is the proper description for the game, but it's what everyone seems to be using and I can't really think of anything better. I suppose that if I were to try, I'd call the game an "Independent Merchant-marine Steamship Captain Simulator in a Victorian Gothic fantasy setting", but that's an awful mouthful isn't it?

In Sunless Sea, you take on the role of an independent merchant-marine steamship captain plying your trade on the murky waters of the "Unterzee" a subterranean ocean devoid of any light and ruled by Eldritch gods. Your "zee-captain" is, beyond a very vague and limited "background" selection made at creation, a nobody. You start out with nothing but a basic steamship, a few coin in your pocket, a small crew, and a very limited amount of fuel and supplies. Beyond a small tutorial on what these things are, the game provides you with no direction or guidance, leaving you to figure out how to proceed entirely by your lonesome. When you die, and you will die, you are given an opportunity pass a tiny portion of what you achieved on to your next captain. Be warned, however, that your next captain doesn't pick up where your last one left off. Apart from what little advantage they inherit from their predecessor, the game picks up from scratch. Even the map gets rearranged, forcing you to explore the "Zee" anew.

Sunless Sea is hard in the vein of old school RPG games. It takes far more than it gives and it doesn't give squat. It's apparent from the opening splash screen, which warns you that your first captain will likely die but that later ones might succeed, that the developers knew they had made a difficult game. The thing is that I'm fairly certain that the game's difficulty and bleak setting are entirely the point, because whether or not the team at Failbetter knew it or not, the game's design Existentialist to the core.

Existentialism is a school of thought that, in very basic terms, posits that life is inherently meaningless. We humans, and everything around us, simply exists without any greater purpose or meaning than what we give to our existence. The goal of life, in the Existentialist view, is to use the freedom provided by a life devoid of meaning to create our own meaning in spite of the overwhelming horror of knowing that our lives don't really matter. To the Existentialist, making your life, which inherently doesn't matter, matter, is the whole point of existence.

I can only speak for myself, as a lower middle-class white male, but the life journey for myself and many of my peers goes something like this: We graduate from high school then join the military or go to college or both in no particular order. After that we join the workforce and try to make a living and provide for the family we have acquired along the way. If we're lucky, we manage to squirrel away enough money along the way to have a relaxing retirement, If we're even more lucky, we have enough money to help our children get through the high school, college, join the workforce gauntlet a bit easier than we did. Maybe, if we're really fortunate, we even leave them a little something when we die.

That is the only meaning that most of us will ever give our lives, that we passed something on to the next generation. Very few people make a large enough impact on the world for their lives to mean more, But even if we succeed in that mission, our children will still need to figure out their own way to succeed in the world. Even if they follow in our footsteps, life has too many uncertainties and pit falls for us to prepare the next generation for everything. Like us, they will start as nobodies and likely end as nobodies, except in the hearts and minds of their families. Maybe, if every generation succeeds in that mission, life will get just a little bit better along the way. If one of our descendants makes a real difference, our lives will have that much more meaning, wont they?

Therein, as they say, lies the rub. In Sunless Sea your zee-captain begins life as a nobody with no purpose. You don't matter to anyone but yourself, even the gods pay you no mind unless you do something to draw their attention. You have nothing and you're only way forward is to find a way to turn that nothing into something. Your life is meaningless and you have to find a way to make something of it. How you do that is entirely up to you. You can be a merchant, engage in piracy, smuggle contraband, hunt zee-monsters, or any combination of those things. None of them is a quick path to wealth. You will spend most of your hard earned money on fuel and supplies for your ship. Profits do not pour in, they trickle.

Even the inherent horror of Existential thought is simulated through the in game hazard of "terror", a resource that you will find yourself constantly struggling to get rid of. Terror is increased anytime you are out at sea or when particularly harrowing experiences happen to you and your crew. The more terror you have, the more likely it is that you or your crew will go mad from the horror of their own small, meaningless existence in the face of the eternal vastness of the great, dark zee! The darkness of the Unter-zee is, in fact, described in game as not a mere absence of light, but a physical presence which seeks to suck all joy and hope from our hearts and must be perpetually pushed back.

If an independent merchant marine steamship captain is smart, hard working, and more than a little lucky, they might just learn enough, or make enough money, to pass something down to the next generation. Maybe, if enough generations are smart, hard working, and more than a little lucky, eventually one of your zee-captains will have enough of an advantage to actually win the game. How painfully similar to real life is that?

The Doom re-boot and single player campaign length.

Later this year, Bethesda Softworks and Id Software will be releasing Doom, a reboot of the popular Doom franchise. The franchise that many credit with the popularization of the First Person Shooter genre and which was certainly responsible for the rise of online multi-player. Just this past week, the developer tweeted that a play through of the game's single player campaign is averaging about 13 hours in length. There are a lot of people on the forums complaining that a 13 hour game is "too short". I think those people are seriously lacking in perspective.

First, and probably most importantly. Doom is a full First Person Shooter (FPS). It is not a FPS/ Role-playing Game (RPG) hybrid like Mass Effect. It's not a FPS with RPG Elements like Crysis or Borderlands. It's just a FPS. It doesn't have anything other than gunning down enemies and mild puzzle solving with an occasional cut scene to pad it's length. Taking into consideration the fact that Call of Duty: Ghosts had only a 4 hour campaign, or that shooters like Star Wars Battlefront have no campaign at all, 13 hours is nothing to sneeze at.

Second, let us compare the cost of going to a movie to the cost of a video game. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the average cost of a movie ticket in 2015 is $8.34. Most people go to the movies with at least one other person, so tickets lone are going to cost $16.68. Based on my own movie snack habits, I'm going to estimate that the average cost of going to the movies is between $30- $40 dollars, though I have seen some people place the cost as high as $50. The average movie is 2 hours long, so you're looking at an investment of $15-$20 dollars an hour for a night at the movies. By contrast, the average video game costs $60 at release time. That means that for Doom you'll only be paying $4.61 cents an hour, not including multiplayer content or re-playability of the game. If you are a gamer, buying Doom is a far better investment than going to see Deadpool.

Third, the average gamer in the US is a 31 year old male. The average 31 year old male in the US is married, has at least one child, and has a full time job. Work and sleep are going to take up around 16 hours of his average day, not accounting for commuting and any work he does from home. Assuming he doesn't completely neglect his family, or himself, for that matter, he wont have much time for playing video games. Assuming he has the sense to realize the a hyper violent game like Doom shouldn't be played in front of his kids, he'll have have even less time to play. A 13 hour campaign is long enough to be interesting, but short enough that the average gamer might actually be able to finish it.

In short, at $4.61 cents an hour, a 13 hour campaign in a modern FPS game is pretty awesome for the average American gamer.

In the Beginning...

They say that the hardest part about writing anything is putting down the first sentence. I sure am glad that's over.

I am Spencer Schaepman. I'm a husband and father of three. I'm a United States Army Veteran. I'm a full time student at the Art Institute of Washington, currently majoring in Animation. I am a Gamer.

This blog will mostly be about the latter and how it is influence by all of the former.

I love games and I don't just mean the fun ones. I love the bad ones too. I love what they teach me about games, the craft of game making, and myself. I'm currently going to school to get my degree in Game Art and Design. When I'm not playing games, I'm thinking about games.

Now, I will write about them too.