Bohemian Rascalry

Good Morning Friends! I’ve been in a bit of a funk of late and been largely unable to stick to a single game for very long. In truth as I have talked about before, I am in a bit of a holding pattern until the start of the new league in Path of Exile. In this interim time, however, I have failed to gain purchase when it comes to actually dive seriously into any game. Over the weekend I started a new venture and so far I am deeply engaged. I’ve talked about imperfect gems before namely in the collected works of the French studio Spiders. I love the Bioware style RPG, but so few studios can really carry it off well and before now I would have ranked Spiders as one of the ONLY ones. Kingdom Come Deliverance is from Czech video game developer Warhorse Studios, and manages to vie for the crown of “Next Best Thing To Bioware”.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is a purely non-fantastical representation of the region of Bohemia in 1403. This region is located in the modern-day Czech Republic and focuses on real-world events surrounding then King Sigismund of Hungary deposing King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. This is a time period and destination that I personally am wholly uninformed about, but I figure to the Czech home audience this would be the stuff of legend. The game focuses on Henry the son of the Master Swordsmith currently serving as the town Blacksmith in Skalitz. The tutorial of the game focuses on getting you acquainted with moving around this area before the events kick in that brings this section to a close and ignites the key conflict of the game. From there you have a few main story quests to follow and bring you purpose and a huge number of incidental side quests, very few of which are actually marked on your in-game map.
The game map is fairly huge and magnified by the fact that for a good while you are without a horse, forced to walk/run your way between destinations. There is a fast travel system but the destinations are few and far between and largely just focus on allowing you to hop between major towns. Traversal can be a bit fiddly at times because it can be a bit of a challenge to determine which bushes you can pass through and which will ultimately bar your way. Of note, there is a game mod that removes clipping from all bushes that I might install at some point because it can be infuriating trying to navigate a course at times.
The game is fully voice acted and the acting itself varies from “competent” to “pretty great”. The writing as well is pretty solid and seems to be period appropriate. It is deeply weird to see so much early Christianity in video game form, as I am far more used to made-up religions and deities. Of note and this comes up a few times… this is taking place during the schism in the Catholic church with one Pope in Avignon and another in Rome. There are times when it feels like you are given significant dialog options and other times when there is essentially a predetermined battery of options. There are various skill checks associated with different lines, but unfortunately, these have a hidden value behind them and there is seemingly no way of knowing if you are going to pass the check or not before attempting it. Skill in this game is raised through doing the thing repeatedly, and the same is true for speaking… so it honestly is beneficial to run around talking to everyone as there are also hidden quests that can be uncovered in this way.
Where things start to fall apart for me is when we get to combat in this game. There have been a number of times when a well-intentioned game studio has attempted to improve the basic click-to-attack gameplay present in so many Action focused RPGs. A prime example of this is the horribly fiddly combat of the first Witcher game, which for me at least makes it a completely unplayable experience. Kingdom Come Deliverance comes close to this level of annoyance with its direction “star” based combat system. Essentially when an opponent is attacking you, they will be holding their sword in one of six regions: Head, Upper Left, Upper Right, Lower Left, Lower Right, and then a central neutral position. In order to land attacks you effectively have to be attacking in a quadrant that they are not defending against.
This might work better on a controller, but effectively in order to do this with a Mouse and Keyboard, you have to be moving your mouse in a specific trajectory to get that quadrant of the star to light up. This feels awful and even more frustrating is the fact that the AI is really damned good at blocking, dodging, and abusing any openings in your defenses. Getting ANY damage can quickly become critical and there is no fantastical equivalent of the health potion. Even worse is the non-consensual target locking system that glues your viewpoint to a specific target and forces you to use the mouse scroll wheel to change targets when fighting multiple encounters at the same time. I am sure over time someone could probably get good at this mess, but if I had my druthers I would replace it entirely with a standard hack and slash combat system and be done with it. I mean I don’t really play this sort of game for the combat in the first place, I play it for the story.
Thankfully it is at this point that our old friend Nexus Mods comes through because apparently, Kingdom Come Deliverance has a vibrant modding community. While you can’t completely gut the combat system and replace it with something more standard, you can curb the frustrations a bit by making your enemies less likely to block or parry you. You can remove a lot of the annoyances like the fact that saving in this game requires that you have a stock of a specific kind of schnapps. Instead, I added a mod that removed this entirely and allows me to save as often as I like. You might be saying… “but Bel, that is cheating” and I will say yes it absolutely is. Life is too damned short to deal with the parts of games that annoy you, and if I can mod my way out of them… like completely removing inventory management… I am going to do it every single time. Game developers try really hard but sometimes get hung up on some really stupid ideas at times, and through modding, I can fix these “problems”.
Thanks to mods I have more or less pushed aside any lingering frustrations that I had with the game and have been able to just sit back and enjoy the world and the story surrounding it. At this point, I am around eleven hours into the experience and enjoying myself greatly. That said I also feel like I have barely scratched the surface. There are a number of characters that have some nuance in the way they interact with you when their public face is on the line, and how they behave in private out of the eyes of the court. Dealing with nobility is frustrating, especially given that I am very much a low-born trying to run around in circles that are constantly reminding me of my station in life. That said I have already elevated my status to that of a soldier and in theory, I think by the time this game is done I will have improved that further.
I’ve also started down the formal romance/courtship line towards Theresa a childhood friend who also managed to survive the situation at Skalitz. It is interesting because this more or less is following what I would assume formal courtship would have been like back during this period. Essentially every few days I can ask her out on some sort of a formal date, and if I don’t screw that up… I gain a reputation. I assume at some point this will lead to marriage, and maybe even buying some sort of a home. In a lot of ways, this game reminds me of what it would feel like to play in a first-person adventure through a Crusader Kings game. There are some definitely flaws in the game, but for the moment I appear to be hooked. The post Bohemian Rascalry appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #398 – Just a Rounding Error

Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Tonight we are down a Kodra because he is off enjoying GenCon.  If you see a spot on Fred from Scooby Doo in GenCon photos, that would probably be him.  We start with a topic that was purposefully bumped from last week because the ramifications were not specific yet.  Essentially Star Citizen did a progress wipe and maybe got it wrong with a rounding error causing players to end up with way more money than they had before.  From there we talk about the Festival of the Four Winds in Guild Wars 2 and some purposefully non-spoiler Sandman discussion.  Bel talks a bit about trying out Kingdom Come Deliverance and how their attempt at a clever combat system blows but can largely be fixed with mods.  From there we dive into a weird topic against gatekeeping and the joy of seeing people discovering Kate Bush.  Then we dive into a Blizzard section as we talk about the cancellation of WoW Mobile, grouping issues in Diablo Immortal, and just general issues with Blizzard.  Finally, we wrap things up with a little discussion about Xenoblade 3.

Topics Discussed:

  • Star Citizen 3.17.2
    • Wipes
    • Stipends
    • Content Drop
    • Problems
  • Guild Wars 2 
    • Festival of the Four Winds
  • No Spoiler Sandman
  • Kingdom Come Deliverance
    • Fixing it with Mods
  • A Case Against Gatekeeping
    • The Return of Kate Bush
  • WoW Mobile Cancelled
    • Exploring the potential whys
  • Diablo Immortal Grouping Problems
    • 100k Whale can’t get a group
  • Blizzard Woes
  • Xenoblade 3 Rocks
The post AggroChat #398 – Just a Rounding Error appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Pat Finnerty Rocks

The internet can be a really weird place sometimes. This morning’s post is more or less me explaining a rabbit hole I have been going down over the last few days. So some background information… I often times listen to YouTube as though it were a podcast while I do work on the other monitor… and admittedly also spend a fair amount of time reading Twitter. On the second something about MGK aka Machinegun Kelly aka Colson Baker aka Megan Fox’s boyfriend… scrolled across my Twitter feed. Now I have listened to quite a bit of music from him because at face value his newer stuff sounds like a lot of the pop-punk music that I actually dig. However the longer I have listened to it the more it has bothered me… how it is essentially this inch-deep surface-level interpretation of the 90s pop punk and emo genres.
This led to me tweeting that it sounds like the music had been generated by an AI that was trained by feeding it essentially everything from the 90s and early Oughts and having it regurgitate a song. The lyrics are bad, the emotional content is shallow, and ultimately sounds like the most generic version of the music you have already heard before. It is a recreation of a genre without understanding any of the elements that led that genre to come into being in the first place. This is where things take an interesting turn. For years I’ve known that behind the scenes everything we are saying and doing is being linked to some algorithm designed to feed us more relevant content. I cannot count the number of times my wife and I have had a conversation inside our home… and then moments later we are getting fed advertisements related to that conversation. Granted we don’t have any voice assistants but I am pretty sure that both of our phones are reporting back what we are saying.
It was shortly after writing this tweet that I turned around and hit refresh on the YouTube home feed to find the next thing to listen to… that I was served up this video. So some background that I did not know going into this adventure. Pat Finnerty is a musician from Scranton, PA, and a member of a band called Okay Paddy and has toured with other bands and projects. Based on my further journey down this rabbit hole, it seems like his moment of internet fame came during the quarantine era of this pandemic doing Instagram live concerts from his home and eventual rooftop. During one of these he staged a “Grohl-a-thon” where after 9 hours of being on air, Dave Grohl hopped on the feed and joined him for some discussion of Dire Straights of all things.
The other thing that he is known for, and the reason I now know he exists… and have subsequently torn through all of these videos… is a series called “What Makes This Song Stink”. He explains in the first video that he is a fan of a series by Rick Beato called “What Makes This Song Great?”, and wanted to essentially create the counterpoint. At face value that is a reasonable concept, but what carries it forward and makes these videos so damned entertaining is that they go some places. It is not just Pat technically breaking down what is wrong with a given song, they are this entire story journey weaving in bits of his past and a whole cast of characters that grows over the course of the series including “Blinds-to-Go Guy” and a fictitious radio station called “The Moose”.
What is even wilder is during the course of these videos… sometimes he decides he can do it better. So in the MGK video, he creates his own emo/punk pop band called “August is Falling”. During this, he goes to the Mall of America and gets fashion advice from a pair of extremely good nature people at Hot Topic. It doesn’t stop there… because apparently he actually played on stage AS the band.. after finding an Emo rock bassist on Instagram to sit in on the set. Taking the joke even further… you can now listen to Mad This Summer by August is Falling over on Bandcamp. Another video has this entire running gag about Here Comes the Hotstepper rocking… and he convinces the band he rents a studio from to release a cover… which now exists.
Then there is the whole Kravitz Bowl… which is a video parody of the classic era of the Super Bowl pitting American Woman against Fly Away in an attempt to determine which song stinks the worst. Like I said before these videos are a lot and in around 45 minutes each… they go on this wild journey while actually explaining the technical faults with each song covered. The could be a slog to get through at that length were it not for the fact that Pat is legitimately hilarious. I guess one of the traits that musicians and comedians both share are understanding how important timing is… and he nails the delivery of what would otherwise feel like purely video parody.
I think it would be unfair if I did not close by sharing one of his performances. On top of being funny as hell… he is legitimately a deeply talented musician. I’ve always loved Sultans of Swing and this rendition is most excellent. One of the things that have come up multiple times during this most recent Blaugust is whether or not you should stick to a theme with your blog. While Tales of the Aggronaut is for the most part a Video Game blog… I have to leave myself room to talk about other things that interest me. This morning is a prime example because I could not experience this ride… without sharing it with you all. The post Pat Finnerty Rocks appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Farewell to WoW Mobile

For a while now we have known that Blizzard was working on a game with Net Ease that would translate the World of Warcraft experience to the mobile platform. I think many of us became deeply concerned about what this might look like when Diablo Immortal launched and turned out to be the egregious money grab that it was. Yesterday Bloomberg broke the news that it seems like the partnership between Netease and Blizzard is strained and the World of Warcraft mobile project has been canceled. This game had reportedly been in development for three years and the only reason reported was a “conflict about financial terms”. So this leaves us to speculate exactly what happened and given that I like theorizing things I can see three paths that might have taken place. I have no knowledge if what I am about to say is true, but I am just theory-crafting the downfall of this game.

The Backlash from Diablo Immortal

Giving Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, it is entirely possible that they were caught off guard by the negative reaction towards Diablo Immortal by the traditional gaming audience. It is possible that they thought they were releasing a game that would play by mobile gaming practices and it would have no blowback on their existing franchise. This was wrong and Diablo as a brand has been deeply tarnished by this game. So for theory number one, it could be that folks inside of Blizzard realize this and do not want to do anything to harm the recovery trajectory of World of Warcraft. Interest in Diablo 4 has seemingly fallen as a result of Diablo Immortal, and there is no way that the Warcraft brand can sustain another hit to the player base. So it is entirely possible that WoW Mobile has had the plug pulled on it to stem the bleeding and signal a shift in direction.

NetEase in Hot Water

Anytime you talk about Chinese politics, things get confusing quickly. Right now both NetEase and Tencent seem to be singled out by China as “problem children”. There have been several stories indicating this including one from June where those two publishers were specifically excluded from getting games approved by the regulatory bodies. Video Games in general is getting caught up in a sweep of things being deemed harmful to “cultural unity”, and I do not have enough time to really address this point today. However, if you are curious look up the Tang Ping aka “lying flat” movement, and Bai Lan or “let it rot” movement. Essentially there is a group of disaffected youth that are actively rebelling against the “996” culture or 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week. As a result video games, take-out food, and social media are being blamed… and the Chinese government has been actively targeting these sectors. Diablo Immortal was clearly banking on the mobile game spending habits of the Chinese market for success and in order to bring a game into that market, you need to partner with a Chinese company. Generally speaking, this is required to navigate the regulatory red tape in order to get a green light. However, with NetEase already being shunned by these regulators, it is entirely possible that Blizzard is considering this a risky proposition and actively chopping for another company to collaborate with that is not being actively targeted.

Doing It On Their Own

I am certain that part of the equation with NetEase is also that they acted as a springboard to develop a mobile title. Diablo Immortal for example was built using the existing NetEase Messiah engine which likely sped up the development time considerably. Blizzard had released a few mobile apps but never anything to the level of a fully 3D action RPG, and as such, they were able to lean on a company that had released several. In the meantime, Blizzard has seemingly been actively building ArcLight Rumble, which itself is rather impressive graphically and by all accounts runs beautifully on various mobile devices. This appears to either be their own engine or leaning heavily on some tech from King, but whatever the case is not tied to NetEase. So this makes me wonder if the canceling of WoW Mobile is a signal that they feel like they can do this on their own now. Granted this does nothing to help with the Chinese regulatory hurdles, but it seems as though as a company they are feeling like they may have mastered mobile development. With some experience in building a mobile title, maybe the company views it as a little less daunting. Maybe there are even direct assets that they would want to reuse given that ArcLight Rumble is set in the Warcraft universe. I’ve not personally had a chance to play the game but from what I have heard from friends it really is a solid outing.

Bits and Pieces of the Above

It could be bits and pieces of everything that I just talked about. I would love to think that Diablo Immortal was a bit of a wake-up call that while it quite literally is a machine for printing money, it is also damaging the company as a brand. I do not think Blizzard could survive another fiasco this time centered around the, even more, beloved brand of World of Warcraft. Even if you are not actively playing the game you have nostalgia for it, and that nostalgia can be weaponized if it is handled improperly. I also think that the current state of NetEase in Chinese politics is probably a non-starter as well. There is significant cultural turmoil happening and video games are getting caught up in the mix. Finally, I do think that after ArcLight Rumble, Blizzard as a whole is in a better state to take on their own mobile development. As a result, I would probably bank that it is a little bit of each of the above topics wrapped up into one mix that lead to the cancellation of this project. Then again… as I said before I know nothing about this situation other than what I have read in the reporting so it could genuinely be none of the above. It could simply be as simple as what was stated that it was a “conflict about financial terms”. Maybe NetEase simply demanded a bigger cut of profits and that was enough to sever the relationship on this project. The post Farewell to WoW Mobile appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.