Tamrielo

It’s a game that’s struck me enough to write about, how about that. I am gifted/cursed with perception. It’s almost certainly a function of low-grade ADHD, where my brain gets bored of whatever I’m directly looking at or listening to (or smelling, or feeling, or even tasting) and starts pulling in other sensory information to occupy itself. If I’m walking down the street talking to a friend, I can’t help but notice the smell from a nearby restaurant, the couple arguing in a car at the stoplight, the person doing their makeup in the car behind them, the person trying to stop their dog from dashing into the crosswalk, the book the person on that bench is reading, the whispered gossip from the pair crossing the other way, the irregular cracks in the sidewalk, the gentle plants sticking out from the gaps in the pavement, the places where water has pooled in the street instead of running to the drains, the seagulls fighting overhead… You can see why I link it to semi-diagnosed neurodivergence. The same perception is in effect when I’m playing a game (or doing anything, really), because I can’t turn it off. I can generally no more shut out the sounds of my office or the rain outside as I can ignore the feeling of each article of clothing I’m wearing on my skin, the omnipresent feeling of my wedding band on my finger, or the physical sensation of blinking. It means a lot of games simply aren’t engaging enough for me to get really immersed. I’ve had an ongoing conversation with friends (and on our podcast) where I don’t really get games that are about “turning your brain off” because they’re low-impact. For me those games are Ikaruga, bullet hell shooters, or extremely high intensity games like Nerts. If I overload my sensory input, I can relax. It’s true outside of games, too. A theme park, a loud dance floor or concert with bright lights and a ton of people, or a big outdoor event (though usually not protests, those have an undercurrent of anxiety that I can never shake) all give me a kind of peace and clarity. I crossed the street at the Shibuya Crossing while vacationing in Tokyo, and it was such a sublime, calming experience I did it several more times for no reason other than to get lost in the scramble. So, Indiana Jones. It’s a stealth game, in theory. Stealth games are games about perception, about paying attention. You’re keeping track of your surroundings in order to move through a space, both determining where you should be at any given moment (usually to avoid detection) and where you need to go, and then working out a path based on what you can observe to get from one to the other. You take risks in order to observe better, peeking around a blind corner or popping up to get a better vantage point. Guards walk in the places normal people walk — streets, sidewalks, inside buildings, so you can get an advantage if you can notice paths normal people wouldn’t walk — rooftops, treetops, underground. A good stealth game is not about hiding and sneaking; it’s about the environment, and having an environment that both offers enough for you to notice and find satisfying and is, itself, satisfying to overcome. Thief is a game about light, shadow, and sound, remaining unseen and in turn finding small, valuable things to take with you along the way, taking risks to reach them. Dishonored is similar, remain unseen, remove cogs in the machine that is the way guards move until it shuts down without collapsing and you can navigate the machine with impunity. Hitman is rarely about actually hiding and is more often about context, ensuring that you fit in and match what people expect. Indiana Jones is about clonking Nazis and solving ancient puzzles, also often via clonking. It is a stealth game, in that the environment is rich, full of interesting things to find and see and do, and you are rewarded for noticing things. For example, you’re rewarded for noticing the bottle of wine on the table near the fascist who’s attacking you by suddenly having an improvised weapon to turn the tide of that fight. You’re rewarded for noticing the layout and high cliffs of an area when you push a Nazi over a railing. You’re rewarded for sneaking up on that Nazi because now you can have a good laugh at his Wilhelm Scream as he falls instead of fistfighting him. You’re rewarded for noticing the windup of the blackshirt you’re fighting so you can parry his attack, and you’re rewarded for noticing the pistol in the hand of the SS officer so you can whip it out and turn a gunfight into a fistfight. There’s only really as much sneaking as you’d expect from Indiana Jones, which is both a non-zero amount but also not the crux of the experience. You’re still a pulp action hero, not a superspy.
Unlike games like Dishonored or Metal Gear Solid, where detection by an enemy is heralded by loud, abrasive, alarming sounds and a feeling of failure, in Indiana Jones being detected often results in a quip from Indy — “uh, hey guys!” — and a feeling of inevitability. This was always going to go loud, or at least non-quiet, because you’re Indiana Jones, not Jason Bourne. It leads to the kind of play that makes the game feel even more like the movies it’s based on — sneak in, shoot out, or punch a guy because it’s more annoying to slip around him than not. Maybe you miscalculate — Indy has bad plans sometimes, and maybe so do you. The game largely isn’t going to punish you for going a little bit loud. It pulls this off by adding a thing that stealth games have had for a long time, but rarely used for much. Most stealth games appear to have two and a half stealth states: hidden, detected, and about-to-be-detected. They often actually have three, where there’s a third “detected but not enough to raise an alarm” which generally exists to give you a split second to react to being seen without everything going to hell. It’s the moment where the guard has seen you and before they shout for help, because every guard will shout for help almost immediately and cause the whole house of cards to crash down around you. The first thing I noticed when I was seen in Indiana Jones was that the fascist who noticed me decided to handle the problem himself. I wrote it off as tutorialization, but when I later had my mouse disconnect after punching (but not knocking out) another fascist later, I saw him step away from me, and shout for help — AFTER having already tried fistfighting me. Indiana Jones revels in that layer that in most stealth games lasts for a split second. Really loud noises can alert everyone in an area — whistles, horns, alarms, gunshots — but often the one or two enemies you see will start by trying to deal with you themselves. It means you can be seen and still win, still keep things under control and not have to either die and reload or leave a giant pile of bodies behind you. It means that if you take the “easy” way out and just start shooting people, it gets very loud very fast, and notably it means your enemies will escalate as well. An enemy with a gun does not always immediately resort to shooting you, but contextually you can guess whether they will or not, and often the thing that will cause them to start shooting is if you do it first. It all adds up into an experience that FEELS like an Indiana Jones movie. It’s amplified by how much MachineGames feels like they get Indy, from every great dialogue bark to the feeling of chaos and overall pacing control they have. The first few areas are more slow and thoughtful, potentially plodding if you’re a completionist, and then it picks up at very high speed into the kind of action thrill ride you expect from Indiana Jones. I haven’t quite beaten it as of this writing, but I’m expecting a final, slower area, smaller than the first few but more intense, as a kind of culmination, just because it’s what I would expect from the movies. I won’t spoil it, but there are moments in the game that mirror classic scenes in the movies, and do so in actual play, giving you just a moment to notice what you’re looking at and how you can resolve it and doing so in classic Indiana Jones style. When I’m out of breath from an intense run and I see a guy block my path with a sword, weaving it through the air menacingly, I have a moment as I watch him to go “wait, I know how this goes” and do the scene properly. It’s very satisfying, and totally optional. It’s just a little reward for noticing. As I’ve been playing, I’ve been deeply immersed because there are so many things for my brain to notice and pick up on. It would be a fun ride even if I didn’t, but for me it’s giving me everything I love in a stealth game without actually really being a stealth game. It’s a rollicking action movie of a game, but it’s not simple about it. The backgrounds are more than just set dressing, the spaces are crafted and thoughtful, not just where I fight the next encounter. It satisfies my perception, because it’s not just picking out nice textures or cute background details, it’s walking into a room and noticing everything I can use as a weapon or tool. I haven’t been this into a game in years. I’m going to be sad when it’s over, and there’s a decent chance I go and try to 100% it. Easy call for Game of the Year.

I’ve been working on a project lately. (CW: suicide, grief)

In early September, my brother in law Sam lost his battle with mental illness. It was… hard to watch happen, as he descended into a spiral of paranoid delusions, which led him to see hidden assailants that didn’t exist and physically assault people, both in public and in healthcare facilities and ultimately resulted in him taking his own life by jumping in front of a train, an option he specifically took because it meant he wouldn’t be found by his family. It’s been hard to process my thoughts, especially because I’d only met him a few years ago when I met my wife, and he’d already had the edges of his fraying mental state then. His friends and family talk about him prior to his struggles, and it’s a person I don’t know and never met. The Sam I knew was an artist and musician who felt haunted by internal demons, whose creative works and whose devotion to helping communities and especially working in libraries and with people who most needed help reflected a person trying to do good, possibly because they were afraid of themselves.\ I’d talked with Sam a couple of times about painting miniatures, and he’d expressed interest. I never got a chance to teach him, but we’d talk about painting and he had been interested enough before things went severely downhill that I’d been eyeing a army to pick up for him as a starting point.

Near the end of September, a friend of mine sent me a starter pack of Blood Angels, part of a longstanding back and forth and a semi-joke gift he sent me intentionally to hit my buttons, because for decades I’ve made fun of Blood Angels, all the way back to the original Angels of Death codex where I played the cool Dark Angels and made fun of my friend who played the lame vampires. The gift came with the book Dante which I promised I’d read before deciding what to do with the army, and something clicked for me when I read it.

The Blood Angels are a faction of superhuman space marines, instilled with genetic code to push them well past human capability. They’re notable for their continuing struggle with being, well, vampires. To some extent they’re a meditation on the monster within, and they stave off their internal monster via art, creativity, and about as much community service as exists within the dark setting of Warhammer 40k. They all struggle with “the Flaw”, an affliction that both causes them to hunger for blood but also to see visions of an old battle, one in which their progenitor was killed and whose death haunts the entire group. Some of them get lost in the visions, seeing enemies where there are none or mistaking friends or innocents for foes. They are often beyond saving, and are given special armor and treatment and transferred to a unit called the Death Company. They’re sent to places where their delusions can be turned against real enemies, where they can meet their end in honorable combat, which the Blood Angels value highly. They are remembered for who they were when they were lucid, and their loss of connection to reality is considered a reminder of how even the best of the Blood Angels are vulnerable.

It’s not… hard to make the connection. Sam was a musician, an artist, and a servant of the community. While when we’d talked about what he might play, Blood Angels weren’t on my list, but as a memorial they seemed apt.
I’ve got a handful of minis left for this project, most notably a Captain and a Death Company Dreadnought. The Captain, with some effort, has a look that’s roughly analogous to Sam’s curly hair, and I want to deck him out in ornate, gorgeous armor. The Dreadnought is a large mech, according to the lore a sort of walking casket for mortally wounded or even technically slain space marines. It’s fairly common in miniatures games to have a particular character represented in more than one way, reflecting different aspects of them or simply different points in time. I’m planning to represent Sam in both of these, golden armor and a halo in one, and a walking memorial to the dead in the other.

I’m sort of hoping it can be a way to keep a bit of Sam around for me. He can be there for the games I never got to teach him and play. My fondest wish when I eventually die is to be, somehow, made into dice so that I can continue to be a part of people’s games, their stories, joys, and memories with their friends, and that I can continue to play even past the end of my body’s limit.

I do a lot of processing my feelings through my creative work– miniatures and tabletop campaigns generally, and this is the third time I’ve done a project like this as a reflection of grief. I wish I’d gotten to get Sam into minis, and see the kinds of things he’d chosen and how he would have expressed himself through the medium. Maybe it would’ve been Warhammer, maybe Infinity or Battletech, maybe historical ship battles or Star Wars, I don’t know, but I would’ve liked to help him get started.
This is not the army I would’ve gotten him, no.
This is just a tribute.

I’ve been working on a project lately. (CW: suicide, grief)

In early September, my brother in law Sam lost his battle with mental illness. It was… hard to watch happen, as he descended into a spiral of paranoid delusions, which led him to see hidden assailants that didn’t exist and physically assault people, both in public and in healthcare facilities and ultimately resulted in him taking his own life by jumping in front of a train, an option he specifically took because it meant he wouldn’t be found by his family. It’s been hard to process my thoughts, especially because I’d only met him a few years ago when I met my wife, and he’d already had the edges of his fraying mental state then. His friends and family talk about him prior to his struggles, and it’s a person I don’t know and never met. The Sam I knew was an artist and musician who felt haunted by internal demons, whose creative works and whose devotion to helping communities and especially working in libraries and with people who most needed help reflected a person trying to do good, possibly because they were afraid of themselves.\ I’d talked with Sam a couple of times about painting miniatures, and he’d expressed interest. I never got a chance to teach him, but we’d talk about painting and he had been interested enough before things went severely downhill that I’d been eyeing a army to pick up for him as a starting point.

Near the end of September, a friend of mine sent me a starter pack of Blood Angels, part of a longstanding back and forth and a semi-joke gift he sent me intentionally to hit my buttons, because for decades I’ve made fun of Blood Angels, all the way back to the original Angels of Death codex where I played the cool Dark Angels and made fun of my friend who played the lame vampires. The gift came with the book Dante which I promised I’d read before deciding what to do with the army, and something clicked for me when I read it.

The Blood Angels are a faction of superhuman space marines, instilled with genetic code to push them well past human capability. They’re notable for their continuing struggle with being, well, vampires. To some extent they’re a meditation on the monster within, and they stave off their internal monster via art, creativity, and about as much community service as exists within the dark setting of Warhammer 40k. They all struggle with “the Flaw”, an affliction that both causes them to hunger for blood but also to see visions of an old battle, one in which their progenitor was killed and whose death haunts the entire group. Some of them get lost in the visions, seeing enemies where there are none or mistaking friends or innocents for foes. They are often beyond saving, and are given special armor and treatment and transferred to a unit called the Death Company. They’re sent to places where their delusions can be turned against real enemies, where they can meet their end in honorable combat, which the Blood Angels value highly. They are remembered for who they were when they were lucid, and their loss of connection to reality is considered a reminder of how even the best of the Blood Angels are vulnerable.

It’s not… hard to make the connection. Sam was a musician, an artist, and a servant of the community. While when we’d talked about what he might play, Blood Angels weren’t on my list, but as a memorial they seemed apt.
I’ve got a handful of minis left for this project, most notably a Captain and a Death Company Dreadnought. The Captain, with some effort, has a look that’s roughly analogous to Sam’s curly hair, and I want to deck him out in ornate, gorgeous armor. The Dreadnought is a large mech, according to the lore a sort of walking casket for mortally wounded or even technically slain space marines. It’s fairly common in miniatures games to have a particular character represented in more than one way, reflecting different aspects of them or simply different points in time. I’m planning to represent Sam in both of these, golden armor and a halo in one, and a walking memorial to the dead in the other.

I’m sort of hoping it can be a way to keep a bit of Sam around for me. He can be there for the games I never got to teach him and play. My fondest wish when I eventually die is to be, somehow, made into dice so that I can continue to be a part of people’s games, their stories, joys, and memories with their friends, and that I can continue to play even past the end of my body’s limit.

I do a lot of processing my feelings through my creative work– miniatures and tabletop campaigns generally, and this is the third time I’ve done a project like this as a reflection of grief. I wish I’d gotten to get Sam into minis, and see the kinds of things he’d chosen and how he would have expressed himself through the medium. Maybe it would’ve been Warhammer, maybe Infinity or Battletech, maybe historical ship battles or Star Wars, I don’t know, but I would’ve liked to help him get started.
This is not the army I would’ve gotten him, no.
This is just a tribute.

Shaking off some cobwebs on this site. There’s quite a few of them.
It’s been six years since I last posted here, and more like ten since I posted regularly (if my addition to this page could ever have been considered ‘regular’). A lot has happened. It’s interesting to read a log of my own thoughts from years ago, especially because I can plot an arc of my own mood and where I was in my life through just the last five or ten posts. Pretty bleak, all told.
Change is inevitable and I am very much changed.
I’m not yet sure how or if I want to use this space, but I’ve kept it online largely because I can look back at my own writing and thoughts and while I’ve advanced my thinking since then, I don’t fundamentally disagree with myself from six to ten years ago. Despite everything, it’s still me. That said, I don’t even know if this will even work when I hit “publish”. The site is old, and has had some updates, but still keeps throwing me errors as I type into this draft that I started in 2017.
I would use this post to write a plan for my posts, a schedule, etc, but the truth is I don’t have one. What I do have is a broader understanding of games and the business surrounding them. In the last few years I’ve spent time outside of games in Big Tech and since returned to games. It’s given me a lot of perspective on things I didn’t fully understand before, and I can answer some of my own questions from years ago. Right now I have a lot of thoughts, and it’s hard to keep them all organized.
There are a few things I want to write down, to get them out of my head. With any luck, I’ll put them here.