For years I have complained about doing escort missions in MMORPGs. They generally involve taking some hapless character along a fixed path as they aggro every single thing in sight. I have long wished I could literally just pick the NPC up and carry them along to the goal to hopefully get it over with quicker. I’ve now played Death Stranding and can without a doubt tell you that having to carry an NPC to the destination is not better, and also apparently humans are really hard to balance on your back. You might be wondering also how in the hell did we get into this situation and I will explain.
One of the things that porters occasionally carry is the bodies of the dead to the nearest incinerator to prevent a “void out” when they go necrotic as they attempt to pass over to the other side. You have to understand that the world of Death Stranding is extremely dangerous and unforgiving, and most of the individuals in this world live in a bunker or vault and have never gone outside for any length of time. So there have been a few cases where some NPC needs to move to another location and asks you to carry them on your back like you would a body. In this case I had to carry a fairly important story NPC effectively the entire length of what was the currently discovered world at the time. It took a good chunk of last night and the entire time I was having to adjust for her listing to one side or the other.
In this case it was an NPC that I have come to really like over the course of our interactions, so as a result I felt like I needed to be super careful as we traversed the landscape. Every time she would shift on my back I felt bad that I was not more careful transporting my “cargo”. Another thing that I love about this game is the random holograms that players have access to, which ultimately break up the wastes. It was really cool to see a Tallneck looming out over the horizon, because it is literally the same size as one in Horizon Zero Dawn making for this massive hologram. I’ve seen a few other HZD cross overs, so I am guessing this is all due to the fact that both games use the same engine, so Kojima more than likely spent a lot of time working with the Guerilla Games team.
If I am correct, I think I am at roughly the halfway point of the game. My goal is to try and finish things up to a reasonable level of satisfaction before the launch of Horizon Zero Dawn on August 7th. That gives me roughly 15 days worth of play time to push across the finish line. I feel like this is a game that I most definitely want to finish, especially given that there is supposedly a 15th chapter that is open ended allowing you to play around in the final state of the world. I always hate it when the continued play option for a game is to effectively “roll back” the world to the moments before the final conflict. Those are the games that I often times never quite finish because I know poking around in the world after that will feel fairly unsatisfying.
On the me front, I am doing better. Taking yesterday off was a pretty good idea even though I hate not actually blogging for a given day. You need to give yourself room to make these decisions every now and then, because in my case it gave me another day to clear my headspace a bit. My wife is healing nicely from the accident, and me… yesterday day was really bad but I am dealing with it. It is like every so often I kinda have to mentally bandage myself up a bit. I have all of today and half a day tomorrow and then it is my weekend which should help a bit. As always thanks for the kind words I received, they do help and they do mean a lot but I mostly share my struggle for anyone out there who might also be struggling.
So I did not get 31 people for the promptapalooza, but I have decided I am going to try and make it work nonetheless. I got pretty close and as a result I will just stub in myself for several days in order to make it work. Tomorrow afternoon since I am off work I will be pulling it all together, creating the list of prompts, the tentative posting calendar, and contacting everyone to try and link topic prompts to people. This is way less lead time than I would have liked, but I should have been more vocal about it. I’ve been in a really bad headspace this month so trying to deal with this has added a lot of stress to my plate as well. For those who have no clue what I am talking about, check out this original post that sorta outlines the idea. There is still time to sign up.
The post Humans are Not Well Balanced appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Sometimes events coalesce in a spontaneous manner and develop an inertia of its own. Most of us are dealing with the effects of social distancing and maybe even full on quarantine thanks to the time in which we find ourselves. So a few weeks back I wondered what Blaugust would be like this year, which lead to me starting to contemplate pushing it a bit forward to give us something to focus on instead of life in Pandemia. Then completely disconnected from this I was approached by Roger and Tessa from the Blaugust discord about maybe pushing the proceedings forward so we had something good and pure to latch onto. This started the ball rolling a bit, but yet again completely disconnected from the other events Syp reached out to me saying that he thought we should do a Blapril, and as a result you are getting this official kick off post.
The idea being that we can use a dose of internet togetherness to combat the negative effects of social distancing. When I thought about the name Blapril (pronounced Blay Prill), it reminded me of one of those pharmaceutical commercials that you get with the evening news where they never quite tell you exactly what the drug does… but they absolutely catalog all of its possible negative side effects. The only negative side effect here however is a renewed sense of community and a bunch of interesting blog posts to read during the month of April. Once again we rally around the blogging community and support each other with good ideas and helpful tips and gain the side effect of forgetting that each day we change out of our daytime pajamas into our evening pajamas since we have not left the house in a week and a half.
The Schedule
Something that we started over the last few Blaugust’s was setting up a bit of a schedule that is completely optional to follow. The idea being that if you find yourself in need of a bit of a structure you can fall back to the overarching theme of a specific week. If you instead have nothing but ideas flowing out of your head and enough posts to completely make it through the month of posting unaided, then by all means go with it and ignore the schedule. I personally do a little mix of all of the above and generally write a post or two on topic during a specific week and then do my normal daily blogging thing the rest of the time. However once again I feel like I should reiterate that the schedule is a completely optional thing as are the rest of the “rules” of Blaugust or in this case Blapril.
March 29th – April 4th – Blapril Prep Week: This is a time for those of us in the community who have been through this process a few times or at least feel like we have figured out this blogging thing to help those of you who are new to the process to get started with some advice posts. Additionally this is a time to sign up for the Discord if you have not already and start mingling with the folks who are active there year round. This is also a time for the newbies in the bunch to get started on setting up their blog and getting those first few “Hello World” posts out there.
April 5th – April 11th – Topic Brainstorming Week: This is a time for the mentors among us to throw out topics and ideas for posts to help you out when you find yourself staring down the tyranny of the blank page. We all have those days when we cannot figure out what to write about and being able to fall back upon the community for ideas and inspiration is a tried and true method. The prevalence of topic ideas also helps the newbies get started a bit with a constant flow of things to write about.
April 12th – April 18th – Getting to Know You Week: Tell us about yourself and your preference as a gamer or whatever thing that you happen to like doing. This is also a time to reach back into the wayback machine and dredge up interesting stories that you don’t mind telling the community. For the newbies it serves as a time of introducing themselves to the broader community and bonding.
April 19th – April 25th – Developer/Creator Appreciation Week: One of the things that has happened over the years with Blaugust is that it enveloped some of the better ideas from other events and combined them as part of the single month long celebration. Years ago Scarybooster started this idea of devoting a week to the sharing our love of the Developers and Studios behind the games that we play. Last year this morphed a bit to also include a celebration of the various content creators that we enjoy as well, so I am officially tweaking the name of the week a bit as a result to serve both purposes. Essentially it is a time to gush unabashedly about the things that you love.
April 26th – May 2nd – Staying Motivated Week: Towards the end of the proceedings we start to have a drop off in post frequency as folks hit their writing wall. The idea behind this week is to share the tips and tricks that we have learned throughout the years on how exactly to stay motivated and keep posting on a daily basis. I feel like this is even more relevant this year since we are all going through massive disruptions to our usual schedules and having to deal with all sorts of external changes impacting our well being both physically and mentally.
May 3rd – May 9th – Lessons Learned Week: The goal as always with Blaugust and now Blapril is to revitalize the blogging community and ignite those fires fresh for another year of posting. As such this is a marathon that we are running and not a sprint, so we continue forward a little bit into the next month for folks to have that cooldown lap and talk about the things that they learned during the month. This could be a discussion of your own personal journey, or focused on some of the things that you learned from the community. The idea being to keep it going just a little bit longer so that maybe the habit of posting regularly sticks.
The Awards
Something that has existed since the very first Blaugust was the concept of winning some sort of an “award”. In reality this just means that you get permission to use a dorky image that I cobble together each year, but the spirit is that you challenged yourself and followed through with the process. Daily blogging is not a thing for everyone, so as a result we have a bunch of “awards” at different levels of participation from the “I was here and got the t-shirt” level to actually standing on the medalists podium at the end of the month. A rundown of the “awards” and what it takes to earn them is as follows.
Newbie Blogger Award – This is a special recognition for anyone who started a blog during Blapril or is relatively new to blogging in general and is using this event as their entrance into the larger blogging community. You are the hope for the future and we are going to celebrate it!
Bronze Award – You made at least 5 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.
Silver Award – You made at least 15 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.
Gold Award – You made at least 25 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.
Rainbow Diamond Award – You made at least 31 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.
Mentorship
One of the benefits of getting our act together and coming up with what appears to be a reasonable format, is that we already have a council of mentors ready to answer your questions and assist with your blogging. However if you feel like you are a grizzled veteran of all things blogging and have something to offer the world, then we are always open to more. Ultimately mentors should have at least two years of blogging experience under their belt in order to gauge the ebbs and flow of content creation in front of a live studio audience. We are not expecting perfection, just a willingness to share the lessons you have learned along the way with fledgling participants and a large dose of patience for questions you have answered a bunch of times before. Mentors should be relatively even keeled and only prone to fits of hyperbole when it is used for comedic absurdity. Mentors will be clearly marked as such in the Discord and can likely share some sage advice for those who seek it.
How Do I Participate
The first step is to fill out the Sign-Up Form for Blapril 2020 which can be found here. Only those who have signed up will be given credit towards the awards.
Next make sure you are active on the Blaugust Discord and the link for that can be found here. This is the third year we have been active on Discord and it is a community that has managed to stay evergreen throughout the years. Maybe even share your content each day in the appropriately named “share-your-content” channel.
When you share your content on social media please use the hashtag#Blapril2020 for tracking purposes and to make it easier for those watching the event to find fresh content.
Mingle with your other Mentors and Participants because this is a community event, and part of the fun is getting to know the community. These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I personally deeply value my ties with other bloggers that I have built up over the last decade of doing this thing.
Welcome to Blapril 2020 as we use the power of internet togetherness to help combat those negative side effects of social distancing.
If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such, check out the Media Kit page which is the final resting place of all Blaugust and now Blapril related media.
As of Sunday September 1st the running of the 2019 edition of Blaugust was finished. Yesterday I spent some time going through all of the blogs that had participated and tabulated the number of posts. Bonus points for Nait for helping me find a few posts that were not clearly visible on the front page of a few of the participating blogs. By final tally here are some of the statistics for 2019.
1305 posts were made by Blagust 2019 Participants
66 Individuals Participated
11 Newbie Bloggers Participated
55 out of 66 made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze
36 made at least 15 posts qualifying for Silver
31 made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold
27 made 31 or more posts during the month of August qualifying for Rainbow
We had one outlier this month and I went back an forth about it, but Data_Error embarked upon a project of making a post for every Pokemon and as a result wound up with a nonsense 83 posts during the month of August. Wilhelm and Bhagpuss both came in with over 40 posts with 49 and 42 respectively, making me think I need an entirely new award for over 40. I was however super impressed with the fact that Three of our newbies made 31 posts or more and one Newbie got the 25 or higher needed for Gold.
Without further ado, lets dig into the awards.
Bronze Award
These are individuals who made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2019.
These folks signed up and in a few case built brand new blogs, but didn’t quite make it to at least five posts. However I applaud anyone for signing up and making an effort.
I’ve always updated the media kit to include links to the various new award images. At some point I will dig through the backlogs of Blaugust and upload all of the previous awards there also. I think it was a really great year. We had a little less attendance than last year, but we also had a significant chunk of our participants make it to Rainbow. More important than anything is that it infused new life into the community with us branching out and reaching several folks who were brand new to Blaugust.
I want to take an extra moment to thank all of the Mentors who have watched the Discord and answered so many questions over the past two months. They also added support in so many other ways behind the scenes.
Here is hoping that we have a great year of blogging and that I will see you all next year for another Blaugust. During the months between please stay active in the Discord so we can hang out and continue the Blaugust magic for the entire year to come.
The challenge with the whole “Developer Appreciation Week” is that I have been doing these posts for quite some time. The folks that would immediately come to mind from my ever present fixation on MMORPGs have already been written about, likely more than once. So instead we are going to mine the well of my memories and start talking about studios that I really like the work of, that are maybe not as flashy as a Blizzard Entertainment or a Bioware. First up today is Obsidian Entertainment, which is going to have a bit of a twisting path considering I am also going to talk a bit about Black Isle the studio that largely became Obsidian.
The Black Isle Years
Interplay was one of those juggernaut studios of my adolescent and teen years. The division I wound up becoming most connected to however was Black Isle Studios. The whole publisher/developer relationship becomes a bit hazy at times but they danced a lovely duet with Bioware for some years during the creation of Baldur’s Gate and the follow on properties. However the two games I am going to write about specifically are as far as I am aware are firmly in the camp of Black Isle Studios.
Fallout 1 and Fallout 2
I am largely going to commit the sin of lumping Fallout 1 and 2 together for these purposes given that they are the offerings developed by Black Isle and the only two of the early PC games that I really claim. I have no clue what was going on with Tactics, nor do I really grok the console Brotherhood of Steel game. To say I was enamored with this game and its universe is a bit of an understatement. This came out when I was in college and I am pretty sure I ditched a few classes to play just a little bit more of it. I was on board with pretty much everything about this game, and imprinted extremely hard on it. I spent hours roaming the desert looking for one more secret.
Planescape Torment
Another game that I imprinted extremely hard on was Planescape Torment, which I did not play until way after it had released. One of my good friends burned through PC games extremely quickly, and he used to sell me an entire document box full of games for $50 as he was trying to clear out space. Planescape Torment was in one of these boxes and I played the hell out of it, with it even managing to pull me away from Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot which had become my nightly fare at the time. There was just something about the world building and the characters that hooked me. I was never really a huge fan of the Planescape setting, but after seeing the potential as exposed through Torment… I remember going out on Ebay and buying the old boxed set to read up more on it.
Rise of Obsidian Entertainment
With the bankruptcy of Interplay in 2003, Black Isle as we knew it was dissolved. Effectively two companies branched out from Interplay. The first was Troika Games in 1998 founded by Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson. The second was Obsidian Games in 2003 founded by Feargus Urquhart, Chis Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones. Obsidian is effectively the continuation of Black Isle under a different name, adopting a similar white on black logo style and another name that more or less means “Black”.
Fallout New Vegas
I loved the reboot of the Fallout universe by Bethesda games, though I had always wondered what exactly Van Buren would have ended up looking like. All of the work that has leaked out over the years seems as though it would have taken a vastly different direction, and in truth I think Fallout did well to make the leap to a 3D open world engine. Fallout New Vegas however really is the ultimate version of this, bringing in all of the rich world building and attention to detail from the 2D game into the 3D realm.
New Vegas has one of the best openings of a fallout game, and as far as the overarching flow… it is one of the few times I actually care about the main plot. In Fallout 3 I n ever cared about meeting up with my father, and in Fallout 4 I absolutely did not give a flying fuck about getting that toddler back… but in New Vegas I wanted to find the man who shot me. I was invested in the story of the world in a way I have never been in one of the Bethesda outings. It is because of this that I will likely always list New Vegas as my favorite Fallout game.
Tyranny
An Obsidian game that I feel is criminally underrated is Tyranny. It came out in 2016 and represents a slightly different spin on the classic PC RPG. Instead of playing the hero you are effectively playing the enforcer of an evil overlord who has taken over all of the world but the territory you are sent to claim. You are sent there to deliver the Edict of Execution… that either you will resolve the surrender of the territory peacefully within 8 days or everyone in the entire region including yourself will be killed.
This is a good primer for what sort of game you are about to be playing. At every step there is choice, and these choices when chained together end up making vastly different play through experiences. Each decision has weight and with it you are effectively carving out your own destiny, in what is otherwise a relatively short game. I think it took me about 16 hours in my first play-through, and in subsequent play-thoughs significantly less. However each time has felt fresh and new which is something few games can really pull off.
Skyforge
Another game that I feel is deeply underrated is Skyforge, an Action MMORPG that Obsidian worked with the Allods team to create. The world is somewhat nonsense, but nonetheless lovingly crafted as you are effectively a God that has risen after the death of your previous incarnation. You use your powers to help the people fight off alien incursions, in what is effectively a Mission and Lobby based MMORPG. I find it deeply enjoyable when you play it with a controller especially, and slightly less so with a mouse and keyboard. From an MMO and RPG aspect it seems extremely simple, and I am guessing that Obsidian was largely involved in setting the world in motion, and occasionally with Story Arcs. Regardless it is a fun game that Obsidian had a hand in so I am mentioning it.
The Microsoft Era
In November of 2018, Obsidian Entertainment was acquired by Microsoft in its recent grab to start locking down studios for exclusives. As such we are entering yet another phase in the life of this constantly morphing studio. So far it seems like Microsoft has been an excellent steward of the companies it has snatched up. Another favorite of my Undead Labs seemingly has had an excellent and productive relationship under the yoke. So I am hoping that Obsidian can get all of the resources it needs to similarly succeed.
The Outer Worlds
The game I am looking forward to that is just around the corner is The Outer Worlds slotted to release on October 25th. Everything I have seen about this game makes it seem like Obsidian is effectively creating a new IP based on a very familiar Fallout style game. My first impressions were… what if Fallout were actually a Firefly-esc Wild West in Outer Space type game. The few gameplay sessions I have watched make me think that it is going to bring the same sort of weighty decision making, each time giving you an option to resolve something peaceably or to just wade in guns blazing… and ultimately have to deal with those circumstances later.
I have watched enough to know I will be picking this up, but I am largely avoiding much coverage for fear of seeing too much. I want the experiences I have in this game to be fresh and new and not reminiscent of something I once saw in an E3 demo. Secretly I am hoping that we are going to be getting something that can rival my memories of New Vegas. However if I just get 20-30 hours of enjoyment out of it I will be super happy.
