I’ll be traveling for much of today, since it actually takes a damn long time to get from Louisville to Edmonton. So in the meantime, talk amongst yourselves!

I will be here. Except on a United flight.

Should games even bother trying to tell a meaningful story?

Kyle Orland at Ars Technica echoes the musings of David Jaffe:

For decades now, large parts of the game industry have been striving to create games that are more meaningful — games that can speak to the human condition and tell an impactful story that’s deeper than “remember when I shot that guy?” At a DICE Summit presentation today, Twisted Metal designer David Jaffe made an impassioned argument that such efforts have been misguided, and a huge waste of the industry’s time and resources.

Jaffe led off by clarifying that he wasn’t against all kinds of storytelling in games — he had lots of respect for titles like Batman: Arkham City and Skyrim that allow for highly personal, player-created stories that can be as deep as a good novel. He also wasn’t arguing for a return to the Atari 2600 days, where graphics were abstract and most titles didn’t have identifiable characters or environments at all.

But Jaffe did argue vociferously against “games that have been intentionally made from the ground up with the intent and purpose of telling a story or expressing a philosophy or giving a designer’s narrative.” Because no matter how hard we want to fight it, Jaffe said, games just aren’t meant for this kind of storytelling.

Jaffe went on to compare depictions of D-Day in movies to depictions of it in games, and argues that the game player will always experience it in a way that prevents him from fully contemplating the deeper significance of the event. And to be fair, he has a point there, I think. Games will almost always have the player thinking about objectives to complete at least as often as they will make him think about the meaning of the events he is participating in and witnessing, which arguably makes for diluted meaning.

But one wonders if Jaffe’s scope is perhaps too limited — his focus seems to be mostly on AAA titles, and then only on particular types thereof. Within that limited scope, he probably has a point: can we expect Twisted Metal to tell a moving, meaningful, deeply philosophical tale? Probably not.

But what about a game like To The Moom, which despite its short length has reduced everyone I know who has played it to tears? Is that a game that fails to reach its full potential as a vehicle for delivering a meaningful story?

(hat tip: Infinitron Dragon)

In-game romances have officially nuked the fridge.

On Valentine’s Day, RIFT — yes, the MMORPG — set a Guinness World Record for the most in-game marriages in one day:

21,879 marriages took place on February 14, starting at 9am PST. Marriage was introduced in Rift’s seventh major update, Carnival of the Ascended. Each participating player earned a unique in-game title, “The Avowed,” and quite possibly a nagging significant other.

I…yeah, no, I just won’t comment on this any further.

The Origins of Fallout.

No Mutants Allowed has posted the first in a three-part document set from the lead designer of the original Fallout, R. Scott Campbell. It purports to detail the genesis of the game that eventually became known as Fallout, and is evidently quite lengthy. Give it a read, if Fallout is one of your areas of high interest!

Canada wants warrantless Internet spying!

And if you don’t like it, you support child pornography…or…something.

The legislation would require service providers to provide law enforcement with IP addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other information on demand.

The bill would also “require ISPs and cellular phone companies to install equipment for real-time surveillance and create new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.”

Members of the opposition have vowed to fight the legislation. More than 80,000 people have signed an online petition opposing the bill.

Challenged by an opposition member about the proposal, public safety minister Vic Toews cited child pornography as a justification for the bill. Opponents of the legislation “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers,” he said.

Le sigh.

Gaming isn’t the problem in your marriage.

Doing fun things by yourself, in which your spouse does not share, is:

The study explains in its intro that marital satisfaction is “lower for those [couples] with high concentrations of individual leisure activities.” That is, doing fun stuff in general without your spouse will lead to fights and unrest.

This study doesn’t prove that gaming, specifically, is to blame for your relationship problems. Couples where one member spends too much time fishing, shopping, drinking, or even volunteering at soup kitchens and building houses for the homeless on his or her own have been shown to experience marital difficulty, just like couples where one person games and the other doesn’t. Since the study doesn’t compare gaming to other leisure activities, it only confirms that gaming makes your spouse angry, like everything else you might do and enjoy alone.

There is one ray of light: while the study found that a married person’s “satisfaction with online gaming” was a predictor of a discontent, the amount of time spent playing games was not.

And if your wife or husband just happens to be a gamer like you, well…heck, you could start up parallel RIFT accounts!

This makes me ragey.

A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

“We’ve found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer,” said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen.

I’d ask if they’re kidding me, but I already know they aren’t. At a previous job, we had a Xerox Phaser-class printer, and I remember my boss at the time wondering what the little series of yellow dots that appeared on every image was. At the time, I didn’t have an answer, and neither did Google…but now we know.

Yes, I realize that the “original” Ultima 1 logo would, in fact, just read Ultima, because that’s what the game was originally called. BioWare Mythic’s creative director, Paul Barnett, also understands this, so why don’t I let him explain:

I was far too in awe/paranoid to take any photos inside the part of Mythic’s offices where they keep all the old Ultima-related stuff, but this is indeed among the many treasures they have from Origin Systems that decorate the place.

Okay, actually, this isn’t brand-spanking-new; it was brought to my attention about a week ago, and I’ve been forgetting to post about it (and then slapping myself on the forehead some time afterward) since then. Now, I can’t seem to pull an embed link out of MP3Twit, so I figure the best I can do is embed Meghann “Firkraags” O’Neill’s original tweet about it:

OK. It ain’t quite perfect. But it is Stones. mp3twit.com/l8u CC the Ultima crew. @endirasae @ultimaaiera @ElPrezAU

— Meghann O’Neill (@Firkraags) February 8, 2012

It’s a rather nice, mellow playthrough of the song, on an acoustic guitar. Quite a nice rendition, in fact.

Don’t get me wrong: I love an epic-sounding remix of Stones whenever there’s one to be found, but there’s just something about the song that makes the simple renditions, played softly on only a couple of instruments (if that many), sound so much more special.

Dungeon Siege 3

There isn’t a collection of updates concerning Obsidian this week, so much as there is a bit of a story to tell. It relates, as well, to the recent crowdfunding success enjoyed by Double Fine.

RPGWatch tells the first part of the tale, detailing how Obsidian’s Chris Avellone and J.E. Sawyer responded to fan inquiries regarding the possibility of Obsidian crowdfunding…say…a low-budget, old-school isometric RPG.

Avellone’s response was probably the more tantalizing…

Hmmmm. I admit, I’ve got Kickstarter fever now. I feel like a bunch of doors suddenly appeared in game development.

…but Sawyer let slip that Obsidian have, evidently, talked about the possibility of doing something along those lines in the past. Interesting.

Chris Avellone decided to double down on his earlier comments, however, and posted this tantalizing little feeler post on the Obsidian blog:

Out of curiosity, if Obsidian did Kickstart a project, what would you want to see funded? (You can respond in comments or to @ChrisAvellone on Twitter, whichever you prefer.)

GameBanshee goes on to report that, as a follow-up to all this, Avellone subsequently posted another blog update in which he stressed that Obsidian weren’t actively pursuing a Kickstarter initiative at this time, though he did say that he is discussing the possibility with Obsidian’s owners.

Oh, and he let slip the results of his impromptu survey. Not surprisingly, the Internet wants a Planescape Torment sequel:

If interested in the results, the most responses concerned in order of preference (note that there’s likely bias here considering the author of the Twitter and the blog post below):

- Planescape 2/Planescape Spiritual Successor.

- An Isometric turn-based/pause RPGs in general.

- The “other” category – this fell into game suggestions and mechanics and genres that were only suggested by 1 or 2 folks. I read all of these.

- Make whatever you want, we’ll support you.

Again, thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. And even if my Excel-burned-eyes are dry from tabulating responses, it’s good that there was such a strong amount of feedback in the first place.

Honestly, I’m not sure what commentary can be made here, at present. On one hand, the success of Double Fine in their initiative with Kickstarter proves that for at least some highly-regarded independent gaming development companies, crowdfunding can be the way to go both as a means of gauging fan interest in a project, and as a means of actually securing funds to complete that project. On the other hand, one wonders whether there wouldn’t be a saturation point, a time past which even the most ardent fans of games “as they once were” would say “you know…I’ve donated to a lot of these projects already…” and think twice before opening his digital wallet.

Ian Davis, writing for The Adrenaline Vault, has put together a “look back” at Ultima 1. It’s not terribly long, so do take a few minutes to give it a read what is ultimately a note of genuine appreciation for the game.

To wit:

There are a few precautions to take before playing Ultima today. First, make an all-Rush mix tape. Second, read the manual. Not only because you want to know what’s going on, but also because it’s fabulously written. The words are the skin draped over the black-and-white frame of the game. Richard Garriott’s descriptions put color and life in something that’s primitive as a stick-figure skeleton. It’s not hyperbole to say you’d be missing half of the experience if you skip the manual.

Nor is it hyperbole to say that modern gamers, with their pathetic little five-page game manuals detailing the game’s controls and little else, are missing out on a huge part of what the gaming experience used to be.

Davis continues:

While there’s a different action mapped to every letter key, the controls are actually easy to grasp. It helps that the combat and magic system is simplistic. Your lone hero has two options: attack or cast the single offensive spell. With no mana, all spells (aside from the random “prayer” spell) are bought from stores and cast like disposable scrolls. It’s much more playable then the early Might and Magic games, which require you to look in a manual to compare gear for each of your six party members. Ultima I’s simplicity keeps the game within the confines of its technological abilities.

As I say, read the whole thing. It’s a fine retrospective.

The Wing Commander CIC reports that George Oldziey, who composed the soundtrack for Ultima 9 (in addition to Wing Commander 3 and Wing Commander 4), celebrated his birthday this week…back on the 15th.

Oldziey, who is (surprise, surprise!) Austin, Texas-based, has also scored several feature-length films (Shorts, Sin City, Kill Bill…) and a few other video games (Red Faction: Guerrilla, Crimson Alliance…). The boys of the CIC suggest checking out this Crimson Alliance trailer to catch some of Oldziey’s orchestral stylings; see for yourself how it compares to the soundtracks of the above-listed Origin games

I have to confess – I loved this game:

It’s been a while since there has been a new RPG on GOG.com shelves, but today we offer Soulbringer on GOG.com for only $5.99.

Let’s conduct a little thought excercise here: If you were an average person living in the mystical world of Rathenna and your father was killed and your uncle Adrus turned out to know a lot about magic, ancient warriors, and demons, would you rather:

a) ignore your crazy uncle, live on a farm, raise a family, and live a long and boring life or,
b) learn magic, learn sword-wielding, awaken your powers inherited from your past lives, and slay ancient demons, preserving the world for all?

Those of you who decided that option “a” sounds a little too dull have a chance to jump into the fantasy world of Soulbringer, an action RPG in the spirit of other classic hack and slash games of the era.

Soulbringer was in many respects a fairly average game in the Diablo vein, and was among the first of the 3D action RPG titles (preceding Dungeon Siege by about two years, and coming out at about the same time as Diablo 2 and Baldur’s Gate 2). Indeed, it took quite a lot of advantage of its 3D engine; height mattered quite a lot in combat and spellcasting.

The game had a decent combat system, but its real innovation was its rather interesting magic system, in which the various elemental circles didn’t oppose along traditional lines, but instead negated each other in a circular, “rock, paper, scissors” kind of way.

Anyhow, GOG has it priced at the $5.99 point, so if you’ve never played it before, think about picking it up.

Double Fine, the independent development studio behind such titles as Psychonauts and Stacking, decided to try something a little different in an effort to fund an upcoming, old-school-style adventure game that they want to make. They started a Kickstarter page, in an effort to crowdsource their efforts to raise funding for it:

Big games cost big money. Even something as “simple” as an Xbox LIVE Arcade title can cost upwards of two or three million dollars. For disc-based games, it can be over ten times that amount. To finance the production, promotion, and distribution of these massive undertakings, companies like Double Fine have to rely on external sources like publishers, investment firms, or loans. And while they fulfill an important role in the process, their involvement also comes with significant strings attached that can pull the game in the wrong directions or even cancel its production altogether. Thankfully, viable alternatives have emerged and gained momentum in recent years.

Crowd-sourced fundraising sites like Kickstarter have been an incredible boon to the independent development community. They democratize the process by allowing consumers to support the games they want to see developed and give the developers the freedom to experiment, take risks, and design without anyone else compromising their vision. It’s the kind of creative luxury that most major, established studios simply can’t afford. At least, not until now.

They set their goal at a modest level: $400,000 raised by March 13th, 2012 (far less than the $2 million mentioned above!). They hit and exceeded that goal in just eight hours, and are currently sitting at $705,510 (as of the time this article was drafted; they may well be north of a million dollars at the time of its publication).

RPS, among other, notes that this raises some pretty interesting questions about the future of indie game development, and game development in general. After all, Tim Schafer — the head of Double Fine and an adventure game development legend — couldn’t get publishers to sign off on investing in the project; adventure gaming is (supposedly) dead. And yet, when he asked the audience, they couldn’t give him money fast enough! ($710,123 now, by the way.)

So how “in touch” with what the gaming audience wants are the major publishers, exactly?

Heh…did I just ask that question on an Ultima website? ($714,105)

Exit question: Could any of the projects I cover on Aiera perhaps be supported this way? Sanctimonia, maybe?

The First Age of Update: Double Fine has announced the platforms the game will be released on, and as you might expect, it’s the usual list of suspects: PC, Mac, iOS, and some versions of Android. Oh, and one more: Linux. Because Double Fine are cool like that.

Skyrim

Did you know that you can see Morrowind from Skyrim in Skyrim?

And apparently there’s a good reason for it:

“The reason they are there – and I will not say if we are or are not using them in the future – is when we first built the landmass for Skyrim we knew we were going to have these tall mountains.

And what can you see see? We have views early in the project where you can see into the [neighbouring] province from the other game. We needed to have something [there].

It’s not high detail. If you walk there, from a distance it’s…yeah, the stuff is there. And the thinking is, maybe we’ll use it one day, but our larger worry was, I’m going to climb up on top of a mountain and look that way. What will I be able to see there? We try to cover all those angles as much as we can.”

Two million Skyrim mods have already been downloaded.

And yes, I know that people were modding the game before the toolkit was officially released. Still, the game itself is pretty new, and the toolkit only just came out…so that’s still a pretty staggering number.

Skyrim of course won Game of the Year…

…at the Interactive Achievement Awards.

Skyrim Creation Kit tutorials!

Bethesda are in the midst of releasing a ten-part series of videos outlining the use of the Skyrim Creation Kit. Here’s the first one:

You can find the rest of the installments they have released thus far at their YouTube channel. It looks like they’re already up to the ninth episode!

Meaningless choices.

An interesting and potentially controversial editorial that argues, and then not badly, that while Skyrim offers gameplay freedom that is second to none, games like Dragon Age 2 offer more compelling choices during gameplay…with better rewards.

Bethesda remembers Adam Adamowicz.

Adamowicz was evidently a level designer at Bethesda Softworks, who passed away from cancer shortly after the completion of Skyrim. Bethesda has put up a tribute page for him. It’s quite touching; go check it out.

Why the PS3 hates Skyrim.

One popular theory was that the lag on PS3 was due to a gamer’s large save files.

“No it’s not,” Howard said. “That’s the common misconception. It’s literally the things you’ve done in what order and what’s running. Some of the things are literally what spells do you have hot-keyed? Because, as you switch to them, they handle memory differently.”

Howard said his developers knew that the PS3 was going to run into a “bad memory situation” and tried to tweak their code to prevent it from happening. He believes only “a small percentage” of gamers would run into this issues, but it was enough for Bethesda to want to fix things post-release.

“The 1.2 patch [released in November] took care of a lot of it,” he said.

Problem solved? Gamers all relieved and in the clear? Not after that 1.2 patch.

Seriously…why would you play a game like Skyrim on console anyway? Especially on the current, absurdly dated generation of consoles, which can barely handle Unreal Engine 3 at full spec.

The good folks at RPGCodex managed to score an interview with none other than Ian Frazier, lead designer of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Of course, they didn’t want to talk to him about that game. No…instead, they wanted to talk to him about the thing we all know and love him (and many others who worked with him) for: Ultima V: Lazarus!

It would be both uncouth (by web standards) and far too long of a post to reproduce the interview in its entirety, so here are a couple choice quotes:

Tell us a bit about yourself. When did you first get into computer role-playing games? Did you come from pen and paper RPGs? Which cRPG was your first love?

I’ve been playing CRPGs since I was…oh…maybe 10 or so? I have fond memories of the old Gold Box TSR games, but I think the first RPG that truly captured me and made me love the genre was Betrayal at Krondor. That game was pure magic. I still have some pieces from the soundtrack in my music collection to this day.

As for pen and paper: oddly enough, I don’t come from that background at all. I played a little bit of the board game Hero Quest as a kid (and yes, I still have it), but that’s as close as I got to tabletop RPGs for a long time. I had a few friends in both high school and college who tried to get me into D&D, but I wasn’t really interested. Big Huge Games has always had a big tabletop culture, though, and I’ve found myself getting into it myself since I started working here. I’ve had a great time with several different systems at this point (D&D, Savage Worlds, Aces & Eights, the Dragon Age RPG, Chaosium’s Cthulhu, etc.) and have been DMing a Forgotten Realms campaign for a couple of years now—good times.

What were your primary motivations for recreating Ultima V in a modern engine? How did the Lazarus project come about and how did you get involved with it? Why did you choose to remake Ultima V as opposed to one of the earlier or later games in the series?

The first motivator was simply a love of Ultima. After Ascension came out, I was incredibly sad. Partially because I was disappointed by Ascension itself, but more because I hated for the series I loved so much to finally be over. The idea of bringing it back to life (i.e. Lazarus) in some form was very appealing to me.

The next motivator was that Ultima V itself seemed to me like it had so much potential to be an amazing “modern” game experience. It had this story with shades of gray and this giant cool world to explore and an interesting, dark atmosphere…but all of those things were hinted at more than actually there—after all, the game was from 1987! NPCs had tiny snippets of dialogue, the graphics were archaic, the music was beautifully crafted but sounded very dated in midi form, etc. I wanted to take that core idea and spirit that made Ultima V so cool and bring it back to life with all that 15 years of technological advancement afforded us. (this is also why I didn’t choose to remake one of the later games—I felt Ultima V had the most potential, plus I thought Ultima VII was still playable enough that it didn’t “need” remaking)

The third motivator was selfish: I knew from 6th grade onward that I wanted to be a game designer, and as I was preparing for college I knew that I needed to make a game of my own to learn the skills and “prove myself,” because class-work alone was not going to get me into the incredibly competitive games industry. I figured I needed a project and, well, Lazarus was it! Starting my first week of college, I began to sketch out the early designs for Lazarus and start trying to get fellow students and some Ultima fans online to join me in working on this crazy project, and eventually it started to build up steam. A long 5 years later, we finished!

Do go and read the whole thing, Dragons and Dragonettes; it’s really quite a good interview (and the Lazarus screenshots are pretty nice as well).

(hat tip: Infinitron Dragon)

I didn’t actually expect to get a chance to play the demo for Mass Effect 3 this week, owing to the fact that I’m currently traveling and don’t usually expect to find a decent internet connection at any hotel I might be staying at. Especially not one decent enough to enable me to download a 2.7 GB demo install.

The Mass Effect 3 title card.

But it turns out that in addition to having an amazing sushi restaurant, Terre Haute, Indiana offers some pretty decent internet speeds…at least at the Hampton Inn. And so the ME3 demo — which I left downloading in the background while I played a bit more Reckoning — finished installing within an hour, giving me the opportunity to play it…and to screenshot the living heck out of it.

The main menu.

And…well…how can I put this? I’m still very interested in playing Mass Effect 3, and I’m still convinced (for other reasons) that it will be an epic game that I will want to replay several times. I’m still confident that it will bring the story of both Shepard and the Reapers to a satisfying — if occasionally grim — conclusion.

But equally…I was not impressed by the demo. Or, rather, I was not impressed by the demo overall. Let me explain.

The first part of the demo takes place near to where I am assuming the release version of the game will begin. I say “near” because the demo definitely starts you in an “in media res” scenario, in which Commander Shepard has already met the fairly generic-soldier-type-looking James Vega and seems to know him reasonably well. Maybe that’s explained in a book somewhere, and maybe the writers are just assuming I’ve read every Mass Effect novel and comic (I haven’t). But seriously…who is this guy, and why does my Shepard know him?

James Vega

Who are you, again?

The short narrative that prefaces the actual gameplay also seems to move very quickly, given what we’ve been led to believe would be the opening of Mass Effect 3; Shepard is summoned to what I initially believed was to be her trial (for her actions at the end of Mass Effect 2′s Arrival DLC), and quickly bumps into one old friend…

Admiral Anderson!

…after another. But there’s something about the sequence of events that doesn’t seem right. I almost wonder if BioWare cut out a bit of content from the demo at this point, because all indications and hints that we’ve seen to this point have suggested that Shepard was actually supposed to stand trial for the events of Arrival. And indeed, the dialogue from Ashley Williams during the brief meeting with her seems to suggest that she had been giving testimony. And yet, when Shepard walked into the room with the other Terran admirals, what ensued was less a trial and more of a quick affirmation that yes, the Reapers are in fact coming.

In fact, they rather conveniently arrived at about that exact point:

Oh. Damn.

To this point, the game didn’t offer much in the way of actual gameplay, apart from a few dialogue choices which seemed to be exclusively split along the classic Paragon/Renegade lines. In fact, most of the dialogue in the demo was an exclusive choice between a Paragon answer and a Renegade answer, and I’m hoping that this was just a contrivance BioWare put in place for the demo, to limit possible outcomes to a manageable number for the limited array of presented content.

Be that as it may…the Reapers show up and blow things all to hell, pretty much as Shepard has been warning that they would.

Example.

Admiral Anderson shows up and extricates Shepard from the wreckage of the room, and the two beat a hasty retreat across what I believe is supposed to be a megacity comprised of Vancouver and Seattle, while the Reapers make a mess of the surroundings.

Again...example.

Thepal, in a comment, commended BioWare for how this part of the demo played out, and I want to voice my quite explicit agreement with what he found praiseworthy. The demo does a very good job of letting you play the game, keeping the action that concerns you in the foreground, but does so while still allowing you to see what’s going on in the background and the surrounding scenery.

One moment, you have a good view of the wider picture...

...and the next, you are up close and in the action!

And once the game turns over full control, the demo is actually a lot of fun. The “escape from Earth” sequence is fast-paced, often heart-poundingly so. It’s got plenty of action and explosions, and even makes you feel desperate a couple of times as it flings more enemies at you than you have the ability to deal with given your limited supply of ammunition.

Incoming fire!

The enemies have also gotten a fair bit smarter, and a lot bit uglier as well. The Cannibals, in particular (which, I gather, are half-batarian, half-human mutants created by the Reapers), are really quite savage opponents, and make good use of available cover.

Die, you beasts! Stop...eating each other and healing!

Enemies in cover are also a lot harder to wound than in previous Mass Effect games, and you very quickly come to the realization that making every shot count is going to be the rule by which you live and die for much of the game.

There are not enough bullets in that gun...

Using Shepard’s powers (and squad powers) is also way less optional in Mass Effect 3 than in previous installments in the series.

Eventually, though, the Normandy shows up and extracts Shepard. Anderson heroically (of course!) elects to stay behind and organize resistance to the Reapers on Earth, while tasking Shepard to go and round up as many allies as she can to save Earth and, ultimately, the galaxy from this existential menace. The heart-pounding pace of the escape is replaced, briefly, with a somewhat more emotionally wrenching scene involving a young boy, although in truth I found it a bit contrived. (Kids getting killed is usually one of my emotional triggers, one of the ones I can’t just be a Stoic about…but this particular example was a bit too ham-fisted to evoke strong feelings.)

Also, you get reinstated. But that was probably obvious.

To this point, I really enjoyed the demo quite a lot. And to be fair, I enjoyed most of the elements in the next part of the demo as well (though not as much). What I didn’t enjoy, and what subsequently reduced my enjoyment of the latter half of the demo, was BioWare’s annoying tendency to jump the action forward by some amount of hours.

Though it does involve Wrex. Which, really, is good.

I really liked the Reckoning demo for many reasons, but one such reason is that it just let me keep playing the stories it started me out with. There was no jump ahead, no disjunct, no time discontinuity. You played an opening chunk of the game’s story, and then got a bit of time to just wander around and explore. Great! More like that please.

BioWare, on the other hand, opted to do with the Mass Effect 3 demo what they did with the Dragon Age 2 demo: let you play out an opening sequence, and then jump you to some point in the game where you were ten experience levels ahead of where you were previously.

In the latter half of the demo, you play through another sequence — the rescue of a fertile female krogan from the salarian homeworld. This is all well and good, but it’s kind of thrust upon you without any explanation as to context or motivation: why is the female krogan on the salarian homeworld? Why do we care about her? Why are we going in to get her? Has Liara even bothered to change clothes since Lair of the Shadow Broker? None of these questions gets answered. And yes, I realize it’s just a demo…they have to be choosy with what content makes it in and what content doesn’t. Be that as it may, it’s still jarring.

It’s worth noting here that in the character creation sequence, you are asked a handful of questions about the previous games and certain outcomes associated therewith. Specifically, during the sequence, you’re asked whether just one squad member of yours has died since the first game — Ashley or Kaidan — or whether “several” have died. I’m thinking that if you take the last option, Urdnot Wrex might not appear during this part of the demo…but since I just picked Kaidan, I can’t be sure.

Regardless…Wrex was along for the ride, and nearly gets everyone into trouble with the salarians.

Damn snipers.

The game then skips what I’m assuming is a decent chunk of content, because all of a sudden I’m running around with Garrus and Liara, and Mordin is accompanying the female krogan as she is being transported in a shielded pod to a shuttle dock.

This being Mass Effect, of course, it isn’t that simple, and Cerberus shock troops show up and attempt to apprehend the lady krogan for their own purposes. Which, naturally, kicks off a running firefight through various levels of the salarian complex.

Kirrahe!

The end point of this quest is a boss battle against an Atlas mech, which…wasn’t as hard to take down as I had expected it to be, actually, although you do have to pour a fair bit of ammo into it. The cockpit is on the vulnerable side, however, and apparently in the full game you can kill the pilot without killing the mech as a whole…which will then allow Shepard to commandeer the damn thing.

Oh! Damn!

I…didn’t attempt this, however.

Bring em on...I prefer a straight fight!

Of course, for most of the battle, the Cerberus troops aren’t just shooting at Shepard; they’re shooting at the female krogan’s protected pod as well, and a little progress bar in the corner of the screen helpfully reminds you just how close you are to failing the mission. (Seriously, it ticked down pretty fast.) Once the smoke clears on the wreckage of the Atlas, though, the demo ends with one last cinematic sequence, before punting you back to the menu.

Also, she shotguns a guy.

What I Liked

Well, it’s definitely a Mass Effect game. The cast of characters is obviously back in action and ready to kick some ass, and it’s always a treat to see notables like Wrex and Garrus on screen. Much — though not all — of the gameplay is unchanged from previous entries in the series, and for the most part the controls have been streamlined and simplified (the SPACE bar does everything, basically, though exactly what it does at any point in time is context-dependent). Managing your squad in combat is essentially unchanged since Mass Effect 2, and little additional things — the ability to jump small gaps in terrain, the ability to climb ladders, etc. — add both to Shepard’s versatility on the battlefield and give BioWare an excuse to create more interesting environments to traverse.

Combat was generally satisfying, of course. Powers still work much the same as in Mass Effect 2, and the sound and general feedback from weapons has indeed been improved somewhat.

And the demo was short. This seems an odd thing to list under the “like” category, but it was nice that I could fit playing the demo into my evening. The Reckoning demo, though I enjoyed it more overall, was on the longish side, and I struggled to finish it in a single evening.

What I Didn’t Like

Let’s take it as read that I didn’t like the jarring time and space disjunct that happened in the middle of the demo. Outside of that criticism, there were a couple things I noticed that didn’t sit well with me, and which I hope can just be chalked up to a lack of polish in a demo that was forked from the main project at too early a point.

I wanted — really wanted — to like the new cover system, especially since it added the ability to jump and roll between pieces of cover. And when I first saw it, I will admit to thinking that it was a damn sweet thing for BioWare to have included. A little arrow appears to show you the direction Shepard can roll, and when you tap the SPACE bar, she rolled from behind one piece of cover and got behind another piece of cover in the indicated direction.

It was only when I wanted to leave cover entirely that I encountered the issue that made me dislike the cover system, which seems to mostly be a sensitivity issue. The little arrow pops up on screen to show you how Shepard will exit cover, either by running around the side of it or hopping over the top. That’s all well and good, but it seemed to take no small amount of mouse-twitching to turn the “roll sideways to new cover” arrow into the “roll out of cover” arrow. (I nearly got dusted by the Atlas mech because of this!)

And maybe it was just me, or maybe it was just the demo, but I noticed that my usual tactic for Husk-killing (shoot out the legs) didn’t work. Not cool. Although in the ensuing need to melee with a pair of husks, Shepard did omni-blade one of them, which was cool to see. I didn’t manage to grab a screenshot, though.

Overall

Well, I’ve mostly said it all already. I’m still very stoked for the game, and I’m willing to chalk up the issues I had with control and combat in the demo to it being based off an earlier build of the game. That said, while I didn’t hate the demo, I didn’t hugely enjoy it either. But then, I’ve never hugely enjoyed a BioWare demo that I can think of, unless you could the beta for The Old Republic. (And I don’t think it does count.)

Again, that isn’t to say I hated it, and it isn’t to say I didn’t like it. I did like it, for the most part…but that’s about it.

Dear all,

I’ve had even more time than planned and so was lucky to continue the progress of dungeon handling for BackToRoots. During the day, I’ve handled the fact that we can now move between dungeon rooms and the correct positions are given to the players depending of from where you enter the room, monsters are now loaded in, and so are objects.

Ladders are handled now and each character of the group must exit the same way for a dungeon room.

The monsters automatically attack players as you can see here:

Every element of course opens a number of new topics to be dealt with:

• Daemons have magic that they do: summoning new daemons
• Spells were availabe for the Ultima 4 port and must be brought into the Ultima 5 port
• When a room is emptied, it shouldn’t be filled up again

But as always, this is the rules of the game,

I hope you enjoy the video,

Jc