The Weekend Warrior and Videogame Shows

A lot of my fellow developers in my shop are also avid gamers themselves, and we often will have daily chats about what we've been playing. Aside from the mega-releases, we're rarely playing the same thing at the same time, but have often played the same games, regardless.

In talking to one of my buddies here, who is finally in the process of busting his Mass Effect cherry, it's been interesting to a) keep track of his experience in the game, and what he thinks of it, as well as b) to understand how he games.

Like a lot of us here, he has young children, so his gaming time is usually 4AM-5AM, and then maybe a little at night. He finds that if he plays the same game for more than two hours, he starts to fatigue of that game.

I found this very interesting. I have a very difficult time gaming during the week now, so I might squeeze in an hour each day, if I really try to make it happen, but I'll binge like mad on the weekends. I have a hard time really getting into a game unless I play it for a couple hours or more at a time. It takes a while for me to 'immerse.'

I think this spreads out more once summer hits, since I like to be outside on the weekends, and my wife and I watch fewer shows in the evenings during the summer, so I'll get in some game time instead.

Also, there are some games she likes to watch me play, ie Uncharted. I think I may try that with the Walking Dead show. We'll see.

The Videogame Show
I miss the old X-Play and I miss the 1UP Show. I've written about this before, but I finally found something that comes somewhat close (closer to X-Play, not the excellent 1UP Show.)

GameSpot now has a show every Tuesday called The Lobby.

I watched the première episode this week, and really liked it. It reminded me of a blend of X-Play and GameSpot's E3 coverage. It's usually two editors talking, and then they'll bring in other editors to talk about new releases or other topics. It's good stuff. This past week, they talked about GDC 2014, Thief, and a range of other topics. I like the direction that GameSpot is going with their video content.

That being said, I still miss the 1UP Show, and would love to find something that approximates that format. Does anyone out there have a game-centric show that they absolutely love?

Weekend Gaming ... Almost Here
Tomorrow at noon start both the latest ESO beta, AND, more importantly, the first Cardinals Spring Training game of the preseason. It's gonna be some good times tomorrow.

I'd also like to spend some quality time with Thief and find out if I just suck at the game, or if its controls are as wonky as I think they might be.

I also still have some story content I want to wrap up in SWTOR before I cancel it in August, so I may jump in on that if I get fatigued at all in ESO. We'll see.

And of course, there's always Morrowind, which I'm loving in more now that I've got the MGSO mod in there. One thing I'm going to do in ESO this weekend is see if I can get to Morrowind, and do some comparison. Otherwise, I'll just tromp around Skyrim and Cyrodil, and do some comparisons there. Yeah, I'm a nerd, but I'm a happy nerd.

Oh, and this is interesting. An explanation on ESO's 'M' rating.

So. What are you playing this weekend?

Either way, enjoy yourself, and thanks for reading!

-Blaine

Morrowind Your Skyrim into Oblivion

I think anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of my 'gaming' time is actually spent NOT gaming, but experimenting with gaming technologies. Yes, it's a mad party up in my rig. Or some such thing.

Lately, it's been perfecting my stream-to-TV setup using the Steam Streaming beta, and modding some older Bethesda titles.

On the streaming front, things are going very well. I was pleased to discover that it streams non-Steam games, as well, which is a HUGE win for my newer BioWare titles. Also, I've been having a lot of fun impressing my son with how good I can get some of these games to look on PC. Skyrim, for example, despite being almost three years old, can still achieve an insane level of graphical fidelity, once the right mods are introduced.

Right now, I'm just sliding the Alienware laptop under the TV, jacking into the secondary HDMI, then connecting an old wireless mouse and keyboard I had the foresight to hold onto.

Problems: power and wireless keyboard and mouse. My power situation behind my TV is a bit ... unstable, and I have no desire to introduce anything else into it. This means I'm running my power cable across the room, into a 3-2 converter, then into an extension cord. Also, the range on the wireless keyboard and mouse kinda sucks, so I have to run the access point halfway to the recliner, which means that people and dogs are free to accidentally knock it down right and left.

Both of these are easily resolved via minor expenditures. What's great is that the proof-of-concept is increasingly successful. I'm now curious to see how low I can go in terms of specs for the streaming machine. I'd guess proc is the key component there, as well as having an HDMI out. I plan to rummage around the house soon, and see what I can throw together.

As stated before, I'd like to just set up a dock at each TV for a super-powerful gaming laptop, and have that act as my streaming machine, that I can also take on the road, much like my existing Alienware.

Modding Mods
On the modding side, I've been looking a lot at Morrowind and Fallout 3.

The number of mods for Morrowind is staggering. On one hand, you have the official add-ons, about which I knew nothing, and then you have super-mega-huge overhaul mods, like MGSO, which transform the game entirely, into something almost modern.

 

I'd installed MGSO a while ago, started tweaking some shit under the hood, broke it, and then also got frustrated, because I tend to game on three different PCs, depending on what's going on, and keeping the install and tweaks across three different devices was a huge headache.

This time around, I knocked it down to two devices, and did the install one after another, keeping the settings very simple. The game still came out absolutely beautiful, especially once you hit the wilderness. It's not just visuals, mind you, it's also the ambience of the environment. Everything from insects to little splashes of water to rustles of leaves makes the world, finally, feel totally alive.

I wish I'd reinstalled this mod from the beginning of this journey, but now I'm glad I did it at all.

Speaking of Elder Scrolls, it was fascinating turning my older boy loose on Skyrim, and observing a) how he reacted to various scripted events (for example, he just wanted to watch the sky for the dragon, rather than act on its impending arrival), and b) how he approached the actual 'game.' He decided he was fine with letting his NPC handle most of the combat, since he was busy picking locks and looting corpses. Then, he wanted to move in straight lines across terrain to an end point, rather than sticking to the roads. Watching it, I was marveling at how many of those tendencies are tendencies that we share. We also share a tendency to be a backseat player, and drive each other crazy in the process.

The next Elder Scrolls Online beta can't get here soon enough.

I've almost been making some minor tweaks to Fallout 3. Mainly, the game struggles a bit with multi-core procs and can even crash sometimes because of that. A few minor edits to the game's config file nipped that right in the bud, and it runs rather nicely now. I'm also looking at a handful of graphical mods. The game looks a bit long-in-the-tooth now, and it'd be nice to up the textures on some of the faces and environments.

Oh, and randomly, I grabbed a total conversion mod for Oblivion called Nehrim. I'm curious to try this one out at some point. It's a whole new world, totally separate from the Elder Scrolls, and I love shit like that. I'd love to something like that someday.

Yes, but you will be talking about actual games at some point in this gaming blog, yes?
Morrowind. Yup. Been playing more Morrowind.

As I've talked about before in here, I find that with Morrowind, more so than any other game I've ever played, I have to be very conscientious about keeping myself in the right frame of mind when I play it, otherwise I'll never come back. I fight, sometimes, to keep myself from being obsessive about making progress. Morrowind is antithetical to this concept, in both its structure and its themes. Morrowind asks, or rather insists, that you chill the fuck out and just immerse yourself in the world. I'm now trying to bust a green librarian out of a floating sky prison above Vivec. This shit is just awesome.

Meanwhile, I'm also all set for Thief tomorrow. I've got my preloads done, one on the main desktop, the other on the laptop.

Interesting. I just noted that Thief is unlocking tomorrow at 1PM central. Looks like it'll be a late lunch tomorrow, and I'll be lugging the Alienware to work. Which is fine.

I anticipate that I'll play quite a bit on Tuesday, barring any technical launch issues, and have some impressions on Wednesday. I may even get all crazy and put up a Tuesday night post, as well.

Here's some Thief reviews, by the way.
EGM
Game Informer
GameSpot
PC Gamer
Polygon
Rock Paper Shotgun

Take from those reviews what you will. In there is some sort of aggregate, but I always wonder how much things like predisposition based on rumors, wanting to fit in with other reviewers, and consideration of being able to make a living because ad revenues are still flowing in inform some of these guys. Historically, I find that there are some reviewers that I tend to match up with, while others seem to be existing in a world that is in total dissonance from my own. And that's okay. I tend to find more use for reviews after I've played the game to completion, as I often enjoy engaging some of these guys afterward to compare notes.

Anyway, if you had a mad Thief boner, don't get upset by other people not loving something you've already decided was the game to ever come out tomorrow. Unless you love it and want them to make another one ever again, it doesn't matter what other people think.

I still plan on seeing what's what, and I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for reading, and lemme know what you think of Thief!

-Blaine

Pre-Orders and the Gaming Space

Because I'm a sad little man that is constantly trying to fill a void where once my soul resided, I finally caved and spent some cash on Steam. I bought 'early access' Wasteland 2 and Age of Decadence, bought The Banner Saga, then preordered Thief, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall. Dragonfall hadn't even been on my radar. I had completely forgotten that was coming, but luckily, I follow Harebrained Schemes on RSS, and caught a glimpse of it on my Windows Phone RSS Live Tile (yes, folks, sorry, but Live Tiles really are fantastic and useful.)

I poked around a bit at Age of Decadence, and came away from it with the certainty that I do not have any idea how to play it. This is one that will require a few hours, 2-3 monitors (game, research, video), and some patience from my wife. It's all good, though. I like complex games, and I really enjoyed the bits I understood. I'm really looking forward to trying more.

I also popped in to SWTOR briefly, and ... I mean, I still like the game, but every time I'm in there now, I just ... I dunno, I always get the itch like I should be doing ANYTHING else. I don't hate the game, I actually quite love it, but close to 2.5 years in, I feel like there should've been a proper expansion by now. Instead, it's just outfits and a space battle bit about which I give no fucks. Not even one.

Hurry up, ESO.

My play-through of Morrowind has slowed somewhat. I'll be honest. I'm losing motivation. I'm at the point in which Caius has told me that I might be the Nerevearereveeaerrine, and I'm to go talk at some Ashlander dudes about it. I decided to start blowing through some side quests, since this seems like a good time to grind some stats. I'm wondering if some of my fatigue relates to how dated Morrowind is, and the illusion of a living world just isn't holding up. I'm not sure. I'm gonna stick with it, but I'm itching to move onto Oblivion.

Meanwhile, Fallout 3 has been my fallback for when I'm just not feeling Morrowind. I've been enjoying the hell out of it, and recently had an episode with it that completely reinforced the fact that I love being a PC gamer. Fallout 3 is, by now, a bit of an older game, and is not properly configured to know how to handle multiple cores in a proc. This was causing repeated crashing when it was time to flee Vault 101. I poked around a bit, found the issue, added a couple lines to an .INI file, and I was good to go. I was playing a 'last-gen' game with no problems, moving between my desktop and laptop all weekend, with minimal effort. Were we talking about a console release, it would've been a whole other story. First, your locked to playing on that aged box, through a TV. Second, if you're experiencing a known bug, you're at the mercy of the developers, publisher, and platform holder to ever get it fixed. No thanks. Because I'm a PC gamer, I was able to find the known issue, see the fix, then implement it myself. Easy.

In any case, I'm now in Megaton, talking at folks, and I'm having a great time saving, trying something crazy, then reloading. For reference, I have played a fair amount of Fallout 3 in the past, but never all the way to completion. I aim to do so before the GFWL servers die July 1st.

I think part of what's constantly nagging at me about Morrowind and Fallout 3 is that the Bethesda approach to RPGs veers sharply into the uncanny valley (not literally, but thematically), and thus, because so many things seem 'alive' and 'true to life,' the things that aren't really fucking jump up and flick you in a single gonads (did that once to a buddy in high school, and he was almost squealing. Hilarious). People in Morrowind aren't on a schedule. They're wandering aimlessly in the streets for DAYS. The animal population is pitifully low. Guards can know I killed someone via the Force (I guess. Not sure how they know it otherwise.)

Also, for as real as some of these characters feel, they don't feel real at all. It's hard to explain, but it's that 'uncanny valley' thing.

I have a feeling that this is incrementally improved in each Bethesda release.

And don't get me wrong. I really like aspects of Morrowind. I'm eager to see where all of this leads. I just wish it had a stronger central narrative, and I wish it wasn't 13 or so years old.

All this should continue to make this my Year of Bethesda (and Witcher, and Dragon Age).

In closing, I have a question for all the 'Bethesda Veterans' out there. How do you all stay motivated in these games, as opposed to games that have a more linear approach, and more insistent main story thread? I'm doing it, but I'm finding that my motivation to keep playing is starting to diminish. I don't like that it's diminishing, but it is what it is.

I'm also thinking about starting to stream some random shit via Twitch. My Twitch channel is here. I can promise it won't be exciting, but it might be interesting. I'll probably stream some of the early access stuff, for those that wanna check it out.

Word. Thanks for reading!

-Blaine

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Bethesda

I've been an RPG fan for a good long while. Yeah, I've been playing games that are mislabeled 'RPG,' such as the Legend of Zelda series, since the first iteration on the NES, but more importantly, I cut my teeth on the early console RPGs, such as the first Final Fantasy (loved it) and the first Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) (didn't really like it.)

All through the 90s, I stuck with the console RPGs, usually Square titles, but then branched out once Squenix decided that most of the design choices in Final Fantasy X were a good idea (they were not).

At that time, I discovered BioWare, then traced them back to Black Isle, and before I knew it, Obsidian existed, and then CD Projekt Red sprang up, and I had so many awesome RPGs from which to choose.

Somewhere in there, Bethesda and I never got some on the page (scroll.)

I never understood it, either. On paper (scroll), Bethesda games should be my dream games. Open world, freedom of choice, a shit load of menus, tons of stats, tons of variables, insanely deep lore. All of those things equal my dream game, and yet ... it just never clicked for me.

The years went by, Bethesda would drop the occasional release here and there, I'd inevitably pick it up on or near release day, because THIS was going to be the Bethesda game that I'd finally get into, and ... it never happened.

I kept telling myself it was the combat (which is pretty bad for such refined games), or I'd tell myself it was the weak central narrative (which is almost nonexistent in some titles), or I'd tell myself it was the pain-in-the-ass traversal of the game world (which can be horribly painful if you take a single wrong turn.) Still, everyone so often, I'd fire up Fallout 3 or Oblivion, and something would almost click. Something would almost tickle the right part of the brain to pull me in, and yet ... it would just never quite happen.

I think, initially, I had a bit of culture shock, if you will. See, in most of the BioWare / Squenix / Black Isle games I've played, if there's a dice-roll associated with an attack, it's an explicitly expressed dice-roll, meaning that the user is informed that there is 'chance' associated with the invocation of this action.

In Bethesda games, the dice-roll is implicit, rather than explicit. When I swing/shoot this sword/gun, there's a dice-roll, even though in most games when I swing/shoot, there's a 1-1 association between animation and object collision.

Throw in there the first-person perspective, and if you're not accustomed to Bethesda games, your mind is trying to demand that there be an automatic 'hit' when you shoot/swing, while, underneath this FPS veneer is a very, very deep RPG engine that wags its finger and says 'ah, ah, ah ... +2 to hit.

At first, this made combat very hard for me. I'm a seasoned RPG veteran, but something about this mishmash of genres really fucked me up. I'd be swinging like mad at a Cliff Racer, only to be taken down by Prehistoric Fucking Tweetie Bird.

Additionally, ranged enemies soon became problematic. Also, jumping. Also, navigating the map. Also, the world just being so big. Also ... it just stopped being fun after a while.

I own EVERY FUCKING GAME Bethesda has ever released. Oh, and all the expansions and DLC and shit. Yup, I'm THAT guy. I wanted so badly to love these games. There's so much in there that I can appreciate and enjoy.

So, fast-forward to late 2013. I decided I needed to chill out a bit, and be less goal-oriented in my play time. I realized that I'd gotten very linear and very concerned with 'progress' when I played games. It occurred me to that I was approaching all games with the same mindset, which was to maximize stats, view all available content, and do so in as timely a fashion as possible.

It occurred to me that Bethesda games, at least the first time each is played, aren't easily compatible with this approach. I decided to approach Morrowind (the furthest back I can go without being forced to invoke DOSBox) with a mindset of 'max chill.'

And to be fair, much of this flawed gaming mindset comes from being a pretty happy guy. I have a wife, children, and a full-time job as a developer, so while I have nothing about which to complain, I wouldn't necessarily have the time to complain, anyway.

Either way, it was time to fire up Morrowind (again.) After installing a few mods to get it to render a little prettier, we were 'go.'

As I (very) slowly walked my way through Seyda Neen, I leaned back, chilled myself out, and said, 'just relax ... take your time ... you're here to relax.' And it all finally started to click.

As I very deliberately took in everything around me and talked to everyone, I could almost here Loial, from a Wheel of Time, in my ear: 'humans are always so hasty.'

Since then, I've progressed further in Morrowind than I have in any previous attempt. I'm excited, because I'm so chilled about it. I'm even thinking I'm going to fire up Fallout 3, and then New Vegas, some time during my Elder Scrolls 3-5 playthrough.

I'm an Imperial bard, member of the Thieves' Guild and Imperial Cult, and cannot stand these whining Dunmer. I look forward to joining the Imperial Legion, and doing what I can to bring about greater obedience from these elves.

It is amazing to me how easy these games are to roleplay, though. It seems that these games lack in story, they make up for with depth of lore and freedom of choice. I appreciate now more fully how different but equally successful the BioWare and Bethesda approaches to RPGs are.

It's amazing to me, though, that all it took for me  to finally 'get it,' in regards to Bethesda RPGs, was an adjustment to mental approach. Have any of you experienced anything like this?

Also, to those experienced Morrowind players - is there something optional that I absolutely MUST do or somehere optional I absolutely MUST go? Let me know!

I'll keep checking back in every so often about this while I write up my RPGs of 2014. I've got more to say, but I'm eager to get back to Morrowind on this extra day off!

 

-Blaine