2402: The JRPG Protagonist as a Sign of the Times

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Playing Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force this evening, I was struck by a thought about JRPG protagonists over the years and how they often tend to reflect some of the prevalent attitudes from the time in which they were first written.

Perhaps more accurately, JRPG protagonists often tend to reflect some of the prevalent attitudes in the games industry rather than in society at large, but nonetheless, it is clear that things have changed somewhat over time.

Consider the early days of JRPGs: the first Final Fantasy, the first Dragon Quest. These games featured protagonists that were silent and had no story or characterisation behind them save for "you are legendary hero". They were intended primarily to be an avatar for the player: a means for the player to put themselves inside the game, to inhabit the game world, to become that legendary hero. This reflects how many computer and video games were marketed at the time: on the basis that they allowed you to live out fantasies that were impossible — or at the very least unlikely — in reality. Where games had narration, it was in second-person; marketing materials put the emphasis on "you" rather than the name of the protagonist, if they even had one.

Advance a few years as RPGs started getting a little more comfortable with storytelling. We have the early days of the Ys series, for example, where protagonist Adol Christin was still silent, but he had a certain amount of personality about him that could be understood through the way people reacted to and communicated with him. While the Ys games have their dark moments, the overall tone of them is rather light-hearted, being all about the joy of adventure and discovery; once again, the player was brought along for the ride, but this time, they were a companion to the protagonist rather than being the protagonist.

As we moved into the 16-bit era, games started to become more sophisticated and the increased amount of storage capacity available to developers allowed them to be a bit more ambitious with their storytelling. From Final Fantasy IV onwards, we started to get much more well-defined characters in the main cast, and the same, too, was true for longtime rival Dragon Quest. We still had our silent protagonists — our Adols and our Links — but where our protagonists had a voice, they often had noble intentions or goals: to help people, to save the world, or sometimes simply for the joy of adventure. This overall air of positivity about many of the games of this time was a reflection of this period being regarded as something of a "golden age" for games: everyone was excited about what the 16-bit consoles could do, and as rumours started to leak out about the upcoming 32- and 64-bit offerings from Sony and Nintendo respectively, it was an exciting time to be a gamer.

This air of positivity continued throughout the PlayStation/Saturn/N64 era, and can be seen throughout the numerous role-playing games that graced these platforms — although Nintendo's console, being cartridge-based, often got left behind due to developers having grand ambitions that often required the extensive storage capacity of CD-ROM to fully realise. At the same time, though, a hint of darkness started to creep in. With Final Fantasy VII, we had the beginning of the "moody protagonist" trope with Cloud Strife, which was subsequently continued with the sulky Squall in Final Fantasy VIII before reverting to form with Zidane and company in Final Fantasy IX. The arrival of moody, angsty heroes on the scene corresponded roughly with a sharp rise in teens expressing themselves through music and counterculture; Cloud and Squall hit the scene around the same time many of us were listening to Nirvana and contemplating slitting our wrists to Radiohead.

That seed of darkness took root, but didn't flourish just yet. The Dreamcast and PS2 era saw a continuation of the overall air of positivity and the joy of adventure in role-playing games, with a few notable exceptions. Ryudo from Grandia 2 on Dreamcast stands out in many players' memories as being a bit different from the norm. He wasn't all "let's adventure!" like more traditional RPG heroes, but he wasn't really angsty like Cloud and Squall. His attitude erred more towards the bleaker side of things, though; he was cynical and pessimistic on many occasions, but ultimately he did the right thing. I highlight Ryudo in particular here as the starting point for an increasingly common trope we're seeing these days.

In the PS3 era, we started to see JRPG protagonists diverge in two different directions, more often than not distinguished by gender as much as attitude. Female protagonists tended to be lively, energetic, positive and full of life, but often inexperienced or incompetent, at least at the start of their adventures — the Atelier and Neptunia girls are good examples of this — while male protagonists weren't necessarily tormented or angsty as such, but the air of cynicism which Ryudo had introduced in Grandia 2 started to become increasingly apparent with every male-fronted JRPG.

How this connects to Fairy Fencer F is simple: protagonist Fang is a cynical, lazy lout who is primarily out for his own gratification, at least at the start of the story. As the adventure progresses, he does naturally start to think about others as much as — or even more than — himself — but his intense cynicism, his unwillingness to be bothered with anything that sounds too troublesome, feels very much like a response to prevalent attitudes in a lot of gaming today. Many people can't be bothered with anything that's difficult or troublesome; if something's supposed to take a long time they need to find the most "efficient" way, even if that's also the most boring way; and if the opportunity comes up to bypass hard work for the same rewards — paying up to skip content or get overpowered equipment, watching YouTube videos of endings — then many people will take it.

Of course, there's a kind of delicious irony about Fang as commentary on the laziness and cynicism of many people in modern society in a game by Compile Heart, which will inevitably be hundreds of hours long and filled with lots of grinding and busywork. But given the company's history with using games as satirical works — primarily through the Neptunia series, but Fairy Fencer F has, so far, despite a darker, more serious tone, dipped its toes into satire too at times — this irony is doubtless entirely intentional, and Fang's growth as a character over the course of those hundreds of hours is symbolic of those people who aren't cynical, who are willing to put the "work" in to fully enjoy a game. His development, then, mirrors the player's own journey in many ways: breaking through the endless cynicism, laziness and grumpiness that pervades the modern online sphere to find that stepping out into the wider world is rewarding in its own way.

Or perhaps he's just a grumpy old sod. It's nearly 3am. Humour me.

2401: Episodes

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I've just finished watching the first season of a Showtime show called Episodes, which is available on Netflix. It stars Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig as a husband and wife writer duo who head to LA to make an American version of their successful (fictional) British sitcom Lyman's Boys, only to discover that taking a show across the pond isn't an entirely straightforward affair. Along the way they become involved with a number of colourful characters, most notably a fictionalised version of Matt LeBlanc played by ol' Joey himself.

The overall tone of the show is pretty much what you'd expect from something Greig and Mangan are involved with, and they're perfectly cast in their roles as Beverly and Sean Lincoln. LeBlanc, too, is excellent, with his characterisation being made up of a combination of the popular stereotypes about him — or rather, about his most fondly-remembered part, Joey from Friends — and a surprising amount of depth and moral ambiguity.

The show is deeply critical of the way American TV networks and showbusiness in general do things. Initially brought to LA on the assurance that network executive "Merc" is in love with their show, Sean and Beverly subsequently discover that very little of what they've been told is true. Merc hasn't seen their show and lots of people already have their own opinions on how best to "Americanise" the whole thing. Most notable is the casting of LeBlanc in the lead role of the headmaster Lyman, who was, in the original British version, an erudite, witty, portly and middle-aged man who developed a strong bond with his young male charges and a doomed infatuation with his school's lesbian librarian. After a number of "suggestions" and changes far beyond Sean and Beverly's control, what was once called Lyman's Boys and was about a headmaster in a boys' boarding school subsequently becomes Pucks!, a show about a lacrosse coach who is in love with a not-at-all-lesbian librarian.

Despite everything, Pucks! actually turns out to be a rather good show that test audiences respond well to, but the stress that piles on top of Sean and Beverly brings the pair of them almost to breaking point on numerous occasions. Sean's developing friendship with LeBlanc and his overactive libido leads him to consider playing away from Beverly with Morning, the much-older-than-she-looks-but-still-smoking-hot actress who plays the librarian in Pucks!, but ultimately his own sense of integrity wins out. This doesn't stop Beverly from overreacting and completely misreading the situation, however, leading to some spectacular tensions being released in the last episode of the first season.

Episodes is effective because, for the most part, it relies on a distinctly modern British approach to situation comedy. That is to say, it errs more on the side of comedy-drama than playing out setpieces for laughs. There's an air of restraint that runs through the whole programme, which makes moments like the furious and rather incompetent fight between Sean and LeBlanc in the last episode all the more effective, because they are symptomatic of how the show depicts "the British condition" as a whole: bottling everything up inside, then releasing it in a spectacular frenzy when it all gets too much. LeBlanc even comments on this in the middle of the whole situation that he is, in part, to blame for: "Man, I can't get over how you guys fight," he says. "When we fight, it's just all 'fuck you', 'fuck you', 'no, fuck YOU'…"

With everything I've said there, you'd probably be right to assume that Episodes isn't a show that everyone will find entirely palatable. It's rather brutally honest and plays a lot on awkward situations that some viewers might find uncomfortable to witness. It builds tension between the characters absolutely masterfully, only releasing it when it's absolutely at breaking point. And, as a critique of the falseness of showbusiness, it does its job extremely well.

Very interested to see how the subsequent seasons go, since the first season ended on a suitably infuriating cliffhanger.

2400: Final Fantasy XV Delayed for All the Right Reasons

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Final Fantasy XV was originally due to come out at the end of next month. Today, director Tabata officially confirmed the rumours that have been swirling around the Internet for the last couple of days: the game has been delayed until November 29.

Tabata announced the delay in a video on the game's official YouTube channel.

His reasoning behind the delay was that, although the team had finally completed the "master version" of the game, meaning a version that was feature-complete and that they would be happy releasing to consumers on disc, they had already started work on some additional content and adjustments that would normally be distributed as a "day one patch" to be applied automatically when a Final Fantasy XV player had their console connected to the Internet.

The trouble with day one patches, though, is that they're not part of that master game experience. They're not on the disc; they're reliant on an Internet connection. And while the "not everyone has an Internet connection" argument is rapidly losing steam as broadband becomes more and more affordable and ubiquitous, there's still a fundamental problem with them from an archiving perspective. In other words, if someone interested in the history of gaming were to become interested in checking out Final Fantasy XV some twenty or thirty years down the line, it's doubtful the PS4's PSN servers would still be up and running to allow them to download the patch, and as such they'd be left with an inferior — although, in this case, still complete — version to explore.

In some cases, day one patches contain essential bug fixes that actually get the game working, meaning the game is unplayable straight from the disc. And in others, they fundamentally shake up the structure of the game — the day one patch for No Man's Sky is a good example of this latter instance. There are very few cases where they are desirable, although sometimes developers are left with no choice — if a game is rushed out of the door to meet a deadline, for example, or if in last-minute testing after the game has been duplicated several million times, a major problem is found.

With Final Fantasy XV being such a big project, though, it seems that Tabata and his team have been given the flexibility to hold the game's release back until it meets with their high standards, however, and Tabata himself notes that he is uncomfortable with releasing a disc-based version of a game that isn't the very best version it can possibly be. He's not ruling out future patches and DLC — and the existence of a "Season Pass" for the game confirms that there are going to be a number of substantial add-ons for Final Fantasy XV — but he wants that initial day one experience to be as smooth as possible for all players around the world, regardless of whether or not they have an Internet connection or are able to download the day one patch.

This, ladies and gents, is how you make a video game. It's what we used to expect from previous, non Internet-connected consoles, and it's something that we have lost sight of in the modern age, where attention-deficient mobile game-playing audiences bray and whine if games don't receive "updates" every two weeks, even where none are necessary. While it's disappointing that this no longer means I'll be playing Final Fantasy XV next month, I respect Tabata and his team enormously for wanting to make their game the very best it can be before it gets into the players' grubby little hands.

I guess that means I have time to play through Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force before Final Fantasy XV after all, then…

2399: No Man's Sky and The Game as a Pure Relaxation Aid

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I've been playing a bit more of No Man's Sky this evening and I still like it a lot. It's a wonderfully dreamy, ethereal experience to play — helped partly by the wonderful electronic soundtrack that accompanies everything you do — but also because it seems to have been designed to be an experience that is pure relaxation rather than the more typical goal-driven affair that most games tend to be.

There is no goal in No Man's Sky. Well, all right, there's one: get to the centre of the galaxy, but that's so vague as to be almost meaningless, and the important thing about playing No Man's Sky is not a desperate attempt to achieve that goal as quickly or efficiently as possible, but rather to enjoy the journey exactly as you see fit.

Any other goals in the game are entirely of your own making and will depend entirely on how you like to play. One person's goal might be to fully scan all the planets in a system to receive the hefty payouts you get for "completing" a planetary analysis. Another's might be to produce as many warp cells as possible as quickly as possible so they can make a large number of jumps rapidly. Another's still might be to upgrade their ship, or their suit, or their multitool… it really is up to you what you want to do, and No Man's Sky offers just enough in the way of structure and mechanics to allow you to make these goals for yourself without it ever feeling like you're following a linear, prescribed path.

It struck me while I was playing tonight that this is what the game is all about. You don't play No Man's Sky if you're a powergamer, seeking the "best" or "most efficient" way to "clear" something. You play No Man's Sky during a period of downtime, in which you want to just sit back, relax and take part in something that doesn't demand anything of you, but which has enough in the way of interactivity and structure to distinguish itself from more passive art forms.

In many ways, it can perhaps be regarded as the natural evolution of the "walking simulator", the subgenre of first-person adventure games that focus not on puzzle solving or other aspects of "gameplay", but on storytelling and experiencing a world as if you were there. No Man's Sky differs in some substantial ways, however, the lack of a linear main narrative being the main one, but the "immersive sim" aspect of the "walking simulator" is present and correct. If you are the sort of person who enjoyed Gone Home not for the '90s teenage lesbian angst but instead for the interesting experience that was just poking around that little world the developers had created, then you might get something out of No Man's Sky, because the whole game is poking around worlds of various descriptions.

That lack of concrete story might be an issue for some, admittedly, but for those who still have a working imagination, No Man's Sky puts it to good use by allowing you to interpret what you're seeing as you see fit. Is that abandoned outpost that's full of weird slimy gooey tentacly things a sign that something awful happened there, or is it simply a natural product of the passage of time? Are the Gek a race of entreprenurial merchants, or do they hide a darker secret, hoping to enslave the universe to their bidding? How did that planet get those curiously man-made looking pillars of rock everywhere?

One of the most interesting questions No Man's Sky asks the player is who are you? You never see yourself in the game, and the fact that the game doesn't have multiplayer (boy, you wouldn't believe the whining that's been going on by people who apparently expected this to be an MMO) means that you don't see others like you, either. Even if you could see other players, though, there's no guarantee that they'd be exactly the same as you. Are you human? Are you Gek? Are you a construct of the mysterious Atlas? Are you something else altogether? The game doesn't answer this — at least, it hasn't in the 10 hours I've spent with it so far — and so leaves this rather important question up to the player's interpretation.

In other words, No Man's Sky is what you make of it. If you go in expecting some sort of grand space opera with a clearly constructed story, villains to defeat and great evils to stand against, you may well be disappointed. If, however, you go in expecting a game that allows you to pretend to be a spaceman for a few hours at a time, and can extract a certain degree of joy from that simple experience, then you'll have a wonderful time.

It's a game to relax and unwind with, not a game to "git gud" at. And I appreciate it a great deal for that. That doesn't mean that I want to play it all day every day, but it does mean that I can open it up at any time, fly around and explore a bit, and feel like I've had my money's worth. And with the tantalising possibility of future updates adding more and more interesting mechanics to the game as a whole, I can see it being a game I'll dip in and out of for a very long time indeed.

2398: The Many Faces of the Roguelike

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The phrase "roguelike" has been overused to such a degree in recent memory that it's become all but meaningless as a descriptor of what a game is actually like to play, but if nothing else it acts as a suitable starting point for a discussion about how a game is constructed, what the player is expected to do in it and where its longevity comes from.

The reason why "roguelike" itself as a term isn't particularly meaningful any more is that it's diverged into a number of discrete but related bloodlines over the years, with each offering their own particular take on being inspired by the dungeon-crawling classic. And, just as with most things, not getting on with one particular roguelike absolutely doesn't preclude you from enjoying others. In fact, this is one of the main reasons "roguelike" as a descriptor isn't useful any more, because it doesn't reflect the sheer diversity that is part of this subgenre in 2016.

Let's take a look at the different branches.

The traditional roguelike

A traditional roguelike builds on the foundations of the original Rogue in a number of ways. It presents the player with a seemingly simple task to complete (usually "find the x of y" or "kill the z") and a means through which to accomplish this task, usually a multi-level dungeon that is randomly generated with each playthrough, but which has the final objective down on the bottom floor.

Traditional roguelikes don't have to be presented as ASCII text characters, but many deliberately choose to, as a key part of these games is the fact they occupy a curious middle ground between tabletop roleplaying and standard computer-based hack and slash role-playing games, and as such a key part of enjoying them is having an active imagination with which to conjure up images of what your character is up to, the strange and terrifying dangers they're having to deal with and the horrible effects that potion you probably shouldn't have drunk is having on you.

A key aspect of traditional roguelikes is permadeath: in other words, your character dies, your save file is wiped and you have to start again. This mechanic can sometimes be circumnavigated by doing unspeakable things to your save game files, but doing so is generally — and quite rightly — regarded as cheating. In other words, if you're going to play a traditional roguelike properly, you can't just charge in with little regard for the consequences like modern hack-and-slash games, where the consequence for dying is usually little more than a portion of your gold and having to run back to where your corpse was.

Some traditional roguelikes try and tell an unfolding story by complementing the procedurally generated content with pre-composed quests, conversations, characters and lore items. More often than not, though, a more old-school, back-of-the-tape-box approach is taken, with narrative very much taking a back seat to exploration and character development in the mechanical sense.

One aspect where traditional roguelikes are heavily inspired by tabletop roleplaying is in the amount of freedom you're given right from character creation. You can generally pick from different races, genders and classes as well as tinker with your base stats to construct the perfect (or entertainingly flawed) character of your dreams. But that freedom often carries over into the game itself, too; many traditional roguelikes, for example, allow you to dig into the walls of the dungeon to change its layout or construct shortcuts, and the mechanics often afford the opportunity to be a little creative with your solutions to problems. A good example is the time I played Angband and ran out of torches several levels down in the dungeon, necessitating me "feeling" my way along the walls of the dungeon (by bumping into them, which reveals them on the map) until I could get back to the stairway up. This mechanic wasn't hard-coded into the game, but I was able to do it successfully thanks to the systems that are in place.

Good examples of traditional roguelikes in my experience include the original Rogue, which is rather simple by today's standards; Nethack, which is a good entry point if you can learn to decipher the ASCII interface; Angband, which initially seems extremely complicated but gradually becomes more and more understandable once you learn a few useful keyboard commands; Tales of Maj'Eyal (formerly Tales of Middle Earth), which is a highly polished, very flexible roguelike that strikes a good balance between storytelling and dungeon crawling; and Caves of Qud, which is unusual for the genre in that it has a sci-fi theme rather than Tolkien-inspired fantasy.

The modern Western roguelike

Modern Western roguelikes tend to take the basic structure of the traditional roguelike and present it in a manner that has more immediacy and accessibility. Perhaps the very best example of this is the wonderful Dungeons of Dredmor, which is as brutal as any traditional roguelike but has charming 16-bit era pixel art-style graphics, a quirky soundtrack and an entertaining sense of humour. Dungeons of Dredmor does the whole permadeath thing and allows you the freedom to build custom characters with a variety of skills — some of which are very bizarre indeed — but doesn't quite offer the full freedom of a completely traditional roguelike thanks to the constraints placed on it by being presented graphically rather than abstractly.

Sword of the Stars: The Pit is another title worth checking out. While its visuals are shockingly bad, it's an atmospheric game that, like Caves of Qud in the traditional corner, eschews the standard fantasy setting in favour of sci-fi. There's an interesting selection of character classes and skills to play with, and some enjoyable mechanics to explore and discover as you play.

The modern Eastern roguelike

Japan latched on to the roguelike structure at some point in the last few console generations, and Eastern developers have produced some great games that have a distinctly Japanese flavour to them while still retaining a number of the key aspects of traditional roguelikes.

One important difference with Japanese roguelikes, however, is that they usually contain some form of persistence rather than permadeath. Death is still an inconvenience, but it rarely, if ever, necessitates going all the way back to the beginning of the game to start all over again.

Exactly how death is handled varies from game to game. In Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon for Wii, for example, dying causes you to lose all your non-banked gold and every item you were carrying except key items for the story and the equipment you had equipped at the time. You keep your experience levels and Job levels, so you can gradually "creep" forward in terms of progress, getting a bit more experience and power each time, until you can eventually just steamroller your way through by outlevelling the challenges — although a number of the bonus dungeons feature a "level sync" mechanic whereby if you're over a particular level, you're pushed back down to the maximum for that dungeon and sometimes given additional non-standard "rules" to folow.

In ZHP for PSP, meanwhile, your character resets to level 1 each time you enter a new dungeon, regardless of whether or not you cleared the last one successfully. The twist is, any time you exit a dungeon, be it through death or successfully clearing it, your character's base level and stats increase, meaning that a "level 1" late in the game will be considerably more powerful than a "level 1" at the start of the game, particularly when you throw equipment into the mix. You still lose all the stuff you were carrying if you die, though, and to add further insult to injury your character develops a phobia of whatever killed him, causing various penalties when encountering them again until they "get over it" by successfully overcoming said challenge several times.

One Way Heroics for PC takes another approach again. Here, there's a traditional permadeath system in effect, though you can retry the same game map by entering a specific seed on starting the game each time. There's an element of player persistence, though, depending on how well you performed, and this was subsequently expanded with the Plus version of the game. You can unlock new classes, carry items over to a subsequent playthrough and upgrade the castle where every game starts (and by extension unlock a number of different quests besides the standard one). There are also a number of named characters you'll encounter in your quests if you get far enough; once you've met them once, they'll be revealed and give you tips on the post-game score screen rather than appearing as shadowy figures. There's also a substantial meta-game in place where there's a "true" ending that can only be unlocked through some extremely convoluted processes. It's a Japanese game, for sure.

Roguelites

This term was, I believe, coined for Rogue Legacy, and is used to describe games that draw inspiration from traditional roguelikes but which tend to fall into markedly different genres and playstyles to the traditional turn-based top-down RPG that roguelikes usually are.

The aforementioned Rogue Legacy was an interesting affair, with Metroidvania-style platform action RPG action coupled with persistent progression between sessions by upgrading your castle and unlocking new abilities as a result. Each character was also regarded as a descendant of the previous one, too, meaning that there was the possibility certain genetic markers could be passed on. These could affect the gameplay — the hereditary ability to jump high or do more damage is very useful, for example — while others were largely there for humour and characterisation. A colour-blind character, for example, had to do their playthrough in black and white.

The Binding of Isaac is another well-known modern roguelite, this time combining the presentation of the original Legend of Zelda's dungeons with some dark, disgusting visual humour and Gauntlet-style shoot 'em up mechanics. While Isaac didn't have persistent progression in quite the same way as Rogue Legacy, you did unlock new items as you progressed through the game, which subsequently gave them a chance of appearing in future playthroughs rather than guaranteeing you'd have them. Collecting all these items provided a substantial metagame for Isaac, let alone the sheer challenge of actually getting to the end of the game.

Finally for now, one of the most recent roguelites can be found in the form of Enter the Gungeon. This is a straight-up action game with randomly generated levels, but its main appeal comes from the many varied and bizarre weapons you'll pick up on each playthrough. There's also an element of persistent progression as you unlock new features using currency you earn in each playthrough; like Isaac, there's a substantial metagame in unlocking everything, though in this case, your unlocks will likely make subsequent playthroughs a bit easier to make it through.

It's pretty fascinating how a simple title from the dawn of gaming has spawned such a diverse range of titles inspired by it to one degree or another. How many other games from those days can boast such a feat? Not that many.

2397: No Man's Sky

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I dutifully downloaded No Man's Sky at 6pm this evening when it became available on Steam and, aside from a break for dinner, I have been playing it all night.

It's very good indeed, with a few caveats.

The first is that it is not a game for the impatient. Before you can even get off whatever planet you get dumped on at the beginning, you have to repair a bunch of your ship's systems, which involves gathering a selection of resources, some of which are harder to find than others. (Pro-tip: zinc can be found in yellowy leafy plants, and heridium can be found in large blue-black rocky monolith-type structures. You'll thank me for those.) It took me a good half an hour of wandering around (including becoming lost in a rather labyrinthine network of caves that I mistakenly thought might be a shortcut to the heridium deposit my scanner had helpfully found for me 15 minutes' real-time walk away from the crater my spaceship had deposited itself in) before I assembled everything I needed to get going, but it was absolutely worth it; lifting off for the first time in No Man's Sky is one of those watershed moments in gaming, like coming out of the sewers for the first time in Oblivion.

The second is that it is not a game for those who like to have their hand held, particularly in the early hours. While the ship-repairing process acts as a tutorial of sorts, the game literally starts with you waking up next to your crashed ship with absolutely no context whatsoever, and from there you have to determine exactly what you're supposed to do.

There are supposedly three main "routes" through the game, one of which is simply "do your own thing and see what happens", so wandering around aimlessly trying to scan all the indigenous life on the planet you've found yourself on is absolutely an option, but so too is following the trail of breadcrumbs left by the mysterious "Atlas" system, which has distinctly sinister omniscient, omnipotent being undertones (and, appropriately enough, this route was apparently penned by one of the writers of Deus Ex).

It's a game that encourages experimentation. Arrive in a new system? Scan it and see if anything shows up, then go investigate. Wander around a bit outside to dig up some minerals and perhaps even find a few alien relics that help you learn the words of various languages. Found some weird technology? Disassemble it and incorporate its components into your suit, ship or multi-tool. Found some shiny glowy things? Sell them off for vast profit at your friendly neighbourhood space station. Met a malfunctioning cyborg bartender who wants nothing more than to shake hands with you? Make sure you have more than one health point before doing so, otherwise said bar will find itself adorned with a rather obtrusive tombstone for the rest of time.

There's a frightening degree of customisation in the game, too, though you have to balance this with your relatively limited inventory space, since upgrades for your various pieces of tech occupy valuable inventory slots or cargo space in your ship. Upgrading your multi-tool is probably the most interesting so far, because by doing this what starts as a simple short-range mining laser can become a machine gun, a plasma launcher, a grenade launcher, a shotgun, a long-range scanner, a lifeform analyser and all manner of other things besides. You even have to consider the layout of the components in your tool, because upgrades and modifications unsurprisingly work better if placed adjacent to the parts they are tweaking.

The thing that's struck me so far is how incredibly absorbing it is. The whole game has the look of Tim White's cover art for Isaac Asimov novels, with a touch of Roger Dean here and there. The worlds you'll visit are varied and interesting, despite their randomly generated nature; there are hills, valleys, caves, seas, deserts, mountains, canyons and all manner of other landscapes to explore, and, assuming you don't piss off the local Sentinels or the indigenous life, exploring it is an enormously relaxing pleasure. Indeed, at one point this evening as I stepped out of my ship onto a tiny island, then dove beneath the ocean waves to see what lay beneath, the Zen-like atmosphere of it all made me feel more at peace than I think anything else I've had the pleasure of experiencing in recent memory. Then I started to drown, so I had to cut my underwater exploits short, but for a short period it was bliss.

Thus far, No Man's Sky looks set to be a really interesting take on sci-fi that is a far cry from the usual "space military"-centric angle we tend to get in video games. Its dreamy, mysterious narration (all in text, no voiceovers) is written with a similar tone to Asimov novels and lends a suitable air of, appropriately enough, otherworldliness to the whole affair. I'm not sure if I've locked myself into one of the three "paths" as yet, or if that continues to be a series of choices you make as you progress through the game, but so far everything I've encountered with relation to the lore is fascinating and intriguing, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. Well, I know that — the centre of the universe — but why? What happens there? Who are you, the player? Why is it so important you follow this path that has seemingly been set out for you?

I can't answer any of those questions yet, but I'm looking forward to seeking some answers. It's early days yet, but so far this feels like the space game I always wanted to play. Fly a cool ship, land on planets, wander around, shoot stuff like a badass, become embroiled in metaphysical crazytimes, possibly find out that you/your ship/the weird thing on the cover is God or something.

2396: The Many Final Fantasies You Haven't Played

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One thing that really, really bugs me about people who say they "don't like Final Fantasy" is that they're showing a spectacular lack of awareness of what the series actually is and how it has evolved over the years.

I've previously remarked on how the mainline numbered series has radically reinvented itself with each installment, and how it is thus dumb as hell to refuse to play any of them on the grounds that you didn't like one of them, but one aspect of the series that doesn't get brought up nearly as much is the fact that there are numerous entries outside of those main numbered entries that represent even more diversity in gameplay styles, aesthetics and overall "feel" while still remaining recognisably "Final Fantasy" at their core.

Just off the top of my head, here are some examples — this is not, by any means, an exhaustive list, either:

Final Fantasy Adventure (Game Boy) — actually part of the Seiken Densetsu/Mana series if we're being picky, but it has Final Fantasy on the box in Western territories, so it totally counts. This is an action RPG a bit like the older top-down Zelda games with the addition of more explicitly RPG-style mechanics and systems such as experience points and levelling up.
Final Fantasy Legend I, II, III (Game Boy) — like its stablemate, this is actually part of a different series, in this case SaGa, but once again, since it has Final Fantasy on the box in Western territories, it counts as a Final Fantasy spinoff. While initially appearing fairly similar to the early Final Fantasy games in terms of mechanics, the three Final Fantasy Legend games had some rather quirky, unconventional methods of powering up your characters, including feeding monster-type characters meat, praying to the random number gods in the sky that mutants would naturally grow the stats you wanted and simply finding stat-increasing items. Their narratives also blended fantasy and sci-fi in a way that will be very familiar to fans of later Final Fantasy games in particular.
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (SNES) — a simplified take on the RPG that is regarded with a certain degree of scorn by many Final Fantasy fans, Mystic Quest is a reasonably solid game in its own right with a great soundtrack, but is very easy. It was intended to be a gentle introduction to RPGs, and in that regard it succeeds admirably. Just don't go in expecting deep, complex mechanics, because there aren't any.
Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1, PSP, mobile) — one of the greatest games ever made, and also one of the most complex, stat-crunching monstrosities of game mechanics you'll ever encounter this side of a Nippon Ichi game. Final Fantasy Tactics takes the familiar Jobs and abilities of Final Fantasy and transplants the action to an isometric, turn-based strategic battlefield. It also ties it together with a borderline-incomprehensible but enormously ambitious plot that introduces us to the land of Ivalice, a game world that would form the backdrop for several future Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy Tactics was subsequently followed up by a number of sequels for Nintendo handhelds.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Gamecube) — a bizarre multiplayer affair in which four players had to control their characters using Game Boy Advances hooked up to a Gamecube, giving them "second screen" functionality long before the Wii U, Smartglass and Sony's cross-platform functionality with Vita and mobile. Truly cooperative, it demanded that one player carry a special item to keep a deadly "miasma" away, while the other three players fended off hordes of monsters and slowly advanced. An enormously ambitious idea somewhat hobbled by the necessity of having 1) friends, 2) friends willing to commit time to play a computer game with you, 3) friends with Game Boy Advances; I never got to play very far in it for reasons that fall somewhat into all three columns.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (Wii) — a download-only title for Wii, this game had very little to do with the original Crystal Chronicles and instead was an interesting take on the "god game" genre. As King, you oversaw the construction of a city and the recruitment of adventurers to delve into the dungeons of your land. You didn't actually go into the dungeons with the adventurers yourself, however; you simply sent them off to do their thing and read reports of what they got up to when they returned. If they returned. Surprisingly compelling.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord (Wii) — while it would have been easy to just reskin My Life as a King with a more evil theme, My Life as a Darklord is instead a tower defense title in which you, as the titular Darklord, must defend your mobile tower base from incoming enemies.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (Wii) — an action-adventure for Wii in which the enemies don't so much power up in terms of stats as you progress, but start using more advanced tactics and AI.
Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (Nintendo DS) — the predecessor to the 3DS' Bravely Default, 4 Heroes of Light is a relatively conventional RPG for the DS, but does incorporate some interesting cooperative multiplayer functionality.
Final Fantasy Dimensions (Mobile) — a full, original, old-school Final Fantasy released on mobile episodically. To date not available anywhere but mobile, much to the chagrin of people who don't like playing games on mobile.
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (Mobile) — a traditional-feeling take on Final Fantasy fused with the popular "gacha" mechanics of modern free-to-play mobile games, this game, put together by the developers of the excellent Brave Frontier, is a fine way to waste time on the toilet.
Mobius Final Fantasy (Mobile) — one of the most technically impressive games on mobile, this game likewise incorporates free-to-play gacha mechanics but instead focuses on a single character with some highly interactive, board/card game-style turn-based combat.
Chocobo Racing (PS1) — Final Fantasy Kart. What more do you need to know?

The reason these numerous spinoffs come to mind is that I've spent a goodly portion of this evening playing one of them that I haven't mentioned above: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon for Wii. I picked this up for a couple of quid from CEX a few months back, and decided to give it a go this evening.

It's one of the most charming games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

Taking on the role of a chocobo called Chocobo, you explore numerous randomly generated dungeons, fight turn-based battles against enemies, find phat lewt, get cursed by some of it, play the local moogle at card games and, when you feel like it, rescue the town of Lostime from whatever awful apocalyptic disaster caused it to disappear from the known world and everyone to forget everything that was ever important to them every time the Bell of Oblivion rings.

I'm very early in the game so far so I'm loathe to say too much about its mechanics and story, but it's already charmed me with a combination of series fanservice (particularly in the music department) and some solid roguelike-esque gameplay. I'm looking forward to playing more, and this will doubtless be my main distraction tomorrow while I endure the long wait for No Man's Sky to finally unlock on Steam!

The moral of this story, then, is that you (yes, you) don't hate Final Fantasy. You hate Final Fantasy VII. Or VIII. Or XII (how could you, you monster). Or XIII. Or XIV. Or "the NES ones". Or… you get the idea.

What I'm trying to say, then, is that if you've previously written the series off in this way… don't. The series as a whole, including its non-numbered spinoffs, represents one of the most interesting and diverse selections of games out there — not to mention a great cross-section of gaming's evolution from the NES era right up until today.

Now I'm off to go explore some more dungeons with brave little Chocobo. DONNNNNG.

2395: Adventures in Space

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After feeling somewhat lukewarm to the idea of it for a while — the relentless hype train hasn't helped — I've come around to the idea of No Man's Sky, so much so that I'm now actually looking forward to it releasing on PC on Friday so I can get started on some grand space adventures.

I'm very interested to see how it's turned out, though I am tempering my expectations accordingly as well as intending on paying attention to the evolution of the game over its lifespan; this is a game that, several months down the line, may be very different to what it is on launch day, and that prospect is both exciting and a bit of a reflection on the modern games biz.

The reason why I'm interested to see how No Man's Sky ends up is that the concept reminds me of some of my favourite underrated games of yesteryear, and a genre which we don't really "do" any more, and that is the Star Trek-style space sim. Star Wars-style (i.e. combat-heavy) space sims have been enjoying a bit of a resurgence in the indie space in recent years, but the more sedate pace of Star Trek-style (i.e. exploration-heavy) sims is something still largely consigned to the past, with the exception of a few 2D affairs like Starbound and Interstellaria, neither of which, I feel, particularly capture the real feeling of space travel and exploration.

The specific games I'm thinking of when I ponder Star Trek-style space sims are the two Starflight games by Electronic Arts back in the 16-bit era. These were games where you were given a starship and pretty much told to just get on with it at the outset; there was an overarching plot to follow, but the main attraction of Starflight was the ability to just pootle around known (and unknown) space exploring solar systems and planets, then bringing goodies of various types back to home base for analysis and filthy lucre.

No Man's Sky isn't quite the same thing as Starflight in that you appear to be piloting a single-seater ship rather than a big-ass starship, but the philosophy behind the game seems to be similar in that the emphasis is on discovery, and the main means through which you profit, progress and flourish is through exploring and finding exciting things rather than blasting anything that dares to pass through your crosshairs into a smooth pâté.

To continue the comparison, both Starflight and No Man's Sky had/have significant planetside components in which you explore, find useful things and perhaps uncover a few mysteries along the way. I can't speak for No Man's Sky yet, but I have some fond memories of landing on planets in Starflight, then sending my all-terrain vehicle out into the wasteland to track down valuable minerals, artifacts and, if I was lucky, some specimens of life, too. Starflight's primitive graphics were enriched by some enjoyable descriptive text whenever your ground crew ran into trouble, and naturally it would be up to the crewmember you'd assigned as your medical officer to patch people up when they got back onto your ship.

Starflight was interesting, exciting and compelling even when you weren't in mortal peril, though, and indeed a lot of the time you weren't. There was a simple joy in entering a new system for the first time only to discover that it had an abundance of planets and moons, each of which could be landed on, explored and stripped of as many valuable minerals as you could fit in your ship's cargo holds. It sounds as if this is the sort of experience No Man's Sky offers, too, and if that's the case then I'm pretty excited for it.

Like Starflight, No Man's Sky appears to have an overarching narrative pushing you towards a "conclusion" of some sort at the centre of the galaxy, but also like its distant predecessor, you're free to just do your own thing as you see fit for the most part.

I'll be particularly interested to see how things like encounters with alien NPCs and suchlike go in No Man's Sky, as some of these interactions were a real highlight of Starflight. Judging by this screenshot, though, it looks like I don't have much to worry about.

Anyway. Just a couple of days to go until I can find out for sure whether No Man's Sky is actually the space sim I've been wanting to play since I didn't have a spare floppy disk to hand to save my game in Starflight on the Atari ST, so had to start again each and every time I played. No such woes await with No Man's Sky — hopefully, anyway, though doubtless day-one server issues will be A Thing — and so I'm looking forward to jumping into my Roger Dean/Asimov-inspired space odyssey and, frankly, seeing if Hello Games have managed to make an interesting game out of 18 quintillion planets or however many are supposed to be in the damn thing.

2394: The Witcher Adventure Game

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Gave The Witcher Adventure Game board game a try today with the assistance of Andie; she wasn't a huge fan, but it's not really her kind of game. She stuck it out to the end, though, so I was able to get a good sense of how the whole game works. And I liked the game quite a bit.

The Witcher Adventure Game eschews the "easy" route the game could have taken by not being a reskin of Descent; rather than being a dungeon crawler, it's presented at a more "macro" level as Geralt the eponymous witcher, Triss the sorceress, Dandelion the bard and Yarpen the, um, dwarf explore the Continent from Novigrad to Rivia, taking on quests, battling monsters and dealing with Foul Fates that infest the regions.

At its core, The Witcher Adventure Game is about resource management. Most quests require that you have a certain combination of "proof" tokens to complete them, and these are acquired by collecting "lead" tokens of the same colour in varying quantities according to which character you are playing. Geralt, for example, being a combat-inclined character, has a much easier job acquiring combat proof tokens, needing only 3 leads to trade in for one, whereas Triss, conversely, is better at acquiring magic, Dandelion at diplomacy, and so forth.

The basic flow of the game, then, goes: get quest, acquire lead tokens, exchange lead tokens for proof tokens, go to quest location, complete quest. Repeat twice more to end the game, at which point whoever has the most victory points wins.

It is, naturally, a bit more complicated than that thanks to the various obstacles that get in your way. Many quests — particularly if you're playing Geralt — involve combat, though you can still complete the quest even if you don't "win" the combat. And each main quest card also carries a number of sidequests that are optional, but worth a number of extra points each. There's also a "support" quest where you can recruit the assistance of one of your opponents; if they accept, they get 6 points in exchange for some of their resources, while you also get 3.

Progression through the game is largely driven by each character's Development deck of cards. As one of the two actions you can take in a turn, you can draw two of these cards and keep one as an ability that you can then use from that point on when appropriate. In Geralt's case, his Development cards include potions and Signs, the witchers' take on magic spells. The early game, it seems, is about acquiring a good spread of these in order to be able to deal with difficult situations you might encounter later on.

The cards are nicely thematic. Not only do many of them have enjoyable flavour text on them, but they work how you might expect if you've played the video games. Geralt's card for the Quen sign, for example — which, in the video games, envelops him in a magical shield for a short period — allows him to exchange dice rolls with the Sign symbol for defensive capabilities. Also, much like the first Witcher video game in particular, Geralt must brew his potions in advance to be able to use them, and must quaff them before starting combat rather than chugging away mid-battle. This makes for some interesting decisions to make, particularly if you know you're going to be dealing with multiple threats.

The overall way the game mechanics work seems to fit nicely with the themes and feel of The Witcher as a whole, too. As a bard, Dandelion is able to enjoy a steady income of gold coins, for example, while Geralt often wanders around penniless, having to rely on other resources to get by. The Investigation cards you can draw as one of your actions often incorporate characters and groups from the video games and source novels, too; expect to be harassed by Nilfgaardians and manipulated by Dijkstra before the game is over.

After one game, it's hard to judge the overall difficulty of the game, but the mechanics were certainly pretty straightforward to pick up and apply. The challenge of the game, I feel — particularly with more than two players — will be to determine how best to use your limited actions to maximise the amount of points you're able to attain, and how to balance powering up your character with actually making progress towards the end of the game and that all-important final score.

I'm keen to give it a go with the full complement of four people; the varying abilities of the four characters look set to make things very interesting indeed, and if nothing else the game creates an enjoyable and engaging emergent narrative as you play through a combination of the choices you make and the flavour text on the cards.

There's no bonking though, to my knowledge.

2393: The Drugs Sometimes Work

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Early last year, shortly after I lost my job at raging shithole SSE for reasons at least partly linked to my depression and anxiety, I decided enough was enough and went to the doctor to seek some chemical help with my mental health issues. I was prescribed a drug called Sertraline, which I dutifully took for well over a year.

I can't quite tell whether or not Sertraline had any effect; I think on the whole, it did improve my mental health somewhat — although this may well be a placebo effect — though it didn't "cure" it. There is no such thing as a magic bullet that will "cure" depression and anxiety, unfortunately; if there were, whichever drug company was able to churn it out by the ton first would doubtless become the first "megacorporation" with all the proceeds, and we'd officially be living in even more of a futuristic dystopia than we do already.

One thing I found while on Sertraline though, and I don't know if this was the drug causing the problem or my own overactively anxious imagination, was that I had great difficulty sleeping. I'd lie awake until 3, 4 in the morning most nights, unable to get to sleep until my body was so exhausted it simply shut down. Prior to that, my brain would be rapidly darting back and forth between all manner of different thoughts — some worries, some desires, some recollections, some pure fantasies — and be far too "alert" to allow me to properly switch myself off and get some much-needed rest.

I persevered with this for probably far longer than I should have, but eventually, once again, I decided that enough was enough, and I wanted to try something new. I'd seen some positive effects on someone (who shall remain nameless for the moment) who had exhibited similar symptoms to me at times when switching from Sertraline to another drug called Mirtazapine, so I went to my doctor armed with this knowledge and asked to switch to see how I got on.

Like the other person, the difference was night and day. While Mirtazapine is also no "magic bullet" to completely alleviate depression and anxiety, one of the things that was bothering me the most — the inability to sleep, and the anxiety this caused — is "fixed". I can go to bed at a reasonable hour now and actually get to sleep when I choose to put my head down. Rather than constantly worrying that I don't know "how" to get to sleep — which is something that continually bothered me while I was on Sertraline, and possibly beforehand, too — I can just, you know, sleep without thinking about it, like a normal human being.

This has made quite a difference to my overall outlook on life. Getting a decent night's sleep is important, and as soon as you start getting it again having endured a period where you haven't had it, you really appreciate it.

Plus Mirtazapine gave me about a week of feeling perpetually stoned and having some incredibly vivid, crazy dreams, too, so if nothing else it was worth it for that experience.