Tag Archives: Elder Scrolls

October 18, 2025 · 23:21

Hidden claws

That is what happened to me, suddenly as I was rewatching ‘the last Witchhunter’ something woke up. It started after I played Oblivion on the Xbox360 for the first time. An idea awoke and I placed part of this as an idea on a gaming website. The idea however never completely died and it remained within me too. You see to take the Olympians into account, there is no way that the worlds of Hecate were innocent and docile and Hecate knew that. Balance is real, it cannot be maintained in the settings we see. Balance of light is still imbalance. In one of the books books of Star Trek there was a expression “Bless the world of shadows, because when the last sunsets fades, they too will die” and that stuck with me over the decades. So what about arch mage Traven? That was the setting I had in mind at that point and the setting war re-awakened in the last Witchhunter. What if the world of Hecate is reimagined but in a more balanced way? What happens when we accept the light and the dark? As such the worlds of Meridia and Namira? In the gaming world they are on opposite sides, but what is the thought that they aren’t truly opposite, what if they are merely apart by a third. Consider a segmented pie chart, one segment light and one dark. But the Elder Scrolls doesn’t hold that as ‘real’ and shows the light as two thirds, whilst the dark side is a mere third and Namira is on the edge between the two worlds and shown as dark. But the largest dark side is ignored. So what about that so called balance? What happens if Hecate, the ancient Greek goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, crossroads, night, and the underworld becomes real in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls? What happens when that balance is restored? Not to celebrate ‘evil’ but to celebrate the ‘reality’ of things. Without light and dark the shadows do not exist, merely what we personally conceive as light and dark. So what will we see when the larger setting is revealed? What do we do when the world of Hecate is given life renewed? Will we create a larger setting of Vampires, Werewolves and darkness? What will be the real dark places? Perhaps we get a funny side of life and the true world of politicians and false prophets will be revealed to us. It is not merely the setting of what is real, but where the true darkness is real is equally important. As such, as the designer of gaming IP I say good night to one of my my godmothers (and family member) Hecate. 

If gaming is delusion and we love our games, let us say good day to the reality that beckons us and in there we might see what we cannot see in real life. It is merely a point of view to behold.

Have a great day and did you enjoy your Shawarma in Riyadh today? 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 13, 2025 · 17:48

The story script of lore

Yup, nice and confusing, isn’t it? But that is the setting. As I was playing Skyrim (yet again) the thoughts of lore went through my head. And RPG players might remember this. You escape the large lizard (aka Dragon), you go to Riverwood and then to Whiterun where you join the companions. Linear in extremity. Now, this is not critique. This is how RPG were played in 2011 and the hardware pretty much set you up for that. So, remember Richard Garriott who gave us the ultimate RPG in Ultima. I got introduced to his master skills in 1983 with Ultima 3, Exodus. But his idea were not used to the largest extent. Now I don’t want to copy his sewing, but the idea that every person has the ability to evolve their choice. Perhaps through an intro story where you have to make choices. So, to connect this to Skyrim, the choices will set you to a setting that will push you to Riften (thieves guild), Whiterun (fighters guild), Winterhold (Mage Guild) or Falkreath (Dark Brotherhood) there are a few other options (but I don’t want to give away the plot for others) There you get the option to get into the Stormcloaks or the Empire forces. Now we have to allow for a few other things, but the setting that you end up going to Whiterun to get to Bleak Falls Barrow, so that need not change, but the setting to give variety to this introduction is an option, and it could happen AFTER to evade that initial sneaky lizard. This could also be the first companion you get. IT doesn’t seem much, but the setting to avoid linearity tends to be massive in RPG’s. In addition to this, finding books, not just for skills but also for quests is a second. I wrote about this and it requires a more dynamic version of books. Skyrim is already doing this, but not with a dynamic pre skilled setting. 

In addition, there is the setting to adjust the game by alternative skills. Skills that are given to you by your parent (an intro choice really), so as that story evolves, you get skills in art, smithing, archery and magic. So as you start of with two of them. You get more pronounced maps, you get the option to see more in your surroundings. You might get a better view on ores and smithing, you get options to see more in shopping, which normally comes from personality. And over time you get the others too, but it shapes you more in the way you get through the first 20 levels and it is important to have balance there, so that people will try other things, not try the same thing at the start and then adjust the choices for the game.

This allows for the setting to own a shop and a trainee that tends to the shop. This opens up a new cog in managing the game and nowadays it is doable and has been for a while. I set that up for the game IP I created last year (might have been 2-3 years ago). The issue is not on Bethesda, they did a good job, but it is now in our hands to push this envelope higher. You cannot relay on one game maker to see it all through. That is where we are required to push new levels.

One of these things is the need to create your OWN journal and shape it through playing. Not just the expected quest things, the setting that you get to a cave and you cannot see how to continue, or a door that is locked. It makes sense that you make notice of this and optionally a tab to remember that you have to go back to this. The idea I had (for streaming games) that this journal could be exported as a pdf. A novel idea for RPG gamers (the novel part was the pun). An additional setting was the art setting, if you did not get this skill in the beginning, the art in your journal might be ‘lacking’ until you do get it, the same could be said for mapmaking. 

As I see it, the current approach is not wrong, but a little ‘vanilla’ (I actually hate that term). So as we see the additional cogs in the game we make the RGP more of an adventure. And whilst some titles in books are a given (also magical skill books) but some could have similar or a dozen settings for the title, so you can stop looking for a certain title. It is just an idea, but it could give the larger setting to non-linearity (and I am all for that).

So this was what I came up with yesterday and then I forgot it. My mind is flaky and weird, I know.

But these are things that could invigorate the desire for RPG games and I took Skyrim as an example, but this could equally done to the Fallout series. Anyway, that was the setting I was confronted with and even as I typed parts of this in the past, I saw this setting to see to the larger evolving stage of RPG’s.

Have a great day and don’t be a silly hero, when you see a dragon in your path, be like a mouse and let the police take care of that sucker.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 29, 2025 · 05:01

The secondary drive

That is what some have and it is not always in the field you expect. I was contemplating a few things whilst playing the remastered version of Oblivion. I am playing me second character as I am stuck (due to a bug) in the first one. It gave me pause to consider a few settings. These settings I can convert to the game I already had in mind, but I can spice things up now (now is a word as the default setting is not entirely accurate). You see, I created the game to counter Bethesda. The operative word might take a little tweaking. It actually started yesterday when I saw a list of upcoming Playstation games, 15 of them this year and I kept on hearing ‘soul type gaming’ (way too often). You see making more of the same is not more gaming, as I see it, it is the introduction of blanded (just more of the same taking away gaming hunger). As such my mind kept on revisiting settings (and movies) in all directions. It also brought to mind a game named Fable (Microsoft title) and it had great ideas, especially the first and second game with the second being a vastly improved IP over the first. It also made me realise that I had created a dislike for the word ‘Chicken-chaser’ (a word EVERY Fable enthusiast remembers). So what happens when we ‘cross-pollinate’ ideas? And moreover, what if we set this per guild, house or location? 

That is merely the first step. You see, most people have ‘accepted’ the use of nick names and when capture this in combination with the SNPC (smart non playable characters) concept I put in here last year a RPG game could really be spiced up. I see it as a setting to create passive achievements, achievements you will have to work for, but they don’t have any real controllable action and as such you could get a real setting that controls you and you do not control it to that degree. You see when you play an RPG over and over again, you get to be blanded, a blanding like setting that takes the joy out of the game, it will take it out of any game, but when you can divert that feeling by adding ‘soft-achievements’ I predict that this feeling diverts somewhat (it will never take it all away). Added to the changeable setting of dialogues and missions, the game gets to be a lot more rewarding for a lot longer. And today’s consoles can handle that challenge. 

I already set some parts in ‘motion’ in my mind as early as 2022 and up to now, no one considered the ideas I had (or never enacted them) and in my mind, the reengineered idea that originally came from Vint Cerf might be a game changer in RPG gaming. Such directionality will up the game for wannabe ‘fighters’ and ‘assassins’ quite a lot. I get that in the past these ideas were not really possible and now we can do them all, perhaps Bethesda is enabling these ideas in the new Elder Scrolls game, but that will not be known until 2027. What is clear that there is a risk that we will see too many things that we saw before. In the YouTube video that game me the list of 15 that I saw in under an hour I had at least half a dozen time things that I had seen before. To be honest, the only real cracker I saw was Code Violet, not ragingly new, the style of gaming is known to stealth game preferred players, but in the setting that we see, is a new fresh paint of a horror classic and that is at least something. Go see the trailer if you are curious. Anyway, that gave me pause to another setting. You see some will remember ‘Knight Games’ (CBM64), and Bethesda has a ‘sort of’ version in that called Arena, but Arena is a joke to stealth players. Most of the rounds I have no opposition. With a bow and stealth I go right through the opponents in seconds. So what happens if all contestants have Candlelight (Skyrim) cast over them? It takes away the stealth advantage, come to think of it, what if the security of a location ‘auto casts’ Candle light over the trespasser of a location? You need to get close to the cast location and perhaps there is a workaround on that too, another thing you have to elude, now breaking and entering comes with a little snag. 

You might (not entirely incorrectly) think that this brainstorm setting only sounds nice. But tell me, when was the last time that you witnessed true gaming innovation? I reckon that for me it was Horizon Forbidden West (2022) and as such I am trying to blend new ideas (at times re engineered old ideas) to add to gaming and to offer a solution that looks in more directions than Bethesda (not that Bethesda is bad, far from it) but a choice of one, is not a choice.

Well, I need to rethink a few more settings (which I already am), but I think better during breakfast and that is roughly 183 minutes away. So back I go, back in my design shell and watch what others are missing. Have a great day.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 16, 2025 · 10:00

Insectum

It is time to talk bugs. As I see it there are three kinds, there are the actual bugs, these are settings that crash a game, or make it non-working. The other two are glitches and systemic glitches. Glitches are merely a hindrance they are flaws in a game of program, but they do not dissuade from the joy that the game brings. I saw all of these settings in Oblivion remastered. Let’s be clear. I am not a doom speaker and heralding the ‘Messy setting of Oblivion’, I am (for the most) a game and before I start this article I will say right now, up front, that Oblivion brought the sense of joy I had when I played the game 20 years ago. That is as I see it a massive achievement, 

Virtuos brought their A game and it shows in everything you see and play. This game is 20 years old, as such plenty of laurels for Bethesda as well. It was the reason I bought me Xbox360 and I never for one moment regretted doing that. Yes, I have had the red rings of death and in the end I have had 3 Xbox360’s. But never was there any doubt that it was a great machine and a worthy contender to the crown that the Playstation 2 won.

Still, we were talking about the game. As such, we have glitches, persistent (or systemic) glitches and bugs, there is also the fatal bug, but I haven’t seen that one in Oblivion.

A glitch can be systemic, but does not mess with gaming fun. An example is that when you go from the rain into a ruin, or a cave and you still hear the rain. It doesn’t stop you from having fun, but it is a glitch. Then there is the systemic glitch. When you’re cupboards are too full, because you (me) is a hoarder, the system gets a little confused and will not show everything in your inventory. As such I could not move my sigil stones from the inventory. The solution is to sell off a lot of junk you were holding and that fixed it. There there is the setting that you can not control. A setting where things go a little haywire (because of a dozen reasons), which can mess with the storyline, but the simple solution is to reload the last autosave and often it is fixed. When dealing with these knights of the thorn idiots, I had to reload half a dozen times before I got the mission done (in different places). There is nearly no saving an idiot who thinks he os gods greatest knife fighter whilst surrounded by two Xivilains, loudly engaging them calling in two more. There is no stopping stupidity, it tends to get you killed in the battle field. Then there was the first time I went into the Rockmilk cave. After the first reception area, there is a path down where three spiked traps are. The stage to the left could not be entered, whilst it had enemies. I think it was a glitch, and it was ONLY the first time I entered it, subsequent entries were good. It is my place to collect free arrows and in earlier levels that matters, later too (I had over 400,000 gold), but it is a assured way to get ebony arrows and glass arrows, which are not sold. Apart from the bounty in there, it is a clear way to make headway. Then there are several persists glitches, but the one in Sancre Tor was fixed by waiting at the opportune time (where there are 4 people) and that worked. These settings happen. Anyone who thinks that bugs/glitches on a game this big doesn’t happen is beyond stupid. And for the most part it never bothered the game. Perhaps one setting which was beneficial to me was that the Rumare Slaughterfish were bouncing on the waterline, so in clear view to kill them. For the most, this game is utterly awesome and I never regretted spending the money of the 125GB download time on this. I will be playing this a few times over as I never played a high elf mage, but that was on me. 

The fact that even after 20 years and after Skyrim, this game shows just haw amazing gaming can be and that is never a bad thing.

So don’t call everything a bug, because some games are just too big and a bug tends to have fatal issues on a game and yes, I did crash a few times, but I just reloaded the game and I merely lost a few minutes in its worst scenario. Yet it is not all bad. It made me realise the settings I redesigned for an RPG and as I saw the stage also saw why my mind set a few things the way it did and it makes sense to do so if replay-ability is your goal. I think this should be the mindset of any RPG developer. As such did you consider the soft architectural stage that Diablo (the first one) offered against the planes of oblivion? When you connect the ideas that certain games had and incorporate them into a plane of oblivion? When you aren’t set to a mere version of a game, but when the towers can be radically different, how much more fun can you have exploring? 

So have a great day and when you hear the screaming in the night, that would be the sound of Daedric Princes as I have entered their realm and they fear for their life now. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

April 27, 2025 · 14:51

Dynamic lore

Perhaps Dynamic interactive NPC’s is a better if not a little incomplete at this time. I have been loving every moment that I have been in Cyrodil, yet some of the missions are bland, redone over and over again and at this time (as there are more options), the setting seems a little absent of electricity. This is not the fault of Virtuos of Bethesda. I have over 1000 hours (perhaps even 2000 hours) in the game, so for the most I have already seen it. Still roaming the sights of the province is a delight. All the sights I forgot about over the 14 years that Skyrim graced my computers (PS3, Xbox360, PS4 and PS5) and there is more, but at some point I started to set out the idea of Dynamic Dialogue.

You see the first game you play remains always the same, but the subsequent versions, there could be a setting that some of the dialogues will be somewhere else. As such my mind set out the stage that at this point has never been done in any RPG.



Could be set to 
Pers001ArdantNadia
Location01BravilBravil
KindofPersonMerchantBeggar
ActionRumorRumor

And this is merely a sample. So we get a key part of information from a merchant, but this information could be from a beggar as well (not always an option), but the system of Dynamic Dialog will have within itself what the definition is. As such you can run to Bruma and ask the same person again and again, but what if the mage changes? Optionally you are given the name, but that is not a given. 

It changes the game, as the subsequent play is more of a setting that sets a new premise. A game  altered to the gamer who loves the challenge, not merely running the distance. In this there comes a second setting that loot in houses could alter, books might be in different locations (after the first play), It gives shine to a game that was good to be great over several play throughs. With the optional setting when you start the game of activate Dynamic Dialogue. As the database is set correctly the game could be reset to original when a new game is started. 

A setting we have never seen in RPG, but this is now possible, as such, I though of including this setting. Loot can always be randomized, but the people usually aren’t. Then there is the setting that a mission could get another parameter as well. Like the weapon shipment could give the added premise of saving miners and that is set to a clock within the moment you give the weapons to the three mercenaries. So there could be the option that you get a 10 minute timeframe to save a number of miners in that level (like 6 miners) and that gives the player a new chase. To get to the people in time. I am not saying that it should have been done, but when you get the second play through, some missions get to be a bit of a milk run, as such I devised the setting to add Dynamic Dialogue and optionally added achievements. 

There are places when that is not possible, but given the option, we have a good stage to improve RPG gaming, and in this case merely the additional times you play the game. I reckon that my mind will concoct a few more iterations of this in the near future as such I will keep you informed of the hair brain schemes I think of. Perhaps in the near future I will add to what I wrote yesterday, there was a lot more to be had.

Have a great day, time for me to close another Oblivion gate.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

November 15, 2024 · 00:42

Yesterday’s news

Yup, we all have it. We all see it and sometimes we want to alter the prediction. It is not a biggie, or essential. Yet in this day and age where news is debatable and for the mere reason that we are blighted by anti-Trumpism, or anti-Bidenisms. We merely want some kind of a safe space to unwind. I usually do that be playing a game. At this moment I am all about Horizon Zero Dawn. As I see it the best IP we have seen released in the last 10 years. Over the two formats I have played (PS4/PS5) I found one bug in both versions and one additional bug in the PS5 version. It might have existed before, but I never encountered it. The game also have a few glitches, nothing big. Now the big part is that these are two bugs I encountered in a game that open and that big, it is almost uncanny to experience a game this perfect. But whilst I was playing the game my mind took a side step to an old game named Iron Helix. The game was made in 1993, an early example of a CD-based game, with video elements integrated with conventional 2D maps and controls. A simple pleasure. But in this day and age it could be made in something substantial. The video parts are updated, but this could be replaced with Unreal Engine 5. Now do not think it should include the original ship, but as a homage in the introduction it could be. Now add a objective to it like Salvaging, optionally pillaging (aka liberating) or a few other settings. In this we have the drones to find access and when updating these drones (after a mission) we could get into other places. A simple game from the beginning of the multi media game market could evolve into an actual behemoth. There is no fault by Drew Pictures (the developer). They might have moved on to bigger and better things. Yet there are a few elements in this game that are still rarely found in todays games. The publisher Spectrum HoloByte was ‘dissolved’ in 1998, but someone might still have the IP. And here lies the opportunity for the developer who has a clue (so to speak). 

A game that seems like a mere month of development time (mere weeks at this time, as the wheel doesn’t need reinventing).

That is what the ‘big’ boys like Microsoft seemingly forgot about. The IP is there, the IP when tweaked becomes a new product. No people like Phil Spencer give us things like “Microsoft will release more Xbox games on other platforms – “I do not see sort of red lines in our portfolio that say ‘thou must not’””. We were given this mere hours ago, all whilst we were also given “Microsoft is killing off Windows 11 Store’s no-download Instant Games (Arcade)” contradictions and added we were given “Microsoft open to more studio acquisitions, partnering with Chinese publishers” as I see it, they merely need a foothold for services as their hardware is rejected. In the meantime (in this blog) I added near free IP (for non-Microsoft systems) and The innovative designers can have a go at them, whist Microsoft (a personal view) keeps on fumbling the ball. 

I gave the notion of available IP at least 3 years ago. In the meantime we have not seen anything brilliant from Microsoft. OK, the flight simulator is absolutely brilliant. That must be said, but it is for a niche market and rightly so. Yet the larger Microsoft games are dangerously faltering. In this I am referring to Bethesda (Fallout and Elder Scrolls series). We are given “Hundreds of Bethesda video game workers, who work on titles like Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls, are going on strike across the country. Workers in Maryland and Texas are walking off the job, claiming that the company has failed to address their remote work concerns at the bargaining table, and has begun outsourcing quality assurance work without the union’s agreement.” (Source: Inverse). Not a few, the mention of hundreds is a setting that will push back a whole range of projects and That could spell trouble for Microsoft. They bought this software house in 2020 for $7,500,000,000 and I winder what they have to show for it. Trouble is stirring in the houses of Microsoft and I don’t think it ends there. What are seemingly knee jerk actions (might be the impression that the media gives us) and that is never a good thing. So far Microsoft is (as I personally see it) the larger culprit in this. Only yesterday we were given “The “biggest Starfield update yet” is coming next week with over 100 fixes plus graphical improvements for NPCs and space sightseeing”. You see, the game launched over a year ago (September 2023) and we still see these message? Over 100 fixes? And there is Redfall, another Bethesda game where we are given (a year after release) “The story and characters are extremely forgettable, and the environments risk feeling lazy as a consequence of its own gimmick – there’s only so much hazy red skyline I can take. Redfall is technically bland and unimpressive, yes, but that somehow only highlights its unrefined charm.” Two triple A titles and they are both regarded as huge flops. In the meantime I laid out (in that same timeline) half a dozen games here for the innovative (aka non-Microsoft) designers. Half a dozen does not make me better, but I feel certain more creative. And in light of Iron Helix. It is not my design, but I improved a whole range of issues that the makers couldn’t consider in the day they made the game. A 80486 PC with 640KB does not go far, and now we can improve on a good idea a lot, making this an exercise in new IP as it becomes an innovative idea, or altered to the largest degree making it new IP and we could alter a few more parts (including the start narrative) giving us dozen’s of games with a larger prerequisite (optionally on the Amazon Luna, Nintendo Switch or the PS5 or PS5pro) all systems with a track record and that could entice Tencent To seek out the three makers I mention here. So Microsoft can partner with whomever they want, but their presentations might be lacking a few items. Even a few days ago I opted a new niche for Apple (and the Apple Vision Pro) which I made a mere 5 days ago in ‘The easy lesson’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/11/09/the-easy-lesson/). A mere idea, because that was all it was. Yet I got this in less than an hour. So where are the ‘successful’ ideas by Microsoft? Perhaps they filed it on a Solarwinds server?  No matter, Sony can pick up that slack, if not them then perhaps Nintendo, Amazon or Tencent. If all things fails there is a chance that Apple could fill up the gap that Microsoft left. It’s all competitive, true?

Innovation is for whomever sees it and can bring that idea to the others. A wallet is nice but wallets don’t speak and that is the lesson that some never learned. They all believe that ‘money talks’ is for real, but without an idea it becomes meaningless. That is how I see “Microsoft is killing off Windows 11 Store’s no-download Instant Games (Arcade)” and I am not attacking that issue. You try and you could fail. Nintendo did that with the WiiU, but from those ashes the Nintendo Switch was born and that is at present the second best system they ever had. 

Have a great day, It’s Friday here now.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 8, 2024 · 20:38

The indirect path

I talked about this before. At first to fit the larger station of Elder Scrolls: Restoration, but as they are part of Microsoft. It becomes no way Jose, so I instilled it in a new RPG called Generation. It was not some Bethesda clone, it was totally different and I put a lot on it on this blog (go find it if you care). So here I was pondering a few things. And as I was setting a few thoughts out which flows from the setting of cogs and balances in gaming (a previous story) I gave the indirectness a new side.

Consider that this game is too large to play in one lifetime, so we get a second and even a third generation and that is the start of a new corner of RPG IP. 

So lets take a look at the next generation, the daughter. The offspring gets the mean of the parents. As such it is ((30+20)/2), but with dexterity something else happens. It is still ((15+35)/2) plus 50% of the difference as the woman is stronger in this field. So the daughter gets additional Dexterity, Intelligence and Creativity. The son would have gotten additional numbers in the other field, neither get additional agility as they are both the same for the parents. So there is a balance and over time these traits go up. In other fields like mapmaking it is about creativity, art and leather skills (original maps were created on vellum), this also allows for new settings to use creativity. You can have a McGyver and that allows for weapons (basic weapons) to be created in the field. And until your creativity is up, you will see and collect rope and leather, but until your creativity is high enough, a sling will never be the result. This allows for other weapons and it helps to season other skills too. Scribe skills are there to infuse map making, allow you to recognise books of value and read lore. But in this the skills of the parent will to some degree transfer to the child, something never done before. So over three generations you will have created a much stronger character if you marry right. And here is the kicker. I believe in checks and balances. Getting a too strong character limits the play, but a partner that is not all out in those fields but is an awesome butcher or fisherman allows for food to be gotten easier, as well as get more value from the skinning of a fish or a deer (I love my Bambi burgers). 

The indirect path has never been optimised and it is a niche in gaming that is screaming to be explored. And when you combine the elements you get to see that none of the others have any of this in their games. Over half a dozen gaming IP added to a blog. I give Guerrilla software a pass as their series is all new IP, never seen before and the others? I will let you decide.

Have a great day, my Friday starts in 200 minutes, in Vancouver it isn’t even 2am yet.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

September 4, 2023 · 19:37

It’s a game Jim.

Yup, I just went there and as it is about starfield I feel correct in going there. You see, I might have given correct (or incorrect) voice to a foundational issue, or issues. Yet I am not playing that game. So I cannot say one way or the other and here IGN comes in. You see they have been a clear voice for a long time. 

Not everyone likes IGN, but together with Eurogamer they are a clear voice and there are a few thing you need to know, things given to us (at https://www.ign.com/articles/starfield-review) aptly named ‘Starfield Review’. This does not give us that the other voices of review are suddenly wrong, but this is new IP. Things will go bump in the night. One thing that stood out was “Even after about 70 hours there are major quest-lines I haven’t even touched, and others I barely began. I’m eager to go back and finish a lot of those up now that I’ve completed the main story.” Did you make that small jump? ‘Even after 70 hours’? This makes Starfield surpass Skyrim by a fair amount. There are matters of concern when you see “In typical Bethesda fashion, that main quest isn’t terribly flexible in how you resolve the situations it thrusts you into. Your options here are, for the most part, about picking whether you want to be a boy scout for whom a good deed is its own reward, a wise-cracking mercenary who asks to be rewarded after doing a good deed, or an all-business mercenary who demands to be paid up front to do the good deed.” This doesn’t make the game, bad, lousy or lacking. It is merely an approach to RPG, one that Bethesda had done for the longest of times and they have done it well. This is not an apology, but I do believe in fair play and I do not hate Bethesda, I merely hate stupid acts and Starfield is not necessarily a act of stupidity, so adjustments are required and I am making them. There are still too many technical issues reported by all manners of media and that is just a big no-no in beta stage or later, but that is a cross Bethesda and Microsoft will have to carry for some time. Such is life. 

Still, the quote “There’s a storyline that felt very Boys from Brazil-inspired, as well as numerous related quests about hunting down war criminals and banned technology that pose ethical quandaries to reconcile. You can join up with the Crimson Fleet pirates and dive into a life of smuggling and general space crime, or take up the mantle of a legendary pirate hunter” is showing us the foundation of a space RPG that most are looking for and that matters, because it is about the game and the gamers, not about Bethesda perse. None of this shows the meltdown vlogger to be wrong or incorrect. I am merely looking at other parts to the degree a non Starfield gamers can. Just as I did not play Redfall. We give ourselves limits (some on principle), but we all have limits, even I have them and that combines with the need to remain fair gave me the push to write this part. So if you are an Xbox thingamajig you need to make up your mind and as such you should read the IGN review. They have always been fair on games and that counts, for me it does. IGN also had some negatives to report, but to see that you will have to red the article, you see, it might not matter to you. Some people love walking the streets of a place, just like they set the town of Chorrel to mind and we get that, any RPG fan would. So are some parts actually negatives, or merely the hassle of a gamer? Your guess is as good as mine. Even Microsoft’s own Windows Central slapped Starfield, who knew. But there will always be haters and non-accepting gamers of the RPG field and it gets weirder, for some reason any Elder Scrolls lover will often never love Fallout and now Starfield. This happens. They are not haters, but there is one universe, their RPG universe and I reckon that Fallout and Starfield will have their own love connection to THEIR game. This too is the world of RPG and we need to recognise it if we want to get along with these people. No matter how we slice it, thanks to IGN we see that there is a lot more to Starfield than the mere complaints I have seen in over a dozen sources. I believe it is only fair I show that part to you too. It is a fair play approach to often non aligned views.

Enjoy the new week. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, Media

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 8, 2023 · 22:28

When the pool is too deep

Twi days ago I wrote Brain switch, it was me on a joyride through my brain as I was reengineering  IP over and over and it went faster and faster. I got a handle on it by playing Hogwart Legacy. You see gaming is more than an escape for me. It is a passion that allows me to take my mind away from things and that is at times a good thing. It allowed my subconscious to work on Engonos, the story of the grandson of Hades. Weirdly enough I was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Or better stated, he gave me the idea to take a trip to the right. In part I was already doing s in another way, but I suddenly realised that I could enhance one character to get a lot more out of the whole. It is in part a little bit of a drag. You see, I can go memento on that character to keep the story in line and not give away too much, but that too has its advantages and drawbacks. The advantage is that two characters are drawn into the story, one makes sense already, the other one does not on the surface of things, but in Olympian lore it does. As such I tend towards that part of the solution, even though one of them already has a larger role to play and I set that in motion. Now that these roles are staged and partially set, I need to build the background stories for all involved. As such the memento approach, the other one is a historic jump, it seems cleaner, but it opens up too much mesh. A combination has benefits, but at that point I need to be cautious how I approach the matter and I need to script some elements, but that is not a problem. One lesson I learned a long time ago, when a problem is too big, chip it into smaller manageable pieces. That was all good and fine, but that suddenly gave me a few more ideas towards some RPG designs I was entertaining, to be made freely available for exclusive Amazon Luna materials.

I get that this does not make sense, but the reason is simple. Microsoft made valid steps in gaming, we might not like them, but they did what any corporation did, set yourself apart. Yet they did so by buying Bethesda and making parts exclusive to the Xbox. This is a valid, but unappealing approach. This setting changed when Avalanche launched Hogwarts legacy and they set the bar way higher than Skyrim ever was, making it a problem for Microsoft. You see if Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 are on par with Hogwart Legacy, Microsoft loses a lot more than they bargained for. Now if I can add to that pain by giving Amazon Luna developers a sight to more software that is close to on par with Microsoft (not an easy task) they will feel even more pain and that is what I had been after. I expected this to be a lot harder, but Avalanche gave me a trump card, they surpassed Bethesda (what they had up to now), this is not unexpected because Skyrim is 11 years old. Yet it makes my work a little easier. The RPG has storylines, it has a balanced economic system and it has evolution, I only need to set a new stage that has a new kind of nemesis system. Not some copy of Shadow of Mordor, but something new, something we haven’t seen before. I want to counter grinding to some extent. I have one side which is a much larger map, the other side is a new kind of adversarial system and I want to add to that. But it needs to enhance what is, not replace what could be. This is hard to explain for now, but it is in the works, in the meantime, those thoughts are helping me to give larger rise to Engonos, which was what I had in mind all along. Cogs within cogs, not the most elegant of explanations, but it will do for now.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Stories

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 18, 2022 · 18:54

Residual seeking

Yes, what is it? Well it connects to the game I am designing. You see, Any RPG has its sides and it needs to change, it needs to be a lot less Bethesda (their games are not bad), yet I seek originality and this all connects to ‘The stage of commerce’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/25/the-stage-of-commerce/) where I give a lot more and in previous articles (seek and thee shall find) where I give more of all this. Yet there is a side I forgot about. You see, we all expect coin, we all expect funds. But what happens when money had no value in a place where they have no lemonade caps? Well, we will have to make a gander towards older times. In this we need to set steady steps towards other parts, but what if the few gold coins we find have more value by making it into something else? Gold and silver have their uses, especially in the arcane, but when do we see that in gaming? That is the 10th (might be 14th) altering thing that other RPG games are not giving you. So what happens when the chest holds a broken sword? Pieces of chain and two coins? There is a need for nearly anything, you just need to adjust your view and lets be honest, what was the last RPG game you played where it was not about gold, credits, or caps? Any place can grow on commerce, but the driving force of commerce is not always gold based. Many places had other means, even in ancient roman times, the soldiers were paid in salt. Salt was more valuable than coins in some places and a return to that opens a whole new set of gaming parameters. Then we have the fact that the broken sword can be remade as a knife, or could be melted into iron and iron (if enough is obtained) gets you a plough, which means more land and more food for a town. All settings to adjust the view of the gamer and to be honest, I cannot find one game offering this alternative view. 

As I wrote in that previous article “because of the random factors the rainbow tables are dynamic and that creates a whole new environment. One where the game can live without you and you become a contributor, not the driving force of anything.” This is important as your play style changes, the dynamic setting remains to some degree and that can push you in other directions. A stage where you optionally have an island that is an evolving stage as we start the island at 18,040 km2 (Halmahera), but there is nothing stopping us to upgrade the island down the track to 138,794 km2 (Java), there is something awfully satisfying to that. It evolves playing and makes it about the game you play, not WHERE you are. And lets be honest, if you could play a game again a year later and that place is 600% larger? Not go from one island to the other, but end up in a similar island a lot bigger and in that setting when you play the generations, what more can you find? It might not be needed as 18,040 km2 is huge, but the option opens a new frontier for RPG gaming and that is what we want, new frontiers and in that only streaming systems would be able to do this, and as I stated very recently, the streamers differentiate themselves or they will become trivialised. There is nothing interesting in playing the same Ubisoft game on these two systems. Yet what happens when AC Brotherhood suddenly has Spain and France added to the game? It becomes a different game, you as a gamer would have to make choices, because you could never see it all. You see, replayability becomes infinitely more important for streaming systems, and as such to prepare the next level of RPG games for such a setting is becoming more and more important. It was one of the truths I realised when I designed Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration. Evolution is where gaming is and the current makers are too much about selling the same cookie to all the other systems, all whilst some can only store cookies, the others are capable of storing a whole apple pie. And when you can have the apple pie, are you really looking out the window for the next cookie dealer? Fair enough if you are hoping for Shannon Elizabeth in a girl scout outfit, but what are the chances? 

Consider how far the Stadia and Luna can take you and then look at the failures of Ubisoft, what are you waiting for? Now, in their case I will make an exception for AC Origin and some might like to play the others again, I get that, but do you really want a Ferrari to get your groceries, or do you want to see what is 2365 km of your current location? How will you get there? You might never see it all, and that is fine too. A game that still has more to offer is a game you will play for a much longer time and there is also the rub. Ubisoft and others have made us completionists, yet how much of your own nation have you ACTUALLY seen? Are you really that driven in gaming, or can you see that the story is bigger than you. Can you see that beyond the main story, beyond all the quests there is just more and we will never see it all? That is perhaps the only real flaw that Bethesda has in its games and we all fell for it. In previous systems it was a natural flow of what a system could hold and we get that, but the newest consoles (PS5) and streamers have broken that limit, so we need to use the new settings to offer more gaming, different gaming and we need to throw repetition out of the window. That is merely my view on the matter, and it starts by creating a new mould, one based on historic parts, but still offers more than we have gamed before. It is possible, it is out there. Grab it and make it yours.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,