Shadowrunning and Dinosaurs

Born to troll.

I love to hate Kickstarter and everything "early access". Because it's easy to hate paying for the idea of a product, which may or may not ever be finished at some point in the future. And even if the product does get finished, it may end up lacking a whole lot of promised features when the developer runs out of money or it turns out that some concepts are great on paper, but prove too difficult to actually implement. With all that in mind, I still shouldn't hate Kickstarter, because I happen to enjoy the kind of video games which aren't usually made with a massive audience in mind.

I grew up playing RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Might & Magic, Wizardry, all things D&D and SSI. Games which put you in charge of a whole party of adventurers with unique strengths and weaknesses. You need guys who can fight and take a few hits, somebody to spot and disarm traps, a guy who can identify the value and properties of all your fat loot and so on and so forth. A huge part of the fun with these games is to create a group of adventurers and see whether or not they all work out as a team. See how they mangage their first battle, their first dungeon, find out if there's any potential or if you should go back to the planning stage.

I also like turn-based strategy games, whether it's Shining Force or Jagged Alliance (the original, not the steaming pile of shit hosted by Gamigo). Long story short, I like the kind of stuff which is difficult to decorate with explosions and flashy special effects, tons of scripted dialogue and cutscenes and the occasional quicktime event. Because games today have to appeal to as many people as somehow possible and that usually means they have to look good, even if they contain mechanics and gameplay simple enough to be understood by a five year old. Look, I get it, everyone is a "gamer" these days and some people don't want to master a game and get good at it before they play. They just wanna relax and have a little fun. But I like to crunch numbers sometimes, I like to use my brain and, for as crazy as it may sound, I like having the possibility to fuck up so bad that I may have to start over. You know, all of the things most modern games try to avoid at any cost.

Since Average Joe doesn't enjoy having his limited cognitive abilities challenged too much, AAA-publishers won't be releasing an awful lot of traditional RPGs anytime soon. So Kickstarter is actually kind of a blessing. Wasteland 2 turned out to be a decent (if buggy) old-school RPG, Pillars of Eternity is 'round the corner and already getting hyped as the next Baldur's Gate, Harebrained Schemes are working on their third Shadowrun game and Divinity: Original Sin is the closest thing to a modern Ultima VII you're ever going to see. While it's still easy to make fun of the fact that people donated tens of thousands of Dollars for potato salad and how some games get funded and still never see a proper release or any of the promised backer rewards, one can't deny that without crowdfunding we would have missed out on some really great games.

I'm keeping an eye on two Early Access titles right now: Darkest Dungeon and Shadowrun Online. The former is an incredibly cool roguelike RPG with a fantastic art style, a narrator I can actually stand and a whole lot of super creepy dungeon-crawling. It still lacks some content, but apparently it's already highly playable and is getting high praise from the Steam community.
Things aren't quite as dandy in Shadowrun Online, but I do have a tendency to favour unpopular games. Okay, "unpopular" might be a bit harsh, buuut the game is receiving mixed reactions so far. You see, early access started about a year late when one of their investors jumped ship, followed by one of their artists. Then their engine didn't work out and they had to start over from scratch, so the whole thing has been a bit messy, so far.

Developer Cliffhanger Productions also follows a bit of an unusual early access philosophy - they only implement features as soon as they're polished and bug-free. Right now, shooting things works, basic skilltrees and gear management work, basic coop multiplayer and basic missions work aaaand that's about it. You couldn't even customize a character until a recent patch, let alone look for new gear and jobs, because there was no hub, no race selection... yeah, you get the idea.
The latest update added some new stuff to the seamless, classless character development, you can finally play trolls and other such fun metahumans and specialise in all kinds of weapons and skills. It looks a little something like this:

As you can see, it's still very basic. At this stage in the game it doesn't really seem to matter whether you're flinging spells, using a deck or shooting a gun - it all does more or less the same stuff. I also question a skill system, which forces me to choose from either a utility skill such as lockpicking or demolition or a combat skill like a double-barreled shotgun blast, but won't let me pick both. I'm not familiar with the newer iterations of the PnP ruleset, but the way they're doing it in Shadowrun Online seems a bit awkward for now.

As for their scheduled Q1 release this year - don't get your hopes up, it's never gonna happen. But the whole thing is starting to look and feel more and lore like a real game. I highly doubt their writing and story will ever manage to reach Dragonfall levels, but online online multiplayer and customizable squads are still hugely appealing to me, so I can't wait to see how this one works out in the end. I'm excited!

Oh hey, any of you guys remember watching this family when you were kids?

uhhh... The Cosby Show?

We've been watching this show again for our dinner entertainment and we never realized how serious and adult some of the topics on there really were. Dinosaurs an in the early 90s and much of the stuff they're bringing up on there is all over my Facebook feed today. How you need a license for fishing or driving, but any idiot is allowed to become a parent. War and media manipulation - there's a battle for resources (nuts, of all things) going on and the news inform people that the dinos on the other side of the continent threaten everyone's way of life and cause nuts to become more expensive, staged footage about how they're winning the war and all such fun propaganda. There's also an episode about the eldest son in the family getting curious about vegetables until he gets caught by his father when he makes friends with a herbivore. Which is unthinkable, because it's not normal. And probably less difficult to handle in a dino sitcom than making that character gay, though it's fairly obvious what they're getting at.

It's not super moving or insightful, but it's still interesting to see a new angle on some 20 year old show, which I didn't understand when I was a kid.

Right then, time for dinner. :P

-Cat