Exodus, Movement of the CEOple

 Knights Who Say No

Earlier last week I mused that BioWare founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka had left the software studio they had started some twenty years ago together due to the negative backlash from fans over the last few titles they had released. Today, someone close to the company seems to verify my somewhat cynical speculations. Furthermore, I wanted to run over some of the controversies that may have led to the Greg's and Ray's (poker, Thursday) decision to split.

Former BioWare developer Trent Oster states ""The last time I met up with [Greg], I felt his exhaustion," Oster told Now Gamer. 'Punch out, eject, get the hell out,' was my suggestion to him and it hit closer to the mark than I had realized. I also think the Mass Effect 3 fan reaction and the Old Republic fans' negativity was just too much."

Regarding the Mass Effect 3 controversy, when the title was released in March many fans found the ending to lack satisfactory closure for the characters they had created, and the choices that they had made. Fans started a petition to have BioWare change the ending. BioWare decided not to change the ending, but to give fans more content as free DLC that expands upon the denouement.


As many industry followers speculated, perceived mismanagement of their intellectual properties by EA may have played a part.

"I'm sure the internal culture at EA had pinned the Old Republic conversion to free-to-play as a failure and hung that completely on Ray, so that would have hurt his upward climb. But, I figured he would fight harder. EA upper management must have been even worse than I thought," Oster explained.

To clarify what Oster is talking about, The Old Republic was a MMORPG that BioWare and EA had sunk a ton of money into, supposedly boasting one of largest video game budgets of any title to date. Taking place in the Star Wars universe, it was expected to bring a flux of traffic to the title, enough to keep it generating monthly subscription fees, similar to the juggernaut that is their competitor, World of Warcraft. Despite claiming that The Old Republic would not go F2P (Free-to-Play, meaning supported by a cash shop and in game transactions instead of traditional subscription fees) for the foreseeable future, like so many other similar titles on the market, BioWare had to swallow their pride and announce that due to plummeting subscription fees, they would be making the game F2P.

Sad times. The gaming world will sorely miss both Greg and Ray. They were true innovators of the industry , and their accomplishments will be remembered for a long time, even with all the flack they caught over their last three releases.

At least we'll always have Baldur's Gate.

Torchlight 2 Review Part 2: The Electric Boogaloo

Torchlight 2 Review

 

Almost As Good As It Gets

I gave my first impressions of Torchlight 2 in my last blog post, but I wanted to do a more in-depth review of the game without mentioning the D word once I had spent some more time with it. In order to do that, I had to play some more first. This took me a while to do. I used to put off writing in order to play video games, and now I spend time writing when I should be playing video games so that I can write about them. It's a cruel, cruel world. Here we go.

Story: 8

The game is divided into 3 acts, and each act centers around a different area. The first act takes place in the Esterian Steppes and features the player seeking to know more about the Alchemist, who is using the power of Ordrak's heart (of first Torchlight fame) to disrupt the world's elements. Honestly, the plot is probably the weakest point, but it's still solid (just not exceptional), and the rest of the game is so compelling it's easy to get lost in the gameplay.

Graphics: 9

Cartoon-like but sharp. It's easy to tell where your character is for the most part and you can zoom in and out quite a bit for your preference depending on the situation. When your character is behind a structure, they are outlined in a blue skeletal frame that makes them easy to see, and the enemies are outlined in red. The UI is super clean, easy to understand, and easy to navigate. The particle effects from the spells and monster attacks are especially nice looking. Doubly so when there's a big beastie taking up half the screen launching projectiles at you like crazy. Unlike the first Torchlight, which featured one town and one dungeon, Torchlight 2 has a variety of environments, all of which are aesthetically pleasing.

Gameplay: 9

Click on monsters, acquire loot. Players can use the keyboard for shortcuts for abilities and potions, but ultimately the whole thing can be played with a mouse. Players can hold quite a few items in their inventory and easily see what equipment is better than what they are currently wearing. Quests are given by quest givers in towns and in the overworld. Players complete quests and move forward through the acts of the overarching story about the Alchemist.

The only thing I would ask for would be some more side stuff to do. There is fishing, although it can get somewhat repetitive, but having a few more things to do would really help flesh the world out. The first time I blew up fish with dynamite, it did put a smile on face.

Sound: 10

Matt Uelmen's sountrack is hot, hot, hot. It suits the atmosphere of the game perfectly, and he has the pedigree of working on a couple of other high-profile and incredibly successful games that I won't mention here. Here's some of the work he did for Torchlight 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtir2GzdPag

Replayability: 10

The game features 4 different classes, (Engineer, Outlander, Berserker, and Embermage) multiple modes of difficulty, multiplayer of up to 6 players, and over
100 achievements to try and achieve. I haven't even touched multiplayer yet, to be honest, and I know that's a big draw for a lot of people. In fact, if you're reading this, have a Steam account, and want to play, add me as a friend. Tone Deaf Jeff. See you online!

Final Score: 9.5

Buy it. Just buy it. Or try the demo. http://www.torchlight2game.com/ Or get the first one for as low as a $0.01  from the Humble Indie Bundle 6 and see what all the fuss is about (only 5 days remaining!).

Relighting the Torch

No torches are actually required to play this game

In my first review, I looked to the past of RPGs with Chrono Trigger. Now let us look to the future of the genre with newly released Torchlight 2

The first Torchlight was a well-received ARPG (the "A" stands for "Action"), although some dissenters denigrated it by calling it a "Diablo clone." Well, Runic Games is founded by members from Blizzard North, the now dissolved company that created the first two Diablo games. At the time Torchlight came out (2010), people viewed it as a tasty little snack until the main course Diablo 3 arrived. Flash forward to 2012 (hey, that's now!) and there is a wealth of hatred toward Diablo 3 that the developers (now Activision-Blizzard) probably could never have imagined. So Torchlight 2 steps up to the plate. Although the first Torchlight didn't have multiplayer, Torchlight 2 will feature both online and LAN (Local Area Network, meaning not-online) co-op play. One of the common arguments against Diablo 3 is the fact that is always has to be connected to the internet, even when you're playing single-player. Runic Games heard the outcry from Diablo fans loud and clear, and seems to be bending over backwards to accommodate their players.

Most hack'n slash isometric arpgs get lumped into the category Diablo clone, but if aany title is going to fill the shoes of the hole left in jaded fanboys' hearts of Diablo 3, it's Torchlight 2. People didn't like the skill system in Diablo 3. Torchlight 2 has the a conventional yet new take on a skill tree. People didn't like the real money auction house of Diablo 3 (although some people did, making a mint off digital goods), but those people need worry not because Torchlight 2 features no such chicanery. You almost  can't mention Torchlight without mentioning Diablo, and in speaking about the second Torchlight, one almost can't mention the sequel to Diablo as a counter example either.

In the first Diablo and the first Torchlight, there is one central town, and one dungeon that you descend gradually deeper in, fighting progressively harder monsters. Eventually, you get to the bottom and beat whatever the bad monster is winning the game. But neither game is really about the last fight, it's about the loot, the grind, leveling up and equipping new gear. The art style in Torchlight 2 is still sort of cartoonish, like Diablo 3, in comparison to the gritty and dark gothic graphics of the first torchlight. The world of Torchlight is a colorful one, and it more technologically advanced than the world of Sanctuary. There are robots and guns, and I don't recall seeing any of those in any games in the Diablo franchise. In Diablo 2, and Torchlight 2, there is more than just the central town. The game sprawls out in an overworld connected via multiple towns.

But Torchlight 2 isn't a straight up clone; there is enough that is new that lets the title stand on its own. One of the welcome additions to Torchlight, the pet system, is back, and better than ever. UI improvements improve the flow of the game, such as each item taking up only a solitary inventory space.

As far as sound goes, the Torchlight series is composed by the same person that composed for Blizzard North back when they were developing Diablo 1 and Diablo 2.

Based on what I've seen so far, I"m going to have to recommend a purchase for Torchlight 2. It's only $20, can be found on steam, or on the developers own website. I will update more about my time with Torchlight 2 once I spend some more time with it. Also know, that you can get the first Torchlight for free by paying however much money you want, via the humble indie bundle.

Another One Bites the Dust

Dungeons, Dragons, and 401Ks.

Doctors and highly successful CEOs? Way to make the rest of us RPG nerds look bad by comparison, guys.

BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk announced that they are both retiring from the world of game development today. Although BioWare is famous for their older RPGs like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur's Gate, they also enjoyed recent success with franchises like Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. So why leave a successful company you helped create? Ray (we're good friends) would have us believe that he simply wants to tackle a new set of challenges, while Greg (again, good friends) notes that he is leaving to make beer.

But is there something else going on here? When BioWare was purchased by Electronic Arts (henceforth referred to as EA) in 2007, the collective gaming world groaned. EA had a history of buying up studios, turning their franchises into yearly releases, and ultimately running them into the ground before finally closing the studio. Surely this couldn't happen to BioWare, a studio whose work was synonymous with quality, could it?

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, BioWare. It tolls for thee.

Perhaps it could. Or can. Or did. Many people see today as the death knell for BioWare, a company that has slowly been circling the drain in terms of quality if you believe the volume of posts deriding the quality of Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Maybe none of those games were critical failures in terms of sales, but every title saw backlash against it for one reason or another. Many people saw the faults in those games as a result of EA meddling in the development process. They could be right; maybe Greg and Ray (see you guys at poker on Thursday) got sick of corporate politics bastardizing their children, and decided to step down before things got any worse.
One thing is for sure, where BioWare used to make games out of love, EA only sees the bottom line. The corpses of defunct studios that EA stands on top of is a mountain of evidence that suggests exactly that.

Second Verse, Same as the First

Pick Your Poison

It's an exciting week to be a fan of RPGs. Tuesday will see the release of Borderlands 2, Gearbox's follow-up to their first-person looter from 2009. Somehow Gearbox managed to smash together the addictive gear grinding of the Diablo franchise with the frantic frag-fest gameplay of Halo, (or Call of Duty, or any other first person shooter you'd be willing to name). The end result was nothing short of digital crack; you could practically hear GPAs dropping all over the country as dorm room after dorm room sat filled with bleary-eyed gamers staying awake until dawn, not to write a paper or study for an exam, but to try and crank out one more level before the sun came up. They were the bodies that inhabited the Borderlands. And now the siren's song is calling again.

See, the Siren is actually a class in Borderlands. So that was like a metaphor or something.

Maybe you're not a fan of first-person shooters. That's okay; admittedly I wasn't too big on the genre until BioShock took me by the hand and asked if I could kindly find a crowbar or something. Not everyone is a fan of shooters, and that's okay. Just know that Borderlands doesn't play like most shooters. Of course you still aim and shoot in a first person view at targets, but the RPG elements are woven into the game quite heavily. At least, they were in the first one, but I'm sure they'll remain more or less the same. Pick from a variety of classes (I think there's a new class), kill monsters, gain experience, level up, pick new powers, and complete quests.Even people that aren't normally fans of shooters can find themselves lost in Borderlands. While gameplay might have been a turn off for some, some people simply weren't fans of the art style. Personally, I think cell-shaded games look sexy. Like Jessica Rabbit sexy.

She's not bad; she's just digitally rendered that way.

Still, some of my friends have a staunch loathing for all things FPS. If that's the case for you, then perhaps Torchlight 2 is the right title for you and your friends. If Borderlands took a page or two out of Diablo's playbook, then one might say that Torchlight developer Runic Games took the whole thing. Of course, many of their staff worked on both the first Diablo and its sequel. Torchlight 2 comes out Thursday 9/20. More on the title itself later this week, but for now, let's look at this tasty infographic Runic whipped up to show the amount of content Torchlight 2 has over its predecessor.

Yes, infographics can be tasty. But not as tasty as pie charts.

Alms for the Poor?

Obsidian's Countdown Ends in Kickstarter Reveal

For the past four days RPG developer Obsidian (Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol) has been teasing a new title in development through an intricate countdown timer on its website.
Obsidian is perhaps most famous for its inclusion of former Black Isle Studios members, a development studio that made a number of critically acclaimed RPGs back in the 90's, including the original Fallout, Fallout 2, and Planescape: Torment. On the kickstater page for their new project they claim they have longed to return to the roots of roleplaying games by making another isometric, PC-based roleplaying game, but due to publishing concerns they have been unable to secure funding. Now, thanks to kickstarter, they have a chance to make the game they have always wanted.

"The Ouroboros is a really underused symbol," said no one ever.

 When they first started the countdown, all we had was the number 4 and a somewhat cryptic message, "What do the words mean?" to which someone seems to reply "Nothing. The Dirge of Eir Ghanfath is sound without form, a lone voice crying out in mourning because it must." This lead some forum posters to speculate that it was a fantasy game, although with then number 4 so prominent, some people strongly suspected it might be a sequel to Dungeon Siege, but obviously those people are wrong now, so hopefully their crow tastes delicious. As for the people saying it was likely a kickstarter project, they were absolutely right. Those prescient people should probably start playing the lottery instead of forecasting video games.

Nothing was clear at this point.

The next day brought the revelation that the number was a countdown, and not part of the title, along with the new message "The book unread is unwritten. The reason we don't explain it is the reason we use it. Its power is in its mystery. That is the Leaden Key, in part, in whole. Is it clear?"
"Digging for truth buries the seeker."

On the third day, we were greeted by the number two, and the following message: "I recognize your pain. Your kind must learn it comes from straining against the turning of the world. It spins thus. You cannot stop it. One day, you will wake up. You will stop pulling. The pain will be gone. Until then, all your waking hours are suffering." Based on the fantasy language and the overall gestalt of what was coming across, most people agreed it would be a fantasy game. But of what sort?

Yesterday, the message changed to "This world wants to drag us down, it does. It made you a Watcher. No one asks for that. And the weight, that guilt they want to hang around my neck, you don't have to carry it one more step. You think they won't let you rest, but it's not up to them. It never was."


The game is called Project Eternity (although that is just the working title, so it might change yet). Obsidian claims combat will be tactical real-time, but with the option to pause combat whenever the player wishes. Works for me, but what will the story be like? Obsidian is known for their branching, complex plots. Hopefully, without publishers pressing them to release before its ready they will be able to produce a title that is not riddled with bugs (Fallout: New Vegas) or tragically rushed (Knights of the Old Republic II).

My prediction? An 84 on Metacritic.

Oh Wii U

Yes Wii Can

Exciting news this morning emerging out of the house that Mario built. The Wii U, Nintendo's successor to the Wii, has been announced as arriving November 18th. Users can pick from one of two SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit, retail speak for something that has more than one version) the first costing $300 for a plain white version with 8GB of memory for storage, and the second, a $350 deluxe black version featuring 32GB of memory that comes with the software NintendoLand, a variety of games set within some of Nintendo's hottest properties, like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda, designed to show off how the new tablet controller's functionality (like Wii Sports on the Wii). The release date comes as no surprise, as Nintendo's last two system launches (of the GameCube and the Wii) were also in November, but the variety of SKUs is new to Nintendo. Typically, they launch one model, then follow up that model with later renditions. Having options is a good thing. Nintendo must be taking pages out of Microsoft's playbook, and I'm not just talking about the controller.

While not strictly related to RPGs, the Wii U will be sure to feature at least some RPGs during its lifetime. It's a safe bet that we will see Nintendo produce titles for their Paper Mario and Fire Emblem series. While the Wii only had a handful of RPGs in its library, some of those were critically acclaimed (The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles) and hopefully the developers did well enough that they will develop new games for Nintendo's next platform. I only played about 30 minutes of each (I know; I'm sorry), but since the Wii U will be backwards compatible with Wii games and Wii remotes, you (and me) can always play the older titles while waiting on some hot new ones. The Wii U already has at least one confirmed blockbuster RPG to be in the works for it, I'm talking, of course, about Mass Effect 3, although it remains to be seen if it can differentiate itself enough from the Xbox360/PC/PS3 version as to warrant a second purchase by people that already played it. And for those that haven't already, do they really want to play the third part in a trilogy without playing the first two? Imagine seeing Return of the Jedi without first seeing A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back.

The first thing every fan of Kung Pow! Enter the Fist thought upon hearing the name of Nintendo's new console.

What's in a Name?

It seems like only yesterday the internet was ablaze with people ridiculing Nintendo for naming their console Wii. But there's only so many genitalia and scatological jokes one can make before the humor wears thin, and the item becomes just its name, no connotations attached. What people don't seem to remember is that Nintendo gets ridiculed just about every time they release something. Motion controls? Who wants that? Everybody, as it turned out. 'Two screens? What a gimmick!' some critics said. Yet people bought DSs in droves. Even the name 'DS' was made fun of, as was its predecessor, the GameBoy. None of those silly names stopped those devices from selling a boatload. Names for electronic devices being ridiculed is not something exclusive to Nintendo, though. I remember when Apple first announced the iPad, and it seemed the flow of tampon jokes would never stop. (Yeah, I went there). Now the damn things are ubiquitous, and no one cares one iota what they're called. So, too, will the name Wii U someday soon come to mean that, just the device, and nothing else.

Unless you follow video games news as voraciously as me, you might not even have seen a Wii U yet, so I present to you in all its glory, the Nintendo Wii U.

Must..resist..urge..to...joke...

And here's a video of NintendoLand.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/sawZZVrlsSo