DISPATCHES NOVEMBER
Not a hero
To me, games are no longer the immersive experience they used to be. Granted, this is a subjective matter and this ageing gamer might have lost some of the enthusiasm, mental agility and leisure needed to enjoy a challenging deep dive. But I remain convinced that there is more to it.
Firstly, the medium fell victim to its own success: there are too many big, triple-A titles vying for our attention. Over the space of a year or so, across various platforms, I acquired The Witcher 3, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mass Effect: Andromeda, The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Uncharted 4 and more that I cannot remember (and I’m not even including the various racers, indie games, firstperson shooters or realtime strategy titles). Each of these games demands dozens of hours to be truly appreciated and I feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface of any of them.
There is, apparently, evidence that people spend more time browsing the Netflix catalogue than they do actually watching movies. This is exactly how I have come to feel about games: it’s too hard to choose. One risks missing out on so much by committing to one title or franchise, that one ends up getting all of them and not investing enough time to enjoy any. This of course works well as a business model – who cares if you actually play the games you buy? – but it falls short as far as artistic expression is concerned: so much is being created, and yet so little is being experienced.
Secondly, immersion is a difficult feeling to conjure and complexity is its enemy. In order to achieve the epiphany of ‘being one’ with the protagonist, one must master the controls to the point of not having to think about them at all. This was easy enough in early games – and still is – in reborn classics such as Rez Infinite, but in Mass Effect: Andromeda, having to memorise the mapping of every single button on the DualShock to various actions on foot, when driving the Nomad, or in the menus and sub-menus is a daunting task. In my experience, there’s just enough variation from title to title to make me feel like I’m remote-controlling the character on-screen rather than playing as her, which can be illusion-shattering and frustrating in a firefight. That split-second wasted trying to remember how to change ammunition type can be the difference between life and death.
The games of 2017 are remarkably rich, beautiful and complex compared to their forebears and, notwithstanding the novelty factor, they are arguably smarter too. Unfortunately, most of them require a level of such commitment and dedication that it clashes with their purpose as entertainment, a serious flaw that is further exacerbated by such a huge amount of worthy titles. I wonder if anyone is working on solving this impossible conundrum. Then again, perhaps my generation of gamers has become irrelevant and nobody cares about our failing brains. Fabrice Saffre
“The medium fell victim to its own success: there are too many big titles vying for our attention”
First, welcome back to Dialogue, Fabrice! Now, to your problem: perhaps you need to think a little smaller. The bigger the game – whether in budget, or scope, or both – the likelier you sound to bounce off it. A handy experiment for you to try: avoid games with colons in the title. It’ll open your eyes.
Serious Sam
Over a decade ago, this magazine ran a memorable cover story entitled ‘Bored to Death of Videogames?’ which seemed to be a shared opinion across the gaming world at that time. Thankfully, things did pick back up, but now I find myself in a similar
scenario again. As the midlife crisis has been and gone, I seem to spend more time reading about games than I do actually playing them.
I’ve probably been in a minority now for a long time, but I think it spoke volumes when
Destiny 2’ s recent beta was released. As it was locked behind the usual pre-order paywall, the only sight and sound of the game was via YouTube and streaming sites. On one stream, an overenthusiastic commentator was asked by a viewer to stop talking so he could listen to the story. What had me laughing out loud was that I didn’t realise Destiny had a story, or needed one. It seems that a lot of recent, highly regarded classic games have endless dialogue trees and a roster of characters four times the size of the Lord Of The Rings novels, with a script to match. Chalk me up as a fan of the silent Link, and the actionsspeak-louder-than-words Souls games.
But returning to Destiny 2, and in particular E310 – if it hadn’t featured enough over the course of its development, then the record-breaking, 18-page special bordered on offensive with its fanzine-like length. As a subscriber, can I urge the editorial team to regroup and at least think of something new to put into the magazine to freshen it up? I don’t detect that much new content in the past few years, and I don’t want it to get to the point where I am bored to death of Edge. Neil McAlister
We didn’t play Destiny for the story either, but the fact that Bungie is trying to address one of the first game’s major flaws in its sequel is just one of the reasons we chose to cover it. We realise not every cover game appeals to every reader. We hope the other 114 pages contained something that piqued your interest; if not, perhaps it’s time you dug your Light Phaser out from the loft. Absolver
It’s been a year since was released to very mixed reviews, down to the fact that a lot of what had been promised by Sean Murray in the build-up to release was No Man’s Sky missing, and the game slowly changed from an exploration game to a pointless one. Your only real options were to farm resources and get a bigger, better ship, and its campaign was too short, especially when you had a billion different planets to explore. Luckily, Hello Games has been adding free updates throughout the year to build the game that was shown off at E3 years ago. With the release of Atlas Rises, No Man’s Sky feels like a game I could happily put hundreds of hours into. There’s now a 30-hour story which has taken me from trying to find another fellow explorer – triangulating his position from planet to planet – to setting up my own base and workers to find this lost soul amongst the stars. The base-building has been available for a while now, but the main story gives you missions, sidequests and a more important reason to increase your standing with the three main alien races.
The game now has a beating heart – a purpose to all the exploring, grinding and upgrading you are doing. It finally feels fully realised: because of all that disappointment, Hello Games have finally made a game worthy of its triple-A price tag. Atlas Rises is a new beginning: with continued support and content from Hello Games, No Man’s Sky can hopefully get people back on the hype wagon for what’s next. A lot can change a game in a year, and this has set the benchmark. Charlie Ridgewell
Quite right too. It seems that if you shout loud and long enough, your voice will eventually be heard and you’ll get your way. Unless your name’s Neil McAlister, that is. Foul play
I don’t usually feel compelled to write to you very often, but a letter in E310’ s Dispatches section had me raise a Roger Moore-esque eyebrow. It concerns the heart-wrenching tale of young Pierre Fouquet, battling through life’s sorrows via the help of our old friend videogames. It was an X-Factoresque yarn so touching and emotional that you could practically hear the soft tinkly piano accompaniment. I’ll admit it had me reaching for the Kleenex myself, until about halfway through when the ol’ Spidey-sense started tingling something fierce. Poor old Pierre, bullied in school and only finding solace in the murder of make-believe people in San
Andreas, then doing the same in higher fidelity later on with GTAIV. Time passes and things get better. But then his mother dies – a truly tragic event amplified by the fact he was only eight years old at the time.
But eight years old? GTAIV was released in 2008, San Andreas in 2004. So if time went on and he got steadily better before his mother died when he was eight, we might surmise it was sometime after the release of
GTAIV. If she had died in 2009, within a year of GTAIV’s release, that would make him three when San Andreas was released – four, tops. I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone that not only is the game vastly inappropriate for a child of that age, but I very much doubt he would possess the fine motor skills at three years old to play it to the degree he claims. All of that isn’t even taking into account the fact that he played it to find release from being bullied at school – a school that he would be too young to attend.
Forgive me if that rubs anyone up the wrong way, but he got Letter Of The Month for that drivel, when your man Robert August de Meijer (not me, by the way) slavered on for ages about AI in games and was far more worthy. Seems you were suckered in, reality TV-style, by the sob story – which is not your fault, incidentally. I blame Simon Cowell. We’re all victims here. Kenneth Russell
Heavens above, we’ve been had! We’ve always been suckers for a sob story, especially when the horrors of deadline are upon us. We suppose after that we’re honour-bound to give you this month’s PS Plus subscription – and Pierre, if you’re reading this, do get in touch. The ball’s in your court now, dear boy.