Dialogue
Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a year’s subscription to PlayStation Plus, courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment
Edge readers share their opinions; one wins a year’s PlayStation Plus
Eternal flame
Robert August de Meijer ( E328) finds himself short of games that allow him to be a benevolent Ubermensch with the elbow room to deviate when the mood takes him.
As it happens, I have just completed the Switch edition of the sublime World Of Goo. I can’t remember a rush of omnipotence like this since Lemmings. Each puzzle element is not simply an object, but a person, capable of sleep, wonder, relief and, no doubt, countless other emotions. The puzzles are curiously involving as a result.
And the Goo Balls with which one builds a way to salvation must necessarily sometimes be sacrificed, sometimes left behind, so that a select few may be saved. Such, I found myself thinking, were the dilemmas of Caesar crossing the Rubicon or Alexander sacking Persepolis.
A more recent, yet equally sublime puzzler points up the contrast: The Witness is a harder and, dare I say, on the whole more intellectual experience, its puzzles more varied and more challenging. But it is somehow a deader game. It does not provide quite the same thrill of saving relatable souls in each puzzle.
I like to think that the great Professor Nietzsche, if he had owned a Switch, would have played World Of Goo for an hour every night as he dreamed of the perfection of mankind in his Alpine retreat. Neil Sewell-Rutter Perhaps, yes – and then he’d have gone on the internet for some Tetris Effect port begging and a few Labo-related death threats. Enjoy your new PS Plus sub.
No diggity
Since you asked, no, I don’t care much for a preview section in 2019. Neither did I in 1983: the correlation between hype and quality has always been miserable ever since there were rumours that Pac-Man was being made for the VCS. It’s the only part of your magazine I don’t always read.
But we’re of course talking about how plenty of games can already be played (and purchased) before their release, and how to treat them. While some are still obviously incomplete, others are already fantastic. I would even argue that some games, like World Of Warcraft’s open beta, are best enjoyed when the community still feels like it’s growing.
I do enjoy your in-depth features, especially when the developers get interviewed and we get to later either a) enjoy seeing their dreams having come reality, or b) marvel at the tragic outcomes. And if there’s a game that catches your attention, please share.
But overall, I wouldn’t mind shorter summaries of most previews, and more review-like features on games already being played, despite their status being in flux. With so many games on offer nowadays, I would rather read about something I can try out now than something that might one day be good.
I tell my friends that your magazine is like National Geographic for videogames. A magazine is best suited to deploy well-curated oversights of what has been happening, not what is to be. Ultimately, I think how good a game is, and not whether a game has a ‘1.0’ in its filename, should be what gets it your attention. A review of PUBG months after everybody has already played it seems awkward. Robert August de Meijer
Just the way you are
“Our early interests are influenced by our parents’ hobbies until we develop our own”
What use has a preview section in the year 2019? Well, curation. Besides games having longer lives now, there are just too many interesting new games to keep up with.
I can’t keep up with everything, nor do I want to. But you guys are paid to keep up with (almost) everything and have a passion for it in any case. So after reading this month’s Hype, Creaks and Sayonara Wild Hearts are on my radar. I’ve been updated
on Felix The Reaper and Outer Wilds. I know Hytale exists. And I know I can safely ignore
Ring Of Elysium. This is all valuable. The major problem is deciding whether something’s been in Early Access for so long that it really doesn’t qualify for preview any more. But you can afford to be ruthless – you’ve got enough potential material for an entire issue of previews every month. Ron Dippold Thanks both, and all the rest of you who got in touch with your thoughts on the future of previews. We’ll continue to mull it over.
Party in the USA
Throughout Red Dead Redemption 2 I’ve been wondering about Sadie Adler: should we applaud Rockstar for trying to create their first meaningful female character, or should we criticise them for failing?
When you first meet Sadie, she is a damsel in distress: a rival gang pillages her home and your gang takes her in. As the game progresses, it turns out that Sadie is handy with guns and knives, more comfortable in men’s clothing or covered in their blood than in a dress, enjoys a good insult, and can step up as a calm and resourceful leader under severe pressure. Indeed, she gets very angry when she is restricted to traditional female roles.
This way of subverting a stereotype is a bit on the nose, but it could be worse. The real problem is that, after 60 hours, this is all there is to Sadie: the paragraph above describes almost all of her backstory and characteristics. The male gang leaders Dutch and Hosea, or even generic protagonist Arthur have stories that would fill this page, but Sadie is just someone who is unexpectedly, in the context of the game, good at some things men are good at. In fact, I think the problem goes deeper than that, because Sadie is also very traditionally attractive; she is the quintessential tomboy crush. So then the interesting question is whether Rockstar failed to write a meaningful female character because they did not know how to, or because they were cynically trying to manipulate both sides of the debate about the representation of women in the industry. Leonid Tarasov Surely being good at the things men are good at is the only way a woman gets to play cowboys in the Old West? Rockstar’s main error with Sadie was that we simply didn’t see enough of her – something we hope is fixed through DLC.
Give me everything
I am a collector. This extends to various aspects of my life – whether needing an artist’s entire discography, or in my hoovering up of old game consoles. The release of Super
Smash Brothers Ultimate therefore set alarm bells going once I had heard of the World Of Light mode. Of course I had to collect them all. Of course I had to unlock all the fighters.
Over the holiday period, the deed was done. The stats said 100 per cent and the timer said nigh on 26 hours. But something wasn’t right. I didn’t feel accomplishment.
Whilst most of the World Of Light levels are meant jokingly, they are also excessively easy. When I compare that to my physical collection of games, some of which took me weeks to find, it feels hollow, as if the lack of the chase renders the prize meaningless. Indeed, there are very few individual encounters within the World Of Light mode that I can remember. It therefore led me to consider what it is about collecting in general that I appreciate. Alan Wake’s flasks, for example, are meaningless,
whilst Celeste’s strawberries are vital. Mario Odyssey’s moons are a tally, whilst BanjoKazooie’s 100 Jiggies and 900 notes are almost burned into my brain.
There’s a fine line in collectibles between being over-indulgent and stingy. I’m curious as to what a post- Odyssey, post- Smash world will mean; it may very much be a case of more is less. In the meantime, I’m going to start cleaning up the Assassin’s Creed Origins map. Alex Whiteside Collecting things is fun, though, no matter the challenge! Just ask this fello– ah.
Don’t you (forget about me)
I first discovered Edge in the GameCube era when somebody told me about an exclusive feature on Twilight Princess. I ran to my local kiosk and bought the magazine for the ridiculous price of about £18. But it was all worth it. I’ve always loved physical magazines, and yours was of a special quality, so I decided to buy a subscription. Edge has been a staple throughout many years of my life, from high school to university to the creation of our own game company. Month after month, I could always count on you to deliver top-quality content about the future of interactive entertainment.
However, I have decided to not renew my subscription. It’s not you, it’s me. My media consumption is totally different now. While I’ve always enjoyed the great-quality content in your articles (especially about how games are made), I have a problem with my everincreasing backlogs. Not just games, but books, articles, podcasts, magazines, etc. There is too much content and too little time to consume it. My magazines are slowly stacking up in a literal pile of shame. Time is getting more and more precious to me. Edge is definitely time well spent, but I also have to be realistic about what I can actually manage to read.
It saddens me to say goodbye; we have been through so much together. I sincerely hope you’ll keep fighting for physical magazines, since digital will never be able to replace the feeling of sitting with printed pages in your hands. Thanks for everything, Edge. Gustav Dahl We had such bright hopes for 2019, too. 2020 is definitely going to be our year.