DISPATCHES AUGUST

Wear the hat

Did you know that The Division 2 was made by Ubisoft? If you didn’t, you knew it after the first time you loaded the game. Yet, for some reason, Ubisoft reminds me, each and every time I start The Division 2, that it made it. Either Ubi thinks I have terminal amnesia or it is incredibly insecure. It also tells me what game engine it used. Each and every time. As if I, a regular punter, care! I’ve already bought the game, so it’s not going to influence me in any way. So, while imparting this information makes no difference to my game whatsoever, doing so repeatedly is a complete waste of my time.

Also, why, upon loading a game, must I press X to start? I’d have thought that taking the disc out of the box, slotting it in the machine and pressing X to load the game were sufficient demonstration of my intention to play the thing.

Pretty much every game on the market is guilty of these sins, but I highlight The Division 2 because of how much of my time it wastes. It takes a full minute before I’m even presented with the option to press X, 15 seconds of which is the Ubi and Snowdrop logos (another 15 is a superfluous epilepsy warning). The game then loads into the character selection screen (which takes another 25 seconds) and then into the game proper (which takes another few minutes). As I understand it, gamers are encouraged to spend no more than 45 minutes playing without a break. It takes The Division 2 five per cent of that time to load up. Thinking this through, if the game takes someone 50 hours to complete, they will spend 2.7 hours waiting for it to load, over 30 minutes of which will be watching the epilepsy warning, and the developer and engine logos.

Perhaps we have videogame consoles’ roots in the arcade to blame for all this, but I can’t see the point of it.

So, game makers, can we all agree that, if you really, really must tell me that you’ve made the game, say using the Havok physics engine, you only need to tell me once and that I really don’t need to press X to start a game I’ve already started? Thanks.

Simon Brindle

At least a couple of those are platform-holder certification requirements, if we’re to be fair, but we agree it can be a bit much. As for the epilepsy warnings, they’re really quite useful if you have, you know, epilepsy.

Junk science

If there’s one thing that keeps me from enjoying a new adventure game, it’s inventory management. The first couple of hours I’m usually in a state of anxiety because I’m not sure which items I should hold on to or not.

A particularly nasty example is in Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, which told me to experiment with cooking. An hour later, the old man required me to make a specific meal for him, but I had already used up all the local bass on random recipes. I ended up not being able to get his nifty cold-resistant armour. A little bit later, I found out I needed to use a huge hammer to beat a stone boss. If only I hadn’t wasted it on easier enemies…

I’ve had similar experiences in Witcher III, Subnautica, and Skyrim. However, I did not feel the same amount of anxiousness in Horizon: Zero Dawn, because its menus show how rare and expensive your loot is, and tell you precisely what it does.

This brings me to a concept I wish all adventure games had: a vendor who sells every item in the game, pricing them according to their rarity. This way I could look up the value and replaceability of things. This would mean only putting mental energy into highly priced items. Also: were I to make a mistake, like destroying a rare commodity,

“I’m usually in a state of anxiety because I’m not sure which items I should hold onto or not”

or simply not being able to find one, I could instead farm gold to still acquire it.

I understand that a sense of mystique is important in adventure games. It’s exciting to find out about the hidden powers of items in games (like Dark Souls and Planescape: Torment). But please don’t make me spend too much time wondering what everything is, and then punish me for experimenting. Robert August de Meijer

Hallelujah. No doubt many RPG designers would tell you that decisions should have consequences, and if everything’s in the shops then none of it is special. But we’re right there with you, Robert.

The future of the future

For me, there are problems behind Stadia’s vision of instant-streaming absolutely any of the world’s games instantly – but they’re not the ones that most people seem to be talking about. Our industry’s asymptotic glide towards the laws of physics assures me that streaming’s technological goals are very much ‘when’ not ‘if ’, which begs the question of what happens once we get there. Is the grass as green as it looks?

The closest precedent we have is, of course, TV and movies, with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime vying for our attention. And what do those give us? Some great TV, sure, but also a difference in how we consume it. I worry that won’t translate easily to the game industry, at least without signficantly impacting its creative output.

Let’s think of the terminology change of the last few years: “binge-watching” wasn’t a thing before – does “binge-playing” await, and will we be better for it if so? I’m not so sure. And I worry that its translation to gaming will lead to bite-size or episodic content which hasn’t suited the medium thus far. How will a 50-hour JRPG fare in that marketplace? What happens if licensing terms means it rotates out of your service provider’s library midway through, without even the ability to transfer saves?

Within those online repositories, there’s also just so much to choose between. Am I the only one who feels instantly overwhelmed, before flicking around and giving up? With games, I find the mere physicality of a disc change, or even a download, provides a buffer before which this kicks in, giving my apathetic self encouragement to stick with whatever I was playing before. Without this I’m not sure I’ll cope – choice paralaysis will overwhelm me!

But there are positives. The quality of TV’s output has definitely gone up in recent years (Oscars for Netflix, no less), and online services now feel more mainline than watching off-air. Will greater ubiquity lead to games being more widely discussed, and yet more socially acceptable? Will that lead to sleeper hits that pick up through word of mouth rather than over-advertising? I certainly hope so. The one thing that is certain is that there’s change ahead. We should proceed cautiously.

Murray Rogers

Nuance? We’ll have none of that around these parts sir, this is videogames we’re talking about. Do enjoy your PS Plus subscription.

(Stay gold)

Reading about Panic’s new console, I started off incredulous, then was sceptical, before finally ending up quite excited. In an age of growing homogenisation and stagnation across mainstream gaming, something so idiosyncratic and disruptive really deserves to find success, just to freshen things up a bit – like indie games have done on the software side of things. And incredibly, it looks like it has a chance to succeed as well. With its distinctive aesthetic, a carefully curated collection of titles from indie darlings, and punk ethos, along with lovely retro graphics and a wonderfully anachronous analogue crank controller, it seems perfectly designed to appeal to the hipster crowd, God love them, as a countercultural statement piece.

There’s only one problem – Playdate, really? What sort of a name is that? It’s not even cool in an ironic way. Worse than that, it’s so… prosaic. Kind of like PlayStation, funnily enough – which is the complete antithesis of this machine; the very reason for its existence. Something like this feels like it should have a name that’s either nothing to do with games, or is just a completely made up word. Hang on, I’ve got it – Indigo. It’s ironic, because that’s not the colour of the machine at all. And it’s a pun of what the machine is for – indie games on the go. I’ll wait for my cheque in the post… Tom Laverack

If you like the thing, does it matter what it’s called? If you need us, we’ll be on our Wii.

Stranded

Hideo Kojima’s latest trailer proves that the creator of Metal Gear Solid is not willing to let us know what Death Stranding is really about. After previous promotional videos, a nineminute-long trailer doesn’t explain the basics about its mechanics, overall plot nor even what kind of game are we talking about here.

It had to be the official PlayStation website where most players found some answers. We talk about asynchronous online gameplay which will let us help each other by sending supplies, sharing safe houses and following each other’s footsteps while exploring a landscape “utterly transformed”. Is it clearer now?

Be that as it may, I am sure that Hideo Kojima’s latest videogame won’t play a classic role in its genre, whatever it is. The complexity of its plot, including concepts such as death, destiny, parallel realities, encapsulated babies, paranormal activity, the afterlife, togetherness and the most likely approach to the ever-present concept of the human nature is something nobody could possibly expect to understand in its totality even when the ending credits roll. For better or worse, if Kojima didn’t exist, he should be invented.

Lidia Castillo Cortés

We wonder what Konami must make of Death Stranding. It shows exactly why the industry needs its Kojimas, sure – but also why Konami got rid of him in the first place. Baffling.