DISPATCHES JUNE
For fox sake
Game manuals were once an art form. Unique illustrations, premises and character bios, tips and tricks for gameplay – these have been relegated to game guides or spread across various in-game menus today. I lament how they’ve disappeared over time and the loss of the special relationship they can have with their games. I think the love I have for them has been gently sparked with the digitisation and integration of physical media within games to help solve puzzles (Nathan Drake’s journal in Uncharted 4) or navigate worlds (Henry’s map in Firewatch). Tunic is the latest to incorporate this idea but it does so with a game manual. And it’s not just for flavour; it’s a core part of the experience.
Tunic has no tutorial. The controls are only conveyed via pages found throughout the game world, which unveil variations or nuances in mechanics that are meant to be discovered later to progress. There are enemy illustrations and descriptions, but most of the narrative context is hidden behind a fictional language, so players are made to draw conclusions from images, symbolisms, and bits of English. There’s even messy marginalia on maps and near item pictures that not only offer hints to hidden locations, but also clues for secret puzzles and mechanics that are too good and too deep to spoil.
Game manuals don’t have to be forgotten or replaced. They can be expansive, additive, and complementary to the game experience. Tunic shows how the interplay between physical media (whether in-game or truly physical) and gameplay is relatively untapped and has great potential for game design. With all the note-taking, crossreferencing and studying they encourage, games can feel even more like adventures. Sometimes, an eye for anachronism can lead to innovation – when the future doesn’t leave behind or modernise the past, but instead meets and melds with it.
Joey Thurmond
We’re currently teasing out the last few remaining secrets of Tunic, and that in-game manual really is a masterstroke – and we’d be very surprised if a physical edition wasn’t in the offing. Meanwhile, since you clearly appreciate physical media, here’s 12 months’ worth of Edge on us.
Reads like an 8
Something I would quite like to propose to the Edge team is for you to put together a roundup of all the Edge-9-reviewed games as a sort of Edge Hall Of Fame. This could either be as a feature in the normal run, or else as a special issue – which I’d happily pay for, and maybe other readers might too?
A spinoff to that would be to then invite readers to nominate their own games for the Hall Of Fame to generate an ongoing discussion, hopefully without any trolls, and/or to compare Edge scores of those games with player/reader perceptions.
Could be a starter-for-ten idea, could be something that’s been proposed before but wasn’t taken up, could well be a terrible idea, but I just wanted to suggest it.
Nick Croman
You want more? One hundred and thirtytwo pages every four weeks isn’t enough? In seriousness, that’s not a bad idea – though presumably you’d want the 10s in there as well. As for ongoing discussions about Edge scores, we’re sure there must be a couple of places online where there’s plenty of – let’s go with enthusiastic – debate each month.
Immolative sims
Deus Ex’s best feature is how you can tackle its challenges using different resources. Its
“Manuals can be expansive, additive and complementary to the game experience”
greatest problem is how easy it is to stock up on them, making the choice often arbitrary. Arkane’s Prey also has this issue.
Breath Of The Wild made its weapons brittle so you would think first before swinging, but without a weak and free weapon to fall back on (like a baton or wrench), players felt a bit too anxious and irrationally stored too many away.
Elden Ring doesn’t offer the same interesting resource management. Sure, there are plenty of toys to throw around, but your trusty sword will solve most problems. However, a trip to a bonfire can mean more than just refilling your health – you can also get your mana back and open your chest of reserves. Now imagine if other immersive sims had bonfires.
I can’t help but think how much better immersive sims would be if I found myself scurrying for a home base because I had been too liberal with my tools. There is, however, a genre that often has me begging for a save point, and that’s Metroidvanias. But I am rarely ever concerned about how many missiles/mana points I have left. In these games, your blaster/whip will suffice, and thus, my only concern is health.
So here I am, wishing games with refill stations/save points would have more interesting resources to spend on the way to the next one. And that games with fun toys would better gamify how often I got to use them. Though perhaps I’ve missed an excellent example?
Robert August de Meijer
Trust pink
I turn the photorealistic final corner at Tokyo Expressway in my tuned Nissan and feel every bump through the hi-tech motors beating directly onto my nerves, making them also believe what my eyes are seeing.
I walk down a glistening American street into the sunset, a stolen car burning in flames over my shoulder, while I throw away this new gun because it’s not as good as my other one.
I race my ghostly horse across a massive windswept world and blink the dust out of my eyes as if it’s really there, before brazenly throwing myself into another death.
I spend on new platforms for new experiences. I spend far too much, and too long. The hours they want get longer, or maybe my own hours get shorter. Fewer. A level is now a journey and I have to push on, because maybe next time I’ll get to do something when I get there.
I feel nothing. I remember when Agro fell off that cliff, my wife wept. I tried to bring her back for his reappearance, but no. I cried, too, in those days.
I turn the final corner at Tokyo Ring and simply exhale. I watch the sunset as the police descend, already reaching for the power button. Ghost horse carries me from one death, too fast towards another, and in a cold loop. It’s been a while since I felt anything more with these things.
But last night I played as a pink blob with eyes who’s really good at blowing. He waddles around cloudy trees and kindergarten flowers. I got to a fairground, discovered that I’d guided some ducklings back to their mother, and cried a little as they jumped in happiness. Maybe I should just stick to pink blobs from now on.
Simon Best
Look, whatever you get up to in your spare time is none of our business. But it’s entirely reasonable to seek out more light-hearted escapes right now. And judging by the sales numbers so far, Kirby (it was Kirby you were talking about, right?) is clearly doing the trick for not just you but a lot of Switch owners.
Avowed Nintent
I won’t lie to you: I’m not a regular reader of Edge magazine. I’m currently buried under work for my final semester of college and barely have time to game. That said, once I’m free from the horrors of academia, I’m going to buy a Switch, huddle in the corner of the living room and destroy what remains of my irises and corneas to make up for lost time, and I intend to once again pick up the mag. In the meantime, any recommendations on what I’ve been missing over the past year or so? Cathal Donovan O’Neill
Well, full marks for honesty. If you’re serious about scorching your retinas, Cruis’n Blast on an OLED Switch could be just the ticket.
Scarce tactics
I just read the letter about NFTs from Leo Tarasov in E370. Him mentioning the Mona Lisa and NFTs reminded me of a time I visited a shop selling pictures many years ago, long before NFTs ever existed.
On the wall were two pictures that looked exactly the same. One priced £9.99; one priced £199.99. They looked exactly the same! So I asked, “Why the price difference?” The answer came back: “Well, the £9.99 one was just a copy”. I then asked, “So the other is the original, then?” The answer this time was, “No, that’s a copy as well – but it’s a limitedrun copy. That makes it worth more”.
That sounds to me like an NFT – in the sense that false value is added due to the created uniqueness of making the copy a ‘limited run’. Other than that, there was no difference at all between the unlimited copy and the limited-run copy. The sales staff did try to convince me that the limited-run copy was on better paper and the ink was better, etc, but was it really £190 better?
The sad thing is, there is a large market for limited-run prints (along with limited runs of a whole bunch of other stuff, such as coin collections, etc). I just don’t get why someone would think that just because it is part of a limited run, it is somehow better than an unlimited run of copies. I guess NFTs are just the latest way to take advantage of this kind of thinking.
Paul Jackson
Come on, Paul. How about some signed copies of Edge? Very limited editions. Fifty quid to you. Meet you around the back at 5pm.