DISPATCHES OCTOBER

Keep on pushing

I am old. So old that my glasses have more of a bearing on my experience of gaming than any powerful console or PC. However, it did get me thinking: one thing I used to love about the older generations, before we got caught up in mid-cycle product refreshes, was how developers got better and better at using them. Look at the first games released for the SNES versus those at the end of its lifecycle. Same with the Xbox 360 or the PS2. However, now, with our new cycles, we never see hardware pushed in interesting ways. We don’t see programmers performing miracles on things that shouldn’t be able to do them. Instead, we just get janky versions of new games, which play better on the newer hardware. In many ways, Nintendo with the Switch is the only place people seem to get to experience the old approach. With everyone else rushing to the most powerful console, using brute force to create beautiful landscapes, I miss those coders and developers who created mini digital miracles.

Anand Modha

How fitting that this should arrive in the same issue as our review of Monolith Soft’s formidable Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (see p110) – a perfect example of the kind of technical accomplishment you’re talking about.

Missed hits

In E373, Nathan Brady-Eastham shared their concern about graphics and design having stagnated. When it comes to graphical fidelity, sure, my five-year-old GTX 1060 is still doing fine. And it’s true that many modern games are recycling old design: besides Dusk and Tunic, there’s Tales Of Yore, Rogue Heroes and Ultrakill (which weren’t reviewed in Edge, so must be mentioned). However, just because design technology has been referring back to games of yore, it doesn’t mean new things aren’t being added. Take for example Astalon: Tears Of The Earth (also not reviewed; should have gotten a 9). Graphically, you’d think it’s for the NES. But had it been released in 1989, it would be up there with Super Mario Bros 3 as the system’s best game. Why? Because designers have been standing on shoulders: the controls, secrets, saving system, boss battles, sense of progress, multiple characters etc are all up to contemporary standards. You won’t see the Angry Video Game Nerd reviewing this one.

But to answer Nathan’s second concern: which design will games lean on in 30 years? Well, there’s plenty of experimental jank deserving a second chance. I can’t predict the future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong finds a cult following and inspires a legacy the way Bloodlines did. What about Ghostwire: Tokyo, A Memoir Blue, or Lost Ark? So many half-baked ideas! Thank

Edge for at least showcasing them. Tragically, many innovative games are actually fine, yet are begging for an audience. Think of Card Shark, Citizen Sleeper, Unsighted and ElecHead. Honestly, I’m too busy with the current crop of original games to be concerned about what gaming might be like in 30 years!

Robert August de Meijer

Robert, if you fancy sending us more provisional scores for games we haven’t reviewed, we promise we’ll add them to the Edge database. (Which does, admittedly, closely resemble a wastepaper basket.)

Back for good

“Nintendo with the Switch is the only place people seem to get to experience the old approach”

I was very pleased to read Adrian Hon’s perspective on game preservation. Indeed, this is an urgent and challenging topic. If you take a look back into the 1890s, the first

viewers in Berlin were able to buy into a cinema-like experience, but it took us about 50 years to set up professional archives in order to create ‘research grounds’. Numerous private collections had already been destroyed during two World Wars; also, film publishers intentionally destroyed their material to prevent illegal copy activities.

With a not-so-new medium at hand, we shall see whether we have learned something – and indeed really great initiatives have been kicked off. For instance, the well-known Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marburg is focusing on narrative-heavy games in their collection; there’s also the International Computer Game Collection, a project launched in collaboration with a lots of public institutions behind it. So, let’s hope for the best here.

Rudolf Inderst

The enterprising folks behind these various preservation efforts do indeed deserve a huge amount of credit. Expect to read a few of their stories in these pages soon.

Mechanics grip

Well, this one’s a bit of a surprise. Since my previous letter was published in E372,

I was readying myself for a barrage of criticism from within a subsequent Dispatches. So to instead find a response within these hallowed pages, not just from the great Robert August de Meijer himself, but one that was also in agreement, was a genuine shock. (Presumably this feels similar to being told by Da Vinci that you’re quite good at drawing mouths.) My insistence that there is an important distinction to be made between a videogame and an interactive story remains – but it’s one that has also kept me thinking. Was it a reduction of my argument to claim that a videogame needs a fail state? I don’t think it was, but the nuance can instead perhaps be better understood as that a game requires challenge. What is the difference between

Florence and Monkey Island 2? Without player interaction, neither story moves forward. In both, the player moves objects around on screen to progress. But Monkey Island challenges the player with interactions that deliberately aren’t obvious to progress past – and even though the inability to solve a particular puzzle doesn’t result in a Game Over screen, the very act of failing to solve it immediately creates an abstract (albeit temporary) fail state in itself. This isn’t the case with Florence, which at the time of writing doesn’t have a single walkthrough on GameFAQs. The story here also won’t move forward without someone taking part in its interactive sections, but these don’t exist to challenge the player – their requirements are obvious, with their real purpose being to tangibly immerse the player in the emotional fabric of its world. It does a fantastic job of that, but in contrast to the concept of gameplay, this is little more than the digital equivalent of turning the page in a book. And there is nothing wrong with objectively concluding from this that Monkey Island is a game when Florence is not. Rather than that being a criticism, solidifying these definitions will only help move our young medium forward and increase its legitimacy in a world where so many are still ready to label all kinds of interactive entertainment as toys.

Lee Hyde

This one, we sense, is going to run and run. From our perspective, the most important distinction of all is simply: is it any good?

Reawakening

I’m a sucker for Zelda. My first experience with videogames was playing an English version of Link’s Awakening on a Game Boy. Being Spanish and at the tender age of eight, I can’t understand how I managed to beat half the game. That being said, Tunic was a no-brainer for me. Alas, the last few games I played (Last Stop, The Gunk, Carrion) were more akin to a chore, so I was skeptical going in, even after your fine words in E370. Oh boy, how wrong I was. Tunic is the most immersive non-immersive-sim I’ve played. Plenty of times I felt like a kid scratching my head, stuck, not knowing where to go – and somehow a minute later I could feel like a genius bypassing a stage. Not to mention the joy of slowly stitching up the game manual with the “a-ha” moments that come with it. This game made me realise how I could play Zelda back then. When a game is infused with that je ne sais quoi, idioms and age don’t matter at all. Long live Tunic.

Adrià Navarro

Village people

Adrian Hon’s article in E374 discussing companion apps and the evolution to wikis was interesting. It touched me as I had recently found myself in a downer following some difficulties in my personal life, and was looking for ‘that’ game to take my mind off things. I had spent years chasing games to the top – the most powerful, the best graphics – but I’ve found as I’ve got older that these titles no longer capture me. I would pick a game up for five minutes and close it down again, until I came across a little game called Stardew Valley. I had never played a game like that before, but found that the simple graphics and easy mechanics really took my mind into this world. However, what really won me over was the availability of the wikis and the strong community online: not only could I sink a few hours into it when I was home from work, but I found myself thinking throughout my day of new farming techniques, working out price versus yield, and planning gifts to give to villagers. Whenever I had one of these thoughts I could jump online and find a community or a page that would indulge my ideas. I played Stardew Valley for a few of the most difficult weeks of my life, and in that time it became a lifestyle, as well as a lifesaver, rather than simply a game. James Hackman

Well, let’s keep those good vibes going. Have a 12-month subscription on us.