Glitchy Troubles Abound

I was planning on starting this post later, but I find some unexpected free time on my hands since my online character has been deleted, so... here we go!

Needless to say, I am very bummed to have lost a character I have invested time and effort into. I've been pretty OK with the other problems plaguing the online launch, like periods where nobody can connect to the service, since those just stop progress. Actually losing progress, though, really stinks. I'll join my voice to the chorus of people recommending that you not start playing GTA Online until they finish fixing all their problems.

The whole situation is simultaneously familiar and absurd. There are always huge problems anytime a historically single-player franchise puts out an online component. The most obvious recent examples are Sim City and Diablo 3, but I still remember the howls of rage that accompanied BioWare's botched launch of Dragon Age: Origins.

At the same time, though... Rockstar waited a full two weeks after the game came out before enabling online mode. Even though the game sold better than expected, that should have been plenty of time to purchase additional hardware, run a closed beta test that could identify stresses on the system, and gotten stuff ready. Instead, they've been plagued by an array of problems, some their own, some the result of the Playstation Network or (less often) Xbox Live. (A recent theory I heard, which seems both like a tinfoil-hat theory and perfectly plausible, is that Rockstar deliberately postponed the online launch specifically to prevents review scores for GTA V from getting dinged by the online problems they knew would come. I can buy that.)

That said, in the time I may have wasted playing GTA Online, I did generally have fun. I've joined a small crew from a website I like; I don't know any members personally, but have run a few races with a couple of them and fooled around in the open world with another. I've always started up a private crew session, and I'm often the only person inside it, so I don't experience the full mayhem that a lot of folks are apparently experiencing.

Once the online game is worth playing, here are a few random tips from me:

• You can start your own solo instance of the game by launching into single player, then choosing Online -> Play Online, then picking either "Solo Game" or "Invite Only". This might be nice if you want to get the hang of the slightly different interface, or spend time shopping, or just explore for a bit without worrying about other players.
• Pressing "X" from the launch screen will put you in online mode, but this will always dump you into a public server. Not necessarily bad if you just want to tool around and have fun, just something to be aware of.
• By far the best and easiest way to level up and get money is to run Races or Jobs with other players. Once you find a group you like, you can keep picking additional ones so they stack back-to-back. You get additional bonus RP (kind of like XP) if you're playing with a Crew. When racing, you can pick from a selection of vehicles, so this is very viable even for a totally-fresh character.
• If you don't want to do Races or Jobs, then levels 1-5 will go rather slowly. You get a little RP from obtaining and then losing Wanted Stars, and more RP from robbing a store. Personally, I found robbing stores the most fun way to advance in solo mode. You get a decent payout for each (~$1k), plus some practice in working with disguises and evading cops.
• Before your robbery, go to Vespucci Masks and buy any mask. If you don't already have a hat or glasses, go to any clothing store and buy one. Park your car close to the store's door, ideally with the driver's seat facing the storefront. Put on your mask before entering the store. Walk over to the cashier, pull out your gun, and aim at him to start the robbery. He'll start putting money in a bag; to make him go faster, you can shoot around him, but be careful not to hit him (you'll get less money, an additional wanted star, and be a bad person). Once you have the money, run for the door (some owners will shoot at you). Hop in your car and peel out. Once you get out of sight of the cops (wanted stars start flashing), open your Inventory, and put on your hat or glasses. (There's currently a glitch in the interface that keeps you from removing a mask; you need to put on other equipment instead.) Exchanging your mask will make you lose a wanted star, so you might be down to just 1 now, which is much easier to evade. Congrats! You are a small-time hood!
• There's an option in Online Settings that lets you make your minimap an, er, maxi-map. It looks weird at first, but I really like it, mostly because it makes it much easier to see where the cops are. It also makes it easier to navigate without stopping to set a waypoint (again, there's no pause in online mode). One significant downside: the map draws over your health and armor bars, so it's very hard to tell how close you are to dying.
• A long press on Select (on PS3) will open up a new quick menu for online mode only. This lets you quickly access some very useful stuff: quickly set a Waypoint on the current mission objective or other common destinations (AmmuNation, Mod Shops, Clothing Stores); access your Inventory (for switching disguises or eating snacks, more on that below); split up Cash with your companions, etc.
• Unlike in single-player, where your character would immediately consume any food or beverages, in online mode you can purchase snacks or drinks and add them (up to a limit) into your inventory. Eating/drinking them will then restore a little bit of health. This is very useful if you're in the middle of a mission/job and want to get above the 50% auto-heal limit.
• One of the best ways to make money in the game, which also works in solo mode, is to steal a car and then sell it to a Mod Shop. You can't sell super-high-end cars like Banshees, but can sell entry-level sports cars like the Buffalo. I find that I generally get good results with a nice-looking SUV, which can net over $6k. Note, however, that you can only sell one vehicle during any in-game 24-hour period. So, it can be worthwhile to spend a bit of time finding a good one.
• Once you finally reach Rank 5, the pace of the game starts to pick up. You'll start getting Jobs from Simeon and, later, from Gerald. These jobs can all technically be done by 1 person, and that's how I do them, but I'm sure they go much faster in a team (plus you get more RP that way). You'll want a decent gun and armor for these jobs. The starting pistol is fine, but the Micro SMG that unlocks at Rank 6 is much better, so I'd save cash for that.
• Most of Simeon's missions suck, while Gerald's are good. If you ever have the choice between the two, pick Gerald's mission. I find it impossible to finish Simeon's missions that involve apprehending a moving vehicle; it might be more feasible if you had another player running shotgun and aiming at the tires, but if it's like any of his other missions, even if you did beat it you wouldn't get much money from it. Gerald's missions tend to be relatively straightforward: drive peacefully to X, kill the gang members, steal the drugs, deal with the reinforcements that arrive (I typically hunker down and shoot them, but you can also try outrunning them), then drive back to Gerald.
• One unfortunate thing I've noticed is that job payments don't appear to scale with your character's reputation level. You can run some jobs around rank 5-10 that pay out $5k apiece; I'm now (or, I was, before my character was deleted!) running different jobs at rank 13 that only pay $1k or $2k. Which is unfortunate, especially since you need to invest more in ammo and armor for higher-level missions.
• Speaking of which: I almost never go to AmmuNation, unless I want to buy a new weapon I've unlocked. Before starting any Job, you can buy ammo for your gun and armor. There doesn't seem to be any markup on either one. 
• Ammo in general is much scarcer in Online than in single-player. You can pick up some in the world, but only up to a limit, while you can purchase a much higher amount. 
• I haven't totally figured out Armor yet. You can see it in-game, where it appears over your character's clothing. It will still appear even after you die, though, so I think it's possible to technically be wearing armor and not have any protection from it?
• Most online guides will say to only spend money on certain weapons, and later on cars and property. I don't necessarily agree. Personally, part of what I (did) enjoy most about Online is the total customization you have over your character. It can be fun to check out new Clothing options that unlock as you play, as well as new hairstyles, etc. You don't want to go overboard, so pay attention to price tags - it's very easy to spend more than $1k on a single article of clothing, even at the start of the game - but in the big scheme of things, spending a bit of money on customization won't really hurt your long-term goals.
• When you die in Free Roam mode (i.e., if you aren't on an active Job), you'll drop some of the Cash you're carrying. Not a big deal if you're playing solo, but with other players around, they'll probably take it. Unlike in solo mode, in online there's both Cash and Bank Account money. You can use your Bank Account for practically everything; the only exceptions I've found so far are vending machines and taxi rides, both of which are useless. So, any time you have any cash, put it in your bank. The game will tell you to visit an ATM to deposit your Cash, but it's almost always quicker to open your Phone, visit the Internet, then pick Money & Services and Maze Bank. Here, you can deposit (good) and withdraw (kind of pointless) your money.
• You can also shop for properties and vehicles on your phone. For properties in particular, this is a great way to browse and see what's available. I haven't bought any vehicles yet, but this is the only way to hold on to a high-end premium car like a Banshee.
• In Single Player, properties generate income. In Online, they are safehouses. You can only own one apartment at a time. The cheapest is $80k, the most expensive is $400k. There are a LOT, which I approve of; they can give more variety between player choices. More expensive properties have bigger garages, better locations, better views, and nicer interiors. Personally, my starter apartment (which I really hope wasn't permanently deleted...) was a $99k 1-bedroom in the north central area of Los Santos. It looks like it should give pretty good access to much of the city, while also being very close to the edge for quicker travel to Blaine County. There are a bunch of little activities available in apartments, similar to what you can find in single player: in mine, you can drink beer, watch TV, smoke a bong, sleep (doesn't save), or change clothes. There's also a shower, which can be used to remove blood from your character. Neat! I haven't checked this out yet, but apparently you can also tune into CCTV to watch footage from police helicopters, which will let you see what kind of mischief other players on your server are getting into.
• Besides apartments, you can also buy garages. I haven't gotten any yet. They're much cheaper than apartments, but can only be used to store cars (and motorcycles and bicycles; garages can have an unadvertised number of bicycle slots in addition to the advertised car/motorcycle slots). Once you get a garage, either by itself or as part of an apartment, you gain access to a Mechanic Contact on your phone, who you can call to deliver a car to you. I think you can own multiple garages at the same time, but don't quote me on that.

One of the most pleasant surprises from playing GTA Online has been a noticeable increase in my skill at evading cops, which I'd complained about before. Partly this is because you never need to outrun them in a garbage truck, but there are other things I've picked up as well.

• As noted above, in the specific case of robbing a store, you can wear a mask during the crime and then ditch it after to lose a star. I don't think this works for any other type of crime, but haven't tried it yet.
• Helicopters only show up at level 3. If helicopters are in play, you may need to head underground to avoid being spotted. But, helicopters don't stay around forever; it'll eventually disappear, and possibly respawn later.
• Unless a cop car is actively chasing you, they will never leave the main roads. So, once they lose sight of you (stars are flashing), try to get far off the road. This is fairly easy to do if in Blaine County. Once you're far enough from a road that they can't spot you, just wait quietly for the stars to disappear. In some cases, I've swum out into the Pacific to get the distance I needed, which works fine. 
• The Expanded Mini Map works wonders for seeing where the cops are. Keep an eye on their position and field of vision. If you're on the freeway together, it can be effective to creep along behind them; they can't easily turn around, so you might lose your stars before they spot you. Otherwise, just keep paying attention and cautiously move away from them.
• Speed can be helpful at first to get some separation from your pursuers, assuming you have a fast car. Once you're out of their sight, though, speed actually becomes a liability: if you move too quickly away from them, new cars will spawn that may be closer. I prefer to creep around while they're searching.
• Don't be afraid to leave your vehicle while they're searching. Some of the best hiding places are behind houses, or other areas that are close to the road but out of direct line of sight. This can be very handy in areas like Chumash where there are only a few north-south roads and thus it's difficult to evade via vehicle.
• I've heard that later on you can call a Contact who will remove your wanted stars for a bribe. I haven't gotten to that point yet, but love the idea!

 Phew! Man, I was having so much fun with this before it stopped working. Argh. That'll teach me for trying to play an online game shortly after launch.

FTM

I'm having a blast so far with GTA V. According to the completion percentage, I'm a bit over 50% of the way through the game, so I figured this would be a good point to drop in and share my thoughts so far.

First, at a high level, the game is (so far) delivering on what I wanted: a fun, open, beautiful world filled with cool stuff to do and nice sights to look at, combined with a high level of detail like that seen in GTA IV. The plot is pretty engaging (though so far it isn't grabbing me quite as strongly as San Andreas' or even IV's), but the highlight for me has been exploring Los Santos and Blaine County, letting the sense of place seep into my bones.

Let me get my criticisms out of the way up front (there aren't many!), then I'll dive back into what I'm digging about the game. I have to admit that, while I vividly remember GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas, my memory of GTA IV is relatively sparse, so in some cases I'm not sure whether these were things that previously existed in IV or not.

In the "classic" PS2 generation of GTA games, wanted stars were a regular way of life. It has always been impossible to win a prolonged shoot-out against the cops: sooner or later, they will always bring you down. With discretion the better part of valor, I always try to lose my wanted stars as quickly as possible. (Of course, some people do enjoy seeing how long they can go while remaining wanted - more power to them, but it's impossible to do anything but evade the police while you're evading the police.) In the early GTA games, by far the most effective way to lose your wanted level was to high-tail it to a Pay-n-Spray, where for a cheap $100 or so, they would repaint your car and instantly render you unrecognizable.

At the time, I'd laughed at how unrealistic this was. There were multiple times when I would be pursued by multiple cruisers with flashing sirens, unmarked black FBI sedans, armored SWAT vehicles, and maybe even a tank or a helicopter, all converging on my position, sometimes even slamming into me from behind in the final moments as I slalom into the painting bay. The door would slide, down, then slide back up seconds later, and... poof! Everyone would instantly lose interest. "Huh, that guy who shot thirteen helicopters out of the sky with an RPG just drove in here in a blue coupe, and now a RED coupe is driving out! Nuts, we lost him! Okay, go home everyone."

While that wasn't very realistic, it was fun. Any encounter with the law would deliver a huge jolt of adrenaline, and lead to a very intense and very brief period of time where I raced to reach the nearest Pay-n-Spray before the authorities blew up my vehicle.

As part of GTA IV's reinvention as a more serious, more realistic game, they revamped this core mechanic of evading police. There are still auto shops (Los Santos Customs in GTA V, I forget what they were called in GTA IV), but they are much farther apart than in previous games, and are no longer realistic destinations in most pursuits. Even if you do reach one, you now need to be out of sight of your pursuers before you can enter (and, as in previous games, you can't get a re-spray if in a police car or other obviously improper vehicle). Instead, they've implemented a more nuanced system of diminishing heat. You need to get out of sight of your pursuers, and stay out of sight for a period of time - of course, greater wanted levels will require longer periods. You have several strategies available to you, including speeding away from them, or ducking into an alley, canal, or other off-road area and lying low until the heat dies down.

In theory, this is a more engaging system. In practice, it's awful and I hate it. For starters, GTA V has multiple missions where you're required to steal a big and insanely slow vehicle - like a garbage truck, or a dump truck. Trying to evade multiple cruisers when your speed tops out at around 40 MPH is the definition of futility. And you can't take out your pursuers, of course, because that would just add MORE wanted stars and more troubles. So, you end up spending 10-15 minutes driving around, your giant hunk of steel impervious to all the bullets and vehicles they throw at you, but helpless to ever achieve necessary separation. That's the opposite of engaging. That's boredom incarnate.

The situation's a bit better if you're in a vehicle of your choice, but even then, it sucks. The game will spawn additional police units directly in front of you, meaning that even if you succeed in evading a tight spot, you'll immediately run into more. I totally get why they spawn more, it would be too easy to slip a dragnet otherwise, but they should really come in from the edge of your map, not in the middle of your current block. They also continue sporting classic GTA nonsense like giving you a star when a cop car crashes into you from behind, then giving you a second star a minute later for no reason at all. It's getting to the point where I want to just reload whenever I touch off a chase, just because I don't want to waste another 10 minutes of gaming time dealing with this nonsense.

Wow, that was a much longer rant than I was expecting. It's by far my least favorite aspect of GTA V; fortunately, though, it's just about the only part of GTA V that I don't love. (Briefly, things I miss from San Andreas: dating, dancing, fat.) Let me enumerate my many praises!

Gorgeous scenery. This has GTA IV's detail, where you can stop at random on any street corner (or in the middle of the woods, or along the shore, or up on a hill) and have something intricate, interesting, and high-resolution to look at. You never NEED to do this, and will spend much of the game blasting past it at high speeds, but at any moment you can slow down and soak in the fantastically realized world. Last night, I saw my first sunset over the fake Pacific ocean. It was gorgeous, a fine match for the real one that I enjoy so much. Later the next (in-game) morning, I was walking along some dunes, and noticed a shadow rapidly receding from in front of me. I looked behind me, and noticed that the sun was rising over Mount Chiliad. I got chills - I've experienced the same thing several times, in the shadow of Mission Peak or Mount Diablo or any number of East  Bay hills, and it was weirdly thrilling to encounter the same thing, purely by chance, within this game.

Varied main characters. The prospect of multiple characters had seemed like a gimmick when I first read about it. Now that I'm deep into the game, though, I'm realizing that it's brilliant on multiple levels. First, on a pragmatic level, it significantly increases the odds that any given player will have someone they can really enjoy playing as. Historically, many GTA fans will identify their favorite title in the series based on how much they enjoyed the main character's personality. People who love playing violent, amoral psychopaths love Vice City mostly because of Tommy Vercetti. People who enjoy playing ambitious strivers with roots in the community are more likely to dig CJ from San Andreas. People who enjoy melancholic, reflective characters will like GTA IV's portrayal of Niko Bellic. Well, there's something here for everyone. Trevor is so insanely out there, a totally unhinged (and hilarious!) homicidal ball of quivering furious rage that he makes Tommy Vercetti look like Desmond Tutu. Michael captures the world-weariness of middle age, someone with the depth of experience of Niko, but with plenty of roots of his own. Michael is dumb but wise, sarcastic yet yearning, a nicely complex guy. And Franklin, by far my favorite of the crew, has several superficial similarities to CJ, but also a much more collaborative spirit and a deeper level of engagement with the people around him.
Having multiple varied characters also has another interesting side-effect: it lets you create some psychic distance between you, the person holding the controller, and the guy on the screen who is shooting cops with a sawed-off shotgun. I've been thinking a lot lately about character development in video games (no doubt due to my dabbling in writing a PC and NPCs for my Shadowrun missions), and have pondered a great deal about the relationship between a player and his or her character. Many people turn to video games for escapism, and delight in acting out in ways they could never get away with in real life: they might indulge in violent fantasies ("Kill pixels, not people!") instead of living a boring law-abiding lifestyle, or they might become gregarious and outspoken instead of an introvert. Personally, I generally try to make moral decisions in games in ways that are congruous with my "real-life" values, but enjoy the heightened stakes and extreme situations presented by such games (what if all of the galaxy was threatened by sentient synthetic lifeforms? what if zombies were killing everyone?). All that to say: personally, I am often uncomfortable when I'm playing a game and need to take an action that I disagree with. The silliest-slash-most-profound instance of this might be the murder of the Companion Cube in the original Portal; I spent something like twenty minutes trying to get out of it, and felt really bad when I actually tossed it in.
Wow, this is way too much text to put into a single bullet point! Bottom line: having multiple characters lets me see them more as actors in a play, and less as avatars of my own will. Trevor is a sick, twisted man, but I don't feel responsible for him in the same way I felt responsible for Tommy. I find that this even extends past the story and into the gameplay: when playing as Michael or (especially) Franklin, I make an effort to avoid unnecessary loss of life; when playing as Trevor, I just figure, well, yeah, he WOULD drive over all of those people. The end result is more fun, and also more interesting than a single static character would be: I get to see the different sorts of reactions you can provoke, without feeling like I'm tarnishing the soul of (all) my characters.
Finally, from a role-playing-game perspective, there are nice mechanical benefits to having multiple characters. In a way, this is kind of like a party-based game, except using an action interface for combat instead of an RPG system of menus or cooldowns. Franklin is a fantastic driver, so I'll rely on him when I need to complete a race or jack a specific vehicle. All characters drive sometimes, so they all benefit from increasing their driving stat, but I don't feel the urge to max anyone but Franklin. On the other hand, "lung capacity" is a borderline useless stat, and as far as I can tell is really only used if you're going to be diving for pearls. If you want to do that, you can build up one character's lung capacity, but there's no reason to increase anyone else's. Anyways! It reminds me well of building up a warrior's strength, a thief's dexterity, and a mage's intelligence.

Fun from the start. That sort of implies that previous GTA incarnations weren't fun early on, which isn't true... I've always enjoyed the early game. However, there has almost always been a progression through the game to reach the cool stuff: you start out driving crummy cars or bikes, traveling through an ugly crime-ridden neighborhood; over time, you gradually expand your world, eventually reaching the wealthier areas and gaining access to better stuff. Here, Michael is a pretty wealthy guy from the start, and Franklin has access to great sports cars (for good story-based reasons), so from the very beginning you can live in a nice big house, drive a good car with good handling, and have enough cash to buy the available weapons and gear without scrounging. Oh, and no areas are locked, so if you want to you can tool around pretty much anywhere you want in all of Blaine County from the start (though the game's story mode does have a nice progression for gradually familiarizing you with the geography).

Solid controls. Every iteration of GTA has significantly improved the feel of the controls. Trying to melee anyone in the early games felt like wrestling a waterfall; now, it's highly satisfying to land a punch or a well-timed kick. Cars tend to handle very well: yeah, plenty of crummy cars will lose traction and spin out, but you don't need to drive crummy cars! Even vehicles that used to challenge me have been significantly improved. I was always really bad at driving the Banshee, but its incarnation in GTA V handles extremely well, and has become my go-to vehicle for most road races. There are tons of other interactions that go into the game, too: managing your cell phone (complete with an Internet browser with streaming video!), switching between your vast arsenal of weaponry, moving into and popping out of cover... all of this stuff takes only a little time to learn, and quickly becomes muscle memory. Even goofy things like raising or lowering your convertible roof have dedicated buttons for quick access.

Music. This has always been a highlight for GTA, even in the comparatively low-budget GTA III when they couldn't afford to license any A-list bands. The depth of music in GTA V is insane. In previous games, I would typically find a radio station that I liked, listen to it until I started to get sick of it, and then have plenty of other stuff to listen to instead. In GTA V, I can keep listening to Radio Mirror Park, FlyLo, or Space, giving me a steady diet of awesome electronic-ish music. But, I can also drop in on any of a variety of hip-hop stations (we've moved far beyond San Andreas's two-station "Classic East Coast hip-hop vs. West Coast gansta rap" dynamic) which are spinning fantastic tunes,  the shockingly good Non Stop Pop station (I don't think of myself as a pop fan, but that station's making a convert of me), and even huge names from the expensive world of licensed classic rock acts (Queen, Def Leppard, Robert Plant, Chicago, Steve Miller Band, Stevie Nicks, etc.).
One of my favorite things about the music, though, is how it's layered into the fabric of the world. That's long been a hallmark of GTA: If you jack a low-riding gangbanging hoopty, it'll probably be tuned to a rap station; if you jack a self-righteous hybrid sedan, it'll most likely be tuned to public radio. Part of the fun of switching between multiple characters, though, is getting a feeling for their own musical tastes, independent of your own. These aren't particularly surprising: Franklin usually is tuned to a hip-hop station, Michael likes classic rock, and Trevor really, really likes the punk rock on Channel X. It does add flavor, though. I find that, while I'll generally tune in one of my favorite electronic stations if I've jacked a fresh car, I'll usually keep their favorites on when riding in their personal vehicles.
Heh, this is as good a point as any to describe one of my favorite little moments in the game thus far. As Trevor, I jacked a dune buggy, tuned it to Radio Mirror Park, and then started cruising down the highway, chilling out to The Chain Gang of 1974. Suddenly, I started to hear this weird rumbling sound. As it grew louder, I realized that it was a shout of disdain. Finally, Trevor shouted out, "This... isn't... working for me!!!" and flipped the station over to Channel X, where Black Flag was playing, and cranked up the volume. I was stunned and delighted. I've never had an in-game character criticize my real-world musical tastes before, and I loved it. (I also got a brief flashback to playing GTA III in college, when my roommate would do almost exactly the same thing as Trevor.)

Have I mentioned yet how dense the world is? It's pretty incredibly dense. Modern GTA games are partly defined by the insane breadth of stuff you can do, even if it's just sitting on a couch and watching TV. While waiting for the sun to rise, I watched a surprisingly long cartoon titled "Kung Fu Rainbow Lazerforce," just one of a large number of streaming videos available on your in-game in-phone web browser. I took a buddy to the movie, and sat through a fascinating, incomprehensible, amusing subtitled European art-house film about... uh... well, I'm not sure, but it was filled with fantastic imagery like a man climbing a ladder to nowhere. There's the usual vast assortment of races, including downhill bike racing and motorsports and ATVs and aeroplanes. They got rid of the much-hated bowling from GTA IV, but have darts, tennis, golf, yoga (surprisingly enjoyable!) and skydiving. In many cases, you'll have a single mission that requires doing one of these things once, after which they'll unlock for you to replay as much as you want (possibly increasing your stats or earning a little bit of money along the way). For the most part, though, I just love exploring. There's some incentive for doing this - finding scraps of letters, hidden spaceship parts, etc. - but I've never been a 100% Completion kind of guy, and just dig exploring the beauty of this fictional world.

Decent cinematics. The bar for these things keeps getting set higher and higher, so this is by far the most impressive in the GTA franchise yet, although in a few specific cases they are lagging a bit behind smaller studios like BioWare. (For example, I think that Rockstar is really good at making expressive eyes, but poorer at creating realistic mouth movements.) As in previous games, all cut-scenes are rendered in the existing game engine, which is a fantastic achievement on its own, all the more so when you have images like a teenager throwing a video game controller at their TV screen, or a middle-aged dude awkwardly sitting in a hip beanbag chair, or a character mournfully lamenting the passing of an ugly pottery sculpture.

Fantastic setpieces. If the cut-scenes are good, the actual gameplay scenes are incredible, which is an inversion from what you would expect. Without giving too much away, there are certain particularly dramatic sequences that involve a ton of simultaneous action by multiple friendly and hostile characters and vehicles at the same time; you're in complete control, so it all feels wide-open and can go in any of an infinite number of ways, and yet every moment feels like it was shot by Michael Bay for a summer Hollywood (er, Vinewood) blockbuster.

I could go on. I won't. At least, not until I finish the game's main plot, when I might duck back in with some spoilery thoughts on the actual plot.

Before then, though, I figured I'd leave a few brief impressions about online play. I wasn't even thinking about online when I pre-ordered this thing, and I'm famously pretty ambivalent/hostile towards multiplayer games in general. Since I've gotten so attached to the single-player game, though, I've correspondingly grown increasingly attracted to the prospect of carving out a piece of Los Santos for myself.

In many ways, the online mode feels more like a pure RPG than anything in the single-player game. This starts with character creation: you can customize the main characters to some extend by purchasing new clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, etc.; but in the online game, you can actually create a unique person. The way they do this is really unique and, in my opinion, rather cool. Most character creation tools use a slider system: one slider controls your skin tone, another the height of your cheekbones, another the width of your brow, etc. This gives a great deal of control over your character, but in practice, it's really hard to make anyone who looks good; in practice, you're generally better off using the randomizer or flipping through pre-created characters until you find one you like, and then just tweaking that one (maybe changing the hair style or eye color). In contrast, GTA Online uses an interesting two-pronged system that I think of as "nature and nurture". First of all, you pick your geneology: select your four grandparents, each from a pool of I think eight or sixteen choices. These cover a broad range of ethnicities and body types. Your parents will then be generated from those grandparents; for each parent, you select how strongly they inherit from their father and their mother. Finally, you select your own genetic closeness. I played around with the system a fair amount, and was impressed by how many of the people came out looking good. If you start with ancestors who you like, you're likely to end up with a decent-looking PC, without looking like a clone of them.

Next comes nurture, which is also done in a creative way. Instead of just picking a kit (Dwarf Commoner Rogue or Elf Mage?), or manually assigning stat points (STR 18+33, DEX 15, CON 14), it asks you how you spend your time in a typical day. You have 24 hours to assign, which you can distribute among Sleeping, Friends & Family, Legal Work, Illegal Work, Partying, Sports, and Sitting on the Couch. Each of these will modify your starting stats: If you do a lot of Illegal Work, you'll gain skill in Driving and Shooting, but lose points in Lung Capacity; when spending time with Friends and Family, you'll gain skills in Stamina and Driving, but lose points in Shooting.

It isn't a purely stat-based decision, though, and in fact the stats may be the least important part of this, since you'll always be able to level up later. The activities will also determine your character's starting look. Someone who focuses on partying will wear trendy clothes and a slick hairstyle; a primarily criminal person will have a leather jacket and a hard face; someone who spends all their time sleeping and lazing about will wear loose, comfortable clothing and look soft.

You can customize this a little, swapping out your starting hat and hairstyle and such, but it does a great job of starting to define you, not just as a bundle of stats, but as a character. (Oh, also: I was pleasantly surprised to see that they let players create female characters, who have their own options for customized clothing, makeup, hairstyles, etc. Given the all-male lineup of the single-player game, I'd assumed they would do the same thing for multiplayer, so it was nice to see Rockstar being inclusive here. Kudos!)

Online play has been notoriously buggy, so I haven't gotten a whole lot farther than character creation. I was pleased to see that they offer solo play, which allows me to explore this alternate game mode while continuing to cling to my misanthropy. There are also the customary settings to play only with friend, and/or invitation-only, and/or with members of your "crew" (the Rockstar argot for a guild). It looks like most of the most exciting content requires true multiplayer. The interesting missions, which pay real money and give RP (Reputation Points, kind of like XP that unlocks more character options, weaponry, etc.), requires multiple players to pull off. You can compete in races in single player, but after the introductory race, it will just be you all by your lonesome self off on the track, running laps and staring mournfully at the emptiness around you. I really wish they'd have an option for racing against NPCs in solo mode.

The main thing I've found that you can do in solo play while in free-roam mode is holding up convenience stores, which gets a bit repetitive but is still pretty fun. The payout is rather measly, especially compared to the big bucks I'm getting in single player, at just around $1500 a score; but you get some RP as well, and it's providing valuable practice in trying to get away from those dang cops that I was complaining about at the top of this post (written before I started trying online). I'm starting to get the hang of using masks for robberies, and diving for underground cover, which is helping a bit at evading the police, at least at the 2-star level.

So, yeah. I'll keep it up for a while; from what I understand, more gameplay options unlock as your online level advances, and I think I'd be more inclined to do most of GTA's mini-games as my own character than I would as one of the three solo characters, so I can see myself spending a bit more time with it.

And, really, that's what I keep coming back to whenever I wonder why I love this series so much. Everyone focuses on the violence and mayhem, but it was the first sandbox game to make a major splash, and it continues to be the state of the art in providing a fully-realized world, packed with all sorts of random activities to do for fun, filled with nooks and crannies to explore. And of all the worlds Rockstar has created, San Andreas remains my favorite by far.

Hey, everyone! It's Bob and David!

Back in 2002, I made a pilgrimage to see Mr. Show live in a production called "Mr. Show: Hooray for America!" This was several years after the cult sketch show had been canceled by HBO, but in the time since then DVDs had started expanding the series' popularity, and there was increasing excitement online for a renewal of the show, either as a movie or in another form.

Hooray for America! was fantastic, somehow managing to maintain the non-sequitor absurdity of the 30-minute show, while also weaving in a surprisingly coherent plot that kept the 90-ish-minute production cohesive and propulsive. In retrospect, it was shockingly prescient: anticipating the Citizens United verdict by nearly a decade, it depicted a United States where corporations could spend unlimited funds to influence elections, and as a result, the GloboChem company (famous from a variety of appearances in Mr. Show) nominates David Cross for the Presidency and manages to get him elected. This sets off a series of events that end with Earth a largely uninhabitable shell of a planet, while the wealthy and powerful are able to escape into space. It was dark and cynical and hilarious, and at the time I thought it was the last chance I'd ever have to see these talented and funny people together.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case! Many years later, I was able to catch Bob and David in their recent mini-tour supporting their new book, "Hollywood Said No!" It was a looser production than Hooray for America!, but that's a good thing... I enjoyed the messiness and honesty of it. Our show even included some memorable technical glitches, most amusingly when David Cross stepped into the spotlight to deliver his "Linus speech," only to have all the lights killed and the room plunged into utter blackness.

Unlike the earlier show, "An Evening with Bob and David" combined several different elements. They did a couple of "classic sketches" from the show, but as you might expect, they were done in a subversive manner. On the off chance they continue the tour or release a video, I'll refrain from spoiling the jokes, but they did a really funny montage that channeled single lines from famous sketches through a lens of incomprehension, and brought some audience members on stage to act out other sketches (none of which lasted longer than a line or two). I thought this balance was done very well: they knew many of us were there because of our love for Mr. Show, and they kind of honored that, while keeping the overall focus on the show on their new material.

Speaking of which, the new material was quite good, not least because it was new. At least one sketch brought back a favorite character from the show's original run, updating his schtick for the more technologically advanced 21st century. Most of them were completely new, and had that nice combination of satire and timelessnes that marks Mr. Show's best sketches. In the original run of Mr. Show, they would run the sketches live several times before finalizing and shooting them, and I imagine that these sketches were about halfway along in that process... they were all funny, and could probably be tuned a little more to sharpen their endings.

There were quite a few differences that kept this from feeling like a long episode of Mr. Show. Everything was live, so they didn't have any pre-recorded video segments (which had played a big part in the TV show and in Hooray for America!). Also, they didn't bother transitioning between every individual sketch. That was one of the most amazing things about Mr. Show: the insane convoluted logic that would lead an episode from sketch to sketch. There were a couple of those here, but also many times where they would just drop the lights and change the set. (That might sound like a complaint, but isn't meant as one. The show's transitions relied heavily on video segments and editing, neither of which are available in a live stage show. The approach they went with emphasized the live-ness and specialness of this production.)

I was delighted to see that John Ennis was in the show! Only Bob, David, and Brian Posehn were billed, so I had thought this might be an intimate affair with just those three. A few sketches into the program, though, the others popped up. It took me a while to confirm that the other man was actually John - I thought that it was, but he's grown a mustache in the years since I last saw him. Anyways, that was great. Ennis might have been my favorite supporting actor on the show back when it aired, so I was really happy to see him again. They were also joined by Stephanie Courtney, who I didn't recognize, but Google has since informed me was a member of the Hooray for America! tour. So, that's cool!

 In the years since Mr. Show, David and Brian have become primarily known as stand-up comedians, and they (and Bob) got to run short stand-up sets within the program. David's was really interesting. I like him as a comedian... in modern comedy, every stand-up comic maintains an illusion of, "Oh, hey! I just wandered in off the street! Hey, here are some random thoughts that just occurred to me!" In reality, of course, comedians work really hard to craft their routines, and put a lot of effort into making it look like it's effortless. Well, David's standup is just about the only I know of that actually sounds like he's making it up for the first time. He says "Um" and "Uh" a lot, laughs at himself, goes back and corrects himself. In a lesser comedian, that would be a sign of a hack, but in David's case it underlies the realness of his set. In a typical joke from him, you'll need to follow him for a while as he meanders through a thought or an anecdote, not knowing exactly where he's going and not having many opportunities to laugh; but once he hits the point, everything suddenly crystallizes, and you can't help laughing loudly at the wholly-constructed idea.

This show was a bit unusual, as David said himself at the very beginning of his set: rather than run through his jokes, he wanted to tell the story of the worst show he'd ever done in San Francisco. He said that this was his first time ever telling the story, and I believe him, though he had the details down well enough that it seems like he's replayed it in his head many times since then. He described the really bad mental place he was coming from (ex-girlfriend in the audience, feeling ill and depressed), his purposefully offensive jokes (joking about Princess Diana a few weeks after she had died, and some Holocaust-related jokes), the first heckling shout coming from the audience, and his subsequent meltdown and termination. There's another wrinkle that David withheld until the very end, which recast everything that had gone before in a different light, and made the whole thing even funnier. After that he ran through a few shorter bits from his routine, including a terrific moment of self-realization he had when confronting a threat at his remote house in upstate New York.

Brian's standup came a little later, and was as hilarious as you would think. Some of his material was similar to what he'd delivered when I saw him at Cobb's a couple of years ago (which hadn't made it onto The Fartist), but I think he'd tweaked it some, and in any case it was all really funny. Brian has a couple of topics that he enjoys revisiting through the years and keeps getting more material from: comic books, Star Wars, heavy metal music, smoking weed, and so on. Most of this set was based around his physical appearance, and included a great (and simultaneously horrifying) tour of his body through the ages. (Louis CK does some similar stuff, but when it comes to body self-critiques, I think Brian has Louis beat.)

Bob's standup came last, and was close to the end of the show. I'd been re-watching some Mr. Show episodes in the leadup to this live program, and had been struck again by how different everyone's sensibilities were, and how surprisingly well they all melded. In the years since then, their careers have gone on very different paths, and they have further differentiated themselves. David Cross has passionately pursued standup, was one of the first comedians to start criticizing President Bush after the Iraq War run-up began, and has become famous for tangling with other comedians and entertainment icons who he dislikes. Bob is kind of the opposite of all that. He's mostly stayed behind the camera, directing several films, writing a lot of scripts, and acting as a kind of mentor or talent scout to young up-and-coming comedians, discovering groups like Tim & Eric and The Birthday Boys. When he does comedy, he maintains his Midwestern affect, generally coming across as genial and reasonable (which, of course, only makes it funnier when he explodes and starts yelling). Anyways: I don't think of Bob as a stand-up, and was glad I got the chance to see him in that element. Everything about his delivery was different from David or Brian's: he sat down in a chair the whole time instead of walking around the stage; he had a music stand with some notes on it; he complimented his audience (he called us "smart"!); his material was focused on his life as a father, exploring his relationship with his kids and how it changes as they grow older. It was all really solid, and makes me curious if this is something Bob does often and just isn't well known for.

The show ended with a fantastic final "sketch", with Bob browbeating the others into acting out his latest screenplay, using layered dialogue and botched cues and failures-to-hit-marks that all made the final product awful/hilarious. It was a great note to end things on.

Except, it wasn't over! After Brian amused us one last time, Bob and David came back on the stage to greet us and hold a brief Q&A session. It started out on a surprisingly touching note, with David finding a dollar bill that someone had thrown on the stage ("He knew that I was Jewish so this would get my attention"), and reading a message written on it out loud ("'Dear Bob and Dave.' Well, screw that!"), finding out that he was a sergeant in the Iraq and Afghan wars ("Not so funny now, is it?") who had appreciated getting back to base after a firefight and watching DVDs of their show. They brought him on stage and thanked him, which I thought was awesome. Honestly, for a while there I thought it was a bit, but as far as I can tell it was as spontaneous and heartfelt as it had seemed. They hugged him and said "Thanks" ("We were just screwing around back home"), and everyone clapped. Very nice!

Heh... they also called out a guy a few rows back who apparently had fallen asleep several times during the show: "I'm sorry we woke you up there. We were trying to be quiet. I'm just curious: tickets to this show weren't cheap. Why would you pay to come here if you were going to sleep?" Bob gently schooled David: "Well, rent is really expensive in San Francisco, so it's actually cheaper to buy tickets to shows and sleep in the theater than it is to rent an apartment." That got one of the biggest laughs of the night. I did the math later, and Bob is actually right - as expensive as this show was, you could buy 30 tickets a month for much less than a studio apartment.

Questions and answers! A young lady (eventually) asked Bob what it was like emotionally to stop playing Saul Goodman: "How do you handle having such an awful scumbag sleazeball inside your head?" His answer: "It isn't hard. I'm not a very nice person. I just kick a kitten."

One guy mentioned that David had done voice acting in some video games in the early 2000s, and was curious if that was just to get a paycheck, or if he actually enjoyed them. David said that he, and the rest of the Mr. Show cast (other than Bob) were all enthusiastic gamers: they used to play Goldeneye for hours, and when the show was going on, Jay Johnston would host parties at his house with 4 separate rooms each with their own TVs, and they would play 16-person Halo matches until 6am. Anyways, David was drunk and ran into Sam Houser, and told him how much he loved Grand Theft Auto and offered to play any role they would have. Hence, his fantastic appearance in San Andreas (those damn RC planes!), one of my favorite games of all times.

One person asked what it was like getting back together, and if they thought they would do more collaboration in the future. This is a pretty stock question, and they have a predictable answer. Logistically, David lives in New York and Bob lives in Los Angeles, so it's hard to get together. They have collaborated since Mr. Show, including making the pilot "David's Situation", and would like to do more, but the logistics are challenging.

Hm... there might have been one or two more questions, but not many. All too soon, our time was up and everyone said goodbye. (There was another show coming up at 10 that night, and I'm a bit curious if they were able to stick around longer after the latter show.)

So, that was great! Rumors are floating around of a larger reunion tour in 2015 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Mr. Show, and I would love to see that happen. There was so much incredible talent that came out of that group, and as far as I can tell its alumni are still friendly and would be up for getting together again. Just imagine: Paul F Tompkins, Scott Aukerman, Brian Posehn, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Dino Stamatopoulos, John Ennis, Tom Kenny, Jill Talley, Jay Johnston, BJ Porter, or some combination thereof, sharing a stage again! And they could maybe even pull in regular contributors like Jack Black and Sarah Silverman, who were unknown before Mr. Show started.

Anyways. That's speculation for the future. I wasn't expecting to ever see these people together again, and feel so fortunate that I get to live in a city where this kind of thing happens!

Simple Things

It's time for another mini-roundup!

When I pledged to Shadowrun Returns, one of my rewards was a PDF of a short story anthology. Honestly, I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of this - game fiction prose tends to be rather poor, and it didn't have any A-list authors attached. I just recently finished reading it, and was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out. Each story stands on its own, but when taken together they weave together to tell a surprisingly epic story, which in its own way is just as dramatic as (and simultaneously subtler than) Dead Man's Switch.

It does reveal some crucial plot twists from the main game, so I wouldn't recommend starting it until after finishing the game. If you do read it afterwards, though, there are a lot of treats for you. Some of them you might expect, like getting to know more of the backstory of various characters like Cherry Bomb, Jessica Watts, and Dresden. Others are some surprising changes from the initial concept of the story to the version that ultimately shipped in the game. The world depicted in the anthology is much more, uh, adult than the game, particularly where the Seamstresses' Union is concerned. In the game, it's a bar with some attractive bartenders. In the book, it's a brothel. In the game, it's overseen by Mrs. Kubota. In the book, it's run by Madam Sinful.

The best part of it, though, is how the book broadens the scope of the game's story. It takes a long time to piece together the meta-plot, but when you do, it not only makes many of the other stories make more sense, but also shines a new light on some elements in DMS that felt like red herrings at the time. The NTSB, for example, was a great setting in the game but felt a bit superfluous, important only because it was the site of a murder that could have occurred anywhere. In the book, though, you see how the NTSB is involved in a much more subtle and long-running plot, which adds a new color to the scenes you spent there.

Oh, and in addition to the stories, there's also some really fantastic concept art, as well as a huge portrait gallery. The latter is actually pretty directly useful to me, since it's an easier way to locate good NPC pictures than browsing through the filesystem. Anyways, I think you can pick up the anthology as part of the Deluxe package on Steam.

In other Shadowrun news, I got my physical rewards! The Doc Wagon card looks and feels great. It even links to a funny video that is certainly the corniest, cheesiest thing ever created in connection with Shadowrun (and there's a lot of competition for that title!). The T-Shirt looks nice too, with a good quality fabric and great image transfer. I know that some folks aren't fans of the new blue/green Shadowrun skull logo, but now that I'm used to it I strongly prefer it to the original red skull logo.

In less cheering video game news, I picked up the new Ultima tablet game and found it wanting. I wasn't really surprised. I'd initially been ecstatic at the news, back when I thought that it was BioWare remaking Ultima IV. Since then, I'd learned that it was actually another division within EA who was working on it. (There was a brief period of time when it seemed like EA was trying to cannibalize BioWare's good name by transferring it to unrelated studios. That seems to have stopped, though I don't know if it's because BioWare complained, or if EA thought that the brand is less powerful in a post-ME3, post-DA2 environment.)

I still think that a remake of Ultima IV could make an awesome tablet game. Those early RPGs had relatively simple controls and maps, and so could be a perfect match for today's tablet interface and hardware. At the same time, it wouldn't take a ton of effort to streamline the gameplay to conform to modern sensibilities: cut down on the grinding, maybe add some high-res portraits for the NPCs, etc.

In the short time that I played Quest of the Avatar, I didn't really notice any similarities at all with the plot of Ultima IV. There is a plot, to be sure, but it's something about a, uh, psychic sickness or malevolent evil force or something. The Virtues, which were the cornerstone of Ultima IV, are present here, but in a weird form. The game starts with you answering virtue questions like you did in most Ultimas, but since there are only two classes available they don't really make any difference to your gameplay. The questions themselves seemed more jokey than I remembered, though that might just be me turning into a crotchety old man. In-game, you periodically encounter virtue quests that demand you to make a choice (e.g., show Justice and send a dying criminal to prison, or Compassion and let him die in peace), but they didn't really engage me.

The worst aspect of all, though, is the Free-to-Play structure. Once again, I should not have been surprised. I have never enjoyed a F2P game (with the sole, shining exception of the excellent Fallen London), and Quest for the Avatar seems to combine the elements I most dislike about this genre.

• It aggressively tries to tie in to your social network.
• It encourages you to play daily, but discourages you from playing for very long (without paying).
• It consistently pings you to spend money to improve your game.
• It throws you into semi-forced, low-quality play with other humans.

 The main mechanic they use is "keys". You are awarded some keys within the game, but the system is set up to encourage you to spend money to buy higher-quality keys. Having keys and more valuable keys results in more-powerful items, which allow you to progress more through the game. Worse, items actually degrade as they're damaged, and you need to spend (you guessed it!) keys to repair them.

I went through the tutorial dungeon, met Lady British (which was a fine change on its own, but really underscored how this plot has nothing to do with the original Quest of the Avatar), went into a dungeon, got invited to join a party, and swiftly quit and uninstalled. Sigh.

On the plus side, I have since learned that the Commodore 64 version of the original Ultima IV has just arrived on iOS, so it looks like I will get to check that out soon! I'll probably never get the remake I wanted, but I suspect that the unaltered original will tickle my fancy more than its complete transformation into a F2P game.

Heh, my gaming landscape has changed drastically between when I started this post and starting this paragraph. To wit: GTA V has arrived! I've had almost no time to play it, thanks to an unusually aggressive confluence of time commitments, but am eagerly anticipating diving into it. I think this is the first game I've pre-ordered since Dragon Age: Origins.  My expectations are simultaneously high and measured. San Andreas is my favorite installment of the franchise, and GTA IV was the most impressive technically, so a combination of the two has the potential to become one of my favorite games ever. It looks like they're shifting slightly back towards San Andreas's RPG-ish elements, including tons of customizations and upgradeable skills (though no more fat, alas, alas). And the setting itself looks gorgeous. That was probably what I missed most in GTA IV: I adored the open countryside in San Andreas, being able to blast down an open freeway along the coast with Radio Los Santos blasting through an open convertible, or riding a dirtbike down Mount Chiliad, or flying through the desert on a dune buggy, or... well, yeah. As much as I appreciated GTA IV's taxi innovations and the ability to get from Point A to Point B quicker than ever before, I also really like having interesting land to travel between those points.

The aspect of GTA V that interested me the least in the press build-up was probably the multiple-characters angle. Of the three, only Franklin really stood out as someone I would want to play as. In the brief time that I've tried V, I've come to appreciate Michael much more, and can see some interesting possibilities in his character. He's kind of in a position where other GTA characters would be 15 years after their own games ended: he's married, with two kids, living in a huge fancy house, and absolutely bored out of his mind. So far, the thing I like most is seeing the very different ways that Franklin and Michael express their rage. When Franklin crashes into someone, he'll yell at them. When Michael crashes, he's quiet for a second, as he calmly collects himself... and then proceeds to very deliberately express his hatred in measured, violent tones. It's a great example of maturity affecting attitude in an unexpected way.

So, yes. GTA V will be my big gaming project for the next while. I'm sure I'll have more opinions on it. I'm kind of dreading meeting Trevor; based on his appearances in the previews, he looks like an entertaining character to meet, but I don't know if I'll be comfortable playing as him.

Hm, what else.... oh! Kickstarter! The Sunless Sea has been funded, and can use your help to reach its first stretch goal!


This comes from the fine folks who created Fallen London, and shares some of the lore, but is a totally new game. It's a 2D top-down exploration, trading, and strategy game. It's semi-procedurally-generated, has a system of officers that will allow for party-building, and will include embedded stories within the action (in the tradition of something like Castles). They call out some fantastic influences like Sid Meier's Pirates!, FTL, and roguelikes.

I was one of the people who voted for this concept when Failbetter ran a survey a few months ago, and am really looking forward to its becoming a reality. There's already so many great concepts to (literally) explore, like Hunter's Keep, the Elder Continent, Corpscage Islands, the Tomb-Colonies, and tons more. The game mechanics seem clean and fun, a set of manageable systems that will allow for tinkering and experimentation without requiring micromanagement. And, of course, knowing that Failbetter writers are producing the content makes me very optimistic about the quality of story. (They're one of the few companies out there with a good track record for producing asynchronous, semi-randomized stories, and they do it well.)

There's just over a week left to go, and they still have many slots available in the upper tiers if you want to go nuts. I know that I personally was kicking myself after Shadowrun Returns came out for not pledging at one of those top levels to be immortalized in a game. Here's a chance to do that if the concept appeals to you.

Ibid.

I don't know what's more embarrassing: that I've gone more than a month between updates, or that my new update is basically a repeat of the old one. Sorry about that.

When I wrapped work on Antumbra, my mod for Shadowrun Returns, I wasn't really planning on making any more. Like I said at great length in my last post, making mods is hard, and there's lots of other stuff I'd enjoy doing in my increasingly limited free time. I didn't want to leave people hanging, so I deliberately made Antumbra a fairly self-contained story with a beginning, middle, climax and conclusion. I did leave behind a couple of little hooks, just in case I ever did decide to pick it up again, but wasn't really planning to continue that thread.

I'd committed to maintaining Antumbra, and so spent a fairly easy week releasing updates, mostly cleaning up some minor graphical glitches and trying to smooth out the combat. While most comments on Antumbra were very positive, almost everyone who disliked it was upset because they got killed at the very first fight. I now realize that I would have been better off making it easier, or at a minimum adding some easier fights in. In the original design, there were only five mandatory (and two optional) fights in the game, and each of them were very different and had their own unique mechanics and strategy. That appeals to me from a design perspective, but in terms of player reward, it's better to include some more boring and easy combat in there so they feel a sense of power and progression, rather than making every encounter a challenge. (At least, that's the take-away I got from my users' comments. My personal tastes still lean more towards FFT than FFVII.)

After doing that for about a week, though, I was feeling giddy enough with the reaction Antumbra was receiving to start thinking about a sequel. People left really, really nice comments, and upvoted it, and altogether Antumbra racked up something like 3,000 subscriptions. More than the raw numbers, I was pleased by the specific notes people would send, like "I'm not playing the sequel unless Dalmin is in it j/k!" and "Can't wait to record my demo!" All along, my goal had been to make a fun little story and not just a set of fights, and that kind of reaction made me feel like I was succeeding.

I followed much the same process for Antumbra 2 as I did on the original. I started out in an open-ended brainstorming period, jotting semi-random ideas down in Google Docs and scraps of paper as they came to me. I'd set Antumbra near the Seattle Sprawl, partly because it's a region most players are already familiar with and that has a lot of documentation. Now that I had some story elements of my own, though, I felt like I had a little more leeway to travel farther afield. I'd come across some lore about CalFree (the autonomous California Free State of the 2050's), and loved the idea of setting a campaign in San Francisco, so I started researching that setting and combining it with some real-world elements that I really love. The "California Free State" sourcebook from FASA proved invaluable, detailing the tense metaracial situation in the Bay Area, as well as the complicated web of authority that included an impotent government in Sacramento, de-facto military rule by the Japanese Imperial Marines, and the even-more-de-facto supremacy of the megacorps. I also trawled the Web for references to the 2060's and beyond, which alerted me to some upcoming events like General Saito's coup that I could start to foreshadow in this time period.

Shadowrun Returns is a great little engine, but since it's a tile-based isometric game, it does not do hills, which meant I'd be missing out on many of the iconic SF settings like Coit Tower, Nob Hill or Pacific Heights. Fortunately, I've been here long enough to know what flat areas would work well in the game. The Embarcadero really helps establish SF's peninsularness, and I knew that it would be fairly easy to recreate using the existing map tools. I also went ahead and built out The Mission as a map. I know, I know, it's very cliche and hip and trendy, but hey, it's flat, and worked well from both a story perspective and a design perspective.

Along with locations, I was starting to pull together some plot ideas. Hm, maybe I should classify these as:

MINI SPOILERS

I started with characters, then began thinking about ways to combine them. The original Antumbra could end in multiple ways, and some important characters (most notably "Mr. Johnson," Carver Wells) could die. However, Kali would always survive, albeit in a state of triumph or disgrace. I figured that she would be my link from Seattle to the Bay. If you sided with her, then Antumbra does so well that she starts expanding her business empire and opening new locations outside of UCAS. If you opposed her, then she's hounded from Seattle by her creditors, then pops up in San Francisco to try and rebuild from scratch. That way, I could keep a single setting for both plot forks, and just change the dialogue around it.

For companions, Dalmin had seemed to be the most popular from Antumbra, so I decided to bring him forward. He's really fun to write for, so I was happy to work on him again. I thought it would be boring to have all of the companions show up again, though, plus it would strain credulity for everyone to randomly show up in SF at the same time, so I decided to omit Turm as a companion this time around. On the other hand, though, I wanted to give her a cameo so people who picked her in Antumbra would be able to see her again. I ended up designing what I think was a fun, somewhat complex encounter: if she died in Antumbra, she would stay dead in Eclipse; otherwise, she would show up as a mercenary on the other side; if you traveled with her before (or had the right skills), you could convince her to switch sides and fight along with you again.

With Turm gone, I would need another samurai. I didn't want to repeat myself with a troll, so I decided to get an ork this time around, and a male to contrast with Turm's female-ness. What should I name him? It was at this point that I realized that, entirely accidentally, I had already kicked off a trend where my hireable runners' names were alliterative with their races: Dalmin the Dwarf and Turm the Troll. So, ____ the Ork. After playing around with a few different names, I settled on Orion. Street Samurai are typically big, dumb brutes, so I decided to mess with that stereotype and make Orion a thoughtful and loquacious scholar. He's kind of a marxist of metahumanity: he's convinced that metaraces will inevitably replace humanity. However, his certainty leads him to a zen-like calm: he doesn't get too worried about any particular fight or alliance, because he knows that in the long run history will lead to the same conclusion. Orion was also really fun to write for, since he's very thoughtful and rational even when making arguments I personally completely disagree with.

Lastly, I knew that I wanted to add the Matrix in this time around, so I would need a decker. I already had two dudes, so I wanted a female for this role. Available races were elf or human. I decided on human, since that would give more insight into what it felt like on the other side of SF's metaracial divide. Continuing my dumb-but-fun naming convention, I dubbed her Hailey the Human. I made her a native San Franciscan, a famously rare breed even in our own time. Where Dalmin is a funny and jaded runner, and Orion a serious and earnest man on a mission, Hailey is bubbly and ambitious, a little naive but a quick learner. I eventually decided to dual-archetype her as a Decker/Rigger, a class combo that my brother Andrew alerted me to that can be very powerful in this game.

For NPCs, I had a flash of inspiration fairly early on: why not include one of my all-time favorite people, Emperor Norton? People might associate him with Discordianism or Neil Gaiman, but he's a real (and fascinating) historic person rooted in San Francisco, and so intrinsically interesting that it wouldn't take much effort to make him a (hopefully) compelling character. I played around with a couple of ideas before settling on a futuristic representation of the man. Much like the historic Norton, my Norton ("Emperor Norton IX, Emperor of CalFree and Protector of UCAS") would be insane, but benignly so; he would be humored by those around him; and he would have a clarity of insight into the world around him. Scenes like the historical Norton's pacific defense of ethnic Chinese from a pogrom would point the direction for how a new Norton might behave in an atmosphere of anti-metahuman persecution fostered by Saito's supremacist ideology.

On a mechanical level, I decided that Norton would best be represented as a Shaman; that seemed to fit his skewed, not-quite-of-this-world position. I've gotten more comfortable commissioning portraits from artists on DeviantArt, and I decided to splurge and have a drawing done of Norton. By far the best unofficial portraits I've seen so far have come from KARGAIN, who has done a fantastic job at matching the proportions and style of the official portraits in Dead Man's Switch. I sent him some old photos of the historic Norton and a brief description of my concept, he asked a few really good clarifying questions (the nature of Norton's insanity, his role in the story), and came up with a fantastic portrait.

I really love this. It's recognizably Norton without being a copy of the source material, and perfectly captures the essence of the character. I especially appreciate details like the very subtle smirk he has.

By now, some rough outlines of a plot were falling into place. In this time period, Colonel Saito would be one of the most influential individuals in SF, although he would not be taking direct control for several more years. Much of the source material on the Bay Area describes the increasing segregation across communities, with humans (particularly those of Japanese descent) clustered in San Francisco, orks and trolls in Orkland, dwarfs in Halferville, and metahumans of all types scattered throughout the East Bay. I didn't want to directly include Saito himself - he's a huge figure in the history of Shadowrun, and I was worried that I'd mess up his portrayal - but I started playing around with the idea of a conflict between Saito and the metahumans driving much of the plot.

I'd still need a way to link this all back to Antumbra, though. You ended the first game in one of two ways: either as a loyal pawn of Aztechnology, or an opportunistic ally of Mitsuhama. From my reading, I knew that Aztechnology was in a fairly rough position in CalFree. Ever since Aztlan invaded from the south, Aztechnology had officially been banned from California. In practice, they continued operating through a set of shell companies, such as Pyramid Operations in SF; but still, they had to contend against the powerful Japanese megacorps that had made headquarters in SF, and so, while globally Aztechnology is one of the most powerful entities, in this local area it was believable that they would feel threatened by their rivals.

So, I started sketching together an overall plot arc. You would be lured down to SF from Seattle in pursuit of work. Using your contacts from the first game, you would participate in an invasion of the Aztechnology Pyramid (which I like to think is the Transamerica Building, though it's probably actually an arcology). Depending on your loyalties, you were either leading a plausibly-deniable rival raid, or defending against such a raid from Mitsuhama. From here, you would be swept up into the conflict between Saito and metahumans; as in the first game, you would need to make choices about what faction to support. Demonstrating loyalty to one side early in the game would give you access to reinforcements later on to help you complete the job.

I'd initially thought of having different villains in the endgame depending on your loyalties (in one extreme case, either attempting to assassinate or save Saito himself), but eventually realized that this would take a ton of work and add more time that I'd rather spend on enhancing a core storyline. Instead, I settled on a single villain, a troll mage rebel named Shavarus. Your relation to him would change depending on your choices, but you would always end fighting him.

The story evolved as I proceeded into the writing phase. I came to realize that, if I were playing this, it would be a no-brainer: Saito was so despicable, and the resistance so pure, that I would unhesitatingly side with the metahumans every time. In a bid to make the choices tougher, I made the opposition much less sympathetic. Shavarus wasn't a high-minded individual like Orion battling oppression; he was a violent (albeit charismatic) extremist, not only eager to kill mankind but even willing to sacrifice large numbers of innocent metahumans as collateral damage in order to create an atmosphere of fear that would prompt the humans to leave. This story was turning nasty and brutal... perfect for Shadowrun!

END MINI SPOILERS

I followed the same pipeline process for Eclipse as I had for Antumbra, but the bigger scope meant that it took quite a while longer. On paper, it didn't look so bad: I was just going up from 4 maps to 6 maps, though the scene count was increasing from 6 to 11. In practice, it was a lot more. I'd initially envisioned the office building as a single map containing three separate floors, and actually went far enough to implement it as one (including a cool elevator system), only to realize in playtesting that it was taking too long to beat, and a late death would set you back frustratingly early. So, that got split up into three separate scenes. PLUS, I had decided that I wanted to implement the Matrix this time around, so I had two separate Matrix subnetworks for the office building, plus another one in the final level. All of which was awesome, but took a lot of effort to build, and even more to polish and test.

On the other hand, I'd learned a lot of lessons from Antumbra that made some things easier. One of the biggest things I berated myself over in Antumbra was my Everett map, the one outdoor map. It took me a long time to build, almost as long as the other three interior maps combined; but, even though you visited it twice, you barely did anything in it. There was a single conversation in the first map, and a single conversation at the end, and that was it. Great for atmosphere, but on replays most people will run through it in 30 seconds. The work-to-result ratio for that map was insane, so this time around I was careful to make sure I could get enough out of each map. Of my six maps, three of them were set outdoors, and I set up the story so I could plausibly visit two of them twice each, helping justify the time these maps took to build. Likewise, for each map I made sure that there would be enough conversations, combat, and puzzles to make them worthwhile.

I was also able to avoid a few gotchas that can crop up on you late. I always do my music, lighting, and effects last, which works great from an optimizing perspective, but when building Antumbra it wasn't until I had added my point lights that I realized they made overlapping floor tiles look weird. Up until then, I'd cavalierly been laying them on top of each other haphazardly in order to produce a rugged, asymmetrical look for an underground cavern. It was a annoying to go back and totally redo those floors when I thought I was already done. This time around, I carefully took my time up front to avoid any tile overlaps, and as a result my lighting phase went much more quickly.

Speaking of which: I've learned the hard way that illuminating a particular prop, or making light appear to emanate from an on-screen element, is incredibly hard. Even the folks at Harebrained Schemes basically just say, "Keep trying different things and adjusting them until it looks right," since the editor is really bad at showing where light will illuminate. On the other hand, though, point lights that seem to project from above or below (such as from a lamp or a puddle of ooze) look great, and are infinitely easier to set up properly: just drop your point light in the center, and boom, you're done. So, when designing maps I always preferred props that would cast omnidirectional light (lamps, ambient magic, candles, streetlights), only using a smaller number of props that would require more fine tuning to light (neon signs, alarm panels, vending machines). I think the overall lighting looks at least as good in Eclipse as it did in Antumbra, and light-for-light it probably took less than half as much effort.

There was more complexity in Eclipse than in Antumbra, so I spent a lot more time testing it even before handing it off to my ever-dedicated alpha tester. Antumbra had one major branching story decision, a choice between two companions, and a handful of smaller choices to track. Eclipse has three major branching choices (albeit one of which only comes at the end), three companions who can be selected (and re-selected if they survive) over the course of three separate runs, and many more smaller choices including several optional side-quests, some of which don't come to fruition until later on. Fortunately the editor's debug tools are really good at letting you quickly set and test story variables, so I was able to find and clear up any plot-related problems fairly quickly.

Companions were trickier, and yet another reason why I was glad to have finished the more limited story of Antumbra before moving on to Eclipse. Shadowrun makes it really easy to test the status of another runner as long as you're still on the scene where they joined you; but if you want to carry them forward across scenes (which I definitely do!), then it gets way more complicated. As far as the game engine is concerned, by the next point they are just "PC1", "PC2", and so on; there's no way to link back to the original actor "Dalmin" or "Orion". You can still figure it out, but it requires managing story variables, which makes the logic somewhat fraught: IF I hired Dalmin for this run, AND he is NOT dead, THEN I can start a conversation between PC1 and PC0 using the Dalmin dialogue. (That's the secret reason why both Antumbra and Eclipse only allow you to hire a single companion runner. Managing the logic to test multiple companions, and map them onto their PCx identity at runtime, grows exponentially more complex and would be extremely error-prone.) Again, though, since I knew the limitations, I didn't need to waste a lot of time trying stuff that wouldn't work, and could focus on producing content.

Balance was my bane in Antumbra, and I spent a lot of time worrying about difficulty in this outing. Based on the feedback I've gotten so far, I think I've largely licked it. Part of the problem was that Antumbra started you as a beginning character, with very limited karma and resources, so if you didn't optimize your build you could easily get taken down. It helps that in Eclipse you have more karma and nuyen, so you can be more resilient against lucky critical hits. As noted above, I also redesigned the flow of combat, creating more encounters and making each individual fight easier. (Not to say that the whole thing is easier. In particular, I had a lot of fun designing the boss fights, and a couple of the battles have fun elements like ad-hoc allies or respawning enemies.)

I think I spent too much time worrying about something that wasn't that big of a problem. Each Shadowrun module can let players create a new character, import an existing character, use a pre-made character, or some combination thereof. Antumbra only let you create a new character, so it was relatively straightforward to test and tune for a known karma range. For Eclipse, I wanted to let you import your Antumbra character, but also to create a new character (using a process somewhat like imports in my beloved Bioware games). There was a problem, though: there's no way to tell how much karma a character has. Now, I could pretty easily check to see if the character had completed Antumbra by checking a plot flag that gets set at the end of that game. But, I couldn't really distinguish between a new character created for Eclipse with 59 karma, or a character imported from the end of Dead Man's Switch with 150 karma.

Like I said, in the end it wasn't that big a deal. I whipped up a little fourth-wall-breaking appearance from yours truly at the start of the game in the case where I detect that you're using a character who didn't beat Antumbra, and give a gentle reminder that they might want to check it out. (I didn't want to push this too hard, though, since you can't really beat Antumbra as a rigger or a decker, and both of those archetypes can be pretty decent in Eclipse). My original plan had been to selectively adjust the player's starting nuyen depending on their character origin: imports from Antumbra would get a little, new characters would get more (to compensate for their lack of starting gear), while high-karma imports would get nothing. In the end, though, it wasn't worth the worry I put into it. If someone wants to "cheat", that's fine... it's their game, and if they want to proceed after I warn them that it will be less challenging and fun, hey, they can do what they want. (That said, it sounds like the next update of Shadowrun Returns in October will finally add the ability to read a player's karma variable, which will let me at least remove the nag screen for newly created characters.)

Anyways! It was really fun to make this. I still like how making a mod stretches me both creatively and technically. It also makes me even more in awe of the work that goes into making a video game. I feel increasingly reluctant to criticize video games (though that won't stop my next post): the mere fact that a company could finish something is impressive, and should count as an achievement on its own.