Wel-ding! I enjoy wel-ding! Wel-ding! Wel-ding! Wel-ding! Wel-ding! ... Wel-ding! Wel-ding! Wel-ding!

This is just a short (hopefully!) post about my initial experiences with Dreamfall Chapters. It's an episodic adventure game that I started playing recently and am enjoying so far.

I actually acquired the game a while ago, through somewhat surprising means. A kind stranger on the Internet, who had played and enjoyed The Caldecott Caper, noticed that the game was on my Steam Wishlist and gifted it to me. I sent him/her a profuse note of thanks - it was extremely generous of them, but I also felt a little guilty, since I hadn't wanted to give even the impression of accepting compensation for the mod. I've since scrubbed the remainder of my Wishlist, lest others get the same idea. Still, it was a very humbling experience (among other things, my benefactor is from France, which gave me a better idea of the global popularity of the Caper), and makes the game even more special to me.

All that said, it has been languishing in my queue for a few months, while I played Wasteland 2 and Siege of Dragonspear and Pillars of Eternity. At last, my schedule freed up enough for me to start playing it. I've been looking forward to it for a while: if memory serves, I initially found it while doing a Stream tag search for "Cyberpunk + Female Protagonist", and the great reviews and screenshots were enough to get me excited for it.

As I've learned, this is actually the latest entry in a long-running series of games called, appropriately enough, The Longest Journey. First released in 1999, it has a detailed backstory, which is efficiently and compellingly conveyed via an optional summary within Dreamfall. While many of the characters and plots are continuations from the earlier games, I haven't felt like I've missed much by jumping directly into the current game.

Like practically every other modern adventure game that I'm aware of, Dreamfall Chapters is released episodically. Each release is a "book", containing several "chapters". Different chapters typically alternate between different playable characters and plot threads, although there's a meta-story tying everything together. It looks like I perfectly timed my start of the game, as Book 5 (the last one) was just released on Friday. I'm not a big fan of waiting for months to find out what happens next in a story, so I'm really glad that I'll be able to play straight through this one.

So far, I've finished the first book, which includes a short Prologue, a shortish Chapter One, a very long (and great!) Chapter Two, and a couple of interstitial segments. I've been struck by how different the chapters are: not just in style and theme, which I was already expecting given the background of the game, but in gameplay as well. It's all an adventure game, and everything uses the same interface, but each sequence has a different feel to its puzzles.

The prologue's puzzles fairly straightforward: you're in a small space, with just a couple of available interactables, and need to figure out which abilities to use to proceed. It was fine, maybe a bit simplistic but that might be intentional to ease people into the game. (I've seen in the release notes to the latest version that they've revamped many of these puzzles, so they may be different now.) The first chapter, by contrast, focuses more on traditional item-based puzzles. You need to explore your environment, locate objects, then combine and use those objects in order to proceed. Those puzzles were decently logical: not immediately obvious, but they almost always made sense in retrospect, unlike the infamous latter-day Sierra puzzles.

The second chapter, though, has been by far my favorite so far. Part of this is because I enjoy Zoe more than Kian; not that he's a bad character, but we get to see a lot more of Zoe's interior thoughts and her relationships. This segment is a lot more open-ended than the more focused Chapter One, with a ton of exploration and many different people to meet. The puzzles change again in this sequence: the map is now big enough that you can make interesting challenges out of finding things, and figuring out who to talk to. There are very few items in this sequence, but some original mechanics to using them.

MINI SPOILERS

Beyond the story itself, though, the setting is just jaw-droppingly great. Propast is a gorgeous cyberpunk-infused district, reminiscent of Blade Runner and other seminal works of the genre. There were quite a few areas that reminded me of Shadowrun: Hong Kong and Dead Man's Switch, except this time around I was playing with a third-person camera rather than a locked isometric view. It looks fantastic, and is a wonderful space to immerse yourself. It feels alive, too, which is something that a lot of video game cities get wrong. There are tons of people walking around, or whispering in corners, or slumped over a dream machine, or protesting the Eye. It took me a while to realize that this was all atmosphere - not every person has a hidden quest associated with them - but once I could relax and enjoy their presence, it helped add to the sensation of Zoe's gradual and deliberate rejoining of her community.

Oddly enough, I found myself thinking of Bioshock Infinite during this chapter. One of my biggest and least sensical criticisms of that game was that it created this amazingly evocative city, and then made us play a dumb shooter game inside of it instead of just letting us explore and immerse ourselves in it. Well, Dreamfall is the game where we get to explore the cool city, and I'm glad for it.

Coming on the heels of my long-running sequence of RPG games, it's also been interesting to contrast an adventure game like Dreamfall with those games. There are certain narrative elements that are common to both games, but the way they're used is drastically different. I'm thinking primarily of choice and, to a lesser degree, consequences.

Each game is different, of course, but I feel like the Platonic ideal of an RPG is a game in which you project yourself onto the protagonist. The game presents you with options, you select the one that most appeals to you (or least repels you), and then the story shifts in that direction. In most franchises you start as a bit of a blank slate: a prisoner from a far land, or the sole survivor of a giant explosion, or the one explorer to emerge from an underground bunker. You have little or no baggage, and have nearly total freedom within the parameters laid out by the developer.

In contrast, adventure games always (I can't think of any non-text-based exceptions) feature a predefined protagonist, generally with a detailed appearance, backstory, and set of skills. You're playing as them, but generally won't identify with them to the same extent as you would an RPG protagonist. Your role is a bit closer to that of a director or a screenwriter: you're steering characters in a certain direction in order to tell a story, not directly experiencing the story yourself.

As an RPG fan, I of course tend to assume that it's better to give players more leeway in shaping their characters. More choices is good. Being able to choose whether your character is male or female is better than having it assigned. Choosing a profession is better than not choosing one. Picking your race or ethnicity is better than having it be assigned. Choosing a love interest is better than having one forced on you.

And yet, many of the most emotionally affecting experiences I've had in the last couple of years have come from adventure games with strongly defined protagonists. I'm thinking now of Lee from The Walking Dead. He's always black, he's always a former college professor and convicted felon, he always adopts Clementine. The choices the game gives you are comparatively narrow, generally more about how you feel about your situation or relate to other characters. And yet, those smaller choices end up touching more deeply. When cutting Clem's hair or walking Duck through the woods, I felt more connected to them than, say, I felt to my sibling in Dragon Age 2, even though I'd had a more significant impact on my sibling's appearance and situation in life.

MEGA SPOILERS

The main reason I'm thinking of all this now is because of Reza. Again, I haven't played the earlier games, but my understanding is that Zoe previously went searching for Reza and in doing so helped unravel the Dream Machine plot. Now that he's free and she's awake, they are reunited and living together. Which is great and all, except I, personally, as a player, don't particularly like Reza.

Don't get me wrong: I think he's a good character, and he's pretty objectively good for Zoe. He's been supportive of her, giving her love and stability without hindering her independence at her own job and political volunteering. He makes his preferences known, but has a laid-back and easy sense of compromise.

And I threw it all away! I think I was a little resentful of being "forced into" a relationship (which, again, makes a ton of sense in the context of the game itself). So, at the end, I deliberately chose to be confrontational with him, calling him out on being overly protective and then chiding him for his patronizing tone. He turned cold. The game clearly warned "Ignoring Reza will hurt your relationship." I wandered over to the living room and turned on the television. He stiffly announced that he was going out for the night and that I could help myself to his paella.

And I felt so bad! I'm infamously fond of video game romances. For me, though, that tends to mean something more like ordering off an a la carte menu. You examine your options, maybe try a couple, then pick the one you want and move forward. In Dreamfall, though, you have to do the work. This isn't the heady early days of passion and romance. This is a relationship that's been built and rebuilt over a year, that requires work as well as pleasure. It's a situation that most people will experience far more often than wooing. It's more realistic, less heightened, and ends up being more powerful because of it.

So, yeah. I felt bad afterwards, but hey, that's the choice that I made, so now I need to live with the consequences. I'm curious to see what those end up being!

END SPOILERS

Whoops! This turned out to be longer than I expected. It turns out that I have thoughts and feelings about video games, who could have predicted that?

As usual, I've assembled an album of screenshots. These cover Book One of Dreamfall Chapters. I'll probably make one more post after I finish the rest of the game!

Cibele + Rambling Thoughts on What Games Can Do

So: one of my immediate inspirations for "playing games other than RPGs" was picking up the Humble Narrative Bundle, a ridiculously-lowly-priced collection of games. This included several games that I've had my eye on for a while, including Her Story and Random Access Memories. It also included one game that I hadn't heard of before, Cibele. After some cursory research, I realized that it would likely also be the shortest of the games, and decided to play it first.

I really liked it! It's definitely on the artier side of game development, but that's a good thing.  There aren't challenging mechanics or an intricate choice-and-consequences system, but rather an immersive story that you participate in.


MINI SPOILERS

You play as Nina, a nineteen-year-old girl. I have never been a nineteen-year-old girl, and it was fascinating to inhabit that perspective over the brief ninety minutes or so of the game. Most of the game is played on a virtual computer within the game (not unlike the fantastic Digital: A Love Story, although this is a much more modern machine). Clicking around the folders, you see old archived emails, posts from a series of abandoned blogs, selfies throughout the years, and some extremely earnest poetry. It's a terrific way to communicate the character who you are playing by catching up on her history and semi-private thoughts.

Nina is shy, and has always been a little insecure about her body. She had a few close friends as she was growing up, who bonded over a shared love of games, mostly RPGs like Final Fantasy X and X-2. Now in college, she has blossomed into a beautiful young woman, but has internalized her self-criticism. She occasionally socializes, but most of her time is occupied by going to class and playing Valtameri, a fictional MMORPG that she has been obsessed with for several years.

Much of the game Cibele is played inside the game-within-a-game of Valtameri, which you launch from your in-game computer. During these segments, I was vividly reminded of Felicia Day's terrific memoir Never Weird On The Internet, in which she chronicles her own addiction to World of Warcraft. Never Weird included a mortifying (and hilarious) passage about how she used to flirt with boys on the Ultima Dragons Prodigy site back in the 1990s, then met with them in person, discovered that she didn't like them as people, but had to spend intimate time with them anyways.

Again, this is all far outside of my own experience. I've occasionally played multiplayer games, but am just as reluctant to meet people online as I am in real life, and so I've never developed those digital relationships that Felicia or Nina Freeman describe. But, that's the power of this game - there is no button that says "Click here to sign out of the game and play a single-player RPG instead." So you are forced to continue playing, which means experiencing a level of emotional connection that I'm not used to dealing with.

We learn from notes on the computer that Nina has been crushing on Ichi, the leader of her guild. As soon as I met him in-game, I was like, "Nope!" He's extremely negative, talking about how all the other players in the game are idiots, how all other games are dumb, why doing stuff besides playing Valtameri is a waste of time. Again, the game doesn't give you any options to control your response (except for three emotes, which I think are just cosmetic), but that's fine - this isn't a role-playing game, it's putting you in the shoes of a sweet, vulnerable 19-year-old and asking you to understand her experience.

Warning bells continued to go off in my head as the relationship deepened - they exchange more and more photos, with Nina's becoming increasingly revealing and provocative. For a little while I was worried that this was going to become a cautionary tale about revenge porn. Fortunately, it doesn't go there. I never really came to like Ichi (real name Blake), but I did gain some sympathy for him as I got to know him better. He's antisocial and shy, and playing the game is the only thing that he feels confident about. Yeah, that's not great, but given that that's who he is, you can see why he would feel (and act) the way he does. His mastery of his role in Valtameri gives him the confidence he needs to pursue a girl, and Nina is flattered by the attention and genuinely attracted to him.

This might be a good place to note that Valtameri is a deeply stupid game. I think that's by design. You click on a bad thing and then auto-attack until it dies. That said, even though the gameplay is shallow, the fact that it's cooperative becomes really powerful narratively. The game is mindless enough that you can continue reading emails and writing chat replies while "playing" it and absent-mindedly chatting with Blake; but it's weirdly heartening to see that, for example, when you attack a mob, Ichi will break off what he's doing and rush over to help you. I found myself naturally returning the favor afterwards, and there was a comfortable, unspoken rhythm to the way we cooperated to accomplish this deeply dumb task.

That is brilliant. First, because the best way to create a bond with another person is to cooperate to overcome a challenge. It also helps you understand the context in which a relationship like this could start. Yeah, it's all digital and they've never met in person, but you can still have many layers of nuance in online interaction. The small kindnesses that we use to signal our care and interest in the physical world have counterparts in the online one, and can provide a graceful entry to the flirting relationship that Nina and Blake strike up.

MEGA SPOILERS

The ending of the game seems cruel, but again, deliberately so. I found out afterwards that this is based on an actual experience of Nina Freeman, the game designer, and... wow, I feel sorry. But it also has a weirdly applicable relevance to how other games represent relationships.

Think of how many games there are out there where the male protagonist can sleep with a woman. In how many of those games does they then have a long and mutually rewarding relationship together? And in how many does the woman disappear, no longer a part of the man's story as he finishes the game?

The answer is "a lot." And I have to admit, I haven't really thought much about that before. The game is telling the man's story, and this is one thing that happened to him. He got laid, it was cool, he moved on. After playing Cibele, though, hopefully I'll have more sympathy for the other partner in that relationship.

END SPOILERS

For the last few years, one of my main obsessions has been with empathy and video games. I think games have the potential to significantly improve our ability to relate to other people, to understand other experiences, to feel what lives would feel like if they weren't our own. One of my favorite authors, George Saunders, has said that "Prose, when it's done right, is like empathy training wheels." There's no substitute for actually meeting with people and getting to know them, of course, but one of the powers of the novel is the ability to share intimate thoughts directly with another mind who has not experienced those things. Video games are still in their infancy as an art form, but I think they may ultimately be even more successful than prose in accomplishing this. You're not just being told something: you're doing something, exploring a world, listening to how it reacts to your presence, seeing what options are opened or closed to you.

Of course, most games don't do this. They're often power-simulators that let us indulge in behaviors that wouldn't be allowed or possible in real life (killing thousands of enemies, saving the universe, building civilizations). But games like Cibele show how games can be even more powerful by taking the opposite approach and putting us in situations that we intellectually know exist but haven't personally experienced. What does it feel like to have a random guy creep on your Facebook? I still don't know, but I did get a little knot in my stomach when it happened in this game, and that gets me just a tiny bit closer to empathy than I was before.

I think it's those moments of discomfort that are the best elements of Cibele. I've played tons of other games as a female character, but they're generally games where the player character is always on top - Commander Shepard is a badass, and playing as a woman primarily just means watching a different body and listening to a different voice save the universe. Cibele is a story that could be our story if our lives were just a little different. There's a very small gap between her and we, and games like this help us understand the other side of that gap.

Transitory

I think this is the first time since 2012 that I haven't had one or more RPGs in my gaming queue. That means time to play other video games, and finish ones I started long ago! Fortunately, all other video games are shorter than RPGs, and I'm looking forward to broadening my horizons a bit. Possibly until Torment finally comes out in 2017.

First on the list: Transistor. I started this almost exactly one year ago, before getting distracted by The Caldecott Caper and the universe. The summary description sounds like my kryptonite: stylish cyberpunk game featuring a female lead and awesome music. It delivered in spades.

Gameplay itself is terrific. It mainly focuses on battles, which you can either fight in realtime or by using a limited "Turn" ability, which lets you pause time while you plan your actions, and then execute them almost instantly. I did almost all of my fighting in Turn mode, which appeals strongly to my preference for tactical gameplay and limited hand-eye coordination, but I think it would be totally doable in realtime if that's your preference.

Transistor is technically an action-RPG. As you progress in the game and level up, you'll unlock new abilities ("Functions") for your character, as well as other benefits like more equipment slots ("RAM"). You can only use a limited number of abilities at a time, but different abilities can be combined in various ways to create new effects. For example, "Mask" can be used by itself to turn yourself invisible for a short time, but you can also combine it with "Crash" for a more devastating backstab attack. There are story-based reasons to experiment with different configurations of your programs, which keeps the gameplay fresh and interesting throughout, rather than just sticking with the same strategy throughout.

That said, I definitely found a loadout that appeals to me, mostly based on the earliest functions you find. I slotted Crash with Mask and Ping for a cheap and powerful backstab. I would follow this up with Breach for a combo. I can typically repeat this in a single Turn, which will destroy most enemies and seriously damage the rest. My third slot is Jaunt, which is useful for efficiently setting up backstabs or as a quick get-out-of-trouble button while Turn is on cooldown. My fourth slot rotated based on what I needed to unlock, but otherwise would remain empty to free up memory for my passives. At the end of the game, my passives were Void (boosts base damage of all attacks), Help (25% chance to become the superuser on each Turn, giving a powerful AOE attack), Bounce (blocks an attack from doing damage), and Tap (extra HP).

There isn't much of an exploration focus in the game - at any given time, there's only one or maybe two places you can go, with possibly a few nooks or crannies that hold a terminal or point of interest. That said, most of the pleasure I got from the game came from moving around, gaping at Cloudbank. It's absolutely stunning. Being an isometric cyberpunk game, there are scenes that are strongly reminiscent of the Shadowrun games, but where Shadowrun often goes for grimy and lived-in locations, Transistor is one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen. It combines cyberpunk elements (neon signs, enormously tall buildings, omnipresent digital terminals) with a fantastic arc deco architecture. These are some of the most graceful and elegant elevators you will ever see in a video game.

MINI SPOILERS

As everyone knows, I'm a sucker for story, and Transistor's is absolutely fascinating. Partly for the story itself (more on that later), but even more so for the unique way in which it's told.

I tend to think of video game stories as being synonymous with dialogue. Well, there's no dialogue in Transistor. That's by necessity, since Red (the protagonist, who you play as) has lost her voice. We only get to hear from her in flashbacks, after everything went wrong, or "hear" from her on the very rare occasions where she can type something into a terminal. When she does this, she'll type and then erase, which at first I thought was a form of self-editing, but now I realize was her attempt at carrying on a conversation. As soon as she pressed Enter, she would lose that input prompt, so she needs to reuse it for everything she wants to say.

In most RPGs, the plot of the story is communicated through critical-path segments that the player is guaranteed to experience. These are often cut-scenes, or crucial interactive dialogues that the player must complete in order to proceed. These are often supplemented by additional materials found in the world that will add in additional background or flavor; these can safely be ignored, but fans like me who want to learn more will gain a deeper understanding of the world and plot by finding them. These include codex entries in Dragon Age, books in the Elder Scrolls games, emails in Fallout, etc.

Transistor has a very full and complex story, but extremely minimal storytelling. The only way you can piece it together is if you combine everything you know. That means using all of the different functions in all of their configurations in order to unlock the characters' dossiers, AND paying attention to Breach's comments, AND finding and reading the terminal news reports, AND listening to Royce's rambling monologue. Each individual piece doesn't make sense. Reading Kendrell or Asher's dossiers in isolation won't help, but after you read both of them, you'll make the connection and realize how the Camerata came to be.

None of this is required to enjoy the game. The atmosphere is fantastic, and you'll be able to pick up on the gist of your motivations even if you never read a word of text. But it's impressive to see a game that's comfortable with such an opaque (but fair) system for communicating with its players about what the heck is actually going on.

MEGA SPOILERS

So, no guarantee that this is correct, but here's my own understanding.

Cloudbank itself is a purely digital, virtual city. The people we meet may have real physical selves, but the community only exists because of their decision to participate.

It is a democratic, collaborative community. I find myself thinking of it as an ultimately-evolved BBS, though of course it would be more relevant to compare to something like an MMORPG. The best comparison might actually be something like a MUD or MUSH. Participants help build the environment that they live in.

The "Administrators" are users who volunteer to help keep things running smoothly. They're the equivalent of the forum moderators or webmasters. They have a position of authority, but their purpose is to implement the will of the community. They aren't dictators, they're the civil service of the digital world. Most administrators will serve for a time and then step back down to being users, similar to many volunteer forum moderators. Some will tire of Cloudbank and log out completely. Kendrell is one of the few who has served for a long time, outliving many different trends and fads.

This is a democratic community, hence the ubiquitous polls. However, this democracy leads to mediocrity. Nothing unexpected can ever happen, because people vote on everything that happens. Everything is just always sort of fine, never wonderful or terrible. The people always vote for mild weather, so they never experience epic thunderstorms or frigid blizzards.

Kendrell becomes disillusioned with the status quo, realizing that democracy can't make the city great. He starts the Camerata, whose goal is to improve the community by surprising it. He and Asher recruit two other people to their elite conspiracy: Sybil, an extremely well-connected woman who knows everyone in the community, and Royce, a brilliant engineer.

In order to make changes without going through the standard voting system, they will need to access the lower-level functions of Cloudbank. Essentially, access the operating system rather than the user-level program that everyone else is running in. This will let them bypass the community's democratic will. Again, their intention is to do good - "When everything changes, nothing changes." They create plans for a new form of Cloudbank, with some immutable features that cannot be modified by popular will.

Royce eventually invents (or perhaps discovers, I'm not clear) the Process, a low-level program that can rewrite Cloudbank. The Camerata begins using the Process. Some people find out about this, and are forcibly exiled from Cloudbank, never to return. When they leave, Royce uses some aspects of their avatars to modify the Process, making it more adaptable and training it to behave differently. I think that this is the purpose of the Transistor: it is the interface between avatars and the process, or perhaps between avatars and the OS where the process resides.

The Camerata is patient and works slowly, converting one person at a time. Things go wrong when Sybil, who feels jilted by Red, plots to use the Transistor to get back at her. Ostensibly this is just another step in their plan, to inject a necessary element for the Process, but it's actually driven by her own jealousy. "Breach" gets stabbed and pulled into the Transistor, Red takes the Transistor and escapes.

At this point, everything starts to go wrong. The Transistor was the interface between the user-level world of Cloudbank, where the Camerata avatars reside, and the OS-level world where the Process runs. (The Process manifests inside Cloudbank, but it's a one-way street. System-level code is allowed to access user-level processes, but  user-level code cannot access system-level processes. The Process can thus attack Cloudbank, but Cloudbank cannot retaliate without root privileges.) The Process no longer receives guidance from Royce or the Camerata, and so it acts on its own, drifting from its original purpose.

The Process begins deleting things. Avatars, buildings, entire blocks. All of the architecture that was built over time and colored by user consensus is erased, replaced with a blank slate. The Camerata, horrified, pursues Red to try and regain the Transistor. She, understandably, is not inclined to let them have it: it holds all that remains of her boyfriend.

In the end, Red and Royce agree to a truce. Red returns the Transistor, plugging it into the interface so Royce can access the root system and destroy the Process. He succeeds (in an astonishingly elided scene). However, there's a problem. Both he and Red are inside, and only one can come back out. She triumphs, and Royce is gone.

Red logs back into Cloudbank, but now as a superuser, rather than a regular user. So, she has the privileges that the Camerata wanted all along. Earlier in the game she cast meaningless votes; now she can do anything by willing it. (In both cases, it was the system itself that ultimately did the work, she's just bypassing the previously-mandated method of doing so.) With her newfound powers, she's able to restore the damage done by the Process. She creates the buildings and plazas and bridges anew, replacing the blank slate with a glorious new canvas.

But... she cannot bring the people back. Everyone else has logged out. (My theory is that they've returned to the "real world", though I'm not sure if the game makes that clear. If there is no "real world" and only the digital one, then all of the users have been deleted.) She's a goddess, but a lonely goddess with no living souls around her.

Except for Breach. He's still trapped in the Transistor. He begs for her to stay in Cloudbank. I'm not totally clear on why, but my theory is that, because Breach is stuck in the Transistor, he's unable to log out. Red basically has three options at this point. Remain in Cloudbank and create a beautiful city that nobody will ever see. Log out and return to the real world, leaving Cloudbank and Breach behind. Or enter the Transistor and spend an eternity with Breach.

She chooses the last option. It's a shocking ending, but after I had time to think about it, it does make sense. Red loved Breach so much that she would give up everything else in her life to be with him. That's really sweet.

END SPOILERS

Anyways, that's my theory! The game can feel very impressionist at times, and I'm certain that other players will come up with their own interpretations of the game. It's a story that really resonates with me, though, so I'll continue to believe it until persuaded otherwise.

So, yeah! I absolutely loved this game. It's the only thing by Supergiant that I've played, though I'm now very interested in Bastion, as well as the upcoming Pyre. I'm also amazed that they managed to build this incredible game with such a small team - the entire credits fit on a single screen with a lot of spacing. That says a lot for their talent, and also for the power of modern game engines. I'm looking forward to whatever they do in the future!

Oh - as per usual, here is an album with tons of screenshots from the game. Spoilers, spoilers everywhere!

Road to Perdition

The works of China Mieville have been on my radar for many years. He’s often brought up when people discuss Fallen London, a gothic Victorian web-game that I’ve enjoyed playing. Fallen London is such an odd, unique, specific game that its fans have very few alternative sources to get more of the same; it isn’t like a fantasy role-playing game where you have your pick of many competing titles in the same genre.

I picked up Perdido Street Station, the first of China’s books in the New Crobuzon series. It’s fantastic. Really dark, macabre, depressing, well-written, fully-realized. I should avoid comparing books to other books, but to me, it felt like the spawn of an unholy triple union between Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, the works of HP Lovecraft, and Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork books. It combines the relentless pessimism of the first book with the eldritch horror of the second author and a setting that feels like a nightmare vision of the third.

Much like Fallen London, it’s difficult to quickly summarize Perdido Street Station to others. I’ve fallen back on “Lovecraftian steampunk,” which sort of gets at it but isn’t quite right. The overall setting FEELS Victorian, but isn’t, really… this isn’t Earth, it’s another world, complete with both alien species (the bug-people Khepri, the lizard-people Vodyanoi, the bird-people Garuda, and the cactus-people Cacti) and different metaphysics. Magic isn’t just real, it’s the subject of study, centered in its own version of Unseen University. Parallel dimensions aren’t just theory, they’re well-established reality, and the source of frequent threats. The overall technology level does roughly parallel that of late 19th-century London, including trains, dirigibles, pistols, and daily newspapers, along with pneumatic tubes and political parties. There are some elements that do feel particularly steampunk, most notably Constructs, golem-like automatons driven by steam power who use mechanical systems of switches and flywheels as their on-board computers.

MINI SPOILERS

The adjective Lovecraftian doesn’t really get at the tone, either. The Slake-Moths do seem like Lovecraftian villains, and the focus on madness and the loss of the mind are very reminiscent of Lovecraft. But the writing styles themselves are very different. Lovecraft was all about absence, writing around topics that were too scary to directly address, building up a sense of horror at the unspeakable. Mieville is all about specificity, detail, lingering over every bubbling pustule and blood-stained tooth and writhing tentacle. It can feel overwhelming at times, and it is relentless.

His writing is very vivid and powerful, and before long the corrosive miasma of New Crobuzon settles over you, filled with decay and filth and corruption. It’s a very distinct vision of entropy that he presents here. Not the long and graceful decline of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, but a self-satisfied wallowing, a bureaucratic malaise. We don’t get the sense that New Crobuzon was a once-great city that has fallen. We get the sense that people have always been a little selfish, a little cruel, a little deceitful, and all of those small sins have accumulated over a millennium into the rotten edifice that they now inhabit.

My favorite example might be the weather machine. Centuries ago, in an effort to protect the city from reality-warping winds, they built a vast edifice that can control the weather. But it's fallen into disrepair now. Nobody has bothered to tear it down, so it still looms over the city, awkward and ugly and useless. It has its own bureaucracy, employing people who uselessly attend the inert machines. No-one knows how to fix it, or could operate it even if it was fixed. It's just one more thing for people to complain about, another pointless eyesore on the city's landscape.

One thing that surprised me was just how many strong parallels I found between this book and details in Fallen London. I don’t necessarily think that Failbetter directly adapted parts of this book, but both might be drawing from similar original sources, or have coincidentally stumbled on the same flavor. Anyways:

Jack-of-Smiles <==> Jack Half-a-Prayer

The Brass Embassy <==> The Ambassador from Hell

The Vake <==> The Slake-moths

The Bazaar <==> The Bazaar

The Battle of Wolfstack Docks <==> The Keltree Docks Strike

That said, while both works share a quasi-Victorian setting that’s literally quite dark, the overall feel is very different. FL is occasionally scary, but more often is delightfully weird, indulging in melodrama and humor as often as the macabre. It is kaleidoscopic where Perdido Street Station is relentlessly focused on maintaining a single discomforting mood.

Both settings do delight in unusual characters. Isaac is a fascinating choice for the protagonist of a story. He doesn’t fit the visual mold of the typical hero, being massively overweight. His background is unusual as well: he’s a disgraced academic, a lousy teacher who squandered his reputation by pursuing overly abstract research goals. He now ekes out a marginal existence, accepting occasional research gigs that give him an opportunity to pilfer laboratory equipment.

Over the whole arc of the book, though, Isaac reveals himself to be a very sympathetic character. Yes, he can be blustery and selfish, but he’s very self-aware of his own faults, and pushes himself to be better. He offers an appealing mixture of ethics and rationalism: he believes in doing the right thing even when it’s hard, and overcomes his fear with his dispassionate judgments of what must be done.

Isaac is a through-character, but up until the end I was never sure if he would last. The book surprised me again and again with the characters it killed off: people who had been built up to seem like crucial elements of the ongoing story would be brutally and/or casually knocked off, increasing the overall sense of hopelessness and shoving the story forward.

MEGA SPOILERS

There are a ton of plot threads that arise and become prominent but are not resolved by the end of the book. Ordinarily that would annoy me, but in this case it feels like it’s being done in service of worldbuilding. A horrifying as the Slake-moths are, they’re just one of the many, many issues with which the world must grapple. I’m not sure if future books deal with Rudgutter and the Weaver and the Construct Council and Jack Half-a-Prayer, but even if they don’t, just the knowledge that they’re still lurking in the world makes things a little bit weirder, a little big more dangerous.

The biggest dangling thread of all might be the crisis engine itself. It was fascinating to realize that, among the most powerful forces behind New Crobuzon, this source of perpetual energy was a bigger threat than the moths. Money is more important than the lives and minds of the city’s citizens. That’s very dark, but also feels depressingly believable for any world in the multiverse where people are motivated by greed.

END SPOILERS

This was a great, horrifying book. I’ll probably try a palette cleanser before proceeding to The Scar, the next book in the series, but I’m sure I’ll reach it

Paratheo-Anametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric

Woo! I finished Pillars of Eternity! I've been looking forward to this for a while... partly because it's a fun game, but also because, for the first time in many many years, I don't have any major RPGs waiting in my gaming backlog. I'm eager to broaden my horizons for a bit. I recently picked up the "Humble Narrative Bundle", which included a bunch of story-based games I've wanted to play, such as Her Story and Broken Age and Read Only Memories.

Before I get ahead of myself, though, let's wrap this puppy up!

I think that, on its own terms, Pillars of Eternity is a great game. It has a fantastic tactical combat system, solid level design, and deep gameplay and lore. Its story and characters are well above the industry average, but in my (highly subjective) opinion, are a step below the heights achieved by BioWare, Harebrained Schemes and some of Obsidian's other games.

I'm a little conflicted on the worldbuilding. As I mentioned in my first post, I have decreasingly little patience for vast and original new fantasy worlds. After absorbing dozens of unique fantasy settings over the years, it's hard to get excited about yet another configuration of new gods, nations, races, and factions. That said, I did warm to Eora as the game went on, thanks in large part to a few unique things it does.

One thing I really appreciate is how cosmopolitan the world is. Most fantasy worlds feature racially-pure homelands with monolithic cultures: Lorien is home to the elves, Orzammar is the city of dwarves, Ogiers live in the Stedding, etc. That may have been true far in the past of Eora, but by the "present", all of the settings are diverse. You might be an aumana from Raedceras origin living in the Vailan Republics, or a Glanfathan Orlan who has relocated to Aedyr. Race still matters, but culture matters more, and nationality tends to have the most immediate impact.

While characters on the whole tend to be interesting and well-drawn, the companions in this game didn't quite strike the highs that I'd hoped for. There are a total of eight (in the base game, I haven't picked up either White March expansion), and each is unique and fairly interesting. Every person gets their own companion quest. These are all optional, and there doesn't seem to be a pressing gameplay requirement to finish them - it's not like Baldur's Gate where Minsc would leave if you failed to rescue Dynaheir in time, or Nalia would get upset if you spent too long before reclaiming the de Arnise keep. But the quests are a good way to learn more of each person's personality, and you'll have some opportunities to guide their path and persuade them to follow certain courses, which will ultimately affect their ending.

That said, each individual quest is pretty short and simple. The most extreme cases just require going to a place (where you're going anyways) and speaking with a person (who you're talking to anyways). Others require a bit of exploration or a new fight, but that's about it. They're a step up from the companions in BG1, but a lot simpler than, say, the loyalty missions in the Shadowrun games or personal quests in the Dragon Age games.

The companion interactions themselves also felt pretty limited. There are a handful of banters between party members. These are usually just three or four lines, and pretty formulaic: person A says something, person B reacts strongly, person A ends with a quip. They definitely aren't bad, but it's disappointing that that's the entire extent of their interaction with other party members. The PC never gets involved in the banters, asking them to get along or fueling rivalries. Companions will sometimes interject during other conversations, but those interjections are always in isolation: they never respond to something that another party member has said. The more I played, the more I found myself missing the sniping between Morrigan and Alistair, or Gobbet and Is0bel looking out for each other, or Minsc's joyful adoption of Aerie as his new witch. Each individual companion is good, but since they rarely bounce off of one another, they don't reach the heights that they should be capable of.

At the top of my list of disappointments was a lack of romance options. I'd assumed all along that there would be romances - after all, this game is a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, which practically invented RPG romances. It wasn't until after I had entered Act 3 and started getting worried that I might have missed a crucial romance kick-off that I researched the topic and found that I had missed nothing.

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. Chris Avellone was one of the main narrative designers of the game, and he's clearly stated his aversion to romance in the past. The story doesn't need a romance, but I think it could have absolutely accommodated one, especially since the main plot of the game deals with procreation and may have had higher emotional stakes and stronger personal connections with an optional romance angle.

MINI SPOILERS

For the most part, the lack of romances makes sense at an individual level. I really wanted to romance Sagani, but she has a husband and children back home, and I can totally understand why she would rather not get involved with the crazy lady who sees dead people. Likewise, the Grieving Mother is... well, honestly, anyone with a name like The Grieving Mother is not going to be an eager love interest. Pallegina seems the most eligible of the bunch, and I dug her pride and competence and self-reflection, but it was not to be.

On the other hand, many of the male companions seem to be crying out for romances. Part of the reason I was so convinced that PoE had romances was because Eder seemed like a tailor-made love interest. Aloth also has several moments of vulnerability which seem like they would naturally lead into a romance angle - which could be very intriguing, depending on how you resolved the Iselmyr situation!

While not directly romance-related, I was slightly bummed to see that the game only featured 3 female companions, compared to 5 male ones. Worse than that, you'll most likely only start recruiting the women after you've recruited at least 4 men. Since most players tend to stick with the first people they accept into their parties (because they've already figured out how to use them and have built the rest of their teams around their skills), a lot of players will end up cruising through the Dyrwood with an all-bro squad. This is a recent and hopefully short-lived but worrying trend, following up on Dragon Age Inquisition's 6 male companions to 3 female ones. Not too long ago, you could expect that fantasy role-playing games would feature a roughly equal number of men and women as potential party members, and it's a little distressing to see those casts becoming less diverse. (DAI had the excuse of many significant women in NPC roles, which is less true in PoE.)

So, yeah, I was a little bummed about the non-romance. On the plus side, the stronghold was very well-done, both narratively and mechanically. It took me a little while to figure out the mechanics of the timeline. You finish building upgrades and pay your hirelings based on in-game time. Time you spend resting or traveling will help these things be done. However, you finish stronghold quests and collect taxes based on "turns". As far as I can tell, a "turn" occurs when you make progress in a quest. Therefore, there are a limited number of turns available in the game, which means that you can't just sleep for 100 years to collect a ton of taxes.

This seems to be balanced pretty well. I was always busy with my stronghold, making sure to always have something under construction and doing any quests as soon as they popped up, and I finished building my last expansion shortly before the end of the game. I focused early on security; I fought three battles early on (two against undead from the dungeon, one against invaders in the courtyard), but after I had finished the Endless Paths and got my Security over... hm, about 35, I no longer got any invasions.

As in other RPGs with strongholds, my favorite parts were scenarios where a petitioner would ask me to do something and I would need to make a decision. Unfortunately, I only had two or three of these over the entire game... once for a vassal who was being cruel to his subjects, once for another noble who suspected his rivals of plotting robbery, and... I think that was it. I would have loved more of these, I'm not sure if there just aren't that many or if I was unlucky in which events I got.

Mechanically, the two big benefits of the stronghold were the herb garden and the warden. Any time I came by the keep, I had a TON of new ingredients to collect, so I never needed to purchase anything for my (limited) crafting. The bounties that the Warden gives you are some of the best sources of XP in the whole game, and also pay out a good amount of money and items.

I hadn't realized at first that the different resting bonuses for Brighthollow were mutually exclusive, though I can now see how overpowered it would be to get all of them. I almost always chose the Woodland Trails option, which gives an impressive +3 CON in addition to 2 Athletics.  I was tempted to use the one that gives a boost to Mechanics, because I always seemed to be low in it, but since that's useless to most party members I never bothered.

Speaking of which... while I got more used to the talent system and general builds over time, I also got increasingly irritated at the skill system. In practice, what you need to do is pick one party member to be your honorary thief, and bump their Mechanics as high as possible. This will let them actually see traps before stepping in them, unlock doors and chests, etc. This means giving up points in Athletics and Survival, which provide combat bonuses that are useful more often. More annoyingly, it also means giving up Stealth. So, you'll most likely end up with one party member who can pick locks but can't sneak, zero or one party members who can sneak but can't pick locks, and everyone else who can do neither.

All that to say, while there are a few parts of the game that seem like they would lend themselves well to stealth-based approaches (as opposed to the more normal "kill everyone and take all their stuff" approach), in practice it ends up being tedious and difficult instead of fun. The main example I'm thinking of now is the temple in Noonfrost near the end of the game. I eventually was able to clear it without any fighting, but yeesh, it was annoying. Sagani was my dedicated stealther, so she would creep forward, check if the coast is clear, then motion for Aloth (whose Stealth was only about 3) to come forward so he could pick the lock, then he would rush back while Sagani crept forwards, etc. I probably reloaded over a dozen times... I really wanted the pacifist conclusion, but with such unbalanced character builds and no margin for error, a single mis-step would aggro the entire building.

This isn't a completely new problem - after all, back in Baldur's Gate you would need to divide between Pick Locks, Move Silently and Hide in Shadows - but it felt particularly harsh in PoE. I think part of that is because of the more open-ended nature of skill allocations in this game. In BG, you just know that you need a thief, and there's a very logical way to build them so they can take care of thieve-y things for you. PoE deliberately avoids having required classes like this, which is an admirable goal, but I ended up feeling like no character was able to fill the role required.

That was a broader thing that I struggled with, unlearning my habits of RPGs. I'm used to putting my frontline fighters in the heaviest armor possible and sticking my wizards in the back with light clothes. In PoE, though, that might not be the best approach. My chanter (bard) started off in medium armor, but I ended up loading him down with the heaviest plate possible, and he was a frontline tank who sang Broadway show tunes into his opponents' faces. Many fighters might choose to pick lighter clothes, since they are the primary damage dealers and can get in more hits with less armor. And it might be perfectly valid to, say, have your priest carry around three blunderbusses (blunderbi?). Since all three are loaded before combat starts, he can get off three shots in quick succession before needing to worry about reloading, at which point he can focus on spellcasting.

For the most part, I like the way they shook up the traditional build system. I was also intrigued by what they did with some of the new characters, particularly the Cipher. A Cipher builds up "Focus" by attacking enemies, and then can use that to unleash spell-like special abilities. One nice side-effect of this is that trash fights become meaningful: they are a valuable way for your Cipher to max out their Focus prior to facing down a boss. It vaguely reminds me of the Guard system in Inquisition, which similarly adds value to previously pointless trash fights, and both are interesting alternatives to the prospect of simply eliminating trash fights altogether (which the upcoming Torment game still aims to do).

Okay... that was very rambling, but I think those are most of my mechanical thoughts. Now, let's talk about plot! For most of the game, I thought it was fine - again, above average, but not as gripping as the best RPGs. That said, some big revelations that dropped near the very end of the game recast a lot of the background in a different light, improving my opinion of the story's quality and giving me a lot more to chew on.

MEGA SPOILERS

Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity are both descended from Baldur's Gate and its Forgotten Realms setting. Both games seek to "fix" the problem of D&D-style gods. Forgotten Realms talks about gods and religion and temples, but it really isn't at all analogous to our own world: if you pray to the right god in D&D, they absolutely will send down a lightning bolt to zap your enemy, or raise your friend from the dead. There isn't any "faith" in the way we would think of it, just super-powerful beings that regularly and predictably manifest in the world. The idea of being an atheist in Toril is ludicrous.

Dragon Age "solves" this problem by making God unknowable. There are certain aspects of religion that can be verified - the Black City, the elven pantheon - but central questions like "Does the Maker exist?" and "Did the Maker really speak to Andraste?" are unanswerable. Individual people, tribes, and nations make their own answers, which leads to conflict. This feels very realistic and compelling.

Pillars of Eternity, by contrast, takes a tack that felt closer to that which Philip Pullman used in His Dark Materials. It's driven by atheist sentiment, but rather than denying the existence of gods, it makes gods real but corrupt, unworthy entities. In PoE, there is a truth that you can discover and know, but it may not be a truth you want to hear.

Near the very end of the game, we learn that in the cosmology of PoE, "gods" exist, but they were created by us, rather than us being created by them. This is different from the metaphysical idea that "gods become real when people believe in them" (used to good effect in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and other modern authors). In PoE, they were created before people believed in them; they have "real" existence and can affect the world. As in D&D, you can verify the existence of gods by watching a priest cast a spell, or by speaking to one in a vision. But the fact that they exist and are powerful does not mean that they are gods or are worthy of our worship.

This was a fairly surprising revelation, but it also worked well as the capstone to a recurring question that ran throughout the game: should kith (mankind) put their trust in gods, or trust in themselves? In Act 2, this mostly revolves around the issue of animancy, using science rather than religion to understand souls. The question arises again in Act 3, when you meet the Ovates and the druids of Ethik Nol, who have defied the gods and claimed immortality. The question is, is that actually a bad thing? Why should mankind bow to the demands of the gods? This isn't a straightforward question: we see much harm done through animancy (children's bodies implanted with the souls of animals turning feral and mauling their families) and the rituals of the Ethik Nol (convincing others to sacrifice themselves that you might live longer). But, we also see much blood spilt in service of the gods, whether through the Saint's War or the Leaden Key's machinations.

Dragon Age makes religion interesting by looking at faith itself, people wrestling with the decision of whether to choose to believe in things that they cannot prove with certainty. Pillars of Eternity makes religion interesting by looking at the purpose behind religion: why it exists, what effect it has. The arguments made within the game have strong parallels to the sorts of arguments we frequently hear here on Earth: that religion provides a necessary moral compass, that a belief in higher powers and an afterlife curbs the worst impulses of the cruel and the powerful from abusing their meek victims. (I found myself thinking of Patton Oswalt's Sky Cake routine here.)

While processing this in-game, I found myself very much on the side of exposing the "gods" for who they were and encouraging the kith to look to their own strength. That said, there's one final piece of information that gave me pause: before the Engwithians created the gods, they were in the same sort of situation that we're in here on Earth: people believed in thousands of gods, and those beliefs led to terrible wars, slavery, and other ills. It was that very situation which led them to create the "real" "gods" in the first place. So, in the understanding of the Leaden Key, unverifiable belief in gods leads people to do evil, while verifiable knowledge of gods leads them to do good.

That said - as far as I can tell, nobody in Eora has made a serious attempt at building a society based on the knowledge of the absence of gods (well, other than Iovara I guess, but she didn't succeed). I don't know if it would necessarily be any better or worse than the alternatives; but since we know that the alternatives have both caused problems, it seems worth at least trying something new. So I ultimately shut down the Leaden Key.

One thing that I'm still unclear on is exactly what the gods are... we're told that the Engwithians created them, but how? I wonder if they were extremely powerful Engwithians, similar to the elven pantheon in Dragon Age. Or, they may have been purely artificial beings, carefully designed and constructed. Perhaps that is what the Engwithian machines were for: to collect enough soul power to combine them into new, immortal, powerful, near-omniscient entities.

And, yeah, while there are some cool and powerful parallels between PoE and our own world, there are definitely big differences as well, one of the biggest being souls. On Earth, souls occupy the same sort of faith-based category as religion: some people believe they exist, others believe they don't, many aren't sure if they do, and those who believe in them believe different things about them. In Eora, though, souls are measurable, verifiable, quantifiable, capable of being combined and divided and destroyed and recycled.

I complained in my earlier album about how I was confused about the main plot, particularly the stuff about memories and past lives. I eventually figured it all out, at the same time as my character. I think it would have been clearer if the game had just said "You don't understand what this vision means or why you see yourself doing this." I'd thought that I'd missed some earlier conversation or explanation that would explain why the flashbacks were occurring, but I think it's intentionally structured to drop you into the middle of past-you's relationship with Thaos.

However, I did still have trouble accepting that the Awakening was a bad thing. You're told a couple of times that it's dangerous, but there really isn't any in-game penalty or problem that makes you feel like you need to get rid of it. On the contrary, it seems like a cool new power, and frequently comes in handy for a wide variety of quests. I found myself wistfully thinking of the Spirit Eater / Hunger mechanic of Mask of the Betrayer, which is one of the few games that has managed such a powerful connection between your character's narrative struggles and their in-game mechanical struggles.

Once I finally figured out the Awakening, though, I thought it was an interesting situation. At the start of the game, you define your own character's background. You do some of this in the character creation screen (race, gender, culture, class, etc.), and other parts of it in dialogue (your reason for traveling to Dyrwood). After connecting to your Awakened soul, you define that character's backstory via dialogue, and it's kind-of-but-not-really-you. It reminded me a little of cases like in Shadowrun Dragonfall where you can define what your runner's relationship with Monika was, or in the Mage Origin story in Dragon Age where you can define your family background. Here, it's at more of a remove - you're defining another character, separate from your player character, but one who carried the same soul.

It's hard to decide how to shape that character. You have limited options - the broad strokes of history are already written, so you can't, say, decide to rescue Iovara. From the remaining options, I'm usually tempted to pick the ones that feel most "good" and most in line with my main player character's. In retrospect, though, I kind of wish I'd gone the other way. Redemption stories are more powerful, and I could have created a more conflicted, dark past without diminishing my player character. Heck, she would have seemed even better in comparison. But it's hard to claim the bad story for "yourself" while in the moment.

All that said, though, the game is really good at tracking those past-decisions-about-not-quite-you. I'd almost forgotten the choices that I'd made - that "I" had loved Iovara, that "I" had joined the Leaden Key because I had been abandoned by my family - but the game continued to track those choices, and they made a significant impact on the dialogue at the very end of the game. I suppose that I ended up getting a kind of back-door romance after all, albeit one that was far in the past and was hopelessly doomed (in other words, the kind that Avellone might approve of).

The end itself was very satisfying. You make meaningful decisions at the end, along with decisions you've made throughout the course of the game, which combine in interesting ways to influence the fate of yourself, your companions, and the world around you. In my case, I had agreed with Hylea's request to restore the stolen souls to the children for whom they were intended, delighting the Grieving Mother. I'd supported Pallegina in thwarting the Republics' aggressive trade takeover from Dyrwood among the Glanfathans; the Republic ended up seizing control of trade anyways, and so she was disgraced and exiled, but if I had chosen to distribute the souls among the living, she would have been vindicated and honored. The endings are shown in slide format, which more and more seems like the best way to handle endings in epic RPGs.

All right, final round-up time!

Favorite Companion

Sagani.

Favorite NPC

Iovara.

Favorite Voice Acting

Lots of great choices. At the moment I'm leaning towards Pallegina.

Best Insults

Durance, with an honorable mention for Hiravias.

Favorite Banter

Either Eder hitting on Iselmyr or Iselmyr hitting on Pallegina.

Favorite Music

Hard to choose one, but I really dig the Thaos theme.

Favorite Class

I loved playing as a Chanter, but I'll probably roll a Cipher if and when I play again.

Favorite Map

The Ducal Palace. Runner-up: restored Caed Nua.

Favorite Weapon

Honestly, nothing was too memorable. I ended the game wielding Sheathed in Autumn.

Favorite Spell

Pretty sure I (well, Aloth) used Fireball more than anything else. Lighting Storm was fantastic.

Favorite Invocation

At the Sound of His Voice, The Killers Froze Stiff (paralyzes enemies in a cone) was my favorite, but when enemies were immune or had high resistance, I would instead use Gernslic Slew the Beast, but Soon Faced its Kin (summons 3 wurms).

Favorite Caed Nua Upgrade

Mechanically, the herb garden. Aesthetically, the laboratory.

Favorite Monster

Cean Gwla are nicely frightening, though they're either too hard or too easy depending on whether you're able to suppress their Domination.

Favorite Boss Fight

The first fight against Raedric was probably the most enjoyably challenging. The Battle of Yenwood Field was the most epic. The Master Below was the hardest (and the one I did not beat).

END SPOILERS

Here's a look at Venyan near the very end of the game.

Not too bad! I'm not sure where the Aggressive point came from, but otherwise this seems like an accurate reflection of my character's personality. (Quick side note: my actual CON was 18; she was suffering from cracked ribs at the time this shot was taken.)

So, yeah. I had a great time in PoE, and will likely pick up any sequel. I'm not currently planning on grabbing either White March expansion, since they sound more like Icewind Dale-style dungeon crawlers than BG-style narrative games. That said, the new companions do look great (one of them was drawn by psdo!), so I may weaken in the future.

At this point, I've played substantial portions of all of the modern isometric RPG renaissance games (though I haven't yet beaten Divinity or Wasteland 2). In my entirely subjective opinion, I would rate them thus.

1. Shadowrun Returns series (internally: Dragonfall, Hong Kong, Dead Man's Switch).
2. Siege of Dragonspear.
3. Wasteland 2.
4. Pillars of Eternity.
5. Divinity: Original Sin.

All of them are great, and the ordering has more to say about me than about the games themselves. Divinity arguably has the most interesting tactical combat of the whole group, with each encounter its own little puzzle to solve, and also features the most innovative approach to PC creation I've seen in a while.  Pillars has the most original and ambitious worldbuilding of the group. I rate SoD highly thanks to its story and my longstanding affection for BG, but I'm sure newer players who are not already familiar with the arcana of AD&D 2nd edition rules would place it much lower on the list.

Basically, I'm saying it's a great time to be alive and playing video games, where I can snark about a game not featuring romance or having companions who are just good instead of awesome. It wasn't that long ago that people worried story-based RPGs would be driven out, replaced by MMOs and action-RPGs; and not long before that when people worried that CRPGs would fade away and we would be left only with console-exclusive JRPGs. Here in 2016, the RPG ecosystem is healthier than it's ever been, from the varied AAA RPGs of BioWare, CD Projekt Red and Bethesda down to scrappy little independent studios telling compelling stories with 1990s-style design.

So, as I plan to take a little break from RPGs (possibly until Torment: Tides of Numenara leaves Early Access), I'm glad to see that the genre is in great shape. This may be the last ridiculously long album that I post for a while - this one features Act III (and the short Act IV) of Pillars, including copious spoilers related to the ending.