Category: Computer and Video Games

There’s Always A City: Experiencing Bioshock for the First Time

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Ever since the original Bioshock came out in 2007, the whole series has occupied a fascinating spot in the gaming hobby. Like Doom and Half-Life, the original Bioshock was the right game at the right time, a first-person experience primarily designed for consoles that came out just as gaming was truly become mainstream. As such the original game developed a reputation as a poster child for the “games as art” narrative, arrying atmosphere, political and philosophical weight, strong story, and solid gameplay. That’s pretty unfair to a lot of games that came before that did all of those things, and it creates a set of expectations that the series struggled to live up to, through two sequels that were each controversial in their own way. That’s why it’s been so much fun for me to go through the entire series for the first time. The legacy of Bioshock is such that it can be hard to approach them with fresh eyes, but I think I came about as close as is possible.

The biggest single mind behind the Bioshock series is Ken Levine, working with Irrational Games. Levine’s previous claim to fame was System Shock 2, a highly immersive first person RPG from 1999. In that game the player uses stealth, hacking, psionic powers, and good old-fashioned gunplay to unravel the mysteries of an abandoned spaceship. System Shock 2 is part of the “immersive sim” genre, a rather specific label reserved for first-person games like Thief, Deus Ex, Ultima Underworld, and the original System Shock. These games all emphasized a heightened level of player agency, a highly reactive environment revolving around designed systems, and a non-linear level design meant to emulate real environments. As its title implies, Bioshock was billed as a “spiritual successor” to the System Shock games, a sort of console-friendly interpretation of a genre that embraced the complexity of PC gaming.

The first two Bioshocks are set in the underwater city of Rapture.

The extent to which Bioshock and its sequels can really be considered “immersive sims” is hotly debated. Though I’ve not played either of the System Shock games, Bioshock is certainly a simpler game, both in terms of design and difficulty. That said, the setup for Bioshock is pretty similar. In the first game the player arrives in a huge underwater city, a 1940s art-deco metropolis called Rapture. Rapture is a remarkable piece of video game design, a majestic piece of human achievement that has gone completely rotten. As the player travels through the ruined city, they learn about Rapture’s history and its leader, Andrew Ryan. This is done through audiologs, recordings the player finds from Rapture’s denizens. (This mechanic was used in both System Shock games) Most of these people are now gone, and by all indications Rapture did not meet a gentle end. As the game goes on, the player meets the only people still living in Rapture: unhinged megalomaniacs, genetically-altered citizens called Splicers, and hulking creatures in diving suits called Big Daddies.

Eventually the player learns that Andrew Ryan started Rapture as a Randian utopia, where every citizen is a bastion of personal freedom and capitalist innovation. Rapture was therefore founded to get away from “parasites” who would steal the hard-earned money of entrepreneurs like him. Much was made in 2007 of the philosophical overtones of Bioshock. Andrew Ryan may have set out to make a utopia, but Rapture is at this point a nightmare city. As the game goes on it becomes obvious that his ideals engendered a sort of moral rot in all of its citizens.

If this series has any overarching theme, it is how ideologues and tyrants consume people for their own purposes. Not that we’d know anything about that in 2020.

The sequels would differ from the original in both subtle and overt ways, but if there is one common thread in the series it is an obsession with self-made messiahs who promise utopia. In Bioshock 2 we meet Sofia Lamb, a Rapture citizen who we learn rebelled against Ryan, promising freedom not through individuality, but through collectivism. The second sequel, Bioshock Infinite, moves the action to a completely different city, Columbia. Unlike Rapture, Columbia floats in the sky and has an early 1900s aesthetic. Led by Zachery Comstock, Columbia is a hyper-nationalist American dream, thick with the religiosity and racist imagery that we associate with the uglier side of American culture. As the characters in that game mention, there’s “always a man, always a city.”

Much was made of the criticism of Andrew Ryan’s objectivist viewpoint in 2007, but as the series went on it displayed a deep cynicism for anyone who promised utopia. The antagonists of the Bioshock games are almost always ideological revolutionaries who believe that human life is expendable in the service of their beliefs. The logical extreme for such ideological rigidity is not peace, but violence, of which there is plenty through the whole series. This gets interpreted as a sort of both-sides fallacy by some people, but I think the more accurate representation would be suspicion of anyone who subscribes to a single view of how the world must be. The Bioshock series is deeply skeptical of people who are certain of their perspective, a lesson that I found poignant and relevant in 2020.

I knew about a lot of this philosophical content before I ever played these games. But as I went on I was surprised to notice that all of the ideas were actually played with a pretty light touch. While the philosophical and political statements are always overt, they tend to be used as a way to provide background to the rest of the game. In the first two games, the real focus is on the place itself. Rapture is one of the most remarkable settings I’ve ever seen in a video game. It is deeply atmospheric, filled with art-deco architecture that has become crusted over with sea life as the ocean slowly reclaims it. It’s a truly frightening place for a game, and the most powerful parts of Bioshock 1 and 2 revolve around lights flickering at the worst times, disembodied sounds that signal unseen danger, and the sad and horrible things shared in the audiologs. As if that weren’t enough, Rapture is also impressive from the standpoint of level design. All of the areas in the game feel like real places. The city is filled with abandoned shopping centers, theaters filled with corpses, and science labs where horrible things happened. The player objectives will push you to explore every nook and cranny, solving problems and discovering secrets in a non-linear fashion. The first two Bioshock games are master-classes of level design, among the best I’ve ever seen in any game.

The first weapon you get in Bioshock is a wrench, a little homage both to System Shock 2’s wrench, and to Half-Life’s crowbar.

Bioshock Infinite is a different beast altogether. While I enjoyed all three games immensely, it must be said that compared to Rapture, Columbia is less impressive. Infinite is a more linear experience, and while it does wonders for the game in some ways (more on that in a minute) it means that the levels sometimes feel like you’re on a conveyor belt. There are still secrets and audiologs to track down, but those mechanics really work better in a more open level design, and Infinite is too invested in its narrative to really work that way. It also makes some series staples feel downright goofy. Columbia is not yet in ruins like Rapture, and people go about their business all over the place. In such a setting it seems weird to open every locker and eat food out of the trash for health, something that is common in every Bioshock game. But Columbia does have its own strengths as a setting. There’s an openness and brightness to it that is a great change of pace, and much of the gameplay revolves around skyrails, railings suspended in the clouds that the player leaps on to like a steampunk Indiana Jones. You get to leap through the air, fly around on the rails, and then leap back down, then turn around and blow someone off of into the wild blue yonder. Columbia is less conducive to exploration, but it is much more conducive to fast-paced action.

There are some gameplay threads that connect all three games. The whole series focuses on a combination of shooter mechanics, and what amounts to a kind of “magic” system. (In the first two games, these powers are called “plasmids,” while they are called “vigors” in Infinite.) Between the different weapons and vigors, the player has a huge range of choices in how they want to approach combat. All three games reward specialization as well, allowing you to upgrade your powers and weapons to make them more effective. Indeed, Infinite forces you in this direction by only allowing you to carry two weapons at a time, something that disappointed a lot of fans. The level of polish on these mechanics varies a little between each entry, though gamers have a tendency to overstate the badness of any of them. All three games are perfectly approachable and mostly quite intuitive. That said, in terms of raw mechanics, Bioshock 2 feels the most well-executed, since it takes advantage of the range of player options most fully, and has some of the best level design in the series.

Whether in the underwater nightmare of Rapture or the above-the-clouds nightmare of Columbia, Bioshock has a lot of fascinating rhymes in every installment.

But the Bioshock series is not just about mechanics. If that were the case I wouldn’t have burned through three whole games in a couple of months (though quarantine helped with that too). The story is what drives all three games, whether the story of Rapture that we learn in the first two games, or the story of the main characters in Infinite. All three games manage this part very well. There are huge twists throughout the series, but there are also tons of small easter eggs for people who are playing the games again, small visual clues that pay off when you are already familiar with the scope of the story. These games are great at environmental storytelling and the big overt moments as well, and that’s what pushed me to keep playing.

They are also super easy to play these days. The Bioshock Collection is available on all three major consoles, and the often go on sale through Steam. The Collection also includes the DLC campaigns for Bioshock 2 and Infinite, which are not to be missed. Minerva’s Den is a small add-on to Bioshock 2, a mostly unrelated experience that manages to pack a powerful emotional punch. Infinite includes the two-part Burial At Sea, itself a sort of coda to the entire arc and with some of my favorite gameplay in the series. As to which game is best, I’m not sure I could choose. The first Bioshock is a triumph of atmosphere and was the one I found most genuinely frightening. Bioshock 2 cannot match that power, but makes up for it in highly polished design, probably the best in the series. Infinite is the most flawed game in the series, but its focus on character and narrative overcame a lot of my complaints. It’s certainly the most ambitious game in a series filled with ambition, though whether it succeeds is up to you. For my part, I could barely tear myself away from Infinite. It’s a glorious mess, one that I found compulsively playable even when it didn’t really work.

As a medium video games are unkind to innovators. When a game is really impactful, imitators will often refine those innovations while putting them in less exciting settings. I get the impression that the Bioshock series has fallen into this realm. The legacy has also been complicated by the sequels. Bioshock 2 is sometimes considered too similar to the first, and Bioshock Infinite is, as I stated already, kind of a mess. I am not generally a huge fan of shooters, so I don’t have a very strong point of reference. That said, the Bioshock series joins the likes of Half-Life and Portal for me as an unparalleled single-player experience. These are the sorts of games that make me happy to be a gamer, immersive stories set in remarkable locations with unforgettable characters. In trying to make sense of their messier tendencies, they’ve actually given me something to think about as well. That is perhaps the highest compliment one can pay to art of any kind.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, or How I Learned to Deal With Change

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Build an empire to stand the test of time.

It’s fascinating how certain bits of culture become associated with specific times in our lives. For me this has especially been the case for computer games, the first type of electronic gaming we had in our home after my parents bought their first computer in the early 1990s. As an adult, no series of games has forged these associations quite like Sid Meier’s Civilization series. While I dabbled in the fourth installment, it was Civilization V that truly hooked me. It was part of the tapestry of my time in grad school, and in fact I have found it hard to return to it since that time. That’s partially because I’m not in that time or place anymore, but it has more to do with Civilization VI, which came out a little over three years ago and has become my most played game in that time.

Interestingly enough, Civ VI came at an equally transitional time, as my family and I were preparing to move overseas. It went on sale on Steam mere days before our departure, and our busy schedule was such that I wasn’t able to complete my first game until we had already moved. Civ VI was there in the wee hours of jet lag, and as I got used to the reversed time zones there were a few 3 AM wake-ups where all I could do was fire up my new game. In my first three weeks in Asia I think I approached about 75 hours. It’s become my go-to strategy game, and indeed one of the only ones I enjoy with very little reservation. But it did take a little while to get there.

To understand why it’s important to consider the evolution of the series as a whole, particularly the transition to the fifth game. It was Civilization V that transitioned the map to a hex-based layout, and imposed a limit on how many units could be in one of those hexes. It was also a more transparent game than Civ IV, which by the end of its lifecycle had become quite sprawling. These changes were controversial in the overall fandom, but it explains why I was able to latch onto the fifth game instead of the fourth, which eluded me a bit. Civ VI keeps those same elements, making it feel like a more evolutionary game than its predecessor. But it’s far from a retread.

Nothing quite like seeing those Wonders get completed.

The big change in Civ Vi was to make cities take more than a single tile. Players now had to found a city center, where a few buildings were available, but everything that is even vaguely specialized now had to be put in a specific district. Science buildings required a Campus District, production buildings an Industrial District, and so forth. All of these districts got bonuses depending on their placement as well, so city layout was suddenly a huge consideration. Not every city can support a Theater District, so not every city will be much use for generating culture. This made city planning a lot more granular, requiring some considerable foresight to really make any sense of it at all. In fact, while the Civilization series has always been pretty heavy on micro-management, Civ Vi is a big step up from the previous installment. There were now two “tech trees” in which to advance, one for scientific discoveries and one for cultural. And then of course all of those wonders took their own hex as well, requiring even further planning. Lest we forget, when I first played it was without any of the expansions. Two of them have since been added, along with copious DLC. As of early 2020, Civ VI has sprawled out to incorporate city loyalty, governors, climate change, and a re-jiggered diplomatic subsystem. It’s a sort of frog-in-boiling-water situation for me, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to take it all in at once.

The upshot of all of this is that I liked Civ VI without really loving it. Meticulous planning has never been my strong suit, but this was a game that felt like it demanded it. It felt much fussier and slower to me, and I constantly forgot to tend to different mechanical subsystems. It was the first time I had been a fan during the release of a new installment, and I soon discovered it was a little like having to learn to tie your shoes all over again. Familiar strategies failed me, and concepts I thought I understood eluded me. I was basically enjoying myself, but it all felt so weird and foreign.

Always fun to play Civ and find a natural wonder from the country where you live.

How appropriate then that I would grow into Civilization VI while I experienced the arc of moving to a new culture. My surroundings were strange and unfamiliar, and the world around me didn’t function in ways I understood. There were many times that I longed to return to what was familiar. But the thought of returning gave me little pleasure. The unfortunate truth of life after a big transition is that it’s become impossible to recapture what came before. You’ve changed too much, and you can’t experience the old stuff without carrying the new stuff with you. Returning to Civ V pointed out to me all of the different things that I had now internalized from the newer game, and what used to feel comforting now felt kind of thin and unpolished.

I now find Civilization VI to be a much more satisfying game than Civ V. Some of the things I initially didn’t care for, like multi-hex cities, have become a source of much enjoyment. In older games, the cities eventually all took on the same flavor, since you could build every building in each of them. But now the cities have to respond to their surroundings, and your strategy has to adapt. I recently played a game as Teddy Roosevelt and America, and my intent was to pursue a cultural victory. But I had such a great placement, well-suited to science and production, that after about 100 turns I had shifted to a science strategy, one that paid off well. It just feels more adaptive, and the different leaders feel less scripted than they did before.

Another big change I appreciate is the combat, which feels much snappier than it did in Civ V. In that game it often felt like a battle of attrition, the stacking limit creating a slog of a fight that dissuaded me from ever pursuing a domination victory. I have never been much of a fighter in the first place, so I didn’t need much convincing. But it feels like Civ VI has a better handle on the stacking limit combat. I couldn’t begin to explain the mechanical causes of this, but combat feels less protracted, and a little less tilted in favor of defenders. I’m not at all sure why this is, but I know what I experienced, and I like it a lot. The importance of combat has also been tuned back from the original release. In the base game I found combat necessary at a very early stage, but after all of the expansions and DLC it feels like you can play a mostly peaceful game if you like.

It’s hard to read here, but there’s a subtle bit of social commentary for those who live in the Philippines in this picture. You may notice that Catholicism has been replaced by Jollibee.

Like any big change, there are things that I will never be wild about. It introduces a Religious Victory, where you have to convert the whole world to your religion. It’s fine in principle, but it doesn’t feel very organically integrated with the rest of the design, more of a parallel game happening alongside the main game. The recent Gathering Storm expansion reintroduced a Diplomatic Victory, but it feels like it requires a very specific set of variables to make it work. It remains the only victory I haven’t achieved, though I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.

But the things I loved, the stuff that has made me fall in love with Civilization in the first place, is all still intact. Going all the way back to the original 1991 Sid Meier design, the Civilization series has been a master class in short-term goals paired with long-term strategy. These games do such a great job of presenting you with all of the milestones that are just around the corner. You’ll complete Petra in two turns! There’s a World Congress coming up soon! You’ve almost finished researching a new type of government! Civ VI emphasizes this even more, by creating a timeline of all of the specific milestones your civilization has achieved. No matter how bad you play, accomplishment and affirmation is right around the corner, and when you look back on the whole game you’ll see the sweep of everything laid out behind you.

As long as Sid Meier’s Civilization keeps that quality, it will be the most popular strategy game series of them all. I’m not sure I’d characterize it as the best or the most accessible, but in my experience it’s the most addictive. You can get hooked without ever really understanding how to play well, to the point where hours can pass by and you barely notice. “One more turn” is the common refrain, and every Civ player since 1991 has experienced it. I’m glad I stuck it out through the rough early going, because it has proven to be a rewarding and addictive game. As I’ve moved to a new culture, Civilization VI has helped me process changes. It taught me that change is always tough, and that I have what it takes to get through it.

The Games I Want About the Things I Like

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adventure time!

In the 21st Century, everything is a shared universe. It can get exhausting when we get one more piece of media from Marvel or Star Wars, and in gaming we are given countless offerings from other franchises. Whether it’s Warhmmer, Dungeons & Dragons, or the Cthulhu mythos, the age of IP dominance is alive and well across all of popular culture. But while this can be exhausting, there’s a good reason for it: people like what’s familiar. When you really like Star Trek, it’s nice to have a game that’s lets you set phasers to full, or set the warp drive and engage.

For me at least the issue is not so much the presence of so many different franchises, but that we are offered the same ones over and over. Granted, there have been lots of great games based on a lot of different media, but there remain some gaps. Well, not so much gaps as specific franchises that I would love to see on my tabletop or laptop screen. So let’s look at some popular franchises, and look at some ways that I think you could make them into first-rate game experience. Mostly this is just stuff I’d like to see. Indulgent? You betcha, but it’s my blog and I can indulge all I want!

Algebraic!

Adventure Time Board Game

Let’s start with the one that I think is the biggest slam dunk, one obvious enough that I am not the first to make the connection. Adventure Time has a decent claim to being the most important animated series of the last decade, and even though its run on Cartoon Network has ended it still has its fans. That’s why it’s able to support a few games already, notably a couple 3DS titles and Card Wars, a kinda-sorta collectible card game that actually has a counterpart on the show. But for fans like me and my sons, I think an old-school adventure board game is the perfect format for Pendleton Ward’s particular brand of insanity.

When I say “old-school” I have one particular game in mind: Talisman. Talisman draws heavily from the same pool of old-school roleplaying that informs the insanity of the Land of Oo. For crying out loud, Finn even makes mention of his “alignment” in at least one episode. Killing monsters, getting loot, and going on bizarre adventures is basically all you do in Talisman. It has that same sort of mildly nonsensical arc, where you can meet goofy monsters, random stuff happens to you, and you fight your way to get the Crown of Command. All that’s required is a coat of Adventure Time paint, and I think it sells itself. The powers that be keep circling around this idea by setting Talisman in the Batman and Kingdom Hearts universe. Maybe they’ll get there eventually.

And if you aren’t wild about Talisman, there are a ton of light dungeon-crawling games that are just screaming for Jake the Dog and Finn the Human. Old games like Dungeonquest or Heroquest are layups, and even newer stuff like Clank would work. Adventure Time screams for a good adventure game. Let’s make this happen, Cartoon Network!

Great snakes!

The Adventures of Tintin Graphic Adventure

I’m one of those snooty comics fans whose formative experience in the medium was The Adventures of Tintin. It remains a somewhat niche series in the US, but the rest of the world has grown to love the adventures of Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, and all the others. I also enjoy graphic adventure games from the 1990s, particularly those made by LucasArts. The way they resolve around puzzles, vibrant characters, and compelling stories means that it would be a great fit for Herge’s seminal series.

In its way, this could serve as a bit of a corrective to some tired elements of both Tintin and of graphic adventure games. Adventure games trended toward broad goofy comedy, requiring the player to do some silly stuff to get from point A to point B. This was most noticeable with LucasArts, who for all their great games worked best when they could laugh at themselves. But Tintin has enough different characters that it could be approached almost like Day of the Tentacle, which let the player switch between different viewpoints and plots all happening in different time periods. You can give more serious puzzles to Tintin and Snowy, more comedic pratfall stuff to Captain Haddock or Thompson & Thomson, and even science puzzles to Professor Calculus. There’s a lot of room for variety, globe-hopping, and mystery. Combine it with the ligne-claire style utilized by Herge, and you have a graphical feast as well.

More importantly, it provides an opportunity to address some of the more regressive elements in Herge’s work. Some early Tintin books, particularly Tintin in the Congo, have been justly called out for their colonial viewpoint and the infantilization of African characters. To Herge’s credit, such ugly qualities became less common as later books became better-researched, and as he made friends with people from the lands he was portraying. That said, these books are still tainted at least somewhat by unfortunate stereotypes. To add to that, the world of Tintin is oddly bereft of female characters. A more nuanced view of other cultures and more pronounced female perspectives would be welcome, either in a new story or even in an adaptation of an old one. I’m sure the notoriously stodgy Tintin fan community would lose their minds, but I think we’d have a pretty great game on our hands.

Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination…

The Stormlight Archive Roleplaying Game

As of the time I’m writing this in 2020, fantasy author Brandon Sanderson remains the rare bestselling author who has never had a screen adaptation of his work. While I would pay cash money to see a screen adaptation (movie or television) some qualities of Sanderson’s work make him a great adaptation for the tabletop world. This has already been done for his Mistborn books, but for me the holy grail would be a tabletop roleplaying game based on The Stormlight Archive. This would be a truly massive undertaking, since the series is projected to eventually cover ten volumes. We already have three with a fourth on the way, each over 1000 pages long. I think that only a TTRPG could do it justice.

Three particular qualities of the Stormlight Archive make it ideal as a roleplaying experience. The first is that, as with many of Sanderson’s books, there’s a mechanical quality to how the world works. Magic in particular is informed by some pretty hard and fast rules. This is more pronounced in Mistborn, and Stormlight is hampered by the fact that after over 3000 pages we still don’t totally understand how or why it all works though. I have no doubt that such an explanation will eventually be forthcoming, but the wait might mean that we won’t see such my game until 2040 or so. But Stormlight also contains some wicked combat, revolving around the legendary shardblades. While their exact nature is also still unwinding, there’s a huge potential for cinematic fights with a magic system that could create something highly narrative. (The temptation would be to bog it down in mechanics, but it could be really fun too.)

The actual world of Roshar is particularly compelling as well. While most epic fantasy series have world-building as an integral part, the different cultures and national politics of Alethkar, Jah Keved, Kharbranth, Shinovar, and many other places lend a rich texture to the world. There are also different religions and cultural mores that would make for some fun roleplaying.  

But the biggest draw for me is the characters. An appropriate subtitle for The Stormlight Archive would be “PTSD: The Fantasy Series.” Characters like Kaladin Stormblessed and Shallan Davar are carrying around painful pasts, dark deeds, and all sorts of trauma. Not only that, but they form all sorts of connections as the series goes on. Roleplaying games like Burning Wheel (unplayed by me) have shown how deeply character backstories and relationships can be integrated into a roleplaying experience. A focus on character and backstory would be ideal for Stormlight, and I’d be all over it.

Look, we don’t need more games, and we certainly don’t need more games based on someone else’s work. But we’re getting them anyway, so hey, it never hurts to dream about what we’d like to see. At the bare minimum, it’s good to prepare yourself for the kind of things that you’ll want to spend money on. These are ideas that would make me post the “shut up and take my money” Fry theme…Now that I think about it, a pick-up-and-deliver game based on Futurama might be fun.

Kicking It Old School

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One of the modern byproducts of getting into tabletop roleplaying games is that you accumulate PDFs. The proliferation of sites like DriveThruRPG and charity bundle sites like Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding make it very easy to have piles of rulesets to games in electronic format. What used to take up tons of shelf-space now sits in a folder on your hard drive. While I much prefer having physical books to read, this trend makes it easy to expose yourself to a wide variety of game styles. It’s especially easy because many of these games are available in PDF for free or next-to-nothing. One wing of the hobby that has taken advantage of this movement is the Old School Revival.

The Old School Revival is a trend in tabletop roleplaying that could easily take up a whole series of articles by itself, either as a history or a philosophy. I’m too new to the hobby to do write such a retrospective, or even to sum it up. But in short the Old School Revival (normally abbreviated as OSR) encompasses a variety of game systems that are either directly or indirectly inspired by the rules of classic roleplaying games, which often means Dungeons & Dragons. Many OSR games are overt (and it should be noted, legal) recreations of games like the original 1974 D&D, the various Basic sets from the late 70s and early 80s, or the 1st edition of Advanced D&D. Those that aren’t direct copies of the rules (known as retroclones) are often very similar rulesets in new settings, or else are inspired by older games in a more abstract way. The overall goal is not generally to dial back the clock on advancements in game design, though there is certainly some of that. Instead it’s focused more on making sure that a certain type of game stays relevant, one that is much deadlier, much simpler, and more reliant on the players to create interesting moments than on the DM to meticulously create things.

If you’ve been reading my work for any length of time you know that I have a soft spot for old games. As a result the OSR has taken up a huge amount of my spare reading lately. Games like Basic Fantasy Roleplay, Swords & Wizardry, and Labyrinth Lord are meant to evoke very old RPGs, but they do so in a form that is much more readable than the classic versions of the games. I’m also a big believer that any gamemaster in any game needs to at least have a passing understanding of how things are done in other system. It’s a little like understanding another language, which can have the effect of helping you understand your own a little better. Knowing other rulesets can only make you a better gamemaster.

But as I’ve given it more thought I find myself thinking about that “old school” moniker. As I write this I am two weeks away from my 37th birthday, and I feel like I am surrounded by people trying to get me to return to a feeling I had all those years ago. Movies, TV shows, and video games have all leaned hard into the familiar. And the thing is, it absolutely works. We all want to be reminded of how we felt when we were young. Whether it’s comfort food at home, sequels to familiar movies at the theater, or classic RPGs on the table, you’ll never go broke with nostalgia.

Ultima Underworld is actually a very cool game, if you are fine with taking lots of notes. I kind of am not.

However I’m also becoming more aware at how the promise of nostalgia is often more satisfying than the nostalgia itself. Throughout 2019 I have buried myself deep into retro PC gaming. Much of it has been rewarding (I wrote about the first two Monkey Island games a while ago) but far more of it has been an object lesson in why things aren’t done a certain way anymore. It turns out I don’t want to have to take notes during Ultima Underworld, engage with the janky controls of Thief, or look at the ugly polygonal graphics of Jedi Knight. I love the idea of Sid Meier’s Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, but both games are just too old-fashioned in their interface for me to fuss with. It’s telling that those last two Sid Meier games have had semi-recent remakes in the last 20 years, making them far more approachable. Sometimes progress is just that, and to pretend otherwise is an act of self-delusion.

Even those OSR retroclones tacitly admit this. The mere act of reorganizing old rulesets requires a bit of interpretation on the part of the writer. This is especially true now that all of the old editions of Dungeons & Dragons are available for legal download in PDF form, something that wasn’t true when the OSR began some fifteen years ago. If they were perfect such reimplementations wouldn’t be necessary in the first place. Just go download the original Players Handbook and call it a day. No one would accuse the writing of Gary Gygax or Tom Moldvay to be perfect, of course, but in reading some of the discourse surrounding these retroclones there’s certainly a touch of wistfulness, a desire to go back to things as they used to be. In this nostalgia’s most sanctimonious form, there is just a hint of scorn for “kids these days,” with their desire to have less character death and detailed character abilities.

(Hopefully I don’t need to say this, but I don’t mean this as a criticism of the OSR movement, or of any of these particular systems. It’s more just an observation from someone who still plays a lot of 5e, and has only been roleplaying actively for a couple of years.)

I’m no better of course. I have a lot of thoughts about what current game design trends are good and which are bad. I find myself increasingly out of step with how board gaming in particular has evolved. I just don’t want games that are trying to recreate experiences from other kinds of games. That means no board games trying to be RPGs or tactical minis or CCGs. No more multi-faction conflict games where everyone has a new win condition, alright? And while we’re at it, let’s stop crowdfunding everything! Let’s slow down the rate of release so that old reviewers like myself can keep up! Oh, and there are too many video reviews. Why don’t people write things anymore?

Maybe you find yourself nodding in agreement with some of those things, or maybe you think I’m going off the deep end. Mayne some of those trends really are unsustainable and will end. But the point is that when they end they won’t go back to how they were before. Everything has changed, because everything is always changing. That’s why so many attempts to recapture nostalgia and how things used to be fall totally flat. It can never be truly recaptured, because we aren’t the same as we were back then. I can’t go back and experience my favorite games for the first time, even if I had a perfect set of circumstances. The game didn’t change, I did.

I’ll probably go to my grave saying Cosmic Encounter is the greatest game ever. (Image courtesy of user killroy_locke on Boardgamegeek.com.)

And that’s a very good thing. So many of my first experiences with games were deeply underwhelming, and it was only after constant exposure that I understood their brilliance. There is real pleasure to be found in those games that keep on evolving as I do. That’s why I have such a deep love for Cosmic Encounter, a game so multifaceted that I am still discovering new elements. That’s why roleplaying has become such a huge part of my life, because I always have the freedom to adapt the game to wherever I am at the time. And some games, like Power Grid, have served as a little island in a sea of transition. This is its own kind of nostalgia, but one that is driven more by long term relationships with pieces of culture than by a misguided attempt to go back to the way things used to be. One embraces the changes of life, while the other wants to deny their existence.

Then of course there is the need to always be in conversation about our past. We understand our future much better when we can look at the things that came before. This is where I think OSR games have shown their greatest value to me. It’s very hard to read, for example, the 1st edition Monster Manual, and figure out what roleplaying must have been like in the early days. But thanks to a lot of these OSR games, it’s not a hard thing to imagine. And it has also served as a sort of Rosetta Stone for board games I’ve loved for many years like Dungeonquest and Talisman. While to modern players they feel random and deadly, to players in the early 1980s they truly were the most accurate representation of roleplaying in board game form.

Hopefully this hasn’t come off as either a plea for old-school gamers to shut up and quit whining, nor as a wistful look into the days of yore. In truth we all tend toward either one of those extremes now and then, because everything in our lives is changing at different times and in different ways. As gaming moves in whatever direction it’s headed, it’s so valuable to have one eye on what came before, not because we want to go back there, but because those things are still with us now.

The Pure Gaming Joy of Untitled Goose Game

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cover image

Those who follow video gaming might already be tired of hearing about Untitled Goose Game, the new indie title from Aussie developer House House. While it can be hard to gauge the extent to which anything captures the zeitgeist these days, it feels like this weird little indie game where the player is a goose tormenting a quaint English town has struck some kind of chord with people. It’s exactly the sort of game that the internet loves, goofy and meme-worthy, and people who aren’t charmed by it will probably get sick of hearing about how charming it is. As I played I found myself with several moments of pure joy, the joy of discovery and of the chaos I could rain down on this little village. But that joy extends beyond the chaos in its soul and the slick presentation. There’s some really sharp game design in Untitled Goose Game, and regardless of how short the game is, the whole package is worth talking about.

Certainly a huge part of Untitled Goose Game’s success comes from the protagonist. There’s a certain satisfying silliness to that white goose as it waddles around and honks at people. It’s able to run, but it sacrifices its maneuverability when it does so. It can also duck its head down and sneak slowly through areas, or it can manipulate its environment with its beak. Some items are small enough for the goose to carry them around, but others have to be drug slowly along the ground. You can even flap your wings around to punctuate the movement with a little extra goose-i-ness.

Aside from the on-point animations, these actions serve as a sort of toolkit for the player. The game does a great job at broadcasting when you can interact with something in your environment, whether it’s a switch you can flip or a flower you can pick. The world around you is filled with things like this. The overall effect is a little like a classic adventure game. You have the range of actions you can take with a range of items, and it’s up to you to figure out how to combine them in ways that will accomplish your goals. Untitled Goose Game does a great job at creating a living environment, populated with people who you can experiment on like rats in a maze.

And oh what people they are. If I had to point to any particular factor that makes this game work so well, it would have to be the population of this poor little hamlet. Everyone is going about their own tasks, and they all respond differently to you. Some will ignore you unless you try to do something irritating. Some will actively chase you away if you get to close, or will run away if you chase them. They have favorite activities, favorite objects, and predictable behavior, and as a result they broadcast enormous amounts of personality. It’s these characters that elevate the game beyond an adventure game, into the realm of games like Thief. This is an environment that the player can use to create their own solutions. When you are able to mark off any of the objectives the game gives you, it doesn’t feel like an achievement. You feel less like someone who solved a puzzle, and more like Bugs Bunny, tormenting and hassling people who give off the distinct impression that they need to be taken down a peg.

in-game shot
Look at that guy reading his paper. Thinks he’s so smart. (As you can see, he’s missing a slipper because I stole it.)

This setup allows for moments where I literally laughed out loud. Some of the townspeople are just begging to be picked on, like the shopkeeper who chases you with a broom or the lady who has filled her yard with tacky lawn ornaments. There’s a vaguely anti-authoritarian vibe to the whole game, where you get to rain chaos on people who like things to be in their own place and will not abide any minor changes, thank you very much. The village is rendered with a stuffy British air, and it feels really satisfying to bring down everyone’s property value a bit. The presentation, while suffering here and there from things like characters clipping into each other, is generally really nice looking. It’s done in a cell-shaded style with excellent animations and graphical cues, making the game super easy to comprehend and pick up.

A lot of that last part comes down to the actual design of the game. This is one of those titles that does a great job of teaching you how to play. It places you in distinct areas of the town, what in game terms are basically levels. After giving you a series of goals to accomplish, it will eventually give you another task that will open up the next area. It’s not exactly a seamless open world, but it feels like a cohesive whole, which is what counts. The four areas in the game all build off of each other expertly. The slow build in complexity makes each successive objective that much more satisfying. And without spoiling the fun, it ties together in a finale that almost made me want to stand up and applaud. It forces the player to draw on all of the mechanical lessons they have learned, while still taking the whole narrative full circle in a satisfying and hilarious way.

In this regard the game reminded me of another short, punchy puzzle game that captured gamers’ imaginations and led to a hundred tired memes: Portal. Like Valve’s classic game, the power of Untitled Goose Game comes down partly to its acknowledgment of its limits. It has a strong concept that it returns to over and over again, building on it in ways that also serve to generate some black-hearted laughs. And just when you begin thinking you’ve had enough, it has the good sense to end. To be sure, this is a very short game, taking me perhaps 2-3 hours to work through the main story. (There are bonus objectives to play after the finale too.) But at no point does it overstay its welcome, and I never felt like it was holding out on the good stuff just to make sure I had so many hours of play. I’m in my mid-30s now, and my gaming time is valuable. Untitled Goose Game respects its audience enough to use its concept for all its worth and get out before it overstays its welcome.

I don’t want to praise Untitled Goose Game too much, because a huge part of its power is in its modest intentions. This is not a triple A title, and a lot of people will balk at paying $15-$20 for about three hours of play. But in that three hours I laughed out loud numerous times, and it encouraged me to experiment and goof around in a way that few other games do. Anyone who has ever dealt with geese in real life knows what a pain they can be, but after seeing things from the goose’s perspective I can kind of see why they act like that.

Why Super Mario Odyssey Feels Different

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Super Mario Odyssey!

In keeping with my tradition of buying every Nintendo console roughly two years after they launch, I finally got myself a Switch in June. The first game I bought for it was Super Mario Odyssey, because if you are a Nintendo gamer you are almost certainly a Mario fan as well. I’ve been plugging away at the game for a few months now, and I’m beginning to appreciate more and more the different atmosphere it brings to the franchise.

Granted, it’s taken me a long time to nail down what it was that feels different this time around. I did know that I enjoyed the game, but it was a question of how much, and more importantly, why. To figure that out I’ve had to think about a lot of the patterns in the major Mario games. There are two generally accepted modes in which Mario has existed. First of all, there’s what I’ll call “stage-based” Mario. These are the games where the basic flow of the game is to get Mario from point A to point B. Whether it’s a flagpole in Super Mario Bros. or a star in Super Mario Galaxy, these kinds of games exist as clear challenges with obvious goals, and the tough part is surviving a gauntlet of some kind.

The second kind of Mario game is what I call “free-roaming” Mario. Until recently there was only two games in this tradition, but they had a huge impact. The first one, Super Mario 64, has long been lauded as a trendsetter in the medium, the first time that exploring a 3D space felt intuitive and comfortable. Here it was no longer about a clear goal with an obvious finish line. Now it was about repeated visits to the same areas, exploring every nook and cranny. You would select a star to seek out, but it was sometimes what must be done was rather oblique. It’s no coincidence that with this new style of gameplay, Mario’s moveset expanded drastically. Mario 64’s direct sequel, Super Mario Sunshine, followed the same format, and even added a new set of movement mechanics in the form of the water-jet-pack FLUDD.

Super Mario Odyssey is clearly much more of a free-roaming Mario game, but I think its strength lies in just how thoroughly it commits to that model. Again, it’s helpful to think about Mario 64 and Sunshine and how they contrast with Odyssey. Those games had open worlds to explore, but kept the model of set goals for the player. If you achieve that goal you are moved back into the hub world, whether it’s Peach’s Castle or Delfino Plaza. You might have to work out how to solve a specific problem, but like stage-based Mario games, the experience revolves around attaining goals. You need to swim down to the bottom of the lake and explore a shipwreck, or you need to use your jetpack to reach the top of some tower. When you get there, you get a star and you are taken out of the stage. The big difference between the free-roaming games and the stage-based games is not the nature of the goal, but the ability to move in three dimensions. Mario can do whatever in whatever order, but he still needs to do stuff. Those two streams of Mario games have a different execution, but they both revolve around achievement.

Mario attends a playoff game in Green Bay.

Contrast that with Odyssey, where the central mechanic of collecting Power Moons feels almost incidental. Rather than acting like the goal for the player to achieve, they are another kind of collectible. First of all there are a ton of them, over 800 of them if you’re counting. Secondly, there are also a whole range of ways to get them. Some of them require intense exploration, but some of them require simply talking to the right person or putting on the right kind of costume. Since there are so many of them, even the most casual player will find hundreds. The “story” portion and its levels are gated behind specific numbers of discovered moons, but you can actually reach the final Bowser battle with less than 250 of them, less than a third of the total in the game. So after the final boss fight, mostly all that’s left is to keep on discovering them. There are very few explicit goals. It’s just about hitting a certain number to unlock a couple of big boss fights, and unlocking new costumes in the store. Anything you try to accomplish after that is purely player-driven.

Odyssey is therefore the first Mario game to feel like it has no real goals besides running around and exploring every corner of the stage. The game encourages experimentation, because so much of that experimentation will give you another Power Moon. And when you find a Moon, you get right back in the game and keep going. This allows the game to get rid of a surprising amount of stuff that has previously been sacrosanct in the series, such as lives. Now when you die, you lose ten coins and respawn at the last checkpoint. You can try the same tough stretch again and again and never see a “Game Over.” The point is that the game is never over.

The result is a game that has a surprisingly breezy attitude. Previous games in the series, 64 and Sunshine included, emphasized challenge. You need to get good enough to beat something, almost to prove you deserve the reward. This challenge also ramped up as the game went on, though that challenge would take different forms. Maybe the game would force you to get through a storm of enemies without getting hurt, or emphasize perfectly-timed platforming. Some of the later areas in Mario 64 function as a sort of one-way loop, forcing the player to redo large portions if there was a mess-up. There’s not much difficulty ramp-up in Odyssey though. There are certainly big challenges for the player in the endgame, but the vast majority of the post-boss experience will be spent essentially screwing around. This exploratory attitude also explains the grab-bag aesthetic, like the oddly realistic humans in New Donk City and the goofball costume combinations that players can create. This is a video game designed as a big toy, rather than an achievement.

I think we can all agree that more games could use mopeds.

I don’t want to be too hard on 64 and Sunshine, because they’re great games. Both were made under some serious time constraints, and in the case of 64 there was a limited amount of memory to work with. (This is why other characters fade in and out of existence based on how close they are to Mario.) It’s hard to completely reinvent the language of video games, and somehow Mario 64 pulled it off. But the fact remains that both are not as refined as they might be. Sunshine in particular has a lot of visible seams. There’s the endless hunt for blue coins, and some punishingly tedious levels here and there. Odyssey feels much more assured in this regard, like the dev team took exactly as much time as they needed. They also benefitted from a lot of experience in making games like these. Mario 64 and Sunshine laid the groundwork for what Odyssey perfected.

Odyssey shares a common beef I have with any game that allows a lot of non-linear exploration, which is that it doesn’t have much arc at all. The challenge doesn’t really ramp up much, and since it’s entirely player-driven you’ll find things late in the game that are stupidly easy, right next to genuine challenges. That’s more of an observation than a complaint in this case though. I think the unstructured nature of Mario Odyssey speaks well to the power of open worlds in the first place. Challenge, while present in some late-game moons, isn’t really the point here.

I wouldn’t say Odyssey is my favorite in the franchise, because I need to sit with it for a few years yet. I would still at least put Super Mario Galaxy 2 ahead of it, the only other Mario game whose endgame is quite as expansive. But Odyssey does feel like the first time I’ve been given a completely different feel in these games. By committing so thoroughly to a different kind of goal, it feels surprisingly focused for as expansive as it is. It’s one of those games that rewards every moment you spend with it, and that is a sign of a lasting experience.

Exploring Monkey Island

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Sometimes we aren’t ready for certain kinds of art right away. In the 1990s when my interest in PC gaming was at its zenith, I had no interest in adventure games. Like many others I found them obscure and frustrating. I was aware of the genre mostly through my sister, who was a fan of games like Myst, and through the many LucasArts catalogs I had around the house. LucasArts was of course the computer gaming company originally founded by George Lucas in the 1980s, and their graphic adventure games were known as one of the high points of the genre in the 1990s. To me though they were the company that made Star Wars games, and that’s all my Mountain Dew-addled brain cared about back then. That means I missed one of the most celebrated of all adventure game franchises, the Monkey Island series. It wasn’t until I watched an outstanding YouTube documentary on the series that my interest was piqued. I have since become not just a fan of the original series, but of the numerous adventure games LucasArts released from the mid-80s until their last adventure game in 2000. Finally I was ready to appreciate them.

The graphic adventure genre used to be one of the more popular ones in computer gaming, but I’m surprised how many people I meet who have no familiarity with it. I suppose its current niche appeal necessitates some background explanation. Nailing down a precise definition of the genre can be difficult, but to me the biggest requirement is a linear narrative with a couple of strong central characters. The player guides those characters through the plot, usually through a series of puzzles revolving around inventory items, logic problems, and dialog trees with other characters. There’s no mechanical standard really, though the games usually revolve around exploration, collecting items, and combining and using them in unusual ways. For years, adventure games from companies like Infocom were text-based, requiring the player to type in commands like “go west” or “pick up box”. These eventually gave way to games by companies like Sierra Online that were based around graphics but still used text commands as the main form of input. LucasArts was among the first to move away from typing altogether, with the classic game Maniac Mansion. This 1987 game was one of the first to ditch text commands entirely, instead providing a selection of verbs the player can use to interact with items on the screen using the mouse. The engine they designed for Maniac Manion, known as the SCUMM Engine, would be the backbone of almost all of their best-loved adventure games.

Through the 1980s adventure games were notoriously punishing. The puzzles might make little sense to anyone who didn’t design the game, or the player might inadvertently make their game unwinnable by missing a crucial item somewhere. Then there were the places where a character would just die without warning, forcing the player to reload old saves to keep playing. It was this notorious difficulty that designer Ron Gilbert found disheartening. Gilbert worked at LucasArts as a part of the Maniac Mansion team, and he had a lot of issues with the adventure game genre. He didn’t care for the genre’s sharp edges, particularly the random deaths and locking the player out of victory. LucasArts eschewed these punishing mechanics, the idea being to make their games more accessible. (They still were prone to bizarre puzzles; more on that in a bit.) They would harp on this accessibility in their rulebooks, obviously viewing it as a big selling point. Gilbert was also weary of generic fantasy settings, and along with a team including Tim Shafer and Dave Grossman, began work on an adventure game revolving around pirates. The resulting game, The Secret of Monkey Island, was released in 1990 and eventually became deeply influential not just for LucasArts, but for adventure games as a whole. LucasArts would eventually publish four games in the series, and a fifth game, published in several episodes, would be published by the now-defunct Telltale Games.

That’s a lot of background information to bring into this, but I think it’s pretty crucial for understanding why I responded to The Secret of Monkey Island so positively. This was the kind of game that I’ve needed over the last year. It does a great job at explaining the parameters of how adventure games work, and it does so with a lot of appealing characters, self-aware humor, and delightful 16-bit graphics. The main character of the whole series if Guybrush Threepwood, a young guy with a desire to be a pirate. All of the games also feature Elaine Marley, the romantic interest, and LeChuck, the evil ghost pirate who acts as the main villain. The games take place around the various islands of the Caribbean, though the precise location varies from title to title. They interact with a lot of goofy characters, and all of the games have a sense of humor that hangs a lampshade on the conventions of both pirate fiction and adventure games in general.

Let’s just say the game is not shy about embracing anachronisms.

The first game has all of those qualities, but what I appreciated most about it was that it places some reasonable boundaries on what was possible. Right off the bat, the game funnels you to a specific location where you are given three things you need to do to become a pirate. It doesn’t give much in the way of precise instructions, because that’s the whole point of the game in the first place, but it sets local goals in front of you right away. Because there’s no way to die or lock yourself out of victory, you are free to experiment and try stupid stuff to your heart’s content. When you find a solution to a specific puzzle, there’s often a little moment of laughter at the solution, since they often revolve around puns or pop-culture references.

Adventure games, including those by LucasArts, often have the reputation of being filled with “moon logic” puzzles, where the solution is so esoteric and weird that no one would get there on their own. This reputation is not altogether undeserved, since adventure games are often the brainchild of a distinct author, and what makes sense to one person might not make sense to another. LucasArts in particular embraced wordplay and pop culture references, some of which don’t translate that well to intuitive puzzle design. Over the last year I’ve hit most of the high points of their catalog, and I’ve not yet had one that I’ve been able to get through without a walkthrough of some kind. That’s not as bad as it sounds, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the genre it’s that different kinds of puzzles challenge different kinds of people. One person’s moon logic is another person’s simple solution, and there have been lots of times when I’ve seen the solution to a puzzle and thought, “oh yeah, that makes sense.” Still, there will always be some puzzles that are too wacky or specific for most people to figure out on their own. When these games came out decades ago, I am sure there were lots of frustrated players who couldn’t just turn to their smartphones if they got stuck.

On the irritation scale, The Secret of Monkey Island does better than just about any other LucasArts game, making it a great starting place. Not that there aren’t some moments that made me roll my eyes a little. I don’t think there’s any moment where a solution isn’t subtly broadcasted elsewhere in the game, but it’s not always as clear as I would like. At least one puzzle depends on the player knowing a particular English idiom, and not one that I think is used that often anymore. There are also times where Guybrush needs to do something and it’s not obvious to the player that he’s actually able to do it. Maybe you won’t know that you can pick up an item, or that you can go to a location. A certain amount of outside-the-box thinking is necessary here and there. This is one of the few cases where I could see someone making it through without any clues at all if they were patient enough. (I’m not.)

It’s also a genuinely funny game, though it arrives at its humor in a different way from its sequels. If you play the original version, the cut-scenes are portrayed in a fairly realistic style. In other words, the pirate setting is played pretty straight, making all of the self-aware humor just a little more effective as a result. Later games would remain funny, but they would take the game in a far more cartoony direction, the wackiness more overt. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, The Secret of Monkey Island is funny because it’s wearing a funny hat and is trying to act like it isn’t. The later games all know they are silly, and revel in it.

From all I’ve been able to tell, The Secret of Monkey Island was something of a slow burn, the kind of game that wasn’t a true smash but still sold well. Its sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, arrived just a year later, and its whole mindset is one of “bigger.” The scope of the game is zoomed way out, particularly in the second act where Guybrush must travel between several islands, resolving a numerous puzzles at the same time. I’ve never been one to take notes in a game, but Monkey Island 2 would have benefited from jotting down some lines about all of its spinning plates. It’s also a longer game, and its puzzles are substantially more complex. I often thought I had figured something out, only for the game to throw a couple more steps in front of me.

In that respect, Monkey Island 2 was a slightly more frustrating experience for me. More of the puzzles were of the variety where there was no way I was going to figure it out on my own. To some extent that says a lot about my own ability to solve stuff like this, but there were one or two times where I found the solution and thought, “That’s total crap.” The design is just a touch less refined, and its sprawl can get a bit exhausting here and there. I have read many people who feel that the sequel is better than the original, which tells me at least some of my frustration is not shared by others. I could see how someone would think of it as the richer experience, but I would consider it a little like the comparison between Portal and Portal 2. The first game is the tighter design, but the second has a lot to recommend it too.

Best to play both games and decide for yourself, honestly. Monkey Island 2 is still a lot of fun. Most of the puzzles have that same sense of laughing realization, and the game’s graphics are probably the best the series has ever looked. From a technical standpoint, it definitely feels like the series levelled up. The music in particular is really cool, since this is the first game to utilize the iMuse system, the LucasArts program that allowed for responsive music cues that would change based on what was happening in the game. This is pretty normal today, but after playing the first game it feels revelatory.

Monkey Island 2 is really funny too, though as I said before, it’s a little more over-the-top. Guybrush mugs for the camera and has some distinctly cartoony reaction shots. He’s also required to commit some distinctly anti-social behavior to get through the story, things like stealing items that another character definitely needs. Some people feel this makes him less sympathetic, but I consider it another aspect of the game’s satirical edge. This is honestly how most adventure game protagonists act, and Monkey Island 2 draws enough attention to it that I think it’s a conscious design choice. Speaking of unorthodox choices, the game ends on a note that is, shall we say, open to interpretation. I like that kind of stuff, but there are people who are still irritated by it.

Monkey Island 2 is a great looking game, and even though the sequels would get technically more advanced I don’t think the series ever looked nicer.

It was after Monkey Island 2 that director Ron Gilbert would depart LucasArts to start his own studio. It would be designers like the great Tim Schafer, one of the writers and designers on the first two game, who would carry on the success LucasArts experienced in later titles like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango. There would of course be two more Monkey Island sequels, but I’ll write about them at a later date, since they feel pretty distinct from these first two games. It would be a good six years between the second and third game, and the time between those games is reflected in some of the design choices present in the later titles.

The first two Monkey Island games are both available on digital platforms like Steam and GOG. The versions you will find there are “special editions,” released by LucasArts about a decade ago. They feature updated graphics and voice acting. The latter is welcome, but the former is more mixed. Thankfully they both feature a way to revert back to classic visuals, and I strongly recommend you play the games this way. The jerky animations just look better in their 16-bit glory, and in a couple of cases puzzles are much easier to solve with the old interface. Both games also include a hint system, which I found generally pretty helpful for the moments I got stuck.

The Monkey Island series has been my biggest game discovery of the last twelve months. As I edge closer to 40, I find myself more willing to engage with a game that is over in about ten hours, doesn’t require me to learn twitchy button sequences or think in terms of challenging long-term strategy. It’s a more relaxed form of gaming, and I find that it’s well-suited to my lifestyle right now. There also can be a fun communal aspect to these games. It’s enjoyable to sit with your spouse or kids, and to figure out together the solution to the next puzzle. My sons have seen solutions to these games that would never have occurred to me, since their minds aren’t as restrained by conventional video game tropes. So even if you aren’t much of a computer gamer, I think you might be surprised at how fun these games are.

If you really are into the history of Monkey Island, and computer gaming in general, I would recommend the great hour-long documentary by Ahoy. It covers all of the Monkey Island series, and touches on many of the other high points in the LucasArts catalog. You should also check out the piece on the first game by The Digital Antiquarian, who writes an ongoing project on the history of computer games. (We have differing opinions on the second game, but it’s a great article.) He’s covered several other LucasArts games as well, and his work is always worth your time.

Baldur’s Gate – Better Late Than Never

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Baldur's Gate cover

In 2016 I began to seriously engage in tabletop roleplaying with my friends. As it grew into the lion’s share of my face to face game time, one of the side-effects of this new love has been a new interest in computer roleplaying games, or CRPGs. Since I’ve spent most of my life as a Nintendo gamer, roleplaying has never been high on my list. Unless you count Zelda games, before 2019 the only real roleplaying game I had completed was Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. (Nintendo, if you read this, I would gladly pay full retail for a remastered version of this game on the Switch.)

When you combine the desire for a CRPG experience with an interest in classic PC games, I suppose it wasn’t long before I found my way over to Baldur’s Gate, the classic CRPG originally released in 1998. Along with the original Fallout, Baldur’s Gate is often credited as the game that made roleplaying games vital once again to Western developers. It was the first game developed by Bioware, who would go on to produce the Mass Effect games and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It also spawned a very successful sequel, and as the first game to implement the Infinity Engine, it served as a template for other classic CRPGs from the turn of the millennium, like Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale. I played the Enhanced Edition, released several years ago from Beamdog Studios. This included several adjustments to make the game just a little more palatable to modern audiences, even bringing it to mobile devices.

I’m not sure I actually qualify as a “modern audience,” but a couple of things made Baldur’s Gate immediately appealing to me. First of all there’s its setting in the Forgotten Realms. A longtime fan favorite among roleplayers, the Forgotten Realms is still the default setting in Dungeons & Dragons to this day. Secondly, the year 1998 is squarely in my nostalgia zone. That’s when I played PC games the most, titles like Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, and of course, Starcraft. Baldur’s Gate is clearly from a world where real time strategy was still a major genre in PC gaming, because that’s basically the control method it uses.

The controls of Baldur’s Gate will be intuitive for anyone who played Starcraft and Command & Conquer.

Baldur’s Gate also represents a move away from the tile-based terrain that had dominated CRPGs up to that point. Instead enormous backgrounds were rendered into the game, making the game take up a whopping five CD-ROMs. The character sprites move around the rendered backgrounds, giving the game an almost painterly feel. When you reach the edge of one of these backgrounds, you are presented with a zoomed-out map with every explorable area on it, and you pick the next one to which your party will travel. A huge number of these areas are unnamed and are not strictly necessary for the quest. They are mostly wilderness areas that exist for their own sake, often with ruins or hidden quests tucked away for the player to find on their own. While Baldur’s Gate is far from the first CRPG to really embrace a huge open world for the players to explore, it doubles down on that format as the bulk of the game.

The combat in Baldur’s Gate was also the first example I know of turn-based combat represented in real time, with a pause button used to issue orders. All of the minutia of D&D combat (at least the AD&D Second Edition version of it) is represented here, where characters go in initiative order and make attacks with weapons or spells that are determined through invisible die rolls. It makes sense if you have ever played D&D, though the end result can feel pretty chaotic. The idea is for the player to pause the game and issue orders to specific characters, telling your mage to cast whatever spell on whichever target, or issuing orders to your heavy fighter character to make them attack a particular target.

Baldur’s Gate uses the ruleset from the Second Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which has a few little perversities that make the game hard to learn, particularly for modern D&D players. For one thing, in 2e your AC is better when it is lower. There is also the little matter of THAC0 (meaning To Hit Armor Class 0), the mechanic that determined the success of your attack roles in 2e. It’s actually not too different in practice from what is used today, but it’s a backwards way of figuring it out for the player, and it feels awfully counterintuitive. Still, it was the current version of D&D in 1998, and one of the big selling points for the game twenty years ago was that it recreated the tabletop experience. This in spite of the fact that D&D has never been designed to function as a computer game, something that shows in the final product. There are WAY more magic items and spells than are actually useful, but those things exist in the game because it existed in D&D. Likewise, there is far more combat in Baldur’s Gate than there would be in any tabletop game of D&D, where a single large-scale fight can take up most of your evening. All of these eccentricities lend the game a somewhat woolly quality, as if it placed fidelity to the original ruleset over what might be called good development.

The mechanics mostly get the job done, but in the end they aren’t really the point of the game. Both Baldur’s Gate and especially its sequel have always been cherished as exercises in great video game storytelling. In the first game the player is an orphan leaving their home, Candlekeep, and their adoptive father, Gorion, for the first time. From there you are given some quests and some direction, but you can take it in pretty much whatever way you like. A concrete narrative does emerge eventually, but in the first half of the game in particular it’s pretty subtle. It was certainly engaging, but it was also hard to escape the feeling that it wasn’t totally clear what the overall story was for the first two-thirds of the game.

The truth is that the first Baldur’s Gate has something of a pacing problem. Most of the first half of the game is spent doing things that are actually important, but don’t really feel like it in the moment. Not only that, but the big story goals the game places in front of you are not actually attainable for a while. Players who try to race to the next section of the story will find themselves in over their head quickly, because this game represents a low-level adventure in D&D, and you’ll need to grind for a while. Lots of RPGs require the player to do some grinding, but in Baldur’s Gate the grind feels particularly transparent because of how many wilderness areas there are in the game. In the second half of the game, after the characters enter the city of Baldur’s Gate itself, the plot suddenly picks up and moves at a breakneck pace, cutting off some of the exploration that the huge city is just begging for. The overall story is strong, but it reveals itself in a rather lumpy way.

The combat does the game no favors in this regard. While there is a lot of space to plan and make interesting tactical decisions, the fact that the game is based on rolling dice means that a shocking amount of the time your character will die, even when the odds say they shouldn’t. A human DM might find a way to mitigate this, but the computer doesn’t really care Like many late-90’s PC games, it is recommended that the player make liberal use of the quick save feature, reloading old saves after failure. The rhythm of exploring wilderness, engaging in combat, and save-scumming until you succeed, is what Baldur’s Gate is made of. The combat does get less streaky as your party gains levels, making you less likely to die when facing wolves in the middle of nowhere, but it is still slow going.

Different NPCs respond to your party members, offering them quests based on whoever is following you around.

This is the Baldur’s Gate experience, and it has been for twenty years. It represents not just a game-changer in the CRPG genre, but the most important D&D video game since Pool of Radiance, the very first D&D computer game in 1988. It’s place as a classic has been established for years now, and I would say it deserves that reputation. That said, this is a long, difficult game with lots of very 1998 design choices. It is most rewarding for the kind of D&D players who learn rulesets and get joy out of min-maxing their character builds. There’s something to be said for the challenge that is present here, but I’m more the kind of player who cares about the overall broader narrative more than tactics. As such I found myself losing motivation to continue playing. Beamdog, the developers of the Enhanced Edition, understood this might be the case, and included in their versions of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 something called Story Mode. This is essentially an invincibility switch. Your characters can’t die, and the need for save-scumming is basically erased.

No doubt a lot of old fans of the game will think this is an abomination, but it was exactly what I needed to see Baldur’s Gate through to the end. I put in 20 hours of what felt suspiciously like work before basically quitting the game in exhaustion. Story Mode allowed me to return to the experience and treat it like, well, a game. I was no longer annoyed at having to brave my way through huge wilderness areas to find a quest item, or afraid to open a secret door for fear that an army of trolls was on the other side. It’s not a perfect solution, because it makes combat a mere speed bump, and combat is a huge part of Baldur’s Gate. Pursuing loot becomes meaningless in Story Mode, since you’ll never lose a fight or find the need to upgrade your gear. But the positive effect is that it refocuses the game on interaction with NPCs and exploration, two of what the current designers of D&D call the three pillars of roleplaying. It was at this point that I began to really get into the groove of Baldur’s Gate. I felt more free to engage in dialog trees, to accept any quest that was given to me, and to explore every inch of the map. And most importantly, I grew more attached to all of the different characters you encounter throughout the game.

The characters are where I connected with Baldur’s Gate the most. You will meet all sorts of people on your journey, many of which are available to join you on your quest. You only ever get a party of five other playable characters besides yourself, so each game will play out differently depending on who joins you on your journey and what quests they open up. There are some who will be more common among parties than others, like Imoen, a rogue who joins the player in Candlekeep. However, others are hidden in strange places on the map, and sometimes quite far into the game. This is where I can see myself playing the game through again someday, just to create a different party and see where their stories take me. Beamdog also added their own new characters in the Enhanced Editions, though they have proven somewhat controversial among longtime fans. For what it’s worth I had Neera, a wild mage, in my party for most of my playthrough. I noticed that she tended to utilize voice acting for her dialog more than the original characters.  Of course there are also tons of non-playable characters in the game too, some of whom are just there for their own sake. I especially liked the guy who, if you talk to him, just follows you around interrupting you until you either leave the map, or just kill him. They didn’t have to put that guy in there, but he’s there, and it demonstrates the attention to character and detail that the original developers got right on the first try.

A scene from Siege of Dragonspear.

Beamdog’s contribution extends beyond the game itself. In 2016 they also released Siege of Dragonspear, an expansion pack that bridges the gap between Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2. The original Baldur’s Gate did have its own expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast, but it added more quests to the game, not a new storyline. (Tales of the Sword Coast also adds Durlag’s Tower, a huge dungeon-crawl often celebrated for its brilliantly diabolical design.) Siege of Dragonspear is kind of a mixed bag, though it does provide some different sorts of quests than were in the original game. It revolves around a large-scale war, so there are several large battle set pieces that distinguish it from the original experience. It suffers most of all from a need to take the character from point A to point B, sometimes transparently so. It will occasionally present you with what seems like a major choice, but when you try to do something weird it immediately pushes you back onto the tracks. There’s not a huge sense of agency, in other words. It’s a decent enough campaign if you are interested in the whole Baldur’s Gate saga, but it’s definitely a step down from the games on either side of it.

Isometric CRPGs had their heyday in the late 90s and early 2000s, but they are having another moment currently. Games like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin have given us new entries into the genre, and Beamdog’s own efforts to release Enhanced Editions of all of the old Infinity Engine games has put the classics back on people’s radar. That means that next year, we will get Baldur’s Gate 3, from the Larian Studios, the makers of Divinity: Original Sin. From that standpoint it’s fun to go back and see one of the games that really started established the genre in the first place. Baldur’s Gate is a classic, and it’s been delighting roleplayers for decades now. It’s worth digging into, because it does a great job at giving the player a world to explore and get to know. There are lots of tactical challenges that will delight certain people, but even if that’s not your bag, the Enhanced Editions allow anyone to put in the time to enjoy this epic. If you’ve never dug into computer RPGs before, this is a terrific starting point.