I was in elementary school when Bill Clinton was first elected. I remember putting crayon to cardboard and producing a "Go Clinton!" campaign sign to hang in the hallway outside my classroom on election day. I remember my conservative, Republican parents were astonished when they saw it. The thing is, I had chosen Mr. Clinton at random. I don't remember being pushed one way or the other by my teachers or peers, but I don't remember receiving any information upon which to base my decision. It was just, "pick one, color something, I'm going out for a smoke."
I learned an important lesson that day, though. It doesn't really matter who the president is, but people take that shit seriously anyway.
Now, one month into the most anticipated presidency of my lifetime, both the country and the office are quite different than they were back when I doodled that sign. We were riding high back then. We were fresh off a brief, successful war (successful as long as you weren't a rebellious Iraqi, that is), the economy was on the verge of exploding (a lot of people who didn't deserve it at all were about to get very rich), and as it turns out, we had so little to worry about that it was of the utmost importance to determine what the president did and did not do with his penis.
Barack Obama was elected in the midst of two (or three, or a thousand, depends on how you look at it) endless wars, a financial meltdown nobody really understands (I like to say the invisible hand got a little fresh with the wrong dame), and is inheriting the office from an administration which covertly abused the powers they could not publicly expand and everyone just went along with it.
I think it's safe to say our new president has to live up to some pretty serious expectations.
One of his first actions was to begin the process of fulfilling his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Brilliantly savvy. He gets to have his cake and eat it a la mode here. It's not like fixing social security, reforming campaign fund raising, or increasing transparency in government. It's a simple matter, comparatively. He pleases the peace-loving folks who put him into office in the first place, but he really only pisses off the fringe psychopaths who openly condone electrocuting the genitals of anyone without a Dale Earnhardt mesh cap. It's a positive politically, but it also may help to clean up America's reputation with the rest of the world.
The other advantage to such a move is that it will help to obscure the fact that President Obama is not likely to instigate or assist a serious investigation on the actions of the previous administration, much less put them on trial and lock their asses up like he should. I want to note that do not say this out of a sense of revenge. Sure, they should be punished for abuse of power, lying in order to build a case for war, politicizing the justice department, you get the idea. It's a long list and I am no legal scholar. The problem is that these actions have to be punished or we will see them happen again.
I know many of you have the utmost faith in the new president, and to be honest, I think he may be as honorable a politician as I have ever seen. He will, however, only be the president for eight years, maximum. What happens if he makes a bad penis-related decision and it's all over the news and he fails to win in four years? What if he's replaced by a shape-shifting alien? What if he's an evil android bent on enslaving all biological life?
"I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards," is what he said during a press conference earlier this month. I fear he may attempt to avoid this admittedly messy affair, even though it is crucial that someone holds his predecessor accountable. To be fair, congress would be doing much of the work here, but the whole ordeal would be carried out on the president's watch. Rush Limbaugh will get to blame the witch hunt on him (he'll probably make a few Joe McCarthy references completely without irony). The president will lose momentum. Too bad. He needs to do his job.
I think that, as a nation, we have this image of the president as the captain of a ship, there are obviously other people--senators, judges, ultimately the voters who elect these people--who make the ship work, but the president sets the course and brings everything together. This is not the president's true role in this analogy.
The president is the sponge used to swab the deck.
Avoiding for simplicity's sake the questions of when and how this came to be, it seems pretty clear that there are deep, systemic problems with our country, our culture, with the way of life of the vast majority of humanity, really. It has been this way for some time.
The problem is that most of us do not benefit from this system, and those few of us who do only do so in order that we may be of better service to those scant few on top who live so lavishly that they are practically no longer human at this point. The system is set up to keep them where they are and mollify the rest of us. It doesn't always work that way, though. The business of sailing this ship is a messy one. People get hurt, they lose everything, communities are bankrupted, industries fail and markets collapse sometimes when someone gets too greedy or too sloppy and we can see it plainly. We can see what the system really is and what it generates.
And then the president steps in. The president must, in some way or another, own these messes. He must absorb them because he works for the system. He is in power for only a short time and he takes responsibility for these problems because someone has to carry the blame. Otherwise we might blame the system itself.
President Obama is going to have to be pretty absorbent to do this job. We're in a bigger mess now than we have been in quite some time. The entire banking/credit institution upon which the grand inequity of our time is based is failing. The system demands that it be saved, and Barack Obama is going to have to sell that to us.
He'll do it, too. It will take unprecedented quantities of stopgaps, theatrics, and make-work, but he's charismatic enough to pull it off. What his predecessor could not contain with anger, fear, and xenophobia he will sop up with a fresh attitude, hope, and a can-do, pull-together spirit. He will not, however, betray the system.
I do actually think he's sincere. I do think he wants to help. It's this sincerity that will make him so good at his job. He's no more free of the zeitgeist than you or I, a president can't change anything. They belong to the system, the network of donors and owners who put them in office.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope he does identify the systemic problems we face and is willing to deconstruct things enough to get at them. At this rate, though, he's not going to have much time to do so before he has to begin his reelection campaign.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe
I confess I am new to the Scott Pilgrim phenomenon. It was only a few months ago I absent-mindedly picked up Free Scott Pilgrim, the short story which takes place between volumes 2 and 3. I'm not sure I would have been interested enough to continue if I hadn't flipped to the page near the beginning where Scott is depicted browsing energy drinks at a convenience store. On the bottles where I expected to see nutritional facts and ingredients, instead I see lists of stat bonuses and penalties like something out of D&D. I read on, obviously.
You see, I'm a sucker for setting. I will sometimes forgive quite a few plot and character mistakes if I like the world enough. That's why I read specialized fantastic literature genres with names overburdened by hyphens. It's why I like to take the occasional shot at traditional orcs-and-elves stuff because I think it misses the whole point of fantastic storytelling.
Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley's world is a clever mix of gaming culture satire, anime, and science fiction, but it shares the same space with a contemporary urban scenester environment. Oh yes, Scott Pilgrim is aware of its audience. Scott plays bass in a local band, but he is also on a quest to defeat his true love's evil ex-boyfriends. He has to work bad jobs to pay his rent, but he collects power-ups when he wins a fight. Could you accuse Scott Pilgrim of juvenile wish-fulfillment? You certainly could. Do you ever fantasize about fighting robots in a public place? I sure as hell do.
Considering I wrap myself in my delusions of uniqueness like a blanket against the cold winds of the great big, gray, homogeneous world out there, I usually have to resist the urge to hate something when I find myself dead center in its target demographic. However, Scott Pilgrim has a disarming allure it earns by being utterly clever and yet totally without pretension. It stands astride the gap between the indie avant-garde graphic tales about the real world and comics. You know, comics? Capes and laser eyes and shit.
This is the comic's biggest strength. The characters experience real consequences for their actions and feel real emotions in one panel and then throw each other through walls in the next. It's guilt-free fun.
The new 5th volume, Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe, is a little shorter than the others. It feels rushed. The series as a whole typically does a good job of balancing the mundane and the fantastic, it's what makes it so cool. It may be that this is the price both we and Scott Pilgrim must pay, we all have to grow up at some point, and leave the fantasies behind.
Unfortunately, it's the balance between the two elements that really makes the whole thing work for me. Have you ever watched the pilot for a television show which utilized some interesting narrative device and then somewhere between the first episode and the second season it was discarded because it wasn't worth the effort? They knew the audience was already hooked by the plot and would continue to watch just to see who boinks whom. This is what I fear for Scott Pilgrim. I understand that the series is reaching a climax and needs to focus a bit more on letting the story play out. I also know that the reader can't just crawl inside a book's setting and explore it for a while, the nice men in white coats were very adamant about that.
The point is that as a series begins to focus, it runs the risk of losing those elements that made us sign on in the first place. Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness had plenty of plot reveals, but it also managed to maintain that sense of adventure. It gave itself time to explore and see some of the interesting things that happen on the fringes of O'Malley's world.
I will reserve my typical rash and crudely-worded judgment in this case. Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe is definitely not the best example of the series, but the fact remains that if it were published like any other comic, we'd already have a stack of useless fluff books already. One volume is hardly enough to damn the series. Everybody gets one Temple of Doom.
You see, I'm a sucker for setting. I will sometimes forgive quite a few plot and character mistakes if I like the world enough. That's why I read specialized fantastic literature genres with names overburdened by hyphens. It's why I like to take the occasional shot at traditional orcs-and-elves stuff because I think it misses the whole point of fantastic storytelling.
Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley's world is a clever mix of gaming culture satire, anime, and science fiction, but it shares the same space with a contemporary urban scenester environment. Oh yes, Scott Pilgrim is aware of its audience. Scott plays bass in a local band, but he is also on a quest to defeat his true love's evil ex-boyfriends. He has to work bad jobs to pay his rent, but he collects power-ups when he wins a fight. Could you accuse Scott Pilgrim of juvenile wish-fulfillment? You certainly could. Do you ever fantasize about fighting robots in a public place? I sure as hell do.
Considering I wrap myself in my delusions of uniqueness like a blanket against the cold winds of the great big, gray, homogeneous world out there, I usually have to resist the urge to hate something when I find myself dead center in its target demographic. However, Scott Pilgrim has a disarming allure it earns by being utterly clever and yet totally without pretension. It stands astride the gap between the indie avant-garde graphic tales about the real world and comics. You know, comics? Capes and laser eyes and shit.
This is the comic's biggest strength. The characters experience real consequences for their actions and feel real emotions in one panel and then throw each other through walls in the next. It's guilt-free fun.
The new 5th volume, Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe, is a little shorter than the others. It feels rushed. The series as a whole typically does a good job of balancing the mundane and the fantastic, it's what makes it so cool. It may be that this is the price both we and Scott Pilgrim must pay, we all have to grow up at some point, and leave the fantasies behind.
Unfortunately, it's the balance between the two elements that really makes the whole thing work for me. Have you ever watched the pilot for a television show which utilized some interesting narrative device and then somewhere between the first episode and the second season it was discarded because it wasn't worth the effort? They knew the audience was already hooked by the plot and would continue to watch just to see who boinks whom. This is what I fear for Scott Pilgrim. I understand that the series is reaching a climax and needs to focus a bit more on letting the story play out. I also know that the reader can't just crawl inside a book's setting and explore it for a while, the nice men in white coats were very adamant about that.
The point is that as a series begins to focus, it runs the risk of losing those elements that made us sign on in the first place. Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness had plenty of plot reveals, but it also managed to maintain that sense of adventure. It gave itself time to explore and see some of the interesting things that happen on the fringes of O'Malley's world.
I will reserve my typical rash and crudely-worded judgment in this case. Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe is definitely not the best example of the series, but the fact remains that if it were published like any other comic, we'd already have a stack of useless fluff books already. One volume is hardly enough to damn the series. Everybody gets one Temple of Doom.
Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition
I think we may have been too young to appreciate it the first time we played Dungeons & Dragons. Either that or our dungeon master was being a douche bag for no reason. I think I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to inexperience. After all, he has plenty of embarrassing stories about me and I'm writing about my first D&D experience, so you can imagine how bad they must be.
Despite the rocky start, I tell anyone who'll listen about how great I think tabletop role-playing games are. Even as video game technology advances, paving the way for more realistic simulations and allowing greater freedom and individuality, I'd still rather spend an evening with friends and dice. Entertainment is all the more rewarding when you're intellectually engaged with it, and there is no better example of that than the tabletop RPG.
Unlike most uber-nerds, D&D was not my gateway to that magical land of imagination and social ostracism. It happened years later, in a different basement, playing White-Wolf Games' Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
White-Wolf was notorious for their other game, Vampire: The Masquerade. You may remember the story. It was sometime during the nineties and some stupid kid did something stupid and happened to own a copy of the rulebook. The next thing you knew, one television news magazine or the other broadcast an alarmist expose on "the game which will turn your kids into children of the night, delusional killers, maniacs!" It gave housewives something to worry about until they caught the obligatory choking hazard toy segment on the eleven o'clock news the following week.
Werewolf is probably more violent than Vampire, but it's a charming, Earth First!, righteous anger of the natural world sort of violence. However, there were far more brooding goths than stoner post-hippies back then, so it was never as popular. Indeed, the company had many different titles, most of which were set in a somewhat darker version of our world where supernatural forces worked their magic behind the scenes. It was a rich setting, well-conceived and inspired by the mythology and folklore of many different cultures.
I bring this up because the White-Wolf titles and Dungeons & Dragons represent two disparate forms of tabletop RPGs. This is a review of the new D&D, but I think it will be useful to compare it to other examples of the hobby, since most people probably never knew there were different kinds.
The main characteristic which sets the two styles apart is their approach to setting. D&D games are set in a sort of amorphous stock fantasy world. Although a creative group is free to bend the rules, it's still just picking through J.R.R. Tolkien's bowel movements. You typically have to break the game and rebuild parts of it if you want to go outside the lines, setting-wise. This would be fine if said setting was innovative at all, but it's not. You're supposedly paying for both the balancing work that goes into creating the gaming system and the artistic work of establishing the setting. If the setting is going to be paper-thin, the system should at least be robust and adaptable.
I remember the previous versions being better at that. My second D&D experience was with the 3rd edition rules and a group that ended up spending more time creating the world than we did playing in it. I didn't even have to invent too many rules to add steampunk elves to our game. That's right, steampunk elves.
The 4th edition carries with it the stink of That Guy. You know who I'm talking about. That Guy insists on playing some sort of ridiculous crossover character and then when you finally work out something you can both live with, That Guy is the first one to strike off on his own and leave the group behind, messing up the session for everyone and then you wish you hadn't included him at all. That Guy has a character sheet so smudged with graphite it's barely legible from the constant, unending revisions to his stats because he started min-maxing before you gave it to him and you're lucky if he stops before the first session. I've been playing games for a while now, and I'm certain That Guy has been asking to play a half-dragon or half-demon since D&D was invented and now he has what he wants.
Shame on you, Wizards of the Coast. Shame on you.
Yes, the new edition has three new playable races: The Dragonborn are exactly what they sound like, the Eldarin are elves, but elfier, and the Tieflings are the previously mentioned half-demons. in my world, they all went right out the window before I even invited people to play, but it's a lot of waste when you cast aside big chunks of the game. Those races belong in the appendix to the Monster Manual, not part of the core game and they know that. They are vindicating That Guy behavior and I will not stand for it.
One thing I do appreciate is the incorporation of miniatures and a grid into the rules. I know that this looks like a way to squeeze more money out of their players... Okay, that's precisely what it is, but you don't have to use their miniatures or anyone's, really. Krogdan the human Cleric can be represented by the shoe from Monopoly if you want.
I have yet to play a session of any RPG in which the game's pace doesn't slow to a crawl once a fight starts. This is unfortunate, but difficult to avoid. Miniature Strategy games, on the other hand, are one of the best examples of streamlining simulated combat, thats pretty much exactly what they do. When they party is investigating a room or questioning an NPC, D&D 4th Edition works the same way it always has, but when it's time to throw down, you break out the minis and the grid. It's much easier to keep track of who's in range and who can do where than when that information is only in your head. Or even worse, in six heads.
I don't give them too much credit. That option has always been on the table, and it was recommended from day one, but I do think it's a good idea to build the game with that assumption. The group is always free to abandon it if they feel it cramps their style.
That's really the key to D&D in general, but it's particularly important with the 4th edition so far. You're not playing a video game with design flaws, you have the power to change the rules, adapt he setting, kick That Guy out of your home forever. On top of that, the official game is added to by the professionals often enough that none of the class omissions or other thin areas concerned me too much. After all, it is in their best interests to expand the game.
This new edition is just starting out. I hope future content expansions will not be quite so cheesy. I pray they'll add useful classes and not, I don't know, Badassatron (like a fighter, but also fast like a thief and can use magic, too). It doesn't look too promising, seeing as how the game in question already features Elves II: Revenge of the Smug, but I can dream, can't I?
Despite the rocky start, I tell anyone who'll listen about how great I think tabletop role-playing games are. Even as video game technology advances, paving the way for more realistic simulations and allowing greater freedom and individuality, I'd still rather spend an evening with friends and dice. Entertainment is all the more rewarding when you're intellectually engaged with it, and there is no better example of that than the tabletop RPG.
Unlike most uber-nerds, D&D was not my gateway to that magical land of imagination and social ostracism. It happened years later, in a different basement, playing White-Wolf Games' Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
White-Wolf was notorious for their other game, Vampire: The Masquerade. You may remember the story. It was sometime during the nineties and some stupid kid did something stupid and happened to own a copy of the rulebook. The next thing you knew, one television news magazine or the other broadcast an alarmist expose on "the game which will turn your kids into children of the night, delusional killers, maniacs!" It gave housewives something to worry about until they caught the obligatory choking hazard toy segment on the eleven o'clock news the following week.
Werewolf is probably more violent than Vampire, but it's a charming, Earth First!, righteous anger of the natural world sort of violence. However, there were far more brooding goths than stoner post-hippies back then, so it was never as popular. Indeed, the company had many different titles, most of which were set in a somewhat darker version of our world where supernatural forces worked their magic behind the scenes. It was a rich setting, well-conceived and inspired by the mythology and folklore of many different cultures.
I bring this up because the White-Wolf titles and Dungeons & Dragons represent two disparate forms of tabletop RPGs. This is a review of the new D&D, but I think it will be useful to compare it to other examples of the hobby, since most people probably never knew there were different kinds.
The main characteristic which sets the two styles apart is their approach to setting. D&D games are set in a sort of amorphous stock fantasy world. Although a creative group is free to bend the rules, it's still just picking through J.R.R. Tolkien's bowel movements. You typically have to break the game and rebuild parts of it if you want to go outside the lines, setting-wise. This would be fine if said setting was innovative at all, but it's not. You're supposedly paying for both the balancing work that goes into creating the gaming system and the artistic work of establishing the setting. If the setting is going to be paper-thin, the system should at least be robust and adaptable.
I remember the previous versions being better at that. My second D&D experience was with the 3rd edition rules and a group that ended up spending more time creating the world than we did playing in it. I didn't even have to invent too many rules to add steampunk elves to our game. That's right, steampunk elves.
The 4th edition carries with it the stink of That Guy. You know who I'm talking about. That Guy insists on playing some sort of ridiculous crossover character and then when you finally work out something you can both live with, That Guy is the first one to strike off on his own and leave the group behind, messing up the session for everyone and then you wish you hadn't included him at all. That Guy has a character sheet so smudged with graphite it's barely legible from the constant, unending revisions to his stats because he started min-maxing before you gave it to him and you're lucky if he stops before the first session. I've been playing games for a while now, and I'm certain That Guy has been asking to play a half-dragon or half-demon since D&D was invented and now he has what he wants.
Shame on you, Wizards of the Coast. Shame on you.
Yes, the new edition has three new playable races: The Dragonborn are exactly what they sound like, the Eldarin are elves, but elfier, and the Tieflings are the previously mentioned half-demons. in my world, they all went right out the window before I even invited people to play, but it's a lot of waste when you cast aside big chunks of the game. Those races belong in the appendix to the Monster Manual, not part of the core game and they know that. They are vindicating That Guy behavior and I will not stand for it.
One thing I do appreciate is the incorporation of miniatures and a grid into the rules. I know that this looks like a way to squeeze more money out of their players... Okay, that's precisely what it is, but you don't have to use their miniatures or anyone's, really. Krogdan the human Cleric can be represented by the shoe from Monopoly if you want.
I have yet to play a session of any RPG in which the game's pace doesn't slow to a crawl once a fight starts. This is unfortunate, but difficult to avoid. Miniature Strategy games, on the other hand, are one of the best examples of streamlining simulated combat, thats pretty much exactly what they do. When they party is investigating a room or questioning an NPC, D&D 4th Edition works the same way it always has, but when it's time to throw down, you break out the minis and the grid. It's much easier to keep track of who's in range and who can do where than when that information is only in your head. Or even worse, in six heads.
I don't give them too much credit. That option has always been on the table, and it was recommended from day one, but I do think it's a good idea to build the game with that assumption. The group is always free to abandon it if they feel it cramps their style.
That's really the key to D&D in general, but it's particularly important with the 4th edition so far. You're not playing a video game with design flaws, you have the power to change the rules, adapt he setting, kick That Guy out of your home forever. On top of that, the official game is added to by the professionals often enough that none of the class omissions or other thin areas concerned me too much. After all, it is in their best interests to expand the game.
This new edition is just starting out. I hope future content expansions will not be quite so cheesy. I pray they'll add useful classes and not, I don't know, Badassatron (like a fighter, but also fast like a thief and can use magic, too). It doesn't look too promising, seeing as how the game in question already features Elves II: Revenge of the Smug, but I can dream, can't I?
Fable II
It is easy to make fun of Peter Molyneux and his tilting at windmills when it comes to game design. I admit that I do it for cheap laughs at this point, even though it may be a little unfair. It is a worthy and honorable goal he has set for himself, to change the way the player and setting interact in gaming. However, it is also worthy and honorable to shut your yap long enough to try and achieve your goals.
When I purchased my Xbox console years back, there weren't many games available at all, and few and far between were really immersive RPGs. Having just finished Deus Ex: Invisible War, I was naturally a trifle starved for challenge and... what do you call it? Oh yeah, good game design.
Now, at the time, searching for "Xbox" and "RPG" together would point you to dozens of articles about the upcoming Fable which began as something called Project Ego. The whole thing started years before as an idea to take role-playing games to the next level and was actually approaching completion around the time I started making inquiries. I was interested, but not just because I had recently taken up residence in Xbox Land, a bleak landscape at the time, where finding a game concerned with intellectual stimulation or emotional depth was even more difficult than finding a spot in my entertainment center big enough to accommodate the thing. My interest was piqued also because I had played Black and White (another Molyneux title). It was a game that, despite its many, many flaws, touched on something unexpected and visceral by incorporating the actual hand of god into the "god game." Not only could you interact with the world via a series of commands, "go there," "build that," "attack them," but you could actually grab and pound and throw. The cursor actually existed in the world in a way that was superbly fulfilling for a longtime RTS player like myself who had always longed to punish my soldiers for their failure by flinging them into the sea.
Sadly, Fable was months away and always had a bit of a problem with deadlines. After getting sick of the almost daily updates which read more like sermons from Molyneux and his acolytes which the gaming media faithfully relayed to the pliant consumers, convincing us that it wasn't so much a delay as it was a three-month long awesome injection, I decided it was time to look elsewhere. I told myself I was going to find something to play until I had Fable.
I found Morrowind, but that's another story.
Fable was eventually released. It was a solid action/RPG with some very entertaining skills and magic attacks, an intuitive combat control setup, but a touch on the short side, and... you know, completely fell short of the world-changing, balls-blasting, epic masterpiece over a decade in the making. In other words, it wasn't the game we were promised.
I'm certain that the gaming public would have been fine with it if they hadn't felt the need to talk it up so much. As it happened, Molyneux looked like an ass and the gaming media sources (I'm looking at you specifically, IGN) were exposed as the corporate shills they had always been and still are.
The story of Fable is a cautionary tale, really. A parable for the benefit of the industry, the media, and gamers alike. The morals being "Don't make promises you can't keep," "don't parrot ridiculous promises just because they let you hang out at Lionhead Studios for an hour," and "those other two just want your money and think you're stupid," respectively.
Now we have Fable II. Yes, I know it's been out for a while. My console was at the Xbox Repair Center over the holidays, so cut me some slack. Things seemed a bit quieter this time around. Granted, there wasn't enough time between it and its predecessor to even attempt to match it in pure hype volume, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt here. I intend to at least feign journalistic integrity and try to review the game on its own terms.
In one promotional video, the protagonist is shown leaping a fence as if to say, "Remember how the first game was just a series of paths strung together? Remember how we promised something more sandbox-like? We actually did it this time." The problem is that there are maybe three open field maps like that and the rest of the game is the same linear point A to point B stuff from the first game. This is normally fine, but not when they advertised something entirely different. Make no mistake, the level design is basically the same as the first game, it just broadens somewhat at a few points, and there really isn't much out there to discover when it does. Just a few piles of junk for your dog to find and an angry beetle or two.
While they should have fired that guy, it appears they shitcanned whoever was responsible for the original Fable's outstanding control setup. In the first game, you can alternate between one melee weapon, one ranged weapon, and four spells without accessing the menu screen. It was very smooth and quite possibly the game's chief success. In Fable II, however, the targeting system feels slippery, the spells take too long to charge up, and the melee combat is slow and heavy. I played the sequel expecting at least the same standard of gameplay, but it didn't feel anywhere near as dynamic.
On the other hand, I appreciated the tweaks to the leveling system. Fable II is a title that combines action with role-playing character-building. What I like about it is that, in certain cases, the actual mechanics of combat actions evolve as you play. Dodge rolls, aimed shots, and melee flourishes are all unlocked as the player gains levels in the appropriate skills. You could end the game unable to perform simple maneuvers available to characters with a different focus. This may seem restrictive, but I think it's actually a very good idea when you look at it next to the Elder Scrolls' method in which every character is capable of every action, they just fail a lot. Since levels only influence the invisible dice rolls that happen when you try, you can still attempt something even though it's way out of your skill range. Admittedly, it is hilarious to take on a powerful foe with a bow and arrow when your character only has a passing familiarity with it, and you find yourself backpedaling rapidly and filling your opponent's face with projectiles to no avail. Unfortunately, it's far from realistic and breaks flow. In Fable II, a skilled gunslinger can take aim at an opponent's head for massive damage whereas a sword-swinging meat head can only clumsily fire from the hip.
I think Fable II it could benefit even more from my previous advice to Bethesda. If they want to go the sandbox route, then cut out the main story altogether because every quest you finish, hell, every step your character takes along that hideous glowing path pointing you to the next objective is time that could be spent exploring and personalizing. New players will be taken by surprise when the game story skips forward a decade while those of us who were around for the first one tiptoe about the map for fear of the cutscene that will end the current phase of the game because we're in the middle of something. The game's brevity and rapid pacing draw the player inexorably to the end and you can miss a lot of the ancillary material they're so very proud of themselves for including.
The game outside the main story isn't even very good. You can work tedious jobs, purchase homes and businesses, and attract a mate. None of these are particularly challenging activities, and they offer essentially no reward other than a few different lines of dialogue from the NPC you shove by on your way to the market. Fable II, like its predecessor, is unable to decide what kind of game it wants to be to the detriment of the whole experience.
I have yet to sample the downloadable content for Fable II, as I've been too busy liberating Anchorage from the communists in Fallout 3, but I fail to see how the addition of new content is going to save the game that can't properly organize the content it had at release.
I don't think the Fable games should try to be bigger than they are because there's nothing wrong with taking the time to really hone the action/adventure game, personalizing it with bits of RPG along the way. Peter Molyneux just needs to pull his head out of his ass and admit that's what he's doing. If it had a little more focus it could really be something special.
When I purchased my Xbox console years back, there weren't many games available at all, and few and far between were really immersive RPGs. Having just finished Deus Ex: Invisible War, I was naturally a trifle starved for challenge and... what do you call it? Oh yeah, good game design.
Now, at the time, searching for "Xbox" and "RPG" together would point you to dozens of articles about the upcoming Fable which began as something called Project Ego. The whole thing started years before as an idea to take role-playing games to the next level and was actually approaching completion around the time I started making inquiries. I was interested, but not just because I had recently taken up residence in Xbox Land, a bleak landscape at the time, where finding a game concerned with intellectual stimulation or emotional depth was even more difficult than finding a spot in my entertainment center big enough to accommodate the thing. My interest was piqued also because I had played Black and White (another Molyneux title). It was a game that, despite its many, many flaws, touched on something unexpected and visceral by incorporating the actual hand of god into the "god game." Not only could you interact with the world via a series of commands, "go there," "build that," "attack them," but you could actually grab and pound and throw. The cursor actually existed in the world in a way that was superbly fulfilling for a longtime RTS player like myself who had always longed to punish my soldiers for their failure by flinging them into the sea.
Sadly, Fable was months away and always had a bit of a problem with deadlines. After getting sick of the almost daily updates which read more like sermons from Molyneux and his acolytes which the gaming media faithfully relayed to the pliant consumers, convincing us that it wasn't so much a delay as it was a three-month long awesome injection, I decided it was time to look elsewhere. I told myself I was going to find something to play until I had Fable.
I found Morrowind, but that's another story.
Fable was eventually released. It was a solid action/RPG with some very entertaining skills and magic attacks, an intuitive combat control setup, but a touch on the short side, and... you know, completely fell short of the world-changing, balls-blasting, epic masterpiece over a decade in the making. In other words, it wasn't the game we were promised.
I'm certain that the gaming public would have been fine with it if they hadn't felt the need to talk it up so much. As it happened, Molyneux looked like an ass and the gaming media sources (I'm looking at you specifically, IGN) were exposed as the corporate shills they had always been and still are.
The story of Fable is a cautionary tale, really. A parable for the benefit of the industry, the media, and gamers alike. The morals being "Don't make promises you can't keep," "don't parrot ridiculous promises just because they let you hang out at Lionhead Studios for an hour," and "those other two just want your money and think you're stupid," respectively.
Now we have Fable II. Yes, I know it's been out for a while. My console was at the Xbox Repair Center over the holidays, so cut me some slack. Things seemed a bit quieter this time around. Granted, there wasn't enough time between it and its predecessor to even attempt to match it in pure hype volume, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt here. I intend to at least feign journalistic integrity and try to review the game on its own terms.
In one promotional video, the protagonist is shown leaping a fence as if to say, "Remember how the first game was just a series of paths strung together? Remember how we promised something more sandbox-like? We actually did it this time." The problem is that there are maybe three open field maps like that and the rest of the game is the same linear point A to point B stuff from the first game. This is normally fine, but not when they advertised something entirely different. Make no mistake, the level design is basically the same as the first game, it just broadens somewhat at a few points, and there really isn't much out there to discover when it does. Just a few piles of junk for your dog to find and an angry beetle or two.
While they should have fired that guy, it appears they shitcanned whoever was responsible for the original Fable's outstanding control setup. In the first game, you can alternate between one melee weapon, one ranged weapon, and four spells without accessing the menu screen. It was very smooth and quite possibly the game's chief success. In Fable II, however, the targeting system feels slippery, the spells take too long to charge up, and the melee combat is slow and heavy. I played the sequel expecting at least the same standard of gameplay, but it didn't feel anywhere near as dynamic.
On the other hand, I appreciated the tweaks to the leveling system. Fable II is a title that combines action with role-playing character-building. What I like about it is that, in certain cases, the actual mechanics of combat actions evolve as you play. Dodge rolls, aimed shots, and melee flourishes are all unlocked as the player gains levels in the appropriate skills. You could end the game unable to perform simple maneuvers available to characters with a different focus. This may seem restrictive, but I think it's actually a very good idea when you look at it next to the Elder Scrolls' method in which every character is capable of every action, they just fail a lot. Since levels only influence the invisible dice rolls that happen when you try, you can still attempt something even though it's way out of your skill range. Admittedly, it is hilarious to take on a powerful foe with a bow and arrow when your character only has a passing familiarity with it, and you find yourself backpedaling rapidly and filling your opponent's face with projectiles to no avail. Unfortunately, it's far from realistic and breaks flow. In Fable II, a skilled gunslinger can take aim at an opponent's head for massive damage whereas a sword-swinging meat head can only clumsily fire from the hip.
I think Fable II it could benefit even more from my previous advice to Bethesda. If they want to go the sandbox route, then cut out the main story altogether because every quest you finish, hell, every step your character takes along that hideous glowing path pointing you to the next objective is time that could be spent exploring and personalizing. New players will be taken by surprise when the game story skips forward a decade while those of us who were around for the first one tiptoe about the map for fear of the cutscene that will end the current phase of the game because we're in the middle of something. The game's brevity and rapid pacing draw the player inexorably to the end and you can miss a lot of the ancillary material they're so very proud of themselves for including.
The game outside the main story isn't even very good. You can work tedious jobs, purchase homes and businesses, and attract a mate. None of these are particularly challenging activities, and they offer essentially no reward other than a few different lines of dialogue from the NPC you shove by on your way to the market. Fable II, like its predecessor, is unable to decide what kind of game it wants to be to the detriment of the whole experience.
I have yet to sample the downloadable content for Fable II, as I've been too busy liberating Anchorage from the communists in Fallout 3, but I fail to see how the addition of new content is going to save the game that can't properly organize the content it had at release.
I don't think the Fable games should try to be bigger than they are because there's nothing wrong with taking the time to really hone the action/adventure game, personalizing it with bits of RPG along the way. Peter Molyneux just needs to pull his head out of his ass and admit that's what he's doing. If it had a little more focus it could really be something special.
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