So the year is almost over, and what a year it has been. I remember spending most of my time in 2014 catching up with old games and TV shows that I missed growing up. There are very distinct memories of consistently looking at the new releases in a given month and going “Meh.”
Not this time. If anything, 2015 highlights just how bad 2014 was by being its total opposite. 2014 was marked by disappointment in the current generation, with gamers wondering why they spent $400 (or your nation’s equivalent) on a shiny new console. On the other hand, 2015 had a consistent stream of good games.
Listed below are my highlights of this year. Please note that this only contains games that I have personally played. Just because your favorite game didn’t make this list does not mean that it’s bad. All it means is that, for whatever reason, I never got around to it, or I didn’t play it enough to have strong opinions of it. More importantly, I am presenting these in no particular order to avoid those annoying discussions over why one game is higher up on the list than another. (Seriously, I’m using a random number generator to determine the order.)
Having said all that: My highlights for 2015 are:

Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has gotten a bad reputation lately, and not an entirely undeserved one. Though I also appreciated Assassin’s Creed: Unity last year, I can totally understand why it wasn’t well liked. Syndicate takes some of the good ideas from Unity, namely the black box assassination missions, and combines them with some new ideas to inject renewed life into the series. The new grappling hook feature offers players much more freedom in how they explore the city of London. Switching to Arkham-style combat has accelerated the otherwise sluggish pace of fighting in previous games. Lastly, having two protagonists was also a massive boon, allowing Ubisoft to cater to the different playstyles of their player base. This may be another Assassin’s Creed game, but damn is it a good one.


Helldivers

I didn’t expect to get into multiplayer games this year, but I did, and Helldivers was part of why. Together with up to 3 frienemies, players aid their compatriots in global campaigns by dropping down to hostile alien worlds, completing objectives, and doing their best to not die in the process. No other game is as frantic and tense as this one can be. Part of that is friendly fire and swarms of mooks. The other part is the ability to drop vehicles, weapons, and allies onto friend and foe alike. In my experience, that alone has been fodder for a ton of “unfortunate accidents” between friends. Luckily, each campaign is short enough that no one loss feels like a big deal. Regardless of how good or bad one is at it (and I am bad), getting a few friends together for a session is guaranteed to be a good time.

Pillars of Eternity

When Pillars of Eternity’s Kickstarter campaign was first announced, Obsidian wasn’t doing too well. There were always huge problems with their games, despite the clear love and care they had for them. At the time, I said that if they screwed up this game, when no publisher was involved, it would spell the death of them. Fortunately for me and everyone else who appreciates their writing, Pillars of Eternity did exactly what it set out to do: Revive the 2D, Isometric RPG. As someone who hates Baldur’s Gate and it’s Real Time w/ Pause nonsense, I was surprised that I enjoyed my time with Pillars of Eternity. Even if the combat doesn’t do it for some, Obsidian’s signature writing and characters probably will.

Until Dawn

I’ve always had a weird fascination with the games that David Cage produces. They’re never well written, and the plots are always unintentionally hilarious, but I find myself drawn to that style of game. Until Dawn represents what those AAA “story” games can do with a modicum of self-control and self-awareness. The writers know that they are telling a classic horror, using a lot of the same tropes one would expect. Yet, it is smart enough to play around with expectations and give players a pretty good thrill ride. Depending on what one does over the course of the game, the entire cast can live, everyone can die, or anything in between. It also came out around Halloween, which was the perfect time for a something like this. Sony didn’t expect it to sell that well, but I’m glad it did.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

It is only in 2015 that I have finally given Metal Gear Solid the chance it deserved. Knowing that MGS V was coming out, I played the others in anticipation via the Legacy Collection. As a result, I find myself at an interesting crossroads. The story is the least interesting in the series, and doesn’t do a whole lot. However, the raw mechanics, especially in the open sandbox, work beautifully. Each system interlocks with the others wonderfully. Knocking out and extracting soldiers/resources improves one’s base. Improving the base gives one access to new weapons and equipment to develop. Developing new equipment gives the player more options and mechanics to work with in the open world. This feedback loop, combined with the game’s desire to just let players manipulate the systems at work as much as they want to, made it one of the best stealth games I’ve ever played.

Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition

I know this is technically a re-release of an old game from the last console generation. I’m including it on this list for two reasons. One, I missed the original release, so this was new to me at the time. Second, the Special Edition includes two new takes on the campaign: One starring Vergil from DMC3, and the other with Lady and Trish from DMC3 and DMC1 respectively. With their unique movesets, this makes going through those levels feel fresh and new, even if one played the old version. For only $25, this was a must-buy for fans of character-action games.

Armello

As a said in an article earlier this year, I often miss the feeling of getting together with friends over a tabletop and playing a game in-person. Most of my friends either live too far away, or are too busy, to make this practical. For me, Armello became a great way to approximate the feeling of a tabletop game without necessitating in-person interaction. I’ve played many games of Armello, and each one plays out differently. Recently, the developers even allowed players to customize the game with new “House Rules” options. If you’re in my situation, and you want to play tabletops with distant friends, Armello might be the choice for you.

Rocket League

Without exception, every person I know who has played Rocket League, myself included, quickly fell in love with it. It’s beauty is in how deceptively simple the basic mechanics are. There are cars and a goal for each team, a ball, and physics. Use these elements to put the ball into the other goal. Anyone can pick up a controller, fire up this game, and immediately understand what’s going on without being taught. The complexity comes from manipulating these physics systems to the player’s advantage. Proper positioning, angling, and trajectory come into play. Figuring out how to line things up just right is as fun as pulling it off. The AI is stupid, but if you need a game that you and your friends can enjoy together, Rocket League is for you.

Fallout 4

Fun fact: Out of every 100 people who read this post, 0 of them are surprised to see Fallout 4 on my highlight reel. If long-time Fallout fans look passed the expectations they had for the franchise, they will see that Fallout 4 is one of the best scavenging/exploration games out there. I spent more time than I care to mention just aimlessly wandering the Commonwealth, exploring areas that caught my interest. There’s also something highly addicting about collecting components/mods and using them to create the most blatantly, disgustingly overpowered weapons and armor possible. It may be a flawed gem, as most Bethesda games are, but Fallout 4 is a gem nonetheless.

Her Story

Her Story came out of nowhere, but left a strong impression. The game starts a woman who is being interviewed by police after the disappearance of her husband. Players are given a database filled with excerpts from these interviews, which they must search in order to discover the truth of what happened. Queries are based on what words the woman uses in a given excerpt, but will only show the top 5 results. (So searching for “murder” will show the first 5 clips where the word “murder” is spoken.) It’s an experiment with letting players discover the story non-linearly, in whatever order they choose. I appreciate the confidence it takes to allow players to do this, potentially missing out on crucial details or coming up with plausible alternate theories. Any game designers interested in that topic, or someone looking for a something new and different, would be well served with Her Story.

Undertale

No 2015 highlight reel would be complete without Undertale. By now, you’re in one of two camps. Either you are a person who can’t get enough Undertale, happily devouring every meme and reference to it. Or, you are absolutely sick of hearing people talk about Undertale. If you’ve played Undertale through to the end, you know exactly why this is the case. Without spoilers, it uses its colorful cast of characters and a cutesy aesthetic to disarm players and prepare them for a series of emotional gut-punches. On top of the callbacks to Earthbound, this was a great sleeper hit. It may be a little overrated, but if you haven’t played it, it would be worth the 6-8 hour investment.

Life is Strange

After playing Remember Me, I was a little concerned for Dontnod Entertainment. They had an intriguing premise and a very good story to go with it, but Remember Me was ultimately let down by forgettable gameplay. When I heard their next game was an adventure game in the same vein as Telltale’s latest work, I was hopeful. As it turns out, something like this was exactly what the genre needed after The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead: Season 2 nearly killed it. This game excels at character interaction and believable conflict between characters. Without spoiling too much, it’s often really easy to understand how too otherwise normal and decent people in Life is Strange can grow to resent and fight with one another. The addition of a rewind mechanic is also a huge boon, solving the adventure game trademark problem of choices that don’t unfold as expected. Even if it predictably fizzles out towards the end, Life is Strange is a great interpretation of the modern adventure game, showing the Dontnod still has a bright future ahead.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong

Shadowrun is, to me, the best RPG series out there right now. It combines the best elements of old school RPG party interaction with new school design sensibilities and X-Com combat. Each new game by Harebrained Schemes improved upon the last, and Hong Kong is no exception. If you’re a fan on isometric RPGs of any kind, you owe it to yourself to play Shadowrun: Hong Kong.

Human Resource Machine

Human Resource Machine is a strange one to talk about in my highlight reel. I can’t really say I recommend it, as it’s not for everyone, but it really spoke to me personally. As someone who works with computers and programs every day, Human Resource Machine is a nice way to apply my programmer’s brain in a carefree way. Every level in the game is a classic programming challenge, except with a limited the pool of commands. If you think you might be interested in programming, Human Resource Machine is a good way to gauge how much you’d actually like it. It requires some outside research and abstract thinking, but that’s exactly why I love it.

Bloodborne

This is an interesting one to bring up, because 2015 was the year that I played all of the Souls games, from Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls 2. It is only fitting that I also get to this game in the same year. Compared to its brethren, Bloodborne is both much faster-paced and more compact. And honestly, I think it’s better for it. After Dark Souls 1, this is my favorite Souls-borne game. I love the addition of the Rally mechanic to regain health by beating the crap out of enemies. It’s only smart that From Software used a lack of shields and the addition of guns to promote far more aggressive playstyles than Souls games. With the recent inclusion of The Old Hunters DLC, there has never been a better time to purchase Bloodborne than now.
Again, this is the highlight reel of really great games that I played this year. If your favorite game of 2015 didn’t make the list, it doesn’t mean I hate it. More often than not, all it means is that I either never got around to it or didn’t play enough of it to get a strong enough impression.
That said, despite all the good games that were released this year, there was enough gruel to go with the gourmet. In the next post, I’ll talk about some of the games that really disappointed me in 2015.

Fallout 4 has been making waves in the gaming community since its release. People have been singing its praises on many fronts, including the town building, crafting, improved character animation, and voice acting. Another area of accolades is in the leveling system. More than just a new and unique way to streamline one the most fundamental RPG mechanics, Fallout 4’s character development system represents an evolution in how Bethesda empowers its players.
In order to understand what that means, we must first take a look at its predecessors. Oblivion, being Bethesda’s first open-world RPG with no dice-worlds and fully realized combat, makes a fine starting-point for our purposes. Character progression in Oblivion was unique compared to most other RPGs of the time. When the player creates their character, they select 7 of the game’s 21 total skills, which become their major skills. Skills increase as they get used (ex. the Swords skill will go up the more the player uses bladed weapons). After increasing their major skills enough times, the player can level up by sleeping in a bed.
Then, they can choose three stats to increase. Stats, like skills, are measured from 1 to 100, and can increase in increments of +1 to +5. The exact increment depends on how many skills that use the statistic were increased since the last level-up. Swords, as an example, are governed by Strength. By increasing the Swords skill, the player is increasing the amount that Strength will be raised if they choose to increase Strength when they level up.
Now, if you haven’t played Oblivion before reading that explanation, that might sound more like legal-ese than the way characters progress in an RPG. There is a very good reason for that. A common complaint about Oblivion, in hindsight, is that this system was overly-complicated. In order to make a decent character, one had to be extremely careful about what skills they trained and when, lest they only get small stat increases. The fact that enemies scale to the player character’s level, and that every stat bonus they receive is always +5, gravely exacerbates this problem. Their equipment also grows stronger, to the point where no-name bandits will accost players for 5 gold while wearing highly protective, expertly-crafted armor worth thousands.
On top of that, the enemies dotting the open-world would be replaced by stronger monsters with more powerful skills as the player grew stronger. When starting the game, players are often accosted by wolves and other forest animals. While annoying, these creatures are more of a minor nuisance than anything else. After getting to about level 20 or so, those woodland beasts are exchanged for Minotaurs, which are significantly stronger, faster, and more relentless. Later, even more ruthless Minotaur Lords take their place. As a result, it’s not just that leveling up leaves players with even lower stats than their foes. Those same foes are also being thrown to the wayside so that even more terrifying enemies can litter the field. This problem is so bad that not only are there detailed guides for how to level, but some of them even advocate not leveling up at all as a reasonable solution. After all, unless players are willing to meticulously study and train specific skills in particular orders, leveling up will almost leave them in a worse position.
Despite its problems, Oblivion did serve a purpose. It brought skill-based, real-time to the open-world format, doing away with the invisible dice-rolls of its predecessor Morrowind. The radiant-AI that gave all NPCs set schedules also breathed life to the world (if you ignore the absolutely hideous faces and voice-acting). It wasn’t stellar, but it’s a base. Crucially, it is a base that can be modified and built-upon to create something significantly better.
Using their now-established open-world format, they were going to bring Fallout to modern audiences with Fallout 3. With a new property comes new progression systems. Though similar to Oblivion, Fallout 3 had a more standard leveling system. Like Bethesda’s previous game, characters’ abilities were quantified by a combination of individual stats and skills. However, instead of building up their stats as they developed, players chose them at the start of the game, and mostly stuck with them. As they adventured, their character would gain experience and eventually level up. Of course, that is when the player spent points to increase their skills. More importantly, they selected a perk. Though skills go a long way towards determining what one can do, they are only half of the equation. The perks also go a long way in effectively defining a Fallout 3 character. Each one comes with a powerful benefit, from increased stats or skills to stronger critical hits and even new dialogue options to take advantage of. These passive benefits, combined with skills and stats, give a holistic, yet easy to comprehend, view of a character’s abilities.
There were obvious advantages that the Fallout 3 system had over Oblivion’s. Firstly, it eliminated the need for meta-gaming that came from Oblivion. Stats were basically determined at the very start of the game, and there was no need to train skills individually since the player can allocate skill points at level up. This meant that players didn’t feel pressure to modify their playstyle in order to stay ahead of the enemies. Maximizing a character’s performance by researching and planning a build was purely optional, instead of being damn-near required to keep up.
More importantly, this simplified the process of character development when compared to Oblivion. Players gain experience, level up, then acquire skill points and a perk before beginning the process all over again. Though one might expect that adding the variables of perks and perk requirements would further complicated the system, the fact the progression is so transparent and plain compared to Oblivion makes it easier to understand what is going on. By glancing at any given character’s skills and perks, it is simple to intuit what kind of character they are, and how they are likely to develop in the future.
The problem of enemies scaling out of control was also corrected in two ways. First, all characters use the same number of stat points, which are by and large locked in from the very beginning of the game. Furthermore, the number of skill points both players and enemies acquire on level up are based on the Intelligence stat, and nothing else. In this way, the enemies’ skills increase at roughly the same rate as the player’s skills, give or take a few points difference in Intelligence. Given that players are often continually augmenting themselves with new perks and equipment, this gives a total net benefit when leveling up, even if they don’t choose an “optimal” build.
The other, less obvious measure Bethesda took when level-scaling is to control how it occurs in the game world. In general, the world scales with the player as one would expect. As the player grows stronger, so too do enemies through the wasteland. This changes slightly when new locations are discovered. By finding a new place to explore, the enemies in and around that area get locked to whatever level the player was at the time.
Immediately after leaving the vault, many players, for a number of reasons, don’t follow the road to Megaton and instead head to the nearby Springvale School. As a “dungeon”, for lack of a better term, Springvale is filled with raiders. By finding it this early on, players will lock the enemies there to level 2 or 3. At this point, a large subset of these players will realize their mistake and run away. After completing quests and getting a little stronger, to around level 5 or so, they may desire to go back to Springvale to extract bloody revenge on the raiders that previously humiliated them. Although the world has scaled to level 5 in the meantime, to match the player, Springvale has not. It was previously locked to level 2, where it remains.
In Oblivion, players could level up a similar way that the above player could in Fallout 3. However, if they did, and returned to a dungeon this same way, they would likely find that it grew harder due to a combination of the level-scaling and enemies acquiring stronger gear. By locking-in a location’s level when it’s discovered, Fallout 3 makes it possible for a player to realize they are outnumbered and out-gunned, then take steps to get stronger and try again, that they may succeed where they once failed. This system worked so well that Skyrim and Fallout 4 would continue to use it in the future.
Bethesda learned their lesson when developing Fallout 3. By building off the foundation of Oblivion, working in some of the design principles of early Fallout games, and mixing in their own observations from the reception of Oblivion, they unknowingly began to embark on a journey of streamlining a simplifying RPG mechanics.
Later, when they returned to their iconic Elder Scrolls series with Skyrim, they continued this journey by overhauling the way characters developed in Oblivion. Players still need to use a skill in order to increase it. However, these skills are no longer governed by stats. In fact, stats aside from Health, Mana, and Stamina are gone. Whenever the player improves one of their skills, they gain experience which goes toward leveling up. Advancing a level allows the player to increase Health, Mana, or Stamina and gain a point which can be spent on a perk.
Yes. Inspired by their experience developing Fallout 3, Bethesda added perks to Skyrim. Attached to each skill is a perk tree, which lists each perk that falls under that skill, and the prerequisite perks and the minimum skill requirements to take the next rank in each one. Each individual perk costs a single point. Players can purchase any perk that they meet the preconditions for, but may also choose to save up their perk points if there is nothing they wish to acquire.
This is important, because it solves a problem that cropped up in Fallout 3. When the player goes up in level in Fallout 3, players are forced to take the skill increases and perk immediately. Occasionally, players in Fallout 3 find that they do not want any of the perks available to them. However, they are still forced to choose one of them to apply to their character. Since skills are trained with repeated use in Skyrim, the odds of this happening are significantly greater. By allowing players to stock up perk points, this problem is deftly avoided.
Yet despite how simple the system is, there was a noticeable drawback. Skills that had no perks invested into their skill trees were practically useless, no matter how much they were trained. I very clearly remember a character that I had played in Skyrim that bests demonstrates this point. By utilizing an exploit, I was able to quickly raise each of his skills to 100. However, I had chosen to focus his perks in Stealth, One-Handed, and Illusion above all else. When I tried to use Destruction magic, despite having a skill rating of 100, the effects of those spells were so minimal, and their Mana costs so high, I might as well have been meekly shoving my enemies for all the damage I was doing. This is because I had not invested in Destruction perks which increase damage and decrease Mana costs. Though the skill ratings did have a slight effect, they were absolutely worthless without perks.
But that on its own isn’t the problem. When I tried using Destruction-magic with that character, it was really more of an experiment, to see how well my supposed “master-wizard” could actually cast without perks. The problem here is that this system asks, especially later in the game, for players to use skills that they wouldn’t otherwise want to use, in order to acquire points to spend on perks in skills they do want to use. I didn’t raise my characters stats to 100 in order to become a god in a mortal vessel. I did it so that I could get the perk points needed to be a better dagger-wielding, illusionist thief. Without the perks afforded by raising these skills, and thus my character’s level, it’s harder to justify taking perks that aren’t core to my character, but are otherwise useful, like Smithing and Enchanting. Investing in them would eat away at perks I can use on my most useful skills.
This might explain the approach taken in Fallout 4. Like Skyrim before it, Fallout 4 attempts to simplify and streamline the leveling process. Rather than go the same direction Skyrim took, Fallout 4 used a different technique more suited to the trappings of the franchise. Instead of removing stats and using skills/perks to determine what a character can do, Fallout 4 opted to remove skills, and use only stats and perks.
At the start of the game, the player is given a set total of points that they can apply to their 7 base stats. These stats determine how much health the player has, their maximum carry weight, their ability to make critical hits, etc, as they did in Fallout 3. Experience, as is also the case in the previous Fallout, is earned by exploring the world and doing what comes naturally. And, as Skyrim players would be familiar with, a point is gained on level up. This point can be spent in several ways: The player can choose to take a new perk or advance a rank in one they already have (assuming the meet the requirements) OR increase one of their base stats by a single point.
Perks also function somewhat differently to accommodate this new system. Each perk corresponds to a prerequisite rank in one of the base stats, without which one cannot take them. Strong Back, as an example, is a perk which raises the player’s maximum carry weight. It is the Rank 5 Strength perk, and cannot be taken unless the character in question already has 5 points in Strength. Every perk also has multiple ranks, which provide even bigger bonuses, and these are gated off by the current level of the player character. Rank 2 of Strong Back, to continue our example, increases the benefit of Rank 1 and can only to taken once the player is level 10 or higher.
Even more than in Skyrim, this means that any given player’s build is closely tied to what perks they have. By looking at what perks one has taken, it is easy to tell what kind of playstyle they have and/or are going for. The character I played has 5 Ranks each in Rifleman and Sneak, along with 3 Ranks in Sniper, Better Criticals, and Grim Reaper’s Sprint and 2 Ranks in Action Boy and Ninja. Someone who has never played Fallout 4 has no idea what any of this means. To one who has played Fallout 4, and even to some who have only placed Fallout 3 or New Vegas, this tells them that I like to abuse VATS to get tons of Sneak Attacks and Critical Hits from a distance using scoped, non-automatic rifles. It also gives a rough idea of what stats I’d need to have in order to acquire all of these perks, since each one has a minimum requirement.
It also solves the problem that Skyrim had where skills and perks weren’t always in alignment. Since skills don’t exist, the “master-wizard” problem I outlined earlier from Skyrim is no longer an issue. As a result, the player character’s abilities are more accurately reflected by their stats and perk ratings than their skills in Skyrim. Perks are also dependent on having a minimum stat rating before they can be taken, increasing the likelihood that stats will correlate with the perks acquired. This all results in a cohesiveness of character absent from the higher-level Skyrim characters.
But despite that, there is still some noticeable room for improvement. Even if the concept behind the perk trees is extremely simple, Bethesda didn’t give much in the way of tutorial for how to use it. If one didn’t follow the pre-release materials that explained how these systems worked, as I had, they could easily be forgiven for not understanding the system. By looking at the in-game perk chart, it is easy to see why so many assume that they need to get a given stat’s perks in order, from top to bottom. The chart makes it seem like such linear progression is necessary. Because of this, it’s possible to put points in perks one does not want or need not knowing that they can easily bypass them to get the perks they want if they have high enough stats. The combination of the graphic designer and the lack of tutorials conspire against the player.
The another primary issue is that leveling-up doesn’t feel as meaningful as it did in previous Bethesda games. The only thing players gain at level-up is the perk point, and a few extra hit points. To compensate for this small reward, level-ups are much more frequent than in previous games.
In Fallout 3 and Skyrim, leveling up felt like a special event. After enduring many tough trials, Fallout 3 characters were rewarded with the chance to strengthen their skills and obtain a unique bonus for themselves. And although Skryim also gave only a perk point and some bonus health/mana/stamina on level-up, the skill training required to grow stronger was a reward itself. Not only were the rewards more substantial, but they came infrequently that the player could eagerly look forward to the next time they built up enough experience to see that screen just one more time. Perks, and thus levels, have to arrive at increasingly frequency in Fallout 4, depriving players of their dopamine fix.

Fallout 4’s level system isn’t perfect, but it is another step in a long journey that Bethesda started in 2006 with Oblivion. For better or worse, Bethesda has been focusing on refining and streamlining the mechanics in their games, the leveling system being only one prominent example. Even if there are some flaws, one must appreciate the desire to experiment and improve these systems. Once people have had enough time to properly digest Fallout 4, I have no doubt that we will discover flaws that have been otherwise overlooked at the time of writing. It will be interesting to see what Bethesda does in response to these criticisms, and which direction they’ll along this road to refining their mechanics.

Long-time readers of my blog know that I routinely talk about Assassin’s Creed games. Whenever a new one gets released, it rises to the top of my to-play list. And for good reason. Regardless of the quality of any one installment, each entry has something, a feature or a flaw, worth discussing. The latest game in Ubisoft’s long-running alternate history franchise is no different.
Unlike past games, Syndicate features two lead characters, twins named Jacob and Evie Frye, who take London by storm. This use of two protagonists allows Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate to do a number of interesting things with both its play and its plot. The most obvious being that it allowed Ubisoft to contrast and cater to the two major playstyles that players can generally be sorted into when playing Assassin’s Creed.
As the more athletic of the two, Jacob loves a good brawl. He’s more than content with attracting the attention of large groups of enemies and beating his targets, and anyone who looks like they might try to stop him, into a bloody pavement pulp. If ranged combat is needed, Jacob will just bring out a pistol and go in loud. Meanwhile, his sister takes a more silent approach. Though she can handle herself in a fight, Evie prefers to sneak around undetected. She isolates enemies and takes them out one-at-a-time, being careful not to attract too much detention. Rather than rely too heavily on her gun, she takes wields throwing knives that can kill ranged enemies quietly. While either character technically can perform in combat or stealth, they have clear preferences towards one or the other.
This neatly maps to the two common Assassin’s Creed player archetypes. Some people are just fine with rushing to a mission objective, killing everyone in sight, and completing their assigned task. Stealth or finesse isn’t important. What matters is only that the mission is done at the end of the day. Others would willing redo the same mission over and over until they’ve “perfected” it by completing all the optional objectives and avoiding detection. It’s not just about completing the mission. It’s about keeping mistakes to an absolute minimum. Though these descriptions are more representatives of extremes on a sliding scale, and less hard-and-fast alternatives, it can be broadly said that most will gravitate towards one or the other.
By having Jacob and Evie together, both extremes can be catered to and defended in the game. Even in the story, both characters represent these playstyles through their conversations. Being the more detail-oriented of the two, Evie constantly admonishes her brother by pointing out the sloppiness of his work and the unexpected consequences of his actions, especially in comparison to how she carries out her assignments. But Jacob gets just as much opportunity to defend himself by pointing out that he gets things done, often faster and more efficiently than his sister. The game doesn’t preach in favor of one style or the other. Rather, through these contrasting characters, it acknowledges that both extremes, and everything in between, are valid ways of doing what needs doing.
As a pair, the Frye twins also allowed Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate to explore the same story through multiple viewpoints. Because he tends to be the go-getter of the two twins, Jacob performs most of the tasks often associated with a typical Assassin’s Creed protagonist. He’s the one who goes after most the high-ranking Templars, by discovering who they are, sabotaging their operations, and ultimately assassinating them. In many ways, his missions offer the “typical” Assassin’s Creed experience. While Evie gets in on the action with her own separate story-missions, Jacob takes the lion’s share of these assassinations.
This frees Evie up to do something fairly unique in the context of the series. Usually, after the mission in which the main character kills one of the Templars, that target’s influence on the world is suddenly rendered null and void. They no longer matter, and we can safely move on to the next target without exploring the potential effects of their removal. In Syndicate, in the next sequence following an assassination, Evie gets a moment where she revisits the scene of Jacob’s crime, exploring the aftermath.
One early sequence has Jacob target a corrupt doctor who was brewing and distributing an hazardous and addictive “tonic” to the people of Victorian-era London. When Evie enters the situation later, she agrees that killing him and cutting off the supply of tonic is a good thing. However, Jacob failed to note that doing so only solves part of the problem, and creates others. This doctor wasn’t only responsible for the distribution of the tonic, but also for providing other, beneficial medicine needed by the poorer citizens. By removing him, Jacob has inadvertently made it possible for gangs to swoop in and take over both the distribution of medicine and the creation of tonic for people those still addicted. Though Evie does what she can to help in this mission, it is ultimately up to other characters, who aren’t involved in the Assassin/Templar meta-narrative, to start setting up the infrastructure needed to truly solve the problem.
Through these post-assassination missions, Ubisoft appears to launch a subtle critique of their very own stock storyline. In almost every other Assassin’s Creed game, assassinating every major Templar magically fixes every problem. By using Jacob and Evie to explore these assassinations from different perspectives (one before and during the kill, and the other afterwards) Syndicate posits that the actual kill is only the start of fixing the problem at best, and at worst makes it harder to come to a permanent solution. It’s not enough to take down the existing economic and logistical frameworks without taking steps to replace them afterward. Otherwise, the situation can only get worse. Without Evie, it would be much more difficult to make this point in an elegant manner.

On their own merits, neither Jacob nor Evie would be particularly interesting characters. What makes them worth noting is what they allow Ubisoft to do in the context of an Assassin’s Creed game. By throwing together two characters with different personalities, and making them work towards the same ends, there styles forced to clash with each other. Using their interactions, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate explores some of the franchises central gameplay and story tenets with an uncharacteristic self-analysis. Hopefully, with this insight, the series can continue to improve itself.




(Spoiler Alert: This article discusses important plot points and twists in Undertale.)
I’ve begun to notice a new trend in video games, especially in RPGs. The current generation of game designers grew up on the games that built the genre, like Final Fantasy and Ultima. When they entered the industry, they took with them an appreciation and understanding of the tropes created and used by these RPGs. Manifesting itself within their works, this understanding allows them to make games that are more self-aware. Some games are content to just lampshade and acknowledgethose very tropes, laughing them off as an in-joke between the designers and the players. Others exist to show the potential implications behind them; to demonstrate the potential horrors of a world where those tropes we take for granted in games are reality. Undertale is one such game, and it has a damning, if not subtle, message to deliver to its player base.
Created by Toby Fox, Undertale is an RPG, inspired by the likes of Earthbound. What separates it from other small-budget, independently-developed RPGs is that it bills itself as a “friendly” game. Though the player encounters random enemies while exploring, they never have to kill any one of them. This isn’t necessary new, as Shin Megami Tensei has frequently allowed players to converse with and recruit demons. However, Undertale takes this basic concept to a logical extreme. Every enemy, even the bosses, can be dealt with without dealing a lethal blow. This is the way in which Undertale helps set the stage for its moral lessons.
In most RPGs, players fight and kill hundreds, if not thousands, of creatures over the course of the game, with little regard for their lives. To the players, and to the protagonists, they are nothing more than speed bumps in the road to their objective. Undertale asks what kind of person is this protagonist, and what kind of effect would that person have on those around him. If the player chooses to murder every enemy they encounter, they’ll begin to see the effects quickly. Towns and areas will become depopulated, devoid of life. Shopkeepers will abandon their stores and their stock before the protagonist arrives in an effort to escape the carnage with their lives intact. City guards and brave heroes will attempt to stop them in their tracks.
In other words, the player who murders every enemy they encounter, who acts like any other RPG protagonist, is a complete genocidal-maniac. To rack up such a high kill count and slaughter so many, they would have to be. By implication, Undertale is saying that this would be true of the lead protagonists of most RPGs and the company those “heroes” keep. Simply by adventuring and fighting against all these creatures, they are complicit in mass homicide. Even if the opponents aren’t sapient, the kind of damage that would ensue on the ecosystem would make life nearly unsustainable. Undertale claims that although we see them as heroes from our viewpoint, the damage they do would only make a bad situation worse. As players, we take for granted that we are in the right, or at least trying to do good. Undertale questions the wisdom of saying that we are morally correct just because we are playing as the protagonist.
But that is not the only RPG mechanic Undertale challenges by exploring its implications. The idea of replaying games with multiple endings, and seeing “all that a game has to offer” also comes into close scrutiny. At any point before beating the game, the player is allowed to start over from the beginning. However, characters in the story will remember and comment on what choices they made in their previous playthrough. Most will discover this in the same way I did. The first boss in the game is your maternal figure, Toriel, who guides you and protects you at the start. In my first run, I had not realized that the trick to saving her is to constantly use the Spare option until she gives up, and my ignorance killed her. Regretting my actions, I consulted the wiki and learned how to keep her from dying. I reset my playthrough and used the non-lethal method to win the boss fight. Immediately afterward, the next character I spoke to mocked me for “growing a conscience” and redoing that section of the game to spare her. For going back to see the alternate outcome, I was chastised by the very game I was playing.
Continuing along this theme, should the player get the Pacifist ending, for never killing a single thing and completing all the prerequisite side content, they are given the option to perform a True Reset, essentially erasing not only the current save, but any record that previous runs ever occurred, returning the game to a factory-standard. When the player launches the game after unlocking this option, one character appears on screen begging them not to use it. By doing so, they claim that the player would be erasing the happy endings that the cast had earned throughout the game, a fate more cruel than anything else that could happen to them.
In the Genocide run of the game, the player has a conversation with the only other major villain aside from themselves. During this discussion, this person praises the player for their willingness to give in to their murderous instincts and show no mercy. Then, something strange happens. He begins to talk about the people who “want to go through with this, but don’t have the guts to do it themselves.” Taunting them, he claims that there are “Probably watching a video of this right now.” (A fact that I learned, fittingly enough, by watching someone else’s Let’s Play of a Genocide run.)
All of this boils down to Undertale’s one, overarching message: Even though the content exists in the game’s files, it isn’t something the audience necessarily needs to see. The game is blatant in the way that it encourages its players to save everyone and avoiding making even a single kill. That said, the option to ignore its warnings and embark on a bloody campaign exists. It’s there, but it is something that players absolutely have to experience this content? Do they have to sacrifice the good times they had with the friends they made along the way in the service of seeing every bit of content on offer? Are all those lives the player took worth the Genocide ending? And if they aren’t, is it even worth the time it takes to look up a YouTube video showing the differences? Undertale ponders these questions and answers with a definitive “no”. All these choices exist, but in reality the game considers the first playthrough to be the only thing worth the player’s time. Anything else being needless fluff padding out your time with it.

Though Undertale lacks a subtlety regarding the way it challenges these tropes used in the vast majority of RPG game design, there is no denying that is does challenge them. Lately, there have been more and more games that deconstruct and analyze their own medium. Given that the generation that grew up on gaming has finally matured to the point where it can enter the industry proper, I expect to see more of these deconstructions as time goes on. Like Undertale, their creators have something to say about the games they played growing up, and now they have the means and opportunity to express those thoughts.

As a child, I spent a lot of time playing tabletop games with family and friends. From the nearly universally reviled, yet still somehow popular Monopoly, to the card games like Yu-Gi-Oh, hours of my time were spent over a kitchen table. With the passage of time, however, things have changed. For many reason, I am no longer able to play these types of games as much as I want to. And like with most of my problems, I turned to the digital world for a solution.
Over the years, I’ve played a lot of “virtual tabletop games” as a substitute. Despite being extremely similar, they are unique compared to their low-tech brethren in quite a few ways. The most obvious of the differences is the ability to play online, on virtual tabletops. As we aged, the friends that I used to play games with grew apart. On top of that, many of those I am acquainted with today live in separate parts of the country, or even the world. Getting together in the same room to play with any of these guys is wildly impractical. However, it is possible to hang out virtually. Whether it’s a large group playing an RPG-campaign through Roll20, a small gathering in a game of Armello, or just a friend and I on Dueling Network playing a children’s card game, the physical distance that prevented in-person gaming has stopped being a concern. We can just get online, put a game on, and get on Skype, and we’re in for a pleasant evening together.
Of course, even if my friends were closer and more able to get together, I could still see us using virtual tabletop games in lieu of physical games for the aid of the computer. One thing I notice, especially in tabletop RPGs, is that there are a lot of numbers, calculations, and other tedious aspects that can be difficult to keep track of. Depending on the game and the players, this can detract from the experience. Moving into the virtual space allows for much of this to be automated. With a computer keeping track of health, damage, resources, and equipment, I found it a lot easier to focus on the interactions and role-playing when my friends got together or an RPG session over Roll20. This made it much easier to just play the game and enjoy the time we all spent together.
When tabletop games are brought into the virtual world, they can even make use of mechanics that would be completely impossible in meatspace. One of the most classic examples of this is the so-called “Fog of War” used in the X-Com games. If X-Com was a board game in real life, the player would have be able to see every single character and item on the field. However, because X-Com is a video game, it is able to conceal those elements. Every soldier the player commands has a range of sight, representing their visual range. The player can only see enemies and objects that are inside that radius. Everything else is hidden under the “Fog of War”. Armello also uses a variant of this mechanic to hide by allowing characters to be granted “Stealth”, making them invisible to other players under specific conditions. This type of obfuscation is just one example of what can be accomplished easily in the virtually, yet highly impractically when brought into the reality.

Even though it’s become wildly impractical for me to play the tabletop games I used to love as a child, the video games that bring them into the digital space have helped to fill that void. And in many cases, their virtual nature allows them to surpass their origins. There are still practical concerns that can’t be avoided no matter how one plays, like arranging a time period to play with friends who all lead busy lives with hectic schedules. Still, playing virtual tabletops instead of actual tabletops reduces the barrier of entry into something more manageable when arranging play sessions with my friends.

In case you weren’t aware, Sam really enjoys anime. Though I joke about anime a lot, I don’t have any particular like or hate of it. Sam’s friend Taylor, who I’ve spoken to a few times, is also an avid anime fan. So what happens when you take their love of anime and combine it with our collective exhaustion after the Watch_Dogs season…

…this.
I don’t have much to say on the actual game aside from what was said in the episode. This isn’t a bad game for someone who absolutely loves any and every JRPG and/or anime, but no one else really needs to bother. And though it has a great premise as a parody of the game industry, it doesn’t do enough with it to keep my interest.

The more important takeaway from this episode was that our new set-up works. Unlike previous episodes, Sam recorded the gameplay footage before we recorded. This eliminates the lag on my reactions that you probably noticed on the three seasons thus far. We also all recorded our own audio separate, to give Sam more freedom in the editing booth. On top of that, I purchased a studio-quality microphone to use in recording.

I think the final result speaks for itself. All the changes seem to be for the better. We’ll probably keep this up until we think of an even better setup…

….but with less anime.


And so it ends. This is the final mission of the game, and it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve seen. In a different context, this ending could be fine. If we were slowly building to an antagonist that had all of your Ct_OS hacks, and was fighting you with them on equal footing, this could be a good finale. However, aside from Defalt, we don’t really discuss that as a possibility.

I suppose that the game needed to tie-up the loose ends of Damien, Ded-Sec, and T-Bone, but to come to this after having such a good scene with Lucky Quinn earlier is just heartbreaking. It’s even more crushing since these groups and characters were never really important in the context of our revenge story. The real meat of the story rests between Aiden Pearce, Clara, and Lucky Quinn. This mission just highlights how unimportant the rest of the cast was.

I’m really glad that despite all of the criticisms, all of the filler and the bat-shit bonkers ending, we were still able to end this series on a relatively high note. At some point, even I got sick of listening to myself complain about this game. One thing Ubisoft seems to be pretty good at is responding to criticisms and correcting course in future entries of a given franchise. I’d love to see what they did if they were given a clean slate to start over with the central Ct_OS premise. It’s a great hook, with tons of excellent gameplay opportunities. Watch_Dogs might not have done it justice, but I still see potential here.

Even though Watch_Dogs has expended both Sam’s stamina and my own, this is not the end of Interactive Friction. Far from it. We’ll be taking a hiatus for a still as-of-yet undetermined period of time, but we will be back. The two of us have even already decided on our next season. There is even the possibility of having a few one-off episodes here and there until we get our mojo back.

So, until next time, cheers!

The scene between Aiden Pearce and Lucky Quinn is by far the best scene in the game, aside from those between Aiden and Jordy. There’s a fair degree of subtext and subtlety in their back-and-forth that it’s surprising that the same people who created this scene also made the parts with Bedbug, Iraq, the prostitutes, and every other section of the story.

This is also the one of the few kills where Aiden Pearce may not necessarily be in the wrong. Even if you discount the revenge motivation here (and we have), it’s clear that Chicago would be an objectively better, less awful city should Lucky Quinn and his Chicago South Club fall.
At the same time, one could make an argument that killing anymore is morally wrong, no matter how evil that person may be. It may not make Aiden Pearce out to be the paragon of justice, at least an argument could be made that it’s morally acceptable to kill Quinn.

We have a couple of problems with it in the episode, but that’s less a problem with the scene and more an issue with the context that it was provided in. If the writing is this game was a little tighter, and there was less filler, this would’ve been a fantastic payoff.

This also happens to be the part where the game finally makes the decision to say something. Even if it’s a simple “Information is power” message, that’s more than the rest of the game has been willing to give. Exploring how much someone can do if they know all of your dark little secrets, if they can expose you at the blink of a button: That’s some very interesting stuff. On top of that, it ties back into the central premise nicely.

If the game ended at that point, I would’ve considered it a pretty strong finish to a pretty weak game. Unfortunately, we’re not done yet. Rather than use this point to wrap things up, we still need to deal with Damien. Even worse, we deal in this dumbest way possible.

And that makes me sad.

As many of you know, I have been working on a Let’s Play series with my friend, Sam Callahan. Together, we have been trudging through Watch_Dogs. One of the more heavily advertised features in Watch_Dogs was the ability for players to invade the game of another in order to sabotage them. Fans of the Dark Souls games might recognize this feature, since it also uses player invasion as a game mechanic. Having played both Watch_Dogs and Dark Souls, I realized that I was extremely annoyed by the invasions in Watch_Dogs. On the other hand, that same general idea worked for me in Dark Souls, adding to the game. This is when I began to ponder why this might be the case.
One of the fundamental reasons why player invasions irritated me in Watch_Dogs was that they were almost divorced from the rest of the game. As a player wanders about the city of Chicago, outside of a mission or side-activity, another player may choose to enter their game at any time. Until the outsider is either dealt with or succeeds in their mission to hack the host player, the host is unable to continue the main story or do any side-quests. Even if the host dies while being invaded, the event continues uninterrupted and the invader is able to continue with their objective. In other words, to someone who is looking to complete the game’s story and/or side missions, an invasion is just a needless distraction, rather than a core part of the game. They have to put their game on hold in order to deal with this new problem. Sam and I encountered this ourselves a fewtimesin our Let’s Play. Though we eventually remember that we could turn off player invasions, that further speaks to how separate they are from everything else. With invasions turned off, the game is improved because players can get to the rest of the content without wasting time killing an invader.
This is in stark contrast to Dark Souls, where the invasions are more nicely integrated into the whole experience. Normally, players won’t be in danger of invasions. However, in order to invite other people to join their game and help them take down many of the game’s bosses, they also have to spend a Humanity point and open themselves up to invasions in exchange. Invasions aren’t so much a dedicated feature as much as they are a necessary drawback in order to balance out the act of asking for help. Even if the player is offline, there are NPCs in the world that can take the place of both co-op companions and invaders. In other words, this feature is so core to the game’s fundamental design that From Software saw fit to include an NPC equivalent for those who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not play online. Opening oneself up to the aid of others will in turn open up the possibility that others will attack.
The difference between allowing oneself to be invaded in Dark Souls and the incidental invasion in Watch_Dogs is a very important one. Whenever I was invaded in Watch_Dogs, it was almost always at an inopportune time. Often, I would be about to accept a story mission, when the game informed me that someone had stepped into my play session, locking me out of the mission. It was an irritation that I had no interest in and gained nothing from. While an invasion in Dark Souls can be inconvenient, players must make a deliberate choice to spend Humanity and make them possible. This opting-in subtly prepares the player for the potential threat, which means they aren’t surprised if and when it happens. In Watch_Dogs, player invasions are always surprising because they can happen at anytime. As a result, they will always mess up the player’s plan and cause undue irritation.
Not only are the invasions in Watch_Dogs separate from the other gameplay elements, but they are also removed from the normal character progression. As players complete missions in Watch_Dogs, they acquire skill points which can be spent on skills in the various categories, like Hacking, Driving, and Combat. There is also another category called “Notoriety”. Unlike the other skill trees, players can’t use skill points to advance it. Instead, they accumulate “Notoriety” through strong performances in the various online multiplayer activities, including the invasions. Out of the 6 available skills in this tree, only two could be considered useful to players who don’t play with others. The other 4 skills only affect elements of the online component, by raising the rewards or making it easier to detect an invading player. To put it plainly, almost nothing the player unlocks in the online mode affects them in the main story.
Dark Souls works differently. In order to gain Humanity points, players can enter another’s game and help them defeat an area boss. Even if they fail in the attempt, they can still keep the Souls that they earned while in working with the host. Alternatively, the enter invade another player’s game, gaining Humanity and souls by killing the host. Since they do not lose Souls in the attempt, they are incentivized to take advantage of this ability to gain Humanity. In turn, this Humanity can be spend to allow other players to join their game and hopefully gain an advantage in fighting many of the game’s bosses. Both the aid of other players and the Souls obtained in these multiplayer events have a direct, positive influence on one’s progression in the game.
Again, observe the difference between these two games. To the player who is only looking to complete the main story of the game, the invasions in Watch_Dogs are a waste of time. If they perform well, the rewards they provide won’t help them in their ultimate goal, designed only to be used in online challenges. Dark Souls goes in a different direction. Even if a player only wants to beat the game, there is still a strong incentive to partake in the online invasions, or at least make oneself open to them. The aid of cooperative partners can greatly increase one’s odds of successfully defeating a boss. Furthermore, there is a chance to earn more Souls and Humanity, which are used to further tip the odds in their favor. As someone who rarely participates in a game’s online component, I still found myself making use of it in my journey through Lordran.

When Watch_Dogs was in development, Ubisoft said that while players could disable the option for others to invade their game, they considered leaving them on to be the “best” way to play. Unfortunately, the facts aren’t in their favor. Without a way to prepare for them, or a strong reason to keep them enabled in the first place, it makes more sense for players to not even bother. As Dark Souls demonstrates, it didn’t have to be this way. As rudimentary as they are, if Ubisoft had been a little smarter about the implementation, they could have been a seamlessly integrated and enjoyable aspect of the final product.

This is the point where all of the many criticisms we’ve be directed at Watch_Dogs that to coalesce. Like the game, we start to tie up all of our loose-ends as we head towards the final stretch.

It’s amazing that even after forcing his family to evacuate the city, because his revenge has made them into massive targets, Ubisoft still doesn’t acknowledge how awful Aiden Pearce is as a person. That’s really all I needed. All Ubisoft had to do was show that they were aware of the monster they had created.

I have to applaud Nikki in this scene. As Sam said, she’s a saint for not blowing up at what happened in her life. She did nothing that would justify the need to be evacuated from an otherwise normal city. If Aiden Pearce has just stopped, like Nikki pleaded for him to do, she could just sit back in her house and deal with normal-people problems.

That tragedy is caused by our hero, ladies and gentleman. Enjoy.
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