It appears that the Janissary Captain Tarik Barleti could be in league with the Templars in Constantinople. It’ll be up to us to confirm if that connection is genuine, or if there’s more to it than first appearances.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

In between the last recording and this one, while I was sick, I watched an Assassin’s Creed Revelations retrospective from a YouTuber who goes by “So Says Jay”. I will cite this an a few other videos over the course of the rest of this, as I find listening to other opinions does much to help me form my own. Nonetheless, I do recommend watching this video because he does a great job reflecting on both the game and the context it was developed for.

And something he cites that’s particularly relevant as we go through the cave in search of the Masayf Key is that Ezio feels more like an action hero than he ever did before. Part of that we’ve already covered and discussed, like with regards to the game’s opening sequence and the carriage set-piece. We’re told he’s an old man past his prime, but mechanically he’s just as powerful, if not moreso, than he’s ever been. Aside from that one sequence at the start, there’s nothing to suggest that he’s lost his touch.

If anything, he’s being thrown into more and more strenuous situations than he’s ever been before, and walking out of them unscathed. He feels less like an Assassin, slowly stalking prey until the right moment to strike, and more like an action hero similar to Nathan Drake. In the previous game, players probably wouldn’t be racing a boat on foot in a platforming challenge while being shot at. The tombs of AC2 always had more of a slower, deliberate feel to them, with music that reflected such a pace.

There’s an incongruity between the old, wizened Ezio that the game’s story wants to establish, and this superhero that we play as in many sequences.

We’ve uncovered the location of another Masayf Key, and with it another memory of the great Altair. What awaits us when in the life and times of one of the order’s most legendary Assassins.

If you don’t remember Abbas, that’s because he was only mentioned in Assassin’s Creed 1 and never seen. An offhand conversation early in the game implied the Altair had a rivalry with him, but he was never brought up again passed that. Going by the original plan, that would have been the end of the conversation. We would have never revisited either Ezio or Altair, ending with Desmond in the final game.

In this new plan, where Assassin’s Creed would become an unending, eternal franchise, Abbas serves as a good vehicle to both bring us back to Altair and resolve any lingering threads we might have with the character before sunsetting this chapter of the franchise and moving onto something different.

And to their credit, what comes of this plot ends up being some of the most interesting work in Revelations.

Ezio needs allies within the Sultan’s court, so let’s be as charismatic a bard as we can be.

Cheers to the Ubisoft dev team, for this mission is aimed at exactly me. I am the man punching bards when they annoy me in the streets of Florence, Venice, and Rome. And I will happy beat them up, take their uniforms, and sing embarrassing songs about them at a rich guy’s party. Even better, I’m pretty sure Ezio is reusing Minstrel animations from those games when he’s singing.

For all my gripes with how they handled the Ezio trilogy, this is the kind of mission that can only be done when there’s a history to work with. It is only possible because we’ve had two previous games with Ezio to draw upon as reference material prior to Revelations. And since this the last game we’ll make use of the character, there’s no better place to cache in on that potential.

Now that we have one Masayf Key, it’s time for us to unravel its secrets.

I can confirm that Altair did switch actors between the first game and Revelations, which makes sense because even in Bloodlines he was given a more appropriate voice for a man of his nationality. But we’ll have plenty of time to discuss him later. Right now, we’re mostly just better reintroduced to the character.

What I want to focus on is the Romani. For me, and probably many other people who played it, this game was my first introduction to the history of the Romani and the idea that the more commonly used term for their people was an ethic slur. To their credit, most teams in the developers’ situation would have had no idea, and would have probably continued to use the g-word without question, especially since they’re a side faction with no real relevance to the overall plot.

It’s a small detail, but one that reveals the amount of care and attention that the researchers and consultants on Revelations took in adapting history to their fiction. Additionally, it’s one of those touches that helps sell that Ezio is a wizened old man who cares for the common folk.

So congrats to the team for managing to pull that off.

Alright, we just about have our bearings in the great city of Constantinople. Now our hunt for the Masayf Keys begins in earnest.

I feel for the development team of Revelations (and also Brotherhood). It is a difficult ask to come up with new tools and abilities for a kit that already felt complete. And yet, when the same character is brought back to helm another game for a sequel, it is a natural expectation for that character to grow and change, learning new skills and finding new gear. Thus, the need to graft new tools onto Ezio. Some of them, like the Hookblade, actually do add new dimension to the platforming and parkour.

Others, like the bombs, aren’t as successful. While they have uses and utility, often bombs and bomb-crafting feel like an unnecessary addition. As far as lethal tools are concerned, we have so many discreet methods of murder between chain kills, poison darts, the hidden gun, the hidden blade, and the crossbow, that yet one more tool feels superfluous. This is unfortunately not a new problem, because this was true in Brotherhood as well. It’s only worse here because we have still more tools to work with.

And while the already existing tools of Smoke Bombs and Throwing Money (via Pyrite Bombs) were folded into this new mechanic as well, that doesn’t really change much. If anything, Smoke Bombs are easier to acquire since bomb components are easy to come by and crafting tables are plentiful. I’ve also rarely used Thrown Money in either of the previous games.

They had an out to this by switching from one character to the next in each game, but because yearly sequels were demanded we were stuck trying to power up Ezio even more than he was already.

As Desmond continues to trawl through Ezio’s memories, we periodically take some time to trawl through his.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

By and large I have been a defender of the Desmond segments so far in Assassin’s Creed. I find that it helpful to have a main plot that connects the games together, giving us a reason to keep traversing through history. Still is still true, but these sections where we explore Desmond’s backstory are the least interesting parts of the game, both mechanically and narratively.

There were clear inspirations taken from Portal (notably Portal 2 came out six months earlier in the same year). And yet, two of the strength of Portal are most the cleverness of its puzzle design and the dry, humorous wit that permeates the script. These Desmond section lack both, with puzzles that require almost no thought whatsoever and bland monologues accompanying them. I could begin to discuss the ways in which it contradicts established lore, but ultimately that doesn’t matter because if there something more important to say I wouldn’t be focused on such trivial details.

And besides, the best is yet to come in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

We have finally arrived in Constantinople to search for the Masyaf Keys. And for once, we’re greeted by friendly faces. But we also have enemies, so it’s best we begin our work now.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

To some extent, this intro suffers simply by being in such close proximity to the intros of the other Ezio games. Both of them (yes, even Brotherhood) do a good job of both thrusting players into their role by giving them a ton of gameplay segments to introduce core mechanics, which slowly easing them into the world with light cutscenes sprinkled in.

I give Revelations some credit for the former. We do have a good amount of tutorial missions and opening segments to start out with, but they don’t do a great job introducing us to the game. Thankfully, we’re playing straight after Brotherhood. Remember though, for most players it would have been a year between games and a refresher couldn’t hurt. Doubly so since that made some changes to the controls that even I still fumble with in this session.

The real problem is just the sheer amount of time we spend in these opening hours watching cutscenes of people talking to each other. There are times when I’m taking breaks of ten minutes or more between portions of gameplay where characters are just speaking to each other. I wouldn’t even necessarily mind that if the dialogue was interesting or told us a bit about the people talking, but largely it is pure exposition that is used to describe the state of the world. It’s the equivalent of a large text crawl at the start of a Tactical RPG, where they have to establish the world and factions before the player takes control, and those rarely hold a player’s attention.

I imagine that the reason is simple: This game was developed in a year and the developers had to budget their resources wisely. We don’t have the benefit of an established villain and supporting cast since we’re no longer in Italy, so the new power players need to be quickly introduced. I just wish there was time to do so more elegantly.

After 300 years, the Templars have captured Masyaf Castle, home of original Hashashin, including the legendary Altair Ibn-La’Ahad.

What does that leave for Ezio, searching for the legacy of one of history’s greatest Assassins?

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

I am willing to concede that my judgement may have been hasty, and that it might be a good thing that the use the set-piece before this bringing us to the brink of death to narratively justify why Ezio can’t use his parkour skills for the segment that follows.

However, I do think it’s also fair to have that feeling in the moment since that is, to some degree, what the designers intentions are. Yes, the segment is bullshit, but that’s largely because Ezio isn’t as young as he used to be and that kind of damage doesn’t heal as quickly as it used to. If anything, it might have been cool to see Ezio adapt his skills and fighting style for an older body that’s not quite as capable as it used to be.

Unfortunately, that’s just not the kind of advancement we see in video games. By their nature, they tend to skew towards power fantasies. And by the iterative nature of a sequel, players tend to want new abilities and tools grafted onto the existing framework. Even if the team at Ubisoft wanted to explore how age affected the character (which, in fairness, they probably didn’t), they probably wouldn’t have had support from either the publisher or the player base.

And in fairness, early-50s still in the realm of middle mage, even if its the upper boundary of it. Even back then, people could be relatively healthy at that age bracket. Admittedly, it’s unlikely for a man who lives as dangerous a life as Ezio’s, but it’s not impossible either.

It just might’ve been more interesting to play with that for more than this short segment.

Although Ezio is approaching his twilight years, we still have one more adventure with him before we finally say goodbye to the character.

Let us begin the tale of final journey.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

To start this series by starting the obvious, Ezio is in his 50s at around the time this story takes place. In other words, he is an old man well passed his prime. And though this rarely comes up mechanically, it does inform the character and how he interacts with those around him.

Uniquely, he’s also informed by the sense of history most players have with the character. If you, like me, played both Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood, you would have followed Ezio as he grew from a innocent and naive young teenager to become the leader of the Italian branch of the Assassin Brotherhood. It’s a length of continuity that, especially in the realm of video games, is extraordinarily rare. Odds are high that if Ubisoft wasn’t demanding yearly releases for this series, we wouldn’t have another strong example of this.

And as we’ll see in the weeks to come, that ability to play with history often results in the most interesting moments of Revelations.

Did you know that, on average, most of the hours people play video games go towards older games from previous years? At least, that was the case last year, and I would be shocked if that was any less true this year. From my own experience, many of the games I played were either rereleases of old content, games from my backlog, or updates to live-service games already in my rotation.

This column, as ever, is dedicated to those, as they deserve their own space separate from the new releases. Presented in random order, the games I played in 2024 that weren’t released in 2024 are.

Darkest Dungeon 2

I really want to enjoy the Darkest Dungeon games, and moving what they had before into the medium of a pure roguelike meant the sequel had a better chance of success from me than the original did.

Unfortunately, this one also fizzled out. I hit a wall that I couldn’t seem to surmount no matter how hard I tried. As much as I wished to be the hero who pushes through the horror and stress to triumph over incredible odds, I wasn’t able to thread the needle. And once the game started hard crashing on my Steam Deck, I took that as a sign my adventure was over.

An ignoble end to my ignoble tale.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

When the Nintendo Direct announced that the Edgeworth games were getting released on the Switch (and also every other major platform including PC and Steam Deck), my friends who were in the Discord call with me could tell you how hype I was for it.

I had played the first Edgeworth on my phone. (Yes, those games are on the Android store.) And while I was certainly eager to replay it, the much more impactful draw was Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. For those of you who aren’t big Ace Attorney fans, the second Edgeworth has been playable in English for years via fan translation, but it wasn’t until this collection that it came to Western shores via an official localization.

It’s an important milestone for the franchise, since after The Great Ace Attorney, Prosecutor’s Gambit was the only game left to port over to Western audiences. As of this year, Americans now have official access to every game in the series. And with the sole exception of the Professor Layton crossover, all of them are on the PC (and Steam Deck) now too, and they go on sale often enough that I don’t feel bad recommending them.

And while of course that game itself is as incredible as all of the Ace Attorney games tend to be (especially on Steam Deck), it is that release itself that makes this such a momentous occasion.

Marvel Snap

Like any card game that’s gone on for long enough, Marvel Snap had its share of bad meta games. After a few too many of those in a row, I had to drop the game because I simply wasn’t having fun anymore despite how much I love the game’s mechanics and the Marvel canon.

And this is where I was introduced to the big problem that will likely be the death of Marvel Snap if it is not addressed soon: The card economy. One of the Marvel Snap content creators I follow, Jeff Hoogland, talked about this in detail in one of his videos from a content creator perspective. In broad strokes, if a player is keeping up with the game as the seasons go on, they should be able to acquire the new cards they need for the decks they want to build with very little issue.

But if you’re like me, and you were a lapsed player who chose to dip out of the game for whatever reason, you are more-or-less permanently behind with no realistic road to catching back up. Supposedly, they are looking to correct this issue soon, but to be honest at this point I’ve already moved onto other games and I am personally unlikely to come back. I didn’t even come back for the Symbiote Season, and that was practically aimed at me.

Castlevania Dominus Collection

People have been telling me that these Castlevania games are actually pretty good. While I believed them because the one I played, Symphony of the Night, left a strong impression, I just never got around to seeing what else the series had on offer.

After enough of my friends swore up and down that this was absolutely-definitely-100%-without-a-doubt a solid collection of those games, I figured I had enough free time to see why they were so insistent. A few weeks later I was walking away with the collection’s Platinum Trophy.

I admit that if it wasn’t for the rewind feature, I probably wouldn’t have cleared Order of Ecclesia. And I dislike the anime art style they went with for Portrait of Ruin and Dawn of Sorrow, vastly preferring the more iconic, gothic art from Ayami Kojima. Those misgivings aside, I have almost nothing else to complain about. Play these games and it quickly becomes clear why Castlevania has attained the status it has despite Konami’s endless bungling.

Persona 3 Reloaded

I’m already fond of Persona 3. It was my first ATLUS game, and as such it holds a special place in my heart. I’m very picky about changes to things I love, so when I say that almost every change made to Reloaded was for the better, that means something.

Each of the new voices for all of the main cast, perfectly embody the characters with their performances. Some, particularly Akihiko, better suit the character than their original actors did. (Sorry, Liam O’Brian.) Many of the new scenes add further depth to what was already there. And as far as Persona Fusion goes, I would never want to go back to an era where I can’t pick which skills are passed on.

If there was anything at all to complain about, it’s probably that the various updates and additions overall make the game far too easy. Persona 3 was clearly balanced around the idea of spending multiple nights each month climbing Tartarus, so when it becomes trivial to do it all in a single-night, some of that tension and decision making is lost. With more time on the calendar, it’s easier than ever to boost social stats ahead of the game’s preset expectations. It’s ultimately probably not a genuine problem, since the end result is more approachable for a casual audience, but it means that someone with more experience will want to boost the difficulty to maintain that sense of challenge.

Overall, it’s a rock-solid package that should become the new, definitive way to experience Persona 3.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (and DLC)

When Valve finally set up this year’s Steam replay, I was surprised to find that this game was the one I had played more than any other game on Steam this year, even Vampire Survivors (and we’ll get to that). The journey of my Knight-Commander, from start to finish, including with DLC, took roughly 125 hours. Considering my two Baldur’s Gate 3 runs were about 90 and 110 hours respectively, that’s not too out of line.

Also typical for the genre, I spend a fair amount of time playing with mods to aid in the adventure, installing a mod to skip a real-time strategy element to the campaign I wasn’t interested in and a separate one that functioned mostly as a debug console to fix issues that I encountered a few times in my campaign.

Additionally, this was my first experience with Pathfinder, and it is regrettable that the campaign uses First Edition Pathfinder instead of Second Edition. Bumped down to the easiest setting, I found that the game wasn’t very approachable even for someone like me who has experience in the genre. I like a crunchy game, but this was so crunchy it hurt my teeth. I also found the character alignment system laughably outed in the current year, with characters and dialog options clearly demarcated as Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaos in case you were afraid to think about the morality of your actions.

All of that is an immense barrier to entry, especially when games like Baldur’s Gate 3 are putting in so much more to make themselves approachable for players looking to give the genre a try. I will make no effort to downplay that cold, hard fact. However, once I was able to push through those barriers, modding and cheating my way into a version of the game I wanted to play, I was hooked. The team at Owlcat did a great job turning an old Pathfinder module into a fully realized campaign from start to finish, and their expansions to that campaign have only further elevated it.

I came in with no knowledge of Pathfinder or its lore beyond rumors and hearsay, but I left Wrath of the Righteous wistfully lamenting that I was unlikely to find a friend group that was able to commit to a Pathfinder campaign.

Legends of Runeterra

With the release of Arcane Season 2, it would have made perfect sense to finally install League of Legends and play as my favorite champions from the show. Fortunately for me, I have enough self-respect to stay away from games I hate.

So instead, I remembered how much I adored everything about Legends of Runeterra before I completed my card collection and grew bored of it. I was aware that the PvP portion of the game was no longer being actively supported, but I also knew that it had been over a year since I last launched the game. 

Additionally, they were about to add Warwick and Ambessa into the roguelike “Path of Champions” mode. While I’m not a fan of League, I love the character designs for many of its champions, including Warwick, so that was as good a reason as any to give it a shot.

It’s remained on my phone for the past month now, and in that time I’ve happily completed a single run of the Path of Champions every day. The tragedy of Runeterra is that it’s a great card game even now. From card designs to fundamental structure and mechanics, it’s still the game I have the most fun with.

Which is why it sucks that no else seems to agree with me enough to play it.

Assassin’s Creed (and AC2 and Brotherhood)

Although I can’t remember the exact article, I read a piece earlier this year where the author described the experience of going back and replaying old games from the PS3/360 generation, particularly the original Assassin’s Creed. I was looking for something to do as an intermission for the Phoenix Wright series (for the sake of my own voice if nothing else), and that first game was short enough that it was low commitment, even if it didn’t pan out.

And clearly I was having enough fun with that Let’s Play that I shelved the Phoenix Wright games to continue with AC2, and later Brotherhood. What’s blown me away isn’t just how well these games hold up even by modern standards, but in many ways they’re even more fun than much of the content from AAA in recent years, better than most of Ubisoft’s most recent games.

Similar to Dragon’s Dogma (we’ll get to that), going back to the early Assassin’s Creed games reminded me that we’ve lost something in the quest to streamline games. Often, the imperfections and jank add texture, making the overall experience more memorable as a result. You may swear and get frustrated in the moment, but looking back you realize that sticks with you in a way many modern games just don’t.

Armello

Earlier this year, looking to find things to do together on the weekend, they started holding weekly Armello nights. It had been years since I last played a game of Armello, mostly because convincing people to join is normally like pulling teeth. Naturally, I joined up with zero hesitation.

Though I am now wise enough to see some of the flaws that I couldn’t back when I first played the game years ago, I still enjoyed my time getting back into it. Official support for the game was long over when we returned to it, but several new characters and the ability to play by House Rules had not yet been added to the game when I dropped it the first time. 

For those few months, the novelty had returned, and our group happily played a few matches weekly. We all had our favorite characters. For me, that was Elyssa and the way she built walls and fortresses around towns to control the movement of other players. But all things eventually fade, and due to scheduling conflicts we could no longer maintain the time slot. The mood only soured when, after hanging our hats, we learned that the development team behind the game had shut down because of the ongoing economic stress felt on all levels but the shareholder and executive class across the world.

It was a tragic addendum to an otherwise joyous period of the year for me.

Fortnite

I am currently recovering from Fortnite burnout since the last two seasons haven’t been very fun for me, each for different reasons. I’ve heard the current season is good, but I launched it and after a few games realized that I have no desire to play Fortnite.

My relationship with Fortnite coincides with my feelings towards live-service in general. I’m growing increasingly exhausted with the way so many games are demanding that I dedicate significant chunks of my free time to them and them alone. Since most of the games I like are largely single-player, I can avoid that most of the time. However, when trying to play with my friends, the live-service machine has grown to become such an ever-present, all-consuming beast that there’s no escaping it.

It’s something we talk about a lot when we play games together, and we’ve all come to the conclusion that it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Gamers just don’t realize how much they’ve been cucked. At least they can give Master Chief a fresh pair of Jordans, or whatever.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

I think that Shadow of the Erdtree is approaching, if not hitting, the upper limit from what I am willing to tolerate of FromSoftware’s boss design in service to the rich experiences that they are so adept at building.

And admittedly, part of that is my own fault. I, like many people, discounted the importance of collecting Scadutree Fragments to increase my stats. Once I took the time to explore around and gather them up, bosses that were kicking my ass to hell and back suddenly became more reasonable encounters. I go back and forth with myself over whether than is good or bad for the DLC.

On one hand, exploration is a core pillar of the design, and peppering the game world with collectibles that raise your stats and make combat easier is a healthy way of encouraging players to engage on that level. On the other hand, these games are famously bad at communicating vital information to the player by design, and this was no exception. This may have been a time where the uncompromising nature of the development team with regards to their vision bit them in the ass, and I hope that’s a lesson they take with them going forward.

Yet not all of the problems can be explained away by that lack of communication. Some fights, particularly the final boss, are so tough that even From Software themselves admitted to going too far. For the first time in a Soulslike, I was not able to defeat a boss because the hard countered my build in a way skill could not overcome. And thus, I was forced to completely respec my character into a cheese build just to hit end credits.

Part of the appeal of this genre, to me, is that although some builds will always be better or worse than others, generally anything is at least viable. Somewhere along the line, that simply stopped being true, and I don’t think FromSoftware realized what they lost in that transition.

Magic the Gathering: Arena

As a digital client to a paper TCG, the state of Magic the Gathering: Arena is inextricably bound to the state of the paper Magic itself. 

Thankfully, we’ve entered a format where Standard is as good as it’s been since Guilds of Ravnica/Ravnica Allegiance. The same is true for Pioneer/Explorer, and I juggle between the two depending on both my mood and what my dailies are. (Though badly my beloved Amalia Combo deck has been banned.)

That said, I don’t play much Brawl anymore, mostly because I find the format miserable. More often than not, if you get off to a good start than the opponent will instantly concede without playing it out, and that’s just not a fun experience.

Hopefully the team at WotC can maintain their momentum in the years to come, especially when Final Fantasy and Spider-man make their debut on Arena next year.

Vampire Survivors

The mad lads actually did it. After all this time, there is finally a vampire in Vampire Survivors. And not just any vampire, but the vampire of all time: Vlad Tepes Dracula from the hit Netflix original Castlevania is finally here.

My goofy jokes aside, love and care was put into Vampire Survivors with the Ode to Castlevania expansion. Clearly, nothing was held back when it came to that DLC. If there’s a character from Castlevania you wanted to play as, or a weapon you wished to wield, the odds are extremely high that it is here. Indeed, there is probably more content in this new map alone than there was in the base game and the rest of the DLC combined.

It was a truly impressive undertaking. Doubly so since the game and DLC are so cheap.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

When I explained how much fun I was having with Dragon’s Dogma 2, multiple people I know started to recount stories from their time playing the original game. Since I knew by then that I could probably handle Dragon’s Dogma, hearing their tales inspired me to take my chances.

Continuing one of the two recurring elements in my thoughts on this year in gaming, Dragon’s Dogma is a game that is rough around the edges, but rough in a way that is additive to the core experience. It’s a game about being thrust into a difficult encounter and realizing that you have the tools necessary to finish the job, you just need to be mindful about your approach.

And I’ve found over the course of this year I actually want that far more than I want games to be streamlined and frictionless. We’ve been trained to believe that games shouldn’t fight us, but in truth if they don’t at least present a challenge then nothing is gained by rising to meet it.

Immortals of Aveum

I want to draw attention to Immortals because I played it for free via PlayStation Plus. Everyone, myself included, mocked it for being a derivative first-person shooter, only with spells instead of guns. And while that description is unflattering and needlessly defamatory, it’s not technically incorrect. It was a perfectly competent and well-designed video game, from a team that put in quality work.

The problem is that it’s become abundantly clear in the video game arms race that being “just” a competent and fun game isn’t enough anymore. It’s sad that a team of creative people put in the work, and delivered on an excellent product, but they’ll never be rewarded for it. In a healthy industry, they’d be given another chance to showcase the skill they have, but we don’t have a healthy industry, as Ascendant Studio discovered.

Shouting them out will do them no good, but hopefully the people who were laid off or moved onto other teams manage to land on their feet.

God of War: Ragnarok (Valhalla DLC)

Kratos is a complicated man with a complicated legacy, both in the fiction of God of War and outside of it. In his original trilogy, he was a character defined and destroyed by rage and pride. It would have been easy to keep him in that state of perpetual anger, and indeed his original creator would have wanted exactly that.

Which is why I find it so fascinating that this new “rebooted” God of War chooses time and again to directly confront and interrogate that legacy, neither running from it nor wholly embracing it. This Valhalla DLC pushes that even further, adding nuance and perspective that, while not redeeming old Kratos, makes it clear that there was always more to him than what memes and jokes skimmed off the surface. It touches on the themes of redemption and self-forgiveness, which is perfect for the character.

And it still shocks me that such powerful writing came from a free roguelike mode added to the game post-release.

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail

I haven’t fallen off Final Fantasy XIV completely in the Dawntrail endgame. I still raid with my raid group for about six hours per week, and I’ve been keeping up with the latest PvP seasonal rewards. But that’s about the extent of my gametime, and I’m rarely logged in for more than thirty minutes at a time outside of raid. While it could be part of my generalized live-service fatigue, I think the more likely explanation is simply that there’s just no longer much left for me to catch-up on outside of current content. And that’s fine, that’s just the reality of the game’s release structure.

What I’m curious about is how the community will feel about Dawntrail down the line. It was difficult to take a good pulse of its reception at the time the expansion dropped, because far too much oxygen was taken up by GamerGate freaks getting mad both that the new major lead character was voiced by a trans woman and that the new zones were inspired by Meso-America. With all of their bleating, it was difficult to separate nonsense from substantive critique.

Thankfully, that group of fools has seen fit to find some other game to complain about. However, I’ve noticed other people aside from myself begin to scale down their time with FF XIV, or otherwise just quit the game entirely. To some degree, that should be expected since Endwalker was an excellent jumping off point, having closed the book on a major storyline. I want to know if that trend continues as Dawntrail patch content gets released.

It’s an interesting period to play Final Fantasy XIV. My only hope is that it will be interesting for the right reasons.

And thus, our time reminiscing on 2024 has come to an end. I expect that there will be many more rereleases and live-services updates in the coming year. Even if there aren’t any, I’m sure that there’s something in the old backlog that’ll be worth playing.

I’ll tell you all about it this time next year.