One of the biggest selling points behind The Quiet Man is that the game has little audio, to help viewers better understand the viewpoint of protagonist Dane, who is born deaf. (Which, considering this means the player can’t understand things he clearly can, isn’t helpful, but I digress.)

So what should be an adequate reward for beating The Quiet Man? Well, beating The Quiet Man awards the player with the ability to play the game again, but this time with audio and subtitles. And to get the full experience of The Quiet Man, Chris and I decided jump back into it.
The article Chris mentioned, written by OneOddGamerGirl, can be found here. This is an amazing article the brings up a lot of baggage that I couldn’t even begin to get into as someone who is not part of the deaf community.
And thank you to Twitch stream viewer Nelson Demifur from making this highlight clip during the broadcast, which very accurately summarizes my feelings behind The Quiet Man.
I am honestly astounded at how much better The Quiet Man was without any audio, because this story is really badly written.
Some aspects of the story just go completely unexplained even with the added context afforded by dialogue, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any supernatural aspect to this story. Things like Dane’s dad, Robert, dressed in the Bird Mask (the titular “Quiet Man”) disappearing randomly during a fight, or Dane mysteriously coming back to life from being shot, then taking out a whole organized squad of goons. Not to mention the scene where Dane apparently goes crazy and starts wholesale slaughtering Taye’s goons dressed in the Quiet Man mask. In a story that otherwise presents itself as “grounded”, for lack of a better term, these are bizarre plot points that don’t get explained.
There’s also the whole thing where the context behind Dane and the detective’s (Robert) relationship is just missing in the voiceless cut. As the clip above demonstrates, the physical actions, outside of context, give a completely different impression than you get when subtitles and audio are added to it. What I thought was a touching moment of a police officer reaching out to a young man who needed help to cope with the loss of his mother turned out to be an abuse father blaming his kid for his wife’s death. This goes double for every other scene where it looks like he’s innocuously talking to other people. But worse than all of that, they have the absolute gall to try to redeem this garbage pile in human skin randomly, without warning, after he’s been nothing but bad news for all of Dane’s life. This character is one of the most messes in the game.
But he’s not the worst, that would be Lala, who doesn’t seem to have any real reason to be doing what she’s doing throughout the game. It’s clear that see set up a gang war between the two faction leaders, Taye and Issac, by staging her own kidnapping with Robert’s assistance. But drag dealing aside, Taye seems like a very benevolent boss from what we see, only losing his temper after people who work for him start dying and/or ending up in the hospital. It’s not clear why she felt the need to do this in the first place, or what Robert did to convince her.
I could go on, but this story is a complete mess, doubly so when it’s presented in full context. At least I understood what was going on in Detroit: Become Human.

Post script (added on 11/30/2018):

I didn’t even talk about how some of the most irritating aspects of the game’s presentation. One of which is the subtitling. You’d think since the story is about a deaf person, they’d be cognizant of how to build effective subtitles, but The Quiet Man fails in even this aspect. Firstly, there is no outline around, or black box behind, the stark white text. This means that when they are displayed over something like a bright white dress, I have a hard time reading them. On top of that, there subtitles aren’t often up long enough for me to read them, and Chris had a similar issue during the stream.

There’s so the many, many times where people are talking to Dane, who cannot hear, when he is positions where we could not possibly see their lips move, and thus would have no idea what they are saying. Once I started noticing it, it became a massive distraction.

I knew going into The Quiet Man that it wasn’t going to be a good game, but I was absolutely shocked by how terrible it truly was. What should have been a mediocre FMV game about a deaf person turned out to be one of the most pretentious and confused piles of bad decisions I have born witness too.

And, if you’re so inclined, you are welcome to join me on this adventure into The Quiet Man.

And yes, for all my trouble playing The Quiet Man, my reward was for it to freeze just before I unlocked the ability to play it again with audio and the trophy for completing the game.

The next day, I tried again, and it froze again. Here is the video evidence…

It’s honestly hard to understand exactly what happened behind the scenes to turn whatever idea spawned this game into such a bad experience. It seems hell bent on making sure that the player is left as confused as humanly possible.

Part of that comes from the game’s most infamous design choices: To remove audio from most of the game. Verbal/word-based communication is only one way to convey thoughts and ideas to other people. With this in mind, a good script writer/director would take advantage of those other ways (expressions, costuming, body movement/positioning) to clearly signal the big events of the story to the audience.

But The Quiet Man doesn’t do that. Instead, they spend their time on long stretches of shot/reverse-shot dialogue scenes where people are just speaking to each other. This is pointless in a game without audio, because we can’t hear what any person is saying, and their aren’t enough non-verbal queues to understand the conversation.

This would be a fascinating choice if it was meant to help us sympathize more with protagonist Dane, who is (allegedly) deaf or hard-of-hearing, but that can’t be true. If the lack of audio was supposed to draw us into Dane’s viewpoint, then we would have subtitles when he can understand what other characters are saying with words or ASL. This is clearly not the case, as there are plainly times where Dane isn’t just understanding what is going on, but actively responding back. And since there’s no audio or subtitles, the player is left in the dark with regards to what their own character is doing.

This ambiguity extends to the combat. I got the basics down, with light/heavy attacks, grabs, and dodges. But when it comes to the finer details, like counter attacks, parry windows, “focus meter”, and guard breaks, it was impossible for me to figure out what was going on for most of the game. I didn’t even realize the game had counter attacks until the one boss where I had to learn how to do it, over 3/4 of the way through the game.

There’s no real way around it. This game is bad, shockingly so.

Edit:

Square Enix issued a copyright claim. If you’re having issues viewing the stream, that would be why.

Our first major boss fight has been completed, and we were able to show off quite a bit.

If you wish to watch content like this as it’s recorded live, be sure to follow my Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

One of the most pointless cruel things you can do in this game is murder a young girl and then throw it in her parental figure’s face. You’d only ever do that if your goal is to make Albatross as angry as possible.

Going through Brayko’s mansion again, especially in the version where Thorton has a high enough Technical Aptitude to save your partner and get the data, makes me wonder what this mission was intended to be like before Alpha Protocol transitioned to having more linear levels, when the hubs were going to be wide open sandboxes. You can tell there’s some fudging, since the vault with the data is located in the same building we first entered (the courtyard we enter to go back there is ever the same courtyard we began the level in).

There’s also the point Wil/anaphysik made about how it seems likely that players were always supposed to go in with SIE, since Albatross gets a less intense cutscene and frankly would not be on site for a mission like this. Artifacts like this are part what make Alpha Protocol so fascinating. It excels in a few key places, but there are also so many glaring imperfections to discuss as well.

As for Brayko, he’s a small sample of what the other bosses are like. By far, this is one of the strangest choices Alpha Protocol made. These bosses are so different from every other point in the game that it makes me wonder where they came from, especially if you specialize in Stealth. It’s very similar (though not quite the same) as the problem Deus Ex: Human Revolution had with their bosses.

Aldowyn, anaphysik, and I continue our redemptive journey with Closure Alert – Part 3. Here, we finish dealing with Shaheed, and discover that the Halbech missiles weren’t stolen. In the ensuing chaos, we’re turned loose to stop a cold war from turning into a real one.

Way back in the day, I was one of the few people who defended Alpha Protocol’s timed dialogue system. At the time, I liked them for the way they kept the conversation flowing at a good pace, to keep up the illusion that the player is part of a spy movie.


To some degree, I stand behind that. However, I’ve had a chance to reevaluate my opinion in the time since. After all, Telltale uses a similar formula for their games. In hindsight, there is a crippling flaw with the system: You are making dialog choices without their full context. Not only does the player need to choose what your character is going to say before the other person finishes speaking, but often they are doing so with one word phrases like “Sarcastic” or “Comfort”. So with only a rough idea of what is going to be said, and what the other person is actually saying, the player is expected to make a decision of what they are going to say.

While Alpha Protocol does alleviate this by using it’s tone system (every response is either Aggressive, Suave, Professional, or a special dialog gated by choices/skills), and characters do have tones they generally respond well to, it’s not perfect. There are still moments where players are asked to make snap decisions without having the time to put in much thought. Despite improving the pace of conversation, there are still areas with awkward flow. And like real people, the cast of Alpha Protocol sometimes change their mood and respond to different stances differently, and it can be hard to keep up in the moment.

A good experiment, but with mixed results.

It’s no secret that I was a big fan of Tomb Raider (2013). As my friend Sam and I explored in our Interactive Friction season on that game, it wasn’t perfect, but it served as an excellent branching point to build a whole franchise off of. When the credits rolled, both of us were excited to see what direction Crystal Dynamics would go in future games. But now, after playing through the following two games, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I’m left feeling snubbed. It’s less certain now that there is a clear direction for the series. Bluntly, both games are emblematic of a wasted opportunity to really explore Lara’s character and expand on it, repeating too much of the 2013 reboot’s story and systems in contexts that don’t make sense.
Lara Croft from Tomb Raider (2013) is a fresh-faced archaeology student thrust into a perilous survival situation. Separated from the rest of the expedition, she braves the elements of the island she’s crashed into, discovering her own capabilities. This is expressed mechanically in the game’s experience system. As she hunts animals, completes story beats, explores tombs, or defeats enemies, she gains points which she can spend to learn new skills that help her in her journey. Where she starts off on unstable ground, with no real training or knowledge in how to fend for herself, by the end of the game she has grown into a capable hunter and fighter. In building up XP and upgrading her gameplay capabilities, the player takes that journey with her. They feel the difference when heavily armored enemies that were once intimidating can now be killed from stealth in a single blow, or while shotgun-blasting foes in direct combat. When the story starts building up Lara’s confidence and determination, that bleeds into all other aspects of the game. This culminates in the final scene where a young Lara Croft defeats the forces threatening her and the remains of her team by taking up her signature dual-pistols, ascending to become the legendary Tomb Raider her previous incarnation was known as.

And yet, despite laying the groundwork and setting her up to become a daring adventurer, the sequels blunt this character arc to uncomfortably preserve the status quo. While it’s true that Lara becomes a more proactive character in Rise and Shadow, the game never escapes the tone of the original. She still feels like a victim, constantly having to reinforce her self-worth and determination with chants of “I can do this” in a tone that implies she’s not sure if she believes herself. Meanwhile, she’s gunning down large numbers of mercenaries, either through stealth or in firefights. The series seems torn about whether she is a trauma victim barely holding on or a mass murderer who has no issues with taking out whole military bases’ worth of personnel. This is undercut by the fact that she’s taking initiative in both stories of her own free will. It’s hard to feel sympathy for her when she’s talking about how difficult her struggle is when she can literally just leave at any point and wash her hands of the whole story.

This push and pull between Lara-the-trauma-victim and Lara-who-smiles-at-death is felt mechanically as well. The skills and arsenal built up over the course of the 2013 reboot, including the dual-pistols iconic to the character of Lara Croft (which are never seen again past that point), are gone at the start of the game, except for some choice implements. Both her and the player are almost back down to square one. Where Tomb Raider (2013) used the leveling system and new gear in order to show her development, the sequels seemed to keep with the structure for no other reason than obligation, with the idea that Lara can’t be an explorer, excited by the thrill of adventure. She must simultaneously be scared and helpless enough that the audience feels they need to protect her, but independent and assertive enough for us to believe that she wouldn’t just back down after realizing she’s in way over her head.
For all of the things Rise and Shadow kept without consideration, they were quick to abandon most of the cast. The reboot goes out of its way to establish a whole host of background characters in the expedition team that work with Lara at various points in the story. They all run the gambit of established tropes, from the grizzled mentor figure that helps her grow into the person she needs to be to stay alive, the kidnapped best friend, the nerdy tech guy, et cetera, but they all serve as Lara’s support as she begins to take a leadership role. Quite a few of them perish throughout the story (in fact, over half of them do), but the ones that survive are shown to have an implicit trust in the young Croft heiress. By following her lead, they are able to both save their captured teammate and escape the island they crashed on.
In fiction, it’s common for a lead character to be backed up and supported by a number of side characters that form their core support structure. No matter how great the obstacle is, some combination of people in this group will have the skills/expertise to overcome. When I saw this cast of characters in Tomb Raider (2013), billed as a new origin story for Lara Croft, I naturally assumed the survivors stranded on the island with her were going to grow into her “Scooby Gang”. In previous Tomb Raider games, Lara always had help to get through her adventures on the other end of a radio, so I naturally assumed they would do the same for this new version of the character, using the cast of this first reboot game to front load and establish character relations.

But this never happened. In both Rise and Shadow, the only returning member of the cast is Jonah, a person whose character was so underdeveloped in the 2013 reboot that I would have had difficulty remembering otherwise. (This is especially curious since Sam, the woman Lara spends much of that game trying to rescue, is supposedly her best friend who goes everywhere with her as a videographer.) Sure, he does offer support as one might expect, but he’s only one character. Ideally, there would be multiple people for Lara to play off of, work with, and learn about. It’s such a missed opportunity to not take advantage of all the relationships developed in first reboot game and build upon them in the sequels.
While Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the catalyst for this piece, many of these thoughts and feelings have been stewing in my heart since I played Rise of the Tomb Raider a few years back. It’s extraordinarily frustrating to see this character misused in this way, and that is only one avenue of criticism. Other people, like Dia Lacina at Waypoint, have approached this game and series from their own angles. I walk away from this “origin story trilogy” disappointed, finishing it mostly out of obligation. Were Tomb Raider to continue, I honestly don’t know whether or not I would actually care.

Normally, I stream Magic the Gathering: Arena every Saturday at 8-10 PM EST on my Twitch channel. As someone who has gotten really into Magic over the past few years, I’ve enjoyed sharing my appreciation with others.

But this past weekend, Arena’s servers were gearing up to be reset in anticipation of moving from Closed Beta to Open Beta, so I didn’t feel a strong urge to play it. Instead, I decided to stream a bit of a game I’ve been slowly diving into. It’s called Eternal, and it was made by professional MTG players.

The MTG influence is pretty easy to see, but they make a number of intelligent choices both to alleviate some of the problems inherent to it’s inspiration, and take advantage of the fact that the game exists in a digital medium, rather the physical cards that define Magic.

The stream audience and I had a very pleasant back and forth about it, and I thought it would be worth it to share with the rest of you.

Aldowyn, Wil, and I are back once again, continuing our journey of redemption with Closure Alert – Alpha Protocol.

And as a reminder, you can find our original recordings here.
It’s been interesting to rewatch the old show in the context of trying to resurrect it in this format. It’s been five whole years since then, Disclosure Alert has grown into a bit of a meme among the very limited group of people who even know about it. On top of that, we’ve all grown in the time since, which really comes off in the recording.

For example, I thought I was being funny when making fun of Aldowyn’s play in the original recording. With the benefit of hindsight (and many people rightfully calling me out at the time for what seems, to them, as abusive behavior), it was completely insufferable and ruined my enjoyment of those videos. I’ve also gain a lot of experience and comfort doing streams and recordings since then, so I don’t feel like I need to rely on that brand of humor anymore.
The realm of choice-based games has also expanded significantly in the time between then and now. Telltale basically revived (and executed) the Choose Your Own Adventure genre. Where Alpha Protocol styled itself as a spy movie simulator, Until Dawn did the same (much more successfully) with the horror movie genre.
There’s also the fact that many of us on cast are more… politically active than we were during that original series. As a result, we notice things that we just didn’t before, as Aldowyn did about Alpha Protocol’s implied support of torture, or “enhanced interrogation techniques”, as they are called in polite conversation. 
I’m glad to be doing this again. It’s well worth it.

Finally, we’re back. After 5 whole years, Aldowyn, anaphysik, and have come back together to finish our Let’s Play series on Alpha Protocol.

No longer Disclosure Alert: Welcome… to Closure Alert.

We recorded this on my Twitch channel. Be sure to subscribe and tune in to see us continue our path to redemption.

I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am to go back and finish this after so long. Not only do I have so much to say about Alpha Protocol, but his series highlights both how different the gaming landscape is from 5 years ago, and how much the three of us have changed in that same time.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I, Aldowyn, and anaphysik do!

And one last little surprise. Let’s spend a few moments going ham and talking about Dishonored 2’s New Game Plus mode.

Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in to even a moment of this series. It was a blast to record with everyone on stream, and I look forward to hanging out with you again!

At long last, it is finally done. The Outsider, an entity on great power, who influenced the fates of so many, has finally been erased from the world. And with this accomplishment, so to ends our Improvisation Run. It has been an incredible experience for me, and I’m glad to have gone through this whole franchise with you all.

If you want to follow me onto the next series, be sure to follow my Twitch channel for content updates.

This area, where the Outsider truly resides, surrounded by the Eyeless Cult, is where the Void seeps into the living world. This makes it a perfect staging ground for the cult, whose sole purpose is to become one with the powers of the Void, obtaining omniscience and omnipotence.

One of the most interesting details about the cultists here is that they are visibly different from normal people. Not only is there skin taking on a grayish discoloration, similar in hue to the land masses the dot the Void when one of the main characters is taken there, but their eyes also glow an eerie yellow hue when they detect you. They are attempt to transform themselves into walking horrors know to them as The Enlightened. But this was not the first method they devised for tapping into the Void’s power.

Long ago, in order to first try to commune with the Void, they kidnapped a boy, and severed his name from him with a mystical knife, killing him. This boy became The Outsider, and entity through which the Void gazes onto the mortal world, and he has been fighting this fate with every fiber of his being ever since. A fate which Billie Lurk, one way or another, ends this night.

There’s also the added factor of the Eye of the Dead God, which hints at deities and powers that existed long before The Outsider. Deities that are so powerful that, even though they are long since passed from this world, still affect their surroundings.

There’s so much going on in Death of the Outsider, and so many different directions they could take the series. It’s a shame we won’t see Dishonored for some time, if at all, for both in story and gameplay this appears to be where the team at Arkane found their stride.

We have one more (brief) scuffle in Dishonored, but afterwards we’ll move onto another game I wish to talk about.
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