Okay, video content is simply hard to produce on a consistent basis. Editing videos takes time, and doesn’t allow for much interaction.

Streaming is comparatively easy, allows for audience participation, and automatically saves a video of the event. This makes it a lot easier both for me to make content for you, and for you to have your voice heard.
My friends David Phillips and Andre Doucet joined me to play the demo for Quantic Dream’s Detroit: Become Human. Here is the result:

Because of the games he produces and his presentation, it is easy to focus on and make fun of David Cage, especially in light of recent events. In the stream, even we fall victim to this trap. However, it is important to note that script aside, there is clearly a level of talent at Quantic Dream that shows in the environment, modeling, and detail that goes into the production of Detroit. These are high-quality assets in play, and the motion capture/actor performance is top notch.

And despite Andre’s (legitimate) gripe that Cage’s script doesn’t make effective use of the setting, the scene is executed well. I’ve seen people on Twitter talk about how playing this demo sold them on the game, largely on the strength of this scene. To be fair to those people, who don’t have prior experience with Quantic Dream, this is a very powerful scene. Sure, it’s cliche. But in that cliche, David Cage offers more than enough to hook his audience in.

The reason my friend David, Andre, and I approach this demo with such cynicism is because we all have experience with David Cage games. The thing Cage excels at is writing individual scenes. Barring some of the questionable positions he’s written his female characters into over the years, individual scenes are always strong on their own. In particular, the opening of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy stands out as some of his best work.

But once he’s asked to tie them together into something coherent, or to cash in on all the hooks and lingering plot threads he’s established over the course of a story, they almost always come crashing down in a fantastic display. I won’t speak for Andre or David, but a scene like this, as impressive as it is, only puts me on guard. Whatever potential that exists here is likely to be squandered later.

This has only become more clear as other studios enter the space of “narrative-heavy adventure” games, like Telltale and Hazelight (the makers of A Way Out), often with lower budgets, they show a mastery of the medium that Cage seems to lack. They understand how interactivity impacts the end-user experience, often producing content of a better narrative-quality (even if it lacks the visual polish of Cage’s recent work).

Maybe this will be Cage’s best work to date. Maybe this will be the one that finally breaks the curse, but I doubt it.

I make no secret of the fact that Ubisoft and I have an on-again, off-again relationship. Every now and then they create a game like Assassin’s Creed: Origins, that I can easily sink 50+ hours into without thinking — sure, it may have its flaws, but there’s clearly a level of love and care imbued into the final product. Other times, they are liable to produce content like Watch_Dogs, which paints itself as a typical, by-the-numbers open-world revenge story that left me sour and disappointed. From my previous experiences with 3, 4, and Primal, I was expecting the fifth entry in the Far Cry franchise to be dumb but otherwise milquetoast: A decent open-world shooter with a story that brought up some interesting ideas that ultimately go nowhere.
Instead, what I received was one of the worst stories I had ever seen in an Ubisoft game. Even more than the villainous Aiden Pearce in Watch_Dogs, Far Cry 5 left me contemptuous and ultimately resentful of the direction the developers chose to go. There are some very dangerous implications behind the story, particularly the ending, and they need to be discussed. (Though it goes without saying, there are spoilers abound, so read at your own risk.)

For those of you who haven’t finished the game, Far Cry 5 takes place in the fictional county of Hope, Montana, where a cult of doomsday-preppers has set up the mysterious ‘Project at Eden’s Gate’, led by Joseph “The Father” Seed. After a video documenting recent abductions and a string of violent incidents involving cult members goes viral, , a warrant is served for Joseph Seed’s arrest. The player assumes the role of ‘Rook’, a nameless, faceless deputy in Hope County, assisting the local sheriff and a US Marshall in executing the warrant.
Unfortunately for the player and their fellows in law enforcement, this event was exactly what the cultists were waiting for. Preaching that “God will not let you take me!”, Seed raves that attempting to arrest him is the “breaking of the First Seal” that sets in motion the end of the world as we know it. After the arrest attempt inevitably goes south, the deputy is rescued by a man named Dutch. Dutch claims that if the player wants to confront The Father, they will first need build up a resistance force by causing enough havoc to draw out and kill his three lieutenants, referred to as “The Family”.
Three dead commanders later, Joseph Seed invites Deputy No-Name to join him at the church where they first tried to haul him in. There, he reveals that he has used a previously-established magical substance known as “Bliss” to brainwash the resistance forces the player has gathered throughout the campaign, compelling them to hold the other three law enforcement officers who came with the player at gunpoint. He offers to let them and the player go if they promise to leave immediately and cease their efforts to imprison him, which the player can choose to do. If they instead make the only logical choice to fight on, the deputy rains a hail of bullets on their former allies so that they can revive them, turning them good again in one of the dumbest final boss segments I have ever played in a first-person shooter. Then, and only then, can The Father finally be defeated…
…or not. After the fight, Seed laments that “The Final Seal has been broken” — and then a nuclear bomb goes off in the background. Yes, really. To which the whole cast hops into a truck and evacuates to Dutch’s bomb shelter from the beginning of the game. Once again, things go poorly, and the player wakes up inside the aforementioned shelter to find themselves cuffed to a bedpost. Lying dead in a pool of his own blood is Dutch himself, with Seed watching over him, cleaning the knife that delivered the fatal blow. As the player awakens, they are confronted at knife-point. Blaming them for “breaking the seals and unleashing hell on earth,” the former Father says that were it not for the fact that no one else is left, he would gladly kill the player for what they’ve done. Then, credits roll. If you return to the main menu afterwards, the previously idyllic intro screen has been transformed into a nuclear hellscape.
At the time I finished the game, I had assumed that The Father was the one that called down the bomb that devastated Hope County. I believed that he detonated them out of spite, blaming me for the consequences of his own actions. While this annoyed me, it’s par for the course when it comes to video games pretentiously spouting fatalistic pseudo-philosophy in the hopes of sounding intellectual. However, a friend of mine mentioned that if one were to listen to radio broadcasts while driving in-game, there are talks of escalating global tensions leading to potential nuclear war. As it turns out, a foreign country had opened hostilities against the US at the exact time that the player defeated Joseph Seed.
This might be dismissed as coincidence, if it weren’t for the rest of Far Cry 5 itself. According to the rantings of both Joseph Seed and his Heralds, after smothering his just-born daughter (whose birth killed the mother), Joseph had a vision from god. He saw that once he was apprehended, bound against his will, the world as we know it would come an end, drenched in fire. Several events would precede this moment. The ones who would eventually bind him would fail their first attempt. They would then proceed to assassinate those closest to Seed, reject his charity, and only then would they finally emerge victorious, triggering the great calamity. Believing this to be inevitable, he created the Project at Eden’s Gate to safeguard enough people that the human race could live on.
His insane, absurdly specific prophecy about the end of the world, unlike the rantings of every doomsayer before him, is one-hundred percent unequivocally correct. And considering just how accurate every single detail of this account is, it would be absolutely mad to blame sheer happenstance. That, more than anything else in this entire story, is a problem.
Similar beliefs exist in modern America to a much greater scale than you might initially think. Even outside of relatively modern doomsday cultsthroughout the world, the idea that the end times are upon us is more accepted than it should be. Roughly 50 million people in Americabelieve that they will be “raptured” away any moment now: That Christ will descend upon Israel and take the true believers with him to the gates of Heaven, leading to the literal End of Days. Some of the people in that group are very prominent politicians, many of them still in office today. Much of US foreign policy (particularly revolving around Israel), climate change policy, and other policies, are subtly or not-so-subtly influenced by the idea that we are living in the end times. Why bother tackling global warming when we know we humans aren’t going to be around to feel its effects? Why should we attempt to bring peace to a region of strife when we fundamentally believe that very conflict is itself a sign that heaven is not too far away? Actual people who hold power over these crucial decisions go in with these thoughts.
I can’t claim to know the minds and hearts of Far Cry 5’s creative team. I wasn’t in the writing’s cubicle, where these decisions were being made. I can only speak to the content of the game they created. That said, to present Father Joseph Seed as “correct” in his prophecy is to give credence to these voices. Ubisoft and the dev team have chosen to validate those who abdicate responsibility to work towards a better world in faith that there will soon no longer be a world to improve. As Waypoint’s Cameron Kunzelman pointed out in an editorial, there is no counterpoint to the cult’s ravings: The protagonist is silent, and the resistance forces are too focused on removing the cult’s power base to talk about what they’ve done to the people of Hope County. The doomsayers are given even more power to spread their message in this game than they have in real life.
Even more aggravating is how the game treats the player for daring to oppose the rabid, murderous cult. Throughout the game, the Heralds all admonish Deputy No-Name for their violence. In my run, I had dismissed this as just another one of the franchises laughable attempts to address the nature of violent video games, much like Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4 before now. I distinctly remember shouting at my television “I wouldn’t keep killing you if you didn’t insist on shooting me on sight” during one of these speeches. It’s annoying, but vanilla.
But it’s tough to think of it in the same way given the full context of the game. After all, in this specific story, the cult is confirmed to be one-hundred percent correct about the coming of the end times. It makes sense for them to take hold of all the resources of this area, since they know that they’ll need them to survive once the bombs fall. Of course they’d try to recruit everyone they can, even if it has to be through torture, drugs, and brainwashing. They’re just ‘mercifully’ trying to save them from their impending fate. Since the end is coming, and not everyone can be saved, they simply don’t have time to take less drastic measures. If only this player could understand how their selfish heroism is damning people who were otherwise going to survive.
Proving that the cult’s prophecy was true, and that the world does end once those conditions are met, Far Cry 5 retroactively justifies every sadistic action performed by the Project at Eden’s Gate. Conversely, it criticizes not just the player, but anyone who would condemn such actions, even in the real world. If you reading this are someone who actively works to protect people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and/or women from the many threats to their well-being, Far Cry 5 wants you to know that you might be wrong for doing so. After all, the crazies might be right. Your gay friends might actually be going to hell for loving another person of the same gender. Who are you to get in the way of their salvation?
These aren’t questions that deserve to be asked. This is not a political platform that should be up for debate. These beliefs genuinely harm people of all stripes across the world, and very a tacit acceptance of them is not something I can take lightly. I felt uncomfortable just writing the above two paragraphs because I’m genuinely afraid someone might take that as praise for the game, excited that it’s worldview aligns with their own. As a cisgender white male, I can’t speak to the level of damage these ideas can cause, but I know that harm has been, is being, and will be done, and this game might further that.
As previously stated, I found it hard to believe Ubisoft intended this to be the underlying moral of Far Cry 5, given my long and storied history with them. That said, there was a whole team of writers who worked on this game. They should be able to think through the logical implications behind their own script. The creative leads for this project presented a statement in support of doomsday cults and against people who were earnestly fight to safeguard their fellows from those who would openly oppress them, whether or not they intended to. (And I honestly don’t care which.) I expected Far Cry 5 to have nothing of substance to say. What I did not expect was to be left quaking in anger and disbelief at the choices made in creating this game. Taken holistically, Far Cry 5 is one of the most damnable games to be released in recent history.

The game industry is notorious for a number of problems, one of them being an almost complete unwillingness to let any information slip out even a second before schedule. But almost paradoxically, despite this level of secrecy, leaks are commonplace. Gaming journalists like Jason Schreier and Laura Kate Dale over at Kotaku have broken stories of upcoming projects, games, and announcements with great accuracy, and before the publishers in question wanted the leaked knowledge to go public.
That said, video games are not the only source of entertainment with such unscheduled reveals. Early last month, one of the oldest collectible card games around had a premature disclosure. Before the leak, it was widely known that Magic: The Gathering’s next set of cards would take place in the plane of Dominaria, but one of their offices in China erroneously sent out specifics on what cards would be contained in this set, along with mechanical or verbiage changes that would be in effect going forward. I’m not interested in discussing the leak itself in any significant detail. Instead, I want to discuss the response from the company that makes Magic, Wizards of the Coast(WotC), and how they provide a stark contrast to how the game industry handles similar events.
Yet before we do, it’s important to understand how the game industry tends to act when details are revealed to the public before their intended date. When leaks happen, the first thing publishers almost always do is deny it in very specific terms, or go radio silent. Before her current job at Kotaku UK, Laura Dale was a journalist working for Destructoid UK, where she disclosed that a new DLC project, titled Rush of Blood, was coming to Until Dawn for the PlayStation 4’s VR headset. The developers, Supermassive Games, hosted an AMA on Reddit shortly thereafter, where they both declined to comment on the story and specifically stated that there was “no DLC” in the works.
To most people, that reads as if the story Laura Dale reported had no basis in reality, but that would’ve been a misconception. Until Dawn: Rush of Blood was absolutely being developed for PlayStation VR. The difference is that it was never going to be a DLC for the base game: It was a stand-alone. Technically, no lie was ever spoken, as the claim that “no DLC” was being developed was completely true. Still, rather than just reveal that game’s existence, both Sony and Supermassive Games deliberately tried to obfuscate the truth of the matter. In the similar case of premature release of the PS4 Slim, Sony took the less egregious path of just declining comment.
Denying the story isn’t the only thing publishers are viable to do in response. Occasionally, punitive actions are taken against the outlet who released the information. Historically, this comes in the form of blacklisting said source, refusing to answer inquiries from them and/or give them pre-release product for the purpose of review. Kotaku has famously been the victim of several such orders, with Bethesda as a result of their Fallout 4 leak and Ubisoft after Assassin’s Creed: Victory (later Syndicate) details were disclosed prior to the game’s official announcement. Laura Dale faced similar stonewalling from Nintendo after uncovering the existence of the Switch. While these companies are obviously within their rights to refuse requests for comment, deny rumors, or to hand out review copies, it frequently comes across as needlessly combative.
Which brings us back to Wizards. Shortly after the Dominaria spoilers came to light, translated within days after its release, WotC wrote a blog post on their website about it. Rather than pretend it didn’t happen and sweep it under the rug, they publicly acknowledged the existence of the information. In order to avoid potential confusion, mistranslation, and idle speculation, their team opted to provide official copies of the leak’s contents in various languages. This isn’t to say that they were happy it happened, and even in their acknowledgment WotC says they are disappointed in how this information came out, but they were able to roll with the punches. There were even plans to accelerate the pace of the reveal until the fans themselves said that while they were excited: They still wanted something similar to the “usual” hype that surrounds a new set being released.
Admittedly, I and many of my friends who play Magic would not have heard about these leaks without Wizards official acknowledgment of them. That said, most of us had our own separate reactions to it. Scouring through list of new cards, I was already starting to plan new decks, and modifications to decks I had already built. I and one of my co-workers began to talk about how some of the new rule changes could impact the games we play over lunch. Some of my gender-nonconformist friends latched onto the fact that “he or she” would be replaced with “they”, both reducing the wordiness of card text and subtly acknowledging the existence of the gender spectrum. There was a lot to talk about, and almost all of it was positive. Despite the way it came out, it was still cool to have the “hype train” start a little early, and all of us were excited to see what else would come.
My point isn’t that game publishers necessarily have to go public and admit the full details of every project that gets leaked. WotC didn’t even do that. They kept more than a few details, like the art for the cards, secret so they still had something to surprise their audience with. That said, this incident clearly shows that there is room to handle these kinds of disclosures tactfully. What Wizards did that the game industry rarely does is seamlessly transformed it into part of their marketing. It didn’t even require them to make any actual changes to their official release schedule. As someone who watches the game industry struggle to deny and rebuke information that is so obvious to the rest of us, it was more than a little refreshing to have a major corporation go “Yeah, it’s a real leak, and it sucks. That said, it could be worse.” Leaks happen, and the industry at large could learn a thing or two from WotC about how to handle themselves when they do.

It is the year 1946, and the Nazis are an ever looming threat. As the Allies struggle against the overwhelming tide of fascism, I, Captain William Joseph Blazkowicz, am on a mission to cut the head off the snake. Lead by Wing Commander Fergus Reid and with aid from Private Probst Wyatt IIIand the rest of our squad, I storm the infamous Castle Wolfenstein in order to assassinate General Deathshead. As the source of the Nazis inexplicably advanced weaponry, ridding the world of his evil would cripple their efforts across the theater of war. At first, all goes well. Fergus’s leadership, and my prowess on the battlefield, allow us to make steady advances as our Allied forces distract the enemy.
This progress comes at a heavy price, as many of the others in our unit simply don’t make it. Ultimately, with just me, Fergus, and Wyatt remaining, Deathshead easily captures us. But simply killing us isn’t enough for the depraved sadist. He sees potential in my teammates, Fergus and Wyatt both, for use in his experiments. Unable to choose which one to dissect, this evil man forces me to make that choice for him, or he’ll execute all three of us on the spot. Having gotten to know and value the leadership of Commander Reid, and not having as much time to cultivate that same bond with Private Wyatt, I make the grim decision to spare my Commander, leaving an innocent young man to die a needless death.
In doing so, I have made a terrible mistake.

My first playthroughs of both Wolfenstein: The New Order, and it’s sequel, The New Colossus, were conducted under the timeline where Probst Wyatt III was sacrificed to the experiments conducted by General Deathshead, leaving Fergus Reid to take a leading role in the KreisauCircle, the resistance to the Nazi-controlled world government that would reign supreme in light of our failure to assassinate Deathshead. Now, several months after the conversation around The New Colossus ended, I find myself with not a lot coming out. This meant it was the perfect time to make a run of both games, but instead sacrificing Fergus to spare Wyatt, and see what I had missed as a result of my previous choice.
Had I known back when I made my first choice what I know now, I would never have sacrificed Wyatt. Out the two timelines, the one where he is spared is superior.
One of the ways in which this manifests, even in The New Order, is by the companion character each one of them adds to the resistance in their timelines. In Fergus’s timeline, a mathematician/philosopher named Tekla is recruited into the Kreisau Circle. She believes that there is no such thing as free will, that everything is a matter of cause and effect. Her cutscenes discuss this and other philosophical concepts like the conscience and the soul, whether or not they exist, and how/why that would matter. While these are fascinating questions that my inner philosophy student would love to discuss to no end, the answers aren’t particular relevant to the thematic content contained within either The New Order or its sequel.
In addition, when I sat down to plan out how I would write this piece, arguing in favor of the Wyatt timeline, I found myself completely unable to recall anything about Tekla or her character from my original run of Wolfenstein: The New Order. I didn’t even remember her name, relying on Google and YouTube to bring back what was lost in the confines of my mind. That, to me, spoke more about how I must have felt about her back then more than any recollection ever could.
But in the Wyatt timeline, she’s not there at all. Where Fergus’s leadership paves the way for a analyst like Tekla to join the group, Wyatt approaches things differently. Instead, his command brings the guitarist known as J (heavily implied to be this universe’s Jimi Hendrix) into the fold. In the interactions between him and Blazkowicz, he brings up points that much more directly relate to the story of a world in which the Nazis won World War 2 and conquered the earth. Namely, when BJ calls out that J has yet to actually take part in any of the fighting, he counters by pointing out the real life hypocrisy of the United States going to war against Nazi Germany when they were also participating in systemic oppression and racism against minorities. In a way, it even foreshadows the direction Machine Games would eventually take the sequel, moving to America and putting a sharper focus on that inherent systemic inequality.
It would be unfair to compare my personal memories of J with those of Tekla. Having just played through The New Order in the Wyatt timeline a week ago, of course they are still fresh. That said, when I speak with friends who saved Wyatt way back in their original game, and haven’t played since, they still talk about how incredible J is in all of his moments. On top of the aforementioned social commentary, J leaves his mark through the scene where he shares some hallucinogens with BJ and in his death, playing the Star-Spangled Banner at max volume as he is shot by a group of Nazi soldiers. While Tekla struggles to stay with players, J remains memorable long after the game is complete.
But beyond having a better supporting character, Wyatt himself is more compelling a character than Fergus. This is easier to talk about in The New Colossus, because that’s where the bigger divergences start to happen. Early on in the Fergus timeline, a Nazi general hacks off one of Fergus’s arms, which he later gets replaced with a robotic equivalent. Despite being attached to him, the arm has a mind of own, often sabotaging its alleged master. Much of the drama and comedy in the B-plot of this timeline comes from these antics. While I did chuckle more than a couple of times at Fergus’s expense, that subplot doesn’t go anywhere and he ends the story in much the same place he was when it began. It felt as if Machine Games didn’t know what they wanted to do with his character, which comes in stark contrast to Wyatt.
Unlike Fergus, who has always been comfortable taking the lead, Wyatt is both timid and easy-going. In The New Order, and the start of The New Colossus, he has difficulty coping with the fact that people in the resistance look to him for leadership and guidance. Once Caroline, the current head of the Kreisau Circle, is killed, Wyatt nearly has a panic attack as he realizes he’s the only one who could be reasonably expected to take charge. In this state, he goes through the belonging he salvaged from J, who had died in The New Order, and started partaking in his… secret stash. This not only does create some of the funniest moments in the game, but also one of the most touching.
Towards the end of The New Colossus, after the party scene, Wyatt goes missing. When Blazkowicz finds him, he’s in bad shape. Up until that point, we as players don’t have many chances to see what Wyatt was like before we first met him. But here, in the grip of the an acid trip, we start to get the full backstory of a young boy whose dad had planned for him to enter politics. A kid who, without a clear idea of what he wanted to do or what he was even good at, joined the military and got swept up in events largely beyond his control. It’s hard, at least for me, not to feel a pang of sympathy for the character.
Seeing Wyatt and what is clearly a low point makes what happens next all the sweeter. After seizing control of the Nazi’s global oversight apparatus and eliminating Frau Engel, the general in charge after General Deathshead is defeated in The New Order, the resistance comes together to broadcast their message to the American people. It’s here the Wyatt, this inexperienced and inept kid thrust into a position of authority, finally begins to take up the mantle everyone around him knew he was able to. He delivers a powerful speech on his own, clearly nervous but still comfortable enough to be a leader. (Credit also goes to his voice actor for nailing the perfect balance of emotions for that role.) Where Fergus goes nowhere (and even his version of the speech just has him flailing around at the tail end), Wyatt develops as a person.
Though Fergus can certainly get the job done, keeping the story going, he’s static. There’s nowhere for him to go as a character. Compared to him, Wyatt is a much more flawed and vulnerable human being. Instead of being a weakness, those flaws give him a weight and emotional heft than Fergus cannot hope to reach. They also afford him room to grow, culminating in a resounding resolution for his arc. If you, like me, sided with Fergus on your first run, you owe it to yourself to experience the Wyatt timeline in all its glory. And if you haven’t played the new Wolfenstein games at all, get on that.

At last, the Kingdom Hearts Primer comes to a close.

If you’re curious about Sam’s thoughts on Persona 3 and it’s extra epilogue, The Answer, you can check out his post on them here.

Remember, as of the time of this post, the reveals regarding Riku’s new outfit, Vanitas, and the new footage from the Monster’s Inc world had not happened. Considering how much time Sam and I have spent on this project, we were getting exhausted by the hype train. I still stand by what I said, in that I need to see Kingdom Hearts 3 in my hands before I believe it’s done, but you have to understand the context behind the statement.

This movie as a whole occupies a bizarre place. The fact that it’s part of “Final Chapter Prologue” implies there is some relevance to Kingdom Hearts 3, but I just don’t see it. Nothing here feels like it is of any consequence.

I’m left with a bizarre mixed of excitement at Kingdom Hearts 3, exhaustion from the Primer series, and confusion as to what Back Cover implies is in store for the franchise’s future.

We’re so close to truly, honestly finished out this Primer series. Just one more episode after this one.

I don’t actually have a whole lot to add here in the post-script. It’s almost sad that Back Cover is the last thing we talk about in this project. Not much of note happens, and the whole film comes across as milquetoast.

And here comes the finale of 0.2

At the time we recorded this video, the trailers that were release earlier this month had not yet come out. Nor was the announcement that the game’s release date would be formally revealed at E3 this year.

As much as those reveals did a lot to warm my heart to the idea of Kingdom Hearts 3 again, I still stand by my earlier statements that Kingdom Hearts 3’s hype train started to grow into a massive problem. Part of why the most recent reveals were so important was that they give off the impression that Kingdom Hearts 3 might actually be finished some time soon.

Sam and I also talked about the prospect of shorter, character-focused RPGs and how much we’d be willing to spend on them. I’d like to pose that question to you guys reading this as well:

  • Would you be interested in a shorter, 4-6 hour RPG?
  • How much would be willing to spend on it if you are?
Mostly, I want to know if you guys are as into that idea as Sam and I are.

(Credit to this artist for the font)
Ever since a friend(?) asked me to join him in campaigns across Dead Space 3, Resident Evil 5, and Resident Evil 6, I have tried to broaden my horizons and open up to the horror genre. Up until then, I had avoided them like the plague because I was (for lack of a better phrasing) afraid to be scared. With mixed results, I’ve dived into the previous Dead Space games, Amnesia, Outlast, and a couple of others. This is why Resident Evil 7: Biohazard caught my attention last year despite not caring too much for RE6. Game critics and personal friends of mine who played it sang its praises, raising more than a few eyebrows.

But instead of rushing out to buy it, I waited… I waited because Resident Evil 7 would serve as a flagship game for the virtual reality headset Sony had created for the PS4. This wasn’t just some mediocre extra mode that takes 5-10 minutes to play to stick some “VR Compatible” sticker on the box: The entire game was fully playable in VR from start to finish. Since I had already made plans to buy a PS VR headset, I decided to hold off on getting Resident Evil 7 until then. One Christmas and one playthrough later, and now I want to talk about the game, VR, and how they affected my opinions of each other.

Prior to Resident Evil 7, I had already begun using my VR headset on other games. I did not spend long with them: A few 20-minute sessions of Rez and an hour and a half with Thumper at most. Resident Evil 7 was just the first one I played that wasn’t deemed “VR Safe”, since those other two weren’t really known to induce motion sickness. Though I was aware of the possibility, it is one thing to hear about VR-induced motion sickness… and quite another to experience it first hand. After the first 20 minutes of playing with the headset on, I had an overwhelming nausea. Since I generally have a strong stomach, I thought it might have been something I ate, but it was growing increasingly clear that the game was the root cause. Thankfully, I wasn’t sick enough to induce vomiting. That said, the unpleasantness almost swore me off playing Resident Evil 7 in VR altogether.

A good night’s rest later, my stomach given enough time to settle, I resumed my run, only without the headset. After making some progress, I felt the urge to VR Mode another chance. “Maybe it was just a fluke,” I thought to myself. Admittedly, it took a little longer than the 20 minutes of the last session, and my symptoms weren’t as severe, but once again I found myself ejecting the headset off my face in the name of sweet relief and once again I found myself thinking I would never do this again, this time saying so on Twitter.

Fortunately in this case (and unfortunately in several others), I’m a stubborn fool when I want to be. Whether out of some misguided, macho notion that “I can’t possibly be so weak that a video game is making me ill”, a feeling that I couldn’t let the money spent on this VR headset go to waste, a sense that the third time might actually be the charm, or some combination of the three, I was compelled to make one last attempt to play this cursed game in VR. Only this time, nothing happened: I was no longer experiencing the ill effects of motion sickness. Those symptoms never came back for the duration of my playthrough, most of it with the headset on. I’m not saying that everyone will get magically cured of VR-sickness through sheer force of will, but it did take several play sessions before I was personally able to handle it.

After crossing that threshold, analyzing the other effects virtual reality had on my experience became a lot easier. The first thing that comes to mind is how the control and camera systems are modified for VR Mode. Obviously, the developers couldn’t map the control scheme in standard play to virtual reality without exacerbating the aforementioned motion sickness. Concessions needed to be made, and one such change is in the way the camera works. Since the headset can track cranial movement, players can simply move their head to look around the environment, crosshairs in the center of their view. To allow people (like me) to play while sitting, the camera can both be re-centered at anytime, or moved to the left or right in 30 degree increments by tilting the right analog stick.

When contrasted against the standard control scheme, this offers an intriguing trade-off. One can move their head to accurately hover the aiming reticle over a target, allowing for a level of precision that is simply not possible with a controller. In-game, this meant that while I was in VR, I was able to put off headshots consistently, rarely missing a shot except in dire circumstances. This doesn’t mean that I had too much difficulty aiming in normal play. But without the headset, there was a noticeable increase in wasted shots, where I either hit my enemies in less vulnerable body parts or missed altogether. Considering that Resident Evil 7 is a survival horror game where ammo is scarce and every shot counts, this made my life in the Baker house a lot safer.

Sadly, all boons come at some price, and where the headset improved my basic ability to point-and-shoot, it detracted from my ability to move about the space. As previously stated, in VR it is only possible to move the camera to the left or right in 30 degree increments. While roaming around a relatively safe area, this is hardly even noticeable and barely worth calling attention to. The drawbacks are more pronounced once players are thrown deeper into the action. In my run, this became clear early on during the confrontation with Jack Baker after the dinner scene. As you can see in this video, it’s a simple scene. The player merely needs to backtrack to the dining room, run passed Jack, grab the hatch key, and sneak under the house.

This exchange can be done easily in standard controls, but in VR this isn’t quite as straightforward. Notice in that short clip all of the times where the camera moves slightly to the left or right, orienting the player such that it’s easier to sprint around/passed Jack. These micro-movements aren’t as simple to perform in virtual reality. In this segment alone, I had to tilt both my head and the camera a great deal so that I could navigate this space without getting pummeled. Coincidentally, this was also where I got motion sick the 2nd time. I took off the headset to finish the scene and progress a little farther. It was remarkable how much easier it was without it. As the game granted me more weapons and options to fight back, this became less of an issue because I could fight back. Though the awkwardness never truly went away, it would be more accurate to say that I simply learned how to compensate for it.

What was most affecting about using the VR headset was the way in dramatically increased the sense of place. It’s a tired cliché, but the adage that the “immersiveness” of virtual reality is much easier to demonstrate than it will ever be to describe on paper is an apt one. Since I don’t have the resources to hand a headset and a copy of Resident Evil 7 to every single person reading, I will instead do as best a job I can explaining what it feels like.

In a mini-rant I wrote on Twitter, I described the helmet as a “sensory deprivation chamber”. While I’m not the first person to make that comparison, drowning out the outside world is as much as advantage as it is a hazard of VR. Lacking the ability to see or hear anything from outside the game brings sharp focus to the events occurring inside the game. I can’t speak for anyone else, but while I’m gaming I like to catch up on podcasts or watch a couple of videos from my YouTube queue. For horror games like Resident Evil 7, I try not to in order to preserve the game’s atmosphere, but I do occasionally slip into old habits while sorting through inventory or when I’m certain the game won’t be trying to unsettle me. When I’m stuck, I might even just go look for a walkthrough to figure out where I’m supposed to go. Needless to say, doing any of this is difficult with headphones piping the game’s sound directly into my ears and a headset streaming my character’s perspective directly into my eyes. With those barriers in place, it is impossible to perceive anything aside from the experience, drawing all of attention directly to the Baker House and the monsters within.

This focus created a bizarre intimacy with all the things that were trying to murder me. Being able to fully move my head and see with the eyes of Ethan, the protagonist, is certainly one aspect to what makes virtual reality so immersive, but another is simply the blurring of the fourth wall. I was still aware that I was just playing a game, especially since they was still a HUD and I could physically see that my “hands” were just free floating objects unbound to any form of in-game body. But in that space, there was no TV separating me from my in-game avatar. For all intent and purposes, it felt like I was transposed onto the main character. It wasn’t Ethan who was fighting for his life, it was me.

I could also tell that I was more affected by the oppressive sense of dread Resident Evil 7 was trying to evoke than I would have been without wearing that helmet. This is slightly embarrassing to admit, but when I play scary games, one of the ways I cope with the dread of what might try to attack me next is by trash talking. I can’t even begin to explain why, but insulting whatever monster or death trap I’m up against helps me not only to keep calm, but stay focused and figure out what I need to do. During my first playthrough of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, this is how I was able to face the infamous watermonster without losing my cool, and eventually figure out effective ways to outmaneuver it.

In the early game of Resident Evil 7, when the player is given limited means to fight back, much of what sustains the tension is that sense of dread. While I was playing normally, without the headset, my behavior was in line with what is described above. To “psyche myself up”, I hurled an untold number of insults and innuendos at the Baker family and the monsters they kept around their estate. I did not notice until I had taken the time to ponder my experiences, but while I was in virtual reality, that trash talk immediately ceased. It seems foolish to clam up because I was afraid that the immediate threat would hear me and come running. They are as artificial as any other monster from any other horror game, but the common sense to make that observation eluded me. Inside that headset, the illusion was great enough to pierce the veil of confidence I normally wear for games like this. Again, at no point was the fourth wall ever truly dissolved, but it blurred such that I no longer felt as “safe” as I would have when playing normally. That, more than anything, exemplifies how radical virtual reality can be.

While Resident Evil 7 definitely doesn’t require VR, it’s a great game to show off both what gives it its potential and what holds it back. After fighting through the motion sickness, and learning to adjust to the new control paradigm, I was able to get an amazing experience that I would have never been able to otherwise. VR probably won’t ever get more than a niche audience, but within that space there’s still a ton of potential. Having finished my trials at the Baker Estate, I’m more eager than ever to see what other applications, even outside of gaming, the technology has to offer.

Surprising everyone, we have a lot of good things to say about Kingdom Hearts in this episode.

At the end of this episode, we begin to talk about how A Fragmentary Passage is a solid, 2-4 character piece (that also shows off the technology that will be used in Kingdom Hearts 3). The fact that it is such a concise, yet mostly complete experience is a large part of what makes it so successful.

As much as I love RPGs, the commitment required to finish most of the games in that genre is a huge barrier, especially as I come into a part of my life where I generally don’t have to worry about being able to afford games. Persona 5 was one of my favorite games last year, but it’s not easy to recommend a 100+ hour game to somebody. And it’s especially not easy to dedicate the time to it.

Though it’s hardly a great example of the genre, stuff like this and Alpha Protocol shows that it is possible to make RPGs that players don’t have to spent months of their life playing. Undertale also did that only a few year ago. I’d love to see more RPGs so this route, if only for the selfish reason that it slides into my schedule more effortlessly.

Settle in, ladies and gentleman, because things are getting self-referential and existential.

It’s very ironic to talk about how people watch YouTube content podcast style when the footage for this “Let’s Play” got corrupted.

It feels strange to talk about YouTube and how to work around it’s many problems in the wake of all the recent controversies surrounding it. With the “adpocalypse”, the rise of YouTube criticism in video games, and the rest of the “YouTube culture”, it’s a subject that probably won’t go away anytime soon.

In a way, the whole reason I came up with the queue system in the first place was that the intended way to watch content on YouTube, to follow the recommended videos and keep watching through Autoplay, just didn’t fit into my schedule. I found myself annoyed at all of the great content I wanted to watch and missed out on. Thus, the queue was formed.

I know it’s weird, and I doubt many other people use systems like that, but it works for me.
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