The Witcher: Impressions

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I Am Interface

I remember hearing a great deal about the Witcher’s interface back when the game was first released, and I must say that for better or worse the UI is a thing to behold. It’s terribly imposing the first time you encounter it, with swathes of tabs and buttons and modifiers and filters sparingly labeled in inscrutable hieroglyphs all laid out before you at once. It absolutely must be fiddled with and prodded at by the user to be understood. To its credit however, at least you can actually see what you need to see.

What's the latitude and longitude for Smithing again? Last time I thought I had crossed the UI and wound up in Alchemy by mistake.


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Mass Effect 3 – The Worst Boss Fight Ever

Posted on by Ross

Apologies regarding my long absence – everything from the final week of the skiing season to the ending of the Mass Effect trilogy ruining a full-featured update (it really was that bad!) has kept me occupied lately. These things have tied me up long enough that I ran out of pre-planned buffer content, and for this I can only beg some measure of forgiveness. Notification, at the very least, should have been in order. These past eight weeks have been something of a familial event singularity for me, running the gamut from birthday gatherings to (alas) funerals, and so Seventh House has gone relatively neglected whilst I donned unbefitting shirts, feigned well-adjusted normalcy, and occasionally even woke up before noon. Unpleasantries and obligations one and all.

Regardless; the seven-kin have been satiated, I am back in business, business is good, and today I talk about the worst video game experience I have had in a very long time.

In light of what seems like the entire internet having already beaten this deceased equine into a fine paste, I had hoped to spare you all of more Bioware/Mass Effect-themed content at least for the near future. However, this “battle” was an absolute failure of design so far-reaching and insidious that I honestly couldn’t help but talk about why. The number of things wrong with the sequence in question is absolutely staggering, like some unholy amalgam of everything which should not be done when designing an encounter.

Barring of course the appropriate response to poorly-planned writing (ravenous stoats tossed through office windows in the dead of night; also impotent ranting) I had never expected to find myself here purely on behalf of game mechanics. Bioware titles have never exactly been the shining jewel of innovative design; I’ve always been bothered by their uninspired level layouts and awkward navigation, but “frustrating and broken” are not the words which spring to mind when I think of them. Their gameplay tends to take a back seat to the storytelling, and thus rarely risks pulling you out of the experience by taking centre stage. This formula works well for them. Most of the time.
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Mass Effect 3 – Many Words About Trailers

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In typical Seventh House fashion I set out to write a relatively well-ordered and concise multi-topic article with which I could share some impressions from the Mass Effect 3 demo, discuss the awful misuse of random children present in the game’s promotional campaign, and even talk about some ideas I’ve kicked around about what the series might have been like if it continued in the same direction as the first game. Naturally I ran up a total of nearly 2000 words and a bunch of hand-picked flavour images on one of these subjects in short order. The good news is that the next update is already halfway done; the other good news is that I have an article for today! Everybody wins?

Les Enfants Terribles

I suppose it’s only fitting that I dispense with… this before delving into deeper waters with my next update. It’s… well… suffice to say I now understand how the main character of an HP Lovecraft story feels when faced with the task of communicating a thing of indescribable horror, the nature of which the human mind can scarcely grasp, upon an absolute medium. No words nor strokes of the brush can approximate even the barest inklings of the encounter – it must be witnessed to be understood, and then only barely. Behold, and in doing spare me a few paragraphs of frenzied typing (don’t worry – the frenzied typing will still arrive in force below).

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Bulk Influence III Demo Annotated – Part 1

Posted on by Ross

Good evening, sirs and madams. It is my pleasure to inform you all that the Seventh House is back in business after an extended break, and will, with luck, be resuming regular operations in short order.

As such, I’ll be getting back into the swing (and perhaps the subsequent skull-shattering crack) of things this week with a bit of commentary on a video of the Mass Effect 3 demo which surfaced a few days ago. As a disclaimer, these comments are made strictly off of the classy steam-pressed cuffs I most certainly am not wearing, and have not been researched or meticulously planned out beforehand. As such my commentary may be subject to inaccuracy, personal bias, or hilarity both intentional and non. Obviously I won’t be able to form a proper opinion of Mass Effect 3 until I’ve played the game myself, or at least seen more of what it has to offer.

Onward, then, with the show:

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The Gamepocalypse

Posted on by Ross

Every publisher down in Gamesville loved Gamesmas a lot.
But the House, which sat just north of Gamesville, did not.
The House hated Gamesmas! The whole Gamesmas season!
Now please don’t ask why, no one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his budget was too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his wallet was two sizes too small.
But whatever the reason, his head or his dimes, he stood there on Gamesmas, hating this time.

Staring down at his browser with a sour seven-frown
At the triple-A titles below in their town.
For he knew every game down in Gamesville beneath
Was busy now, plotting a holiday release.

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The Bioware RPG: Choices Without Choice – Part 2

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It is frankly bizarre just how many articles have popped up since my last update confirming precisely what I think is the matter with open-ended western RPG’s today. The writers for Mass Effect 2 lamented writing themselves into a corner by making too many aspects of their game open-ended; Yahtzee pointed out the extreme fixation with options in Skyrim and wondered if it was all really necessary; and Dennis Scimeca, author of The Escapist’s First Person column absolutely nailed the lack of narrative and dramatic soul that plagues games that aspire to be all choices without any meaningful choice.

I believe it safe to say that everyone is now talking about this. It has officially become a A Thing. However unlikely, I can hope all this debate leads somewhere and catches the attention of somebody in a position to make a difference. Whatever the end result, it’s already far bigger a debate than I had expected to be getting into in the writing of this ever-humble blog series. With that said: Onward, my revolution! Down with the bourgeois and their false freedom! Choice or death!
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The Bioware RPG: Choices Without Choice – Part 1

Posted on by Ross

Bioware is something of an anomaly in the world of game development: a company that does good business almost entirely through story-driven singleplayer titles and makes bank on the talent of its writers more than the appeal of its graphics or game mechanics. While there are most certainly other developers such as Obsidian who follow a similar strategy and often bring interesting nuanced stories to life in their games, I believe it would be fair to say that Bioware are the biggest fish in this particular aquarium. For better or worse they are largest and most consistent producer of big roleplaying games with a heavy emphasis on plot and characters, and we are at the lowest point in a downward trend.

Precious few people are currently making big story-driven RPG’s, and thanks to the endless production value arms race I described last update, those that are have been forced to make harsh compromises in everything from length to depth to simple subject material. Good luck finding a game where you can play the role of an in-canon scoundrel rather than a hero, abstain from overt violence, not save the world/nation/known universe at the end of the story, or have actual characterization and yet not be a young, fit, handsome male with only the vaguest hint of personality.

Enough of my lamentations about the horrid genre constraints placed upon video game writing – the fact of the matter is that for various reasons, on a given day a Bioware game is your best bet of playing something in which the storytelling itself is a major factor and you are given a measure of control over how your character acts within it. More than half of the big titles which fit this description are from one company. This is unfortunate, because I have beef (salted, ground, and seasoned) with Bioware RPGs – their structure in particular.

Beef #2: It is uncommonly difficult to find good art of Bioware games for this post.


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Modern Level Design: Broken Plumbing

Posted on by Ross

There exists a common concept in level design by the name of flow, used to describe how intuitive a level is to play and navigate. Like a system of plumbing, levels with a good flow will naturally direct players to move through them and onward to each connecting section in order of how important each path actually is, without needless confusion or misleading design. A lot of this comes naturally – it’s common sense that the massive antechamber with a towering steel gate flanked by pits of formless black nether-fluid houses the throne room of some elder god, while the little crack in the wall at the top of a stack of barrels is likely hiding a secret stash of loot in a single dead end room. This also ties into layout design; doors directly across from room entrances are most commonly the way forward on a given path, while things above or far below players are much less likely to be noticed, and the quickest route somewhere is going to be the one most frequently traveled (good logic for designing traps and sneaky alternate paths).

In essence, it’s the estranged game-designing cousin to Feng Shui – everything in its rightful place. The real mastery of flow, however, is a great deal more nuanced than just geometry. Use of lighting, colour, visual themes, and also the learned behaviour of game mechanics can be used to direct players to where they should be going with an unseen hand. Should your game be all about rolling down a hill or falling for instance, the way forward should usually be down a slope, while any detours will split off on a level plane. It’s the sort of infinitely complex discipline Valve tests relentlessly in their games and casino architects leverage to frightening effect.

Sonic the Hedgehog games have a persistent theme of placing a high-difficulty route at the top of the level full of extra lives and powerups which players can strive for while constantly moving forwards. Because gravity naturally pulls them towards the bottom of the stage and fighting it is always rewarded, the end result is a natural flow: higher means harder jumps and better loot; lower means less reward, but safer and easier. Less skilled players naturally get pulled towards an easier path each time they fall, while ones looking for a challenge can always fight their way skyward for greater risk and reward. Good flow is all about making players aware of their options.

Above: The Spoils. Below: Gravity.

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