Y'know, sometimes people fixate on some baseless idea and will not let go of it, continually doubling down until they begin to believe their very existence revolves around this one irrational flight of fancy.

Thank God it's not common.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

"Frō the highest spire of contentment,
My fortune is throwne,
And feare, and griefe, and paine for my deserts, for my deserts,
Are my hopes since hope is gone."

 

John Dowland - Lachrimae Pavans / Flow My Tears

 

 

Help, I have a tapeworm! And consumption! And I never learned how to read!

... however, I do brew a mean moonshine.

But first, fun fact:

Back around Y2K when I was playing Counterstrike (which is the only time to play Counterstrike) one of the sniper rifles (no, not the inexcusable one) lacked a targeting reticle unscoped. Presumably that was meant to make it harder to aim. Which it did. So I just grabbed a marker and daubed a little green dot in the middle of my computer screen. Low-tech but effective.

Interface handicaps can only go so far, is what I'm saying.

I don't know what exactly I was expecting from Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I bought it while nostalgic for Morrowind, then heard it might be something like Thief, installed it to stave off my craving for Bannerlord and gritted my teeth through the first twenty hours making unflattering similes to ELEX or GreedFall. Now I'm leaning more toward Miasmata (carrying my weight in flowers) and my opinion will change again once I get back into fighting. Partly it's my own fault. Jaded old wolf that I am, I dove blindly right into hardcore mode relying on my accumulated metagaming expertise to keep me safe, and I would not recommend it for a first run. Deliverance functions according to quite a few unusual or annoying mechanics, some hyper-realistic, others merely idiosyncratic.

 

From the start it becomes obvious that half their budget must've sank into cutscenes. After a brief tutorial letting you learn how to talk to NPCs, eat apples and click to swing your mighty fists of Bohemian fury, you're tossed into a horrendous clutter of cutscene after cutscene after cutscene, interspersed with do-or-die tests of pressing buttons you're just now being informed exist (like galloping) or fights you have no idea whether you're even supposed to win or not before the next cutscene triggers. Even outside of cutscenes, every single thing seems to trigger some overwrought animation: talking to merchants who have no dialogue, zooming into an alchemy bench, taking hold of a ladder to climb it, everything takes twice as long as it should. The little herb-picking animation, because it briefly, disorientingly flips your point of view, is even actively counterproductive in hardcore mode for reasons soon to be discussed. And, once you get your mutt, Mutt, you'll be clicking through even more unnnecessary animations for his uncanny knack for getting underfoot. (Though, admittedly, if you're ever had a dog, that's just truth in advertising.)

The over-scripting also extends to NPC interactions. At one point I heard a guard order me to stop for a routine stolen goods search... from the other side of a fence, his pathfinding apparently insufficient to navigate a 180 turn. By the time I figured out where he was and made my way to him, he was already attacking me for resisting arrest.

The absolute worst of it is melee combat. Archery, meh, the lack of a targeting reticle isn't too limiting, and I've hunted a couple of rabbits already. But for melee, instead of FPSlasher weapon swipes they wanted to institute a system of Mortal Kombat "moves" which play out when you time your button-mashing correctly. The result, however, interferes far, far more than it responds. Weapons inflict quite a bit more stopping power than you might be used to (which is great!) but combined with the overextended animations means you'll be stuck watching your screen get knocked around two seconds for every second of active gameplay while your mouse and keyboard might as well be unplugged. Even in the tutorial, if an enemy gets too close while you're running away your own movement slows to allow him to hit you as part of a pre-scripted combat action. Worse still, the target-lock system tends to automatically refocus to the latest enemy to hit you, and while having to split your attention can be challenging, having your attention split for you is just infuriating. Most perplexing, target lock is in this case utterly gratuitous, as unlike GreedFall or ELEX, KCD actually boasts perfectly workable (if not quite Portal-level) physics. It certainly doesn't help that while you can rebind basic movement keys, this apparently doesn't extend to some interaction commands defaulting to Q, E, F and Z on the presumption you'll be using WASD.

 

Apropos, what the hell is this recent obsession with real-time target-lock?!? While necessary for RTS and workable in TPS, in FPS the very notion is self-defeating.

Anyway, if you're just hoping to swash your buckler in a satisfying manner, you might be disappointed. This game shines elsewhere... many elsewheres.

 

I'm not particularly crazy about the hero of the story. I rarely enjoy pre-made characters, and I especially don't want to be 'Enery the eighth, I am I am! You do however get plenty of options to develop your 'enery as you see fit, according to both a "main level" advanced by quest completion and separate leveling of stats and skills based on your actions. Everything from riding to half a dozen combat skills to stealth-related and social perks... though unfortunately it seems that just as in The Elder Scrolls, being able to level everything to max will render any role-playing moot by mid-game.

 

Per my wizard / druid preference I opted for herbalism / alchemy and the only mental stat available in these oh so high middle ages, speech. Yes, quite uncharacteristically for lupine old me, I'm playing a charisma-based character. Even my strength stat was built up by an herbalism perk.

I don't mind admitting I did cheat on day 2 and cribbed 2 alchemy recipes from the wiki to make myself some cash... and because the alchemy minigame, where you need to read recipes and execute them by physically picking up and adding handfuls of herbs and boiling them in exact sequence, proved more adorable than expected. KCD's hyper-realism extends not only to physical interactions but to its medieval world as a whole. My first major adventure so far was prompted by 'Enery's illiteracy, quite ordinary for a craftsman's son back in the days of leechcraft. To keep myself awake I boiled myself some 'cockerel' potions (a.k.a. valerian and mint... which are both mild sedatives in the real world, so apparently alchemy in this game is half homeopathy but only half as crazy) then set out... and got jumped by bandits, died and lost half an hour of gameplay.

 

But let's talk about the second time I set out for the village of Uzhitz, where a scribe is rumored to teach the mysterious arts of l3tturz an' riideen. After getting turned around twice in the dark and having to retrace my steps, just at the crack of dawn I finally found myself at a witch's house in the woods, allowing reorientation.

 

In hardcore mode, y'see, you get a map but not your position on it, and you no longer get any indication of magnetic north, leaving you to navigate by landmarks, the position of the sun and moon or even stars, as the sky backdrop features Polaris and Ursa Major in their expected places. Meaning that, counterintuitively, what I found a nonsensical drawback in a game with randomly generated planets and repetitive environments proved, in this game with its meticulously arranged landmarks, a major selling point convincing me not to uninstall after my severe frustration with combat training and overextended cutscenes. And I do mean meticulous.

Smaller than Skyrim but also relying less on random encounters, KCD pays a staggering amount of attention to the decor of old European village life. No dragons or demons here, no fireball slinging or potion-chugging yourself to full health during combat. Fifteen years ago when I was trying to drum up interest in Mount&Blade among MMO fans I tried advertising its factions' loose basis in actual historic combatants like boyars, huscarls, saracens and tartars, only for others to immediately complain "dude, that just sounds like a history lesson" and still others to retort "some of us like history lessons" - and if you find yourself in the second camp, KCD is definitely for you. Not only did Warhorse Studios research old-timey clothing, ranks and occupations, bathhouses, military equipment etc. but painstakingly recreated some of the towns and castles from historic accounts and extant Czech ruins. While it's always possible to nitpick, no reasonable critic could deny that everything from the dung-heaps behind peasant houses to the rapidly-decaying food you'll need to survive to the garishly-dyed snazzy chapeaus of the well-to-do amounts to one of the most immersive games ever made.

 

After finally learning my ABCs I rented a room at the inn and bummed around Uzhitz for a couple of days looking for side-quests. After tracking a horse producing inexplicably prodigious quantities of dung, I heard from His Questionable Holiness the local Bible-thumper that the harmless female picking herbs in the woods whom I'd jokingly labeled a witch really is being accused of witchcraft! So after the witching hour of night I got up, fired up a torch and made my way back to her, stopping on the way to mug a traveler (as one does) of everything on him including his clothes. Having arrived too early at the shroomer's hut, I proceeded to sneak around picking her pockets and burglarizing her (treasure) chest for good measure (as one does) and finally read my literacy primer for four hours until she woke up. Then just as I turned around to return to town, who should amble past, having regained consciousness and resumed his journey barefoot in his underwear, but my dearest chump from earlier.

Fare thee well, good chump. Better luck next time.

(I knocked him out a second time as soon as he was out of the herbalist's sight, just for funsies.)

(as one does, by and by)

 

____________________________________

P.S.: If you do end up installing the mega-super-ultra-director's-dooper-deluxe edition or whatever the hell it is I bought including all DLC, I strongly recommend running Theresa's story, A Woman's Lot, as soon as you exit the prologue. (Ask her what happened to her.) It makes a better introduction to game mechanics than the tutorial itself and doesn't use up your 'Enery's time while you get the hang of things.

Also, you can stop advancing the main quest at the stage where you're supposed to go hunting and go level up.

ST: TNG - Lower Disaster Command

In an effort to relive my early teens, I am re-watching old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is both better and worse than I remembered it, as was my youth most likely.

_____________________________________

 

Seriesdate: 5.05

Disaster

 

That episode where the engineer and the doctor don't know what "radiation" is, Picard jacques a shaft and appoints a radish officer, Data gives Riker head after they both steam their buns and Worf has a human as take-out. But more importantly, we get to stare at Sirtis' seat of command for a good long stretch-pants as she struggles to make a hard. (decision) Y'see, a filament done quantumed-up the Enterprise's systems, isolating various crew members in separate parts of the ship without communication. Solid precept hampered by groaningly contrived writing forcing all the characters into stupid decisions and forced ignorance for the sake of drama, but ultimately salvaged by the actors who judiciously played down the more ludicrous bits instead of piling ham on cheese.

 

Picard's stuck in a soon-to-fall elevator with three rugrats and pulls a "go on without me" because he sprained his ankle, though I suppose you shouldn't expect anything more original from whoever came up with the very Scie Fie scenario of a stuck elevator IIiiinn sspaaaaaAACE! And it's not even a space elevator! Also, note that no matter how many systems get fried, how little power they have remaining, the one technology that never, ever fails is the artificial gravity.

 

Worf has to deliver Keiko's (Obrien's (the transporter chief's) wife's) baby at the bar, which is mostly an excuse for a woman to tell a man he doesn't know what he's doing and waste five minutes of air time groaning. Don't ask where Guinan the centuries-old mystical barkeep / renaissance woman was during all this. Presumably Sister Act-ing or something. 

 

Data and Riker traverse a dragonless dungeon of access tubes littered with environmental hazards. At one point Data offers to block a half-million-amp electrical arc with his plastic body, since he can detach his head. So he steps into the dramatically sparking electricity and only AFTER has Riker detach his head. Positronic logic at work, ladies and gentlemen.

Troi as ranking officer on the bridge has to exert some uncharacteristic authority over O'Brien and the rebellious Ensign Ro. The engine's antimatter's about to matter in a 'kaboom' sort of way so they must choose whether to save themselves or keep attempting repairs in case others have survived. Compared to the rest it sounds almost reasonable, except we conveniently forget Troi's oft-demonstrated telepathic detection of life even from orbit, much less across a few bulkheads, and you'd think a thousand panicking monkeys would at least tweak the needle on her emotive compass. As usual, TNG's need to hand-wave, nullify or simply ignore the Trois' mentalism only further supports my point that telepathy is a dead end for science fiction.

But my favorite plot thread, for sheer redundancy of lack of common sense, has to be LaForge's and Crusher's.

The titular disaster catches them in a cargo bay alongside several drums of radiation-sensitive explosives and wouldn't you know it? A wall panel explodes, spewing bright green plasma "radiation" into the bay. So Crusher ambles around with her tricorder:

"The radiation level is about 20% lower at this end of the bay. Let's move the containers over to here."

Now, first off, assuming that Minas Morgul miasma there outputs a radiating force it should be subject to the inverse-square law, partly absorbed upon reflection and mitigated by shielding, so you shouldn't need a tricorder to immediately huddle against the farthest corner from the breach along the same wall. Also, prop up some inert matter as shielding... like that freaking cargo pallet you're standing on, Bev! The pallet! Use the pallet, Bev! THE PALLET! THE PALLET!

This whole spiel might seem less ludicrous if they hadn't demonstrated energy shielding in the form of Data's nonconductive corpus just five minutes prior. Hell, they could even rotate some of the drums to shield others in turn then huddle behind them, assuming secondary radiation's less dangerous. Even if the fire's venting particles to fill the room, venting it away from themselves or at least not basking in its glow would buy them precious time.

If you're inclined to excuse such nonsense by claiming nuclear physics was too far over their wee little screenwriter heads back in the days of televisual yore (1991) consider that Robert Heinlein gave a more realistic account back in 1949. But, so long as you despise your audience enough, there's no common denominator too low.

After amusing themselves rolling explosive drums over the floor in front of a radioactive plasma breach, the engineer and doctor decide instead to simply vent all the air out of the cargo hold to vacuum the boom-boom into space and starve out the plasma fire, but they'll be safe... by clinging bare-handed to a metal ladder... in rapidly expanding air... instead of bracing themselves against the computer terminal they need to use to re-gas themselves anyway. Quoth the "doctor":

"Once the air is vented, the first thing you'll feel is an extreme pressure on your lungs. You have to resist the temptation to exhale."

 - which of course would burst your alveoli and drown you in blood, a fact they wouldn't even have needed to confirm with any university professors, but merely with the nearest beach bum handing out scuba-diving certifications. Good night, everybody!

All in all, noteworthy script for attempting to fit five plot threads into a standard 45mins+ads show, but not for any success in pulling it off.

_____________________________________________________________

Seriesdate: 7.15

Lower Decks

 

Personally I would consider this interpersonal tapestry relatively dull, but it pulls off a damn good climax via a rarely utilized focus shift to a cast of five rando' mooks. Well, technically one of them's the same Bajoran from The First Duty (where Wesley finally gets a long-overdue browbeating) having completed her degree in murderonics or whatever it is military schools hand out and joined the Enterprise. Initially set up as competing for a promotion, <something happens> to shift our attention to their individual relationships with their superiors and the inherent struggle of building loyalty and trust within a closed environment. From the mundane interference in each others' personal lives (Crusher's assistant) to the counterproductive careerism (Riker's suck-up) to dealing with an underling too clever for his own good (LaForge's pet Vulcan) to the momentous decision to send a dedicated young graduate with a troubled past on a mission far over her head, the episode eagerly takes a step farther than TV clichés would normally allow.

 

While the ending's a bit sappy and early scenes painfully slow (e.g. drinking with Riker) in one respect at least the focus shift to a new character was exploited far beyond expectations. If an established hero's sent on a dangerous mission, especially mid-way through a season, you know he's going to make it. No tension. TNG suffered from that issue same as any other serial, and conversely, inherited from the original series also the other extreme of "redshirts" who'd barely get one line before biting the dust. Sito Jaxa on the other hand interacts for half an hour with the rest of the cast before her call to adventure. Brilliantly, she's played fairly low-key compared to the more colorful "downstairs" crew (perfectly logical once you hear her side of the story in the aftermath of The First Duty) only gradually outshining them through not just "quirky" but meaningful development. By the time she gears up for action, the audience is just invested enough in her success to wonder at it.

________________________________________________________________

 

Seriesdate: 6.10 - 6.11

Chain of Command

 

One of the series' lauded high points, and not without cause. However, after a stuningly blunt opening (replacing Picard with a new captain) it drags a bit for its two-episode scope. Turns out he, Worf and Crusher are being sent on a hush-hush mission to sabotage a Cardassian bioweapon ("metagenic" - for which Crusher gives so hare-brained an explanation as would sully my blog by its repetition) and so they spend the rest of the episode spelunking in black catsuits, but not before some painfully awkward PG-rated seduction of a Ferengi by Crusher.

The "A" plot consists of the other officers struggling to meet the replacement's demands, frustrated at his unwillingness to take any advice or address valid concerns, while he negotiates with a Cardassian delegation in a manner befitting a drunken Klingon. Then, in the last five minutes, it turns out the bioweapon was a fake to lure Picard in for capture, and the A and B plots suddenly flip.

Oh, now I get the title!

 

The second half revolves around Picard being tortured by the Cardassians, and given it largely hinges on the interplay between two good actors while giving a surprisingly concise summary of the manipulative angle of torture, it quickly became another feather in Stewart's cap. Certainly Picard's pyrrhic proclamation "There! Are! Four! Lights!" has been making its rounds on the internet alongside "I am Locutus of Borg" ever since.

 

In the background, Riker and the new kid in the big chair fall out then fall back in just in time to gain some leverage over the Hardassians and secure Picard's release. (Oh, and save a planet.)

___________________________________________________________________

I set out for examples of TNG's take on martial obedience and inter-rank relations and I don't think it's any accident that all three turned out to feature Cardassians and/or Bajorans. Deep Space Nine launched immediately after Chain of Command aired, and establishing a whole new series' fundamental power play lent itself well to conflicts or rank and privilege. Which was quite welcome, given TNG suffered severe growing pains in that department. The original series set a terrible precedent with James T. Crotchgrab the rule-defying interstellar bad boy, and at first TNG seemed to head in the same direction, discussing rules like the prime directive only when it would give its heroes something to break. Never mind that when you spend your days locked in a crate in hard vacuum fifty light-years from the exact center of nowhere, most of the rules you have to follow are quite literally a matter of life and death... even before the psychic cyborg space whales show up.

 

Still, TNG struggled to balance dramatic conflict with believable interactions which varied from episode to episode depending on whether individual writers remembered it's supposed to be a military vessel. Even ignoring Wesley's specialness, Riker for instance gets alternately painted as either a hard-nosed, hypercritical overachiever (Lower Decks) or an insubordinate maverick (Chain of Command) with no in-character justification as the plot demands.

 

Picard is either an awkward authority figure incapable of dealing with humans except through ranks (Disaster) or a savvy manipulator always a step ahead of his underlings (LD).

 

Troi is either bravely charging into her superiors' offices to set them straight in their relations with others (LD, CoC) or fretting herself over giving even one order to her underlings (D) and never mind she spent the first couple of seasons fainting and swooning.

 

Crusher... is so consistently a mother hen you have to wonder what the hell she's even doing on a military vessel.

Worf makes an interesting case, as many have noted his informed competence, pugnacity and loyalty are most often used as mere set-ups to show him failing or being pushed into a situation where he questions his principles. In all three of these examples however, his martial sensibilites allow him at least some success.

(D) - he does a bang-up job organizing the bar and setting a broken bone, but in order to be browbeaten by a female he has to fail at midwifery.

(LD) - he wisely trains his underling and succeeds in reminding her to question authority when it is unjust, which earns her Picard's respect and trust. Then, his interpersonal acumen forgotten, he has to be coddled by the other low-ranking crew at the end.

(CoC) - he knocks out a Cardassian or two, but mostly he's brought along so we can feel the pathos of brave, loyal Worf forced to run from the fight and abandon his boss.

In Data's case his equanimity and consideration sap his interactions of any tension inherent in defying authority. Even when he seemingly refuses orders, as in Clues, it's only because an external set of circumstances legitimize his actions. So in all three of these examples, he mostly... exists.

Geordi, for much the same reason as Data, is too reasonable a person to fuel much drama. Even in (CoC) he's shown kvetching only because of the physical impossibility of carrying out his orders as he'd wish. In (D) he and Crusher notably spend all their time agreeing with each other where all the other characters voice reticence or frustration.

The Cardassians I've always thought a bit superfluous in TNG as they overlap too heavily with the Romulans. Though one is supposed to be a decadent empire and the other an upstart military junta, a rising empire, in the end their episodes play much the same, with orders being barked and shadowy schemers twiddling their fingers. In fact, aside from a less-defined plot and better acting, you'd be hard-pressed to differentiate the villains in (CoC) from those in The Mind's Eye two years earlier.

Rarely did TNG grasp power dynamics as in (CoC) Picard's defiance of his tormentor. Faced with absolute, malevolent authority, he reframes the situation mentally, unveiling the Cardassian as a desperate, terrified child overcompensating by abusing whatever power he gains over others where Picard himself in (LD) twice uses his influence to widen another's personal choice.

 Do happy people slouch?

Myst

"We'll go down in historeeeeeEEEEE!!!

Remember meee for centureeeeeEEESSS!!!"

 

Fall Out Boy - Centuries

 

 

After being moderately pleased with Gabriel Knight, I thought I'd polish off another oldie, and in fact Myst makes a good counterpoint, having come out the same year (though its gratuitous weirdness combined with overreaching for rapidly outdated special effects yields a '70s sort of atmosphere) yet aged much more poorly than the likes of Sins of the Fathers.

 

Along with its sequel, Riven, Myst was one of the few games to make appearance on TV morning shows back in the days when TV only cared about games when some churchgoing pillar of the community * pulled his head out of his ass long enough to babble about satanist dice and gamepads teaching children violence - something children could never learn from, say... Anglicans... or Catholics... or Catholics again... or Methodists, then some other kind of Presbyterians, then Catholics again... or two different kinds of Catholics... or those same Catholics from two or three examples before... or yep, more Catholics, or Catholics on their home turf, or... fuck, how do the faithful even make time for anything other than raping and murdering children? I mean, you'd have to multitask. Do they stock a guillotine and anal lube in every pulpit before mass?!?

 

But I digress. Perhaps in response to the panic about games as ultra-violent splatterfests (oh, that poor Frogger) Myst lacks even the minimal cinematic violence or conflict of other adventure series, focusing on exploring for objects to activate in certain sequences by way of puzzle-solving. It's surprisingly freeform for 1993 when games already functioned on the precept of high scores (contemporary Sins of the Fathers even hilariously scores you on how many mystery clues you've found) and executing fixed moves, y'know, up-down-x-square-up, that sort of idiocy. Myst's walkabout was relatively rare, though it should be mentioned, hardly unique. Off the top of my head, Albion, two years later, made a much better show of open-ish world-building without blowing its budget on special effects. Also, I seem to remember text adventures from back in the '80s were more freeform in many ways than graphic "level design" allowed in the '90s... or 2000s... or 2010s... hey but I got a real good feelin' fer this decade!

 

Anyway, graphics. Myst and Riven made the news as graphic adventures, wowing audiences with the possibility of standing, turning, walking and looking around immersed three-dimensionally within simulated worlds which (impossible as it may sound) looked even more realistic than Tron! I remember the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago even featured a rapidly-outdated virtual reality exhibit back then looking... more or less like Myst except with actual animations allowing you to space some invaders or whatnot. And that, to bring this back around to our opening, is why Myst has aged so poorly. As a warning shot in the next decades' 3D arms race, the praise it received for its museum-grade technology overshadowed the many ways in which it proved a chore even by '90s standards, and still overshadows them in its fans' nostagia.

First off, don't let the 3D objects fool you. You're forced to view them from fixed 2D perspectives, switching between these and moving about by clicking objects or the edges of the screen. Unfortunately, with no indication of whether "right" means turning 90 degrees or 45 or 180 or move you five steps forward or ten or whether any particular empty space between a wall and pillar might constitute a clickable, walkable path, and in the absence of any indicators as to utility, Myst's vaunted "exploration" proves a stumbling, jarring mess of constantly struggling to get your bearings every time your next click changes your view angle unexpectedly, until you just memorize every single 2D image by rote. By the same token, its puzzle solving proves a matter of simian visual acuity, rote memorization and blind repetition largely divorced from higher brain functions. Those square buttons above? They're each marked with symbols you can't see until you click you way to each one indivdually. (Supposedly the game originally shipped with a paper notepad, just to add insult to the injury of a lack of in-character record-keeping.) Purportedly vital communiques from NPCs are delivered via scratchy, staticky full-motion video (another infuriating '90s fad). Your first clue is to "count the number of levers" and you do exactly that: walk around the island impersonating The Count... after which I went to the input device clearly marked for me on the map and was stumped. It took an online cheat-sheet to point out my difficulty was not cerebral but optical.

 

In fact, having not even bothered leaving the first island, I'll gladly wager that if you trace the memeology of games inspired by Myst, it will lead you not to mystery or puzzle-solving adventure but to hidden object games. Even your map is hidden in the options menu for some reason!

I didn't quit, however, until trying the generator puzzle. You discover a generator underground beneath a brick building and down a winding staircase, with ten buttons adding different percentages of power. Every time you get the pattern wrong and overshoot some unknown value around 60%, you have to walk click by click out of the room, through several screens of winding staircase, out the little brick shack, take several lefts and rights before you manage to click the invisible access between the shack and the main path to turn around to climb a ladder to a circuit breaker to reset the system (or maybe it's the other breaker a few more screens away) and then click your way back down to the main path and to the little brick shack and into the little brick shack and down the winding staircase and then farther down the winding staircase and even farther down the winding staircase and finally back into the room and HOLY MOTHER OF CRAP, MY KINGDOM FOR A WALK KEY! I finally quit Myst after a few exasperated trial-and-error attempts at this (having assumed turning the power on would be a logical first step toward activating the various levers) only to check the cheat-sheet and discover I shouldn't even be trialing-and-erroring it now, despite it being one of the few functional pieces of equipment.

Exploration is great, red herrings can occasionally be used to great comedic and dramatic effect, repetition can have its place so long as it's an optional alternative to other activities... but exploration plus red herrings plus repetition amounts to unrewarding tail-chasing frustration. Only in light of enjoying the environment for its own sake does criss-crossing the island a hundred times looking for a functional button actually make sense - just as stealth-archering hundreds of mudcrabs and bandits in Skyrim only made sense if you admit you just love hopping around river gorges and salt flats and ice floes... except Myst's fans seem a lot less willing to admit they were in it for the outdated graphic spackle than are TES'.

 

The lore books meant to spice up your adventure don't help much either. Aside from at least being written intelligibly (which is more than can be said for some games) their literary merit hovers around sixth grade composition, a child's impression of how adventure stories sound, overly-verbose and not particularly poetic (e.g. instead of "their rather remarkable adventure" you get "an adventure they had and it was rather remarkable") and hey, I'll gladly admit I share these flaws in my own feeble attempts at fiction... but then I'm not getting paid for this shit or lionized as a visionary of interactivity. As far as sound goes, just try to compare it to Sins of the Fathers' - 'nuff said. Visually, aside from being composed of 3D objects, it's also... not terrible for its time, but a bit like a frat house trying to decorate itself as "Greek" with a couple of plaster columns in the middle of the yard.

I can go back and play some famous, trendsetting or memorable old games (exhibit A / exhibit B) partway through and laugh at their cheesy, amateurish aesthetics or gameplay mechanics, not bother finishing them either because they don't suit my playstyle or they're too much of a chore, yet I'll still acknowledge the means by which they advanced their creative medium. Since I bought Riven as well in some package deal I'll be giving it its separate fair shake at some point, but with Myst, I'm just not seeing it. Freeform exploration would be one thing, but really, as far as I can tell here you really are faced with linear sequences of object interactions you're trying to reconstruct, and the "game" consists, instead of rational choice or connecting clues, of stumbling around mashing typewriter keys until they spell out the complete works of Shakespeare. And, by teaching its own audience to accept drudgery as intellectualized problem-solving, Myst inflicted just as much damage as Mortal Kombat and Doom ever did to theirs.

 

The only mental faculty I find taxed here is my admittedly snarly patience.

Good riddens.

 

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* This being before social justice warriors started biting the fundies' act.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

"Draw another picture
Of the life you could've had
Follow your instincts
And choose the other path"

 

Muse - Hoodoo

 

 

Strangeland and Lorelai having both been out long enough to receive their bugfix patches, I find myself long overdue to dive back into that genre four decades old and two decades outdated, adventure games. First though, as usual when switching tracks, I sought an older appetizer before the newer main course, some primitive simplicity that wouldn't really tax my attention much, something I could take in aesthetically while allowing familiarity to write its own intellectual assessment and fuel a short review just reading "meh" so I can move on to bigger and better things. You know, a proverbial exercise for the left hand and/or right brain.

 

Unfortunately for my already lacking brevity, I picked Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.

Before even leaving St. George's Books for the first time, I was hit by how nostalgically different this game feels from not just more modern "action" descendants of the adventure genre, but from modern games across the proverbial board, dating as it does from a time when electronic adventuring still held the promise of a new creative medium, before being standardized and trivialized into marketability and out of cultural relevance. Mind you, I'm not gushing about its overall quality (anything from back then ranks borderline playable at best by modern standards) but because it exemplifies the better side of computer games' Betty Boop stage of creativity, managing to own its primitive nature by sheer enthusiasm and dedication to the craft.

 

 

Gameplay mechanics offer an even mix of inspiration, perennial adventure game foibles and outdated presumptions about gamer preferences. Instead of context-sensitive clicking, you get eight fixed interaction buttons, and even in real life there just aren't that many ways to use an ashtray! So you sometimes have to "walk" out of one door then immediately "open" your way past another or "read" one piece of text then "open" another and figure out whether you're supposed to grab, operate or push things like drawers and switches. And sure, sure, you can rule about half the interactions out at a glance (not going to interrogate the ashtray) but compounded by the lack of highlighting for interactable objects you're still looking at canvassing every single backdrop several times over in the hopes something will do something... and that's before we even get into dragging objects from your inventory to throw a dozen of them at every single wall and see if anything sticks.

Amazing as it may sound (even to myself looking back) this sort of tedium didn't bother us back in 1993. Computer games were still a new medium to most of us, marketed to no small extent for the thrill of partaking in this marvelous futurism, despite flimsy low-definition pay-offs, just as our grandparents sixty years earlier were more than willing to crank their gramophones or drop a nickel at the nickel-odeon to hear Caruso scratch his way through "vesti la giubba" or marvel at Betty Boop and Olive Oyl flapping their rubber arms around. Or how the younger generation doesn't mind shilling out $500 for migraine-inducing "virtual reality" headsets. Sure puts great-grandpa's copy of "Minnie the Moocher" into perspective, don't it?

Anyway, the point is we clicked for the joy of clicking back in those days, but on the other hand, designers designed their products to be a joy to click. So while Gabriel Knight's two-frame sprite animation looks rudimentary even by 1993 standards (launching the same year as the original Doom) the game might as well be subtitled "Virginia-Capers-and-Tim-Curry-snark-about-everything" for the painstaking attention to detail put into most environments. Those superfluous interaction buttons were often supplied with their own voiceovers even in the absence of an interaction, some quite humorous like "Gabriel was just thinkin' that he could really use a lake, but he doesn't want to get his pockets wet" when trying a reverse-Canute act. Not to re-reiterate my oft-reiterated disdain for computer games' nosedive in aural accompaniment over the past couple of decades, but either a good composer or some good voice actors or both can set the mood faster and probably still cheaper than any amount of pixel-shading. Though they overdid it a bit with "this is the last page of inventory" where a beep or drum-beat would've sufficed, the sheer volume of volume sounds lush by today's standards of generic tootling and stock-audio grunts. Even aside from Curry and Capers' great work, Luke Skywalker as a goofy cop, Lt. Worf as a voodoo priest, etc., make the game pleasant enough to listen to even when nothing's happening.*

But still... there's a bit too much nothing happening. Gabriel Knight is an exemplary adventure game, extending also to the genre's chief flaw of nonsensical "puzzle"-solving via brute force and non-sequiturs. To advance past several chapters you're required to stroll around the park and chat up more or less random NPCs to fulfill arbitrary, convoluted multiple steps toward what should have been an obvious simple solution, like:

*SPOILERS* \/

- a jumble of symbols needing to be re-drawn, requiring you to

    1) open your cash register for no particular reason at your shop, only to find a misplaced coupon in it

    2) observe an artist's drawing in the park get blown by the wind into a bush behind a grate

    3) trade the coupon to a hotdog vendor

    4) trade the hotdog to a little kid so he can stick his skinny little arm through the grate

    5) trade the drawing to the artist in return for re-drawing your symbols in the correct pattern

    when the only steps should've been

    1) You're in a freakin' PARK, genius! Snap a leafy twig off that very same bush and use it to grab the drawing!

    2) trade

    or better yet

    1) Grace draws!

 

- figuring out how to wash your hands at the castle. Can you ask the maid, who's just sitting there peeling potatoes, for the nearest bathroom or kitchen? No. That would make too much sense. You have to run upstairs, open a nondescript window with some fluffy stuff behind it that looks more like clouds and wash your hands in what is apparently snow.

 

- this puzzle

is utter nonsense. Not because of the code itself, which you can have translated, or identifying the person of interest which is obvious enough, or even the more shaky identification of the coded message's pattern susceptible to text adventure linguistic imprecision but especially for giving absolutely no clue as to the exactly one single item on which you're permitted to use the tracker, a device specifically designed to be affixed to anything! Like the snake's cage, an item you already knew would be included in the ceremony! Or the drums you already know they use to communicate!

 

- even the quaint "grab the lake" example from earlier is soured by the fact you really are supposed to "grab" a random patch of empty ground by the lake shore, which turns out to be clay.

 

- weirdly enough, the clock puzzle only took me a couple of tries after running across the poem, but I'll admit I "solved" it more by a vague feeling for the nouns used than by strict problem-solving

 

*END SPOILERS* ^

 

 

Even ignoring specific examples (seriously, seven-year-olds making up fairy tales cohere better than those) the sheer number of times you're expected to just run around randomly "using item on" various pieces of scenery can be infuriating. Having to comb through a random patch of terrain with your magnifying glass is just the tip of the iceberg. Certain locations offer new clues depending on your progress, but with no indication whatsoever that they've been updated, so if you're stuck revisiting each of a dozen old screens every time you get stuck or every time you acquire a new inventory item, for fear the universe has been rearranged or a new dialogue option popped up.

And yet... for all its outdated nonsense, Sins of the Fathers also shares the original Half-Life or Fallout's keen sense of monomythic escalation from the mundane to the exotic (complete with grossly foreshadowed hero's mentor sacrifice) (addendum: and hero's journey beyond the land of death) a feature even more noticeable in a linear genre like adventure games. The low-key (a.k.a. point-and-click) onscreen interactions lend themselves well to humble beginnings and mundane protagonists who grow into their heroic roles gradually, as the plot itself shifts from gradual inklings of dread to late-onset monsters. 

The overall plot itself seems trite now, its antiheroic premise catching the '90s goth craze early. Mixing Voodoo themes into other plots wasn't all that original (hell, if James Bond did it...) and combined with Gabe himself in his black trenchcoat, the slight film noir tinge can't but recall Count Zero's release seven years prior. Gabe's fundamentally no more than purest romance novel trash, a virile bad boy of good lineage just waiting to be saved from his own self-destructiveness, browbeaten and tamed by the right woman. Idiotic lines abound, like Grace's blather about "a spiritual path" or this little gem:

 

Yeah... Jane Jensen's got no compunctions against telling women they're worthless without male approval... no, wait, it's the other way around so her chauvinism mandates a standing ovation. Note that for all the talk of Gabe's sins, the worst we see him do is impersonate a charlatan, not-write-a-bestseller, steal a dead man's credit card to save a city, crack bad jokes and enjoy sex... which, again, yeah... just try reversing the polarity on that shit and see how well it flies.

In fact, it's a miracle just how well the whole game holds together given its piles of cheap gimmicks, non sequiturs and clichés, and for that alone, for the charm of being encouraged to keep clicking to hear the narrator's quips and hope the next puzzle makes more sense, I can't hate the damn thing. Sins of the Fathers is by no means the peerless classic its gushing fans hold it up to be, but definitely worth a playthrough, interesting even in its worse points for its obvious influence.

Just keep a cheat-sheet ready to save yourself a lot of wasted hours randomly trying to slap items together.

________________________________________________________

 

* And it's not like you need big names to get good voice acting. Given she had to beg for money online for her multiple sclerosis treatments, I doubt April Ryan got paid more than peanuts, or at most, cashews (only Mark Hamill gets macadamias) and gave one of the most memorable performances in any genre.