Having polished off The Elder Scrolls for the foreseeable future and not particularly keen on lasering more rocks in No Man's Sky, (or its presumed copycat The Solus Project) I find myself spoiled for choice for a new open-world adventure. I really, really want to enjoy Bannerlord, so I'm giving TaleWorlds a year or two to add a bit of post-launch content before diving in. Kingdom Come: Deliverance sounds like it might just be M&B with a main quest chain, so that'll make a good prelude to Bannerlord someday. Cyberpunk2077 is apparently still fixing its monstrous parade of launch bugs, I'm not in a smiling mood for We Happy Few, not feeling particularly Fallen Out at the moment, and Elex is probably just that with less fall and more out... or something. Ditto for Metro Exodus.
Yes, these are all presumably 100+ -hour open-world games I've already wasted money on and won't have time to play for years to come. Learn from my mistakes, younglings...
Well, I might as well polish off a similar title which I presume I'll have cause to quit early on, GreedFall. Because it's French, that's why. Don't get me wrong, I'm the last to deny France's monumental aesthetic and stylistic contributions to world culture, and even French video game developers have consistently delivered artistically inspired decor. But, while it can work wonders occasionally, that Gallic flamboyance does not lend itself readily to intrinsically practical, object-centered media, and French developers more often prove pathologically incapable of prioritizing playability, challenge, personalization, complexity and in general the substance underlying aesthetics, the many facets of interactivity which justify producing a game instead of a movie or comic book. So, expecting to be initially enthralled and thereafter soon bored, I flipped a coin between this and The Technomancer, and off I go!
Sure enough, even GreedFall's menu screen looks jaw-dropping. Quaint, customizing your avatar as part of a cutscene about having your portrait painted. I'm forced to be a prince apparently, which as a scruffy ostracized beastman at heart, I hate... but the scene saying goodbye to your terminally ill mother already flaunts the dev team's artistic panache, by NOT ending on a close-up of her disease-disfigured face for redundant shock value, but thus:
That, mes amis, if not a direct copy of some actual famous painting I don't remember, is a bunch of art&design fops putting their encyclopaedic knowledge of emotional cues to good use. Skip past the obvious mood lighting or the lone sympathetic figure haloed and attended by ephemeral dancing dust motes, or the massively unnecessary amount of negative space in the center offsetting her to isolation. Look at the little details like her skirt curving under the chair contorting her otherwise mundanely seated figure, or the closest foreground objects looming opposite her in the bottom left. Yeah, the candles. The burnt-out, gutted, expired stubs of what were once light-givers. Memento mori, biznatches!
Addendum to my post about cutscenes: don't waste my time with cutscenes unless you're at least this capable.
In keeping with my usual support caster schtick I'd intended to level both trapmaking/alchemical "technique" and magic with zero investment in melee, but it seems the political conflict's setting up an Arcanum-style magic vs. tech clash. Newbie Island, a.k.a. Sérène, is impressively detailed, with several short quest chains immersing you in gameplay mechanics like information gathering, dialogue and other skill checks, combat and faction reputations, all complete with a surprisingly tough boss fight at the end, all before you even get the majestic GreedFall title screen sailing off to the main game area. Then again, most games tend to be somewhat front-loaded, by necessity of making a good first impression.
Given the magically-enhanced period setting with an emphasis on stealth, stealth kills, stealth macguffin retrieval and stealth looting, I'd have to guess this game's mostly copying the Assassin's Creed series... which I've never played.
I did play about a third of the first Thief game though, so I'm set.
I'll be fine. I'll be fiiiiine...
By the time I reach the game proper, I've started noting some cracks.
Both the halting, keyboard unfriendly movement and the limited inventory view (lists instead of draggable tiles with mouseover tooltips) blatantly pander to console retards with gamepads.
Cutscenes triggering on walking across random patches of empty ground are getting annoying, especially when one forces you to replace an NPC companion, on the presumption the devs can guess which quest you'll want to do next, once again pandering to console retards who can't direct their own progress.
Also, meeting a native "princess" who'll obviously ride around on a moral high horse all game would grate less if my second line of dialogue with the little bitch weren't to ask her whether she considers me attractive. Don't even get me started on the first line of dialogue with your fencing instructor forcing you to ask him whether he's lonely. There's two pointless humpable NPCs I'll be tossing by the wayside as soon as I can. Certainly doesn't help that the male love interest's introduced as your obedient guard dog while the female one plays an abusive tsundere card from the get-go.
Come on, this is a magical setting. Bad enough I have to play one, but can't I at least get some companions who aren't filthy hu-mons?
Weirdly, it lacks French audio, despite all the names being either French or... Dutch, maybe? I applaud the consistency (if not exactly artistry) of the voice acting. Still, Cockney English is bad enough, but Cockney French? *shudder*
I'll admit for the most part, by the time you break out of starter areas it holds up well. Call me shallow, but the gorgeous visuals certainly help:
They really managed to convey that pre-industrial scramble to establish a colonial foothold, a busy hive of scum and villainy.
Factions, if not particularly creative, are fundamentally both intelligible and open to intrigue: the mercenary sleazebags, the theocratic totalitarians, the clannish cut-throat shipping guild, the amoral technocrats... and presumably the nauseatingly idealized noble savages, but I'm not quite there yet. Individual characters are forgettable but at least not too cheesy yet, aside from the romance angle.
Quest design is, once again, unambitious but solid, linear chains offering alternate completion options at various steps. While I'm not fan of "action" RPG combat, the third-person-slasher mechanics are bearable so far, with an emphasis on parries and stopping power setting up multiple attack combos. Sadly, the first few nonhuman enemies I've seen so far seem universally centered on overpowered charge / knockdown attacks to the point of already feeling repetitive. At least it's difficult enough (for my customary unoptimized, non-combat character style) that I've needed to consume about a third of my accumulated consumables on normal difficulty.
I'm also impressed by the very gradual introduction. By level 7 I've yet to see magic beyond a single character's healing spell. I've spent 6/7 levels exploring towns without getting bored, learning the layout of large, livable buildings offering lots of nooks and crannies and alternate entrances with seamless transitions. The environments seem very well proportioned, certainly moreso than Skyrim's... though I am disappointed at a facetiously exploration-themed game being broken up into zones.
Next stop:
GreedFall: Happily Ever After
or
GreedFall: the Divorce?
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