Pumping Irony

I finished the story in Mafia II last night – in Hard Mode, no less! – and it was truly a wonderful ride. Initially when I made my little post about the demo I had planned to wait until the game had naturally lowered in price after 4-6 months. But launch day arrived and I failed my saving throw versus impulse purchases. I initially justified it by guessing it was probably similar to The Saboteur, another excellent single-player open world game that I fell in love with last year. For my personal comfort I chose the 360 version. The PC version looks incredible, especially with PhysX enabled, but I would be in excruciating RSI pain right now if I had played the PC version as much as I did the 360. So, no screenshots for this article, obviously.

What is Mafia II? Despite obvious comparisons, it is not a GTA clone, per se. To gamers and reviewers who were expecting (or more probably, assumed) it would be, they may be disappointed at the lack of pointless and clunky mini-games … annoying hoodlum friends who call at inopportune times … side-missions compared to Rockstar’s offerings. I compared it to The Saboteur above, and that is probably the most accurate comparison. While the game exists in the open world city of Empire Bay, it is a single-player game with a highly focused linear narrative. I wouldn’t have it any other way; Mafia II has kept me entertained solidly since it released a few days ago, which is more than I could say for GTA 4 which took me over 18 months of occasional play before I could be bothered to finish Niko’s storyline. Mafia II and GTA are two very different types of games, despite sharing the open world, driving and shooting.

Mafia II is comprised of 15 chapters, each focusing on specific parts of protagonist Vito Scaletta’s rise and fall (and rise?) within the mafia families in Empire Bay. Each chapter is set in its own timeline. Chapter 1 starts us off with Vito assigned to the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in 1943 Italy. Chapter 2 moves forward to February, 1945 when Vito comes home to Empire Bay after being wounded in battle. Vito meets up with his childhood friend Joe Barbaro who brings Vito into the gangster scene. The next few chapters take place at later points in February until Chapter 7 where the timeline moves forward to April, 1951. This is the final year of the story, though time progresses as Chapter 7 starts us in April and Chapter 15 concludes in September. Additionally, many chapters are broken into parts which occur at various times during whatever day that chapter is set. Because of this narrative design decision, there is no day/night cycle nor random weather but rather each time frame is set in its own time of day or has specific weather assigned to it. This especially works well when the game starts off in winter with the city and cars covered in snow and roads with patches of ice then shifting to spring and summer. It’s a nice touch that we don’t see often, probably because of the extra expense of re-texturing the entire world per season. Some parts of the game occur at night, sometimes it’s raining, sometimes it’s foggy but the weather always seems to be appropriate for that segment of Vito’s story. Rather than being random like you’d see in GTA (or even an MMO) the weather, the time and other factors all contribute to the big picture of setting the mood as we progress through the narrative.

Controls

In my article about the demo I complained about the default controls on the 360 because I’d spent so much time with GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption lately. There are two control settings, one of which is nearly identical to Rockstar’s control layout so I was very happy with that. Responsiveness is spot-on and generally I was happy with the controls for both shooting and driving. The vehicles in the demo seemed heavier or less controllable than their retail counterparts as well. Vito can store up to ten cars in his garage, and there we can see the stats of each car from brake horsepower to top speed and the car’s weight, which is important in terms of high-speed controllability. All the cars are rear-wheel drive (probably era-appropriate?) which combined with the overall weight of these older cars can result in excessive fishtailing if you don’t slow down. Unfortunately, I don’t slow down. Once it starts fishtailing, I try to correct to the other direction, probably end up over-controlling and the fishtailing gets progressively worse. I’m not the greatest driver in the world with analog thumbsticks (note: I can drive FPS vehicles perfectly fine with WASD but I am beyond useless with WASD in racing games and these open world action games. Go figure.) but I got the hang of many of the vehicles in Mafia II far better than I ever did in GTA 4, possibly better than I did in The Saboteur as well.

The shooting aspect is pretty standard fare for an open world action game. It has the same snap-to cover system we see in GTA 4, RDR and others and works great for the most part. Just like in Rockstar’s games, it knows if you’re running towards an object when you try to go into cover so Vito will run then duck and slide behind the object and so forth. The only problem is when there are multiple surfaces in a small area, Vito may take cover behind the wrong one or on the wrong side, but that is a common problem with every snap-to cover mechanic I’ve played, so I won’t single out Mafia II for it. There is no automated targeting option like GTA 4 has so you have to aim your shots. The 360 and PS3 versions do have the obligatory target assist option but it’s fairly tight — you have to aim within a few pixels of the target before it will attempt to assist. My only real gripe with the shooting is that the target reticule is located higher on the screen than I am accustomed to. I’ve had over a decade of the reticule being in the center of the screen. In Mafia II the reticule is level with Vito’s eyes. That makes perfect sense when I think about it but during hectic shootouts I would revert to aiming the center of the screen (the reticule is not displayed unless you have a weapon drawn and aimed) and firing a shot several feet over the head of the enemy. The moral of the story is when you’re hiding behind something bring your target even with Vito’s eyes (roughly halfway between the top and middle of the screen) and you should nail your target.

Mafia II also features brawling in addition to gunplay. In GTA 4, Niko could punch and block, but that was about it. Here, Vito can block, punch, counter-punch, jab and grab, with two combo’s and some finishing moves which shift to slow motion for the knockout blow (which may be a kick to the jaw rather than a punch). It’s fairly basic, no deep fighting game mechanics here, but it’s more than we’ve seen in other open world games. Just like the guns all have a good feel, so does the melee. When Vito takes a hard punch, from the animations to sounds to graphical effects, it all comes together and it’s like “damn, that hurt!” When you manage to defeat your opponent with a finishing move, it’s a satisfying thing indeed. Some reviewers are whining about the brawling, saying it’s tacked on and limited. Really? But GTA’s isn’t? Keep a straight face while you answer that. Take your tongue out of Rockstar’s sphincter first though so I can hear you…

AI

The AI in Mafia II is probably its weakest aspect, though not a game-breaker. I’ll break it down into categories for posterity.

• Actor AI: Quite often after a cutscene or conversation, the actors are supposed to walk out of the room but never open the door so they get stuck walking face-first into the door. If I walk over and open the door for them they will continue on their merry way. Possibly a minor and patchable glitch but it’s right there in your face so it’s noticeable. Otherwise the actor AI serves its purpose.
• Driver AI: On the surface the driver NPC’s seem to have the same basic AI we’d expect based on what we’ve seen with other open world games but the more I played the more it seemed like the AI drivers had a very limited focal point of awareness. Rather than having, say, a cone of vision, the drivers in Mafia II appear to only notice things directly in front of them, and even then only within a certain distance of the AI vehicle. If, say, I am driving alongside a vehicle in GTA 4, the AI might beep its horn at me and get over slightly so I don’t hit the car. If I am at a corner and begin making a turn in GTA 4, AI drivers appear to at least be aware of me. Not so in Mafia II; the AI doesn’t appear to have any awareness of me whatsoever until I am directly in front of it. If I beep my horn at AI drivers, they do not react at all whereas in GTA 4 they might get over to one side or another.
• Pedestrian AI: Very limited in scope. There aren’t as many pedestrians walking the streets as we’d see in GTA 4 or Crackdown and more importantly, they don’t react to our presence much. If I aim a weapon at a pedestrian in Mafia II they don’t notice whereas in GTA 4, Crackdown and others the AI will cower and run away. If I shoot a gun in public in Mafia II the AI will cower where they are but never run away and don’t say anything either, compared to the screaming panic that ensues in GTA 4, etc. Also there are very few AI conversations in Mafia II compared to the others, though the few that exist are pretty good, including the inmate reciting the Zero Wing introduction speech verbatim (pop culture Easter egg). The AI pedestrians are only aware of us driving if we happen to skid around a corner or otherwise end up not on a street surface, such as a sidewalk or parking lot. Then, and only then, will they react to the presence of our vehicles or to our horn. But if both the pedestrian and myself are on the street, the AI does not acknowledge my horn or vehicle at all.
• Police AI: Standard fare with the exception that the police also react to speeding. While driving, there is a “speed limiter” that, when enabled, will not allow you to exceed the posted speed limit (45 mph on city streets, 60 mph on the highway) to avoid police chases. Otherwise shooting in public, stealing a car or hitting a police car will get the cops’ attention and they turn into the same single-minded and obsessed homicidal maniacs we’ve come to expect. There was one time when a police car T-boned me in traffic but did not start chasing me. It could have been a fluke or perhaps the AI knew it hit me rather than me hitting it, but either way I approved. Escaping from the police is quite a bit easier in Mafia II than GTA 4 at least though once escaping, you are still “wanted” and if another patrol notices you long enough they will resume the chase. Usually they note your license plate so you’ll have to stop by a repair shop to have the plates changed. If they get a good look at Vito though, you’ll have to change his clothes to clear his “wanted” status.
• Shooting AI: Again, standard fare. The AI will usually take cover then pop out at predictable intervals to shoot at you. Sometimes the AI may switch positions, even running to different parts of the area, to make things interesting but that is the exception rather than the rule. Occasionally the AI may try basic flank maneuvers. Nothing we haven’t seen before and nothing we’re not already expecting. In my mind, one doesn’t buy an open world action game and expect advanced MilSim AI tactics, but apparently some reviewers do… I don’t understand that.

Graphics

As I mentioned above and in the demo article, the PC version has some incredible graphics, especially if you have the hardware to enable PhysX. Absolutely incredible. Even on the 360, though, Mafia II has great graphics for an open world game, which usually has to make sacrifices to pull off the seamless world. For sheer visual fidelity, I would list Mafia II, GTA 4, then The Saboteur. GTA 4 has the lowest performance of the bunch though it has the most detailed city and comprehensive AI so I’ll cut it slack for that, while The Saboteur muddied the background textures too much for my liking in order to get the foreground visuals and performance up. GTA 4 also blurs and muddies its background textures quite noticeably. The distant buildings and countryside in Mafia II look much sharper by comparison. 2K Czech broke out all the lighting, particle and post-processing effects as well. The headlights at night were very well done, starting as a single, brighter point of light then splitting into two headlights as the cars get closer. Lights at night and in mist or fog have both a glow and starburst effect applied. Weather is equally well done; the rain effects I thought were especially good-looking.

Sound

The sound in Mafia II is top-notch. From ambient sounds to vehicles to weapons, everything sounds excellent. The weapons in Mafia II all have their own unique “feel” and the high quality of the sound effects enhance that greatly. While driving, Empire Bay has three radio stations which play from the list of licensed songs from the 40’s and 50’s in addition to a few good DJ spots between songs. The game’s score was recorded by the Filmharmonic Orchestra Prague and is also of excellent quality and fits perfectly with the game’s narrative. Voice acting is more often than not a sore spot for video games but here. The voice acting in Mafia II is superb; it seemed like the actors really got into their characters and delivered quality performances every time. Finally, the audio engineers and producers for 2K Czech may have accomplished an industry first. Longtime readers may remember one of my pet peeves in games is that studios never lower the volume of background sounds and music when voiceovers are being played. So many games have voiced dialogue which is blocked out by full volume music, explosions, or whatever in the background. Meanwhile audio engineers have been doing it in radio, television and cinema for the past 50+ years. It takes a smallish European studio to finally show everyone else how it’s done. I doubt that it gets noticed, though so I won’t bother expecting any big-name American studios to suddenly begin mixing their audio in a professional manner.

Conclusion

If there has been one common theme in every paragraph I’ve written, it’s that of narrative. Mafia II is a highly focused, narrative-driven game and it is that which separates it from being the non-linear GTA clone that many assumed they were getting. There are no random strangers giving side-missions, no street races, or any of the other fluff detracting from the story. The only thing coming close would be robbing stores, selling high-end cars to Derek or crushing cars at Mike Bruski’s junkyard for extra money. [Note: Two DLC packs have been announced where you play as a different character “Jimmy” adding arcade gameplay featuring side-missions, street races, etc. and leaderboards. One of the DLC is currently a PS3 exclusive.] There are two aspects of collecting in Mafia II – Playboy magazines and Wanted posters. There are a total of 50 Playboy magazines, each featuring an actual, and uncensored, Playmate centerfold. Each Chapter has 3-5 magazines hidden, usually in one of that chapter’s featured locations. Then there are 150 Wanted posters hidden in rather hard-to-notice places all over Empire Bay for players who enjoy that sort of thing.

One thing I didn’t really mention was Empire Bay itself. It is a fictional city based on features of New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Some of the really high buildings immediately bring to mind the famous New York City skyline, with one tall pointed building reminiscent of the Empire State Building. One chapter of the game is set during heavy morning fog and you drive over one of the large arched bridges. In the city then driving up the bridge you can barely see in front of your face through the fog and looking out of the bridge is nothing but whiteness then you crest the top of the bridge and emerge from the top of the fog and can just make out the tops of some of the taller buildings as they pierce the misty veil, stretching for the overcast sky above then you drive back into the fog as the bridge descends. Simple, yet effective, and brings to mind those foggy mornings in San Francisco. Empire Bay is also smaller than Liberty City and less of a meandering jungle of streets. That may in fact, be appropriate for the era in which Mafia II is set but for a game play experience, I prefer driving five to eight minutes over GTA 4’s ten to fifteen minute drives during missions.

Mafia II takes it’s M rating to heart, more so than GTA 4. Just like every gangster movie ever made, Mafia II has a lot of strong language and violence in some cutscenes. The few instances of violence in GTA’s cutscenes don’t hold a candle to this.

Obviously I enjoyed my time with Mafia II and would heartily recommend it as long as you know you’re getting a game focused on story rather than the more non-linear meandering experiences of GTA 4. Oakstout and I were doing some multiplayer GTA 4 last week and he mentioned he always feels overwhelmed in the open world games because he never knows what to do or where to go. If you’re only playing Niko’s story then that isn’t the case (same with Red Dead Redemption) but GTA 4 has all the strangers, the friends, and other side-content that could be missed if you don’t know about it. Mafia II is all about Vito’s story, period, so I suspect Oakstout might have an easier time with Mafia II provided the game’s style and theme is suitable for him. The story itself was very enjoyable as Vito meets various characters and as time passes and he matures he begins to realize the toll of the lifestyle he has chosen. There are a few unexpected plot twists and the characters were all enjoyable to learn, even the bad guys who were usually so bad it felt good to go against or defeat them. Again, props to the voice actors for jumping feet-first into their characters.

Now excuse me, I have a few more Playmates to find…

Fun Fact: All those Playboy magazines? Mafia II is set between 1945 and 1951. Playboy was founded in 1953.

I downloaded the Mafia II demo for both Xbox 360 and PC (via Steam) yesterday and did a few playthroughs on each platform. The PC version is amazingly smooth! 2K Czech is obviously proud of the work they’ve done on their PC engine and they have every right to be. Performance didn’t scale quite as well on the 360 engine; it could definitely use more optimization (which I don’t see happening this close to release date) but it’s not bad by any means.

Graphics are quite good for an open world game; better than GTA4 on probably every point, and make no mistake: GTA4 will be what everyone compares it to. It also has PhysX (only Medium and High settings) which I had never seen fully functional until now. The environmental texture interaction with PhysX was amazing! Start moving and Vito’s jacket would “poof out” slightly from the air catching it, and the corners of his jacket sway in the breeze. With PhysX on, smoke actually reacts to your movement through it whereas with no PhysX it’s a static particle effect. I ended up leaving PhysX disabled because this PC is my first ever with an ATI video card, so PhysX calculations are offloaded to the CPU which caused a performance hit of roughly 20 to 30fps.

Controls were a mixed bag on both platforms. On the 360 the default controls (I did not check to see if controls are changeable) use the Halo “press RB to reload” which I intensely dislike, and the Gears of War “press A to enter/exit cover” which is fine except I’ve been spending so much time in Red Dead Redemption and GTA4 lately that Rockstar’s controls are far more intuitive for me at the moment. On the PC, it may just be that I do the majority of my gaming on the 360 now but it took me awhile to get used to controlling Vito with mouse and keyboard. I have no problems with MMO’s and FPS’ so I am inclined to stand by my opinion that PC developers just don’t “get” third person shooter-style control. Driving was atrocious for me on the PC. I thought I was a poor driver with analog thumbsticks but driving with WASD? No wonder racing games have all but died on the PC, it’s atrocious! I’m sure PC gamers who spend more time with action games that use vehicles would get comfortable with it faster than I did, and a few key re-binds would probably serve me better than the default controls.

Audio is great as well. The story takes place from in the early 1950′s so era-appropriate music plays on the radio stations — Buddy Holly, Elvis, and many more — as well as commentary from the fictional radio stations. On the playthrough I just completed, for example, the DJ was talking about the new invention of the “computer” (quoted because of how the DJ annunciates every time he says the word) as big as a house and eventually scientists hope to make them small enough to fit in a garage. Voice acting is also well-done, and features liberal use of F-bombs as we would expect from an M-rated game focused on the Mafia. My only complaint was the audio engineering. There was a little too much bass on Vito’s voiceovers and the mixing made his voice seem too all-encompassing rather than coming from his location onscreen. As usual, the audio engineer (Do game studios even have audio engineers? Maybe that’s the problem!) didn’t think to adjust the music and other sounds during dialogue, but I can’t think of a single game ever that did this properly off the top of my head so I can’t really fault the guys at 2K Czech for being industry-consistent.

A recent trend in practically every video game genre is collectibles and Mafia II jumps on the bandwagon as well with a number of Playboy magazines (featuring actual centerfolds from the era) all over the city of Empire Bay for Vito to find. The demo includes five magazines, which I have included locations to in my slideshow. Considering how innocent of an era we consider the 50′s to be, it’s almost amusingly disturbing to think that these shop owners leave Playboy magazines on their countertops in plain view of everyone though.

I just may end up buying Mafia II, though probably not for awhile because I’ve already spent quite a bit of time with GTA4 lately, finishing both Niko’s story and The Lost and Damned DLC and my current obsession has been Red Dead Redemption (92.2% completion of all tasks at the time of this writing!) and Crackdown 2 is waiting on me as well, so my plate is a bit full on open world games. Despite the better performance on the PC, I will be getting the 360 version of the game for comfort (RSI on my mouse-using wrist, remember?) and the achievements. Yes, I’m an Achievement Whore, what of it?

A couple weeks ago, one of the popular topics recirculating the blogosphere was immersion. “Immersion” ranks right up there with “hardcore” or “casual” where if you ask ten gamers what immersion means to them, you’ll get twenty answers. Two of my favorite articles on the subject were The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games and What is Immersion? From my own experiences observing and participating in discussions of immersion, it seems those two articles collectively hit the nail on the head: as gamers, we tend to use the term “immersion” to mean alternatively “spatial presence” (read the first link, or Wikipedia) — which is how I normally define immersion as well — or “flow” depending on the circumstances (and the player’s understanding of the terms).

Despite my love for video games, when I stack them up against books and movies, I find games to be the least immersing of the three. Books would be top of the list because the various descriptors used in writing can pull me into the story’s world (spatial presence) to various degrees, though I may only achieve a state of flow where I am really engaged or engrossed in the story but circumstances around me such as the fact I am reading on a plane, possibly elbow-to-elbow with other passengers, snoring fat guys in front of me and screaming demon-children behind me prevent me from reaching a state of immersion. Similarly, movies can be so engaging and entertaining that they pull the viewer into that world — James Cameron’s Avatar was a cinematic experiment in forcing a suspension of disbelief; remember the hoopla over “Post-Avatar Depression?” — or they may be very enjoyable, the 2 or 3 hours may seem to pass quickly, but we are still aware we’re in a theater, that there are other people around us (possibly talking or making other noises) and we still had to get up to visit the restroom. Athletes can enter a state of flow while playing (being “in the zone”) or I could get into a state of flow if I am successfully playing Tetris but Tetris is not immersing (spatial presence) because there is no “there” to Tetris, there is only the gameplay itself and the level of my focus upon it, which is flow. (Yes, I am calling upon my trademark ability to split hairs (/wave to SmakenDahead) and refute Elena Gorfinkel’s Tetris example quoted in the second article I linked.)

The above paragraph can sound like it is external stimuli that is “immersion breaking” or perhaps even “flow breaking,” but I believe there are three factors at work, that being only one. A second is, for lack of a better term, the media presentation. If I’m reading a book from a new author, that may show in her writing and if I deem the writing style amateurish it may have the effect of reducing my interest and therefore reducing flow and immersion. Also if the writing is either too complex, vague, or overly prosaic yet underdeveloped (Tolkien’s The Silmarillion comes to mind) and I find myself repeatedly re-reading paragraphs just to try to understand what the author is trying to convey, all levels of flow and immersion are nullified. Studies (and opinions) show that sometimes using a well-known actor in a movie can contribute to the audience’s engagement with the story. Other times, not so much. For instance, I tend to be skeptical of movies starring Jim Carrey and Robin Williams because all too often they don’t act. They may be playing a character with a different name, but they are being themselves and replaying their same old shtick again. But the few times they step outside themselves and into the role, I find myself able to get into the movie much easier. Another example is Inception, which I have not seen yet. I keep hearing how excellent the movie is, and what a fantastic job all the actors did, yet I watch the trailers and can’t help but think Joseph Gordon-Levitt was horribly miscast because all I think is “That kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun? Are you kidding me?” My suspension of disbelief is already broken before I’ve even arrived at the theater, and it will be left up to his acting and the overall story to bring them back up for a fully enjoyable, immersing, and hopefully thought-provoking experience.

That last sentence serves as a segue to what I see as the third factor: suspension of disbelief. More to the point, a willing suspension of disbelief, meaning the participant must bring that to the table themselves. I have to be willing to give John Papsidera the benefit of the doubt for casting Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception. World of Warcraft players have to be willing to believe in the cartoonish world of Azeroth. Immersion is not something left entirely unto the creators to supply, though they certainly have the bulk of that task. We, the audience and participants, must be willing to suspend our disbelief in order for the spatial presence immersion to work.

But is immersion required? Looking at our favorite genre, MMORPG’s, I am inclined to say no. Sure, some players take things all the way into full role-playing. Even then, there are different degrees and types of role-play. I have my own style and typically limit it to myself, since it my enjoyment of directing my characters development through the world that matters to me, and I do it my own way. However, when I do happen to include others in my little personal role-play sphere (usually in chat) some readers can be thrown off because I can often switch in and out of character within the same sentence and leave it for the reader to discern which is which. To put it more technically, I am readily able to switch from the Player form to the Character form at will, and sometimes to the Person form, as Gary Allen Fine would say in his Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds. Whether that is a result of so many years of tabletop RPG’s where I had to switch from myself to GM to various NPC’s, writing, and now various video games and MMORPG’s or simply my (lack of) attention span, I will leave you to decide. Other players don’t seem inclined to immerse themselves in the game or its world but are perfectly content to play for the entertainment and social value. I always remember an Age of Conan player who said in Global chat “I know that I am sitting at my computer pushing a cartoon character through a cartoon world, and I don’t care to take it any further than that.”

How can media creators, or specifically game designers, work to improve our suspension of disbelief and therefore our sense of spatial presence? Small details and consistency. In order for us to believe in this virtual world, it needs to be true to itself to pull us in. I said above that the WoW player must be willing to accept the cartoony world, but from there the task in on Blizzard’s shoulders to ensure the various aspects of that world appear or behave in a consistent manner. Turbine has all sorts of little Tolkien references hidden away in LOTRO awaiting players to discover, assuming they are recognized for what they are.

Yet, for myself, I find that it is often the act of playing the game itself that detracts from spatial presence. Our Diku-influenced MMORPG’s require so many hotbars, inventory slots and other UI frames that keep me in the Player form paying attention to the keyboard, mouse, and on-screen cursor or watching UI elements such as debuff icons or health bars. Those UI elements take up entirely too much real estate on my monitor as well and get in the way of putting myself fully in the role of directing my character or believing in that virtual world. I always appreciated WoW and LOTRO for including the ability to bind name text to a key, and I get highly agitated at all the games that make me go into the options and turn names off one by one. Unless I have a need for names to be displayed, I typically press the ‘N’ key to turn off all names over NPC’s, objects and other players, because the more I have to pay attention and mentally engage myself in my virtual surroundings the better my sense of flow and immersion will be as opposed to simply being told in large, brightly-colored text that there is an annoying Mirkwood Crow up ahead in the darkness or that the player ThunderN00b is hiding behind that bush hoping to gank me but his big name sticking out of the bush gave away his position.

While we hear the word “immersion” being used most within the MMORPG genre, and MMORPG’s are for the most part consistent with their world design and behavior within it, MMORPG designers are woefully behind the times and behind the power curve compared to other studios. Specifically I will give Rockstar the award for Best Virtual World Design, and that is mostly due to all the little details they put into their worlds, and also physics, which is something MMO’s haven’t adopted yet.

I recently finished the story mode to Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption, which also provoked me to get back playing their Grand Theft Auto 4, where I finally finished the story mode, and one of its expansions, The Lost and Damned, which I also completed. Without getting into the gameplay of any of those and just sticking to the topic of the virtual worlds they have created, they are hands-down the most immersing I have experienced. The environments are a huge part of it, from the massive, winding Liberty City to the open ranges of the Old West, it is always fun to explore. The citizens of those worlds are another huge factor. All the people walking or driving through Liberty City or riding their horses or coaches in Red Dead Redemption. Having conversations among themselves, reacting to your presence if you walk near (or into) them, skid your car around a corner, or shoot a gun. Sometimes I like to just stop and observe what they do because you never get the same thing twice. I might drive down a street and find an accident in the intersection. An NPC may have been mugged and the thief is running away. An NPC thief might be carjacking another driver — or me. The police might chase down and arrest the NPC. Helicopters and planes fly overhead. Boats and ships are in the river. If I get out of my car, it’s still there when I come back. In RDR, Rockstar ramped things up even more. My horse is not merely a “speed buff with graphics” like our MMORPG mounts. Like the car in GTA4, it is its own entity and if I get off the horse it still exists in the world. But the horse is also an animal, so has its own AI. Horses are skittish around noises like gunfire, and this is reflected in-game. My horse also knows if there’s a rattlesnake nearby even if I don’t see it. It also has a sense of self-preservation and will do everything in its power to prevent me from riding off a cliff. These are consistent behaviors I would expect and the AI interactions and behaviors contribute to my suspension of disbelief, even when it’s silly. At times it can be aggravating if I hop off the horse to gather a plant or skin an animal and it walks off to graze, but it is the behavior I would expect if I let a real horse go alone unhitched. Compare all that to our MMORPG worlds where most town citizens are mannequins or at best have a brief patrol pattern. There is never any sense that the NPC’s actually live in MMO villages or that they truly exist at all other than as static Pez dispensers for quests. Another example in RDR is when I gather a plant or skin an animal, I am shown a brief cinematic where Marston bends down and picks the plant or takes out his hunting knife and skins the animal. This is a brief perspective shift, which may potentially bother certain players (as discussed in my recent Dragon Age vs. Mass Effect article) but it does serve to keep me squarely planted in the virtual world. What are not immersing are progress bars. I don’t know what happened in recent years that caused developers to decide that nearly every possible action in an RPG needs to be accompanied by a progress bar, but it is an annoying practice. Being annoyed in both Person and Player forms is a sure-fire way to eliminate my spatial presence.

There are no names floating above NPC’s or objects in Rockstar’s worlds, I have to mentally engage myself, pay attention and *gasp* learn. This is especially apparent in RDR where, if my count is correct, there are 31 different animals (counting both domestic and wild) and I may have to hunt and skin various types. Not only do I have to learn what each type looks like (Is that a deer, an elk or a bighorn ram? Is that little critter a raccoon or an armadillo?) but also learn where they may be located, not only from a “zone” point of view but also what terrain do they prefer and sometimes take into account whether they are predominantly diurnal or nocturnal animals. The animals in RDR behave like the animals they mimic. Wolves are pack animals and hunt together, but with more realistic patterns than the hard-coded patrols we’d see in an MMORPG. Deer are easily spooked and will bolt in erratic patterns, which can be fun to watch if there is a herd of them. Buffalo and cattle can also be spooked if chased, will work themselves into a lemming-like frenzy and run themselves off a cliff to their deaths. All this leads to a more pure sense of “hunting” than what we have in an MMORPG where we know not only which zone a particular mob is located, but also where it has been placed and will always respawn. The crème de la crème of hunting in RDR is the grizzly bear. While it is only found in the North, specifically in the area around Tall Trees, it can often be an elusive beast depending how vigilant I am scanning the entire environment and the time of day. Unlike MMORPG’s where “night” is simply stars in the sky and the lighting turned down a couple notches, Rockstar’s nights are very dark and difficult to see in. In LOTRO or other MMORPG’s if we get into aggro range of a bear, it will stand up, make its bear roar sound then charge us. There is no aggro range in RDR. If a grizzly happens to see me, I can pretty much bet that it’s pissed off and will charge. I rarely see them ahead of time and when I do it’s too late. They don’t make a roar sound at all ahead of time, I have to rely on hearing it breath as it charges. In fact, there are already so many ambient sounds in RDR from other animals to other NPC people, to gunfire, to my horse making horse noises, to the sound of its hooves on the ground that I ended up turning off the music every time I enter Tall Trees just to give myself one avenue of advantage to attempt to hear a grizzly breathing. Grizzlies are also the most dangerous predator in the game. Two swipes from a bear and you’re dead. We can carry medicine in our pack which will heal us from one hit but depending on how the physics system reacted to the bear’s mauling, it’s possible the bear may be back for its death blow before we manage to stand and use the medicine. You’ve heard adrenaline-pumping stories of trying to avoid and evade enemies on a PvP server in an MMO? The grizzly in RDR is the closest I’ve ever come to that feeling in a PvE setting. I may be hunting, but I am also being hunted.

[Note to MMO developers: The previous paragraph is precisely what we speak of when we ask for better AI. We are not asking for impossibly difficult AI like you continue to believe. We are not asking for human-level deviousness, ingenuity and tactics. We are simply asking that things behave as we would expect them to, including cover or survival tactics for intelligent enemies (eg. humans or humanoids). The "Hulk Smash!" AI found in MMORPG's was perfectly acceptable in 1980's-era arcade games but it's time to join us in the 21st century.]

Rockstar also uses physics in GTA4 and RDR, specifically the Euphoria physics engine, which is specially crafted to provide realistic movement and behavior to models rather than having each animation sequence hard-coded like we see in MMORPG’s. If I jump off my horse while it’s still moving, I will lean back on my heels while I realistically skid to a stop. If I jump in the air, I see a normal jump animation but if I’m near a fence I climb or vault over it. I may even stumble over an object or a small ledge and fall to the ground then pick myself up and dust myself off. Running too fast down stairs may lead to stumbling or running into someone. Reactions to an explosion takes into account the distance from the center of the blast. Maybe I am simply knocked down or maybe I am blown off my feet and into a wall. By contrast, all “knockbacks” in an MMORPG have hard-coded arcs instead of actual physics modeling. Rockstar also gives more benign physics behavior such as walking or driving uphill tends to slow us down, and moving downhill speeds up. Age of Conan is the only MMORPG I have seen include that behavior. Horses in RDR ride faster on paths or roads than in wild terrain. If it rains in Liberty City your tires have less traction.

Speaking of weather, Rockstar even delivers in that department. Not content with simply “rain” their worlds might have anything from light showers to torrential downpours to raging thunderstorms. Sometimes the rains will be accompanied by mists. Wet surfaces actually appear wet and puddles form. Mornings may be foggy in Liberty City. Mountains in RDR may have mists or fog in the evenings. Dry dust blows through the weeds in the parched plains. I’ll give LOTRO the award for Best Weather in an MMORPG but Rockstar still takes the award home for Most Comprehensive Weather in a Video Game. Not to say it’s perfect; it isn’t but it’s the best out there at the moment.

I will leave you with this time-lapse of Red Dead Redemption created by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry.

This is the YouTube version, fine for the embed here but I recommend viewing the one on the RDR: World in Motion article which describes how they made it. The best version is their 720p H.264 MP4 they link for download though.

For those interested, Digital Foundry also has time-lapse videos of GTA4, Assassin’s Creed 2, and others. Links should be found at the end of each time-lapse video article.

Caught the blurb on Massively so I popped over to Twisted Pixel’s site, and sure enough, they’ve posted that they’ve completed a contract to help build Turbine’s upcoming unannounced console MMO.

It’s still hush hush, but we just finished a contract with Turbine to help them build an awesome new MMO intended for consoles.

If you want more than that, you’ll have to take it up with Turbine, because we can’t spill the beans on their top-secret game.

It was a fun project, and we’re proud of our work. We can’t wait to play it ourselves when it’s released.

This is exciting news! Twisted Pixel has produced two of the most highly-acclaimed XBLA titles out there – The Maw and Splosion Man – and gives me hope that whatever the game may be, it won’t use the Turbine Engine. I enjoy Turbine’s games, but that engine is coming up on a decade old and it seems like they keep piling features on top of the ancient crap instead of cleaning it up and keeping it updated under the hood. Epic and id update their engines and design entirely new ones; it’s time Turbine stepped up to the plate as well.

Of course now the speculation goes into overdrive of what the game will be. I could have swore Turbine said (or implied) it would be a new IP but players won’t seem to drop the idea of a DDO port. The concept of DDO – a co-op group completing adventures – would work perfectly on consoles; after all co-op is the Big Thing this year, but would require a massive overhaul of the UI and inventory mechanics. We are also accustomed to buying DLC Adventure Packs already on consoles, though I have my doubts that a full in-game store would go over well in the console world. The instanced adventures would work well given that consoles have much more limited RAM and resources than higher-end PC’s. I could see a console DDO going over quite well if it were given a better engine and the fluid controls and graphics/animations we’ve come to expect on modern AAA console titles – something Turbine struggles with on the PC with limited success.

A console version of LOTRO? Nah, DIKU and consoles just don’t get along. An “arcadey” version of LOTRO with a playable evil side? Why would Turbine bother when Snowblind is already finishing up that exact idea (non-massively multiplayer) with Lord of the Rings: War in the North?

The much-speculated Harry Potter MMO? Now we’re at least talking with not only a new IP but one that belongs to Turbine’s new Dark Lord owner, Warner Brothers. It’s been talked about for a long time, and WB has stated they would like to see the IP given the MMO treatment. My own hope is that if it happens, it’s not too kiddy-fied. Not everyone who enjoys Harry Potter is a kid, nor are a good deal of console players, and I would hate to feel flatly excluded from a title.

How about a console MMO set on Dereth, the world of the Asheron’s Call games? That would bring some attention back to that IP and perhaps to the original MMO that is still running (and I’m certain Asheron’s Call will end up going the hybrid freemium route eventually) and possibly lead into an Asheron’s Call 3 MMO on the PC as well.

How about moving on from fantasy (Turbine has 3 fantasy IP’s already) altogether? Done correctly, we console players certainly still love our fantasy, but also seem much more willing to accept other settings than are our PC compatriots.

Sorry, still no screenshots. Too busy installing and playing all these games to remember to take screenshots then upload them anywhere. I’ll do it next time! (That’s probably what I said last time, right?)

In the MMO Department, I’ve installed the obvious: LOTRO because I’m a Lifetime member and it’s “home” then Age of Conan because I kept my subscription active the past few months and *gasp* the game has come a long way since beta; it’s quite a blast now, and a shame more bloggers aren’t coming back to it.

I took Longasc’s advice and turned DX10 back on in LOTRO but disabled the dynamic shadows. Honestly, I can’t tell it from DX9 like that, but I’m sure there must be some differences somewhere that I’m missing.

Otherwise, despite being either on break or having a broken PC for the majority of last year, LOTRO was almost like I’d never left. I’m still busy grinding daily quests in Lothlorien for reputation so I can get into Caras Galadhon. I also never got to kindred with the Iron Miners so I’ll have to go back and work on that too so I can get the Friend of Nature combat pet. Then of course, I need the last few pieces of Radiance gear to complete the set then continue to the new set for Mirkwood which everyone is saying has crappy stats but the Radiance is required. So other than learning Skirmishes and grinding up my little Soldier — how the hell do I change classes or make it female? All I can do so far is trait him for Warrior (dps) or Protector (tank) — and the fact I’m getting XP again, it’s almost like nothing’s changed for me since I’m essentially still playing the early Moria game where I left off.

Age of Conan, as I mentioned, is a lot of fun! I’ve been plugging along quite nicely, just putting an hour or two per day in running quests. The XP is a bit over the top, though. My Bear Shaman reached level 28 and is already 80% to 29 just from turning in quests and only a few combat encounters. Maybe I’m just spoiled from having a mount in LOTRO but I’m really resenting being locked out of my mounts (I have two War Mammoths) until level 40. I’m assuming (hoping?) that the Bear Shaman will be a desired class for grouping and raiding, though. My primary goal in AoC is participating in end-game, so I want a class that I enjoy playing and is also in demand and can get groups easily. Really looking forward to the expansion!

Guild Wars is installed and up-to-date but I did not install using the -image switch so all I really have is the login screen. I’ll have to fully load each and every zone one by one once I decide to actually jump in and play the game, unless the -image switch also works after the fact?

I was planning on installing DDO but the little installer program doesn’t seem interested in running at all in Win7, even under compatibility settings. I’ll come back to that one, it’s rather low on the priority list, although I’m extremely curious to see how it’s changed since the business model shift.

In F2P Land, I installed that Allods Online game, and not sure I’ll be sticking with it. I do like that they totally ripped off Mythic’s font from Warhammer, though. That font was probably my favorite part of WAR’s UI. Otherwise, yeah, the art style in Allods is very WoW-ish so far. Due to that, framerate is excellent although the engine seems to falter a bit when it comes to loading in players.

I also installed Runes of Magic and spent a few hours today trying to remember how to play my character and how some of that game works. Despite being quite “standard” there’s something I rather like about Runes of Magic. I kinda wouldn’t mind having a regular F2P title as a secondary MMO; something that I like enough to be willing to support the developers by actually spending a little money here and there. It’s been well over a year since I last played, and my character is only level 11 now, but I never understood why Darren raised such a stink over the price of mounts. Compared to other F2P mount prices, RoM’s are right about in the middle; I’ve seen cheaper but I’ve also seen much more expensive in other games. I figure if he liked the game that much (and he seemed to until he saw the price of the mounts and then changed his opinion of the entire game) what’s $10 or whatever towards supporting a game you like that you never had to pay a dime for the box or a subscription? Darren has never struck me as an end-game kinda guy but the prices to play end-game at the same time he was complaining about the horse was the real crime. I think it was something like twice the cost of a full year in a subscription MMO in order to play RoM’s end-game. And he was complaining about a horse? That’s missing the forest for the trees, right there.

Finally, I saw Steam had Champions Online which is now setup as a permanent trial. So I logged into my Cryptic account and got a trial key and put a few minutes into it last night. Graphics are nice and I love the art style but the controls were a bit wonky and unresponsive. I was into comics and superheroes in high school, and I love the superhero movies of today, but I just don’t know that I’m into superhero games, MMO or otherwise. I bought City of Heroes at launch, and I think my character is perhaps level 9? Maybe slightly higher. I sub for a month every couple years, and CoH never manages to hold my interest the full month and after a few minutes in Champions I can tell it would probably be a similar story. But I’ll keep it installed since it’s a never-ending trial so I can pop in at my leisure.

In non-MMO territory, I started things off with my favorite PC shooter, Battlefield 2142. Installed it, patched it to 1.40 then installed the expansion then patched to 1.50. It runs fine but I keep getting PunkBuster errors and kicked off every server I’ve tried playing on. I have the manual PunkBuster updater but it’s not helping. So, no luck with shooters so far. It crossed my mind to pick up Bad Company 2 for PC but I only know two people who have it on PC. I run a Friends of Friends list on XBL that currently has 70 members of the 21+ adult gaming group I’m a member of so it’s not hard to do the math and figure out where I’d get the most bang for my buck. Bad Company 2 is arguably the best shooter I’ve ever played, but playing with the general public rather than squadding up with friends gives a much weaker experience and I’d most likely be stuck with the public if I got it on PC. Plus I get achievements on 360!

Speaking of that, Oakstout talked me into buying Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 yesterday. I know the hardcore PC-only guys bitch about the whole Games for Windows LIVE thing but I love it! Not only can I chat (both text and voice) with my friends on XBL but I get achievements too! So far the game is pretty fun. It’s more of an RTT than an RTS, which is more my style, and the bosses are much more active and scripted, similar to a console game boss or an MMO raid boss, which makes for an interesting experience. Apparently DoW2 has a co-op mode too, so Oakstout is looking forward to getting me into a match. JayeDub saw me playing yesterday and said the same thing, and I think both Hudson and SmakenDahead have the game so maybe Oak can get a whole blogger or Casualties of War group for DoW2.

I also installed World in Conflict, another RTT. I bought it launch day because a buddy and I were interested then we ended up only able to play once. That was, what, two years ago? Turns out Oakstout and Aaron both have WiC too, and have expressed an interest in making some rounds there.

Finally, Aaron has spent the past year or so trying to convince me to get Battle for Middle Earth 2, so I bit the bullet and ordered that yesterday as well. He says it has an excellent co-op campaign and I’ve heard good things about the game overall, despite being 3 years old or whatever now.

So, now I’ll be back to bouncing back and forth between the PC and 360 again; between MMO’s and real games again. The challenge I face is whether I can flit from game to game as much as Stargrace or not! Watching her status on Raptr can be entertaining all on its own and makes me wonder if I’m not the only blogger out there with an extremely short attention span!

Before I sign off, non-gaming question: Rather than making backups of important files, settings, and media I bought a new hard drive for this PC. I have the other hard drive installed as secondary, and eventually after I’m satisfied I’ve pulled all the files I need off of it, I’m considering formatting that drive and making the entire drive into the My Documents partition. I could do that easily under XP but does Win7 support that type of thing? And would you recommend doing it or should I leave well enough alone?

As in the previous article, beware traveler! Beyond this point be spoilers!

I completed Mass Effect 2 last week, and it was glorious! I wanted to check a single part of the UI in Mass Effect to compare to Mass Effect 2 and ended up getting so engrossed in the game that I completed an entire second play-through of Mass Effect in 3 days! My first ME (and ME2) play-throughs were as a male Soldier class who took the Paragon path. So this time I played the exact opposite: a female Adept (biotic) Renegade. Boy, was that some devilish fun being no-nonsense, shooting important NPC’s in the head and slinging biotic powers all over the place. It was almost like playing a Sith, sans the red lightsaber. I’m looking forward to taking her through ME2 doing all the Renegade actions and seeing her glowing facial scars from the Lazarus Project become more pronounced. (See? Spoiler!)

On a positive note, playing both games back-to-back has brought the stark contrast between the two games into clearer light.

Every technical aspect has been dramatically improved upon for Mass Effect 2. Character models, animations, world design and architecture, textures, lighting and particle effects, controls, UI… you name it, it’s better in ME2 and with much better performance!

From an overall story perspective, I would without hesitation recommend playing ME before going into ME2. There are too many mentions of events that occurred in ME and several brief appearances of characters that Shepard interacted with in the first game that wouldn’t make sense or have meaning to players who skipped ME. Do yourself a favor and play them both for the full effect.

In addition to the other positive aspects I’ve already mentioned both here and in the previous article, I’ll add the new cover mechanic as well. There was a cover mechanic to ME as well, but it only worked by running into a large object like a wall. Anything smaller than Shepard would not work. ME2 improves by not only making Shepard crouch behind smaller objects but also adds more direct interaction to enter/leave cover by pressing the A button. Also, once covered behind a smaller barrier, moving forward and pressing A tells Shepard to jump over the barrier, and the game uses this new mechanic to move from cover point to cover point as well as for climbing. As I said in the first article, ME2 is very derivative of the Gears of War series in several areas, cover mechanic being just one.

ME2 has an improved auto-save as well, should you choose to use it (it’s on by default). There are frequent auto-save points, and all saves are completely seamless whereas in ME the game would freeze during the save process. First, the save points are a tremendous boon, and I became so accustomed to this that it cost me over an hour of playtime I had to repeat during my replay of ME a few days ago when I hit a snag and wanted to reload. I also noticed that ME does not allow you to manually reload an auto-save; you have to exit the game then resume to do that. ME2 lets us re-load an auto-save from the Load menu, which is a huge convenience.

Another positive in ME2 is that each mission has its own cinematic, in contrast to ME which re-used the same scene constantly. For example, in ME every time you land on a planet, it’s the exact same scene of the Normandy sweeping down and dropping off the Mako rover, the only change being the sky and terrain graphics are unique for each planet. ME2 has extremely well-rendered cinematics for every single mission which are not only enjoyable to watch on their own but also serve to improve the overall sense of immersion in the game’s universe.

To avoid being a drooling Mass Effect fanboy, I’ll give some negatives and things that I am still undecided how I feel about in ME2. Nothing’s perfect, after all.

The Mission Complete screen. This is a minor — indeed, a shallow — thing, and on the one hand I suppose it’s convenient to have one screen that shows all the XP, credits, etc. I gained during that mission. On a negative side, it makes an already streamlined RPG feel more like “merely” a game, like Peggle or something where you see the “Level Complete!” screen.

The XP Table. Mass Effect 2 does not use a gradually increasing XP curve, like we’ve become accustomed to over the years in every single RPG. Each level in Mass Effect 2 requires 1,000 XP and never changes from that. Unlike ME, no XP is earned for kills, hacking, resource recovery, etc. Completing a Story Mission rewards 1,000 XP so automatically completing a Story Mission means you gain a level. Completing a Loyalty Quest for your crew members rewards 750 XP each. Anomaly Detected missions discovered while scanning a planet for resources reward 125 XP upon completion and then side missions acquired from dialogue with NPC award 40 XP. I am undecided how I feel about this change. It is convenient knowing exactly what is required to level up, and many (not all) RPG’s, including MMORPG’s, have a leveling curve where it requires exponentially more XP to gain each new level, but kills also reward more XP so it works out that the curve is barely noticeable in practice.

Some story elements were questionable. One that stands out is during the mission to recruit Mordin, you encounter people looting the dead bodies. This apparently offends Shepard, for there is a dialogue scene to dissuade them (or probably threaten them if you’re playing renegade) from looting the corpses and offices. Meanwhile what is Shepard doing the entire game? Looting corpses and offices. The few areas of “exploration” in ME2 is solely for the purpose of looting. Practice what you preach, Shepard.

I was not a fan of ME2′s particular method of content gating. Similar to ME, each NPC crew member has a particular area of the Normandy they can be found. It’s the same in ME2 but now the door to the NPC’s area is locked until you recruit them. Uh, sorry, but Shepard is the commanding officer and there is no reason he would be locked out of part of his ship. Maybe it’s just close to home since I’m a captain at work and there is no part of the jet I’m “locked out” of for any reason. Regardless, next time I’d prefer a more logical and story-based means of content gating.

The audio mixing was poor during dialogue scenes. BioWare is hardly the only game developer guilty of this, but it just amazes me that audio engineering and production has been around for how long now? And games still don’t lower the volume of the background music and ambient sounds during dialogue so that we can, you know, hear what is being said? Bargain basement radio shows know how to do this; there is no excuse for development studios with multi-million dollar budgets to be this clueless.

Finally, I did encounter two glitches during the game that required re-loading. At the Normandy crash site, I walked too close to a cliff while exploring and triggered a z-axis glitch which elevated Shepard a few pixels in the air. Suddenly he could walk on air out over the cliff but couldn’t get back down onto the actual terrain. Also on Tuchanka during Grunt’s loyalty quest, at one point we’re fighting waves of klixen and one large flying klixen. Once we’d killed all the smaller klixen, the big flying one disappeared. My AI squadmates continued shooting into the air where the klixen was supposed to be, but it never reappeared so we could kill it and continue the mission.

I’ve read a few reviews that complained about the mission structure, saying they were all similar. Um, duh? Every mission will have some exploration, some dialogue, some story, and some combat. It was the same in ME, and it’s the same in every single RPG I’ve ever heard of. I’m a little confused why ME2 is being singled out for the same act all RPG’s (or any game with a story) are guilty of? The one thing during missions that became somewhat predictable was that if you ran into an area and suddenly notice low walls or other short barriers, you know you’re about to enter combat because those low barriers are to take cover behind or jump over. If you’re paying attention to that, you have a heads-up that combat is coming but there are also other clues. But the actual maps for each mission is unique each time, unlike ME with its horrid planet design and only a handful of building layouts which were repeated ad nauseum.

I will agree, to an extent, with the complaints over the length of the actual story arc itself compared to the number of recruitment missions. ME2 is a much more focused and tighter experience, and while the actual story arc defeating the Collectors is condensed to a few missions, what the game did from an overall perspective was to drastically improve the lore to Mass Effect in an immersive and visual manner. In ME we learned about the Quarion flotilla in dialogue and from reading the Codex (You did read the Codex right? No? Me either.) but in ME2 we actually get to see that migrant fleet and board two of its ships. So much of what we only heard of in the first game we actually experience, to varied degrees, in the second. ME2 spends a lot of time letting us expand our experience and knowledge within the Mass Effect universe. Instead of just reading the Codex for lore (and there’s plenty of that, too, unfortunately) ME2 also gives us the chance to live out little bits of it. Mass Effect 2 had record-setting sales of over two million units its first week, and the most January sales to date, no small feat considering ME2 launched on January 26th. Mass Effect is becoming a big-name IP, right up there with the Star Trek’s and Star Wars of yesteryear, and you can officially count me among those who firmly believe without a doubt that BioWare fully intends on expanding the Mass Effect IP into the massively multiplayer realm within the next decade. ME2 serves to further that goal by showing us more of that universe and letting us play in it, in addition to merely reading about it, which not only improves the “immersion” of ME2 but also draws us into the concept of the IP as a whole so we yearn for more. The lore already has everything we’d possibly need for an awesome space adventure MMORPG: multiple races, multiple opposing factions to support PvP, governing bodies, galactic threats, law enforcement, criminals, mercenary groups, etc. The potential is there for either the greatest sandbox-with-a-story MMO or the greatest sci-fi themepark MMO. I’m hoping for the former, myself…

I’ve been very curious on people’s opinions on this, so I installed a poll plugin so I could ask. I’m hoping I did this correctly…

Many of us loved BioWare’s recent epic fantasy adventure RPG Dragon Age: Origins and lamented that it was a single-player only game.

So my question to you is: Would you play and enjoy a multiplayer cooperative Dragon Age RPG if it continued to use the same control scheme as found in Origins?

What I’m getting at is DA:O is fairly traditional in the you, the player, issue commands, including movement, etc. to the character(s) and they follow those commands. The closest multiplayer game I can think of would be Guild Wars where your character will move to points or enemies, and will continue to follow if the enemy runs (ie. mobs can and will kite you if you let them). Would this be acceptable in a Dragon Age multiplayer RPG or since you would only be actively controlling a single character, would you prefer more direct interaction of that character, such as you’d see in an MMORPG?

This question is based on the stance that pausing a multiplayer game is out of the question, so the pause mechanic would be disabled during multiplayer, which means the skill selection, etc. UI would be during live play. I’m only curious about preferences for the actual direct control of your single character in co-op versus the traditional RPG controls found in DA:O.

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Warning: High Likelihood of Spoilers!

As always, due to my job I am nowhere near finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I’m possibly not even halfway finished, not really sure since I’ve been avoiding storyline spoilers, etc. for the most part, though I’ve heard rumors it’s a shorter game. I have recruited the first batch of NPC squad-mates — Archangel aka Garrus from Mass Effect 1, “Jack” the biotic psychotic convict, Professor Mordin, Grunt the Krogan super-soldier prototype, and the DLC mercenary Zaeed  — and have completed the first mission for the Illusive Man where Shepard fights some Collectors — the new galactic enemy for Mass Effect 2 which look like a cross between Turians and the aliens Will Smith fought in Independence Day (I’m secretly hoping Shepard spazzes out shouting “Who’s the man? Huh? Who’s the man? Wait til I get another ship and I’ma line your friends up beside you! *whap!* Welcome to the Citadel!”) — then has a brief reunion with Ashley Williams, who gives him an earful for, in her eyes, betraying the Alliance (and her?) and working for Cerberus. The two Cerberus personnel Shepard begins the game with, Jacob and Miranda, have given Shepard their personal stories leading to their Loyalty quests but I’ve not yet deviated the Normandy off-course to begin either of them.

For this first Mass Effect 2 article, I will give my impressions of the game so far as well as seeing how I fared on my Mass Effect 2 Wishlist a few weeks ago.

I imported my Mass Effect character, a male Soldier Paragon who I completed one playthrough of Mass Effect with. I still intend on doing a second playthrough to get him to level cap and complete a few extra achievements, as well as playing a biotic class to re-play as a Renegade someday. But for now I was most comfortable with the Soldier class in Mass Effect as well as being comfortable with the Shepard I’d already played, so I wanted to continue his story in Mass Effect 2 rather than starting a fresh character.

Let’s start with my Wishlist items:

1) Make it fun from the start.

I’ve had a real problem with Western RPG’s in that, while they may be stylistically more appealing to me than JRPG’s, they have been intrinsically boring as well. I’m still nowhere near finishing Fallout 3, and haven’t even played in months. Oblivion? I did the initial quest to escape the castle and get into the world and haven’t played since. Checking the timestamps on my Mass Effect achievements, I completed Eden Prime in July, 2008 then didn’t play again until November, where the game finally picked up pace and retained my interest and I completed the first playthrough at the end of January, 2009. (Who says achievements are useless?)

Compare that to Dragon Age: Origins which was immediately fun and intriguing and for the most part kept up the pace the entire game. The only break I took from playing Dragon Age was due to the deluge of heavy-hitting AAA titles that released back-to-back from September through December, and even then I’d still stop in DAO to run a quest or few in between the new shiny games.

Mass Effect 2 has done a great job so far of being cool, fun and interesting the whole time I’m playing and I actually look forward to my next session whereas the other RPG’s I mentioned, obviously that has not been the case. The opening CGI cinematic with the Normandy crew frantically ejecting before it was destroyed while Shepard staying behind to fight through the floating wreckage to save Joker as the Normandy is in her final, fiery death throes, then ultimately giving his life as he ejects Joker’s escape pod while the enemy ship fires its final blast (hey, I did warn about spoilers!) was very gripping and I think I even made a few “oooooh’s” out loud. Even though BioWare made no secrets about the whole “death of Shepard” thing, I never knew how true that was or how and when it would happen, so starting the game that way had me reeling in shock and kept me riveted to the screen.

2) Improved dialogue animations.

Oh, my! I stated in the Wishlist how the characters were mostly stiff mannequins during dialogue scenes with only a few animation frames. Mass Effect 2 dramatically improves that with character shifting between idle stances, pacing back and forth, NPC’s looking at whomever is speaking, NPC’s continuing their activities in the background and so forth. All the character textures and animations have been improved and are utilized well during dialogue scenes. However… Occasionally there are times during dialogue scenes when the new higher-polygon-count and more complex character models appear a little strange during their close-up scenes, especially when the facial animations for emotional portrayal are used. One recent close-up of Shepard had him open his eyes wide, probably to appear amazed or shocked, but they opened so wide with his bright white round eyeball models hanging in the sockets that he looked more like a Halloween mask. Jacob is even more noticeable because his facial expressions get a bit wonky fairly often. Sometimes he’s Jacob, former Alliance grunt turned Cerberus soldier. But other times he answers that age-old question “What would Marty Feldman look like if his corpse was put through the Universal Soldier program?” What, no one else ever wondered that? No one? Anyone? Hmph!

3) Improved usage of Unreal Engine 3.

Mass Effect was, I believe, BioWare’s first time using UE3. It showed. UE3 is well-known for texture loading and pop-in issues, and those reared their head in Mass Effect more than any other UE3 title I can think of. In addition, there were a lot of performance issues where the framerate would suddenly start chugging along, sometimes making it difficult to control for brief periods. Auto-saves would freeze the game. Memory usage was inefficient with frequent load spots that would freeze the game momentarily. During dialogues, characters would randomly jump from position to position rather than smooth animation cycles. All in all, Mass Effect was one of the worst offenders I have personally played when it comes to the laundry list of UE3 technical issues.

I am pleased to say that BioWare has certainly taken the past couple of years to adequately familiarize themselves with the engine. Every single UE3 issue present in the first Mass Effect has been addressed in the sequel. I’ve yet to have even a single noticeable framerate drop, even in busy locations. I loaded up Mass Effect for comparison and just jogging through the Citadel the engine was having difficulty and sprinting nearly made it a slideshow a few times, the framerate dropped so badly. Mass Effect 2 handles its asynchronous streaming fantastically. Manually save your game and you’re right back to controlling Shepard while the “save” icon does its thing. If it weren’t for that “saving” icon you’d never even know you’d reached an auto-save point, and even in the largest areas I’ve seen so far the game never stops to load new parts of the same map. All this is with even better graphics, more detailed environments and the full arsenal of lighting and particle effects that are UE3′s specialty. Kudos to the BioWare team!

Even more amazing, I think Mass Effect 2 is the first and only UE3 game I’ve seen where the initial texture loading isn’t plainly obvious. Epic’s own Gears of War 2 does it. Borderlands does it, and it’s only a few months old. I have no proof of this, but I suspect BioWare uses the pre-mission character loadout screen as a buffer of sorts, or perhaps as a distraction, while the textures load in the background so that when the screen shifts to the game, everything is already loaded and ready to go. If I was a betting man, I’d say BioWare got some assistance and consultation from Epic this time, as they are known for providing those services for their engine, but regardless the results seen in Mass Effect 2 are damn impressive.

4) No elevators, please.

To a small degree, I am actually torn on this. In Mass Effect those torturously lengthy elevator rides were an opportunity to pan the camera around and check out the gear of Shepard and his team without them moving around. Some of the elevator conversations were humorous, sort of a pre-cursor to the conversations heard in Dragon Age: Origins, as was some of the news announcements over the radio. On the other hand, the elevators were torturously lengthy and I don’t miss that at all. To be fair, the elevators were a roleplay-ish compromise to the technical issue of having UE3 live-stream the new level. Mass Effect 2 does technically have a few elevators, but entering an elevator simply presents a level selection screen, then a loading screen while the new level is loaded. The loading is pretty fast, and the loading screens themselves are animated so it’s not that bad, really. On the Normandy it’s nice because the loading screen is a sort of 3D wire-mesh of the ship showing the elevator progress to the selected level.

5) Moral ambiguity.

Ok, I struck out on this one, though it was more of a hope based on other RPG’s such as Dragon Age: Origins which had shades of grey and I actually had to read the responses to see which was appropriate to the character I was playing. Mass Effect was pretty simple in it’s Good (Paragon) or Bad (Renegade) and you always know that the top choice is Paragon, the middle is neutral and the bottom is Renegade. It’s the same in Mass Effect 2 and honestly, while there was a ton of changes streamlining to the actual gameplay and mechanics in Mass Effect 2, the dialogue circle is a big part of the Mass Effect “feel” and it’s probably for the best that it was kept intact to avoid breaking too far from feeling like a Mass Effect game.

So, 4 out of 5 on my wishlist, number 5 being a bit on the bogus side to begin with, so not bad! Now for some general impressions of the game so far.

The first Mass Effect was a bit of genre-blending on BioWare’s part as a relatively full-blown RPG disguised as a third-person shooter. On the downside, that disguise was rather flimsy since if you so much as fired a shot in the general vicinity of an enemy it was considered a hit and the RPG die rolls took over to determine the actual result. This was even more obvious in the Mako which would only hit within a specific range, regardless where the targeting reticule was capable of aiming. BioWare said that among the many improvements for the sequel that they wanted to step up their game on the shooting aspect. They’ve done just that. If there is any RPG die roll combat resolution occuring, it’s very well hidden. Weapons don’t have stats, and armor only has a mild bonus to a single aspect of combat. If I may be so bold, I will compare Mass Effect 2 to Borderlands. Gearbox may have pioneered the acronym “RPS” for Role-Playing Shooter and they did an excellent job of providing a solid first-person shooter based solely on player skill with a few (mostly passive) RPG abilities. With Mass Effect 2, BioWare has seemingly reversed the roles of the first game, delivering a solid third-person shooter with some RPG features; BioWare’s own take on an “RPS.”

On that note, I mentioned above that I suspected BioWare got some assistance from Epic on the Unreal Engine 3. I also suspect the BioWare guys have been playing a lot of Epic’s Gears of War games, because an awful lot of the new controls and abilities in Mass Effect 2 are derivative of the Gears of War series. In Mass Effect 1 holding the A button put Shepard into a mild sprint. In Mass Effect 2 the camera actually bumps along like a sort of “follow cam” you’d see in chase scenes in a movie. Exactly like Gears of War, which also uses the A button. The Gears of War series is a cover-based shooter where pressing the A button near a wall or short barrier would put Fenix into cover then pop his head out to aim a shot then safely fall back under cover. Mass Effect 2 has the exact same controls. In Mass Effect 1, either the LT or RT would draw weapons and the B button would stow them. Now, in Mass Effect 2 pressing the Back button stows weapons while the B button is now a melee attack. Exactly like Gears of War. In fact, the only perceivable difference control-wise between the two is that Gears of War uses the X button to interact with objects while Mass Effect 2 uses the A button. Otherwise, it’s not too far a stretch to say that Mass Effect 2 is essentially BioWare’s version of Gears of War with a strong story (they’re all about that Fourth Pillar, remember?) and RPG character progression.

This shift has rubbed some people the wrong way, but I approve. For the most part. Mass Effect 2 has been highly streamlined from the first game. Skills, for example, is one obvious area that this shows. Mass Effect had a whole screen of skills for each character to assign points. Mass Effect 2 has a much smaller choice of skills per character, and only 4 “levels” per skill but achieving that 4th level will “evolve” that skill into another selectable higher skill. For example, as I said earlier, I imported my Mass Effect character who was a Soldier class. In Mass Effect 2 one of the Soldier class skills is Combat Mastery. Achieving level 4 in combat mastery will evolve the Soldier class into either a Commando or Shock Trooper class, which has a few different abilities and bonuses, especially bonuses to Paragon/Renegade points. Also each individual point I assign to any skill is immediately noticeable whereas the effect was much more subtle in the first game, if it was even noticeable at all.

Some aspects have gone far beyond mere streamlining, though. The unholy mess that was the inventory system has been completely removed, for example, and replaced with weapon loadout lockers. One is located in the Normandy’s armory and most locations where missions or combat can occur will have one. Those are the only points you can choose which specific weapon within each weapon category that Shepard and his team will carry with them.

There is very little in the way of acquiring better gear either, though personally I don’t see that as a downside for the type of RPG that the Mass Effect series is. In an MMO or RPG-ish games like Diablo clones (including Borderlands) enemies are little more than loot piñatas and the constant urge to acquire better gear is what keeps players coming back for more. Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins are the only two BioWare RPG’s I’ve ever played (and completed) and in both of those the characters themselves and the storyline is what kept me playing, not gear. While gear dropped constantly in DA:O I very rarely found anything that was actually worthy of using and all my characters kept their gear they acquired mid-game throughout the rest of the game and its conclusion. Same with Mass Effect, I had tons of “stuff” in my inventory but most of it was vendor trash and there was very rarely any reason to upgrade. If I found any armor for my NPC team, I’d usually equip it based on looks because they almost always had equivalent stats. While having few actual sets of armor, Mass Effect 2 actually has more customization available, but only for Shepard. Your NPC companions get one “upgrade” upon completion of their respective Loyalty quest but from what I’ve heard it’s nothing more than a color change on the same armor.

Mass Effect 2 did add some cool MMO-ish features like casual appearance. Think of LOTRO’s (and EQ2) “appearance tab” and you’ve got the gist of it. In Shepard’s quarters on the Normandy you can choose which set of armor he wears while out and about and choose from a few choices of non-combat appearances while aboard the Normandy. You can also choose background music that plays while in your room, and buy fish for the aquarium, though you have to stop by to feed them rather frequently or they die.

Planetary exploration is another feature that so far seems to have been put on the chopping block. The first game had the Mako rover, which was cool in concept but between the horrible controls and gawd-awful physics, just didn’t work at all. The planets’ landscapes in Mass Effect were uninspired at best, and downright atrocious at worst. Rather than fixing things up for the sequel, BioWare outright removed them, giving us planetary scanning instead. Now, at first I was excited about this because someone in the beta tweeted how fun scanning was, and I thought there would also be some planetary exploration. I was looking forward to having a Lt. Data moment proudly exclaiming “I’d be happy to, sir! I just love scanning for life forms!” then singing “Life forms! You tiny little life forms! My precious little life forms! Where are you?” But alas, that is not to be. Rather than something that actually makes, you know, sense and simply having EDI (the onboard Cerberus AI) automatically scan the planet and display the locations of resources, etc. we have to manually scan a small circle of the planet’s surface waiting for a spike on the meter then launch a probe to gather the resources. This involves holding the LT to actually run the scanner, which moves rather slowly during scanning. I’ve taken to simply rapid-firing the LT while moving the scanner reticule up and down the planetary grid, only slowing when I feel a spike (which displays graphically but also uses the gamepad’s rumblers) then launching a probe. Needless to say, scanning is nothing more than a boring time-sink, but one that is required because the various resources are currencies spent on researching upgrades.

Speaking of pointless time-sinks, let’s talk about hacking. In Mass Effect 1 hacking was a simplified quick-time-event (QTE) version of the old Simon game only rather than repeating the sequence by memory, you had to quickly press the appropriate button when it illuminated on the Simon screen. In Mass Effect 2, bypassing and hacking each have their own mini-games. Bypassing (usually used to open a door) is accomplished on a circuitboard screen. Several nodes are shown, each with its own icon that displays upon mouseover. Find an icon then mouseover the other nodes until you find the matching node to close the circuit. Simple enough, and fairly quick. Hacking, on the other hand, shows a scrolling grid of segments of “code” and a target segment. You simply sit back and watch the grid scroll along until hopefully the target segment appears before the timer runs out and you click it. Three or four segments in total. Both bypassing and hacking feel very unfinished, tacked on, and obviously a shallow time-sink to expand the total playtime by a few minutes at a time. They’re both quite boring as well, though if I had to choose one, I’d much prefer the bypassing mini-game. I think I prefer scanning planets over hacking, and believe me when I say that I am not enjoying scanning planets. At all.

I’ve mentioned how the graphics have improved, performance improved, and all the UE3 eye candy is out in full force already. My initial impression is that the actual maps themselves are smaller than in Mass Effect 1 but so far they are more immersive. There’s usually more actually going on than before. Sure, in the first game the Citadel was a huge area, but considering it was supposed to be this huge multicultural melting pot, it was mostly empty. The parts of the Citadel I’ve seen so far in Mass Effect 2 seemed smaller in comparison but much more lively and more representative of what the Citadel is supposed to be. Remember the nightclub Chora’s Den in the first game? Now the Citadel has a new club called Flux and there’s an even bigger club called Afterlife on the Omega station that are far more believable even though they don’t offer any more actual interaction than before. BioWare did have some actual exotic dancers come in for motion capture (I’ll bet that was a fun session!) and comparing the animations of the dancers in Chora’s Den to those in Afterlife is practically night and day. The Flux club has a dance floor where patron NPC’s are dancing and there’s an interactive spot for Shepard to show off his oh-so-white-boy moves. In full armor and weapons, mind you. He’s such a bad dancer you just can’t help but laugh.

Finally, I’d like to mention the Mass Effect dialogue system in general. I just finished Dragon Age: Origins last week then immediately started Mass Effect 2 and the difference in systems is shocking. I much prefer the Mass Effect way of doing things. In DA:O the dialogue choices don’t appear until the character speaking finishes what he or she has to say. Then you choose your response, to which there is no voice acting whatsoever for your own character. The Mass Effect system is to present your upcoming dialogue choices well in advance of the NPC completing his statements so you can prepare your choice ahead of time, and choosing quickly enough will allow for a seamless dialogue delivery. Not to mention Shepard is fully voice-acted for both male and female. Sure, DA:O would have required male and female recordings for each playable race but it would have made a huge difference in bringing some on-screen personality to your own character. The dialogue in Mass Effect 2 has increased dramatically over the first title, with over 31,000 lines of written dialogue that if listened to non-stop start to finish would total over 25 hours. While I stated above for #5 on my wishlist that I feel Mass Effect 2 is better off without all the grey areas, etc. I do hope for the Dragon Age sequel BioWare displays the dialogue choices ahead of time like they do in Mass Effect. I also hope Dragon Age sold enough to become an important enough IP for BioWare to warrant the expense of providing voice acting for the player character next time.

On today’s episode of Kotaku Talk Radio, BioWare developer Greg Zeschuk said that the Mass Effect IP – a planned trilogy – will not end with the release of Mass Effect 3. In other words, BioWare EA plans to milk the franchise for all it’s worth.

“We’re actually going to continue to use it for stuff and we’re going to continue to make games there. Believe me, we have our work cut out for us for the next little while getting Mass Effect 3 done after this. Don’t worry if you love Mass Effect, there will be more Mass Effect in the future.”

Kotaku’s article gave example’s such as the Halo universe spreading to other genre’s like Ensemble’s swan song title Halo Wars. Not sure that I foresee a “Mass Effect Wars” RTS game on the horizon, but stranger things have happened.

What I could certainly foresee (may as well start a rumor while I’m at it!) is a Mass Effect MMORPG. A multi-platform MMORPG, for that matter, though not cross-platform. Mass Effect is a huge name on consoles and it’s shooter-esqe approach is appealing to many console gamers, myself included.

To use the Warcraft analogy that once upon a time was applied to World of Warcraft, it took three Warcraft games until there was enough Warcraft lore, story, etc. to deserve a MMORPG. That is often used as a counter-argument for why people said there would not be a “Worlds of Starcraft” MMORPG because there’s currently only the one game, with the second game in development. (I could see a Starcraft-based MMOG that was a hybrid RPG and shooter (both first- and third-person, switchable) but Blizzard says their new MMOG is also a new IP, so that theory is out the window. Using the “three games first” theory, it could certainly stand to reason that the Mass Effect IP would have enough interest and sales behind it to warrant development of a MMOG in that universe. I would be interested, but only on the condition they use BioWare-developed RPG systems for it, not the anti-social DIKU mechanics.

The other little tidbit in the podcast was that Mass Effect 3 will also use the same “persistent” save game concept that Mass Effect 2 will be using, checking which decisions were made in Mass Effect 1 to affect how your Mass Effect 3 game will play.

The main reason I find this interesting is that it directly implies Mass Effect 3 will be made during the current console generation. The current generation has already been stretched longer than any previous generation, and both Microsoft and Sony have implied, if not outright stated, to not expect the next hardware generation until at least 2012, most likely 2013 or 2014. I’ve read several “MMOG’s on consoles” blog posts recently and they all cited console generation lifespans as a con, but that argument hasn’t applied this time around, and if I shake my Magic 8 Ball, the next generation will be similar. Quote Everquest all you want, and sure it runs on modern multi-CPU PC’s but I’ve tried several games from the single-core days that are newer than Everquest and they don’t work at all on multi-core CPU’s. Between shifts in CPU’s, GPU’s and DirectX versions, PC’s also have “generations” even if they usually strive to maintain backwards-compatibility most of the time.

However, I would not expect a Mass Effect MMOG to appear within the current console generation. There has been too much feet-dragging on the part of Microsoft, Sony, and every development studio that has ever claimed to be “working on” a console MMOG. The only two I actually expect to see the light of day at all within the current generation is DUST 514 and Final Fantasy XIV. The Magic 8 Ball tells me the next generation of consoles will blur the line a little further between console and PC and will have MMOG’s in mind peripheral-wise, and then we’ll really start seeing some serious development – and releases! – in the massively multiplayer realm.

BioWare has been going crazy saying how much better the shooting part of the game, and how much better animations and cinematics will be. I’ll take them at their word for that.

My personal short wishlist is:

1. Make it fun from the start, don’t make me wait until the latter part of the game before it gets fun and interesting. They pulled it off with Dragon Age: Origins, but no other Western RPG is coming to mind as I write this that grabbed me from the get-go and kept up the pace the whole game.
2. We know there’s more in-game animations and better cinematic cameras, but I hope they also added some facial expressions this time. In the first game, characters were practically mannequins and depended on listening to the voice acting to convey the emotions. For the sequel, show us the emotions on their face and in their voice.
3. Unreal Engine 3 is being used again, so here’s hoping BioWare has a better grip on it this time than they did on the first game, which was pretty damn rough performance-wise. To make a comparison, look at how Gearbox improved from their first UE3 title, Brother’s in Arms: Hell’s Highway to their recent Borderlands.
4. No elevators. Worst case, if we must tolerate elevators again, at least make them equivalent in speed to the turbolifts from Star Trek.
5. Moral ambiguity. The first Mass Effect was right up there with every other RPG with “choices” in the dialogue that were very obvious in the “good; neutral; bad” morality scale. Again, Dragon Age: Origins played with more grey areas, and I hope that also carries over to Mass Effect 2.