Foundry hit EA about a year ago, I gave it a shot then. It is a 3D procedurally generated world, built on voxels (key point, that), that experimented with some ideas. Right up until mid-game, the idea of a mega bus remained practical. You could build mega structures in pieces, and finally robots along assembly lines. It felt a bit like Lego, where you could see the potential but were missing a few bricks.

My gripes then were about powering mining bases (high/low voltage stuff is way too complicated), and throughput logisitics are essentially capped due to lack of trains (or their equivalents), making a mega bus effectively starve itself. You couldn’t effectively ‘make numbers go up’ beyond a certain point.

Update 2 Notes

Last fall the devs surveyed folks for what they wanted to see on the roadmap. Top of list was production-related changes, balances, and similar items. They did want to see a greater expansion of the robot production chains! So we got Galactic Markets, which apparently is a system that allows you to sell your robots to space folks. From the patch notes, my selection of highlights:

• Added Galactic Commerce:
  • New Galaxy map:
    • Procedurally generated galaxy on each fresh game start.
    • Unlock galactic sectors and acquire trade licences to sell your robots to planets.
    • Set up and manage supply routes between planets to distribute your robots.
    • Buy and sell resources on the galactic market.
    • Compete for market dominance against other companies. (Hoping this is not PvE for markets)
  • New Space Station Features:
    • Dozens of new station upgrades.
    • Spaceship Management: Buy spaceships of different types and assign them to various tasks.
    • Establish trade routes to the galactic market.
    • Sales Platform: Sell your products to casual customers.
    • R&D Lab: Earn XP and levels on each produced robot and improve your products.
    • Fuel Station: Produce your own spaceship fuel to supply your spaceships instead of buying it from the market.
  • Many new robot types for you to build and sell.
  • Choose your company name and logo.
  • New Company Rank system: Increase your rank based on your lifetime earnings.
  • New Shipping pad buildings to ship items between the space station and the planet.
  • New station terminal building to contact the space station.
  • Keep track of your finances on various accounting-related charts and tables.
  • New feature that allows you to pay back your debts.
  • New research options to fit the commerce narrative.
  • Countless balancing adjustments.
• Pipe system 2.0: New and improved pipe flow simulation, including performance improvements. (I liked the old pipe system, anything to avoid Satisfactory’s version)
• Added new smart conveyor drag mode. (It’s much improved)
• Added new starting planet option which affects which biome and resource distribution. (This seems like a bad use of dev time. More later…)
• Added orbital uplink tool and space laser that can be used to terraform large areas.
• Added lava caves and lava smelters. (Caves in general are neat in concept, not neat in execution)
• Added new Tundra biome.
• Added new jungle/sandy desert/forest critters.
• Added new underwater decor/vegetation.
• Add new freight elevator III/IV. (This is a massive improvement)
• Incompatible with prior saves, meaning a fresh start is required.

Trade Interface

There really isn’t much here to be honest. You get a new building early on that enables shipping of material to the space station (this building doesn’t require inserters or power, which speaks volumes to game design choices), which makes a number go up. The space station itself has no interaction outside of a menu. What the dev stream has shown seems like a precursor to something larger, which still seems like on the edge of potential.

I am in the early portions, just having unlocked green science. Maybe there’s more to this.

Overall Thoughts

On the one hand, cool that there’s new systems and very curious as to how this will work out long term. It’s weird building end-game systems and asking every player to sink 20 hours to actually test it, but hey, that’s EA I guess. I’m looking forward to a much different set of goals to try out.

On another, there are some core balancing issues that still seem present. Great to see Freight Elevator improvements on throughput, because splitters and multiple elevators was a pain – there are no other vertical belt options. The game still keeps splitters behind alternate research paths (this feels QoL to me), the 3rd row inserter is way too late in the tree (on the edge of QoL and bad design), and power management still feels painful until you build acres of solar panels (there wasn’t occlusion before, so a tower of panels actually works).

Games like this need effective logistics… there’s still a fair chunk of work needed. Some interesting ideas here, but there’s still a ton of rough edges and strange mechanics. I remain hopeful they can figure this out and deliver it in a reasonable timeframe.

Timing is an interesting thing, innit? Outworld Station launched in EA the other day, and it’s very much in the logistics gameplay vein. It is quite rare for a game of this genre to leave EA, for a multitude of reasons. I tend to support these games as the concepts are often interesting, if the execution tends to lack.

Outworld Station has ideas. You start in a relatively small area map with a simple space ship. You bring various asteroids to your base, break them down, and then build automation tools. That seems somewhat straightforward. As with many of these games, it takes a while to automate the mining process, but it does force exploration. Power generation and base layouts have limits, so you need to build efficient designs. I’ll get to that in a bit.

In the exploration phase, your ship moves around the map finding the odd thing to bring back to base. Sometimes there are NPC enemies. Sometimes you defend a meteor storm, or a solar storm that turns off all power. You can unlock chests, which give artifacts that give talent points. Eventually you discover mining nodes you can build, and then automate shipping to the main base. It’s responsive, and relatively interesting content. It is NOT biters or dark fog that attacks your base… at least not in the first zone.

Production Chains

First power generation. This is all automated and inherently connected. No need to run wires or poles. Get solar panels of fusion generators and you’re good. You can even remotely power mining stations. It generally works.

Logistics are extremely simplistic, which actually adds a ton of complexity. The ‘floor’ of the factory is a cross construct and automatically connects to other floor pieces. To move things between factory objects, you need to bind them together and routing is automatic. Things then just naturally flow and I have not seen any rate limitations as of yet – the output of a building appears to be the limiting factor. Not being able to see these connections adds a ton of complexity – which means that planning is 10,000% more important here than other games.

Space limitation is a challenge. You could technically build a massive factory that takes the entire map. It will take time for stuff to move through and it will take a while to detect throughput problems. If you build small, then you are likely to run out of space. You can (and should) build a top floor to help here, as it allows some expansion of the factory. When I started my build I just wanted to get something basic done. I quickly realized that I was making bad design calls and rejigged the factory.

There are building limitations that need to be considered. Ctrl+C allows you to copy not only a building, but its settings and logistics path, making it the perfect tool for expanding a factory. Saves a lot of design headaches. To have that truly work requires buffer chests at any inflection point, which abstracts the complexity into simple layouts. What does that mean?

Miner -> Chest -> Smelter -> Chest -> Factory #1 -> Chest -> Factory #2 -> Chest

This is extremely similar to Satisfactory’s central storage hub concept (pre 1.0), and allows for a very flexible factory build. The concept is there for fluids/gas, but you need to pipe things around and that is a very high-friction process. Generally, if a chest is empty, you work back 1 step and build another factory. As an EA game that just launched, productivity screens are not yet implemented.

A few interesting bits to add:

• Inventory management for chests works well enough. Your personal inventory is less fun as similar to Satisfactory, you need material on hand to build something and you have limited slots.
• I like the mechanics of the talent tree, you need to explore to get the points. The actual talent tree isn’t very good (invest entirely in productivity/speed, ignore the rest).
• The ship building process is more like a resource sink to progress the story. There’s potential here. Curiously complicated.
• Defensive structures are currently just to avoid pressing a key to repair a structure.
• You eventually unlock another map and can shift things between them. The resource costs to get all this established are not fully balanced, nor are the links as you can only link 1:1. Which means daisy-chain connections.
• Fluid/Gas logistics are unpleasant, or perhaps just a right pain to manage unless you’ve done some serious factory planning work. Or rather, it’s jarring game design when the rest of it has zero belts to worry about.
• Pacing needs some balance work. There’s no ability to have functional ratios between buildings, so buffer chests being empty are the only red flag. More accurately, you can’t optimize, only brute force. This is absolutely normal for any EA game.
• For a very long time, upgrading buildings isn’t worth it. The main point you want to pay attention to is ‘max output’, that will limit a lot of gameplay.
• The building mechanics generally prevent scalability. You can’t move buildings, only destroy and rebuild. No blueprints. Again, all expected in EA titles.
• The game looks great and plays smoothly. Way, way better than expected.

If you like productivity games, this one is surprisingly robust. Way better than I had expected. The foundational pieces are very solid, and for the most part small tweaks are what’s required rather than massive changes (inventory aside). Awesome find!

Maybe it’s a GotY contender, maybe not. Rogue-lite puzzlers are certainly uncommon. I’ll avoid spoilers here, as that’s frankly part of the joy of these games. Suffice it to say that I have reached Room 46 and leave it at that.

Blue Prince (say it quick) tasks you with finding a mystery room in an ever changing layout of connecting rooms that you select from a random pool. Most of these games have the obvious puzzles to start, and then some complex interconnected pieces as you discover more. The Rogue- portion means that you will face resets. The -lite portion means you do have access to upgrades along the path to make your life (potentially) easier. You have limited resources each day, then reset and try again.

I think Outer Wilds is one of the best game ever made. The DLC was not enjoyable to me primarily due to the repeated friction on just accessing it. It didn’t have RNG, but it did have steps you needed to repeat ad-nauseum.

I think Blue Prince does a great job is setting up a foundation that is clean, crisp, and identifiable. The puzzles themselves are interesting (some are super obtuse, especially the latter ones) and note taking is absolutely required. That said, I am tired of the artificial friction. If I have successfully completed the billiards room a dozen times in a row, I will not fail a future attempt – let me bypass it. Some rooms are so rare that you can go 20 runs without seeing them, and not quite understand the conditions of making them available – one particular room holds a critical key that is behind some rather punitive RNG. Having to ‘farm’ the RNG machine for a specific outcome is not fun game design.

Let me super clear, the path taken to reach the ‘RNG wall’ is amazing. Some of the best out there. The little bits and pieces are sharp, and learning the colors of the rooms, cross-dependencies, and interactions a neat meta aspect for future runs. When the game has minor relationships between room, the game progresses well. Every room (well, except the lavatory) has an actual purpose and likely some hidden feature. Like smaller puzzle boxes!

When you’ve done that and there’s nothing left to discovery because you need a specific set of RNG rolls to move forward, that is not fun. The latter puzzles require you to discover a complete set of uncommon rooms in order to have a chance to move forward. It makes the journey a slog, and rather than enjoying the craft of a puzzle, it turns to pure friction as you need to get the ‘right roll’ to get to the new stuff. I mean, how many times can you solve ‘two truths and a lie’ before you’ve had enough? 20? 40?

I should mention the meta progression is present but not immediately obvious. There are specific upgrades you can acquire that are permanent, and are all but mandatory to meaningfully progress. In only one case across the entire game did I reach a point of energy exhaustion before running out of other resources, which makes me wonder why energy even exists. There’s a random drop that can upgrade a random room to some new benefit, but no real way to tweak it down the road if you haven’t understood the implications of that choice. (One particular egregious super RNG mechanic deals with permanently removing crates. I saw it occur once and never met the conditions to trigger it. Once.)

I am not looking for the puzzles to be easier, at all. I am however looking at a meta progression that allows me to say ‘I’ve mastered this, let me see what’s next’. It feels like I’m asking to skip a tutorial at this point.

One last bit regarding the story/lore. If you play this game simply for the meta aspect of solving all the puzzles, you will achieve that in a reasonable timeframe. If you play this game to understand the larger story/lore context, you won’t get that unless you get most of the achievements. Not that the achievements themselves unlock lore, but that they are all bound to uncovering every RNG nook. As of the drafting of this post, there are ~15% of players who have reached the first achievement, getting to Room 46. It is a journey.

Back to the GotY point from above. If you like puzzle boxes inside 3 layers of puzzle boxes, and that they change every other attempt, then do I have a game for you! It sticks to its design principles throughout, rewards discovery like few other games I’ve ever played, and for a long time gives a sense of progression. It’s certainly an achievement. Just not sure it’s one I can fully appreciate.

I’ve spent so much time talking about design that I’ve missed sharing the key principle in it all, which is oddly relevant today – logistics. Specifically, the act of moving things from one place to another, in the right amounts, at the right time. It sounds simple, but logistics is how actual wars are won. I will try to simplify that down.

Also check my post on Space Logistics

Important note that of all the factory games I have played, Factorio is by far the most robust/complex. I’m of the growing opinion that graduating engineers should be forced to play this game, it’s that complete.

Concepts

Moving things from one place to another. Easy right? Sort of.

• You need to know where things are, how to get to them, how much you need, and then move those things to your transport vehicle.
• Your vehicle needs a path, fuel, storage, and travel time to reach a destination.
• Your destination needs the ability to store said items, and how much it needs. It should not store things it doesn’t need.

If I want to ship aluminum powder across the ocean, I need trucks to get to the supplier, then to the docks, onto a ship, to another dock, then a truck again, to the receiver. That takes weeks to complete, so the receiver places the order well ahead of time. In a war, think guns + ammo.

If I want to eat a banana, I go to the grocery store. Bananas don’t grow in Canada, so again, farmers, trucks, distribution centers, grocery stores. That takes a few weeks, so the bananas have to be collected before being ripe, and have to be placed in the small timeframe before they go rotten. Perishable goods are extremely time sensitive. In a war, think food or people.

Tools

Factorio has a lot of tools to help here.

• Belts. Simple enough, they move things at a given speed across a map. They can be split or merged. A belt is saturated when it’s full.
• Pipes. Similar to belts, the move liquids across a map. They have a maximum distance before needing a pump. They have no throughput limits (which is a BIG deal on Vulcanus).
• Trains. Bulk belts with schedules. You often don’t think you need them, and then you realize you absolutely do, and have to tear half your factory apart. Trains require blueprints for you to stay sane. At ultra late game levels, they are the only solution to landing pad throughput issues. I won’t detail much here, they aren’t as useful as they were in vanilla.
• Logistic Robots. Can carry a maximum of 4 items, and their speed can be upgraded infinitely. Used to move things between lading pads + logistic chests. They need a Roboport to function (yellow to move items, green range to build things). Roboports can, if connected, read the logistics network.
• Space Platforms. A combination of a train and Logistic Robots between planets. Train in that it’s scheduled, Robots in that you can select specific items.
• Logistic Network. A planet’s interconnected system of logistic containers. Only items in specific storage count – colored chests + the landing pad. Items in transit or on you don’t count.
• Circuit Network. Math and logic tools that set conditions for the network to function.

Colored Chests

There are bunch of options for logistic chests, each with a color and a purpose. Some you will use a lot, others barely.

• Active (purple). You can only put things in manually or with an inserter. The chest will automatically request itself to be emptied. Extremely useful on Gleba (as things spoil) or to keep a landing pad empty.
• Passive (red). You can only put things in manually or with an inserter. The chest acts as storage. Ensures that robots never put anything inside. Useful for storing multiple items, or to avoid having to filter a yellow chest.
• Storage (yellow). Can be accessed by anything, for storage and removal. 90% of your chests are this type. Can only filter for a single item. Useful to put 20 or so near a landing pad so that the purple chest can dump into here.
• Requester (blue). Requests items from the network so that robots find them. Items in blue chests cannot be removed by robots. Items in blue chests do not count to the logistics network. Extremely useful to construct complex buildings in late game instead of belt weaving.
• Buffer (green). You set requests, which will then feed other parts. I have found zero cases where this is useful, certainly not with Space Age.

Circuit Network

These tools are math based, and can be used in a variety of methods to present decision points for a logistics network.

• Constant Combinator. A tool that has a fixed set of items listed, sometimes in groups. If you always want to have 200 red belts, you set it here. Has no inputs, and 2 outputs.
• Arithmetic Combinator. A tool that performs basic math functions (+ – / *) on a given set of inputs.
• Decider Combinator. A tool that compares inputs and provides an output. If something is larger, or the same, or a threshold has passed. Has 2 inputs and 2 outputs.
• Selector Combinator. Think of it as a filter. This thing has very niche uses and not worth exploring until you understand the first 3.
• Wires. Used to connect things. The color matters (red/green) as your inputs are color specific. You can connect to nearly all items in the game, including belts (to read all material). It transmits the math.

Simple Setup

When you start the game, you’re extremely resource starved. You only want to build what you need and no more. The simple circuit can help!

• This assumes that you have Assemblers that are putting their material into storage containers.
• The Assemblers are all connected to power poles through a colored wire (let’s say red for now), building a connected network.
• All the chests (wood or steel) are connected to power poles through a different wire (let’s say green).
• A Constant Combinator that has a list of the maximum amount you want, per item constructed. (let’s say 300 yellow belts).
• An Arithmetic Combinator. One input is from the Constant Combinator (red wire), the other is from the chest network (green wire).
  • The math would be Red (what you want) – Green (what you have). The output would be a red wire to the assembler network.
  • If you have too much, the number is negative. If you have too little, the number is positive.
• Each Assembler is configured on the network so that it is enabled when the item being produced as a positive number.
• The end result is that each Assembler will only produce and store what you need, and automatically stop past that.

You can evolve this with logistics networks with colored chests + connecting to a Roboport to read all the chests automatically (replaces the original green wire network).

Decider Setup

Taking the example above and moving into a Logistics network. I find this required for space travel.

• Constant Combinator with what you need to keep a base running, as well as rocket ship parts. This includes pipes, inserters, assemblers, plastic, LDS, and so on. See image as an example. Also good to have this set up as a demand on Space Platforms.
• Arithmetic Combinator comparing the logistics network to the Constant.
  • The challenge is that the network is always under change as you produce items. Green belts are made on Vulcanus, and you ideally never want to request them from a Space Platform.
• A Decider Combinator that filters the demand so that only items that need >5 items are actually requested. It is important that the lowest value on the Constant Combinator is higher than the Decider value.
• Connect the Decide to the Landing Pad, set it to Request Items
• A stack/bulk inserter connected from the landing pad to a purple chest, with 20 yellow chests next to the pad.

Space Platform Deciders

Space chunks are full of RNG, and it’s entirely possible to saturate your Space Platform with too much of a useless material. This is extra painful on Aquilo where 80% of the chunks are Oxide and you really want Carbon. There are a few ways to manage this.

• Read all the contents on a belt through a connected wire.
• Constant Combinator that has the maximum amount of a given type of chunk (all 3 combined should be ~80% of a total belt capacity). You can also manually set this in the next step.
• Decider Combinator, per chunk type, that evaluates if you have less than the maximum. If so, output the chunk type. (so if you have less than say 20 Oxide chunks, request Oxide chunks)
• Connect the result to the Collector network, using the filter option. If you need more, then it will filter to collect, else it will skip.

Fuel/Ammo Deciders can be used to set ship launch conditions. Same concept, read each item, compare it to a set value, and output a signal. If all signals are good, then launch the ship. On basic planet routes, that’s 12k fuel (each type) and 150 regular ammo. Aquilo is 20k fuel, 400 regular ammo, and 300 rocket ammo. Super simple and easy to maintain.

If you have the room to recycle chunks, you can use combinators to evaluate if you have too much of one type and not enough of an other, then recycle it. Aquilo needs this. If I have over 80 Oxide and less than 20 Carbon OR over 80 Oxide and less than 10 Metallic… recycle.

When you get the concepts of logistics, you realize that the game has so much more to offer that just filling boxes. Impressive the flexibility that math tools can provide.

I took a forward-looking approach in this run, which really means that I skipped some pieces to potentially save on rebuilds. In a “normal” playthrough, you’d optimize a bit of Nauvis with some red belts and more effective smelters. You’d likely use beacons as well. You’d create purple and yellow science. And then you’d launch a rocket.

I did not do that. And consequences followed.

First, the smaller build space on Nauvis is a good thing. It requires me to be more effective in the designs. What is saves me in long belts it costs me in undergrounds + splitters mind you, so the material costs are arguably higher. Power is substantially more efficient though, and a whole lot less poles. I skipped upgrading to red belts and everything that follows. While I had crafted logistics containers, I didn’t actually use any until the first rocket went up.

That was the point where I realized I had a more difficult path ahead.

It is entirely possible to build a space platform with basic logistics. Storage containers are all you really need as the rockets will self-request. Taking the platform to Vulcanus was simple, landing was a relative breeze, and set up was quite fast. It certainly helps when you know what you need for a first landing! (Funny story, I forgot to add a Landing Pad and had to reload a save. Well I thought it was funny.)

Vulcanus has 4 main phases, though folks are likely only to see 3. The initial setup, which is about unlocking foundries and big miners. The mid-game which makes the planet self-sufficient for rockets, meaning LDS, rocket fuel, and blue chips. The late game when you’ve unlocked Aquilo and realize that all chips can be made for free and super speed on Vulcanus. The end game, when you then realize that Vulcanus is the absolute best factory planet in game and you transfer 90% of production there.

Sidebar. I recall in Satisfactory the first few run-throughs I absolutely didn’t account for scale and needed to rebuild the entire factory. And then I’d unlock something new and realize I had to do that again. That game doesn’t naturally support modular design and scalability, you need to bring the mindset with you. And mods. The 3D layouts and free-form placement are unique, and the challenge is in that freedom. Satisfactory works on a 2D grid and has a pile of automation. Scaling is extremely simple, and moving a factory 2 spots to the right is a mouse click.

Back to Vulcanus, or rather all planets for that matter. Accelerating to get to phase 4 is friggin hard-mode. Without purple/yellow science on Nauvis, you need to build a main transport hub on Vulcanus and then transport it back to Nauvis. This is very expensive, as blue chips are a nightmare to build before Fulgora is unlocked. Did I mention that blue chips are needed for yellow science? The good news in this is that while they are very expensive to make, they are infinitely cheaper on Vulcanus than on Nauvis. But wait there’s more!

Blue chips need plastic, which can only be refined from oil products. There is no oil on Vulcanus, so you need coal liquefaction, behind purple science. You see how this is a catch-22? To get blue chips, you need blue chips to send rockets of purple science to Nauvis. But the devs thought of this and gave us simple coal liquifaction, which produces heavy oil from calcite + coal. Using that recipe, I can kickstart plastic generation with a rather complicated oil factory. Blue chips –> purple science –> get me the Fulgora ASAP.

Oh, and during this time I needed to lay out some rail networks to get copper + iron to my Nauvis factory. Big miners do wonders here as they are 5x more efficient and only consume half the resources. Foundries are not an option, as I can’t efficiently ship calcite to Nauvis yet. 50×50, ground-based rail systems are I guess “easy” to build, but the space limitations really play a number on making it all work. Actually being on the planet would make it a lot easier, but that’s not really an option right now.

I’m heading to Fulgora now, and the electromagnetic plants are the absolute priority. They will practically trivialize chip production and shift the game into overdrive. Oh how I am looking forward to that!

I “played” Monster Hunter in the dark mobile ages, but never really got into it. Too many rough edges. Monster Hunter World though, I spent time in that sucker. Both on the PS and then again on PC. That was eye opening. I’ve played Rise and now Wilds.

World first though. I died (carted) a lot. Anjanath was a near wall for me, and that semi T-Rex was like the 4th monster in the game! Nergigante took me a week to kill due to the dive bomb mechanic and just really bad skill on my end. I stuck with it, got better, and found a solid groove. I played with multiple weapons, notably dual blade, charge blade, and heavy bowgun. It was a journey.

Rise was different. I carted, sure, but it took a long time to reach that point. Most of the issues were with the game design itself and having to collect bugs to boost my stats enough for a fight. The wirebug mechanic took me a right while to figure out, and the bosses felt like it was 1 hit kills. I swapped to long sword to see what the fuss was about and no lie, it took me a couple weeks to figure out that dance, in particular the defensive portions.

And truly, MH is a dance. Every monster has their own theme song and you need to learn the steps. Do so, and things are relatively easy. Try to waltz when it’s 2-stepper, and the cart awaits. That said, there’s a limit to how many steps you actually need to learn. I wouldn’t say I mastered the long sword, but I was damn good at it by the time I was done with Sunbreak.

The transition to Wilds was simple by comparison. I kept the longsword and the mechanics feel similar in pace. I understood the need for cooking good food. Collecting before a battle isn’t needed. Upgrading armor (using spheres) makes a much bigger difference than weapons when trying to learn a fight. Radial wheel access to heals + the seikret mount means I can very quickly leave a bad place and heal up. It also means that mounting an enemy is so much easier!

Now, the question really boils down to “Is Wilds easier or am I better?”

Obviously it’s a bit of both, but I’d put a significant amount of weight on the latter. I get the game, I get the mechanics, I get the timing. I still carted on the ice/fire dragon with a crazy AE attack, but I haven’t failed a single quest yet. The moment to moment portions still feel great, the hit delays work, the defensive agility gets the blood pumping, and it never feels old when you get a crazy massive combo on a 3 story dragon who crumples to the ground!

Wilds is a good game. It isn’t as earth shattering as World, and doesn’t take major steps like Rise did, but it polishes almost every aspect down to a clean and fun sheen. It is by far the most accessible Monster Hunter has ever been, and there’s plenty of difficult challenges for those searching for it. Put in non-stop carts at the start though… and you’re not going to have good retention numbers. And from the achievement % I see on Steam, it would appear that a lot of players have progressed in the game so far.

For those who find it too easy, maybe you’re just that much better than the last time you played.

I’m actually going to pick on WoW for a minute because that is such a major change in the gaming industry that few people remember a time before. When WoW launched it had an innovative (at the time) method for leveling – and that was through quests. Prior to that, and exemplified in Everquest, progress was 100% tied to combat. D&D only really gave experience for monsters (unless you had a smart DM), so it was baked in that progress was based on body count. WoW changed that, and the rest of the gaming landscape changed as a result. If you have levels in a game today, the progress of those levels is very tightly tied to questing… and the ! marks that track it.

What that meant was that quests moved from being exploration driven to achievement driven – the goals were more important that the journey. That is not a small pivot. And we’ve been living with that mindset in gaming for nearly 20 years.

Avowed now. Does it have formal quests? Yes. Do quests equate to the majority of player progress? No, combat and exploration add a lot. Pillars of Eternity 2 was a step in this direction, but much larger here. Avowed also goes deeper into what I call breadcrumb quests. These are items and things in-game that you need to piece together as next steps and context without formal guidance. There’s no in-game tracking, just reliant on you. Most of them are simple, like “hey, I put your stuff in the bag behind the shed” and sure enough, stuff behind the shed. Others are much, much more complicated.

Light spoilers here.

Emerald Stair is the 2nd zone, and the main hub is a key part of the story. There is a rather substantial breadcrumb quest in this zone that has multiple paths that can be taken before the tail end. If you only follow the quest markers you will see a specific and honestly horrific event take place. If you follow the breadcrumbs you will have a completely different outcome.

Truthfully I had those crumbs and steps up, but proximity to a quest marker had me take a different path. Following that main path completely changed the zone layout, failed some quests, and closed off areas. By reloading I was able to take the different path. While the results of that alternate path are more, I guess lawful good in essence, I loaded back on the main path as it appeared to have more story implications long-term. Let’s see how that pans out.

Spoilers end

It’s hard to properly explain what this type of world building construct actually means. Skyrim has smaller pieces, but my memory has them as distinct and not connected. I honestly cannot find a comparable event in recent gaming, though I’m certain they exist. Of course breadcrumbs exist – what I mean is breadcrumbs that exist outside a vacuum. Playing a game that rewards exploration with more exploration and world building… I thought that only existed in table top sessions.

At the end of the day it’s still a game, and someone will write a guide about an optimal path including these more hidden pieces. That’s for later. Right now, there are impactful decisions here that are not obvious, that do not have a glowing sign saying ‘EXP RIGHT HERE’, and that reward the nook and cranny type of player. I am really, really pleased with what’s here. A truly fresh breath in the RPG space.

Not often I talk about my work. It’s a significant part of my identity mind you, and I gather if you read this blog you’d have a good idea of type of work I do. One area I’ve been continuously working upon is conflict management. Honestly, way more work than I ever thought I’d need.

An old adage I learned was to never argue with an idiot. They will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience. Truth there.

I find, and have been provided feedback, that I am pragmatic. I tend to navigate the middle of the spectrum when it comes to interpersonal relationships and values, which allows me to work with pretty much any type of other personality. For those aware of the Myers-Briggs personality tests, I am a natural square (for whatever that may be of worth) and adapt to a given role based on needs. For example, if I’m in fire fighting mode, there’s very little space for emotional consideration. If it’s a team building activity, then the get-stuff-done mindset isn’t helpful.

I still encounter conflicts though. Work and personal. I’ve narrowed it down to conflicting principles and primarily due to trust issues. If a person is unable to be empathetic to other’s needs, and I mean willfully so, then I need to take specific steps to have a working relationship with them. If a person struggles to make the hard decisions because they are too sympathetic, a similar issue occurs. And above all else, if they say they are going to do something and don’t, then I need to re-assess the relationship.

Given the larger world context, a lot of people are under a lot of stress and anxiety. I get it. That causes defense mechanisms to activate earlier, and for less patience. That is tinder for conflicts and a lot of people will go to greater lengths to avoid it. It doesn’t do a great job of building relationships and in my experience, the majority of people will experience fear instead. They are simply looking for a safety blanket that is promising stability and golden fields. That’s the entire modus of a populist after all, preying on fear.

I am finding myself at an interesting intersection. I have spent years adding to my toolbelt of interpersonal skills, learning and tweaking. Ups and downs along the way, but I’m where I am because the tools work and the people I work share trust. Lately though, I’ve found myself in positions where I am unable to find common ground and in spaces of added conflict. The last couple months in particular have been chock full of trust breaches, and from the same set of individuals.

One particular relationship (not work related) has degraded to the point where it is not worth investing further. I can’t salvage it, and yet need to maintain it for at least another 2 months. They are not a bad person, at all, it’s just that our principles are very opposed meaning that we generate conflict continuously. It sucks because it’s smack dab in the middle of a passion of mine and draining the pleasure I get out of it. It’s a poor example, but putting a vegan cook in a burger joint is not going to work out.

Another relation is at work, where there’s a perceived complete lack of awareness of the people factor. The roles we occupy impact a lot of other people, and we are not in firefighting mode, so empathy for the actions is important – as is holding your word on steps you will take. I will have to maintain a working relationship with this individual for the foreseeable future, which is not exactly something I look forward to. I’ve exhausted my toolbelt, raised this with our joint superiors and I’m taking additional measures as well. It’s fascinating to see where my mental space lands after any interaction, and I’ve opted to simply stop engaging when my blood pressure spikes. Avoidance is not an effective strategy, and I am quite aware that if pressed, I am going to say something I should not. You can pull on an elastic for a long time, but eventually it will snap. In the positive space, I am at least aware of this issue, something that I would not have years ago.

And I have yet one more that relates to work that is not a colleague. For some time I have been trying to help this person’s development and have encountered a slew of events that breach ethical behaviour. Their lack of accountability is frankly astounding, where they end up blaming other people for all misgivings. Given the need for truth, digging with these other people has been eye opening. I’ve entered a less frustrating space now, where feedback and expectations are managed more formally, which will have longer term impacts I need to sort out.

Good news, is that within my house’s 4 walls there are no real comparable conflicts! Sure, there are stupid ones about taking out the garbage, but nothing mind blowing. A big piece I think is related to a shared set of values and principles, one that we’ve lived by for years, regardless of how hard it may have been to uphold. And damn, some times that absolutely was hard. The results will only be really seen in 10 years, but so far, so good. And I can certainly use a safe space to recharge from the rest.

Taking some steps back from all of this, it’s somewhat evident that I neither search for nor avoid conflict. Conflict is life, and hardship is growth for sure, but as long as we’re respectful then progress can be achieved. Yelling into the anonymity of the internet serves no real purpose. Group think of getting mad only makes you feel part of a group, it doesn’t actually solve anything. And not everyone has the skills or desire to navigate those rough waters. That realization is still a very tough conclusion to swallow.

What interesting times we live in…

I guess I was in the right mindspace for this run.

PoE2 is an interesting game for a whole lot of reasons. Most importantly, it is clear that it was designed and developed by people who are passionate along with a clear vision. The game is consistent from start to finish, with some really impressive writing and decision making along the path. An RPG without a main villain is hard to keep on track, but this game does a wonderful job at it. Oh, there are bad people in the game, but no mustache-twirlers. And while there are a few opportunities to make what would be considered a lawful-good choice, most of them are in the neutral space.

Mechanically there’s enough detail and complexity here to add nuance to the quests. It’s not possible to truly fail a quest (aside from a game over death), just a bunch of different paths to accomplish them. Your teammates can boost your skills to help pass some checks, and aside from 1 specific case, these are mostly flavor options that may or may not avoid combat. As with most RPGs, it’s nearly always favorable to talk / skill check your way through an event instead of brute force. That said, the combat is rather snappy, at least up until the last couple levels.

I like the classes and diversity the game offers. I like the subclasses. Up until level 13 (of 20 max) there’s clear distinction between them. Multi-classing is, as with all D&D game, the core issue. There are a lot of benefits to multi-classing, and in nearly all cases it’s a better choice. There are exceptions – notably the ranged attackers. The skills you get as a pure class for melee are not very good in the later portions, usually passive upgrades to existing things. Wizards, Chanters, and Druids though… they get god-level powers.

Which is a core issue with all D&D games honestly. Melee characters start strong and get weaker as enemy armor/avoidance increases. The last mainline quest and all the DLC has enemies that have crazy defensive abilities, which you either chip away or debuff. Beasts of Winter (DLC) has a final boss that took me nearly 8 tries to beat, eventually lowering the difficulty because my wizard was multi-class and no one had the skill to debuff the 90% damage reduction the boss had.

There are other mechanical challenges. Enchanting is a great idea, but resources are so rare/expensive and you know you’re going to get something better than you avoid it. Consumables are great, but poorly implemented in turn-based mode. Stealing has only niche value, and stealth just doesn’t work. This is nit-picking honestly, and it’s been an issue in every RPG I’ve played.

Eoran Gods

The setting of Pillars of Eternity is the true joy. An older race of soul magicians determined there were no actual gods, so they went about transforming themselves into gods instead. And not like a god-race, I mean the entire race sacrificed themselves to make 11 gods. And then they killed everyone who knew about it, and directed the world on it’s eventual path. PoE1 is about you learning the truth. PoE2 is about you chasing one of those gods who is hellbent on breaking the cycle that keeps the gods in power. Basic RPG stuff.

Religion is a tough subject and nearly every RPG hits on this specific topic with varying results. Here, it’s the crux of it all, the foundation on which every other part exists. You quite literally converse with a god in massive statue form at multiple points, traverse to the otherside to have a coffee, or kill their avatar. The stakes are much higher here than before, and everyone in the game knows it. Quite honestly, most of the quests had me moving forward just to discover the next bit of story, which is not a very common thing.

Wael has to be my favorite of the gods. The weirdest one at least. Imagine if D&D Beholders had their own god – they’d look just like Wael.

Obsidian Entertainment

I still have a few golden dev studios, and Obsidian is right in that pack. The short list of games:

• Knights of the Old Republic 2. Play with the lost content mod, best Star Wars game I’ve ever played.
• Neverwinter Nights 2. I don’t think this game gets enough credit. D&D mods exist because of this game and the prequel.
• Fallout New Vegas: The best 3D version of Fallout. Notorious for Bethesda not paying them because of the 1pt missed on Metacritic.
• South Park: Stick of Truth. This game is great, way better than the sequel.
• Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2: I honestly don’t think Baldur’s Gate 3 would exist without these 2 games.
• Tyranny: A great game with an even better concept – you’re the judge for an evil warlord. Still amazed that pitch got a game!
• The Outer Worlds: Avowed exists because of all the lessons learned in this game. This is what Mass Effect 4 could have been.
• Grounded: A survival RPG. Think Valheim but you being shrunk down in a backyard.
• Pentiment: A murder mystery in the style of 1600s art work. What other dev studio could actually do this, and do it this well?

What’s really fascinating is how story drives all of these. They aren’t experimental in the mechanics department, in fact I’d argue they are all AA-level attempts at best – with plenty of bugs. But the ideas are the gold mine. There are people at Obsidian who are paid to write down these ideas, stretch them out to see how far it can go, then translate that for us gamers to experience. And these ideas are coherent too!

I am clearly over-excited for Avowed. I know there are parts of that game that will not meet my expectations, in particular the mechanical parts. I don’t really care, they are simply a means to an end. I want to explore more of Eora. I want to see how people have adapted after Eothas’ world-shattering events. And I’d like a good news game development story, we’ve been short of those.

So far, early reviews are where I expected. Let’s give it a go!

The art of saving and reloading.

Save Scumming is a rather simple concept. You save the game, perform an activity that has a random outcome, and reload the save if the outcome is not favorable to try again. Not all games support this, and quite a few struggle with the concept of ‘favorable’. Others do a great job here.

XCOM2 is probably the best example. The RNG itself is set before you perform the action, so save scumming doesn’t actually change the results of an action, you need to take a different action altogether. Second, the failed results rarely lead to ultra negative outcomes, often simply an added difficulty modifier. I mean, that’s why Iron Man mode exists (1 save, can’t reload). Favorable outcomes in this case become ‘optimal’ outcomes.

Many RPGs can find difficulty here, either in that failures cause massive failure (e.g. failing a roll = the whole map turns aggressive) or that the favorable outcome is so powerful that it changes the rest of the game.

The answer lies in complexity and flexibility. In that the positive and negative outcomes have a marginal impact on the overall progress. BG3 and PoE2 tend to hit this one well. Impactful outcomes are less about a random role than a clear decision. Flavorful outcomes (more lore, cosmetics, alternative paths) are unlocked through the RNG machine. Example: I need to pass a speech chest to get access to some gloves. If I fail that check, I then need to steal them through a different set of skill checks. The final destination is still the same, but the paths to get there are different. Heck, Fallout 1 nailed this nearly 30 years ago – you could talk the final boss into taking themselves out!

I’m still noticing behaviours in my PoE2 playthrough though. I naturally press F5 when I enter a new zone, as you get little context as to what awaits the next step. Nekataka (the capital city) has a location that is miles above your level, and they will kill you on sight. Turning an entire zone hostile = I will die and need to reload, so less scumming than simply accepting defeat and moving on. The game also generally hides skill checks, only truly presenting them if you can pass. This is different than BG3, where you roll a die and can clearly see that you failed. I can still clearly recall needing a very low number to pass, and rolling a critical failure – right at the start! The good news is that the outcomes of those rolls are very rarely full failures.

The absolute best example I can think of is Disco Elysium. The entire game is rolls to determine outcomes, and nearly all of them are glorious in one way or another.

When a game uses RNG to determine fixed outcomes that are objectively bad/horrible, and paint you into corners you absolutely do not want to visit, save scumming is needed. If your roll relates to a marriage proposal that goes poorly, and you end up in a bar drinking your misery away and meet an entire crew of ragtag space misfits, isn’t that a positive thing?

It’s an interesting mindset that is only possible in today’s gaming age of non absolutes. And in the broader sense, I think it’s a good thing for people to accept that failure of one small act does not mean that the world is going to end. Experimentation gets you so much more enjoyable experience, so that the next time you give something a try, your skill + experience has raised enough to pass that check. Oh yeah, I went there.