The Art of Game Trailers

I have been trying to decide what to write about for my return to this platform. I have been considering expanding the scope of this blog to other personal interests of mine: television, music, etc. While I still plan to do this, in the end, I decided that my first post in years should be a return to form. However, I do apologize for the length.

A week or so ago, someone reminded me of the SuckerPunch game, Infamous. In an instant, I was suddenly back in school, sitting on my couch watching an ad break on tv when a trailer for Infamous started playing. It was understated at first. Just some simple guitar notes with an out of focus Dutch angle shot of bolts of lighting striking the ground near a truck.

Then a rewound shot of a power transformer being struck by lighting. The music picks up, getting louder and adding instruments in as you see people bound to the ground with bonds made of lightning and a reversed shot of a man crashing through a glass ceiling with electricity coursing over his body. Each new shot grew more and more epic.

Silent, slow motion explosions, massive lightning storms and then suddenly the music changes. Some light cymbal crashes lead into a heavy guitar chord matched with this incredible shot of a man in some kind of machine surging with electricity, his back arching as the power rushed through him. The simple guitar notes have turned into grungy power chords as the screen shows speed ramped combat with amazing electric powers, big explosions, parkour, etc. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen and it matched perfectly with the music (which I later learned is “If Trees Could Talk” by Malabar Front) such that punches and explosions landed on down beats.

The trailer ended with a prolonged guitar chord and an electric grenade blowing up a giant golem made of trash behind the character as he walked like a badass away from it. In that instant I knew I had to get the game. The trailer gave me chills then and still does today, eleven years later. That whole experience flashed through my mind the moment someone even mentioned the game.

I immediately went back and searched up the trailer on youtube and thought about how well that experience has stuck with me after all these years. I started thinking about other game trailers that were similarly memorable and why. There are lots of ways that an advertisement can gain attention and that’s no different for video games.

Empowerment

The Infamous trailer shows one of the most effective ways to draw in players. Showing exciting gameplay-ish footage with effective music to make you think you’ll feel like a total badass when playing. I knew almost nothing about the game except that it had some electric powers and I was sold. Another good example of this is the trailer for Call of Duty Black Ops. Set in the Vietnam war, the trailer is matched with “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones. This trailer also does a good job of editing to match explosions, gunshots, and glass shattering with drum beats, which heighten the experience of watching the crazy action on screen. The shots are almost all taken from cutscenes in the single player campaign and so not representative of the main gameplay experience at all, but the rush of the action mixed with the nostalgia of a beloved classic rock song will create an emotional connection that would be very effective at drawing in new players. Similarly to Infamous, there isn’t a ton of immediate info on what the game is about, what kind of story or setting to expect, or how it might be similar or different to previous entries in the series. The draw is all based on making the viewer feel like an action hero.

A slightly different case of this kind of emotional draw is Shadow of the Colossus. The trailer takes a few seconds to show Wander carrying the woman’s body and that is the only “story” context we have. The rest of the trailer is shots of various Colossi battles set to very PS2 era adventure music. It is awe inspiring to see these massive foes with this bombastic, triumphant, heroic score in the background. More than making the viewer feel like they will be fighting in David vs Goliath esque battles, this trailer does a good job of pushing the false narrative of a brave hero fighting massive evil monsters to save a damsel and doesn’t hint at all at the true somber tone of the game. It’s a simple trailer, but emotionally engaging and quite representative of the gameplay.

Visual Storytelling

Making you feel like a badass, isn’t the only way that a game trailer can capture your attention with thematic music and striking visuals. The trailer for That Game Company’s Journey relies almost entirely on Austin Wintory’s gorgeous score. It starts with a fade in to sand. Pretty sand, but just sand. But it doesn’t matter because all you need are the beautiful deep cello notes evoking a sad solitude, a sorrowful desolation. It’s over 30 seconds, 1/4 of the trailer before you see anything but logos or sand. As the player character appears, the cello fades out for a harp and oboe to take over. The next 30 seconds are taken up by shots of the character running through abandoned, desolate landscapes accompanied by the same sorrowful melody.

And then three things happen at once. A second character appears, the light at the top of the mountain is glimpsed and a viola comes in with a rising, hopeful melody. You are no longer alone and without hope. There is something more. Something new.

There are now scenes the characters flying and glowing, traveling upwards and forwards together. This trailer perfectly fits Journey for me. It is a game with no dialog, and yet it tells a complete story both through visual storytelling and unmistakable emotional language. This trailer is a microcosm of that. What else is capable of filling me with emotion while staring at sand?

A similarly subtle, yet meaningful trailer is for the recent game Draugen, a beautiful and mysterious exploration of the dark side of a picturesque Norwegian village. On a casual viewing of the trailer, it just seems to be beautiful glamour shots of the game set to dramatic strings music. But on a closer viewing, there are a lot of details that hint at the nature of the game. It opens on a closeup shot of a young girl looking searchingly into the camera, as if into the viewers eyes, looking for something only she knows. She looks away briefly and then with a brief smile, turns away and runs off. Immediately, this tells us that there’s something that we don’t know but she does. Here is the mystery.

This is confirmed twice more, by the light, tentative piano keys playing over a high, shrill violin note: hesitancy hiding tension. Then in case you hadn’t caught on yet, words appear on screen saying “A Story About What Lies Beneath”, stating outright that things are not as they seem. The trailer goes on to depict an empty village on an empty fjord. A knocked over bucket sitting next to what seems to be old laundry hanging from a tree. A flag at half mast signifying that someone is dead. And scattered pieces of clothing left abandoned: a red hat, a pair of white gloves, and a blue coat. We are left wondering who those belong to. The video ends with the same girl dancing and humming along to the melody (the song that is evoking the feeling of mystery and tension) looking out of the window expectantly. In a few shots we know that there is an empty village that has known death, an absent person who has left their belongings, specifically clothing that they would travel with, strewn about, and a mysterious girl who knows something we do not. This is the kind of trailer I wish I saw more often. One that sets the tone emotionally and thematically without saying anything explicit. It’s the opposite of a trailer like that of Nier Automata, which while emotionally intriguing and exciting, is chock full of spoilers and significant moments from the game.

Emotion

Not all trailers are as cryptic as these two, however. Two fantastic examples of trailers that tell their stories simply through music and visuals are Dead Island and my personal favorite game trailer, Halo 3. Both of these are not subtle at all about what they want the viewer to take away from watching. Dead Island’s trailer shockingly opens on a closeup shot of the horrified face of a dead little girl. The camera zooms out with sad, minimalist piano music playing to set the mood. There is a man running around on fire behind the girl, suddenly there is a quick cut to the same girl running for her life, gasping for air. Then we are back to the girl dead on the ground. Suddenly her body lifts off the ground with a collection of broken glass, revealing that the scene we are watching is being played in reverse. We cut back and forth between the silent, except for music, reversed scene and the other, normal one as they slowly come together in the middle. The girl is running from zombies but gets caught and bitten. Her parents find her and carry her away from the zombies but it’s too late. As they try to get her away from the horde, she turns and jumps on her father, biting him in the neck, as her mother watches in horror and the horde of zombies spills into the room. In the chaos, the girl gets tossed out the several story window of a hotel and lands on the ground. Told through both the forwards and reversed scenes, the trailer cuts to a simple logo and then handheld camera footage of the happy family arriving at the hotel for their vacation before everything went to hell. The trailer tells a simple and sad story of a family destroyed by zombies. It’s not subtle. It’s not mysterious. But it’s very effective, evocative, and memorable.

Halo’s is similar and yet different. The trailer starts with minimalist piano music by Chopin. It sets the tone well by evoking loneliness and nostalgia. The camera starts panning up from a shot of the ground to a plastic toy soldier sitting dejectedly on a fallen tree. Then a cut to a row of shellshocked and traumatized toy soldiers staring into space.

The trailer moves on to show a still life of an active battlefield populated by plastic soldiers and plastic aliens. Explosions are tossing bodies. Alien brutes are decimating the human forces, clearly winning the battle as they tower over fleeing soldiers, throwing them around like they are nothing. This is also clearly evident on the faces. The humans are consumed by fear, despair, pain and hopelessness while the aliens are roaring in savage triumph.

As the shots grow grander and show more of the battlefield, we see hundreds on both sides swarming in a chaotic mess over this mountainous, alien environment. It is a sobering image of a desperate war and unimaginable death. And at the center of it is an alien displaying the limp body of Master Chief and roaring in victory. This is the darkest moment. The symbol of the humans’ hope is defeated.

That image is still so powerful to me and I’m not invested in the Halo story in the least. The pathos built up through the shots of death and despair on the soldiers faces to then see that their ultimate hope is gone is really effective. However, just when all hope seems lost, Master Chief’s looks up and straight into the camera. This is the first moving object in the entire trailer. His visor is reflective. A mirror, as if to say that we, the viewers, are the hope that he symbolizes. The final shot is a black screen with the word “BELIEVE” on it. At the moment of ultimate defeat, we are told to believe that we can be the ones to bring hope back to the battle and save the day. It’s an immediate and powerful change in tone that really struck me emotionally. It is, to this day, one of the most powerful trailers I have seen.

Setting

Neither the Dead Island nor Halo trailers actually say anything about the gameplay, story or even much about the setting other than zombies and alien war. There are some other trailers that use similar artistic methods to draw in players but rather than pure emotional appeal, they want the viewers to be attracted to the setting. One of my favorites is Dishonored, a gritty, steampunk assassin game by Arkane Studios. This trailer uses a very creepy cover of an old sea shanty called “Drunken Sailor”. This cover, “Drunken Whaler” uses a chorus of children’s voices, deep bass and guitar instrumentation, eerie sound effects like a squeaky swing and heart beats, and far darker lyrics (Instead of “Throw him in the brig until he’s sober”, they might use “Feed him to the hungry rats for dinner”). This music is accompanied by shots of a Victorian London-esque city full of tall, old fashioned buildings intermingled with advanced technology like stilt walking mechs, electric force fields, big mechanical towers, etc.

This is an impressive and intriguing enough setting on its own, but the city is clearly not doing well. It is dirty, dark and empty, there are signs about a plague all over the streets, dozens of corpses being tossed unceremoniously into the ocean as a kind of mass grave. In addition to this, however, there are also scenes of grand cathedrals, palaces, and parties to show that there is a great class divide in the city and the rich are not suffering the plague like the poor. These establishing shots are mixed in with small sections of gameplay, usually a second or two to show that the player can use powers like time manipulation or teleportation. These not only serve to hype the player for combat abilities, but to show that the setting also has a mystical element to it.

About half way through, the trailer shifts to a montage of the player executing and assassinating people brutally while the song goes into a repeated refrain of “Slice his throat with a rusty cleaver” which very clearly shows the brutality and violence of the world and the player character. The trailer ends on a shot of a little girl reading a book, while the child vocalist hums the melody and it fades out to a title screen. The viewers get so much information about the world: class divides, advanced technology, a deadly plague, magical abilities, brutal violence, and the notion that even a child’s innocence has been corrupted by this horrible world. That was enough for me to be extremely interested even without very much knowledge of the gameplay or story. Another Arkane game, Prey, does a similar thing with it’s trailer. It introduces important themes, while showing off some of the setting without giving too much away about the story (though still a bit more than I’d like).

The Witcher 3 is a fantastic game that has been talked about to death, but I do want to quickly mention that CDPR did something interesting, and quite smart, in releasing several very different trailers that will draw in people for different reasons. They had, of course, their cinematic trailers: A Night to Remember, an intense fight scene between Geralt and a vampire that introduces viewers to the life of a professional monster hunter and the extreme danger of it. And Killing Monsters, a short scene where Geralt, and his mentor Vesemir, come across some soldiers about to lynch a peasant woman. Geralt kills the men despite Vesemir’s desire to stay neutral. This is to introduce one of the main themes of the entire Witcher story. While witchers are supposed to stay neutral and professional, Geralt cannot and routinely gets personally involved despite what he claims he wants. They also released a fairly comprehensive trailer called The Sword of Destiny that briefly outlines the main plot, Geralt’s unique status among witchers, the moral ambiguity of choices, and shows a bunch of shots of Geralt fighting monsters, killing men, and bedding women. This is a very good trailer for showing the viewer exactly what the game is about.

My personal favorite Witcher 3 trailer, though, is the launch trailer. It includes no dialogue or narration, but still imparts a lot of information. It opens on a shot of a tree from which several people are hanged, showing the brutality of this world. Set to “Oats in the Water” by Ben Howard, a song written while feverish and ill about death and the cruel ironies of life, the trailers shows the world as both Ciri and Geralt travel it, telling the viewer of Geralt’s search for her. This is interspersed with shots of the past showing Geralt, Ciri, and Yennifer’s bond, further emphasizing their drive. Towards the end, the trailer shifts to a collection of epic landscape shots to show the beautiful world and a whirlwind of colorful characters that all impact Geralt’s quest.

There are probably hundreds of trailers that could fit into the setting category and as much as I would love to talk about them all, I’ve been on this for long enough, but here are a few other notable examples that I couldn’t help but mention. Horizon Zero Dawn had an incredible E3 presentation in 2015 that sold me immediately just on the concept of a post-post apocalyptic world inhabited by primitive tribes and robot dinosaurs even before the astounding game play section started. Dark Souls 3 released a very tonally powerful trailer that I would actually only recommend to people who have finished the game because it spoils all but a handful of bosses. It combines powerful visuals with cryptic NPC dialog and matches big downbeats in the song to epic boss attack moves. Control is a game about a federal agency that handles SCP-like objects and events. Unexplainable phenomena that affect our world in almost paranormal ways. The trailer for the game shows haunting and amazing imagery of forboding and often impossible rooms with floating people and disturbing monsters while a narrator explains the premise. It immediately hooked me when I saw it as I have long wanted to play an SCP game. Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture depicts an empty town full of mysterious golden balls of light while a conversation about some emergency is played over a radio. It is heightened even more by a hauntingly beautiful choir song. The less I say about the trailer for Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice the better, but rest assured, it’s powerful.

Cinematic

Many people don’t like cinematic trailers because they tell you absolutely nothing about what the game experience will be, and they aren’t wrong, but a cinematic trailer can do a ton to get viewers into the conceit of the narrative or world. Overwatch and League of Legends are famous for their short films and music videos that expand on lore or simply get people attached to characters. The Dragons short for Overwatch is one of my favorites and rewatching it today makes nostalgic and gives me an urge to get back into the game. Hanzo and Genji’s story is emotionally powerful and just plain cool. I haven’t really played League in seven years and yet this terrifying trailer for the champion Fiddlesticks gives me chills and the K/DA Popstars music video got me to actually download the game again and try a few matches. Some cinematic trailers can do a lot more than just get you invested in lore or pull on your heartstrings. The original Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos trailer actually manages to be cool, emotionally engaging, and introduces the viewer to the themes and premise of the game world.

The trailer opens on a tattered flag and a duel between a human knight and an orc. Their fight is desperate and they are both panting and exhausted, but their hatred keeps pulling them back into another attempt to kill the other. A narrator explains that they have been fighting for generations without heed to the prophecies. This very succinctly sums up the whole setting: orcs and humans locked in a forever war, perpetuated by nothing but their mutual hatred. Both sides suffer and nobody wins. The things that were important and sacred before the war are now ignored. In the trailer, a storm intensifies around the combatants and suddenly, green meteors come raining down around them. One lands nearby and a large, monstrous demon rises from the crater. The last shot is of a puddle being polluted with both orc and human blood as both corpses lie next to each other, killed by the demon. This is the premise of the game. Orc and human must learn to put aside their hatred because for all their differences, neither can survive the Chaos alone.

Assassins Creed lives and dies by its’ setting. They are perfectly aware of this and their trailers capitalize on it really well. AC trailers are short, action packed films that are love letters to fans of the setting. Two examples I want to mention are Assassins Creed Black Flag and Assassins Creed Syndicate. I am a huge fan of the romanticized Pirate concept and the trailer delivers that in spades. The legendary Edward Teach proclaiming the virtues (or lack thereof) of Edward Kenway cut with shots of chaotic ship battles, seedy taverns, and buried treasure told me everything I needed to know. I wanted a Pirate game and here it was. Syndicate is set in Victorian London where you build up a gang of commoners to overthrow the oppressive elite. After a gorgeous aerial view of London, we see the cartoonishly evil templars putting kidnapped children to work in a factory, immediately setting the tone for the player to be the champion of the people. The trailer follows various actions of one of the playable assassins, Jacob Frye as he gets in a gunfight/carriage chase, liberates a factory from its oppressive Templar overseer, and uses a bar fight to gain new recruits for his gang. It’s fun, action packed, and full of Victorian flavor. My only complaint is that Syndicate has a gorgeous score composed by the great Austin Wintory and the trailer just features a modern pop rock song.

The last cinematic trailer I want to mention is the one for Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. Civilization is a hard game to hype with a trailer. The gameplay itself is hardly exciting to watch and the changes between mainline games are significant but hard to see in a 3 minute trailer. So instead of trying to capture the specifics, Civilization trailers tend to try to capture the soul of the franchise. It’s about trying to build something that will last the test of time. Do we as players measure up to the great leaders in our history? But it’s also about how our civilizations have evolved over time. Humanity’s endless ambition, ingenuity, creativity and even greed. The trailer depicts great scientific achievements, daring adventures, cultural wonders, and terrible wars but all with this hopeful music driving us forward to the next landmark era. It inspires me. Even if it isn’t representative of the game in the least, Civilization’s brand is tied to these kinds of cinematic trailers that make people feel the call to adventure and progress.

Art

There are some games that don’t need to hook you with the story, the setting, or emotional appeals. All they need is to show you what they look like. The beautiful and unique art on display to capture and retain the audience’s attention. The original Okami trailer is a good example of this. It’s all in Japanese and I have no idea what it’s about or what is being said, but the art is so unique and interesting that I want to try the game. This section will be more brief, as I think the trailers can and should speak for themselves.

One of my absolutely favorites, Supergiant Games is a studio that has mastered this. All of their games are gorgeous, but Transistor, in particular, is notable for its trailer. It’s a simple presentation, but it doesn’t need any more because it lets the strengths of the game speak for themselves.

Transistor has an almost stained glass look to its multi layered, isometric backgrounds with bright colors and varied shapes. The trailer includes a short section outlining the basic premise of Transistor, but all that is needed is the amazing haunting music by Darren Korb and sung by Ashley Barrett providing emotional texture to the mixture of incredible stills and Supergiant’s unique combat. It tells you all you need to know about the game: good music, breathtaking visuals, and signature gameplay.

Ori and the Blind Forest is a game that tells the entirety of its story through visuals and music. It’s very emotional and the music is so distinctive that when a live pianist played a few notes before the sequel’s E3 announcement, the whole audience knew what it was. The trailer explains the entire story conceit of the game in just a two minute video. The animation has so much character that no words are needed.

Another of my favorite studios, Thunder Lotus Games, released one of my favorite roguelikes in 2017. Sundered has possibly the most frenetic and intense combat I’ve ever experienced. What seems like unending hordes hell bent on dragging you into the darkness with them. All of it in this eldritch, horrifying artwork. This is one of my favorite uses of Lovecraftian imagery. The entire experience is very unique.

The final game I want to mention is Hyper Light Drifter, a deeply personal game that I don’t have the words to describe. The visuals and music say more than I ever could, but it has my highest recommendation.

In conclusion, I clearly think about these trailers too much and am really bad at trimming. This ended up being far longer than I intended it to and I fully do not expect anyone to read the whole thing, but I just hope that everyone might find some example here that they can identify with. If I had an overarching point, it’s that there is so much variety in art that appeals to different people for different reasons and it should all be celebrated.

Player Empowerment

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One of the great things about gaming is that it can provide an escape from everyday life. Many gamers seek a feeling of being powerful and important. They want to feel badass and strong, often in contrast to their real life. Games often provide a power progression to give players a sense of improvement as they play. Even if the goal isn’t to provide a power fantasy for the player, having a tangible way to track progression, in the form of avatar skill, is a popular feature. Not every game uses or needs power progression (Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice and Overwatch, specifically, come to mind), but most games do have one. There are good and bad ways to do this, though.

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A problem I often see in power progression systems is making the player so powerful in the end game that the challenge disappears and the game becomes trivial. Bethesda is pretty bad at this. I encountered this in Skyrim and Fallout, but the worst I have experienced is Prey. It is a shame, because Prey is one of my favorite games of 2017 and by far my favorite horror game. Unfortunately, the suspense and uncertainly is trivialized by how powerful the player becomes at the end. When Mimics can be detected with a spectroscope and even the most powerful of Typhon melt underneath the Q-Beam, some of the suspense is gone. The Witcher 3 does this as well. There are so many side quests and optional content that is worth completing. If you complete even half of it, you will likely be far over leveled for the end game. Also, enemies do not scale with the player’s level, so after a while, most mobs littered around the map are trivial and not even worth the time to get off of Roach to fight them.

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Conversely, I would say that Divinity Original Sin 2 handles progressive challenge really well. As you level up, there is always an area or quest that is perfectly suited to be just barely within your ability. The only real walls that block off content, are simply difficulty walls. If you want to charge into the Blackpits at level 6, the game will let you, but you will certainly die. There are encounters and areas beyond your level that, if you are clever, you can access early to get some good higher level rewards, but it also doesn’t break the game, either. If you pick up a sword far above your level, you can use it, but your accuracy is much lower. You never feel too powerful or too weak.

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The ideal system, in my opinion, is to allow players to control their own difficulty, and I don’t mean game-wide, menu difficulty levels, but rather in-game mechanics that allow players to change their own difficulty. There are several excellent examples of this. Super Giant Games do this better than anyone else I have seen. There is an incredible amount of avatar and play style customization in their games, including ways to make the game more difficult. In Transistor, for example, there are limiters that you can install into your transistor. A limiter might increase the health of enemies, decrease Red’s speed, increase the number of bad cells created from enemies, etc. There is so much replayability in these games, partially because the player can make the game as difficult or easy as they wish. Dark Souls 2 has a few good player-controlled difficulty features as well. The Covenant of Champions allows you to play the game as New Game + difficulty. There are rings that limit the number of souls you receive. You can use Bonfire Aesthetics to fight bosses again at a higher difficulty, as well as repopulate the level with enemies.

Ultimately, I want everybody to get the kind of experience they want in games. Some want to feel powerful as they clear rooms of aliens in Doom. Some want to feel desperate, fearful and in danger as they creep through Prey or Resident Evil. I think that some games benefit from players feeling over or under powered, and that most benefit from being balanced. I have a lot of respect for games that can allow the player to customize a game to their own desires. I definitely support any game that increases player choice, especially on a matter where every player would have a different preference.

Open World Games

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When I was younger, I thought that open world games were the best. I would play GTA at friends’ houses and was blown away by the scale. I loved that you, as a player, could decide where to go and which order to accomplish objectives. I love games that offer more player choice. When I got a PS3, Infamous was probably my favorite game. The amount of time I spent gliding along power lines, shooting electricity from my hands and dominating Empire city one block at a time is ridiculous. I still think that having the freedom to explore the world at my own pace is a fantastic feature, but I also know that there are often serious problems with open world games.

When open world games are announced and they are described as massive play areas that will take dozens of hours to see everything I get excited at the possibilities but also wary of the quality of encounters in this massive space. I find that an open world is only as good as the content that fills it. If the world is mostly mostly empty space or filled with copy-paste encounters, rather than unique and varied content, then it is wasted space. I find that Bethesda games often do this. Skyrim, in particular, is massive, but has so much empty space and samey encounters. I never actually finished Skyrim because I modded to hell, making it crash every five minutes. I know that I could fix this issue by removing mods until I find the problem one, but I realized that I didn’t care enough. I had cleared enough Draugr crypts, bandit camps, Dwarf fortresses, and Thomas the Tank Engine…I mean dragon nests for a lifetime. There was a ton of great content in that game, but it felt like the unique and interesting content took up like 20% of the world, and the rest was wasted space. Fallout New Vegas, while I adore the game, suffers from this too. The map is much more manageable in size, but a lot of the Mojave is just desert. You may encounter a roaming band of Legionnaires or Bloat Flies, but that is rare. I do appreciate that nearly all, if not all, of the content in the game is excellent, though. I never finished Batman Arkham Knight (mostly because of all the terrible Batmobile combat and races), but I think that the scale was far too large for the amount of interesting content.

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There are games that do this extremely well, though. Keeping with the Bethesda theme, Prey does open world surprisingly well. The world, or space station in this case, is fairly small and contained, so every object, enemy and encounter is placed there for a reason. The game is open world, but it has the detail and care of scripted linear games. Not only is none of the space wasted, but the world evolves as you progress. The locations change visually, structurally, and there are new encounters. I don’t need a game world to be massive. I just want it to be populated and interesting. An aspect that I really like in open world games, that I wish was more common, is the ability to access areas and content far above the player’s current ability. The game has difficulty walls, rather than story or invisible walls to funnel players into the right path. Dark Souls, The Witcher 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Divinity Original Sin 2 do this very well.

Two other good examples are Horizon Zero Dawn and Batman Arkham City. The scale of these games are large, but not unmanageable. I found that in HZD, I was nearly always in some kind of encounter. The world was full of machines, tribal settlements, old world ruins and cultists. The locations without enemies, quests or cities were designed to be quiet moments to admire the beautiful world they had created. I never felt like there was wasted space. Arkham City is an excellent example of an open world game. It’s small enough to fill with interesting and different encounters, but large enough to feel like you are really in a city. I think its even more impressive because the map is urban, but doesn’t feel like every third building is copy-pasted. Arkham City also does a great job of making the player return to past areas in order to access new content. It’s a shame when a game never provides an incentive to return to old areas. I also think that Rocksteady did a great job of mixing collectibles, riddler challenges, easter eggs, and the various kinds of combat throughout the map. I want to give a quick honorable mention to The Witcher 3. I’m always heaping praise on that game, but I do think it deserves it. In this case their open world is amazing. It’s beautiful when it wants to be, bleak at other times. It is filled with content(though there are probably a few too many samey Witcher contracts) and nothing really feels like its there to fill space.

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Whenever I play a linear game like Uncharted, Wolfenstein, or Bioshock, I love the detail that the developers put into each level. Nothing is there just to fill space. Any building you can enter, corner you can turn down, or ladder you climb, leads to something you can pick up, interact with, or use. Every camera angle in Uncharted 4 is painstakingly designed. This kind of detail is infeasible in an open world game. While this isn’t a problem per se, it is something that I appreciate. I love to see a game that shows the care the developers put into it.

Ultimately, I think that open world is not an intrinsically good feature. It is just an aspect. The value of it, is entirely dependent on its implementation and usage. I’ve encountered many people who would point to a games world scale and length as a sign or evidence of a good game. I don’t think that it is an intrinsically good or bad feature. Like any other feature, it just informs the gameplay and nothing more.

UI: Has It Gone Too Far?

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Games are essentially the undertaking of conquering optional obstacles to accomplish an objective where all parties agree on the same set of rules. In order to accomplish this goal, the gamer needs to have enough information to know how to overcome the obstacles. This is usually accomplished through tutorials and the user interface. Information is necessary, but there is a point where the amount of information becomes too much. The more information on screen at one time, the less comprehensible the information becomes and eventually it’ll give the player sensory overload.

I have only played a few hours of the Diablo series over the years. I’ve always found grinding, exploring identical environments and sorting through piles and piles of loot to be tedious. I have a few friends who love the game and I have seen much more gameplay online. There gets to be a point in Diablo where you get to a high enough level that in order to create a challenge, the game fills the screen with dozens and dozens of enemies. I have found myself watching the gameplay and recoiling in horror at how the screen fills with damage numbers, particle effects, and so many enemies that they can barely move around for the collisions. The HUD also takes up half the screen, by itself, so I have no idea how anyone can understand what is happening in the game. It becomes completely incomprehensible. World of Warcraft can fall into this as well, especially with party raids.

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Ubisoft games are infamous for a lot of things, and UI clutter is one of them. Particularly in how they indicate locations in the world. Not only do icons constantly pop up on the screen, compass and minimap, but when you open the map in Assassins Creed or Far Cry, you are usually met with dozens and dozens of map icons flooding the map. It can be overwhelming and even hard to read the important information on the map. In an open world game, the player needs to know how to get around and where to go. If the UI is so overwhelming that it makes the basic information hard to decipher, then there’s a problem. The Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn, games that I adore, are also pretty bad about this, though not to the same level.

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I mentioned that Horizon Zero Dawn overpopulates the map, but the game does have a feature that I never knew I always wanted. There is an option in the menu to turn on Dynamic UI. When you are not in combat or using items, the HUD fades away and simply leaves the entire screen to the bare essentials and the amazing visuals of the game. I love that I can ride across the red rocks of Southern Utah on a robotic bull and watch enormous robotic creatures silhouetted against the sunset without a health bar and equipment obscuring the scenery. It’s a small detail, but I want every game to have this option from now on. I also want to talk some sugar about Nier Automata for a bit. That game does something I have never seen before. Since you play as androids, your UI is treated as software on your hard drive. You can uninstall sections of HUD to make room for other upgrades. You can remove your minimap or your health bar to make room for a damage boost. It was really cool to see the presence of information have a gameplay consequence.

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There is a game called Banished. Not very many people know about that game, but I quite like it. It’s a sort of city builder game set in the middle ages. It’s cathartic until disaster strikes. Anyway, Banished is interesting in this discussion because, similarly to Nier Automata, you can add or remove information from the screen. There are tons of menus full of important information: map, job list, resource panel, message log, etc. You can resize and move these information panels around or even remove them entirely. This is a great feature. At the same time, all of the information on the screen is never really explained. The only way to truly know how to play the game is to try and fail until you learn the mechanics or reading a guide elsewhere. So this game has a great UI system, but does a poor job of explaining it.

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Information is important, but too much information makes it difficult to parse important information from the rest. The UI should never distract from the gameplay. It should only inform the gameplay, not replace it. I love the idea of being able to customize how much HUD you want, but if the system is complicated, the game should be responsible for teaching the player how to use and understand it. It’s a delicate balance, but an important one.

Game of the Year

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The Game Awards just happened, and though mostly meaningless, I was rooting for my favorite games of the year. Of the contestants, my pick was definitely Horizon Zero Dawn. Sadly, the award went to Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, but my opinions on that are for another time. Though I voted for Horizon Zero Dawn, and I did love that game, my top 3 choices were Prey, Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice, and Nier Automata. Spoiler warning for each of these, by the way.

Personally, I think that a title worthy of being called the Game of the Year should not just be the most popular game of the year, but something that adds something new to the industry, something that innovates. As much as I love Horizon Zero Dawn, it mostly just takes mechanics from other games and perfects them. There are so many games coming out every year, many of them are just reskinned versions of other games or they copy and paste all of their mechanics. The games that are brave enough to try something new should be the one’s recognized.

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Prey is probably my favorite Bethesda game, or it might be Fallout New Vegas…it changes all the time. It was very refreshing to see a more contained game from Bethesda. I love that about Arkane. They are much more contained, but every square foot is used. In the open world games, I love exploring, but there is so much empty space. I was lucky to have started Prey without any knowledge of what the game was about or what I should expect. I had no idea that the beginning of the game was a simulation, or that any object could be a mimic, etc. Prey is, by far, my favorite horror game. Unlike many other horror games, Prey doesn’t rely on jump scares for it’s horror. While it does have some jump scares in the form of mimics you’re not expecting, Prey creates the basis of it’s horror through making you suspicious and on edge at all times. I love that it made me afraid of coffee cups and trash cans. I think this is much more effective horror. The further into the game I went, the less I trusted everything and everyone around me. January, December, Alex, even the past versions of Morgan were all untrustworthy. It’s a slow burn style of horror. The environmental design is excellent at not only showing the status of the space station (I absolutely love the coral that spreads across Talos I), but also at designing diverse encounters that require different tactics. The last thing I want to talk about with Prey is the wide array of weapons, powers, and tactics. The recycling grenade, gloo gun, mimic power, the gravity field power, etc were all so goofy and awesome. I loved using them and I’ve never seen anything like it. If I were to pick the biggest flaw, it would be that the player becomes very powerful and it makes the enemies fairly trivial, thus lowering the horror aspect.

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Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice passed me by at first. I hadn’t heard much about it, and by the name, it sounded like some hack n slash Dynasty Warriors-style game. It was only about a month ago that someone recommended it to me. I instantly loved it from the opening cut scene. I really appreciate when media depicts mental illness well since I’ve struggled with mental health myself. I have never seen a better depiction of psychosis than Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice. My experience has never been nearly as bad as Senua’s, but there are elements in the game that ring true for me. I played this game with noise canceling headphones, and I was blown away by the sound design. The binaural audio made Senua’s voices feel real. I loved how the voices showed the doubt, encouragement, fear and danger in Senua’s heart. They not only showcase Senua’s illness, but also provide information in the combat, and hints for the puzzles. Speaking of the combat, many detractors find it repetitive and boring. I can see how people have that complaint, but personally, I found it simplistic but satisfying. I specifically enjoy combat systems with timing-based parry mechanics. Plus, the bosses were super cool and that doesn’t hurt. I think it’s important to remember, though, that Hellblade isn’t about the combat. The combat is just a way to represent Senua fighting against obstacles that her brain placed in front of her.

Hellblade’s mechanics are primarily puzzles. Most of them are “find the shape in the environment” puzzles. Many of the complaints I have seen talk about how they dislike these puzzles and they are just boring filler to make the game longer. Boring is a matter of opinion, but the puzzles actually fit perfectly into the game. One of the signs of psychosis is a need to find meaning where there is none: in others’ words in actions, in events that happen, or in the world around them. When the game locks a door behind runes that you must find in the environment, the door is not actually locked. It is simply locked for Senua. She is convinced that it is impossible to open that door until she has earned it. Senua has to find signs (runes) in the world around her to show her that she has earned it. It is a brilliant way to showcase this aspect of psychosis. Her brain is constantly creating obstacles and placing them in her way (something I can absolutely relate to). This game isn’t a fight against Hela, its a fight against herself and her guilt over her lover’s death. Everything she is doing is an avoiding facing her own illnesses. This is the darkness that encroaches across the screen when she is particularly vulnerable or scared.

I want to quickly talk about a few shorter things I appreciate. First of all, the game is beautiful. It displays the same sad, lonely, and rugged beauty of Senua herself. She is beautiful but her life has taken it’s toll on her. Her eyes are constantly shifting, suspicious and afraid. Her hair and face paint showing her Pictish heritage. Her body is covered in scars and wounds that mirror her mental state. Next I want to praise Melina Juergens’ performance. She had me transfixed. Her facial movements and voice acting perfectly displays her pain, fear and anger. I am so happy that she got the award for Best Performance. She deserves it. Lastly, I love their depiction of Norse mythology. So many adaptations stick to the lighter parts like Thor, Odin, Asgard the glittering realm of the gods, etc, but there is so much more. Much of Norse mythology is dark, gritty, and violent. I love that Hellblade displayed this side of it.

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Nier Automata is a game that I was initially hesitant about. It had a lot of elements that I usually don’t like in other games. Bullet hell and hack n slash mechanics specifically put me off of it. A friend of mine bought the game and loved it. He convinced me to give the demo a try. I enjoyed it a lot; enough to buy it for myself. I first want to say that the music in this game is incredible and absolutely deserving of the Game Award for Best Soundtrack. Just like Prey, this game has a very contained open world. The world is small but full. I do wish that the world was full of more diverse enemies, though. It’s amazing to me that this game managed to create a complete story with five fleshed out characters: 2B, 9S, A2, Adam, and Eve. Each character has such depth. It’s especially amazing that they managed to give 2B, a terse and mostly silent android, a fleshed out character through her actions and the words of those around her. Our perception of 2B started as a strictly professional and efficient soldier who suppresses emotions to accomplish the mission. As we learn more about her, even after her death (something I’m salty about, by the way), we see that she cares a lot about 9S, but she has had to bury her feelings in order to be able to kill 9S again and again. 9S goes from innocent and excited to have company to bitter, heartbroken and reckless. Each other character has similar development. I want to quickly mention how expertly they showed that robots are not as simple as YorHa says. Though fighting them is the same, the robots from the factory, the castle, the amusement park, etc are all so different.

It was brave of Nier Automata to tell the story the way they did. I wonder how many people got the credits for Ending A and then put the game away because they assumed it was over. Normally, I would dislike a game that makes you repeat large sections, but the differences in play style as 9S as well as the new perspective and quests makes it alright, for me at least. I don’t think I have ever seen a game pull off storytelling from multiple perspectives this well before. Normally it feels fractured and breaks immersion and any sense of urgency. Another thing that really impressed me about Nier Automata was the creative camera work. Most of the game is from a third person camera view, but depending on the location, the game will fluidly switch you to a 2D or a top down view. It could happen several times each level. The last thing I want to mention about Nier is the chip customization. This concept isn’t new (Transistor does this the best, in my opinion), but the one thing I haven’t seen is the ability to remove sections of the UI to add more memory for other chips (kinda like you’re an android, right?). This isn’t a huge thing, but it’s a detail that adds some flavor that I like. If I had to pick my least favorite thing about this game it would be 9S’ hacking mini game. I can’t stand it. Objectively I think the biggest flaw is how little enemy variety there is.

I loved all three of these games. These stood out to me this year. They stepped outside of the comfort zone for video games these days. I think that they really distinguished themselves, even if they were small in scale. They don’t try to appeal to every gamer or pretend to be something they are not. Larger games such as Breath of the Wild or Horizon Zero Dawn are awesome and expansive and fantastic in the moment, but eventually the excitement diminishes. I find that games like Prey, Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice, and Nier Automata are the ones that stay in my mind for years. They are special. If I had to choose one of the three, I would probably say that Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice is my Game of the Year. I will never forget playing this game and I will probably never see another game like it. It is special and deserves recognition.

Dark Souls 2: An Underrated Gem

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According to the internet, Demons Souls is the weird one nobody has played, Dark Souls 1 is the best game ever made, Dark Souls 2 is trash, Bloodborne is almost as good as Dark Souls 1, and Dark Souls 3 is pandering fan service. Now, I think that the player base as a whole isn’t that extreme, but the vocal fans love to hate Dark Souls 2 and I think it’s undeserved. If I had to rate the series, personally, it would go Bloodborne, Demons Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2 about equally, and then Dark Souls 3. I think that many people like to forget the flaws in Dark Souls 1 and ignore the strengths of Dark Souls 2. One of the biggest flaws of Dark Souls 3 (which I still love) was that it was too similar to Dark Souls 1 and had too many references. Personally, I love how different 2 is from 1. It was brave to set itself apart from its predecessor and I think it paid off.

One of the things that is popular about Dark Souls 1 is the variety of boss design and Dark Souls 2 is accused of having too many bosses that are armored knights. I think that people often forget or ignore the Re-skin Demon, A.K.A. the Asylum Demon, the Stray Demon, and the Demon Firesage. Those three bosses are literally re-skins of each other, and the only difference in functionality is their health, damage numbers, and the later two do magic or fire damage. In Dark Souls 2, the only thing that is the same about the armored knight bosses is the fact that they wear armor. They are functionally different and have unique fighting styles. The Pursuer is aggressive and quick, making himself more dangerous because he inflicts curse. The Dragonrider is predictable and slow, perfect for learning patterns and dodge timing. He also has good player-controlled difficulty with the changeable size of the arena. The Ruin Sentinels are very challenging to fight all together, they are slow but hit very hard and have short and long ranged attacks. They teach you about zoning multiple enemies. The Looking Glass Knight is slow and telegraphs his moves, making him easy to fight on his own, but he summons phantoms and sometimes players. These new enemies are not push overs and the Looking Glass Knight has several crowd control attacks. You have to keep an eye on him while you take out the phantom as fast as possible. There are others, but I’ll leave this point here. Functional differences are more important than visual differences. If you look at them as game mechanics, there are more unique bosses in Dark Souls 2 than in Dark Souls 1.

One of my favorite enemies in Dark Souls 1 was the Basilisk. Those things are absolute bastards and curse sucks, but they were so goofy. I loved that they could make me afraid of a derpy frog monster. I also loved the mushroom people, Havel, and the corrupted citizens of Oolacile. From Software is not afraid of including some absurd and funny designs in their otherwise serious game to provide some levity. Not every enemy has to be a Black Knight. Dark Souls 2 just expanded that. Two of the bosses are perfect examples of this. The Demon of Song is a gigantic frog monster with human hands and a grotesque skull-like face. He hops around a pond trying to slap you with its giant arms and the only place to damage it is it’s creepy face, which he periodically covers with skin around his neck. The boss is incredibly goofy but also horrifying. The other boss is The Covetous Demon. He is a massive Jabba the Hutt-like creature. He has three basic attacks, lunging his body forward, rolling over on top of you and a fantastic tongue attack were he grabs you, eats you and then spits you back out after unequipping all of your items including your armor. So you have to either dodge him while putting your armor and weapons back on, or beat him to death with your fists. Both bosses are pretty easy, but they are still funny and have great designs. Another example is some of the weapons. There are entire anvils on chains, a club shaped like a drum stick that flings you onto your stomach with every heavy attack, and a sword made out of a slab of rock that’s larger than the player character. It’s all very creative and adds a lot of flavor to the game.

The weapons are not just good because there are some funny ones, there are so many and they are so creative. The same can be said for the magic and armor. There are so many viable builds in Dark Souls 2. I personally really like pure strength and hex caster. It makes the PvP so much more fun as well. I love invading someone’s world wielding the Fume Ultra Greatsword while dressed as a butterfly that poisons anyone near me, or dressed in the armor that makes me look invisible and cast crazy hexes into area. I haven’t mentioned rings and consumables, but there are dozens of each of those as well. There is so much variety in the game, much more, I think, than the other games in the series. Dark Souls 3 had, by far, the most weapons and armors, but they were almost all the same. Nearly every straight sword had the same animations and the stance weapon skill, every ultra greatsword had stomp, etc, so it didn’t feel quite as varied.

Something that many people dislike about Dark Souls 2 is that the story isn’t very connected to that of the first game, only a few small references, and that the story of the game itself is very fractured. I once heard it described as Dark Souls 1 is a straightforward but detailed saga and Dark Souls 2 is comprised of a series of short stories. I quite enjoy both. 1 had a much better story start to finish, but 2 had amazing character stories and location lore. I particularly love the story of Vendrick, Lucatiel, and the whole Iron Keep leg of the game. I want to give the DLC content in this game is fantastic as well. This series does an amazing job of creating detailed characters with snippets of dialogue and item descriptions.

Now I do want to make sure to recognize the flaws in the game because it’s not perfect. I enjoy the combat a lot, but I think that the parry timing was much worse than the rest of the games, and the weapons felt a little floaty. I also think that accessing the Darklurker boss fight is unreasonable. I love the boss and unlocking each of the three entrances is fine, but having to defeat those enemies every time sucks. The final boss is fine, but definitely a let down. The healing gems made the game significantly easier. I disliked three of the boss fights: the Ancient Dragon, Sinh the Slumbering Dragon, and the Old Iron King. It’s really a shame that From Software hasn’t managed a good dragon fight since Kalameet.

Overall, I think that the game is flawed but excellent. That how I also feel about Dark Souls 1. I love the series as a whole and even the worst one is still better than most other games I’ve played. There is something special about the series that I have never been able to pin down. It’s not the combat, the difficulty, the setting, or the storytelling. There are games that have had one or several of those elements, but they haven’t grabbed me in the same way. I must add that Dark Souls 2 created my favorite Souls meme.

Don’t Give Up Skeleton

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I grew up with games like Halo 3, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, and Star Wars Battlefront. I would spend entire nights with my friends eating junk food and playing games together on the couch. I loved being able to hang out with my friends and family and all get to play a game together on the same screen. I have played hours of Little Big Planet, Towerfall, and Rock Band with my family. This new generation of consoles has seen a departure from local multiplayer, and a complete focus on online multiplayer, and I think it’s a shame.

Some of my favorite memories from my teens were of playing Zombies in Halo 3 and battling for the sniper roost on the Rust map of Modern Warfare 2. It was great to get together in person, lock ourselves in a basement and stay up all night eating pizza and gaming. As I’ve grown older, I still enjoy getting together with my friends and gaming all night occasionally, but now if we want to play together, each person has to bring their own PS4 and screen. While still fun, it’s inconvenient and a lot more work. It also loses a little sense of intimacy, it feels more like we’re playing next to each other and not together.

Don’t get me wrong. I love online multiplayer too. I have lots of friends who now live all over the country, and it’s fantastic to be able to get on discord and play with my friends all over the country. I’ve also met several great people in Overwatch and Fortnite chat that I enjoy playing with. I also understand that local multiplayer isn’t important to many people because they don’t have friends locally or they don’t have the time to organize a larger get together. It’s just easier to play with everyone online. I do understand this, but I also think that there is something more that you can get by having in person contact, drinking and eating together. It’s, at least, important to me.

Ideally, games would have both local and online multiplayer. All of the games I mentioned before have that feature. I could play Battlefront with my friends or online, or the single player. I want every player to be able to play the way that they want. It’s such a shame that Halo, once the pinnacle of local multiplayer, has abandoned it entirely. I know that this is more of a personal nostalgic complaint, and that this isn’t an issue for everyone, but I do care about it and that’s enough for me.

The Art of Absurdity

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When it comes to storytelling, in any medium, it is important to keep a tonal balance. In film and television, if the tone is always dark and gritty, it can get wearing and even break the immersion, becoming melodramatic. At the same time, if there are too many moments of levity or humor, the experience becomes more casual and harder to get invested. The same sort of thing can happen in games. It’s important to keep a balance of realism and absurdity, not just in story, but also in game mechanics.

Realism can add a lot to a game. I, personally, appreciate when games add elements like limb damage, stamina, and bullet drop (depending on the game, of course), but sometimes it’s taken too far. In Shenmue II, the ending of the game includes a hiking sequence, with little interaction, that takes 2 hours in real time. In DayZ, you have to consider sore feet, rain making you cold, staying fed, ingesting bacteria from dirty water, etc. DayZ, obviously appeals to some people, and I’m glad that it exists for them, but I think there is a line where realism turns from strategic considerations to frustrating or boring tedium. These games can be interesting, but will rarely have a lasting playerbase.

On the other side, there are some games that are too absurd. I think that absurdity is a highly underrated feature in games. Absurdity can create some of the most fun moments. In Wolfenstein New Order, you impersonate a scientist to sneak into a Nazi research base on the moon. Killing Nazis on the moon while dual wielding sniper rifles that can transform into laser guns is an incredible amount of fun. In Fortnite Battle Royale, you can build ridiculous, physics-defying structures to outmaneuver opponents while dressed as a bush and then fire a rocket at a teammates feet to pick them up and send them flying across the map while surfing on a rocket. It is absurd and amazing and incredibly fun. Some games, however, are built around absurdity, and while entertaining, have very little staying power. A perfect example of this is Goat Simulator. Flying around a map as a murderous, glitched out goat, constantly knocking things over and causing mass destruction is fun and gimmicky, but only for an hour or two before it gets old. Octodad and the Just Cause series are the same way.

One of my favorite games is The Last of Us. It is a masterpiece of pacing, storytelling, and character growth. It does really well with balancing its tone as well. The setting and story are very dark and serious, but there are beautiful moments where the characters and the players take a moment to release some of the tension. The giraffe encounter in Salt Lake City was incredibly moving because it was a perfect counter balance to the depression and trauma created by the encounter with David. Ellie’s teasing of Bill helped distract both the player and Joel from Tess’ death. Mechanically there is realism in the arrows breaking based on how the corpse falls and the noise created by starting up a generator, but there are also considerations for the sake of enjoyable gameplay, such as being able to listen carefully and see through walls or being able to stick several hand guns, a bow, shotgun, rifle, a brick, several nail bombs, lit molotov cocktails, shivs, ammo, and many more things in a single backpack. Wolfenstein is another good example of a game that has a good balance.

I should clarify that I understand that games like DayZ and Goat Simulator have people that they directly appeal to, but for the general gamer audience, it’s different. Like so many things, games are best as a collection of elements from both sides in moderation. Realism and absurdity are both valuable qualities in games, as long as there is some of both.

DLC: Good or Bad?

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DLC is an important issue in the industry that gamers tend to be very split on. Some think that new features are always a good thing, even if it costs more money and some think that DLC is anti-consumer and unacceptable in any form. Like most issues, my opinion is somewhere in the middle. Some DLC is good, some DLC is bad. I think that intent, cost, timeline, and type of game are all relevant when deciding if a piece of Downloadable Content is bad or not.

I think that the biggest problem with DLC in games is when a game is released, has a $60 price tag, and then has paid DLC a week later. When a game has extra content for sale so soon after release, it means that the content was ready and always intended to be part of the game. The devs simply released an incomplete game at full price and then offered the rest of it for more money. The complete game is not $60, but $70, $80, $100, or more, depending on how much DLC there is. Marketing an incomplete game as a finished product while holding the rest hostage under an additional pay wall is anti-consumer and unacceptable. One of my absolute favorite series is terrible about this and I have been forced to stop purchasing their products: Total War.

I have been playing the Total War games since Medieval Total War in 2002. I have hundreds of hours in Rome, Shogun II, and Empire Total War and dozens in the others. These games are incredibly fun and appeal to my strategic and gameplay sensibilities on almost every level, but a month after each game is released there’s $20-$40 of DLC. Usually a game will launch with 5 or 6 playable factions in a map of 25+ AI factions. In a couple months after release, they will often add 5 or so more. These were obviously in the works at launch, but unfinished. They were always intended to be in the game and charging more money for them as if they were simply extra features is dishonest and unethical. If the game is unfinished, they should either delay the release or publish the rest of the content for free. Creative Assembly, though amazing at creating games, has business practices that I can no longer support.

In shooter games like Call of Duty, the devs will release new map packs as paid DLC. Fighting games like Injustice will also do this with new playable characters. I don’t see this as quite as awful as the Total War system, but it’s still not great either. While the extra content is not necessary to play or enjoy the full product, but it splits the player base. Since only some people will be able to play on all of the maps or as all of the characters, matchmaking becomes more complicated, separating players into those who can play with the extra content and those who can’t. This becomes worse and worse with every added piece of DLC. Companies try to solve this by offering a Season Pass, which guarantees access to future DLC for a one time price. This concept, while seemingly practical and will probably save you money, is not a good idea as a consumer. You are paying for content that doesn’t exist yet. There is no guarantee that future DLC will be of acceptable quality or that there even will be more DLC. It is the same issue as pre-orders, which I will get into in more detail another time.

I think that a game that does this well is Overwatch. The game is a one-time purchase, $40 for PC and $60 for Console, and you get access to all current and future content. Every new character, map, balance fix, event skin, etc is available to you. You never have to spend another cent. The way that Blizzard can do this and continually create new content for the game is through the optional loot box purchases. The loot box system is one that is controversial and some see it as anti-consumer. I covered this topic in my post about loot boxes. Essentially, as long as the contents of the loot box are only cosmetic, I am fine with the system existing and I much prefer it to being charged for each new character or map.

Another situation that is worth considering is free-to-play games. While I don’t like a system where parts of the game are locked behind a pay wall, but as long as the game isn’t pay-to-win, I suppose it is acceptable. I think that a good middle ground here is a game like League of Legends or Paladins, where most of the characters are unavailable initially. You have to either purchase them or unlock them eventually by playing the game. Each week, there is a rotation of characters that are playable for free, that week. The game is free, it is all unlockable by playing the game, and there is a way to experience all of the content if you play long enough.

Now on to examples of DLC that I think is specifically done well. First, I want to talk about From Software and the Soulsborne Series. Every game, other than Demons’ Souls, has had at least one piece of DLC. Every single one, in my opinion, has been an excellent addition to the game. They usually release the base game with plans to add DLC later, but the content in the DLC never feels like it should have been included in the base game. They all are clearly additions to the world and story and each one has added several hours of content. Bloodborne’s The Old Hunters expansion included my favorite boss fight in the series. For a paid DLC on a fully priced base game to be acceptable, I think that the added content needs to be high quality, solid quantity, and should feel transformative or at least additive to the base game.

Firaxis, the makers of Civilization and XCOM, is an interesting case. I find that each game they release is excellent on launch and feels complete. Their major expansions have all be amazing and worth every penny, but they sometimes have smaller DLC packs which, while not necessary for the game, don’t merit their own price tag. XCOM 2 had a collection of additional soldier customization options called Anarchy’s Children. This should have either been included in one of the later DLC’s or added for free. Civilization VI adds new playable civilizations to the already plentiful list every few months. I think that these are often over priced. They are always good, but should be priced reasonably. On the other hand, XCOM Enemy Within improved on Enemy Unknown exponentially. It completely transformed the game and added tons of new content. Civilization V Gods and Kings, Brave New World, etc were all massive overhauls of the game, adding new features and changing mechanics. XCOM 2 War of the Chosen could have been marketed as a separate game. It completely changed how the game is played and added hours of new content. Overall, Firaxis has a few lackluster but not terrible DLC’s and arguably some of the best DLC ever made.

The last example I want to mention is The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3 is often held up as an amazing example of DLC done right. I just want to add my voice to this. Hearts of Stone, as an expansion was excellent. The story, new characters, new monsters, new part of the map to explore, new crafting mechanics were all excellent. The missions for Von Everic were quite different and very fun. I also loved how well it fit into the post game of Witcher 3. You didn’t need to start an entirely new playthrough of this massive game to play the new content at a satisfying level. I was blown away by Hearts of Stone and it was probably my favorite DLC in any game…until Blood and Wine. Blood and Wine was bigger and more saturated than most other AAA games. If I had to pick my least favorite thing about the base game of Witcher 3, it was that many of the Witcher Contracts and side missions felt pretty similar to each other. This was not a problem at all in Blood and Wine. Every mission, was unique, hilarious, evocative and fun. Posing for a painting with a dead griffin, winning a grand tourney, helping a love struck knight woo a cursed woman, enduring the bureaucracy of Beauclaire banking, and my favorite quest in the whole game: entering a land of corrupted fairy tales. When people say that DLC is unacceptable, I can understand that, but then I point to Blood and Wine and realize that DLC can sometimes be amazing and absolutely worth it.

Morality and Choices

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The world is not black and white. It is a wide rainbow of different shades of gray. There’s no such thing as good and evil. Morality is subjective and can be different for everyone. The best fiction, in my opinion, explores this concept. With very few exceptions (Lord of the Rings, for example), I dislike any story that deals with a clear purely good heroes fighting purely evil villains. Those stories tend to be boring, unrealistic, and simplistic. Good stories take human nature and explore both the good and the bad. Morality is a subject that I wish was explored more in games. Most games that explore morality tend to just be telling a specific story, and does not offer choices. The Last of Us is a good example of this. When it comes to offering moral choices to the player, most games don’t touch it, and many that do tend to boil moral choices down into a clearly good choice and a clearly bad choice. The few times I have experienced truly interesting moral choices in gaming are some of my absolute favorite moments in games.

I don’t need every game to allow me to forge my own story through choices. If a developer has a specific story that they want to tell, then they should feel free to. I mentioned the Last of Us briefly before, but I think that it was a masterpiece of storytelling and offering choices could have easily ruined it. The player was not meant to play Joel as they would act in his place. The player was meant to experience this story through Joel’s eyes. His character is specific and unambiguous. Other games that do this are Bioshock, Uncharted, Wolfenstein, and many more. As long as the story is good, I am fine with not having true agency.

There are some games that are story based but fail to explore any kind of interesting morality. I think that these games have boring and unrealistic stories. Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor is an example of this. The gameplay is fun and the nemesis system was fantastic, but the story, itself was boring. I couldn’t care less about the main character. The outcome is predetermined because everyone knows the Lord of the Rings story, so there are no real stakes in that respect, and there is no exploration into the morality of the characters. Sauron and the orcs are clearly evil, and the humans are clearly good. The only character with any amount of moral ambiguity is Celebrimbor, and he was really just a good person manipulated by evil.

Most games that include moral choices take the simplest and easiest path, that of a binary morality system where you are given a good choice and a bad choice. It becomes more of a role playing decision where you decide if the player character is a good person or a bad person. Infamous does this. I love the first and second Infamous games but when you either choose to be Good Cole or Bad Cole, it doesn’t make you, the player, really think about what the moral choice is. You just decide that you want the evil powers or the good powers this playthrough and decide accordingly. Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic do this as well. You can never truly place yourself in the shoes of the player character because the immersion is broken by an unrealistic morality system. If you were truly in that situation, it wouldn’t even be a question. You wouldn’t ask yourself: “Hmm, should I steal all of the food from the starving people or nah?”.

Occasionally a game will come along that really makes you think about what is the right decision. These are amazing moments. One of my favorite examples of this was in the Witcher 3. You come across a small settlement that was almost entirely massacred. Geralt assumes, at first, that it was some monster that did this, but after examining the bodies, he discovers that they were killed with a sword. He followed the killer’s tracks to a wounded witcher. The wounded witcher reveals that he was contracted to kill monsters by the settlement but after he finished the contract they tried to get out of paying him by trying to stab him in the back. Wounded and furious, he killed most of the settlement. He knows that what he did was wrong and is prepared for you to execute him. But Geralt has experienced the discrimination and hate that most people have for witchers every day. He understands the pain and frustration of the constant mistrust and disdain that could lead to this mindset, and Geralt has not always done the right thing in the past. The player is given the option to duel the other witcher to the death or to let him live. I sat and looked at the screen thinking about the situation for at least 20 minutes. It really made me think and consider every factor. I loved it. The Witcher 3 had several really good moral choices like this.

Prey 2017 has several interesting choices as well. Spoiler warning for any game I mention, by the way. In the end you have to choose if you will sacrifice yourself and any remaining humans on the Talos 1 space station in the chance that you will stop the alien threat from spreading to Earth or if you will find an escape pod and try to return with help. The whole game, you have multiple characters insisting on the correct choice, including videos of yourself before your memory was wiped. Prey does an excellent job of making you mistrust every single person and thing on the space station, including yourself. You have no idea who to believe, so it’s a choice you must make for yourself. Life is Strange has some interesting choices as well. In the alternate timeline where Chloe’s dad is alive but she is paralyzed. After spending time with her, she asks you to help her end her life. The choice is agonizing, which makes it amazing. Some people criticized that moment because since Max immediately changes the timeline back, the choice ultimately doesn’t matter. I disagree. Perhaps it doesn’t affect gameplay, but it is a choice that Max will have to live with. I like to live through the characters I play and empathize with them, so Max’s impossible decision is my impossible decision. When a game truly makes me think deeply about my own personal morality, those are the moments that I remember.

Sometimes games create choices that have potential to create either gameplay or emotional impact, but ultimately fail to. Wolfenstein New Order and its expansion Old Blood have these choices. In both of these, you are forced to choose to save one of two people. Unfortunately, these choices come ten minutes after meeting the characters so you have no emotional investment, and the gameplay doesn’t change based on your decision, so the decision is also not functionally different. These feel like missed opportunities for powerful moments.

Ultimately I love when a game explores human nature and morality, but not when the morality is binary and simplistic. I also love having gameplay consequences to my choices.