It’s become a game industry in-joke, but Bethesda games, from the Elder Scrolls series to Starfield, have always heavily leveraged what’s come to be known as environmental storytelling. The classic example is the hordes of skeletons you find in the wasteland in the Fallout games – propped in various poses suggesting the manner of their …
In the Zone: Great Environmental Storytelling in STALKER 2 Read More »
The holiday season is upon us, with December 19 marking the start of the annual Steam Winter Sale. It’s nearly impossible to experience a “gamer slump” this time of year – too many great titles flood our discovery queues. So this week seems like a good time for a quick rundown of the games I’ve …
When I start rambling about weird niche board games, my industry friends politely smile and nod. But I can tell when they’ve started looking for the quickest possible exit to the conversation. “That sounds cool,” they might say, “but not relevant to what WE do.” There’s no way to get them to tune out more …
Climb and Dive: Clever Mechanics in a Niche Boardgame Read More »
How to build great narrative content in games is a topic that’s always at the forefront of my mind. Crafting game narratives has been one focus of my career, and I’ve been around long enough to see several trends in narrative design come and go. The industry has undoubtedly improved at delivering stories over the …
Battle Lessons: The Superior Narrative Stew of Zephon Read More »
Two hours into Dragon Age: The Veilguard I started to get worried. The introduction to the game had been crisp, an action-packed sequence reintroducing Varric, a much-loved dwarven companion from the previous games, and Solas, the antagonist from the twist ending to Dragon Age: Inquisition. The action combat felt immediately good and impactful; the environment …
Comfort Food: Dragon Age Veilguard First Impressions Read More »
I remember when I first played SimCity. Will Wright’s masterwork was a breath of fresh air – a playable simulation of real-world urban planning, a topic that sounded like a terrible idea for a game on paper but was incredibly compelling in reality. Like Civilization and other 4X games, SimCity and its descendants weave an …
Ant Farms: Three of the Quirkiest City-Builders Around Read More »
Useless biographical tidbit: I have a law degree. I don’t talk about it much, I don’t use it for anything, and I never passed the bar exam so I’m not an attorney. It was a waste of thousands of dollars, though I did pick up a few techniques on how to really annoy people in …
Past Lessons: Innovations and Flaws in Ara: History Untold Read More »
Back in January, I wrote about traditional wargames and their somewhat problematic nature. Still, it’s a genre I enjoy when I’m in the right mood. Digging deep into a historical battle and then re-reading a military history book to see how my experience differed from reality scratches a unique gaming itch. One of the most …
Island Hopping: Three Wargames Take On the Same Conflict Read More »
Some months back, I wrote a love letter to SCS’s Euro Truck Simulator 2 – still one of my favorite relaxing gaming experiences. ETS2, which has been in active development for years, is a robust title with a ton of depth in its simulation. The various name-brand trucks feel genuinely different. They take damage in …
Rich Soils: The Relaxing Joy of Farming Simulator Read More »
I regularly take a break at the end of June, escaping the Texas heat for the glories of summer in rural New Hampshire where much of my family still lives. This trip was bittersweet this year. At the last minute, I had to make the journey alone while my wife and son stayed behind, and …
Musings on Malazan: The Best Fantasy Series You Haven’t Read Read More »