Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Out Of Time : New World

I had a plan. I was going to play New World for a while this afternoon and then I was going to post about it. I took a lot of screenshots. I had plenty of things to write about. It was all going nicely.

Problem was, I was having too good a time. I ended up playing more than twice as long as I expected. I tried to write the post but it was getting late. I could see I wasn't going to get it done.

Maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here's the flavor. To be honest, it's probably better this way.



5 comments:

  1. I got reinvited to this (And Crowfall), installed both, haven't tried either yet. Maybe soon!

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    1. Well, you have about 48 hours to try New World. I'd be interested to hear your take on it. Also Crowfall, although I've read some very details responses to that one and they are not favorable.

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  2. Okay, Bhaggy, I have to ask: is there a plot or not? I figure that isn't covered by the NDA.

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    1. There is no NDA on the Preview, so that's not a problem. You probably ought to ask someone who's gotten further than I have, like Belghast maybe, but as far as I can tell New World doesn't have a "plot" so much as it has a situation. There's a whole system (which no-one seems to mention much in any commentary I've seen) where you find fragments of books, letters, lists of instructions, any kind of paper trail really. They fill out pages in your journal and tell stories by increment and implication. What, if anything, happens when you complete one of those I can't say, but the entries are numbered and you know how many there are to find, so maybe something?

      Again, I can only speak from the first few levels, but as far as i can tell New World is a lore-rich setting with no central narrative. I don't think there's one of those typical MMO main sequence quests or signature narratives that takes you through to some kind of resolution, although there might be, later on.

      You're in a place where things have happened and you're gradually discovering what some of those things were. It's an approcah I prefer, strongly, to a linear narrative. It reminds me very much of how it was in the first decade of MMORPGs, when there was a plot but most of us never knew waht it was because it wasn't particularly coherent and most of happened in raids that we never saw. We just heard garbled rumors and hearsay and I always found that a lot more immersive.

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    2. That almost sounds like they were going for a "Lost Colony" narrative, like the Roanoke Colony.

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