Nightingale: Realms Rebuilt - First Impressions

So, who's up for some more First Impressions posts on Nightingale then? Nobody? Tough luck! They're coming. Why, look! Here's one now!

I think it's fair enough. The Realms Rebuilt update is about as close to a relaunch as you get in live games - the cute callback to Final Fantasy XIV's "A Realm Reborn" being no co-incidence - so a re-review is entirely justified.

There's supposed to be a whole raft of entirely new content but as yet I've seen almost none of it so this is going to be a very first impression: character creation, the opening scenario and the basic tutorial up to the point when Puck (For it is he.) deems you ready to step into the first new, handcrafted, story-rich realm. 

That's about it so far, even though Steam tells me I've played for just over three hours, which seems really high. It felt more like two but I don't think it was because the gameplay was so scintillating the hours just zipped by. The difference is more likely accounted for by the length of time it took me to get my "old" character copied to the offline client. It looks as though Steam was counting every minute of that little escapade.

Anyone got a torch?

I could easily fill a whole post with all the fuss and bother but I don't see why anyone else should have to suffer, even vicariously. All I'll say is that the process is convoluted and messy and really ought to have been made much simpler. It does at least work, though, so there's that.

After I'd managed to get my character successfully transferred to what's now known as "Legacy Mode", the client-based, offline version of the former game that will never receive any more updates, I found myself wondering why I'd bothered. I stopped playing that character because I'd lost interest in what there was left to do in the game. If there's never going to be anything else, why should I care if I can still play that version of the game or not?

I guess the reason rests in those hundred-plus hours I spent there. It just seems wasteful to throw it all away. I might not ever play that character again but I'll probably log her in now and then just to say Hi so I appreciate that Inflexion took the trouble to make that possible. They very easily could have not bothered. This is still Early Access, after all. Wipes were always a possibility. I'm sure it'll be in the EULA somewhere.

Once I had my past safely archived, I swapped back to the present (And maybe the future.) with the regular client, something that was also more awkward than it should have bee. I suspect that's a function of Steam that Inflexion can't do a lot about, though. It looks like they've had to finesse thngs just to get two versions of the game up at the same time. Legacy Mode is masquerading as a beta. 

Then I set about making a new character. That took a while but not for any problematic reasons.

They shall not pass! For a given value of "they", that is.

I couldn't see much different in character creation but I thought I probably ought to go back and refresh my memory by reading what I said last time. Just about everything I said then applies now so I won't rehash it all except to say I still have no clue why there's all that rigmarole about birthdays and ancestors. It never did seem to mean anything but it's all still there. 

Whether it will have any added significance in the new, narrative-focused Nightingale I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I bet it doesn't, though. It looks to me like someone's clever idea they just won't give up on even though it never quite went anywhere. Kill your darlings. It's sound advice.

There was one thing that went differently this time but it was entirely by chance. The first step in character creation gives you a basic face to work with and the one I got reminded me a little of Sabrina Teitelbaum (Aka Blondshell, if you want to go the Blondie/Debbie Harry singer-is-the-band route.) It might just have been because I watched the Deceptacon video from Friday's post immediately before I logged in. Or possibly it was because I'd watched it about half a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours. Not that I'm obsessed with it or anything...

Whatever the reason, I decided I'd try to make my character look as much like her as possible, which took a while. I couldn't get the chin right - there just didn't seem to be a slider that would do it - and none of the longer hair styles came with a central parting but overall I wasn't displeased with the final result. 

My photo-reference and the final result. That's the closest together the eyes will go, the roundest I could get the chin and one of only two longer hairstyles available, neither of which has a central parting. I actually forgot about the eyebrows altogether and the eyes ought to be a darker blue. Other than that...

I did consider naming her Sabrina Teitelbaum, which would be an excellent name for a Nightingale character, given it sounds like it is one already, but I thought that really might be crossing a line . So I called her Califa Mortensen instead. She looks both Californian and Scandinavian so it seemed to fit.

Once that was all sorted out, I logged in and found myself in a very dark cave. I don't remember it  from the original game but I suppose it might have been there. If it was, though, it must have been a lot better-lit because I definitely don't remember being completely blind at the start of the game. I couldn't see a bloody thing!

Puck, our unreliable narrator with the orotund vowels, popped up and told me to follow the sound of his voice but then he immediately stopped talking, which I thought was very unlike him. I blundered around in the dark trying to find where he'd gone, got jumped by a bunch of Bound (Zombies to the uninitiated.), got confused in the dark trying to turn around in the narrow corridors to fight them off and promptly got clawed to death. 

Not the most encouraging of starts but possibly not entirely unintended either, given what happened next. After I'd revived, exacted revenge on my killers and managed through sheer luck to stumble into Puck, he pointed me at a portal he told me would take me out of the cave. Thank god! Daylight at last!

Don't tempt me...

Yeah... nope.  I was very annoyed to find myself ported to somewhere just as gloomy if not more so. I was about to curse all developers who think darkness equals atmosphere when Puck handed me a card and told me to put it in the machine next to him. I did as he said and suddenly the gloom vanished, the sky turned blue and the sun came out.

Granted, it was an impressive piece of scene-setting and a clever way to demonstrate how cards can be used to change the environment but was it worth fifteen minutes of frustration in the dark? I don't think so. If this was a brand-new game I might well have consigned it to the recycle bin before I got to the punchline.

That said, it seems quite likely that the cave isn't supposed to be quite as dark as I found it. A while later, when I reached the settlement where the NPCs stand around waiting to hand out the missions, I was more than somewhat irked to find they'd chosen another subterranean pit of gloom to hang out in. They gave me some spiel about it being safer down there but it cut no ice with me.

Those caves were even darker than the last lot, so dark I literally couldn't see where to go. I couldn't even see the steps leading down. Frustration sent me to the Settings to see if there was anything I could do to make it lighter. 

I wasn't expecting much joy there. I haven't seen a gamma slider in a very long time. But Nightingale has one.

Gamma to the max.

I slammed it all the way to the right and suddenly I could see normally again. I think that's probably what underground is supposed to look like. Unfortunately, when I emerged from the cavern back into the sunlight it was like someone had let off a magnesium flare in my face so I had to push the slider a ways back to the left again. I suspect that slider is going to be doing a lot of work in the days ahead.

Lighting aside, the rest of the visuals seemed much the same. Character models stil feel slightly off and no-one seems to have thought about adding any idling animations yet, which sometimes makes me feel I'm looking at a very clever automaton rather than an actual human being. 

There was some evidence of the new, hand-crafted scenery off in the distance but the bits I was walking around in felt very familiar. The game now sets you down in an Abeyance realm, meaning it's relatively safe to go exploring. It's a large zone with a lot of points of interest marked on the map, so I guess if you wanted to go off script and ignore the story prompts you could settle down and amuse yourself there for quite a while.

Speaking of the map, it seems to have had a quality-of-life pass. There's annotation now to tell you what some of the POIs are for, not just where they are. It also has the relevant locations for at least some of the missions marked on it.

I know where the bodies are buried.

The first thing the new main questline asks you to do is go find some tools. They're all handily marked on the map but since they're also all right next to the only obvious path that isn't quite the boon it first seems. There are a dozen "treasures" you're supposed to go find as well, which I thought, somewhat goulishly, were going to be on the corpses of Realmwalkers who didn't make it home. They're actually just lying about and they're all marked on the map too, or they appear there once you get the quest. It's defintely an improvement

Everything I've done so far has been pretty much a tutorial and at these very early stages it's all been extremely straightforward. Puck pretty much tells you he isn't going to let you go anywhere until you've learned the absolute basics so that's what I've been doing. Gathering mats, making tools, claiming a base. All the traditional tropes of the genre.

As I said the last time, the basic survival gameplay loop is pretty much bullet-proof by now. If you ever enjoyed it at all, chances are you'll enjoy it again, whenever and wherever you encounter it. It's obvious why these games have been so overwhelmingly successful - they pare that old Skinner Box/Dopamine hit combo down to its core and then absolutely ladle it on. It just works, at a back-brain level that's very hard to resist.

The last thing you'd call it, though, would be exciting. Compelling, immersive, addictive, any of those but thrilling, exhillarating, surprisng? Nope. Not a chance.

Maybe a little more of this, a little less "Go pick up that second-hand mining pick"?

The original introduction, as I remember it, did go a little further in that direction. I seem to recall Puck instilling some sense of urgency into the process as he insisted you experience all three major biomes before choosing one to settle down in. I seem to remember there being some actual plot and an element of danger that did something to pull me into the game.

There's none of that here. This time it's all far more streamlined and considerably less intense. I spent a couple of hours doing pretty much nothing and it's clear I could double or treble that without gettin the feeling I'm going to miss out on anything important or that anything rests on my getting my act together.

Maybe Nightingale is going to re-pitch itself as some kind of cosy base-builder. It certainly has the chops for it. Or maybe once I follow Puck's next instruction and cross the Abeyance realm in search of a way out into the Realms the narrative will pick up pace and I'll start to feel like something's actually happening. 

As for the structural changes, I'm not wholly on top of all of them as yet. I haven't encountered any of the new pets, for example, just the good old dachsund, who I made it a priority to invite into my home. (No sign of my old Twitch drop dog or any of my other Twitch rewards, though. I asume those didn't make it through to the New Nightingale.)

As for the crafting revamp, rather baldly re-badged as "Progression", it seems like a sideways move at best but maybe it'll grow on me. It is certainly a lot tidier and better-presented but also quite a bit less evocative. The original may have been chaotic but it also felt aspirational. This new one looks a bit too much like a work schedule for my tastes.

An example from the new crafting Progression tree.

I think they must also have done away with the system whereby you had to visit all kinds of NPCs scattered throughout the realms to buy most of the blueprints. Now it looks like all of that happens in the UI which, once again, is a lot tidier and more convenient but also considerably less interesting.

The one new addition I was really keen to try out doesn't appear to be available at this early stage of the game at all. I couldn't find the "Glamour Station", the new device that lets you swap the stats of one piece of gear onto the look of another (So you don't have to go around looking like one of those scarecrows even Wurzel Gummidge wouldn't be seen with.) anywhere in the Progression tree at all. [Edit: I found it! It's in the Structures tab, Tier Two. It requires a whole bunch of stuff I won't be able to get for quite a while but it's a worthwhile goal to aim for.]

There seems to be very little information available as yet but from the little I was able to glean I have the impression it relies on tokens dropped by mobs, which seems like an unecessary complication. Changing your appearance seems like something that really ought to be a UI option.

Anyway, there's no need to speculate further on things I haven't had the chance to try out for myself yet. I already know I'm going to be carrying on with the game. It feels both familiar and fresh, which is a nice combination. I wasn't expecting to be playing Nightingale again but it looks like that's what's going to happen.

If I do, you can expect to read about it here. You can take that as either a threat or a promise. Up to you!