A Trip To Deadville

 Actually, I've been there a few times, now. It's the closest place I know of, where I can pick up my mail.

Let's start with that. I have to go to town to get my post. Can you imagine it? I mean, I know it's the apocalypse and all but they have teleportation but no home delivery? Has no-one at NetEase seen The Postman?

Maybe there is some kind of technomagical delivery system. I'm not sure. Ever since I started playing, there's been a tiny message in the lower left corner of the screen - a picture of an envelope with the ominous word "Unread" next to it. There's also the icon of a bell, the universally acknowledged signifier for "Attention Required" and a little box with F5 in it, suggesting that's what I should press. 

Well, I pressed F5 a bunch of times and nothing happened. I clicked on the image and the bell and the message and nothing happened then, either. Maybe it was a bug - this is beta, after all - or maybe it was me. Either way, I didn't like it but there didn't seem to be much I could do about it, so I tried to put it out of my mind and mostly succeeded. 

And then I got to Deadville and the first thing I saw was a mailbox. No, I lie. the first thing I saw was the gate, then the guards, then Clair and her big, red truck but that doesn't really help the narrative flow all that much, does it? So we'll skip all that for now. We'll get back to Clair later. 

I'm amazed it all fits in the box.

When I finally got to pick up my mail there was a ton of it. A bunch of freebies for signing up to play the beta, for not being able to play the beta when the servers were down, for logging in to play the beta every day. For something as over-subscribed as Once Human's current closed beta, NetEase seem ridiculously eager to keep everyone sweet. Honestly, they could probably charge for access and still have the original twenty thousand volunteer testers they were looking for but let's not give them ideas.

I took out all the stuff and very handy a lot of it turned out to be, too. Since then I've been back twice to collect my mail and I plan on doing it every day. It would be nice to be able to use the F5 button and have the goodies sent directly to my backpack but there's a teleport tower right in the middle of the town so it's hardly a problem, getting to the mailbox from wherever I happen to be.

I called Deadville a town just now. That's flattering it, really, although it does have a Mayor. Does having a Mayor automatically make somewhere a town? Not sure of the rules there. 

Deadville is basically a big house with a stockade around it, a few outbuildings and a bunch of vehicles. The Mayor, naturally, lives in the big house. I'm guessing Clair sleeps in her truck, although since she's both a mission NPC and a vendor she probably doesn't get to sleep at all. 

That's a bit of a fourth-wall-breaker. Pretend I never said it.

Inside the Mayor's house. I think he has kids. I hope he has kids...

I spoke to both Clair and the Mayor at some length. Once Human is on the higher end of the verbosity scale for a Survival game, I'd say. Everything has lengthy, explanatory tool-tips. There's a whole collection mechanic using found texts that I ought to post about some day, when I figure out how it works. Most named NPCs have some kind of dialog and the ones who give missions sometimes get cut scenes and dialog trees and all the good stuff. 

And it is pretty good, too. Someone in a Massively OP comment thread about the game observed that the text in OH was obviously machine-translated, which made me think either they'd formed that opinion in an earlier beta or they must know some damn smart machines. I'd say most of it is clearly not machine-translated but done by someone with a solid grasp of contemporary spoken English. I'm not saying it's literature but it's decent genre writing for sure.

Both Clair and the Mayor (Sounds like an educational kids TV show...) have backstories they're not slow to share but the central narrative behind their personal histories all revolves around the aftermath of the Starfall and how its ongoing reverberations affect the town. There's something eerie going on that makes Deadville the local equivalent of Hotel California - people come to stay for a while, then find they can't leave.

It's not so much a psychic anchor as a lack of fuel. Some unexplained phenomena keeps draining batteries and making gas last a fraction as long as it should. It could be the baleful influence of a Great One. In the old days the townsfolk would have asked the Mayflies to look into it but no-one's seen a Mayfly for a while.

Yadda yadda yadda - It's a Mission, right?

Oh, hey! Didn't you used to be a Mayfly?

Well, so they tell me...

So off I went to investigate. Boy, that was a trip...

It was chaotic, in fact. Fun but nuts. I did another survey at the end of last night's session and in the part where they ask if you have any suggestions on how to improve the game I put "Stop everything happening all at once!" Have you ever tried to listen to two ghosts having an argument while a zombie tries to eat your brains? It's not as relaxing as it sounds. 

This is where I should mention the Q key and rifts. Except I probably need to do a bit more research on that before I make any solid statements. The basics, though, those I can give you.

If you press "Q" the screen washes blue as a wave of arcane energy ripples out with you at the center. Anything of interest lights up, especially ghosts. You know there might be ghosts around because you get an onscreen message about a rift in reality or time-space. I forget the exact wording.

I'm calling them "ghosts" because that's what they look like but they might be morphic resonances or holograms for all I know. I'd lay odds it was explained when it first happened but so much happens all the time in this game, I don't take it all in. 

I had to kill an entire pack of corrupted wolves before I could listen to what Mary had to say! And that was after we started chatting.

Whatever they are, you're supposed to watch them and listen to them as they rehash old conversations and fill out the plot. Listening to them triggers updates in the relevant mission until eventually, when you've heard all there is to hear, the mission completes. Or that one did, anyway, and another one I did the next day. I don't imagine all missions involve spying on ghosts and the ones that do also include a lot of killing and thieving but ghost-listening is definitely a skill you'll want to focus on.

Oh, sorry, no... there isn't an actual skill called Ghost-Listening. I bloody wish there was! It would be a lot easier than trying to read the text while you load and aim your pistol or trying to hear the dialog over all the screaming and gunshots. I had to jump out of a freaking window in the middle of one ethereal exchange just to stay alive!

The whole thing took place on an estate where, as far as I could make out, a family business had been disrupted by a corrupt family member, who may or may not have had links with organized crime but who definitely was infected by Stardust. Exactly what he did and to whom I couldn't tell you. As I said, the finer details were lost in the ongoing chaos, although there is a handy recap in a conversation you have later - which is where I'm getting most of this from.

There's another reason I was distracted during the whole thing, besides the hitting and shooting and running away; someone in the design team had the wild idea to name the villain Keefer Sutherland. Why? I mean, just, why? I think one of the other ghosts had the name of a famous actor, too. 

I didn't take a picture of Keefer so here's one of the Mayor instead.

One way or another, I got the whole thing done and enjoyed it, too, although I'd have enjoyed it more if the ghost convos could have happened in some kind of safety bubble, where I could have given the dialog the attention it deserved. I went back to Deadville for a debrief. I told them it certainly looked like ol' Keefer might be a Great One now so I only have myself to blame for what happened next, which was that I somehow agreed to go do something to stop him.

I'll precis that part: I went to a big factory, where I killed a lot of zombies and spiders and some ghouls while I was looking for the two "anchors" I needed to set, or unset, or something. Click on them and hold for five seconds, basically. One I found right away; the other took me ages because of the blasted z-axis. You know the story.

The facility was sprawling and complex and just barely over my level. I dinged while I was there so that was perfect. The combat was a lot of fun. It reminded me very much of New World. Lots of big, violent, kinetic action that feels visceral and intuitive. Movement and animation isn't as slick as Amazon's game, yet, but it wasn't in New World at this stage of beta, either. 

I'll get back to you one that one...

The finale of the mission saw me facing off against the first Big Bad of the storyline in a red room worthy of an industrialized Twin Peaks. In a less than immersive but very welcome design choice, when the mission marker leads you to the point of no return you have to opt in to an instanced battle to take on the boss. 

Since the advisory note recommended two Level 10s and I was one Level 8, I decided to leave it for a while but I will have to do the fight, eventually. Once Human uses the exact same progression mechanic as Valheim and Dawnlands, gating tech tree progress behind boss kills. It's not my favorite system but it doesn't look as if leveling itself is gated by those same bosses so as long as I can outlevel them in other content and come back when I'm ready, I should be fine.

All things considered, I'm very happy with the way progression works in the game. I also like the combat and the story is interesting enough to want to find out what happens next. The world itself is a constant stream of sensory pleasures, quirky and peculiar but with a discomfiting relatability. I'm having a great time.

My main concern is for the future. I strongly suspect Once Human is going to be one of those "Better in Beta" games, where the tighter, more commercially-tuned release version lacks the endearing abrasiveness of the earlier iterations, while also somehow becoming more challenging and less fun. But then, maybe I'm just negatively projecting. New World turned out okay in the end, even if there is still a whiff of "Better in Beta" about it at times.

If Once Human goes the same way, I'd settle for that. For now, I'm just going to enjoy it while it lasts.

How long is this beta, anyway?