Throne And Liberty - First Impressions - Of A Kind...

Before we begin, just in case you came here from Google Search looking for some kind of useful information about the game, I do apologize. That's not really what we do here...

After an extremely lengthy and repetitive installation process that seemed to go on forever, I finally got in and played some Throne and Liberty last night. Just over three hours of it, according to Steam, although it didn't feel that long, which might mean I enjoyed myself.

On the other hand it, it might just be that I was zipping through the parts I'd already done back in open beta at such a pace it felt like a lot less time had passed than the clock would have showed. Shown... Shewn...?

Hang on... what's the past participle of "To show"? Let me ask Gemini...

Well, there you go. I get these moments of existential doubt sometimes. Doesn't everyone? How fortunate we are that our AI overlords allies are here to help. 

Although I'm not quite sure I like the way it's corrected my capitalization. That seems a bit cocky. Reminds me of Dirk Bogarde in "The Servant". Not a good sign.

Popular game is popular.

Well, this isn't going the way I thought it would. Shall we see if we can get it back on track? Or shall we just sit here talking to ourselves in the second person plural like some kind of experimental novel?

Does anyone really enjoy experimental novels? The kind that come in a box with all the pages loose so you can read them in any order? Or ones where the author has managed a hundred thousand words without once using the letter "e"?  

I know a couple of people who claim to read that sort of thing for pleasure but I can't stick them, myself. The novels, that is, not the people who like them. Although...

I'm all for being pretentious but there are limits. I was reading Stuart Lee in the bathroom a few minutes ago and he described Tarka the Otter as an experimental novel for adults that Puffin repackaged as a children's book in the 1970s, which goes a long way to explaining why I gave up on the damn thing when I tried to read it in my teens.

Speaking of otters, I think you can be one in Throne and Liberty. There are "travel forms" you can morph into, "morph" being the verb employed in the game for the process which, in keeping with all such events in every game, is never explained. It's just magic, I suppose.

I have three travel forms so far: wolf for running, hawk for flying and otter. (Or at least something that looks like an otter although, for reasons that also go unexplained, it appears to be wearing a hat.) I'm guessing the otter is for swimming but since I haven't been in the water yet I can't say for sure.

If you'd just switch the lights on, we could appreciate the stitching.

I like travel forms as a rule. I think my first experience with them must have been in EverQuest, where druids get a spell that lets them change into wolves. Being a wolf in Norrath confers a number of advantages besides letting you run faster. 

I mean, that's a given, given the name of the iconic spell: Spirit of Wolf aka SoW or more often "Can I get a SoW?", the cry so frequently heard in any public space where crowds gather in preparation for adventure, but being a wolf in EQ also makes some people like you more. And others less but swings/roundabouts.

When I get back to Throne and Liberty (I'd have used the name of the world where it takes place there, if I'd known what it was. I wonder if Gemini knows?

Okay, come on! You have to admit it. That's useful. I know I could have googled it to get the same result but isn't it neater to ask a straight question and get a straight answer? Of course it would be better if the answer was right...¹)

I left a sentence hanging up there, didn't I? I haven't forgotten. I'll start that part over. 

When I get back to Arcion (See? That's better, isn't it?) I'll have to see if I can't find some water to jump in so I can try the otter-form out. I wonder how many travel forms there are in the game? Not nearly as many as there are in AdventureQuest 3D, I bet. There are dozens of them there.

I think I look pretty badass. But then, I would...

So, anyway, other than running around as a wolf, which is always fun, what else did I find to do in Arcion? (Now I know what the place is called you can bet I'm going to make the most of it.)

Mostly questing so far, as you'd expect. I haven't really bothered to read up much about T&L but I have a general idea from things I've heard that it's a very group-oriented game. Unsurprisingly, that restriction has yet to get in my way. It's early days. I'm still getting tutorial tips.

Before I could begin, of course, I had to make a character. That was fun. I do like character creation. It's a game in itself these days, isn't it?

Hold that thought. I have to stop now and drive to another city to drop off Mrs. Bhagpuss's annual accounts at the accountants, which makes it sound way more grand than it really is. Then we're going to give Beryl a walk and maybe have lunch - it's a beautiful day - so I'm going to have to pick this up when I get back. 

Maybe I'll be in a less self-indulgent mood then. I'll probably read this back and delete most of it so you'll only be reading this if you're in a different timeline, one where that didn't happen.

And I'm back. Had a lovely walk, saw some impressive goats, ate a very large ice-cream. Good times.

We're all still here so I guess I didn't split the timeline. Always a consideration. Also I read the above back and it seemed pretty spry so I'm gonna carry on. Where was I? Oh yes...

So I made a character and almost fell into the same trap as last time. Nearly ended up with someone who looks like the first cousin of the first NPC you meet, which would be a bit like wearing the same frock to a party. Embarrassing!

I'd love to say I remembered and caught myself in time but in fact it was only when I got into the game and the person in question came running up that it all came back to me. Fortunately, I'd already gone for a goth-gamine-tomboy look just very slightly askew from my norm so it all worked out fine.

After that I sped through the tutorials as fast as possible. It's amazing how it comes back to you. If you'd asked me ahead of time to recap my adventures in open beta I would have stared at you blankly but every step and most of the dialog drifted up from somewhere, just a beat ahead, as I clicked through for the second time.

It took me more than an hour and a half to get back to where I left off last time, which was the bit where you have to make bait to lure wolves for the annual wolf-killing competition and then get the wolf-bits to make the trophy you get for killing the most wolves (Except, as it turns out, you don't, because they stopped giving them out years ago.).

I felt a bit odd, running through packs of wolves as a wolf, killing them and stealing their teeth, but that's the way of things in magic-land.

Last time I did it, I stopped after I'd made the bait and gotten a drunken dwarf with a really unconvincing accent (Although not, for once, a Scottish one - or at least I hope that's not what it's meant to be.) to make me a couple of fake trophies. It seemed fair enough for the trophies to be fakes since I hadn't even entered the competition, let alone won it.

A dwarf with Imposter Syndrome. That's new.

It was around there, somewhere, that I felt things were getting a little meta but I hadn't seen anything yet. At the risk of spoilers, although it's one of the first quests in the game so it's probably exempt in under the ten-minute rule (Which I just made up so don't bother googling it. Or asking an AI.) the quest carries on for a fair old while, bringing in hallucinations, visions, time-travel and who knows what-all else until it turns out you're the mysterious hero who saved all those children a decade ago. 

Or something. Don't look at me. I didn't write it. I could barely follow it.

It's all quite confusing and honestly not really as bad as I'm making it sound. It was fine. By the standards of MMORPG questing, that is. Which, let's not kid ourselves, are not all that high.

I'm extremely wary of raising expectations that are bound to be disappointed but the quality of both writing and voice acting in Wuthering Waves have spoiled me for these kinds of quests. I think I would have been moderately impressed with this one a couple of years ago and I still think it's more than decent for the genre but standards have risen.

Or my tastes have changed. Or both. 

I don't think there's much doubt about the voice acting, though. It is not great. At least, not in these early stages. Maybe it improves later. That happens, sometimes.

It's not actually bad. Just not very engaging. If I had to guess I'd say it was a lack of direction more than any fault of the actors themselves.

Down in one! Down in one!

There are exceptions. I liked Chris, Dave's pal. He was good. The voice actor seemed to be having some fun and putting the effort in, which is more than I could say for some of them. 

I was predisposed towards him just because he was called Chris, though, to be fair. I liked there being two nobles called Dave and Chris. (Dave wasn't as convincing.) It made a nice change from all the Lord Evertrues, Ragnar Bloodswords and Lentensip Fentonworps we usually run into in these things. 

That quest chain itself was quite long. I think it probably took me the best part of an hour. By the time I
finished it (Plus all the other tutorial tasks.) I was Level 12. 

It mostly involved a lot of running around, plenty of chatter and a good deal of fighting. All the fighting was easy even though I had no idea what any of my abilities did. I could have stopped and read the tool tips but I wanted to get on. Anyway, button-mashing seemed to be more than up to the task.

Apart from the two tutorials showing me how to craft and upgrade weapons and armor, I made absolutely no effort to improve myself from the moment I stepped into the world. I kept getting messages telling me I had new abilities or I could upgrade the old ones but I didn't bother. 

I made a nice hat and a sword and then annoyingly I got another hat as a quest reward. Other than that, when I dinged 12 I was still wearing the same clothes I started with.

I'm guessing at some point I'll have to buckle down and make sense of what looks like a very fussy and over-complicated gear-and-skill system but so long as I can get away with not bothering, that's what I plan to do. I find it unlikely that I'll stick with Throne and Liberty for long, especially if those rumors about needing to guild and group up are true, but I'm not done yet. I had fun last night, though, and I'm quite keen to carry on and have some more today.

If nothing else, the world is extremely pretty to look at and I quite like the character I'm playing, which is always key. Whether that will be enough to hold my attention for more than a few sessions I somewhat doubt. As I keep complaining, if complaining is the right word, which it's not, there's a lot going on in gaming just now. T&L is going to have to dig some pretty sharp claws in to hang on to my custom and the no money at all it's worth. 

I doubt it can but I'm going to expose myself a little longer to give it the chance. It seems like the polite thing to do. They are giving the game away for free, after all. It would be rude not to play it for a while.

^{1. [The actual name of the world in Throne and Liberty is Solisium.]↩}1.