Welcome To Rinascita

Yesterday I finished the Black Shores storyline in Wuthering Waves, meaning I was able to move on to the new region added in the recent update, Rinascita. Black Shores was excellent - exciting, enlightening, emotional and thoroughly enjoyable. Occasionally I found some of the combat challenging but never overwhelming. I had a lot of fun there.

The one thing it wasn't was easy to understand. I'm still not entirely sure what some of it meant but then I see a certain degree of inscrutability in these things as a net positive so that's all to the good.  I prefer to be somewhat puzzled than completely in the picture, sometimes.

When the main quest in Black Shores came to a conclusion, the game tried to shunt me into Camellya's companion story, a direction I would have been very happy to go, had I not known there was a timer hanging over at least some of the content available in the new land. I have a plethora of narrative options waiting in the background - several companion stories, a slew of side-quests and at least two chains of dailies that appear to lead to some kind of conclusion - but with my slow and scattered playstyle, I can't really afford to stray far from the main questline or I'll lose all hope of ever catching up.

The introduction to Rinascita, like just about everything in the game, is more nuanced and playful than it has any need to be. Other games would just send you through a portal or add a marker to your map where you could go to take a ship. Wuthering Waves gives you both of those tropes and it's still not how you end up getting there. 

First the Shorekeeper opens a portal so you can travel to Rinascita instantly but your point out it will drain too much of her power so you offer to find your own way there instead. The Shorekeeper suggests going by ship but when you get to the dock it turns out the navy is off doing something more important and no ships are available. Luckily, Aalto, one of your many new pals, just happens to have a dinghy you can use. 

There's some joshing about how small it is although I thought it looked pretty spiffy. More like a sleek speedboat than any dinghy I ever saw.

You set off alone in the small craft but before you can get to Rinascita an ominous shadow appears in the water below. It turns out to be a humongous narwhal-like creature that flips your ship high into the air and you into the sea, where you're saved from drowning by a passing circus troupe, who just happen to be floating past on the back of some giant sea-beast. They're all headed to Rinascita for the Carnavale and they're happy to give you a lift, which is how you eventually arrive.

Rinascita means rebirth in Italian and it's the name of an island continent. The city where you start is called Ragunna and it's an analog of Venice. At first sight, it also appears to be a borderline sinister theocracy, complete with strict immigration policies and the quasi-military infrastructure to enforce them. The opening quest is actually called "Papers Please" and they're not joking.

The weirdest part, though, is that the entire economy, service sector and social infrastructure relies on "Echoes". Echoes are something I don't wholly understand. In the early game they're physical manifestations of the frequencies Tacet Discords sometimes leave behind when you kill them and if that doesn't make much sense then welcome to Wuthering Waves. 

In Ragunna, they seem to be very much more than that, being more like droids in the Star Wars universe or Munchkins in Oz. They basically do all the work and have no rights of their own. They also can't talk, which means everyone you meet is absolutely fascinated by Abby, the cute, sassy Echo that lives inside the player character. 

Abby's articulacy does raise uncomfortable questions about the way Echoes are placed into service. If it makes the Ragunnans uncomfortable, well it should.

I suspect that theme may develop. The main reason you're in Rinascita in the first place is to talk to the local Sentinel about halting and reversing the degredation of Abby's frequency, a worrying situation that's making her sleep much more than before and will likely lead to her fading altogether. 

Unfortunately, no-one has seen the Sentinel in what seems like forever and the Sentinel only speaks to the leader of the religious order or occasionally to the single person fortunate enough to be crowned at the Carnavale. Which is going to have to be you, obviously.

Enough rehashing the plot. If it makes no sense when you read it here, then I assure you it does in the game, at least in all the ways that matter. What Wuthering Waves excels at is making you care about the characters and what's going to happen to them. The overarching plot may be all but incomprehensible but that absolutely does not matter at all. Everything makes sense in context and the emotional through-line is crystal clear.

The world-building is also exemplary. Ragunna is stunning. The attention to detail is intense and the quirky whimsy adds a surreal edge to what would otherwise be a faithful evocation of an idealized Italian city. 

Transport is by self-driving gondola and it feels serene and relaxing. Citizens of the city-state go about their business, some visible only from the water. The city feels alive in ways so many game-cities seldom do.

That has to be, at least in part, because of the degree of  attention - surely unnecessary from any practical point of view - paid by the designers to how the place functions. Take the banking system, for example

. Most games have banks but how often do they also have members of the senior banking staff who come out to greet you and explain the way the system works? And not in a tutorial fashion, either, because this isn't a typical game bank where you can stash your surplus stuff. It's the bank the locals use.

Wuthering Waves consistently opens out the lives of the ordinary people, who live in the world through which the player character only passes. They share worries and concerns about the economy, the social infrastructure, the government, their personal lives, their families and pretty much everything that might come up in a conversation with someone you'd just met, if that person were something of an over-sharer. It's very strong storytelling and it makes the whole game-world feel that much more convincing.

If all that feels a little too real-world, let me introduce you to the Tubpups. Tubpups are half bathtub, half puppy dog. They're Echoes you can ride in and wash away the grime of the city at the same time. Not that there is any grime in Ragunna. Not where you can see it, anyway.

Nothing in the game introduces you to this bizarre form of public transport. It's just there if you want to use it. I noticed one standing idle, saw it was interactable, went up and spoke to it and ended up being carried - i n c r e d i b l y  s l o w l y - through the streets for what felt like half an hour but was probably five minutes. 

It has to be by far  the slowest means of transport I have ever encountered in a game, much slower than walking, and if it has any practical purpose, other than being very entertaining in its own right, I have yet to find out what it might be.

I could go on and on about the wonders of Rinascita and I've only just arrived. I'm almost scared to imagine how much there must be still to come. 

I'll just mention one more thing before I finish. A few games I've played have made use of wall screens showing moving pictures. It's something I always find both impressive and amusing. 

In Ragunna, it goes a stage further. There are numerous, large wall-mounted displays that run advertisements on a never-ending loop. They're full-length ads, too. And they're for the NPC shops and restaurants you see around you.

Sometimes advertising can be a good thing, especially if no money changes hands. And I guess that's what this post is, after a fashion; an advert for Wuthering Waves that no-one paid me to write and which isn't trying to sell you anything, except maybe on the idea that it's a game worthy of your attention.

And it's free, too. The gacha thing? If it's the story you're after, you can forget about that. And the story is what matters.