There was a big surprise for me in today's gaming news - the sudden appearance of Nightingale City. I knew it was in the works but with Nightingale already receding into the nostalgic past (It happens so quickly these days.) I really wasn't expecting it to happen any time soon - if at all.
The update had actually been trailed but I have to admit it's been a while since I read any of the PR or watched any of the regular "Dev Bites" videos, where the two main voices left to talk up the game banter amiably and long-windedly with each other about how things are going.
It's here, though, whether I was expecting it or not, the missing piece without which the game always felt unfinished. Which, of course, it was. That's what Early Access means.
Still, it always seemed like an error of judgment to hang an entire plot on getting to somewhere you couldn't ever go. I certainly wouldn't claim it was why I stopped playing but it was the main reason I felt unsatisfied when I did. It was like walking out half-way through the final act of a play.
Well, now the story has a proper ending at last. Or it might, at least. I'll tell you when I get there.
Unfortunately, due to the bizarre and illogical way the game has fractured and split over its short life (The first anniversary only came around a few weeks ago.) I'm not in a position to just log in and go see what Nightingale City looks like. First I have to navigate the long and arduous path to get back to where I was when I gave up the first time.
The problem is that I started over when the Realms Rebuilt update soft-relaunched the game. As I recall it, you couldn't transfer existing characters into the new version and I wanted to see the new content so I could post about it, so I re-rolled.
Which would be fine if I'd gotten that character as far as the first one but I didn't. I played through the new stuff until I hit the point where it was obvious I was going to have to repeat a lot of the same quests to carry on with the story and that didn't seem very appealing. So I stopped for the second time. And I haven't been back.
Inflexion Games is nothing if not accommodating so I didn't lose my old character. She's just immured behind the wall of what they call Legacy Mode. I'm pretty sure Legacy Mode doesn't get any updates but just to be sure I'm patching it up right now so I can log in and check Nightingale City hasn't made it back to the past.
It would save me an awful lot of time if I was wrong and it would be very annoying to find out later I could have been where i needed to be in half an hour, not a few weeks. I can patch the old version back in the time it takes me to write this, so why not? It'll be nice to say Hi to my old character again, too.
I did Google it first to see if I could save myself even that minimal effort but up-to-date information on Nightingale isn't that easy to come by. Not that it matters. It takes a while to swap between the two versions, since it relies on a kludge using Steam's beta testing process so the entire game needs to be re-patched each time you move one way or the other, but it's still a lot faster than leveling up is going to be. Might as well do it as not.
Assuming it isn't going to work, though (And I'm 99.9% sure it's not.) I'm guessing it's going to take me a good few hours of leveling to get to the point where I can take some screenshots of the rediscovered center of civilization. What's more, those hours are going to be spread across a number of weeks, if my current unwillingness to do any gaming at all is any guide. It might be summer before I get there.
The real question is can I be bothered? I do want to see the place but there are other ways to do it. The update is less than a day old and there aren't any videos on YouTube yet, other than the official trailers, but no doubt there will be. Is there any game so obscure or unpopular that no-one uploads videos of them playing it?
Watching videos isn't the same as playing yourself but it's one hell of a lot quicker. I'm sure the time will come when I'm in a game-playing frame of mind and a few dozen more hours in Nightingale will seem like a rare treat. I'm certainly not there now, though.
I'm minded to wonder whether it wouldn't be better to save the whole thing for a time when I might actually appreciate it, rather than be mildly aggravated that it's turned up unexpectedly and demanded my attention. What's the opposite of FOMO? Because I think I might be suffering from it.
FOBO, I think it must be - Fear Of Being Obligated. I feel like I ought to want to go see Nightingale City. I was complaining for long enough about not being able to, after all. I feel I ought to do it just so I can post about it. Only I don't want to, not if it's going to be all this trouble.
The Legacy version patched while I was writing. I've been in and had a look around. Of course there's no Nightingale City there. How could there be? Legacy is time-locked. Nothing will ever change.
So now I'm swapping back to the live build. That'll take a while and then I'll have to have a think about what to do next.
If I do decide to carry on I imagine I'll post something about it soon enough. If I don't then I didn't, if you get my drift. Right now I feel like I won't but who knows? It's not like I ever really know what I'm going to be doing from one day to the next...
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