Settling In or Just Another Day In Hethereau

Here's a first-world blogging problem if there ever was one: new games give you far too much to blog about. Such a terrible situation to find yourself in! Enough ideas for a dozen posts but how are you meant to choose? 

Maybe pick the most immediate, the one that's right there in front of you, shimmering with vitality and immediacy? Or should you let it rest a while to settle and prove? But if you do, will it join all those other, unwritten posts? Drift away into the void, never to be seen?

Should you stand back, take the broader view? Focus on the details?

What are you trying to achieve, anyway? Do you want to tell stories? Offer advice? Share information? Analyze and explain? Are you looking to give a show and tell with pictures? A critical essay on one specific aspect of the game? Half a dozen bullet-pointed paragraphs on several?

Or perhaps you find yourself so stunned by choice all you can do is write about how hard it is to choose at all.

Yeah, that really would be a waste of time, wouldn't it? So let's not do that. 

Lens Flare

When this blog was young, I'd have done a whole post about it. Just the sort of sidewise lean I loved back then. Mind you, that whole post would only have been the length of one section of this one. I valued concision more then, too.

Oh, but how I love lens flare! It hits me like a drug. When I say I like a game there's a non-trivial chance what I really mean is it gives good lens flare. Quite a lot of the imports I've been keen on the last few years answer to that.

On any given day you care to name, there's a strong possibility I'll have been staring into the sun, mesmerized by the glare, fascinated by the halo, seeing the eternal in the ephemeral. Again. 

And taking screenshots. 

Do you know how hard it is to not take screenshots of lens flare? Especially at sunset or sunrise. Games have golden hours just like Hollywood needs. I have to talk myself down, convince myself they aren't magical moments never to be repeated. Just coded performances, another show same time tomorrow. 

By The Clock

It should get easier now, I found the clock. I found it yesterday. 

Actually, I didn't. The game told me about it. Oh, wait, I didn't mention the name of the game yet, did I? Neverness To Everness. I guess you guessed that, though.

I was doing a quest. Not that they call them quests. Games with contemporary or futuristic settings tend to avoid giving that mystical gloss. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what they are called in NTE. Missions, maybe? Doesn't matter anyway, except that names always matter. But let's not go there just now.

It was one of those deals you get in games sometimes, where the NPC tells you to come back in a while. A few minutes, a few hours, tonight, tomorrow, after dark, when you've had time to think about it. Any time but not right now, ok?

They're annoying, aren't they? Does anyone actually enjoy being fobbed off by an NPC with a "Give me a day and I'll have finished making your boots."? Why do developers even bother? Is it just to piss people off?

Rhetorical question. Of course it is. Here's a tougher one. What might be going through a developer's mind when they add a quest like that, one with a hiatus, then pop in a hint telling you if you can't be bothered waiting you could just spin the hands on the clock and make it happen right away?

That's what NTE does. I met this woman who was selling her car for real cheap except you could tell she didn't really want to. She asked me to come watch her race so I could check out what a great bargain it was but the race didn't start until six in the evening and it was midday then. 

The car was a real steal and I wanted it plus there was obviously a backstory and I wanted that too. I thought I'd do something else for the afternoon and come back later. 

Only I didn't need to bother. It seems you can set the time to anything you want. The weather, too. Those sunrises and sunsets? Any goddam time you please! 

All of which is top quality of life and so very welcome. Only, if you're allowing that, why even suggest waiting?

I think it's for "realism".  It's not clear if the street races are even legal but they all happen after dark. Maybe the roads are just quieter then but I kinda doubt it. All the bad things happen at night, don't they?

I guess it would make even less sense if you could talk to an NPC any time of day and a race would magically begin right there and then, though. Oh, the compromises we make for authenticity.

Friends Would Be A Reality Show Here

You know that thing everyone mocks about Friends? Ok, ok! I'll be more specific. You know that one thing? How everyone always points out how unrealistic it is, to put it mildly, that a bunch of twentysomethings with crap jobs, if they even have any job  at all this week, could afford live in those apartments in New York? Or any apartment?

Yeah, well you ain't seen my pad in Hethereau! I got it yesterday and it is saaweeet! So sweet!

I was wondering when housing was going to appear, so I had a poke around and found you have to get to Tycoon Level 5 first. Tycoon Levels probably needs a post of their own but the tl:dr is that it's how you get all the casual/leisure options, like fishing and housing and runing a business, assuming you call that last a leisure activity, which I fricken' do not.

I was momentarily concerned it might be a grind to get to Level 5 to open the feature that most interested me but it wasn't. I'm sure there will be grinds in the game but I haven't hit any yet. 

It took me a couple of sessions to get to where I needed to be and by sessions I mean fragments. I did some Tycooning in-between exploring and questing and taking screenshots of atmospheric weather conditions. I suppose it might have taken me an hour, all added up.

So, getting on the housing ladder was quick and easy. It was also cheap. And like most things in the game it was quasi-realistic. I had to go to a real estate agency, where the realtor showed me what she had on her books. That part was convincing enough.

The illusion of reality started to break down when I saw that only one property was available at my level, the rest needing to be unlocked. Then it shattered completely when I found out how much it cost: 200,000 Fons. That's almost chump change!

What? It sounds like a lot? I suppose... I mean, 200,000 is a biggish number. But then, of course, if you don't play the game you have no idea what a "Fon" is so it might be a fortune or just a whole lot of nothing. 

I can't say I have a clear mental image of a Fon either. Bloody stupid name for a currency if you ask me. Every time I see it pluralized, it makes me think of Henry Winkler. Maybe they should have called it the Winkle. 

The important part is that, even though I've only just started playing, and even though I've spent most of my time goofing around, I still had enough cash on me to buy the apartment outright. And that was after I'd leased a cafe and bought a car!

I imagine there'll be a whole post on housing at some point, not to mention the truly bizarre entrepreneurial economy, but for now I'll just say that just the starter home is a fifth floor duplex with huge picture windows and stunning views. If this is what a part-time gig at a down-at-heel, back-street enterprise in a poor part of town, run by a drunk and staffed largely by children gets you, god knows what I'll be able to afford when I get a real job! 

I bet you wish you lived in Hethereau. I know I do.

Otterness To Notterness

Nimgimli posted yesterday, listing a few things that were harshing his mellow in NTE and one of them was Taygedo. 

Taygedo is an otter with a television for a head because what else would he be? He works for the Eibon Antique Shop, the struggling business the PC gets drafted into right at the start of the game for reasons that are still not as clear to me as they probably should be. 

Taygedo communicates almost entirely by the use of the word "Taygedo" or slight variations, a bit like Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy. He occasionally throws in a few grunts and squeals but conversations involving him mostly run along the lines of the old subtitled movie gag, where several sentences of dialog are rendered in the titles by just that single word. Only in reverse.

I feel relatively neutral about the gimmick but it's self-evidently as likely to infuriate as delight. It certainly annoyed Nimgimli. However endearing or otherwise you find him, though, I do think making Taygedo the central figure in a lengthy storyline close to the start of the game is a high risk strategy.  At best.

Add to that, the plotline doesn't just give you an otter with a televison set for a head repeating one word over and over ad infinitum. It also asks you to stop whatever you're doing so you can help him set up a date with another otter (No TV head for this one.). You have to take him shopping, buy him clothes and gifts and then to pretend he's your boss so he can impress his date, who he's given the impression he's much more important than he really is. 

Basic 1960s sitcom plot in other words. I was going to say "minus the mechanical animism" but then I remembered My Mother The Car.... I can see why Nimgimli was losing patience if that's waht he'd been doing.

I'm quite enjoying it myself. I've bought Taygedo the gear. I haven't yet been on the date yet. So that's something to look forward to... 

Setting Boundaries  

Finally, for this post that is, there's the issue of where to go next. Or rather where the game's going to let me go. 

I've been doing a lot of exploring and some of it has taken the form of seeing how far out of town I can get. It varies and it's not nearly as obvious as you'd imagine.

Hethereau is bounded on one side by the ocean and on the other by some lush green hills. I was fairly sure neither would be available to explore and I was mostly right but not entirely. 

The sea is just sea for the most part. The distant hills are out of reach but there is a substantial out-of-town wilderness area with campgrounds and a somewhat manicured stretch of woodland you can wander around in if you want. Not much to see there except trees but it's nice to get out of the city for a while.

Across the river and stretching along the coast is what looks like another part of town although it could be a separate conurbation entirely. I wanted to see what it was like. 

It would be an exaggeration to say I felt confident I could go there. That would imply some element of doubt. I had none. I didn't think about it at all.

I happened to be strolling along the beach opposite when I got the urge to go take a look so I took a right-turn to the ocean and ran straight into the red No Access barrier that materializes when you try to go somewhere you shouldn't. Because I can't take a hint, I tried a few other ways- gliding, crossing the bridges, swimming - no joy.

You can see the area is fully developed. There are even cars moving through the streets. You just can't go there. Ooh, I was cross! Why even put the thing there if it's just a tease?

I was crosser still, when I tried to go to PukaLand. PukaLand is an amusement park on an island just off the coast. Or maybe its on a peninsula. You can see it from anywhere on that side of the city, its fairground identity established by a huge ferris wheel and a Disneyesque castle. 

You can see it but you can't see it. You can go up to the gate but you can't go in. That damned red screen again.

I can't say whether these and other inaccessible locations are places not yet "in the game" or whether they open up at certain points in the storyline but either way it's frustrating. I guess the positive take is that it means there's more content ready and waiting to go, one way or the other but damn! I wanted to go there now!

And that's it for today. Just some random thoughts among many. Plenty more where those came from but I'll try to narrow it down to just the one next time. 

Maybe.

No promises.