This is also not going to be a post about the various problems I'm still having with my PC. Progress has been made on that front but I think I'll leave it until I reach something that looks like a conclusion there. I know it's not the most interesting topic to read about. Or write about for that matter.
And on that theme, the other thing I won't be writing about today is blogging. Once again, I have some ideas on the hobby that might get an airing at some point but now, I think, is not the time. Blaugust leaves a long shadow.
Having crossed my first three possibles off the list, I was scratching around for something to write about today and as it so often is, my go-to for inspiration was my screenshot folder. I take a lot of screenshots, many for the sheer pleasure of looking at them, others with a post in mind. It's a good place to start when I'm low on ideas.
I'm very untidy when it comes to storing my screenshots but I have a folder now specifically for lock screen images, which is where all the best ones go. I used to pick a screenshot folder from an individual game and point the slideshow function at that but this summer it finally occurred to me I could collate and curate them so I'd only get to see the good ones.
I particularly wanted to avoid having images on my desktop that were more UI than scenery or characters. I try to avoid shots with the UI in general but some games make it so fiddly to hide I just accept the clutter and edit it out if I want to use it in a post. Of course, sometimes I need the UI to be in shot because that's what I'm posting about.
Oh look. Here I am, talking about blogging after all. So much for promises.
But since I've gotten myself onto the subject of UIs, why don't I start there?
I was browsing through the shots from the last week or so and I saw this:
Just look at it! And it's by no means the worst example from that game. It's Black Desert Online, in case you didn't immediately recognize it. I logged in for the first time in several years last week because I was wondering if it might make a suitable replacement for New World when that game sunsets next year and BDO is right there on GeForce Now, already set up and waiting.
It might work as a substitute, all though they aren't all that similar, but first I'd have to do something about the UI. Not counting the ones on the left, which are my character's vital stats, there are twenty-eight icons along the top of the screen and eleven along the bottom. There are also eight under the character's vitals and another five randomly floating in the middle of the screen.
By contrast, New World has sixteen and that's only if you count everything.Nearly all of them are for combat.
That said, even then, it still looks pretty ugly.
The thing is, both of these games can be played quite comfortably with no UI at all and I've played them both that way, for long stretches too, when I've been doing nothing but traveling, gathering and fighting. Which, let's face it, is much of the time in almost every MMORPG..
I'm really in no position to complain about screen clutter anyway. I mean, I play EverQuest II! I'm pretty sure it has to be the all-time champion of clutter.
Here's a typical screenshot, taken in the last couple of weeks:
That, I think, is why I found the BDO screen so intimidating when I logged in the other evening. I'm fine having a hundred buttons I recognize immediately but ten that mean absolutely nothing is enough to make me think I ought to log out and play something else instead.
I do like Black Desert, though, and I'm sure it'll all come back to me after a session or two. The sensible thing would be to roll a new character and start over but I already have four and they've all been through the same low-level content. Even though it was a while ago, I can still remember a lot of it. I don't think I want to give it a fifth go.
It's quite disturbing to remember how amazing Black Desert's graphics were thought to be, back when the game came out a decade ago. They look kinda funky now. That attempt at visual realism seems a tad old-fashioned, even though it looks a lot more convincing in New World.
Speaking of Amazon's doomed MMORPG, things have been going nicely for me in Aeternum. Or at least they have since I looked up how to get started on the Nighthaven storyline.
Silly me! I thought just going there would be enough but no. If you turn up without an introduction, absolutely no-one will talk to you at all.
I had to go all the way back to Compass Keys and speak to someone there, then get on a boat to get back to where I'd just come from before I could get the plot moving.
After that it was fine. The fights weren't too bad provided I didn't let myself get mobbed. The scenery was stunning.
And I do like fighting werewolves. It's funny how some mobs just feel good to fight and others less so. I've never been mad keen on fighting skeletons in any game and there are a lot of skeletons in Aeternum. Ditto zombies, which I find I can have more than enough of very quickly, too.
Other opponents I can do without include boars, bears and bats but I'm fine with any amount of wolves, big cats, bandits, or pirates. The occasional crocodile isn't unwelcome, either.. Were-creatures, though, I'm particularly partial to beating up and there are, as you'd expect, plenty of those in Nighthaven.
There's probably also a story although I'd be lying if I said I could remember what it was. I have the same problem with most high fantasy games these days. It all just blurs into one.
I think I reached saturation point with this sort of thing about five years ago. That's one reason why I seem to get so much more out of the more contemporary-themed storylines in the gacha games I've been playing.
Take, for example, the side-quest I did in Neverness To Everness yesterday. It was one of the bond quests that pop up in the open world, when you run into someone you know on the streets of Hethereau. In this case, it was Fadia, who Flora happened to bump into in a bar.
It was one of those bars that's mostly open to the street. Flora was just passing by and she spotted Fadia inside, It would have been rude to keep on walking.
Flora wasn't day-drinking, I'd like to make that clear. Well, she wasn't until she met Fadia. But then the two of them started putting away the shots until Fadia was drunk enough to make a pass. Flora very gently indicated that she wasn't interested and called Fadia a taxi, which she pretty much had to pour her into.
Last seen, Fadia was hanging out of the window of the cab, making a final play for some physical contact next time they met.
The weird thing is, this is exactly the sort of writing I dislike in fantasy games, where I always find it completely inappropriate and unconvincing, but it comes across very differently in a modern setting, where it just seems to fit in with life in a big city. I still tend to rebuff any advances but I don't begrudge their having been made in the same way, especially when they make me laugh like this one did.
I also did a longish side-quest in which a talking bag of french fries had me polling the local neighborhood to find out how good it tasted. Or something like that. That ended up being a lovely, bittersweet tale about belonging and friendship. The sunset at the end was just sublime.
And that's what I've been up to in my games of late.
Oh, I also played through the first episode of Dispatch on Luna. But that can have a post of its own sometime, when I've played a bit more. As a spoiler for that, though, so far I've found it a bit on the annoying side.
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