Hethereau Across The River - New District Or New Backdrop?

Malvaltar mentioned in the comments the other day that the inaccessible part of the city of Hethereau, to the east of the river, had been redeveloped. It's a large area, easily as big as any of the existing districts, and it's been there since the game started but we've never been able to go there.

It supposedly can't be visited by NPCs either since the two bridges are closed, although only one is physically blocked to traffic. I guess an NPC could walk across even if none of them seem to be doing it. There are a couple of small boys watching the construction workers but that's all.

Flora can't cross the bridge or the river. She's tried but a big, red barrier pops up to tell her there's No Access. There are clearly people living and working over there, though, because you can see vehicles moving around the streets. No people but maybe they're just too far away to spot.

Since I'd heard something was apparently happening over there, I thought I'd go take a look from as close as I could get. I started off by porting into one of the ReRo Boxes to the south-east and from there Flora did her usual jog-scramble-glide to get to the coast. I still find it much faster to get around that way than to drive. When you can climb over any fence, scale even the tallest buildings in a few bounds and then throw yourself off to glide across the rooftops, who needs a car?

I came out opposite the huge funfair on the southern promontory. That's been a tease since the start. You can see the rides but you can't get to them, let alone get on them.

This time, as I was looking down on the fair from the clifftops, I noticed a huge dirigible in the sky that I didn't remember seeing before. As I got closer, I could see lots of large balloons and other aerial decorations that didn't seem familiar either. 

 "New" fairground, with balloons.

 

Who knows, though? For one thing, my memory is extremely unreliable and for another I'm playing on GeForce Now's servers, where the GPUs are a good deal more powerful than even my good graphic card, let alone the onboard graphics I'd been reduced to using until playing at all nearly killed my PC. There might always have been balloons and I might just have forgotten them or they could have been there all along, just not showing up on my graphics settings.

That latter possibility also makes any comparison between screenshots I took on my own machine, weeks ago, and ones I took today somewhat suspect, at least when it comes to the finer details. It's a moot point where the funfair is concerned anyway because although I remember taking some shots, I can't now find them.

That's not surprising. I have multiple folders of screenshots from Neverness To Everness. The game itself stores shots you take using the in-game camera in a folder in its own directory, while screenshots I take with Win+PrtScr go into the general "Screenshots" folder. I've also had to copy the folders off my old C drive that I'm no longer using, so I have a different location for all the old shots.

Meanwhile, for the new ones, I can't just use the in-game camera any more because those shots go to GFN's servers and get deleted at the end of each session. I'm now using Win+PrtScr for all my shots, something that's been made an order of magnitude easier by the addition of the F7 "Hide UI" command in the last update. (If I do use the in-game camera for the various features it offers, I then have to take a Windows screenshot of the image, which is a bit of an awkward workaround.)

Old fairground, no balloons.

 

Just to add another level of uncertainty over whether I did or did not take any particular shot, NTE doesn't automatically save your screenshots on your hard drive. You do have to remember to use the local download function, when using the in-game camera because NTE only keeps the shots in your in-game Gallery for 15 days. After that, they're automatically deleted. 

With all of that, it's hardly surprising I can't always find a specific shot from the past. I haven't been able to find the ones I thought I took of the fairground so I can't say for certain that it's been redeveloped but my feeling is that it has.

Looking across the river to the east, I wasn't sure anything had changed. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been clued into it by Mailvaltar, I wouldn't have noticed. One thing that did strike me immediately was that there didn't seem to be any cranes over there. I did seem to remember some construction going on before.

I spent about fifteen or twenty minutes jogging along the riverside, peering across to the far side and trying to see if I could see anything different but it all looked much as I remembered. The bridges were still closed. There were still vehicles moving through the streets.  

After a while, I thought of checking my old screenshots and with some diligence I was able to find a few of the eastern district. I went up and down the riverside, trying to find the exact spots where they'd been taken, so I could get a clear comparison. That took long enough that Flora decided it was worth getting her scooter out, much to the dismay of people walking along the sidewalk.

Old district with forested hills and over-road walkway.

 

After a great deal of trial and error, I eventually managed to isolate two locations that seemed to be the right places. One was looking south-west, back towards the fairground, the other north-east into the hills. And both looked substantively different in game to what I was seeing in the record.

The whole of the cityscape on the far side of the river has changed. It's very interesting that I couldn't tell without the evidence in front of me because it's not a subtle change. It's a fairly radical re-interpretation. 

The buildings that used to be there were, now I come to examine them critically, really quite old-fashioned. They have quite a lot of the 1960s and '70s about them, the sort of pre-stressed concrete neo-brutalism that used to be so popular with local government architects when I was growing up. 

In the shot looking over the bridge, for example, you can see one of those completely enclosed over-the-roadway walkways that were a feature of the city nearest to me when I was in my teens. In fact, that whole square, boxy office-block waterfront could almost literally have been copied from a photograph of that town back in the seventies.

I'm very fond of that style of architecture, partly because it feels quite nostalgic but also because I find its clinical austerity quite soothing. The muted color and smooth-but-rough texture of concrete has a pleasant, tranquilizing effect, especially in the rain. 

I can see, though, why it might not be quite the right style for a near-future metropolis like Hethereau. The revised district is much more modern. The skyscrapers are much taller and the tallest have that edgy, knife-like look so familiar from the skylines of Dubai or even modern London. There's a lot of glass and the late afternoon sun glares back at you balefully as it sets. It's a mood.

New district with bare escarpment and completely revamped architecture.

 

Even so, there's still a surprising boxiness to it all. If the old version looked extremely mid-20th century, the new one hasn't quite shaken off its past. 

What it has done is grown. As you can see from the view behind the buildings, looking out to the countryside... well, there's not all that much countryside left. Where there used to be low hills covered in trees with higher, forested hills rising behind them, now there's just one escarpment, topped with trees but bare where there's clearly been felling and quite possibly quarrying.

To the east of that there are a couple of large blocks of offices or apartments. Below the rise, the valley floor is filled with what definitely look like apartment blocks. The city is growing.

In his comment, Mailvaltar hoped the redesign meant a new playable area on the way, not just a cosmetic uplift. Before I'd been to see it, I thought it would have to be the former. Surely no-one would waste resources on a changing the appearance of a part of the city players would never be able to visit?

Having seen it, though, I'm not quite so sure. The screenshots of the former version point up just how out of place it used to look. Or, perhaps, it makes me wonder just how old the rest of Hetherau is, if you stop to look at it properly. 

Old Hethereau, as we remember it. Fondly, even though we were never there.

 

It also makes me realize that one of the reasons the city has always felt so convincingly like a real place, right from the start, is that it has more than just a patina of age. Architecturally, culturally and aesthetically, Hethereau gives a very solid impression of a city that's developed organically over time. The center is very modern and slick but as you travel further out, you find yourself in what can only be smaller towns or villages that have been assimilated by the urban sprawl. Different districts, even streets, have a very different feel to them, just as they would in a real city.

It's extremely effective in evoking memories of actual places I've been and I haven't even been to the part of the world from where the designers are most likely drawing their inspiration. Nevertheless, I can all but name places I have visited in real life that parts of Hethereau remind me of, quite specifically.

In that context, it makes a great deal of sense for there to be an older, slightly more run-down district across the river. And the new version doesn't entirely dispel that impression. The buildings are newer, yes, but only some of them are flashier. Alongside those cutting-edge skyscrapers that have just appeared, there are ranks of more modest, more utilitarian buildings. 

From across the river, the eastern district looks like where the urban workers live, studded with enclaves of the rich, who look out from their massive windows, high above the gritty streets to the forested hills that they can still see but which the workers beneath them can now enjoy only in memory.

There would certainly be plenty of stories to be told in a place like that. We can only hope we get to hear some of them. 

Every Picture Tells A Story : Black Desert

There's a small problem with Black Desert. It's too photogenic. It was bad enough while I had my head down, concentrating on learning the systems, running up and down dirt tracks and country lanes between small villages and family farmsteads, picking potatoes or battling goblins.

It was worse when I reached the larger settlements, Velia and Heidel, with their architectural authenticity, their realistic street planning, their curious, colorful citizens. Sailing between islands, arriving at fishing ports just as the sun fell below the horizon, climbing the steep hillside to catch the last of the light among stands of rough brush, it was already becoming clear there were more photo opportunities here than a dozen Cannes Weeks.

Gotta pick a tater or two

But now I'm on an extended road trip things are really getting out of hand. I could, with ease, put up half a dozen narrative posts like the last, each one heavily illustrated with shots I've taken as I travel.

Before I began writing this I was flipping through the folder looking at possibilities. In a couple of minutes I'd pulled out enough for three posts and I had at least twice as many more still to consider.

My float is bigger than the fish

And that's just picking the most appropriate ones to tell the stories. Stories like the way by chance I at last found the road to Calpheon as I stopped to catch my breath at the safe haven of a riverside wharf, where I'd run to escape a cluster of angry orcs.

 
Or the hill-fort besieged by harpies, where I weaved a path through the screeching, flapping creatures, ignoring the shouts of soldiers and the clash of steel, to leap the wall and run on, high into the mountains.

You got harpies. And you can keep them.

There, finally, I butted against the invisible walls that mark the end of explorable territory and stood, gazing wistfully into the inaccessible valleys that stretched away to  the South. That adventure taught me how to slither and slide down the steepest mountainsides without breaking bones, leaning into the fall and spraying bronze dust from my soft boots.

It also led me to watch my footing closely, which was how I found the deep, deep hole that led to the spider cave.

Cave of the Unfortunately Mistranslated Spiders

That's an experience I choose not to recall too clearly. One blurred shot, taken at a dead run, is all I have to prove I was there. Oh, that and the photograph of the explorers before me; the ones who didn't climb so well or run so fast.

You're going to need some better boots.

A vendor in some village or farm, whose name and location on the map I don't recall and forgot to mark, sold me a pair of shoes that let me jump higher and farther, a bargain at thirty thousand silver. That fortuitous purchase changed the way I moved forever (or at least until they break, which he warned me they very well may should I die while wearing them). Without them I'm not sure I could have escaped the spiders or found a whole new rooftop world in Calpheon.

I could climb that.

When I came to Calpheon, great city of the West, it was of course, late in the evening. It's always "late in the evening" when I arrive anywhere. It seems as though I never get to see anything in full daylight. One moment I was gazing up at the rooftops from the road as wagons thundered by: minutes later I looked down on that same road from the tiles. These days I climb like a goat. And after all this running probably smell like one, too.

Told you!

Much has been said about Calpheon, mostly by Syl. I was ready to be impressed and I was, although the city is smaller than I expected, somewhere between Caceres and Trujillo, perhaps. Again, leaving aside a population leavened with goblins, giants and talking otters, this is a fair representation of a true, southern European medieval town.

Where did I put my Rough Guide?

The churches, markets, parks and public buildings all ring with authority. I spent a good while exploring with the UI switched off and the camera pulled back to first-person view. It felt almost disturbingly real. Once again, as I thought when I took the balloon ride in Ninelives, I could see the possibilities of VR very strongly.

Now That's What I Call Inappropriately Dressed Vol 1.

I called Mrs Bhagpuss in to take a look and she compared it to "Divinity's Reach without the confetti". They are very similar, if only in scale and scope and imagination and detail. The main difference, I think, is that Queen Jennah's capital is a pristine fairy-tale confection while Calpheon is a mostly-successful attempt to render a working city of the high-medieval period, with fantasy trappings.

I always try to get a room with a balcony.

Calpheon was a wonder but I was still restless. In my next session, which again began just as the sun was going down, I took the road west, past the great hulk of Calpheon Castle, whose barred door I tried to beat down without success and in whose moat I fished for dace and notch jaw for a while.

In time I came to the great forests where Treants are lumbered for their wood, a peculiarly disturbing concept, although why it should be more so than butchering boar for their meat I can't quite say.

Um, did I see that plank...twitch?

I spent a while in the busy lumber camps around Trent. Timber production and processing goes on there at an almost industrial scale, drawing in all kinds of new, strange races for the heavy lifting and the silver to be made. I talked with a troll, a people who here are untypically jolly and cheerful, fond of clapping their ham-like hands and laughing. A massive ogre hefting tree trunks was less willing to chat.

Chattiest troll I ever knew.

A catfish-man held a roadside node and a fanged Khuroto another. In the crowds I saw other races I couldn't yet identify. No elves, though, for which small mercy many thanks. Eventually the last of the light left the treetops and full night fell. Not wishing to be lost in the dark forest when the monsters took their strength from darkness I sneaked into a hunting lodge in Behr and settled for the night.

Around these parts they tell of a catfish that walks like a man.

There's been little time to "play" Black Desert this week. By the time I get home from work and do my dailies on three accounts in GW2, it's usually pushing nine o'clock. By chance this has also been a very lively week in World vs World, with Jade Quarry hitting back hard against the domination Yak's Bend has shown for the previous month. There have been calls to arms that I've been happy to answer.

No, but have you got any elf-skin gloves?

Consequently all the Black Desert I've been able to manage has been an hour or so late in the evening. It's been days since I last quested or crafted or traded or did any of the game-like things that usually progress a character. I have, though, seen a lot of the world and it has made me want to see more.

I've often heard it said that sandboxes give players stories to tell that theme parks never can but I've always found that an unconvincing argument. Certainly, there are great tales to be told of the human encounters between players and sandbox gameplay is often designed to encourage human to human interaction, but a good storyteller can make a story out of anything. The better the raw material, however, the easier it is to work.

And so to bed. Never mind whose. Let's just hope he works the night shift.

Black Desert is often touted as a sandbox, or at least a sandpark, and yet all of the stories I have made for myself so far have nothing whatsoever to do with other players. Neither have I, yet, read anyone else's account of their interactions with another person in the game. Everyone is writing about the world, the scenery, the races and the wonder of exploring it all. And the game mechanics and the cash shop, of course.

This is a high-quality piece of world-making we have here. Comparisons that come to mind are The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, The Division, not Ultima Online or Darkfall. Everything  Syl and Alysianah and I are gushing over has been made by creative artists and placed to be discovered, not made by us.

I just bet they leave these flags up all year round.

Then again, perhaps that's the signature of the sandbox: you take what you're given and make of it what you will, be it scars or silver or stories. Only, when it comes to stories, the telling goes so much easier when you come to the fireside with pictures like these.

Edited to add more pictures. Oh yes...

Are You Going To Be In There All Day?

Our little guild on Freeport now has a Guild House. We've been of a level to take a Guild Hall for quite a while now and the idea gets booted around every so often but there's never been sufficient enthusiasm to take it any further. Mrs Bhagpuss and I are wary of taking on any virtual responsibility and the thought of having to farm even the small amount of Status a basic Guild Hall requires is enough to ensure we never make a purchase.

We have some people who aren't us in the guild now, though and it would be nice to have a place to hang out sometimes, so when we were having our discussion this time I suggested a compromise. We're each entitled to a free Mistmoore Crags Estate Prestige House as a Seven-Year Veteran Award. Actually, we're entitled to lots of them since they come "one per character". It's unaccountably generous and yet strangely unexciting offer and until yesterday we'd never claimed a single Vampire Castle. I thought we could grab one and use it as a Guild House.

Dear Auntie Enid, The weather isn't all we'd hoped...

So that's what we did and we'll see how it works out. There's an awful lot of decorating to do, not least since the first thing we did was break out and plant our metaphorical Guild Banner in Loping Plains. We really should get a Guild Banner, come to think of it...

But before we made the final decision I went off and read up on just what you get if you have a real Guild Hall in EQ2. I was appalled! There have been guild halls since EQ2 started but if I've ever been in a guild that had one I can't recall it. I've rarely been inside one. I knew they'd been tarted up over the years and now have a whole raft of "amenities" but I had only the vaguest understanding of what those amenities were. They are these. (Or is that "these are they"? I can never remember how that goes).

That's pretty much every reason you'd ever want to go into a city. Is it any wonder the cities died? Is it any wonder it's taken a full revamp and a ton of additional content to draw a scattering of players back to add some life to the streets, squares and docksides of Freeport? It's one thing to offer guilds a nice big meeting hall where they can hold disciplinary hearings and dinner-dances among the tastefully plinthed and polished skulls of the many dragons they've slain but who ever thought it was a good idea to add in every other facility that might induce any of them to set foot in the shared part of the world ever again?

This is just part of the perennial, long-debated problem of instancing. WoW, which has no housing Guild or otherwise, has cities full to bursting with people. That the cities have the ambience of a metropolitan bus-station just after the pubs have closed is by-the-by. At least they're busy. Thinking about it, maybe that's not such a great argument.

Don't you hate it when mothers dress them all the same?

As ever there's a balance to be struck. The cities need to bustle. New players need to see crowds of other people around them, doing mysterious things they don't yet understand with objects they don't yet recognize, racing past in their fancy gear on their sparkling unicorns and clockwork chickens, trailing a comet's tail of unfeasibly cute and terrifying pets as they race who knows where on who knows what Important Mission.

Established players need a place of their own to get away from all of that.

It's a difficult balance, yes, but it has to be found. I hope we're doing our bit for the Greater Good of Norrath by resisting the temptation to set up our own City-State and settling instead for a nice big house where we can throw fruitcake at each other occasionally while we dance on the patio to the sound of our Snow Globes.