Path Of Fire Preview - Color Me Impressed

Beta weekend. Demo. Preview. Call it what you will, the doors are open. Last time we did this, when we caught the beta bus that was bound for Heart of Thorns, you needed a pre-order to board. This time you don't need a ticket at all. Just jump on.

Okay, it's not quite that simple. Before you grab a raptor and roam the desert you have to jump through a few hoops. First you have to make a new character. Then you get to watch a rather nice cut scene while you take an airship ride from Lion's Arch to Crystal Desert.

I got the feeling I was missing some plot here. Maybe there's a pre-expansion lead-in we're not seeing. I hope so . If not it seems a bit of an abrupt transition form the end of the last Living Story. The view's nice, anyway.

Next comes what is presumably the first segment of the expansion's storyline. There's a lot of fighting, a lot of fire and it's all very orange. You get a mount. It was easy enough but I could have done without it. I just wanted to get to the real map. 

Once the flames die down you begin to see just how gorgeous this thing is going to be. The scenery is astonishingly lovely - and we're only in a quarry!

I wanted to explore the mine workings but this is one of those story instances that warns you you'll be summarily ejected if you deviate from the program. I hate being on rails. I don't have that kind of tunnel vision. Okay, I'll stop.

After a bit of business with Kasmeer and Rytlock, which I found very interesting and amusing enough that I laughed out loud, twice, the story segment concludes and the real doors open.

Blimey, Charlie! It was night when I arrived and it stayed night until I left which seemed like about an hour but can't have been, can it? The city, Amnoon, is stunning. It's mostly the color palette and the lighting, I think. I just gawped.

And gawped. And took screenshots. And ran around and gawped some more. The desert sky at night, the stars and the moon, the sea, the clouds... I'm not sure you even need gameplay with visuals like these.

There is gameplay, though. Plenty of it. And it's the same as you're used to if you've played GW2 in the last year or so. There's something to do in every direction, some event to complete, heart to fill out, Mastery or Hero Point to get, Champion to kill...

Or all of them at once. Here's a snapshot I took mid-battle. Someone had triggered a Djinn at a Hero Point and while we were killing him a Champion Hyena for one of the new Bounty Hunts got involved, so we had the two of them on the go, when a Veteran (or maybe it was a Champion) Hydra wandered over the hill and thought he'd have a go at us as well.

All good fun until someone loses a head, as I think I heard the Hydra say. And enough for me for a first look. I saw enough to know that I'm going to have a great deal of fun exploring and I'll probably need to buy a new Hard Drive just to store all the screenshots.

Not sure I'll be doing any more of the "beta". I don't want to take the edge off and there's always that niggling terror in the back of my mind - this might be the time a precursor decides to drop.

Looking good, though, ANet. Looking really good.

Welcome To Mediah : Black Desert

In a move almost as unexpected as the return of Super Adventure Box, this week Daum, the licensee and operator of Black Desert in the West, dropped an entire expansion on us out of the clear blue sky. There seems to be some rumor going around that MMORPGs are stagnating or even dying off. It's things like this, or the upcoming massive free update to EQ2 , or the one Blade and Soul just got, or Otherland, just to name-check a handful of games in which I have a personal interest, that get these kind of rumors started.

Got to be, because nothing says "ded gaem" like continual development and a pipe full of impressive new content, does it?  Truly the Last Days are upon us.

Nevertheless, although all may be sunlight and rose petals this side of the screen, things seemed very different for my Tamer when she blew into Tarif at two in the morning. The sky was dark, the prospects sulfurous... but, here, let her tell the story.

In the usual way of things it was the middle of the night when I woke up. At least I was in my own bed, for once, safe at home in  5, Lynch Ranch, not bivouacking under a bush. The moon was full so, since everyone else was awake and working already (no-one ever seems to sleep but me - it's worrisome), I decided to set off straight away rather than wait for morning.

By luck I'd already been to the closed border with Mediah to the East a week or so back and for once I knew exactly where I was going. I left the horse at the stables because, honestly, I can travel faster without him and running is good for my stamina. Although, on the other hand, riding is good for my...riding...so it's a judgment call.

My cottage isn't that far from the new lands so it didn't take too long to get to the border. There wasn't much to see along the road, it being nighttime and all, but there was some evidence of the warming political relations between the territories (or whatever caused the border to open this time) in the steady flow of foot traffic and wagons heading back West to Heidel.

It was too dark to tell all that much about the landscape but I got the feeling that it was slowly changing, becoming drier, dustier. The thick undergrowth turned to scrub and the road to grit and sand. There was no sudden, jolting transition from West to East, just a subtle elision.

I stopped for a brief rest at a small village. Didn't get the name. Already the architecture looked odd and foreign. It felt like I wasn't at home any more. Not that I know where home is, since I woke up not knowing who I am, with that Black Spirit whispering in my ear. 

Ah yes, the Spirit. He's a wonder, that's for sure. I thought he was something only I could see, although every so often, when I arrive in a new town, some local dignitary with a third eye or psychic powers will sense him and have a fit of the vapors. That's going to get me into trouble some day, I just bet.

And then I came to Tarif. I hadn't meant to go there. I didn't know it existed. I was just following the road, hoping it went somewhere. Roads usually do, although in my experience they're as likely to end in a ruin full of orcs as a welcoming inn. The sky was beginning to lighten as I came to the town gates so I could see a little. What I saw almost made me wish for the darkness back.

Oh, I'm not saying anything bad about Tarif. Well, nothing worse than I'd say about Florin. I have a strong feeling it wouldn't be clever to say anything bad about either of them. I mean, I'm sure the local Shai have a sound reason for pulling a Black Spirit around on a handcart in the dead of night. There must be one, right? That's not something you do for fun. Is it?

I was so stunned that at first I just stood there and gawped. Then my adventurer's instincts clicked in and I slipped into the shadows. It was two in the morning so it wasn't all that hard. Tarif was mostly shadows. Maybe it always is. 

I followed the long-eared little deviant as he wheeled his cart through the alleys and back streets, the Spirit gibbering and mumbling in a skin-crawlingly familiar way. At one point we passed an open door and in the light that blazed out I could see candles laid out for a ritual. Objects were hanging motionless in the air. The ritual had probably already happened. Maybe that's how this Shai got his Spirit-in-a-Pot. 

As dawn came on we arrived in the main square. No-one seems to sleep here, either. The streets were packed with people, trading and chatting and floating. Floating in the air. Doing back flips. I was starting to freak but I hadn't seen the worst of it yet.

As the sun set the hills alight and the streets began to glow I noticed an Inn. It seemed quite upmarket, with tables on a terrace and food already laid out, so I sat on a bench to take stock and breakfast, not necessarily in that order.

I looked around for the Inn Keeper. Then I saw her. In a manner of speaking. I saw her portrait on the wall. Some townsfolk were chatting. Chatting to the picture. The picture that wasn't a picture of the Inn Keeper. The picture that was the inn Keeper.

About this time I decided I'd catch my own breakfast after all. I made my excuses and bolted for the riverside. On the way I passed a smuggler, a man of a race I didn't immediately recognize, although if all his kin have a nose like his then I shan't be having any difficulty recognizing them in future.

He was operating in broad daylight (well, almost) with no regard to the law, even though guards were everywhere in the town, clinking in heavy chain mail, armed with vicious-looking pikestaffs. I get the general idea of what goes on here, I think.

So, this is Mediah as seen from Tarif, gateway to the East. The locals tell me it's a quiet place, not like the chaos and confusion I can expect further on down the road.

I can't wait.

The Drug Fields of Calpheon : Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online comes on in a rush. From the moment you step out of character creation into the small country town of Olvia you're assailed with contradiction, confusion and chaos. Almost all "First Impressions"  pieces begin with some variation of "I had no idea where I was or what the hell I was doing".

If you give the game the reins it immediately hands you over to the Black Spirit, a disembodied entity with a cartoonish appearance and a voice that sounds like the untranslated yipping of some forgotten Saturday morning sidekick. That Black Spirit is both the most unreliable of narrators and, I have long suspected, the falsest of friends.

Oh, you look harmless now...

The first and among the worst of the many bum steers and gobbets of bad advice he, she, or most probably it, throws your way is a swiftly accelerating sequence of quests that seeds from the moment you make the mistake of listening to anything he says. Before you have any chance to get your bearings or orient yourself the animated smokestack sends you spiraling off across the landscape on an increasingly frenzied and purposeless series of murders.

It begins, bizarrely, with wildlife; weasels, foxes and wolves, all of which mill around the fields and meadows of Olvia in an existential funk, predators absent prey, merely awaiting their own pointless predation, by you. From there the Spirit moves you to slaughter various denominations of imp, to desecrate their holy places and generally tear their playhouses down for no more reason than as a test of your mettle for his amusement.

Like that's going save you, Mr Fox.

Before you have even the inkling of an idea of what you're about, your discorporate director of operations has you half way down the road to the bustling seaport of Velia, by which time you are thoroughly lost, both morally and cartographically.

Most accounts of play sessions thereafter move on to fishing, boat-building, trading and the road to Heidel and the South. The Black Spirit has you where he wants you - in thrall to his agenda.

But what if you hadn't listened to that wheedling voice? What if you'd quit after the weasels, said the hell with this, turned back to town and just got on with your life as if it were, indeed, your own? What's so bad about Olvia, anyway, that the first thing you have to do is leave?

Everything's a little blurry around the edges. I wonder why that might be...

Well, maybe Olvia has something to hide. Perhaps the Black Spirit has reasons to move you along, before you begin to look around you too closely and start to notice things.

Olvia on the surface seems as interesting, or as uninteresting, a small town as any other. It has most of the facilities you'd find anywhere: storage, trade, stabling, shops. It has the regular industrial and residential opportunities. It also has access to a fine, sandy beach with abundant fishing. As the locals will tell you if you stop to chat the coastline is underdeveloped industrially because of the fine opportunities it offers for leisure and tourism.

The key thing about Olvia that your Black Spirit won't tell you, however, is that it's on the high road to Calpheon. And I mean "high".

Wait a minute. Why am I the only one doing this?

After all those days pounding the highways to the east in search of the great city it turns out it was barely an afternoon's ride away to the south-west from where you started. The hinterland is studded with farms, most of which seem to be involved with the alchemy trade.

Alchemy. It was never "respectable" but here, there's something hazy, even shady, about the whole enterprise. The piles of herbage literally glow. The workers appear dazed.

Why did I come up here again? I feel sleepy. I'm just going have a little lie down.

Robed men in floppy hats that hide their faces smoke pipes as they eye the childlike Shai tending to the poppies that grow in the thatch of the roofs. Slow-spoken giants mumble to themselves as they haul huge baskets to the wagons. Make no bones: there are indisputable narcotic overtones.

Yeah, and I bet they talk to you too, right? Backing away now...

There's money being made here, too. Big money. The adventurers' addiction to "potions" drives the economy. In Black Desert you'll soon learn to chug with one hand while slicing up imps with the other or you'll not be an adventurer for long. Here, in the fields of Calpheon, is where they bottle those demons.

I just bet they did.

And don't let anyone tell you its "safe". That it's "just a potion". Look around you. Wake up and smell the "herbal medicine".

I mean, just how stoned would you have to be to design and build a production line that has you extracting alchemical ingredients by bouncing up and down on a giant set of bellows? What would you need to be smoking to come up with the idea of harnessing racoons as an energy source? Just how far gone would you have to be before you allowed birds to nest in your beard?

Give them the sweet taste.

The trip from Olvia to Calpheon is Black Desert in a nutshell. On the surface it appears to be the most naturalistic, authentic representation of a fully working environment, architecturally, socially and geographically. Look closely and the realistic veneer peels away to reveal the seething madness beneath.

The drug fields of Calpheon, They explain so much.

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...