The Séance Society And The Solitary Path

I started another post this morning but before I'd finished the opening paragaph I realized what I really wanted to do was play Wuthering Waves, so that's what I did. And now I'm going to write about it.

As usual, I wasn't timing my session but from memory I played for around an hour and a half, took a break, then played for maybe another hour. For the whole of that time I was doing one, continuous narrative sequence, Solitary Path, the "Companion Story" for the new Resonator, Yinlin.

Well, she's new to me, anyway. She's the focus of a new Event, When Thunder Pours, and by "event" I mean Cash Shop promotion. Based on that and the fact that the only video of Yinlin's adventure didn't pop up on YouTube until a few hours ago, I'm guessing both the character and the event arrived in the game at the same time.

I knew about the event before I started playing today but since it appeared to be nothing but a Gacha promo I had no intent to pay it any mind. That all changed in a matter of seconds after I logged in, when, the moment I appeared in Jinzhou, I got a call from Chixia, asking me if I could look into some missing persons reports for her.

Naturally I agreed because what else am I there for if not to do everyone else's job for them? Okay, that's a little unfair. Unlike most games I've played, characters in Wuthering Waves do genuinely seem to have real jobs with fixed hours and actual responsibilities they'll get into trouble for shirking. 

They even give broadly convincing reasons why it makes sense for me to run errands for them. As Chixia points out, Rover does keep running around all over the place anyway. She's in and out of the city all the time. And as we've established, she does have that Access All Areas pass the magistrate gave her...

What makes less sense and indeed completely undermines the whole conceit that the NPCs have prior commitments and full lives, is the way I, as the player, can summon any of the NPCs I've added to my team at any point, not just in combat but even while I'm just wandering around or goofing off. That's why lots of the screenshots you'll be seeing here may have someone other than the character I started with posing for a selfie. I'm sometimes not myself at all.

There's a crucial moment in the Solitary Path storyline when it becomes particularly hard to swallow this paradox, even with the most liberal sprinkling of story-teller's salt. I'll elaborate in a moment but just on the off-chance someone reading this might be playing the game (Unlikely, I know.) I'll just mention there will be extensive spoilers from here on. 

The Cliff Notes version of the plot is that it turns out the missing people have all lost someone to illness, accident or misadventure. A nebulous organization called the Séance Society has contacted them all with an offer of a way to see their loved ones again. After much investigation it transpires that someone called the Dollmaker has been supplying androids, known as "Puppets", that can emulate the dead, something they manage only by means of memories siphoned from the living.

Unfortunately, there's a side-effect. Prolonged exposure to the Puppets can lead to a violent, manic breakdown known as "Overclocking". It affects any human who spends too much time close to a puppet, although it doesn't affect everyone equally. Worse, the Dollmaker seems to be in cahoots with the underground rebel faction, Fractsidus, which wants to use his skills and his puppets for even more nefarious purposes.

After much running around, a lot of talking, quite a bit of fighting and several apparent changes of allegiance by half the cast, Rover ends up fighting her way through the Dollmaker's factory complex, ostensibly as the prisoner of his lieutenant, Yinling, but actually as Yinling's covert partner. 

Before Rover and Yinling team up, though, while Rover still thinks Yinling is one of the bad guys (Which she kind of is.) Rover manages to send a coded message to Chixia revealing the factory's location, which is why the red-haired Junior Patroller is outside the heavily booby-trapped and defended complex with a squadron of Huangdong's paramilitary police force. 

Except at the same time she's also inside it, with me. She's one of my deployable team of Resonators. The fights were getting pretty brutal so I had to call on everyone to see us through to the denouement. I did try not to bring Chixia into play, for the sake of immersion, but on the final boss, an Overlord Class mob almost ten levels higher than me, I really had no choice.

It was a chaotic fight but I'd intentionally charged and saved all my big attacks in the expectation the whole thing would end with a boss fight. Having all four of the team dump their Ultmates on the boss was what swung it for us. Without Chixia, we might not have pulled it off. 

For all practical reasons it was worth breaking immersion to win that battle. Still, it did feel weird when the fight ended and second Chixia broke through the doors and ran in to handcuff the defeated Dollmaker and drag him off to jail.

The aforementioned paradox inherent in the structure aside, I thought the self-contained story was pretty darn good. It would make a very decent story arc in an anime TV series. It certainly had no more logical inconsistencies or internal contradictions than some I've seen. 

The dialog was solid throughout, the plot was twisty and intriguing and the voice acting was convincing. The themes felt remarkably relevant, with some examination of the ethics and morality of AI and a touch of philosophy concerning existential identity and the eternal. I do like it when someone asks me to think.

All things considered, I was impressed. Also satisfied. The whole thing lasted about as long as the narrative section of a Guild Wars 2 Living Story chapter but the story was much better and the fights a lot less annoying.

I wanted to make it clear how much I enjoyed it before starting to nit-pick some of the detail. The issues with characters being in two places at once is inherent to the gameplay but most of my other concerns revolve around sloppy editing and inadequate Q.A.

As I mentioned yesterday, the voice work is produced in London. That may explain why the various voice actors can't seem to agree on how to pronounce some of the Chinese names. For example, there's a girl/Puppet called YuanYuan, whose father fully articulates both the "Y"s, saying it just as it looks on the page. Yinling calls her something that sounds more like "WanWan", which actually sounds more convincing, only then, a little later, she also begins to stress those leading "Y"s, losing the "W" sound altogether. 

It made me wonder if someone asked her to change her pronounciation or whether she reacted to what her colleague was doing. It also makes me ask why, since the whole thing has been translated into English anyway, they don't also give the NPCs western names.

Either way, it's something that ought to have been caught and cleared up in the edit, as should the occasional variations between what the voice actors are saying and the text that's on screen. It would also be nice if the game could remember whether Rover is supposed to be male or female. I realise it didn't actually say the appearance I chose was one or the other but I don't think the way some NPCs use "him"  to refer to my character while others use "her" is intended as a statement on gender fluidity. I think it's just more bad editing.

In general, I did get the impression the translation for the new story was very slightly less polished than before. Only very slightly, though. It was still orders of magnitude better than most imported titles I've played. On the other hand, I felt some of the voice acting was better, possibly - as others have pointed out in discussions I've read - because British voice actors are likely to turn in better performances if they're not asked to put on American accents. 

I did feel there was considerable chemistry between my character and Yinlin, which has something to do with the voice acting but more to do with the writers and the artists. This doesn't appear to be one of those games where you can romance NPCs and this particular story doesn't offer much in the way of leeway to react in different ways, so anything in the way of flirting has either to come from the script, the art direction or wishful thinking on the part of the player.

I don't think it was me this time. I'm pretty sure Yinlin was flirting with Rover and I'm damn sure the art director was telegraphing their attraction, which looked quite mutual on screen. I submit this screenshot as evidence. Judge for yourself.

Characterisation is definitely one of Wuthering Waves strengths. It tends to be, in these kinds of games, where everything revolves around building a roster. Noah's Heart had lots of very strong characters too, largely because they stole borrowed them all from history and literature, but unfortunately the translations weren't good enough to make most of them feel like more than curiosities and ciphers.

Here, they feel a lot more rounded and convincing. They're all familiar types and tropes but that's true of much popular fiction. Characters and story are easily strong enough to hold my interest. My main concern is whether that standard will be maintained.

I remember all too well how strong some of the opening content in Noah's Heart was. I wrote a whole post about one of the segments of the main storyline because it was just stunningly well done. A few months down the line, though, everything seemed much more rushed. By the end of the first year, what little new content we got was so badly translated I literally couldn't understand some of it at all.

I'd like to hope that Wuthering Waves is going to be a lot more successful than Noah's Heart and therefore won't slide into the same downward spiral but I do recall that Noah's Heart claimed a huge number of pre-registrations and was briefly illuminated in a flare of supposed success at launch. It didn't last.

I do wonder, too, what lifespan these Gacha RPGs are intended to have. They look fantastically expensive to produce and therefore to maintain. Perhaps they aren't meant to go on and on like MMOs. And maybe that's a good thing. Genshin Impact has been running for nearly four years now. Does it really need to carry on for another decade?

I think it's best to enjoy these things while the shine is still on them and not to expect that luster to last. If it does, all well and good. If not, there's always another game. Because there always is another game.

For now, though, Wuthering Waves is a lot of fun. I'm going to stick with it until it's not. I've had worse plans.

If I Could Talk To The Animals...

I could post about something else today but I don't want to so here are some more of my unstructured, rambling, unnecessarily detailed thoughts about Wuthering Waves. I might be getting a bit obsessed with it. It happens.

With that in mind, perhaps it's as well that this morning I reached the point where the story takes a breather and you have to increase your "Union Level" to find out what happens next. Just don't ask me what Union it is. I don't remember joining and I'm pretty sure I haven't paid my dues.

When I got the message about it, it told me I needed to be UL14 to carry on with the story. I was only UL 8, so it seemed like it might take a while.

There was a helpful list of things I could do to earn Union XP. My feeling was the developers would prefer I do a lot of dailies or, failing that, spent some currency they would probably be able to sell me in the cash shop. That made me glum for a moment until I read on and realized I could just do some quests and go exploring instead.

Just about everything seems to give some Union XP, including wandering around the open world, exploring, beating up Tacet Discords, engaging in challenges of various kinds and generally behaving as though it was an MMORPG. That suits me just fine. For now, anyway.

At some point, no doubt, I'll have explored everything there is to explore in the local area, done all the quests, bested or failed at all the challenges, but by then, with luck, I'll have increased my standing with the union sufficiently to carry on with the story, which in turn will send me to another area, where I can start the cycle all over again. 

Or so I hope. There's the small matter of vertical progression to consider, something about which I'm currently quite ill-informed, not having taken the time or trouble to do any research on it whatsoever. In fact, I haven't bothered in the slightest with what I'm assuming will at some point become the central tenet of gameplay, namely upgrading my gear and filling out my roster of... hang on, what do they call them here? Ah yes, Resonators. 

In some gacha games I've played, ignoring the core purpose of the game, i.e. spending money on power (Or, more realistically, the slim chance of power.) does eventually mean you can't win the fights. Not being able to win the fights means you can't see the rest of the story and sometimes it means you can't even see the rest of the world either. 

Then there are the games where you can pretty much pootle around as long as you want, doing all kinds of stuff so long as it doesn't further the story. In those games, if you're willing to forget about progression, the whole gacha aspect fades into insignificance. Noah's Heart was like that, which is one reason I stayed with it for so long.

It's too early to say which way WW leans but should it turn out to be the former, I'm covered. I found a full edit of the entire story so far on YouTube, so if I get roadblocked by bosses I can't beat, I can just go watch that instead. 

Always providing I can find a spare seven hours, that is. That's how long the cut scenes last if you string them all together. Longer than the original Star Wars trilogy. And probably... no, better not go there.

Although I am invested in finding out what's going on, what I'd most like to be doing in the game right now has nothing to do with the main storyline, compelling though it is. And it has even less to do with whacking mobs with my sword, something I'd happily do without altogether. 

What I'd really like to do is carry on working with Xuanyin, the self-styled "citizen scientist" who's developing an app that translates the language of animals into English. (Well, presumably into Mandarin then into English, since Kuro Games, the developer of Wuthering Waves, is based in Guangdong.)

The app is supposed to work on any animal but the experiment I helped out with inevitably involved a cat. You can't walk down the street in Huangdong without tripping over one.

I met Xuanyin on a bridge in the city, where she immediately put herself into my good books by not only knowing who I was but also calling me by my actual name! Yes, alright, I had to prompt her. But she knew who I was without my having to use the cursed R word. 

That's happened twice now, which makes the game's insistence on calling me "Rover" even more annoying. I know it knows who I am. It's just being deliberately awkward about it. Either that or someone on the writing team isn't talking to someone else.

There does occasionally seem to be a certain disconnect between departments in Wuthering Waves. For example, as you can clearly see in the screenshots, the cat Xuanyin and I were talking to is a short-haired calico (Or tortoiseshell as we call them where I come from.) It also looks full-grown to me. Whoever wrote the dialog thinks otherwise.

Both Xuanyin and the descriptive text describe the cat as a "hairless kitten". Xuanyin even has a short speech, which I unortunately neglected to screenshot, in which she wonders what breed it might be. Evidently the art department didn't get the full brief.

I wasn't too bothered with all of that. I was much more interested in the prospect of being able to Doolittle all the animals in the game. When Xuanyin added the app to my gourd, the local nickname for the do-it-all communication device everyone carries on their belt, I thought I'd be getting a new ability to add to my Utilities along with the Grapple, the Scanner, the Camera and the other one I can't think of right now.

Sadly not. After we'd tested the translation on the cat-kitten and found out she wanted snacks (Not sure we really needed an app for that.) Xuanyin gave me a lecture on the dangers of feeding human food to animals, then sent me off to find some Milky Fish Soup.

Luckily I remembered seeing both the cooking station and the food vendor on a high boardwalk in the upper city. I'd been wanting to try my hand at cooking and this seemed like the time - start with cat food and work my way up. 

The moment I got to the cookery station, which is in back of a resturant, Panhua, the chef and proprietor, started in on me about some girl at the counter who just wouldn't stop crying. That led to a literal sob story about the girl's grandfather and some spicy dish he used to make for her when she was a tearful tot and how she couldn't find it anywhere any more.

The restaurant-owner offered to make it for her but of course she didn't have all the ingredients and she couldn't leave the restaurant to go get them, so she asked me if I'd go instead. Or maybe I offered. My character is helpful like that. Unlike me. 

I was headed there anyway, of course, so it wasn't such a great favor. I stopped at the stove on the way, just long enough to check the soup recipe. I had nearly everything. Not surprising since I've been picking up random cooking mats since day one. I was only missing the fish.

At the food vendor I got everything I needed both for the spicy recipe and my soup. I also got a call from my pal Chixia, asking me out to dinner. We fixed to meet at the restaurant I'd just come from, apparently one of Chixia's faves anyway, so that all worked out. Meanwhile, Chixia told me how Panhua and Mahe, the food vendor, have one of those Diane and Sam relationships so beloved of sitcoms and we had a good laugh about that.

Mahe and Chixia engage in a nice-off.

I could go on. It was a strong sequence that flowed really well. I'm still not sure if it was a series of fortuitous co-incidences or a script that felt a lot more organic and unplanned than it probably was. The sheer triviality of it all added hugely to its appeal.

To cut to the chase, I made the Milky Fish Soup, went back to Xuanyin, gave the soup to the cat and then the translation app went on the fritz and Xuanyin took it back for adjustments so I don't get to talk to the animals after all. Just that one cat. I'm hoping that's not the last I'll hear about the Animal Language Translator Module but I fear it might be.

It would be exceedingly handy to be able to talk to cats. They do seem to play a surprisingly large role in the game. Not only are there cats all over the city, as I said, but I've already done two quests featuring felines, the other being to find a missing cat called Lulu, who turned out to be hiding at the top of a very tall tree. 

That one ended with Lulu's owner, who seemed more than a little unhinged, suggesting, with disturbing intensity, that Lulu and I might like to get married. I really should have taken some screenshots but I was too stunned by the turn the conversation had taken to hit the button.

A cat even plays a significant part in the main storyline. Last night, the inevitable anti-hero and his slinky sister, both dressed all in red and looking like KPop idols, arrived to try and convince me my current friends were all part of some dark conspiracy, which of course was exactly what those same friends just been telling me about the Siblings in Scarlet. 

Scar, for that is the bad boy's name, subtlety not being in any way relevant here, used a cute cat to trick Yangyang into falling into a trans-dimensional trap, just so he could monologue at me for what seemed like  - and indeed very probably was - a full half hour. His trap worked because of course no-one in this game can resist the charms of a cute li'l kitty-cat.

I certainly can't. Nor a cute li'l puppy dog either, although I haven't seen one of those yet. I hope there are some. I hope there are plenty more quests featuring cats and dogs, too. I'll happily do 'em all.

And since that almost sounds like a punchline, I think I'll end this post there. That way it'll look like I had it all planned out when I sat down to write it. 

Which I did. 

Of course.

You Say You Want It But... Oh, Hey, I guess You Do.

It's been a while since I last posted twice in one day. I think about it quite often but I hate to cannibalize my own content and anyway I generally prefer to keep a good idea in hand for the next time. 

Once in a while, though, something comes up that I feel just have to jump on right away. This is one such item.

A new Guild Wars 2 expansion. Feh. Big deal. Didn't buy the last one. Haven't logged in this year. Why would I care?

One reason and one reason alone: HOUSING!

Genuine player housing is literally the only feature ArenaNet could have added that would make me consider buying another GW2 expansion. And even then only consider it. I'm very much not sold yet.

I watched the video and the overriding impression it left on me was just how dated and tired the graphics look. All those years when I was playing every day I thought the game looked pretty good. It just shows how hard it it is to see the outside from the inside.

After I waded through the uninspiring footage of more wilderness that looks a lot like the other wildernesses in the game and fights that look like not a lot of fun at all, I was eventually rewarded with a fifteen second coda showing what housing might look like in Tyria.

It looks like the basic housing in EverQuest II's Halas that was added back in 2010, crossed with the wooden viking huts from Valheim, which was developed by a tiny team for an indie developer five years back. I mean, it doesn't look bad but you'd have to hope that's just a sample of what's on offer, not the totality.

I haven't tried to read up on it yet. Knowing ANet they won't be saying much anyway. And the important part isn't the housing content that ships with the expansion. It's that the infrastructure for housing will be in the game and the stubborn, blinkered refusal to admit it's a feature players want is over. They can iterate on the system from there. Iteration is supposed to be their thing, right?

By my count, I think this leaves World of Warcraft as the last Western AAA MMORPG not to provide proper accomodation for its player-characters. Blizzard copied GW2's Skyscale mount to good effect. Let's see if they go for this, too.

As for me, I'm still not committing to buying the expansion, although it is pretty cheap as these things go. There's a lot going on in gaming this summer after all. 

I'll keep it in mind for the slack times that are sure to come.

You Can Always Trust A Man In A Hamster Costume

Five hours into Wuthering Waves and I have a lot to say about the game. And to show. I've taken so many screenshots, some for the pure pleasure of looking at them, others to use in posts like this one.

It's a familiar process. Some new games just spark a huge desire in me to analyze, discuss and deconstruct. It's part of Bartle's Explorer archetype, which apparently covers much more ground than the merely geographical.

Let's start with the thorny question of sound quality, as discussed at some length in the comments by myself and Naithin, to whom, incidentally, many thanks for drawing my attention to this really rather good game in the first place, although how the heck I hadn't heard of it before, since it seems to be a Really Big Deal, I can't quite figure out.

By the way, did you know all the voice work was done in the UK? I didn't until I saw this video. It explains a lot!

I don't know if that's a factor in the less than perfect recording quality. Naithin's investigation into the Japanese original suggests not. I'm not bothered by it the way Naithin is anyway. Although, now I'm really making myself listen to it with recording fidelity in mind, I can hear the over-tuned top end, which does occasionally remind me of the sibilance and hiss of the cheap microphones my band used back in the 'eighties.

The aspect of the voice recording in Wuthering Waves that dominates my attention, however, isn't its quality but the sheer quantity of it. I can't readily recall the last game I played that had this much talking. Or, I should say, the last game I played that had this much and wasn't a visual novel.

Wuthering Waves calls itself an open world RPG and it certainly sits comfortably enough within that genre. It's very likely that after a few more hours gameplay will open out to reflect that description more closely. Thus far, though, it feels a lot more like a visual novel than anything else.

I don't think it would be much of an exaggeration to say that more than three-quarters of the time I've spent with the game so far has involved listening to NPCs talk. Of the remaining twenty-five per cent I'd estimate ten per cent has been devoted to traveling, ten per cent to making dialog choices and the final five per cent to hitting things with a stick. Okay, a sword.

Rover Speaks!

Every storyline NPC is fully voiced with the exception of the player character.  Who, by the way, no matter what the player might have wanted or chosen - absolutely is going to be called Rover forever after by everyone she ever meets until the end of the game and most likely the heat death of the universe. (Not that I'm bitter...). 

That doesn't mean the PC never talks out loud at all. I thought it meant that but I was wrong. When I posted yesterday, having played for a couple of hours, I was under the impression the PC (Or Rover, as we shall now call her, since why fight it?) was one of the genre's many Silent Protagonists. She'd shown a nifty line in nodding and head-shaking but up to that point hadn't made a sound.

Imagine my surprise then, when in the middle of a conversation she suddenly began to speak out loud in a husky, vaguely American-accented drawl. It made me jump. After that, she went back to being silent for long enough to make me think it was an isolated outburst until, once again for no particular reason and no warning, she suddenly found her voice again.

Now I never know whether she's going to speak or not. It's disconcerting but also quite exciting. And honestly it's a bit weird she doesn't talk all the time because even background characters not directly involved in the storyline sometimes have conversations out loud. Long ones, too.

I'll give you an example. When Rover and the gang (Did I mention she travels in a pack? And they all chip in with comments whenever they feel like it? It's like a road movie, sometimes.) went to see a big shot scientist, they found him already in conversation with two of his investors. 

You're asking for a slap, girl!

I think I could have interrupted them and got straight on with the plot but I wanted to see how long they'd go on without me. A long, long time is how long. Long enough to go through an entire sub-plot that told me quite a bit about the character of the guy I was about to do business with (Spoiler: he's a bit of a dick.) 

Someone had to write and record all of that dialog. There must have been several minutes of it. All for a bit of character-building that most players probably click straight past.

So far, the whole game is like that. There are plenty of NPCs out and about in the city and every one with a name talks. Not aloud. They haven't voiced every last one of them. But they all have dialog, some of it quite extensive. And often interesting. 

I have seen this sort of thing in other games but Wuthering Waves really goes for it. I think I'm noticing it more because of the quality of the translation, too. Five hours in, it remains well above average, although I have noticed the odd verbal infelicity now and again. It does make me wonder how good the stories in other imported games might have been in their original languages. 

Some rando wanted to talk about his dreams. You know how that goes.

I suspect many of them were much better than their terrible translations made them appear. I'd say I couldn't understand why companies are so willing to skimp on the translations except I think I know the reason: most players will just click straight through the talking to get to the fights anyway, so why bother spending money on getting the nuances right?

I'm not one of those players and I've paid for it time and again in games where I could barely work out what the plot was supposed to be, let alone extract any sense of characterization or world-building from the gibberish I had to plow through. It's a real pleasure to be able not just to follow the storyline but to gain some insights into the culture and circumstances in which the narrative takes place.

How much of what I'm hearing and reading has any meaning or significance beyond building ambience and atmosphere is a lot harder to say. Some of it seems quite surreal. 

I spoke to a young girl who wanted to tell me in considerable detail about "the hamster at Lollo Logistics". At first she seemed to be talking about a real hamster but she went on to describe how someone in a hamster suit "saved" her. She ended up proclaiming "People who wear hamster suits are always good people!"

 

Is this relevant? Do I need to know it so I can react appropriately when I meet someone dressed as a hamster somewhere down the line or is she just rambling on about some TV show she likes? Maybe it's special pleading from a writer who likes to dress up as a hamster on weekends. I mean, I'm fine with that, if so. I'd just like to know.

I only heard all that hamster stuff because I randomly chose to go up to that girl and press F. And I only did that because I happened to land next to her when I jumped down off of a giant statue of a temple dog that had had its head replaced with a security camera. And I was only on top of the statue because I'd climbed up there to take a selfie next to a white cat that was up there already.

Of course, I'd only done that because I was taking selfies next to all the cats and dogs I passed. The cats roll over or stretch or skitter around chasing something only they can see. The dogs you can pet or tell to sit. You can feed them if you happen to be carrying a hambone, which so far I have not been.

I might one day, though, because I found the cooking station and the food vendor. I said yesterday the game has crafting and now I know what one of the crafts is: cookery. You can make food that gives various buffs to Rover and her pals. Since I've also seen ore nodes and wood I'm guessing there are more crafts than just cooking but so far I can't prove it from personal experience.

Changing topic, because why even pretend there's any through-line here, another thing I like very much about Wuthering Waves is the way it contextualizes routine RPG behaviors and thereby makes them feel less insane than usual. I alluded yesterday to the Magistrate's extreme youth for someone holding the position she occupies. I just took it for granted it was a genre trope but apparently it seems as strange to some of the citizens of the city as it would to us:

La La La ! Not listening!

What's more, if you take the middle dialog option, the one that puts the best possible slant on the Magistrate's position, Yanyyang comes back at you, suggesting you may be overly invested in not hearing anything bad about the town's senior administrator.

Administration is something of a theme here, too. The city is under military protection, if not direct control, and the need for documentation, permits and authorization comes up repeatedly. 

When you get to talk to the Magistrate, the most helpful thing she does is to give you a Pass that authorizes you to visit all parts of the region, many of which are currently off-limits due to the ongoing war. That explains how you can travel freely wherever you need to go but a later conversation with two gate guards, the first time you present your authorization, goes further, explaining the restrictions in place and the reasons for them, as well as the limitations on your own authorized movements (Spoiler: there are none!)

Cultural and societal explanations for game mechanics crop up repeatedly. I've seen that in other games but this goes further than most, sometimes subverting or over-turning expectations. For example, I can't remember seeing another companion NPC who not only can't always go adventuring with you because she has a job but who leaves in the middle of an adventure because she needs to start her shift. 

It didn't happen just once, either. It's almost like these people have lives that don't involve being at your beck and call 24/7.

I'm standing right here, guys...

I'm not suggesting Wuthering Waves is unique in any of these respects or even all that unusual but it does seem to be willing to go the extra mile and then some in making everything feel... I want to say realistic but I think the word I'm searching for is convincing.

It often surprises me just how much background detail games developers feel worth putting into their work. I wonder who they think sees it all and why they do it? 

My guess it's partly because it's expected of them but mostly because they get so caught up in their creations they find them endlessly fascinating. Whatever the reasons, this kind of world-building does contribute hugely to the sense of investment I feel in so many games when they're fresh and new. If they're there, I find myself getting drawn into the complexities but if  they're missing I feel loose, untethered, disconnected. Sometimes I end up wondering why I'm there at all and that's the kiss of death for engagement.

Good world-building is likely why I end up writing far more about games at their beginnings than through the middle or, especially, the end. The interesting stuff, to me, is often heavily front-loaded, not just in all the systems and mechanics that need to be understood but in the wealth of cultural cruft that collects around the big, starting cities and the opening stages of the storyline, the time in the game when all the main players need to be introduced and the stakes made clear.

Peace and quiet at last!

Later, things tend to thin. The storyline condenses, the narrative threads cohere. Regions and cities begin feel less vital, less complete. Things in general seem to be there more because they serve a purpose than that they simply exist. It's no longer a world but a gameworld.

At least, that's how it goes in the games that don't take off commercially. Three to five years of development and resources go into the base game, especially the opening stages, the sales window as it often needs to be, making those aspects feel so much more finished than what comes later, especially when diminishing funds and resources mitigate against maintaining the same level of effort after launch.

It does make starting new games a more appealing prospect than sticking with them, something that's often raised as a problem for the industry. Not so much for me, though. If they keep making games like this, I'll keep trying them, getting excited about them, writing about them, then dropping them when I've seen as much as I want. 

I've only been playing Wuthering Waves for a couple of days. I think I'll carry on for a while but for how long I wouldn't like to say. It's hard to predict. I only lasted about a month in Genshin Impact but I played Noah's Heart for over a year. Clearly quality isn't the only factor in play.

Thus far, though, the indications suggest I'll be sticking around for a while. And posting about what I find, no doubt. Always a bonus!

Wuthering Waves: Very First Impressions

One thing I did not plan on doing today was downloading a game I'd never heard of, then spending a couple of hours working my way through the introduction and tutorial. And yet here we are.

As far as I'm aware, I'd never heard of Wuthering Waves until I saw a passing mention of it at Time To Loot. Even so, as I said in a comment there, I'm not absolutely sure about that. I guess I might have heard about it somewhere before...

You'd think it would be easy enough to remember. The word "wuthering" doesn't turn up all that often outside of the works of Emily Brontë, after all. Speaking of which, I wonder if the working title for the game was Wuthering Depths? Depths... ocean... waves? 

Wait... I'm not in the Upside-Down am I?

Never mind. Wuthering Waves is what they went with and a very good name it is, too. A lot better than most, although I am sensing a trend here. 

This is an open-world RPG, following the trail broken by another game with an odd, intriguing, evocative name - Genshin Impact. These open-world RPGs do seem to have a penchant for left-field titles - Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, Noah's Heart... After far too many years of games called World of Whatever or Abstract Concept or Unfamiliar Placename, it's refreshing to be faced with something that sounds both poetic and intriguing. Something that could be the title of a book or a movie or even the name of a band. Something that doesn't sound like a video game.

Or maybe that's just me. It must have worked, anyway because, although Naithin wasn't all that complimentary about it, my immediate reaction was "Ooh! I'd like to try that!" So I did.

What would a train station be without pigeons? Clean.

After just a couple of hours, any impressions I have are going to be very unformed but when have I ever let that stop me? And anyway there are always certain conclusions you can draw at a very early stage, like whether the game feels like a professional production, if it looks and sounds good and if feels user-friendly and inviting.

Wuthering Waves ticks all of those boxes. It also ticks the ones marked "I've seen this before" and "Oh God, not that again!". Still, originality isn't obligatory in gaming or even always welcome. Give me a good clone over a bad original any day. 

Starting at the beginning, WW scores big points for convenience. Downloading and installing the game (It's something like an 18GB footprint.) took just a couple of clicks from the website. There was no time wasted registering an account. It accepts a Google login, which it doesn't even bother to confirm with an email to the Gmail address you give it. 

Ah, that old chestnut!

As for character creation, it's literally two clicks: one to decide if you're a boy or a girl (Or at least if you look more like the traditional idea of one or the other - it doesn't actually mention a specific gender identity.) and another to pick where in the world you'd like to send your ping. I chose Looks Like A Girl and Europe. The game told me what server I'd be playing on and that was that. 

Oh, and I had to choose a name. Let's not forget that part. Even if the game did. But more on that later.

From then on it's sit back and watch a movie for the best part of two hours. I exaggerate slightly for dramatic effect but only slightly. I've played a few games that like to think they're movies or, in this case, anime TV shows and Wuthering Waves is up there with the best of them. Alright, not FFXIV but that one has no competition when it comes to Hollywood pretensions.

Oh, it was that dream I had...

The set-up is extremely familiar. It's also one of the better versions of the well-known scenario I've seen. There's nothing much new about any of it, from the opening cut-scene with your character and a mysterious, angelic (Or is it demonic?) figure floating in space to the crash-landing in the sea and the waking up surrounded by strangers expressing concern over your state of health, strange appearance and apparent inability to remember anything, including your own name.

From there everything proceeds pretty much exactly as expected. The strangers quickly bond with you and become your new best friends, not to mention your fighting force, since this is one of those "Make a Team" gacha games. They take you through the basics, explaining the way the world works and what the dangers are, as you all head off to the nearby Big City for further explanations and indoctrination.

Bright light, big city.

So far, so predictable. It's at times like these that I wonder why people are so worried about games developers using AI to create quests and other content. If some gaming version of Watergate's Deep Throat appeared tomorrow to reveal that most games had been written by AI for years now, would anyone really be surprised?

So, why did I carry on, not only continuing to play the game but watching every cut-scene, listening to all the dialog and paying close attention to the story as it unfolded? Well, because it's not a bad story as these things go. 

Yes, it follows the formula, but the specific details were idiosyncratic enough to make me curious to know what was going on behind the scenes. The characters may be types but they're well-written , with sufficient personality and individuality to make them believable, at least in the context of an anime world, where no-one looks much over eighteen even if they turn out to be the Magistrate in charge of the city. 

Not in Kansas any more, then?

Some of the stickiness I experienced is down to the writing and some to the visuals, which are good. If you don't like anime-style art you definitely won't like this but if you're no worse than neutral to the look, Wuthering Waves is probably going at least going to strike you as quite pretty. The backgrounds in particular, for both the natural and built world, I found very pleasing to look at.

The thing that surprised me, after reading Naithin's observations, was the voice acting, about which he said "Quality of the voice recording is especially poor and distracting." I didn't notice anything like that at all. In terms of technical quality, it sounded just like every other game. No better, no worse. 

In the couple of hours I played, I heard maybe two or three slight glitches in the vocal delivery, always when I was trying to do something else while someone was still speaking. I've played plenty of games where things like that happened far more often. I certainly wouldn't have thought to comment on it if it hadn't been in my mind from what Naithin had written.

Stop me if I'm going too fast for you.

As for the voice acting itself, I thought it was above par. It's not mainstream TV quality acting but it's good enough for the kind of TV show the game very much resembles and considerably better than quite a few games I've played, particularly imports. 

Speaking of the game's transition from East to West, the translation is also very good. The English is idiomatic. It reads and sounds naturalistic, insofar as a world apparently run entirely by teenagers ever could. I did notice the very occasional phrase that didn't sound absolutely like something I could imagine a native English speaker using and there were a very few incidences of the spoken and written dialog not matching up exactly but by the benchmarks of this sort of thing it all felt close to exemplary.

One odd quirk of the translation that did make me smile was the name my new friends decided to give my character, which then quickly became what everyone called her, making the name I gave her completely redundant. I know the name they chose for her means someone who wanders around all over the place and therefore makes perfect sense for a mysterious visitor who arrives from who knows where on her way to some equally unspecified destination, but in my book "Rover" is something you call a dog, not a person.

Arf! Arf! Woof! Yip!

There's also a lot of jargon, mostly pseudo-scientific technical terms, not all of which are cogently explained but I actually liked that. I've read a lot of science fiction in my life and I'm entirely comfortable with characters who know a hell of a lot more about the science of their world than I do. I actually prefer it when these things don't get explained up front so I can figure out the meaning from context.

Of course, imported games often have much better translation and voice acting in the tutorial and very early stages so Naithin may just be warning of rougher waters to come. For now, though, I have no complaints about the sound or the voice-work at all.

Sticking with the writing, there were several moments that impressed me. One that sticks in my mind is the cut-scene where the Magistrate appears as a hologram to make a broadcast to the city about the very special stranger she's expecting. As well as saying how immensely important the unknown stranger is to the future of the people who live there, she invites whoever it might be to a personal audience with her at City Hall.

Everybody wants to be famous.

It's clear the stranger is going to be the player character but as the Magistrate was talking I was wondering what the heck the rest of the population of the city was going to make of it. It seemed like an open call to every wannabe and fame-junkie in the region to high-tail it to City Hall for the promised step-up to super-stardom.

I assumed that was just clumsy plotting until I got to City Hall and found a crowd of would-be Special Ones had gotten there before me. What I'd taken as a plot hole turned out to be a plot point. There's a whole schtick about it, which I found both ironic and amusing. That's teach me to underestimate the writers.

So, the game looks and sounds good and the story's interesting. What about the gameplay?

I'd like to be able to go into detail about that but after two hours, I really haven't seen enough of it to say. There's crafting, something I only know because I picked up some mats while I was jogging into town. I think there might be housing - the Magistrate told me I have an apartment in City Hall but I haven't seen it.

Fight? In these heels?

As for combat, I've had three or four fights in total, all which were pure tutorial fodder. I vaguely followed the instructions about all the special attacks and how to swap from one team member to another but it always felt as though just hammering LMB would have done just as well.

Naithin says combat in Wuthering Waves is "without question superior" to that in Genshin Impact. I would say, even from the little I've seen, it looks a lot more complicated. Whether that's a recommendation or not depends on how much you like fighting in these games, I guess. 

Personally, as has happened a number of times before, I'm getting the feeling I'd rather watch Wuthering Waves the TV show than play Wuthering Waves the video game. I spent two hours with it today in good part because it felt like that's what I was doing. 

I strongly suspect that as soon as the game becomes more about fighting and less about watching, I'll make my excuses and leave. Until then, though, I'm quite happy to sit back and see what happens next.

Here Comes Summer

It's the first Sunday of summer, by some reckonings anyway. I'm also on holiday or at least not working and it's quite possibly the finest day of the year, weather-wise. No surprise, like Wilhelm, I'm really not feeling it for sitting indoors writing a blog post.

Still, these things have to be done. No-one said blogging would be easy. Or fun. 

When it comes to knocking out quick posts I have a couple of go-tos. There's the ever-popular screenshot post, in which I grub through the files hoping to pull half a dozen shots I can pretend have something in common. Cobble together some kind of narrative, knock out a few, short linking paragraphs and boom! Done.

Or there's the good old thematic mix tape post. I love doing those even if no-one wants to read them. Or listen to them. Or watch the videos. They're even easier to throw together than screenshot posts, too. For a picture post I actually have to go through my files manually, so to speak. 

They none of them have meaningful file names, just whatever gibberish the games assigned them, so if I want, let's say, pictures of summer scenes, I have to go look for them. It might take me an hour to find half a dozen good ones.

If I want to put a music post together featuring songs about Summer, though, all I have to do is type "summer" into the search field in my Music Archive folder and voila! 

Guess what I just did?

Guess how many results I got?

Actually, fewer than I expected. Summer's such a common word for song titles, I thought there'd be more but there were only a couple of dozen. 

But that's fine! It's far more than I need. 

Except I've used some of them before. 

But that's fine! It just makes choosing which to use now that much easier.

I mean, they must all be good or I wouldn't have kept them, now would I?

Feels Like Summer - Childish Gambino

That's gotta be the opener. Where else would you start? And it's true. It does feel like summer! Probably because it is.

It was a long time before I realised Childish Gambino was the actor Donald Glover. Or is it the other way around? I have no idea which came first. I could go look it up but do I really care? 

Nope.

Can't Wait For Summer - Working

Luckily we don't have to because it's here! There are a lot of songs called "Can't Wait For Summer" or some variation on the theme. I'm placing a bet this is the most obscure of all. It's been on on YouTube for nearly ten years and it has fifty-five views. 

The song came out in 2014 but it sounds - to the note - as though it was recorded in 1986. If anyone ever wants to start up a Shop Assistants tribute band they could do worse than get in touch with these guys.

Summer Love - Sherbet

Speaking of tribute acts... 

One of the things that fascinated me, when I first began to dig back into the archives that internet access opened up for me, was the way countries around the world kicked up their own versions of bands and scenes and movements. Heavy, glam, new wave, disco, you name it, someone in France or Brazil or Japan was doing it too.

Australia, though, was in a league of its own when it came to cloning popular culture. In the sixties and seventies, right into the eighties, it was just too far away for most bands to visit, let alone tour, and even vinyl didn't always make it down under. The local market was wide open for homegrown versions of whoever or whatever was hot in the UK or the USA.

Without YouTube, I'd never have heard of Sherbet, far less heard them - or seen them. And neither, I'll wager, would you. 

I'll just leave that thought hanging...

Summer Job - Art Brut

Skip the long-ass introduction from the verbose guy from KEXP. The song, when it arrives, slaps. No-one says that any more do they? Well, I bet they did when this was new, back in 2010. 

Art Brut are still going. They seem quite prophetic now.

Summertime Sadness 

 Lana del Rey vs Cedric Gervais

Giving a downbeat, depressive epic about suicidal ideation an Ibiza rave remix ought to have been a disaster. 176 million views on YouTube suggest not.

I probably ought to hate it but if I have a complaint it's that it doesn't last nearly long enough.

Lana does like summer. Could have had Summer Bummer or Summertime or Summer Wine or even Summer of Sam, if Summer of Sam was on YouTube, which it is not. I could upload it but I don't want the hassle.

Summer Dress - July Talk

What's he saying in the chorus? It sounds like "She'll buy me a little blow". Surely that can't be right?

Summer Come Back - The Budgies

It has to be said, there a lot of tweepop songs about Summer. This might be the twee-est.

About You (Must Be Summer Soon) 

Bad Little Kittens

Then again, the competition is fierce.

I think we might need something a little more substantial to finish with. How about something by the All Girl Summer Fun Band? No, they're quite twee, too. Umm... Summer Camp? Nope. Fuzzed-up dream pop is just twee's cooler cousin. Still doesn't go hard enough.

I know!

Pizza or Mac - Summer Whales

Okay, you got me. That's just Japanese twee. I don't think I have anything left that isn't some stripe of C86-inspired shambling. 

And as you may have noticed, I've run out of songs about summer. I'm down to bands with the word summer in their name now. 

I guess we're done.

Time to go outside and get some sunshine.