The monsoon came early this year. A storm swept through town in June and besieged the walls of my house, all day and throughout the night. Lashing gales and crashing rain assaulted the storm shutters. The clamor heightened around two in the morning; I was jolted from sleep then, disoriented and tangled in covers, not certain in which bed I lay, halfway between waking and dreaming. The rain smashed against the window just above my head. The gales screamed around me.

That was when I heard the woman. Through the window across the room, calling from the house’s back door:

“Please! Let me in! Let me in!”

In my dazed and unalert state I dismissed the voice as a hallucination. The hourglass of my consciousness drained back into reality, but for a long time I thought, surely, no one could be there.

But I heard the security gate bang. I heard the woman scream again, voice less distinct. I stirred, realizing that someone was surely in the yard, and looked out the window to see.

It was too dark. The rain came down hard, and rain fogged the glass. I went around to the front door and flicked on the lights—to let the woman in, to check if she were real.

No one was outside. The woman was gone.

In that state of half-slumber, roused by the storm, I really had heard a woman begging to be let in. I remember her voice. The sound was “real,” in the sense that any noise descrambled by our minds is “real.” But it is obvious in retrospect that it was an auditory hallucination, caused by a tired mind’s misinterpretation of the keening wind outside my windows.

It was a very dark and very stormy night. Without powerful lights mounted outside the door, I never would have been able to see, without venturing into the rain, that there was no one outside. Perhaps I would not have been brave enough to open the door without the assurance that it was safe to do so. Then how could I have been certain that the woman hadn’t been real?

Consider this same encounter in the year 1800. In the dead of night, during a long storm, a woman screams for help beyond my window. At first I dismiss it for a trick of the mind, but when the screams persist, I investigate.

I see no woman through the glass. But it’s challenging to tell. At most I might have an oil lantern to light my way, but even so much as a candle would be difficult to ignite in the dark without a pre-existing flame. The shadows around me are viscous at night. I am keenly aware that I am a diurnal creature, acting in a time God did not intend for me.

The woman’s screams have stopped. I hear only the wind. But I still cannot be certain she is gone. I do not know that the woman was a hallucination. I am too afraid to open the door, and so return, warily, to bed.

When I relate this story to my friends the next day, each have had similar experiences. They have never seen the woman calling for help during storms, but neither have they seen with some clear source of light that she is false. Over time, as we tell these stories, we propose explanations. Perhaps there really is a woman whose spirit haunts our village. We call her Screaming Susan and speculate that she was a young girl thrown out from her father’s home during a terrible storm. No stranger let her in, and she drowned in the rain. Now she returns at night to relive those final moments. One man says he thinks he caught a glimpse of her once, through his window. New details are added over time.

In this way, a ghost story is born. At its heart is an element of truth, and the need to understand.

This story seems ridiculous in the modern day. Ghosts are not real. They are not a very good explanation for anything. But for almost all of human history, belief in the supernatural has been completely ubiquitous. Today we stand atop a corpus of enlightenment that seeks to deny the existence of the otherworldly, but it is only because I have the language to understand what an “auditory hallucination” is that I can explain away an obvious apparition, rather than to say it was a ghost or a monster or a message from the gods as my ancestors might have.

But I don’t think the Enlightenment is what killed the visceral belief in the paranormal that pervaded the past. Reading folklore today, when I consider what it must have been like to live in the stories of monsters and demons, I think it was humanity’s literal enlightenment that spelled the end for a world of magic and monsters.

For many months, rats infested my ceiling. You would not believe how loud these tiny aberrations were. Anyone who heard them would have sworn homeless men were holding a fiesta in the walls. For weeks I had no clue what they were, until I set up a trail cam and caught the fuckers running around my kitchen late at night.

Without that trail cam, I wouldn’t have thought they were rats. I would have thought my house was haunted.

This ancient house I live in is becursed by strange sounds. A rapping, tapping noise still sometimes comes from the kitchen. Noises bang out from the yard and basement. The walls groan like old men rising from their chairs. More than once I have sworn that a burglar has broken in, because some strange noise pounded from one room or another.

But always I turn the light on, and I see that no one is there. No one and nothing. If I go outside with a flashlight I might realize that the banging from outside has, somehow, despite its volume, been caused by a rabbit stuck in my fence.

The revolution in technology since the end of the 1800s has completely changed how we live. We all know that the Internet didn’t exist before the 1980s, or that people rode horses and drove carriages before 1900. No one forgets that airplanes didn’t exist before the last century. As a Type 1 diabetic, I am keenly aware that I would be dead many times over had I lived any time before 1922.

But how often do you consider that light was a luxury before the invention of matches? It often comes up in my novels. In the book I’m currently writing, the most useful spell any character can know is one of flame or illumination—to have a flashlight powered by your voice, when contesting with the darkness. Yet this is no magic in the modern day. It’s something we take entirely for granted.

But before friction matches, there was no easy way to light your surroundings, even with a candle. A hearth had to be tended constantly. Shadow was the endless enemy. Any task at all at night was challenging. The lightbulb fundamentally changed humanity’s relationship with day and night. In so doing, it also changed our relationship with the supernatural.

We have all had cameras and flashlights in our pockets for twenty years. In that time we have learned that there is nothing hidden in the shadows of Earth. No UFOs, no monsters beyond men, and no ghosts. When something happens in the dark, we can shine light on it. Each ray from a flashlight is a tiny, instantaneous exorcism. We are so numb to this miracle that it has become part of our instinct; when I worked in a haunted house last year, I realized that nearly every visitor would pull out his or her flashlight the moment he entered complete darkness—even voluntarily.

Of course, using your flashlight in a haunted house ruins the experience, as well as blinding the actors. But spoiling the horror is just the point. As light tears the horror from the carnival ride, so too does it tear the horror from life. An illuminated world is one where ghosts and monsters cannot exist.

I don’t believe in ghosts. There are no cryptids I think might be real. But the past was a dark and scary place, full of strange sounds and unknowable mysteries. If I’d had to live there, by the light of candles and lanterns, even in the Age of Enlightenment, I think I would have been just as superstitious as anyone else. And I think you would have been, too.

Maybe the thesis of this post is so obvious it goes without saying, but I couldn’t get it out of my head once it had occurred to me. For some reason, though I never really intended it to be found by anyone, this blog has begun receiving a fairly large number of visitors each month. I’ve been preoccupied with other writing projects and don’t have much interest in pop culture anymore. But I might start updating this blog more regularly, depending on how I feel. No promises.

Suno is an AI tool that lets users generate music in two-minute chunks. Describe the kind of song you want to hear and receive it within seconds. Like most AI services, it can be extensively trialed for free: enter any prompt and make the music happen. I’ve had over 300 tokens since I started using it last year and have come nowhere close to exhausting them, though they appear to have recently locked the more advanced models behind a paywall.

I enjoy music. I listen to a lot of it. But I don’t know anything about how it works. I can’t play any instruments, can’t read sheet music, and can barely sing. I could never write a song.

This makes Suno an arcane and mysterious platform to me. It does something that I cannot do myself. Though AI image generation is functionally similar, I can conceive of myself drawing a picture: I cannot even imagine what it would be like to write a song.

Now I can. It turns out it’s as easy as writing, “A 1980s New Wave hit about buying a houseboat.” Or, “A 1920s musical number, low bass, rhyming chorus, angelic choir background.”

If you are curious what Suno might generate as a response to the latter prompt, you can give it a listen here:

Suno is extraordinary. Audio quality issues aside, which are mostly resolved in newer models I don’t have access to, it seems to understand rhythm as well as most human musicians. What it produces is often legitimately catchy, and it does this in seconds. Perhaps all the world can be reduced to mathematics; and what is music but a mathematical expression of noise? Maybe it’s no surprise that computers can quantify melodies so easily.

I spent the better part of a day turning Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells” into a song. It struck me in college that the poem had an intensely lyrical quality, and I’d wanted a suitably gothic musical arrangement for it ever since. I even considered composing one myself at one point (though I was swiftly defeated).

No longer. Here, in just a few hours, I had something that precisely matched what I had imagined those years ago. It is rhythmically varied, sonically interesting, and matches my taste in music precisely. Though most of what I’ve generated on Suno isn’t very compelling, I’ve had “The Bells” on repeat for the last three days. I like it. It’s a song tailored specifically for me. I like it not just for AI, but as a real song. It could be better—but it’s the closest thing that exists to what I want to listen to. So I listen.

I won’t share “The Bells” here. AI “art” works because it can be tailored for the individual, generated in seconds or hours. It isn’t tailored for you, and you probably won’t appreciate it. This is why posting your Midjourney images or ChatGPT photos to Pinterest is such a waste of time. These things work because they are bespoke, not because they are inherently high quality. Were I to upload “The Bells” here, it would surely be nothing more than cheaply generated slop to most strangers. But to me, it’s the song I’ve always wanted.

The End of Culture

Now imagine a future where everything is “The Bells.” You have an idea for a book you’d like to read. You ask your preferred LLM to generate it. Within moments you have a novel tailored to your every preference, and though it might not be flawless, might not be Literature, it is good enough to read like any book off the shelf at Barnes & Noble. Except it is your favorite book, because it has everything you know you like.

You’re feeling like listening to something new. You could open up Spotify. Or you can have Suno take a look at your preferences and generate a few bangers that match precisely what you’ve had on repeat all month.

You have a game you’d like to play. GameGPT makes it for you instantly. It has read your angry Internet blog and knows exactly what you do and don’t like. It is the best game you have ever played. Its small deficiencies are compensated for by the sheer fun you have seeing your old ideas come to life.

This future has no vision. It is a world in which no one is ever challenged or confronted by anything uncomfortable. Ideas are no longer transmitted between humans, and no one ever experiences anything beyond the filters of their AI tools. You will never be surprised. You will never encounter anything new.

In this world, nothing ties groups together. You have nothing to talk to your coworkers about. There are no metaphors that make sense to your whole family at the dinner table. The bonds of society have broken down. Culture itself has ceased to exist. There is only the Machine, and the Individual.

This is the future of AI entertainment.

“The Bells” is a great song. I legitimately enjoy listening to it. But I can’t help but see the far-reaching consequences of a technology that creates culture fundamentally tailored to people, rather than populations. What will the civilization enamored with these tools produce? What will it be remembered for? And what will happen to the people within it?

For those who insist AI will never raise to a level at which it competes with human-produced art, because the AI lacks a soul or some similar nonsense, I would say that Suno has already, in its infancy, proved you resoundingly wrong. Computers can and do understand what makes music work. They will only get better at it. They do not need a “soul” for this. And if music can be written by the machine, so can books, games, and movies. It’s just a matter of time.

Maybe I’m being melodramatic. But I believe this truly could be the end of culture as we know it. We have already experienced the breakdown of society with the decline of broadcast entertainment, the rise of the Internet, and the digital age. AI will kick the process into superoverdrive. Yet what is to be done?

AI is here to stay. There’s no stopping it. The only question is who gets access to it. For my part, I think that’s better you and me than someone else.

My favorite genre of game, the so-called 'Immersive Simulation,' has been much discussed on this blog. But I've never taken the time to express what this vague descriptive actually means to me, as a critic, and as such have found it hardly any more useful as a term in my toolbox than the non-existent literal meaning of those two words together. It's time to rectify that fact.

Definition

An ImSim is a narrative-heavy, systems-driven, non-linear, RPG-ish first person shooter/stealth game. Most of these qualifiers are negotiable, but the unifying key is systems-driven. ImSims are about gameplay--they emphasize skill tree development, upgrades, gadgets, exploration, and the creation of a personally tailored toolset to overcome obstacles. In this sense it isn't a genre so much as it is a philosophy, and like any philosophy, elements of its theses can be taken from the whole and incorporated piecemeal elsewhere.

You might also know ImSims as games where there are audiologs to pick up while wandering around claustrophobic environments. Many years ago this might have been enough to get the point across, but like with most other kinds of games, ImSims have generically diffused throughout the medium. You'll find bits and pieces of their design philosophy sprinkled throughout the games industry as of 2023.

Examples

The ImSim exists on a spectrum. An ImSim is frequently, but not always, a cRPG. It's usually, but not always, first person. It generally, but not exclusively, features stealth systems. I view the genre as consisting of the following categories, broken down by franchise:

True Immersive Simulations

• Prey

• System Shock

The true ImSim is, in my opinion, an exclusive category. It consists only of Prey (2017) and System Shock 2 (1999). These games fill all criteria listed above, but additionally are true open worlds: you always have access to the entire map, at any given time--although the individual areas need to be unlocked. Both are narrative focused, with special effort taken to integrate systems and storytelling. Both feature stealth, audio logs, and unguided gameplay; both encourage experimentation and reward creativity; and both have significant focus on character development mechanics. Neither are quite roleplaying games, but they're very close.

Prey is the ultimate, pure, true expression of the ImSim, thanks to Raphael Colantonio's genius systems, Arkane's well-honed level design talents, and Chris Avellone's stupendous narrative design. There are no cutscenes and no QTEs: only systems, audiologs, and freedom.

Effective Immersive Simulations

• Deus Ex

• Dishonored

• Blood West

• Thief

The effective ImSim consists of these four franchises, and perhaps a few others. What separates them from the true immersive simulation is the lack of an overworld, with the maps instead being hub-based. It's an important distinction, especially with Thief and Dishonored, which are in fact mission-based games. But it's also a minor one.

What distinguishes these games into their own genre is their shared emphasis on non-linearity. ImSims do not have QTEs. They rarely have setpiece action. They generally place the player in an environment and tell him to go wild. Despite vast differences in setting and tone, they feel conspicuously similar to each other for this shared philosophy.

cRPG Immersive Simulations

• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

• Arx Fatalis

• Weird West

It can occasionally be challenging to draw the line between cRPG and ImSim. The obvious reason is that there is no clear line. Still, these three games above are what I would consider generally matching the qualifications to be considered Immersive Sims, but are decidedly slanted toward roleplaying game elements. Bloodlines has a heavy narrative focus, with an emphasis on dialogue trees, but is in style and feeling pure ImSim. Arx Fatalis is inscrutable due to being old and shit, but possesses the same general qualities as even the true ImSims. Weird West fails in its systems focus too much to be considered a real ImSim, but was clearly intended as a game more like Prey.

There is no contradiction. A cRPG--like Deus Ex-- can be an ImSim in philosophy.

Immersive Simulation-likes

• BioShock

• Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

• Atomic Heart

• Alien: Isolation

The Immersive Simulation like is a development that began with Dark Messiah and exploded with BioShock. These games are often referred to as ImSims, and may even be marketed as such (BioShock), but tend to be more linear, more action focused, and less systems-driven than the others listed above.

Oftentimes their similarities to real ImSims are superficial, as in BioShock. While BioShock does have character building, and it does have some minor systems-driven interactions, it's also a mostly-linear action game. Only a few sections of the first game are open to any meaningful extent. Most of its ImSim feel comes from the environment, the atmosphere, the themes of identity and agency, and the fact that there are audiologs everywhere. Infinite is closer to ImSim, but it's similarly too linear and action focused to be considered a true member of the genrr.

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is systems-driven--brilliantly so. But while its levels are open, they're also linear. There are no hubs, and there's only one solution to navigation and environmental puzzles.

Atomic Heart's ImSim inspirations are less worn on its sleeve and more blared in the player's face with a spotlight. It succeeds as an ImSim in ludonarrative consonance and open-ended gameplay, which includes stealth, but fails in narrative and level linearity. There are way too many cutscenes, way too many QTEs and puzzles, and far too few interactions between guns, the environment, and abilities for it to truly qualify. You can read more about my thoughts on this question in my review.

Alien: Isolation is a strange exception. It fits every ImSim qualifier, important and superficial, with enough style to qualify as an additional True Immersive Simulation, as per my definition. But while it's a mostly systems-driven game, it lacks the openness of a real ImSim--not in its environment, which is a rival to Prey's, but in its gameplay. In Prey there are no Typhon who are conveniently invulnerable for no clear reason. But the alien in Isolation is arbitrarily immune to shotguns and revolvers, and objectives are never defined by the player: instead, you're told what to do and where to go, and most are accomplished in linear ways.

I made it down to the reactor core in Prey by carefully constructing a gymnasium of Gloo, which I could scale up and down in order to bypass patrolling Typhon. There was really no other way to do it, as I was playing on Nightmare difficulty, while also doing my No Needles powerless run. No designer ever contemplated a player being insane enough to spend an hour doing this--but the systems were robust enough to allow me to anyway.

Isolation has nothing analogous to this. For that reason I relegate it to the ImSim-like category.

Immersive Simulation-inspired

• Fallout (3, 4, New Vegas)

• Dead Space (2023)

• Deathloop

Many more examples abound, but for brevity's sake I'll restrict myself.

I believe it's worth discussing the 3D Fallout games as semi-ImSims. Even at their worst, Bethesda's two FO titles are non-linear, somewhat systems-driven, generally character-malleable RPGs in which you can solve various problems with differing solutions ('differing' meaning genocide, usually). They're also first person shooters with heavy exploration emphasis. I wouldn't call them ImSims--that isn't their intention. But they have much in common thematically with the other games discussed here.

The same is true for New Vegas, maybe even truer, but in its case I think the design is shifted so far toward the sandbox cRPG that it no longer qualifies even as semi-ImSim inspired. New Vegas isn't an immersive sim; it's Fallout 2 in 3D.

Dead Space (2023), and to a lesser extent the original, is also taking cues from the proper immersive sims. There are audiologs everywhere, and the map is open. Exploration is important, care has been taken to creative ludonarrative consonance in the upgrade schemes, atmosphere is vital, and there are numerous sandbox-like systems--such as tearing limbs off necromorphs to use as weapons--that shift the balance of the gameplay toward the systems-driven. It loses points for being in third person, having a strong focus on a linear story, and generally lacking in solutions to problems that haven't been intended by any level designer.

As for Deathloop--I'm still not sure what to make of it. It seems to be trying for immersive simulation, but it doesn't do a very good job.

Conclusion

To call a game an 'immersive sim' is simply to say it excels in the gameplay version of Unconstraint. As New Vegas permits the player to take any path to advance the narrative, so too does Prey allow the player to use any tool to overcome any obstacle. Something blocking your path? You could go around, or buy a neuromod to lift it out of the way, or throw a recycler charge and call it done. You might not be able to overcome any problem with any tool--just as how you cannot literally take any path to the Battle of Hoover Dam in New Vegas--but you can overcome most problems with many tools.

And at its core, that's what an ImSim is to me. It's a game where you look at a problem and solve it however you see fit. Not in the way that has been set out for you by the designers, but in the way that your brain has decided makes the most sense. Be that stealth, magic, combat, or some strange gadget, or all combined, it always comes back to you in the end. This makes them the precise opposite of puzzle games, and explains why I'll always love them so much.

Since publishing my review, I've been replaying Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters on ironman mode, on Hard. It's been a lot of fun. I've learned new strategies, figured out how to stack AP via executions, found better uses for the ranged Purgator. Fifteen more hours flew by. In that time I've also strongly recommended the game to several friends and written a glowing Steam review.

Yet I awoke this morning to see the new patch was deployed. A number of bugfixes, plus the removal of the stupid autopause feature whenever you tab out. Great! Daemonhunters just keeps getting better! I loaded the game up, started a mission, and...

Realized then what I hadn't glancing at the notes, which were the multitude of balance changes.

Deploy Nerf Guns

I mentioned in my review that I was worried the developers wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to 'balance' the game retroactively, most particularly in regards to nerfing the Interceptor + Justicar combo. So they have. In their own words:

We have made a number of balance changes to resolve a couple of exploits which affected the intended use of certain game mechanics. We are continuing to monitor feedback and performance to ensure that difficulty levels are tactically challenging but fair.

"Exploits," huh? Apparently the developers consider "exploits" to include the fact that Interceptors exist, that the Honor the Chapter ability on Justicars exists, that there were weapons that were good, and that it was possible to stun normal enemies before killing them outright. These "exploits" have been thankfully rectified, and now anyone who has specialized into the rather reasonable assumption that using the abilities on their weapons or the abilities on their Knights was how the game was intended to be played--well, you're going to have to start over and find a new strategy. Good luck using Honor the Chapter and Teleport Strike when both cost 4WP and you can never regain more than 1WP per turn.

Take that, exploiter!

Beyond class-specific changes, the cadence of the gameplay feels completely changed. Encounters last longer. Executions are much harder to land (actually I didn't manage to land any in the two missions I played). Afflictions matter more. Everything is slowed down. The core experience has been significantly altered, all in the name of "balance."

I would like to remind everyone at this junction that Daemonhunters is a singleplayer only game. Why are there balance patches for a singleplayer only game? Bugfixes, okay. Changes to some mechanics that nobody likes, maybe. But I specified--and plenty of other players had as well--that the game was fun precisely because of how outrageously powerful Interceptors and Justicars could be. This is a game about playing transhuman supersoldiers in power armor with magic who are immortal and fight demons, in case you've forgotten. Why are these characters being nerfed into the ground? Why is this SINGLEPLAYER, OFFLINE GAME that I paid $55 for being permanently changed, against my will, into something else, retroactively? I feel like my Steam account is being molested.

Stop it. Stop fucking my library. Take your hands off or I'm calling the cops.

Perhaps Complex Games felt the game was too easy on harder difficulties. I ask: who cares? Are people enjoying the experience? If the answer is yes, why would you increase the difficulty? What's the logic? If the developers think the game is too easy, that's excellent data for their sequel, or an expansion pack, or even a new game mode. But it isn't any justification for fisting the current experience out of existence--the experience we paid for.

I need to stress that this was one of my fundamental concerns about Daemonhunters when I wrote my review, as I realized the balance was imperfect--even though the game itself was brilliantly enjoyable. A title with an uneven experience is tremendously vulnerable to small shocks introduced via schizophrenic developers who are insistent that players are "exploiting" their systems because they've found an enjoyable, optimal experience for higher difficulties. More competently designed games like XCOM are less prone to this complete destabilization.

Yet I would point out that even the hilariously overpowered combination of the Chosen sniper and Death From Above on the Sharpshooter was never nerfed in XCOM 2. Do you know why? BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING AWESOME. You earn it, you play with it, and you love it. It's fun. It's the sort of thing that makes you want to come back for more. The Interceptor was just the same way in Daemonhunters.

But not anymore. At least the game is harder, though, right?

Enough

I used to love Heroes of the Storm. I'd play with my internet friends for hours every day after class in high school. My favorite hero was Sylvanas. But one day, Blizzard announced Sylvanas was too overpowered. They decreed that she would receive a rework. Just like that she was completely changed, her playstyle removed, turned into something else entirely.

Old Sylvanas is gone forever. I'll never get her back. I've hardly played HotS since.

I'm still pissed off about this. I'll never forgive Blizzard. But it was true that Sylv was OP (and practically braindead to play, which is why I liked her). Some argument existed that she needed to be reworked, considering that HotS is a competitive-only online game.

Singleplayer and cooperative games are not competitive. They do not need to be balanced. They only need to be fun and engaging. I know that among many in game criticism circles the 'f-u-n' word is tantamount to a swear, far worse than any number of other words that start with 'f,' but I maintain that it's tremendously valuable in so far that games exist to provoke feelings. Feelings are subjective, and nothing is more subjective than fun. Yet when fun is achieved--is there anything better?

Unless something is abjectly broken, a singleplayer experience should never receive a balance patch. Ever. If people are utilizing some "exploit," who cares? If the game is too easy, who cares? Better luck next time. Try again. Stop fucking with the established experience.

It's bad enough that we have to deal with online experiences that are continually shifting, that can be yanked out from under us at any point. But I refuse to accept that this is something we must accept for singleplayer games too. When I buy a game, I want the game. Stop fucking with it. Leave it as it is. Fix bugs, fine. Add content, maybe. Produce expansions and sequels, sure. But don't change what's already there. I paid for it. Keep your goddamn hands off of what I paid for.

No doubt future patches will come for Daemonhunters. Over the months that follow some less idiotic compromise will be reached by the developers and the game will be left in a decent state re: balance. But I don't actually care. They've shown their hands. An extraordinarily important principle has been violated and I can never trust Complex Games again. If they can ruin the Interceptor with a patch, what else can they do? What else will they do? And what will other developers do?

Enough. Don't put up with it. The ship has sailed on live service games being fucked over with patches, but I won't let them get away with molesting singleplayer experiences too out of concerns for "balance." Write a bad review on Steam. Tell them you won't put up with it. Demand they remove their hands from your anus. Otherwise there will be no end to this idiocy.

H1

Consider the following:

LF1M DPS H SH/SHH/BF/BM/OHF

This sentence is constructed entirely out of initialisms. Anyone who has played World of Warcraft will likely be able to decipher it; for the rest of us, it has no meaning. In English it would read:

Looking for one more damage per second for Heroic dungeons, we're running either Sethekk Halls, Shattered…

Read more

I decided to stop by the town of Megaton while on the road to find my father. Megaton was built around an enormous undetonated nuclear bomb for some reason--hence the name--and as I visited the local saloon, this bomb always remained in view.

At the saloon a man of dubious morality asked me to rig this bomb to explode, in an effort to clear land for a new hut development tract. He would pay me a few hundred caps for the job, which, destitute as I was, was a tempting offer.

But Jesus is my middle name, so I accepted his offer and then immediately reported the suspicious character to the town sheriff. Then, in an act of valiant selfless heroism, I permanently disarmed the bomb. It only took 25 Explosives skill. Since this was my default Explosives one wonders how it took 200 years for someone to click the "disarm" prompt. In any case, the matter was resolved. Megaton was saved, and all because of my awesomeness.

This quest is not remarkable. It is good by Fallout standards and excellent by Bethesda standards, but it's simple and straightforward. Nearly everyone who plays Fallout 3 will have an analogous experience while exploring Megaton. The events merit no further discussion.

But something interesting happened next. An hour or so later, as I wandered my way toward the ruins of D.C., I heard the voice of Three Dog--the post-apocalyptic radio jockey--over my Pip-Boy:

Got some great news out of the town of Megaton. Turns out that live atomic bomb in the town's center has finally been deep-sixed for good. The town's sheriff, one Lucas Simms, commissioned the one, the only lone wanderer from Vault 101 to disarm the nasty nuke, and the kid delivered. Hey, nice work 101. Next time you're in the neighborhood, pop into the studio. Ol' Three Dog's toaster's been on the fritz.

Hey wait, that's me! Three Dog is talking about me! The game noticed what I did!

Throughout all of Fallout 3, the writers use Three Dog to report the player's various activities. He'll comment on your karma level, whether you were nice or mean to the denizens of the Capital Wasteland, and make you feel like you're making a difference. In a word, he gives you a real sense of agency--like your decisions matter Like the world is more than a video game.

3 isn't as good at being a Fallout game as the Black Isle/Obsidian entries, although it does make a good effort. There are too many invulnerable NPCs and the main quest is too linear. But what it does far better than any other title in the franchise is cultivate this sense of agency. Three Dog is incredible as a tool in the game's narrative design. He's one way the game keeps you from acting erratically, from slaughtering a town because you had a bad day at work, from doing the evil thing just because the people of Megaton are annoying. He's looking over your shoulder. He's watching. He reminds you that what you decide will have consequences. And if you give in to your genocidal desires, you won't get away with it scot-free. Any time you tune into Galaxy New Radio, Three Dog will remind you of your depravity. Forever.

This isn't the only way the game reinforces player agency. As indicated above I played Wasteland Jesus and never did anything even remotely morally questionable (aside from killing hundreds of people--but they were all bad!). The game rightfully bequeathed upon me the title of Messiah. But far beyond giving me a fancy title in the Data tab of my character menu, people noticed my actions. NPCs commented on how awesome I was. Paladins in the Brotherhood of Steel told me how I honored them with my presence. You know what? They were right! I did honor them with my presence! It's about time someone noticed!

Fallout 3, more than perhaps any other RPG that I'm aware of, truly seems to care about the decisions you make. The number of decisions available is more constrained than New Vegas, true, but those decisions matter more--or, at least, they feel like they matter more. The reality is that agency is always an illusion in games, so feeling is hugely important. It sucks when you kill Caesar and no one in the Legion seems to notice. Similarly, it rocks when you blow up Megaton and everyone reacts. This is small relative to the entire story, but it's what makes or breaks an RPG all about player decisions.

Replaying 3 for the first time in a decade, I can say it does hold up when compared to the other titles. It is, without any question, Bethesda's best game. We can laugh all we want about how anemic Colonel Autumn is as an antagonist, especially compared to Frank Horrigan or The Master, or that it's lame the Enclave is back for some reason, but delving only a tad deeper it's clear that 3 is a game with excellent narrative design. The writing varies, but this attention to player agency is nothing short of brilliant. It's honestly hard to believe that the same company that brought us "arrow to the knee" and "that won't be necessary" also came up with Three Dog. But they did, and credit goes where credit is due.

Good work, Bethesda. You made a great game.

When I was young I divided the games I played into two categories: the ones where I could kill everyone (including my friends) like Halo: Combat Evolved and Fallout; and the ones where I could only kill people when I was allowed to kill them (including my enemies), like Knights of the Old Republic and Metal Gear Solid. My preference was for the former. To this day I still try to murder everyone I come across in video games, just to see if the designers will let me get away with it.

These categories applied to "narrative games," specifically cRPGs, I think of this today as the Constrained versus the Unconstrained narrative: the sandbox, where agency rules; or the highway, where any path will lead to Rome. As a child I would have instead called this the BioWare vs. Obsidian dilemma, and although unnecessarily restrictive categories, these two developers provide the most useful examples for analyzing how and why differing RPGs do what they've set out to do.

A Case Study

Both Fallout 2 and Dragon Age: Origins have clear end-points: defeat the Enclave and slay the Archedemon, respectively. These two games are both cRPGs and generally considered to be of the same genre, and are two of the mostly highly regarded games in that genre. But their approaches to reaching this end-point could not be more different. They are galaxies apart.

BioWare

No matter what decisions the player makes throughout the course of Origins, the overall journey will remain the same. Every playthrough hits the same beats, outside of the prologue, even if the content of those beats varies wildly. The player will go to Redcliffe, to Orzammar, to the Circle of Magi, and to the Elves, before ultimately heading to the Landsmeet. The order can vary, but each event must occur. This is the Constrained philosophy of narrative design.

The Constrained philosophy is plot-driven and character-focused. It is about telling a specific story, rather than allowing the player to tell his own story. Every game is necessarily constrained to a certain degree, as narrative games are finite. True unconstrained design is only possible in tabletop RPGs. What I refer to here is intent rather than the objectively concrete.

Origins is unconstrained in a number of ways. Choices feel as though they matter. The player is often permitted to make decisions that feel spontaneous and change the outcome of the narrative significantly, such as refusing the Dark Ritual and dying for it. But he can only reach the end of the game by following the course set out by the designers. He cannot beat Origins without recruiting every faction first.

Obsidian

In Fallout 2, the player's mission is to retrieve the GECK. The game does not care how he does this. It does not tell him how to do this. The journey's course is irrelevant: it is his decision, as a player, how to reach the end of the game. When it's revealed that the GECK doesn't matter because Arroyo has been destroyed, the philosophy of the design still hasn't changed. The player's goal has shifted toward the Enclave, but how he goes about defeating the Enclave is up to him.

The end of Fallout 2 is still linear. As far as I know there's only one way to get the credits to roll. It is constrained in this sense. But everything between the beginning of the game and the final sequence is completely optional. The player could kill everyone, or he could speedrun to the tanker; it makes no difference to the game at large (although some courses are obviously more optimal than others).

The Unconstrained philosophy is player-driven and setting-focused. It is about sandboxes and emergent storytelling, rather than characters or well-paced stories. Fallout epitomizes the Unconstrained philosophy, even the less-than-spectacular Bethesda titles. These games possess constrained components via their individual quests, but in general allow players to solve problems in a broad variety of ways--including genocide.

Fallout 2's options for solving the Gecko powerplant problem are constrained. There are only a handful of solutions. Yet these on-paper constrained solutions work hard to feel like they're the only solutions that make sense for this given problem. And if the player doesn't feel like repairing the reactor, he can opt to kill everyone instead--at any point, whenever he desires. In fact he can do this to solve any quest and any problem at any point in the game. In summary, the player can beat Fallout 2 without ever bothering with any narrative, listening to any dialogue, or solving anyone else's problems. He does have to hit a number of beats along the way, but these are most often presented as necessary steps: of course the PC needs to get a boat before he can get to an off-shore oil rig. The best Unconstrained RPGs do this elegantly, so that the player never notices.

Again, it must be stressed that even Fallout: New Vegas, which is without doubt the most Unconstrained game ever made, still possesses a finite amount of content. It cannot be entirely reactive. This is an impossibility. But when contrasted with the Constrained philosophy, the differences become clearer: Dragon Age: Origins does not explain to the player why he cannot commit genocide to solve the problems of the dwarves in Orzammar. In some cases the game permits this approach, as with the Circle of Magi and the elf curse questline, but these actions all require permission first and foremost. There may indeed be implicit reasons why killing Lord Harrowmont is not a valid solution to the dwarf succession crisis, but there is no objective reason in the mechanics why the player isn't allowed to kill all of the dwarfs, as he could in a Fallout game.

The reasons are, of course, obvious. Killing the dwarfs does not necessarily lead to an alliance being formed. Failing to achieve an alliance would too radically alter the game's outcome and change the story the writers have set out to tell. Therefore it is not a valid option.

Because Origins is a roleplaying game in which we're asked to assume the role of a Gray Warden, and thus required to roleplay in ways that fit the character, we don't necessarily notice that there are certain actions we are forbidden to take, even if said actions make sense in other situations. This is because BioWare's writers did an excellent job constructing their game's narrative.

I want to stress that neither philosophy is inherently better than the other. Each has benefits and detriments. I would say, in general, Constrained games do a better job with pacing and characters, as their relative linearity permits better character development, while Unconstrained games are more immersive and allow for more roleplaying opportunities.

A Constrained game in which the writers have not been careful--such as Dragon Age II--can become very frustrating if the range of permitted behaviors appears arbitrary. Likewise, in an Unconstrained game, if the player slaughters Caesar's Legion and no one seems to notice, he will likely be very frustrated. Down that path lies ludonarrative dissonance.

A Few Examples

The first litmus test for deciding which category a game should be placed within is that which I used to introduce this essay: can the player murder whoever he feels like murdering?

In general, the more he's allowed to murder everyone and get away with it, the less Constrained the game. Obsidian's games in general tend to follow the Unconstrained philosophy, and as such very rarely prevent the murder of important NPCs. Fallout: New Vegas, both Pillars games, and Outer Worlds all permit genocide, to varying degrees. Morrowind and Fallout 3 both do a decent job in this regard. Fallout 4 and Oblivion try in places and do okay. Skyrim is a catastrophe and Constrained in all but clothing, as the player is permitted to stab any NPC to death...only for them to get back up two seconds later. BioWare games, meanwhile, and RPGs in that vein, haven't allowed the player to go on unconstrained killing sprees since the days of Baldur's Gate 2.

The second question I pose is: can the player b-line it to the end of the game, if he wants to and knows where to go?

This is a test that all BioWare games fail. However, Bethesda's Fallout titles, and TES to a lesser extent, receive a pass--nothing is stopping the Lone Wanderer from running straight to Three Dog and getting the story underway in Fallout 3. Prey passes both this test and the previous with high marks.

The ability to ignore content and rush to the conclusion is the most significant factor in determining whether or not a game is Constrained. This is because the quality of constraint is all about how concerned the game is with developing its characters and using pacing to tell its story. These are obviously not possible if the player is going to ignore all side content and finish the game in thirty minutes. Constructing a game that is Unconstrained, therefore, requires an entirely different mentality: Morrigan's arc would not work for an NPC in Fallout 2, even though she works brilliantly in Dragon Age: Origins.

Conclusion

Constraint exists on a spectrum. Fallout 4 is highly constrained in most of its content, but it still permits more leeway in its overall approach to narrative than Mass Effect 2. This does not mean Fallout 4 is a better game than Mass Effect 2. Instead, I suggest that there are foundational differences in the philosophical approaches of the designers. Identifying those differences can give us language to better understand what designers are trying to do while analyzing their titles, and also permit designers to better understand what they themselves are doing when working on games.

After all, it's an important question for a developer to ask himself. What kind of a game is he making? Is it a sandbox or is it story-driven? Is it one where the player can kill everyone or will some NPCs be immortal? Will the player be able to finish the storyline before the end of the first act, or will he be required to hit certain beats first?

The answers to each question do not matter. All that matters is the intent behind the design at large. Constrained and Unconstrained RPGs can both be excellent for different reasons. But a game which doesn't know what it is results in Skyrim: Unconstrained in appearance, but utterly linear in practice. A sandbox two inches deep. An ocean with the depth of a puddle. It's only through this confusion of intent that bad design can come into being.

When I say “best” what I do not mean is significant, iconic, or popular. You will not find Link or Commander Shepherd on this list. Instead I want to start a discussion surrounding a handful of characters from games who I think either

1) possess real dramatic and psychological depth that rivals great non-interactive fiction

or

2) function in unique, intere…

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October, 2010. My parents are away for the weekend to celebrate their anniversary and my eldest brother has come home from college for babysitting duty. He shows me Evil Dead for the first time at midnight on Saturday.

After a long discussion about the film, I'm ready to head to bed.

"Wait," he says, "it's not that late. Let's play a game."

He installs a c…

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Forget GOTY awards or decade retrospectives. Let's celebrate the conclusion of the PS4/XBONE console generation by reminiscing upon elven of its best games. This list, as with most lists, is utterly subjective, but I figured this ending of an era would be an excellent opportunity to write up some brief commentary (and recommendations) on the last seven …

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