Readers of this blog may have perhaps realized by now that the immersive sim is my favorite "genre" of game. From Deus Ex to Dishonored, nothing beats the systems-driven cRPG. And no developer exemplifies the immersive sim as well as Arkane Studios.
With this in mind, and with copious amounts of free time, I sat down in 2020 to beat all of Arkane's games in order of release, one-by-one. The journey did not take long.
Alas I had not yet launched this blog yet, so there was no venue for me to put down these thoughts. Not so at the dawn of 2021. Still, I don't want to pass up my chance.
Arx Fatalis (2002)
Although released before my time, Arx Fatalis was both the first Arkane game released and the first Arkane game that I played.
My brother instructed me to buy and install this game off of Steam c. 2010 or 2011. It was his newest infatuation. My impressions were that it was an interesting, if poorly aged, little game. I gave up after three hours.
Going back to play it a decade later, what surprises me the most is that I made it even that far.
Arx Fatalis is an awkward, clunky, ugly game that feels at least a generation older than it actually is. But I made up my mind to beat it, finally, after all these years, and so that's what I sat down to do.
I gave up after fifteen minutes.
This is a game that plants many seeds which will later bloom into the games I know and love. Like with most seeds, it doesn't taste very good.
Arx Fatalis has a vaguely interesting magic system and a cool setting, but that's about all I have to say on the matter. This story really begins in 2006.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006)
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is Arkane Studio's first real game. It's a first person orc-kicking simulator, less immersive sim and more action adventure pseudo-RPG. It has a linear story with minor branching paths near the end.
Setting out to finish every Arkane game, I have a confession to make: DMoM&M is the only one I hadn't ever played before.
I'm not certain why, because it's well-regarded these days by both fans of the studio and first-person-slasher aficionados. Maybe the connection to Might and Magic was simply off-putting, as I had no experience with the franchise.
Right out of the gate, you'll note that this game is old. Almost 15 years. The physics are bizarre and the platform elements seriously wonky. I suffered from regular crashes. The level design, which is where Arkane's light shines the brightest, is not strong--but, and here we get to the positives, demonstrates some of the fundamental brilliance that would later grow into the level design magnum opi that are Prey and Dishonored.
It isn't quite there yet. If you play this game, get ready to either use a walkthrough or get ready to wander through samey corridors endlessly.
Everything else about this game is still worth it.
What I find so interesting about every facet of this game, aside from its writing, is the unmistakable genetic link with Dishonored. The magic system is more or less the same. Its melee mechanics are the same. The level design is similar in many ways--and often very clever--if also, simultaneously, not particularly good.
The core melee combat systems are fantastic. They are extremely engaging. Doing battle is all about controlling the arena of play and knocking enemies off of cliffs or into spikey walls, which allows you to use your own creativity when deciding how to dispatch the latest orcish threat.
This is play your way, except with combat rather than stealth or exploration.
The levels themselves aren't particularly linear, but this is a level-based game. The PC Sareth has a voice and personality independent of your own, and most of the decisions in the narrative happen without your input (although certainly not all of them).
Like probably a lot of people, it was NoClip's recent documentary on Arkane spurred me to finally dive in and buy this game, and embark on my journey as described here. What surprises me now was to hear one of the studio's current narrative designers malign its story--because it is the narrative that I find so worth dwelling on with DMoM&M.
Basically, it's metal as fuck. It's revealed halfway through that Sareth is the Dark Messiah, which is like an antichrist or something, and that Satan is his dad. Your ultimate input is required to determine whether or not Sareth will take up this mantle.
Naturally, because I'm not a bitch, I went all in. You know what they say. It's good to be bad.
This is where the narrative design impressed me. The story allowed me to take precisely the actions that I wanted to take, and no others. Contrast this with Cyberpunk 2077, which is a game that allowed me to take only options that I didn't care about and railroaded all others.
To continue with Cyberpunk comparisons, this is also a game in which you have a demon Cortana in your head, whispering evil things to you. It's just a personal preference, but I love that shit, and once unlike Cyberpunk I felt like Sareth and I were more or less psychologically aligned when it came to interacting with her.
Many will say that Dark Messiah's story is predictable. It doesn't have a good reputation. And I will concede that it is no great work of art.
But what it is is FUN. It's weird in an interesting way and full of fun fantasy tropes. Some of the voice acting is rough, but in terms of raw storytelling, this game is miles ahead of Dishonored and lightyears ahead of Dishonored 2, although not nearly on the level of Prey.
The point is this: the definite quality of a video game's writing interests me less than how that story is deployed and how it functions with the game as a whole.
In Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, the story provides a fun framework that guides you between orc-kicking arenas. You do not play this game for the story, and the writers realized this. They opted to give it a supportive role as a result.
Could it have been better? I guess. But if improving the writing in any way means reducing the overall quality of the systems design, it'd be a mistake. This game has a story that is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more. And although it's silly, when I load up a game about kicking orcs into spikes, I don't want Citizen Kane. I want Dark Messiah.
Dishonored (2012)
Some 14-year-olds have sexual awakenings. Some bloom into jocks or party animals. Others discover drugs, or a passion that will guide them through the rest of their life. Such freshman awakenings are part of what it means to be in high school.
I had an awakening of my own as a freshman. It wasn't drugs, or girls, or going outside in any fashion.
It was Dishonored.
This is a game that is very important to me. It's hard to believe I only have 50 hours in it, because I feel as if I've beaten it again and again and again and again and again. I'm not sure where to even begin.
I'd played Deus Ex: Human Revolution upon its release and loved it like no other game up until that point. Dishonored scratched that same itch. It was like nothing else I'd ever played. Eight years later, my verdict hasn't changed. This game is phenomenal. It really does everything right.
For those not familiar, Dishonored is a game about playing as an Italian ninja assassin named Corvo who has supernatural powers in a whalepunk fantasy London. You can slow or stop time, teleport short distances, possess rats (and humans), jump to superhuman heights, deflect bullets with your sword, and generally be a huge fucking badass.
At its core the game is stealth-focused. Like with basically every stealth game it suffers from the distinct problem of the "cock-up cascade:" it's much too easy to be spotted, far too hard to get stealthed again, and generally the easiest thing to do is kill everyone in your path.
The narrative design, along with the level design, does a little bit to fight back against this. The more people you kill, the higher your "Chaos" rating goes. Total Chaos will determine whether you get the good or bad ending and, I believe, also makes later stages of the game harder.
This is a great piece of systems design. I'm not convinced it really works in practice, but it creates cohesion between gameplay and narrative. Which, if you've been paying attention, is the most important part of interactive storytelling.
As for the writing itself, this is where the game stumbles. It's almost good enough, but it's not quite there. It's predictable and a bit on the trite side, and it doesn't make up for it in raw awesomeness like I believe Dark Messiah to.
Like with so many other of my favorite games, the narrative is unobtrusive. It doesn't get in the way at all. So while in another world I might write essays complaining about this game's sudden and inevitable betrayal against Corvo Attano, or the anticlimactic finale, I can't bother to here. If you don't like the story, just ignore it. It's very easy to do.
And even if you don't like the story, it still works okay as a framework for the level design. That's all I ask from narrative.
But what makes Dishonored stand out from the crowd is its level design. It isn't as flashy as Dishonored 2, nor as brilliant as Prey, but it is astonishingly good, and was perhaps the best ever released c. 2012.
Corvo has a huge number of tools at his disposal. Not only are there all of the game's spells, but you can beat every encounter without ever touching his powers. You can use mechanical tools, like the Rewire Device, to turn the enemy's whale-fueled defensive fortifications against him. You can always find an alternate path, and although your stated mission at the start of each level is kill X NPC, you better believe that there's always some alternate way to eliminate your target--without getting your hands personally dirty.
You gain experience via exploration, discovering new Bone Charms and Runes to unlock passive abilities and spells or character upgrades. This means the player always has an incentive to explore and interact with the levels.
In summary, that means narrative (find another path to deal with the problem), gameplay (player incentives), and level design (if you look for it, you'll find it) are all working in perfect harmony to create a single experience. This is what sweet dreams are made of.
Dishonored 2 (2016)
So you can imagine my anticipation come time for Dishonored 2's release four years later. I was once again a freshman, this time in college, and I don't think there had ever been a game I wanted to play more.
I had mixed feelings on release.
In retrospect, it's challenging to say whether I prefer this title or its predecessor overall. But at the time, DH2 had a lot of problems. It launched in a horribly buggy state, thankfully now mostly fixed, and I grated against some of its design decisions--in kind of an odd way.
Based on advertising material, you'd rightfully suspect that in DH2 you no longer play as Corvo, but as Emily Kaldwin--his daughter (or something) from the first game, who he spends quite a lot of time rescuing.
This is a brilliant decision. It's also obvious, but it was entirely the right call. Emily deserved her own game. Her own powers, her own dishonoring.
DH2 isn't that game.
In Dishonored 2, you choose who you want to play. Emily, or Corvo.
I'd take less issue with this if your first playthrough had to be with Emily, and then Corvo was something extra. But that's not the decision they made, and as a result most of us foolishly chose Corvo for our first playthrough.
What's foolish about this, you ask?
Well, first off, the story is way better as Emily. I don't think this game has good writing at all--in fact I think it's awful, which I'll talk about more later--but this story was obviously intended to be Emily's.
If Emily is the PC, it's a reversal of the first game. It's a coming-of-circle.
If Corvo is the PC, it's...the first game. Again.
You can see the issue.
My gripes are more fundamentally mechanical, though.
Corvo has all of the same powers. They are more or less unchanged.
Emily has a whole new host of powers. They are very different from Corvo's.
I love this. It's brilliant, and it gives the game so much replayability. But here's the rub: Corvo's powers are way better than Emily's, in every single way--and they're also less fun to use.
This is a stealth game, after all. Playing as Corvo, you can...
Literally stop time
Jump into and ride around in anyone's body, bypassing security systems
Instantly teleport all over the place
Being able to stop time makes pretty much any stealth game absurdly easy. It's the best power possible. You press 4, then press RMB, and then walk to the end of the level. Mission accomplished. To be honest, it's kind of lame.
Meanwhile, Emily's powers are more nuanced. She can...
Use Far Reach instead of Blink, which is a slingshot rather than a teleport
Link NPCs together, making damage to one cause damage to all
Create a doppelganger to distract enemies
Mesmerize and stun guards
Turn into a literal shadow monster that guards will have trouble spotting
You'll notice the relative versatility. These abilities are less obviously powerful and require more thought to use effectively. As a result, Emily's skill ceiling is much higher.
I chose Corvo first because I love Blink so much. Nothing will ever beat Blink. But beyond Blink, Emily's kit is way better for Dishonored as a whole.
This wasn't an issue for me upon replaying the game in 2020, however, because I'd unlocked NG+. In NG+, you have access to every ability, from both characters.
With this the case, I see no reason not to play Emily. Forget Corvo is an option. Then, spec into Agility, followed by Blink, and go wild.
Before I talk about level design, I should briefly circle back to narrative, because this is where I was supremely disappointed in DH2.
Basically, it's the first game again. Except now the enemy is Delilah, again, who players will remember from the first game's phenomenal Knife of Dunwall DLC. Delilah's plan? The same as it was last time, except again.
I dunno. It's pretty lame. Neither Corvo nor Emily are particularly interesting as characters and "defeat this witch you already defeated last game" doesn't grab me as a narrative impulse. You travel around and visit some cool locations--because world building, like in the first game, is phenomenal--but I can hardly remember why or what for, and I've beaten this game like 25 times. It has a few decent moments in its sidequests but the primary narrative is completely disinteresting.
The first game's Chaos rules have carried over. This time, rather than a rat plague, there's a bloodfly epidemic. This works basically the same as the first game. I like it here as I like it there, although I think the Chaos calculations are a tad on the binary side. The ending cutscene either paints Corvo as Gandhi or Hitler, with very little in between.
But games have struggled with that problem for quite some time!
Any points lost in narrative are regained in level design.
Dishonored dabbles in hub-based mission design, but Dishonored 2 takes the hub to true immersive sim levels. Every mission is set in an enormous open world, navigable in ingenious ways using either Emily or Corvo's powers, full of side quests, interesting alternative objectives, and a practically infinite amount of room to make your own fun. Every problem you face can be solved your own way.
Basically, Dishonored 2 sets up its systems, puts you in an arena, and says deal with it. And it's so fucking awesome.
Then there are the rules of the levels themselves.
In one you possess a stopwatch that allows you to transition between two alternate timelines within the same house, one set during a dinner party and the other, in the present day, when the house is dilapidated, crumbling, and abandoned; you must use this tool in creative ways to bypass enemies and environmental obstacles.
In another, the map is actually two maps; every room has a switch on the wall that will change its layout to something different entirely.
These respective missions are a Xanadu to Arkane's brilliance. They are obscenely flashy and impossibly brilliant. I cannot imagine the amount of work that went into making all of this...well, work.
But are they fun to play?
Yes, the first time. Less so on subsequent playthroughs. Replaying the game in 2020 and I found my favorite levels to be the more open-ended ones, which are a little bit less "grab the player by the balls and show him how awesome we are."
Arkane is awesome, but simpler is sometimes better. I don't really need a Clockwork Mansion--an abandoned old hospital can be just as interesting.
This is all pretty much besides the point. Dishonored 2 is exactly like Dishonored, only more so. It takes all of the first game's qualities, positive or negative, and amplifies them. Although I can see a number of ways in which it could be better, it's a good thing that there wasn't much wrong with Dishonored for its sequel to negafy in the first place.
Death of the Outsider (2017)
Technically this expansion came out after Prey, but I suspect it will be more efficacious to discuss it here instead of chronologically.
Death of the Outsider is really good. In it, you play Billie Lurk, that random NPC from the first game and its DLC, and you set off to kill the Outsider--the setting's bored emo deity who is personably responsible for giving the characters in the games their cool magic ninja powers.
DotO is the ultimate game in the series in more sense than one. I think it's pretty much perfect. The story is okay--Billie is a better protagonist than Emily or Corvo--and better than the rest of the franchise, but here the systems are taken to their logical conclusions.
In DotO, you no longer use runes to upgrade your abilities. You have three magic spells and that's it. Use them all to overcome your problems. Bonecharms take care of the rest of advancement.
This fits well with the narrative, but also allows Arkane's level designers to create much more focused problems for the players to deal with. It makes Dishonored less "play your way" and more of a swiss watch stealth game.
There's still a huge amount of versatility, of course. It wouldn't be Arkane without that. But for a shorter game, this change in philosophy works impeccably. Billie's new powers--similar to, but definitely distinct from, Corvo's--must be used intelligently to overcome specific problems.
Or you could just murder everyone. That's also an option.
Maybe my favorite thing about DotO, though, is that the game no longer judges you for murdering people. It instead judges you for being caught murdering people. There isn't even a Clean Hands achievement, thank God. Although almost not worth mentioning, this has important psychological ramifications on players like me: we no longer feel like we're playing the game "wrong" by using our tools to kill NPCs. The game encourages it in places. It reinforces Dishonored not as a pacifism simulator, which the first two games do to a rather large extent, but as a stealth game, where your objective is first and foremost stealth.
I really like this game. I think it's probably the best entry in the series, although I like it differently from the previous titles, and it's likely my second favorite thing Arkane has ever done..
Prey (2017)
I could serenade you with my first experience with Prey. I could sing you a paean of how mind-blowingly awesome its opening sequence was going in unspoiled, or how absolutely magical it was to play this game for the first time.
But I won't do that, because this is technically a retrospective. Allow me to instead retrospect.
My first playthrough of Prey is my best gaming experience. There is no competition. I liked everything about it. I have finished it five times since, always on Nightmare difficulty:
Once as "No Needles," without any Neuromods
Again using only human Neuromods (and killing everyone on the station)
A replay without any gimmicks just for fun
An aborted replay-turned-psychic-powers-focused attempt at beating the game using only Typhon Neuromods
An actual finishing of the game using only Typhon Neuromods
I'll admit, after at least 75 hours on Talos I, it's starting to wear a little thin. I know everything about every inch of this game. The replayability is starting to wane.
But that doesn't matter. Prey rightfully earned its position as my #1 game of the console generation. It's just that good.
In many ways it's a challenging game for me to write about. It's far easier to pick holes than build poles, as a friend of mine once told me, and so it is with criticism.
There's nothing for me to critique.
I love this game. I like everything about it. Let me go through the factors, from the perspective of someone who has finished it over and over and over again...
#1. Level design
Prey is effectively the true spiritual successor to System Shock 2. That is to say, it's a sci-fi game about being trapped in a single spaceship (or station, whatever) full of killer aliens. That means almost all of the game happens in the same locations: the Atrium, Hydroponics, Engineering, Psychotronics, Neuromod, Engineering, Cargo, the Bridge, and the Crew Quarters.
Oh, and IN SPACE.
This playing area is actually fairly enormous, but you spend a lot of time going back to each area. This turns the levels into living organisms that grow and evolve as the game progresses. Exploration feels like it means something because knowing the layout of a level is extremely important.
Just as in Dishonored 2, the levels themselves are brilliantly designed. They're full of secrets and redundancies and they permit the player to navigate in creative ways based on what Neuromods they've chosen.
What I love maybe most of all, though, is how the game pays attention to NPC agency. Take note, Naughty Dog, because this game gave every character a name three years before you did. Not only does every NPC have a name, they also have a definite position on the space station, multiple audio logs, an explanation for how they died (if they died), and a role to play in the story.
Yes, literally everyone on the station is modeled. All of them. The entire crew.
This is an ecosystem that creates character through systems. Over the course of the game, you learn about these crewmembers. You hear their voices. You grow attached. You feel like you're exploring a real place.
Prey does all of this without EVER subjecting the player to a single boring ass cutscene. It does everything through its systems. Yes, you'll have to listen to a lot of dialogue if you want the full story, but you won't have to watch some stupid NPC's lips moving for 50 hours a playthrough (I'm looking at you, Horizon: Zero Dawn). It'll all just play in the background.
And if you don't give a fuck, it's easy enough to ignore. Just don't press play on each of the tapes. Don't track down each dead crewmember.
#2. Focus & Cohesion
Everything in this game is about Neuromods, a piece of supertechnolgy that allows humans to transmit skills, memories, and abilities between different people's brains.
This is how you "level up." This is your incentive to explore. This is why Talos I is imperiled. This is why protagonist Morgan Yu has amnesia. It's what enables the story to operate so well.
This is the video game equivalent of the Theory of Universal Gravitation: the simplest explanation is not only usually the correct one--it's also usually the best one, too. Prey is an incredibly focused game and it's all the better for it.
#3. Narrative Design
Prey has some of the best narrative design of any AAA game ever released. Actually it might have the best, period, thanks to the work of Chris Avellone.
Like most of the best gaming stories (also written by Chris Avellone), Prey is all about amnesia. You play as Morgan Yu, head researcher and associate nepotist at the Transtar Corporation's research space station Talos I, alongside your fat brother.
Just like Morgan Yu, you're going to be a little bit overwhelmed as new information comes in.
Amnesia is such a powerful tool in narrative design because it allows a "reset" of the protagonist. It puts the PC and the player on the same footing, which is immensely powerful--and important--for interactive storytelling.
Prey is more of an RPG than Arkane's other games. Not only are there multiple endings, but there are a huge number of ways to get to any ending you desire, including cutting the game off more or less at the midpoint (if you want to escape using a lifepod). Again, this is unsurprising, given the pedigree of Avellone.
In a brief summary, without giving too much away (because you need to go play this game), Morgan has to deal with the Typhon organisms unleashed on Talos I. Throughout the game, you are confronted by three different versions of yourself--all Morgans with a different memory state:
Yu Original. This is the Morgan Yu who appears in videos and backs up your brother's perspective, from a memory timeline before Morgan's first mental reset.
Yu.0. This is Morgan Yu after his first mental reset. He has different opinions on how things should go and is represented by your primary ally, the robot Operator January.
December. This is another version of Morgan who appears in the form of an Operator; he tells you to GTFO of Talos I.
All three of these Morgans will tell you "trust me, this is what you'd want to do." All three of them disagree about everything.
The bottom line?
MAKE UP YOUR OWN DAMN MIND.
I love this so much. There are actually even more versions of Morgan hidden away in audiologs across the station, but I won't get into that here. I just want to reiterate how awesome the writing is here.
Most people playing any game will listen to the story and do whatever they're told. They'll go destroy the engines to facilitate a wildcast destabilization of the Pillar of Autumn's fusion drive cores because a pointing arrow tells them to do it--not because they know or care or have decided that it's the right thing to do.
Most people will play Prey this way. Unfortunately the game also uses pointing arrows by default, which MUST be turned off before your first playthrough because they ruin the game's exploration.
But this story is implicitly telling the player not to trust the NPCs. It's telling the player to come up with his own plans, thereby reinforcing Arkane's system-driven immersive sim design philosophy.
It's perfect. It's brilliant. Not only is it unobtrusive, it slots in perfectly with the rest of the game, like a puzzle piece to complete the Mona Lisa.
The writing itself is considerably better than average for a AAA game, but forget about that for now. I don't really want to talk about the characters or the dialogue here. The triumph of Prey is the design of its narrative and the way that the writings slots in with the systems. It's what makes this my favorite game. It exemplifies what interactive storytelling is capable of.
In that sense, I would proudly declare Prey to ACTUALLY be "gaming's Citizen Kane"--indies aside, this is the game that takes the medium's storytelling conventions to their absolute zenith. And after all, that's what Welles actually did for cinema. His film was more important than just being really good.
Mooncrash (2018)
So with Deathloop not yet out at the time of writing this, we come to Arkane's last game: actually an expansion pack for Prey, called Mooncrash.
Mooncrash is a roguelike. You play as one of five characters trapped on a Transtar moonbase. Your ultimate goal is to escape this moonbase alive--and to do so with all five characters in a row, during a single playthrough, without resetting the "simulation" you're currently in.
If Prey has any deficiency, it's that it's way too easy. Savescumming is too reliable a strategy for overcoming any obstacle. Mooncrash's permadeath fixes that. Fail states actually matter. That's great game design.
As for the expansion as a whole, it wears after a while. It's still, probably, too easy after you've unlocked most of the Neuromods. It's well-written and the characters are fun, but the lack of any NPCs on the map during any escape attempt hurts immersion.
Ultimately, if you've full-cleared the game, its replayability is limited. I reset my progress and did it all over again, with a full clear of all the crew, and was pretty much done with it after that--even though there was a bit more left to do.
Other than that, it's more Prey. I absolutely recommend it.
A Ranking...
Now for a completely arbitrary ranking to cap things off. All said and done, I'd place the games in this order...
Prey
Death of the Outsider
Dishonored
Dishonored 2
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Mooncrash
Reading all of the lore books in Dishonored
Arx Fatalis
I have high hopes for Deathloop. Let's see if Arkane can keep this streak up.