Sidequest #2: Refracting 2014

Typically, at the end of the year reviewers and critics cobble together a list of games they enjoyed (or in some cases loathed) to reflect on the new ideas that emerged and forecast the future of the industry. I can’t in good faith make a list of any sort for 2014. Sure, I played a lot of games this year and many of them were released in 2014, but very few titles really captivated me in such a way that I’d like to sing their praises (or even frustrations). I guess more than anything, for me 2014 was a year of disappointments.

“Your AAA Status has been Revoked”

Yes, I am well aware that this isn't a unique or insightful observation, but if there was one thing that emblematizes this past year more than anything else, it’s the astonishing shortcomings of the AAA games industry. Drive Club was outright unplayable for over a month after it launched and barely worked even after it was stabilized. Assassin’s Creed: Unity randomly crashes on console and had one of the most un-optimized PC ports in recent history. The online is still borked in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, an assortment of old ass games that have historically been praised for their stable online multiplayer, I might add. And the list goes on and on and on. 

Don’t get me wrong, for the medium as a whole, bugs aren’t all that surprising. Even the best of developers make mistakes, and since game consoles' transition to a more digital infrastructure, launch day patch-fixes have largely rectified crippling issues. But, for so many mistakes to emerge on such a large level, and nearly all of them to come out of the wealthiest leg of the gaming industry; the giant multi-million dollar corporations with more money than several dozen studios put together…it’s the kind of thing that leaves you wondering, “were they just not ready for the new consoles? All of them???”

And what of Dark Souls 2, a game made for a seven year-old console by a studio with a track record of releasing relatively bug-free games for the system, somehow produces a game with a game-breaking bug that doesn’t get patched until almost a full month after the game’s launch (one that I unfortunately experienced firsthand)? How is that even possible!?

Yes, Nintendo got it right with virtually all of their releases launching perfectly, but the WiiU has also been around for a year longer than the Xbox One and PS4 and nearly every major release was developed by Nintendo themselves. If they still hadn’t sorted their own games out by now, I’d almost be ready to just walk away from the medium entirely. And yet, as if to salt the wounds left by these mechanically broken titles, almost all of them either took a step to the side or just backwards with respect to their given franchises even when they are working as intended.

The aforementioned, Dark Souls 2 broke the overall cohesiveness of its predecessors, utterly pissed on the philosophy that progress should be "challenging but fair," and had a nonsensical story that rendered the events of  Dark Souls pointless. Drive Club somehow doesn’t contain any individuating features from Gran Turismo 6 (a freaking PS3 game) or Forza: Horizon. AC:U didn’t introduce any noteworthy features to the franchise, removed the only compelling feature of the last two Assassin’s Creed games (boats), and gut the overarching story of Desmond from the franchise. Watch_Dogs lifts nearly every major mechanic from Assassin’s Creed and, again, doesn’t have a story or worthwhile (or even consistent) characters or story arcs to fall back on. Destiny, despite containing extremely competent shooting mechanics, lacks map, mission, and enemy variety and contains what can only be described as “maliciously time-consuming” character progression that is required to experience the only significant content of the entire game. Dragon Age: Inquisition added an open world (which isn’t an inherently good change, mind you), but didn’t populate it with the meaningful quest lines of the previous two games, and had easily the worst story of the trilogy (which will be extrapolated on in tomorrow’s post). 

I could go on, but the pattern should be pretty apparent; For every Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Bayonetta 2, and Alien: Isolation was a handful of Sonic: Booms, Drive Clubs, and Watch_Dogs. I wish I had some sort of magical crystal ball or a book of post-mortems I could read through to make any sort of sense of this trainwreck within the AAA industry; a gaffe of this scale simply defies the imagination.

Looking at the way the games were intended to work, however, leaves us with another increasingly threatening problem in the industry: AAA developers are still largely afraid of testing new gameplay systems. It's particularly telling when the only game to implement a wholly new, genre-expanding, gameplay system, Shadow of Mordor, also happens to lift the entirety of its combat, exploration, and even story premise from existing properties. It's not so much that the games this year were all bad, but that the good ones weren't evolutionary.

Even Bayonetta 2, a game which would easily be my Game of the Year should I bother distributing such an award, is largely iterative of Bayonetta. Platinum Games polished everything contained in its predecessor to a mirror shine, and filled in what few gaps lay within its gameplay systems (Umbran Climax, angled ground to air combos, etc.), but it’s still basically Bayonetta in a different context. And while taking the Platinum games approach doesn’t hurt the medium in any way, it doesn’t advance us in any capacity either. Generally, this is the part where I’d point to Indies for quirky new ideas that could still be expanded by a larger budget, but unfortunately this was also one of those years where the Indies all gathered around the table and decided “This year we shall make retro-style games!” and didn’t produce anything revolutionary (Though Shovel Knight and Luftrausers are still damn good games).

The Good(?)…Oh Wait, There’s STILL More Bullshit to Wade Through

The underlying conservatism of the gaming industry, while nothing new in the grand scheme of things, also led to one of the largest cultural catastrophes in the history of the medium (and I’m sure you know what I’m referring to). Gamergate boldly drew yet another line to divide our increasingly bifurcated “community” (whatever that term even means anymore). Some were driven from their homes, others had their personal welfare violated, and still more were left in the middle, caught hiding in bunkers beneath a storm of pusillanimous bile raging over issues that have virtually nothing to do with the problems in that actually threaten to tear this industry apart .

It’s worth noting that some people like TotalBiscuit, Dan Pakman, and others all made significant efforts towards purging the madness through open diplomacy, though based on the fact that people are still using the term SJW as a slur, I fear that their efforts may have been pearls before the shrillest of swine.

Perhaps this hostile landscape is why I too retreated from the discussion and instead focused on releases. Actually that’s not entirely true. I did post a single piece on Gamergate after arguing with people on the Internet (never a good idea) about it for several weeks. But, my piece wasn’t particularly comprehensive, nor did it get to the heart of the matter that Gamergate is really about the struggle between conservatism (pure mechanics focus) and progressivism (narrative focus/mechanics-narrative synergy) in the gaming industry. Eventually I backed out of any and all future discussion on the matter. Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of my behavior either. Was I reasonable? Cowardly? A bit of both? Does it even matter?

Real Talk: 2014 Was a Year of Remembrance

To an extent I suppose it does. You see, I too found myself longing for the days when gaming was a thing of wonder and possibility; when getting a new game was like finding a mile wide playground to explore. And ultimately, I leaned towards the more conservative point of view, or rather towards playing something that was unequivocally fun for every reason that I enjoy games (basically a fusion of both stances). It’s sad to say, but the most enjoyment I had all year was in playing and replaying games from year’s past.

I played Mass Effect 3 for the first time last summer. It is now my favorite Bioware game. I also replayed Final Fantasy IX for the first time in sixteen years, and despite the fact that it was my first videogame and the one that sparked my lifelong love of this medium, it legitimately holds up (sans nostalgia glasses) as one of the greatest RPGs Square Enix has ever produced. And, of course I had to go back and play Dark Souls again after my heartrending experience with Dark Souls 2. And in doing so, I remembered exactly why I fell in love with this franchise in the first place, as well as why I have to play Bloodborne in 2015, even if it isn’t like Dark Souls or Demon’s Souls in the slightest.

And really, there’s nothing sad about enjoying these games above all others from this year at all. They are classics; gems that make this industry worth sticking with; games that remind us that people can build something beautiful. While I can’t look back on 2014 favorably or see 2015 with anything other than jaded skepticism (Dragon Age: Inquisition left me genuinely terrified for The Witcher 3.) I’m still willing to have hope that something will be worth it. There are still more stones left to turn; more land left to tame, and more seeds left to sow. And so I hope.