Showing posts with tag: PlayStation

Final Fantasy XI, and the stories we shared with strangers no comments

They were family. In that moment — mere hours among the thousands been and gone  —  that monk, that thief, and that white mage were effectively family. It was a bond of necessity, a bond driven by the brutality of a world that wanted nothing more than to see us fail.

That was the world of Final Fantasy XI twenty years ago, where convenience wasn’t a word — nothing like the online worlds of today. It was a time when we thought more real meant more good and more fun. Square’s debut MMO embraced that, and wanted — nay, needed — every second you had spare if you wanted to make your way in its web-based world.

More electric words…

Larian’s worlds offer meaning in a way few others can no comments

Exchanging magical fisticuffs with a teleporting crocodile on a trip to the beach is, if nothing else, a potent but unsophisticated crash course in consequence. It was in this raw and tender moment — as this non-verbal, non-physics-understanding reptile gently abused my succulent ego — that Larian’s Divinity revealed itself to be game about consequence.

Those crocodiles, whose seminal spell is aptly named Scale-portation, set the scene for the perilous road ahead. It was a journey that made me realise why Divinity and games of its ilk work as well as they do.

Simply put: Divinity’s road is a different journey than many of its peers, whose checklists speak to the inevitability of success. This step will follow that step will follow this step will follow that step. Your story, then, the same as everyone else’s: you won, and you were always going to. The script written, events set.

You can do everything but irrevocably fail.

More electric words…

Free Radical’s time travelling shooter predicted the future no comments

One series remains trapped in time, a relic held in a stasis of circumstance and corporate reluctance. It seems forever stuck in the mud of its sixth-generation origins, defined as much by its inability to move than its ability to enthral. A series that turned out to be as prophetic as it was preservationist.

But the history of what got stuck where and why is only the first part of its story. That story in a sentence or two: staff from GoldenEye-developer Rare splintered into Free Radical who, after the commercial failure of PS3-exclusive Haze, was bought and turned into Crytek UK.

In doing so, Crytek obtained that time-trapped series: TimeSplitters. There it remained dormant until it was ultimately acquired by Embracer Group.

Where it still remains dormant.

More electric words…