If I could summarise my feelings for Prey on a second attempt in a single sentence it would be : "I apologize, I was not familiar with your gam- oh, hmm, well, hmm, err I, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" and then that last hm lasts for about 15 minutes as I sit staring at the credits with an expression on my face that can only be achieved by contracting every single muscle in my face.

Now that I have your attention with that stupid intro, I hope I can make clear that whilst mixed, my overall feelings on Prey are positive. I had originally played about 5 hours of Prey before dropping it, I dont know whether this was due to the comparatively slow pace of the opening or the fact that I was stupidly trying to play the game stealthily or just being in a bad mood at the time, I mean; it happens.

Second time around I can appreciate it much more. I was a bit wary at first when saw that Morgan's password was Fermi Paradox and I think there's even a whiteboard with the Chinese Room thought experiment in the first area which made me go "oh boy, another sci fi story that thinks its so fucking clever cause it read a few wikipedia pages on philosophical concepts" but thankfully its not so surface level as I feared it would be. There is also the matter of the fact that I basically guessed the game's ending almost inmediately but we'll get to that later.

As a modern spiritual successor to the likes of System Shock (incidentally Psychoshock would have been a much better title) its top notch. The Deus Ex levels of variation in approach and dense level design allowing for multiple approaches that somehow manages to do so whilst simultaneously making the levels plausible architecturally and through their visual design ; you really believe this is a space cruiseship/research center that people lived in and even thrived. Special mention should go to the (I think Art Deco? Im not much of an art history guy im afraid) propaganda posters and visual design of the ship's interior - the art designers very convincingly played their dual role as creators of the levels as well as interior designers for a giant transnational corporation within the game's fiction.

The Gloo Gun is a very clever weapon/tool on the level of the gravity gun from Half-Life although it kind of suffers from what I can only describe as the quickly fading wonder of its own matter-of-fact effectiveness. Okay that was a really dumb and pretentious way to put that, what I mean is that yes, the first time you use it for a novel purpose like plugging a leak, making a staircase to cheese level design, crit and enemy, put out a fire or whatever its exciting and feels rewarding of your ingenuity, but then it just sort of becomes the new normal and subsequent solutions are more just sort of going through the motions. Same with all the times I opened a door using the Nerf Gun to hit the door button from the outside or used a recycler grenade to bypass a blockage without the strength upgrades.

This is an insane comparison, admittedly, but I am reminded of my Dad's thoughts on having children. He said that when they had their first kid they were constantly worried and going to the pediatrician if she so much as coughed a demi-tone higher (who would roll their eyes and ask if they were first time parents before telling them everything was fine) and everything about it was highly emotional in the good and the bad. He said when they had me they were much more relaxed about it and as much as all creations of life are magical in their own way, I imagine its not quite as impactful on a re-do. He jokingly said if they had had a third child they would have given it money to get a cab home from the hospital when it was ready to go.

Anyways. I was a bit mixed on the storytelling of Prey. Fitting for a game of its DNA, you wake up in a facility with no memory of what happened and pretty much everyone's dead and posed in a convenient way for you to deduce how they arrived at such a state. Its up to you to find out what happened through sigh random text and audiologs like every fucking first person sci fi game ever made. Now, I suppose the joke is on me cause I actually did read/listen to those I found which is unusual for me. I suppose the mysteries were effective enough at drawing me in to the world and as I said, I guessed the game's ending early on so I was mostly trying to play "spot the foreshadowing" and thinking through some of the implications and broad philosophical questions of the game's setting. Unfortunately not all of the secondary writing is that great. Its always the issue for me with these types of "everyone is dead" stories that the writing always seems so functional? You know what Im talking about, so many entries in these types of games being like "Im going to the LOADING BAY, I hope no GIANT MONSTERS tear out my head through my ass and throw me in the TOILET" and sure enough there is a blood trail leading to the men's restroom. Thats not to say that Prey is entirely like that, hence why I said I was "mixed" on it. There are enough logs that attempt to be more subtle and/or try to suggest that the people of the station actually had rich inner lives beyond unsuccesful attempts at levity and suspicions of how insanely dangerous the whole operation was from the start.

I think the issue is that I was fairly thorough in my exploration of Talos 1 and I can only really think of one moment of genuine human connection I felt to the characters in the game, through a series of logs relating to the character of Danielle Sho and her partner Abigail Fo. The resolution seemed rather abrupt, but I legitimately felt something reading her last few emails. Thats about it though, everyone else just seemed stiff to me, whilst its nice that unlike other similar games, there are actually a few survivors to interact with, they didn't really sell me on actually just having seen their coworkers subjected to nighmarish body horror and trying to survive not knowing their only hope is a man currently trying to blow them all up to stop the spread of the eldritch horrors. Its not nearly as bad as Dishonored, admittedly, which was 99% bland characters speaking in monotone at a psychopathic dullard.

Speaking of Dishonored, it definitely improves upon the morality system, given that I actually stumbled across the "good" ending without having to spend the entire game quicksaving and reloading crouching past guards. There was one aspect which annoyed me, which is fairly unambigously telegraphed that installing the more interesting toys will lead to a worse ending which led to me basically not using any of them (just 2) not because it was my preferred playstyle or made most sense thematically but because I didnt want to get slapped with the naughty card at the end (also cause turrets would have turned hostile) but still, an improvement IMO. There was one good thing I did that got erased because the NPC I saved bugged out and died somehow, which was... disappointing to say the least.

I was also greatly annoyed by the game's dynamic music, not the quality of the OST itself but the patronising quality of the game's systems in regards to music, unsubtly alerting to danger and/or trying to fake you out with stupid music queues in a way which eventually led me to figure out how they worked in many cases from how predictable they were. Its sad, given the game's pseudo horror ambitions that it feels the need to undermine the tension with such foolishness which is unfortunately in fashion now. "Oh there must be a monster nearby cause there's loud techno music" vs a few days ago being genuinely jumpscared by fucking S.T.A.L.K.E.R, walking into a building with no music and being greeted by the simple sight of a hostile soldier.

There is a lot of speculation, given the production values of Prey and its general competence how it failed to really break out as a super hit the way that could probably be expected to and there are always a few common reasons given as to why : 1) The Name. Those who love Prey the most will hold this to be the main and only reason for its failure, Bethesda's corporate bullshit simulatenously done to fuck with the original devs of Prey and seemingly set up Arkane for failure as it failed to market the game as the spiritual sequel to System Shock. I think there is definitely some truth to it, but that only really explains initial sales, its definitely a popular game by now so its not as if its a failure, but I dont think "Psychoshock" would have smashed records either, given the relative niche appeal of Immersive Sims.

2) Its relative lack of iconic imagery or memes: I mean the word meme in a very broad way, what is the popular image of Prey exactly? The mimics maybe? Its competence almost works against itself, its like, an expertly crafted dish which just lacks salt. A bit like dishonored, I don't know what the "Oh My God JC a Bomb : A Bomb?!" moment is. The high concept sci-fi setting is perhaps hard to distill into a simple package; one could argue this is a good thing but it also makes it hard to sell.

3) The game's ending

I do recommend Prey, so if you haven't played it yet I would ask that you do and come back later cause I'mma spoil it.
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Prey basically ends with "It was all a dream". Well, not exactly; more like "It was all a simulation" which I think most people would have guessed by the time of the game's final stretches. Im not of the opinion that those types of endings are necessarily bad, importantly for me, it doesn't matter if its a dream if the dream mattered : like say, a Christmas Carol. Even if Scrooge dreamed all that ghost business it still changed him as a person by the end and we get to see that change. Unfortunately, with Prey we dont really get to see much of the impact of our choices. They basically serve to convince our overlords on whether or not we : an alien-human hybrid exposed to the memories of the real and presumably deceased Morgan Yu in an attempt to engineer the empathy that the typhon are unable to possess to hopefully undo the alien takeover of Earth, can be trusted as a newly created member of the human species. In that sense, your choices ARE paid off with the various characters vouching for your kindness or lack thereof, which is a lot cheaper than actually showing us a real impact on what we did: the simulation is based off of the real events of Talos 1 although Im still hazy on the details; how exactly did the Typhon escape if Morgan blew up Talos 1? Idk maybe it was in some text log I didnt read. And in the end you're left with the choice of working with Alex Yu; who by all rights should be up there with Joseph Mengele in the history books, to somehow save earth question mark? Or just ice him, ironically the real proof of the newfound empathy of the Typhon hybrid, empathy for the victims of Transtar.

So its just kind of anticlimactic. Deliberately so, but yeah Idk what Im supposed to feel or take away here, or if maybe theres some hidden piece of lore Im missing that makes it all make sense. Im not really sure what the impact of what I did was or what exactly the point of it all was in the grand scheme of things. And its not as if I was hoping for Morgan to chill in a hot tub with a model smoking a blunt whilst credits roll, but it doesnt really feel like closure. Hell, I think Soma's ending was way more effective at being disquieting and climactic. Just like the game's ending, I don't really know how to end this review either, so I guess I wont even try.

Yeah, genuinely, what the fuck was I expecting? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twi- y'cant get fooled again! I knew from previous experience that any Elden Ring DLC was ultimately going to be a) more Elden Ring and b) harder than the base game, neither of which are particularly attractive to me at this point. The 412 hours I have put into ER might puzzle you (as indeed it does me) then, but the actual enjoyment I have gotten from ER is much less than that. Its kind of genius in that sense, it has just enough good legacy dungeons and interestingly designed environments to make you almost forget the slog of shitty microdungeons, modern souls bosses and long stretches of riding with torrent doing nothing. Its ironic, in those 412 hours I have genuinely beaten the game just 4 times, compared to like, idk 15/20 for DS1. So many times Ive started a run, gone through the same bullshit of getting the tears, killing greyoll, doing godrick's castle that I just uninstall the game again.

The thing is though, Im clearly in the minority, ER has sold incredibly well and whichever flaws I thought it had have evidently not dented its commercial success so why would they ever think to deviate from it. Sure enough most of what annoyed me about the base game is here, though in fairness; SOME things really have been changed. The microdungeons arent quite as barren and boring now, the bone fist is back and there seems to have been an effort to lean more into the difficulty of the levels with long sequences of enemy gauntlets without a grace every 5 steps (for the most part). The highlight for me was during a particularly vertical section in a big library; I have thought in the past how disappointing it was that as the souls series progressed we seemed to lean more and more into the combat difficulty over everything else, consider DS1 : what would you say is the hardest part of that game? I would argue the Anor Londo rafters and the section inmediately before solaire's bonfire fit the bill and those are about 50/50 precision platforming and combat encounter.

Sure enough there is a section of that library that was pleasantly surprising, navigating the thin rafters carefully I made it to one of the guards of the area who's attack patterns I'd gotten somewhat used to in the regular sections of the library with wide open areas to maneuver and dodgeroll about. On the wooden beams though, I could only dodge forwards or backwards so it was tense as hell trying to attack or retreat to heal without falling to my death and somehow I was able to close the distance and kill him right before going up a ladder to safety. That was genuinely a more interesting and satisfying encounter to me than 95% of all of ER's bosses.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there was a particular annoying boss which made me do what Im going to coin as the "delayed ragequit". The traditional rage quit is : you get mad at a game so you close it and uninstall right? Well, something that happens to me sometimes and I don't think Im the only one, is I'll get mad at an annoying boss/section, beat it out of spite and then when I cool down I realize I am spending my limited time on this earth on something I don't enjoy and I uninstall the game.

Inb4 Skill Issue, Mad Cuz Bad etc yeah I don't care. Thats my takeaway here, I simply do not care about souls anymore, this was already a long shot to rekindle my interest in the series but nah, Im done. Its fine, really, this is what people want seemingly, and y'know good for them. Personally Im done with these 1 million hit combo bosses with absurdly delayed timings, Im going back to demon souls where bosses started their attacks on a monday and executed them on a thursday.

Its funny though, the scadutree system. If ever there was a mechanic more steeped in the ing admission by the developers that they fucked up : "oh god, Miyazaki-san we made this shit unbalanceable almost by design due to the open world" : "fuck it, just make an entirely separate system for balance based on collecting critical path breadcrumbs". But IMO this shit is even less balanced. Sometimes I encountered a boss that assumed I was way tankier and sometimes the opposite. I remember hearing people talk about that one hippo being a bastard but I one tried it with my dumb ranger build cause I was loaded on cereal box tokens.

As for the story, idk, Miquella was bad or something. As usual I continue to not give a shit about the lore, fool me once etc. Base game ER was the only game I ever tried to actually piece it all together and the sheer nothingness of the experience + being more of the same "blah blah blah decay, ambition, delaying the inevitable" I just dont care, cause it doesnt matter; more so than how videogames dont matter as a baseline, or well, more than how anything doesnt matter cause we're all gonna die and be forgotten about eventually. That got dark and edgy needlessly? Yeah it did. I dont have a closer here, hug your loved ones and play lumines or something.

Exactly what it wants to be, and ultimately not for me.

Post Void is cool. I've got an incredible respect for this primarily on the basis that it's designed to give you a headache, and then secondly on the basis that you get an achievement for turning the music off and listening to a playlist of what would have been licensed music in the background. It's a pretty good playlist, too; where a lot of less-cool people would have been content with slapping in whatever RateYourMusic sort-by-top-rated-all-time noise punk albums they could cobble together, Post Void's playlist slides effortlessly between shrieking vocalists and laid-back alt-rock guitars. "Yeah, we've got the obvious Midori pull with the one song from the one album that every zoomer's been recommended if they listen to anything outside of the Billboard Top 40, and we've also got La Femme". Holy shit. Okay. I wasn't familiar with your game. And it all works together if you actually listen to it while you play! There's a through-line in this chaotic mixtape that lines up well with the aesthetics of the game — it gives me this vibe of leather shoes and tacky wallpaper, of your beautiful grandmother's living room melting into full-saturation secondary colors because you're in the middle of discovering that two of your medications interact badly. I dig it.

As hard as the baroque stylings carry this, I don't think that the gameplay quite manages to reach the level of its visuals and its sounds. Running forward and shooting your gun is universally going to be okay in its worst moments, but there really isn't much here to latch onto. There's always the chance for an extremely thin gameplay system to be interesting through the limitations that it sets for itself — Devil Daggers is the easy example — but there's enough tacked onto this that it doesn't feel like a pure experience, either. Choosing upgrades at the end of the levels that buff your pistol or allow you to swap to other weapons has worked well in other games, but it doesn't accomplish much here besides randomly offering you the chance to trivialize your run a little further with each successive pick. It's a little too easy to figure out an optimal way to blow through to the credits without thinking about it and without requiring much in the way of player dexterity, either. I wish there was either more or less to this. It's the opposite of the Goldilocks conundrum. This porridge is just right, but there are two extremes at either end of the table that could have worked a lot better instead of making them meet in the middle.

For what this is, it's perfect. It just doesn't do what I would have liked it to. There are a lot of people out there who have been looking for this game their whole lives; some people got a taste of these visuals when they played Cruelty Squad for the first time, but they weren't satisfied by the fact that Cruelty Squad wasn't running at triple speed. Post Void is here to fill that hole in your heart. This is going to be a personality-defining work if you've got an Adderall prescription.

Beats the shit out of whatever it is Mullet Mad Jack is trying to do.

For reasons that remain inexplicable to me, Record of Lodoss War is a pretty popular fantasy franchise. The characters are incredibly flat, the plot is incredibly rote. All it really has going for it is “vibes”. I will readily admit that the dreamy opening of the OVA is enchanting, and makes me with the rest of the show matched that. And Deedlit is a fantastic character design. So when we take Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, we are gifted with all of the vibes as a frame, but whatever the hell we want in terms of gameplay and story. And yet, and yet… I am not sated.

I can’t help but feel like the sheen is wearing off on the Ladybug games. There’s a few reasons why: there are so many fucking Vanias these days, and Ladybug in particular has a house style that is pretty recognizable. I think it probably has more to do with the fact this game is more or less a rehash of Synchronicity: Prologue, but with far less novelty. And not just in aesthetics, though the wacky monsters of SMT are very fun, the mechanics and level design were also more creative there. There aren't a lot of distinctive areas or surprising encounters in Deedlit. This game is very breezy and linear, as to be expected, and not much sticks with you. There's not a lot of replayability in these games, unfortunately.

Team Ladybug recognizes the art of a meter management loop. This has become increasingly evident in the more recent games, even in Drainus their recent shmup release. The elegant, dare-I-say perfect loop of Touhou Luna Nights isn’t matched here. Instead, this system is again almost identical to Synchronicity: evade, switch colors, absorb magic, use magic, repeat. It’s a good system, to be certain, but it’s not crisp and its not novel anymore. The problem with the constant return to systems it that the seams begin to show more, and the flavor begins to fade.

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is still a good game: like every Ladybug game, it’s got awesome music, some of the best spritework in the business, and a very slick combat system. They may be boring ass fantasy monsters, but they're beautiful. It may be a rehash of an older game, but that game still plays well. It may be the same old song, but it's a good song. Its world design being breezy isnt an intrinsically an issue when you play these games like action games to blast through. When you take these games for what they are, this specific style of action game, you can have a lot of fun. But I worry that this will become a matter of “fans of the genre” as time goes on.

Outstanding writing, voice acting, presentation, and animation, in service of a funny and heartfelt story about Indian-American identity, queerness, family, and failed romantic relationships. The "league of not-so-evil exes" premise obviously owes a heavy debt to Scott Pilgrim, but Thirsty Suitors thankfully takes it in a distinct direction. The actual gameplay, on the other hand, is unfortunately rather lacking; at various points, you'll be doing: a QTE-heavy cooking minigame; a vaguely Tony Hawk-esque (but much simpler) skateboarding minigame; or, most prominently, QTE-heavy Mario & Luigi-inspired turn-based RPG battles. None of these three gameplay styles are bad for what they are, but none of them proved fun enough to make me want to engage with them outside what's necessary to complete the main story, which is a shame since there seems to be some additional story scenes tied to side quests involving the various exes. Fortunately, the main story path doesn't take very long to play through, especially if you set the battles to easy difficulty in the options, which I recommend. Mechanics aside, the boss battles with the various exes are also laudable for how they flesh out each ex's personality and backstory not just through mid-battle dialogue, but through excellent, distinctive visual design and animation.

In short: if the story and premise sound appealing to you, Thirsty Suitors is absolutely worth a play. Just don't expect a mechanically deep or engaging experience here.

Pentiment has an official reading list, partly composed of some of the books that the team used for reference when building the game's art, plot, and characters. They're an interesting collection of books, and since my love of Pentiment overflowed after finishing it originally, I poured that excess enthusiasm into reading them. Now that I have read them all and replayed Pentiment with the knowledge in hand, I thought it would be interesting to dive into the inspirations and how they helped me to have a more complete understanding of the historical and cultural background of the game. Hopefully it won't be too dry, but also bear in mind that this is a very loose analysis. I'm not going to go back and find passages to cite unless they're super important to the point I'm making. I'm enough of a nerd to read five books for a backlog review, not for an academic article.


First things, the books: I read the following from the reading list, which you can find here: (https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/11/10/recommended-reading-of-medieval-history-from-josh-sawyer/)

1 The Name of the Rose: Umberto Eco

2 Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen Richard Wunderli

3 The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg

4: The Return of Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis

5: The Faithful Executioner, Joel F. Harrington

6 Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist—Susan Foister and Peter Van Den Brink


The Name of the Rose is perhaps the most important book on the list in terms of understanding the inspiration behind Pentiment. I admit I watched the film before reading the novel, but they are rather different beasts. Besides certain common elements between Pentiment and Name of the Rose, like the fictitious Abbey, certain elements straining the credibility of the historical setting (tassing having all strata of social classes present, the 15th century scriptorium vs. a random ass mountain abbey having a gigantic labyrinthine library), and main characters borrowing from real historical figures who are name-dropped in the story (William of Ockham in Name of the Rose and Albrecht Durer in Pentiment), the main connection is that they both use the classic detective murder mystery setup as a framework to explore both theology, historical moments, conflict, etc.

This is the part where the movie most differs from the book; it makes sense given that you can't really fit all that into 90 minutes. It chooses to keep the juicy murder mystery and some background political intrigue but dispenses with the broader narrative of the book, which is about apostolic poverty and the Avginon papacy. Essentially the gravity of the murders add a sense of urgency in solving them because the Abbey is defending its political independence as neutral ground for a meeting of the pope(or anti-pope really)'s men and several monastic orders and representatives of the holy roman emperor to debate the merits of how the church should function, if it should reject all property and live as paupers, which has both a religious significance but also a political one in the conflict between the Avignon Papacy (essentially for a while the pope left Rome and went to France and this had a pretty massive impact upon european politics of the time with a politically ascendant France) and the HRE and the various religious orders like the Benedictines and Franciscans. This is mirrored in Pentiment, which also uses the murders of Baron Rothvogel and later Otto as a framework to highlight both the purpose of historical memory, the nature of justice and peace in early modern Europe, the importance of religion in their communities and how alien that can feel to modern audiences in rich countries, life, death, our ideas of the past and how they influence us in the present, and a whole bunch of related themes.

Similarly, in Act 1, the murder is also presented as politically inconvenient for the abbot, who seeks a speedy resolution to the issue much like the abbot in The Name of the Rose does, but for the different reason that his Kiersau Abbey is an oddity in the church, maintaining practices such as a double monastery, which have long been frowned at by the catholic authorities but have simply remained unnoticed due to its insignificance. A long, embarassing murder investigation could bring the hammer down on them, which leads to the Abbotts callously attempting to throw Andreas' mentor, Piero, for the murder so that the monastery may continue without issue. There is also the matter of the scriptorium and adjacent library with a secret entrance by the ossuary in Name of the Rose and Crypt in Pentiment (though in truth, I think Brother Volkbert confirms that the crypt just holds bones, so it's probably also appropriate to call it an ossuary) being direct references.

In both stories, the skill of the detectives is a bit suspect. In the case of William of Baskerville, whilst he is definitely closer to the Platonic ideal of your Sherlock Holmes figure, being less of an unbelievable omniscient who has information, the reader doesn't like many of the examples of bad detective fiction (cough cough, BBC Sherlock). His assumptions and thought processes are reasonable (for the most part), but he sure takes his time in solving the case. In fact, he arguably fails pretty much everything he sets out to do. Seven people lie dead, the library got burned down, and the matter of apostolic poverty they had come to debate eventually led to it being branded as heretical, though the Avginon papacy did disappear in due time as the seat of the Holy See returned to Rome. Of course, he does have a sort of moral victory over the reactionary Jorge who set the murders in motion to hide the existence of a lost tome, which would, in his view, help to elevate comedy and laughter, which he views as subversive and leading to heresy and the corruption of the divine truth. It is fitting given the frequent debates in the book that the climax would involve essentially a philosophical discussion. This parallels somewhat Pentiment's ending, wherein Father Thomas brings down the Mithraeum below the church to erase the proof of St. Satia and St. Moritz being essentially just Diana and Mars, pagan figures worshipped before the Bavarian Christians settled on tassing. Andreas is also not the greatest sleuth, though, in large part, being an interactive medium, the character of Andreas' skills depends upon players' actions. Nevertheless, the constant of Andreas having to make difficult choices using incomplete information is a constant; it's impossible for him to ever fully uncover the truth of the matter with the limited time and resources he has to investigate the murders, and much like many things, including historical events, it's not really possible to actually 100% discover the "true" killer. There are likelier candidates, of course, and a good argument can be made for the most reasonable culprit, like in Act 1, where it is rather doubtful that Ottilia did it; I think Lucky is almost certainly the murderer; and it's interesting just how much a second playthrough can change a lot of what I thought. In Act 2, it's rather less clear, with Hanna and Guy both having threads pointing to them.

Either way, there is also the matter that Andreas and Pentiment as a whole are also concerned with the perception of truth rather than the whole matter of it, similar to the Name of the Rose: case in point: when Andreas returns to Tassing a few years later in Act 1, the Innkeeper will refer to a warped version of the events of the original murder, suggesting that either way the truth of the events has already passed into unreliable folklore. There is an angle to consider when choosing a culprit in both acts when considering the consequences for the community. Its still refreshing to me in an industry that still has seemingly not moved on from boring black and white low honor vs. high honor binary choice bullshit that Pentiment presents you with the infinitely more interesting to my mind issue of Ottilia Kemperyn. An old, misanthropic, heretical widow whose husband's death was caused by the murdered Baron Rothvogel's savage beating has essentially given up on life. Her house is just about to be taken away from her by the church because she has no heirs and cannot own property herself. If one were to invent utilitarianism in the 15th century, one could argue that letting the obviously innocent Ottilia take the heat for the murder of the Baron is the optimal choice; indeed, standing up for her by challenging the church's claim to her house does cause her to retain the house onto Act 2, but the church is predictably angry at your actions, and you've done little more than buy a woman a few more miserable years of her life. Of course, in doing so, you will be utterly perverting justice and sentencing a woman to the executioner, whose only crime was being born a peasant woman in the 15th century, with all the trials it entails. These tough choices are not limited just to Andreas, with Act 3 the townsfolk are still reconciling their choices in dealing with Otto's murder in 1525 and subsequent burning of the abbey (which mirrors the ending of The Name of The Rose with the Abbey and Library burning down also) and whilst they all have different perspectives on the issue, its interesting that some regret the foolishness that brought the hammer down on them and resulted in bloodshed whilst also recognizing that that very sacrifice led to their current positions, there is some optimism in the ending, with some arguing that the Abbot's ecclesiastical authority being replaced with the lord's secular one has been beneficial, with slightly less strict oversight and Lenhardt being murdered at least had temporary material improvements for the peasants who wouldn't be completely gouged by the new miller. As with everything, one can only move forward; the wheel of time stops for no man, and making peace with our mistakes and seeing a broader perspective is supremely important to life.

Peasant Fires doesn't cover the more famous 1525 German Peasant rebellion, but rather the lesser known Niklashausen rebellion of 1478, wherein a drummer whipped up a mass of pilgrims to rebel against the ruling authorities, claiming that he had received a divine vision of the virgin Mary, who called on him and the faithful to overthrow the corrupt church and kill the priests, that god had ordained for all land to be held in common and the feudal lords of the time had corrupted his will. The book explores the role of festivals in medieval Europe, with some serving as outlets for repressed anger at the authorities, like carnival being a time of playfully "reversing" the established relations of nobility, royalty, and peasantry. It highlights how, for most peasants, the calendar would be seen through the lens of the various public festivals throughout the year, from Christmas to Carnival to Lent to Easter, etc. Despite the much harsher working conditions, there were many more public holidays for the Europeans of the 15th century than there are for the Brits of today. Its influence is most apparent in Pentiment's Act 2, with Otto claiming a holy vision has revealed that the Lord is with the townsfolk of Tassing against the increased taxes and restrictions of the Abbot, mirroring the drummer. Otto's murder occurs during St. John's Eve, a very popular summer festival, with anger boiling over with the Abbot threatening excommunication to anyone he finds in the forest getting up to mischief. In both examples, the peasants are drawn to revolt against ecclesiastical authorities due to the increasing restrictions on their rights and material conditions. In Tassing, there is a noticeable decline in living standards, with the poor Gertners being particularly destitute due to increased taxes.

In the 1478 rebellion, the drummer started rallying people to the cause by preaching near the pilgrimage site of Niklashausen. In Pentiment, the Abbot further angers the peasants by closing the Shrine of St. Moritz, which is also a pilgrimage site and source of some religious comfort to the Catholic denizens of Tassing who often prayed to Saints for deliverance. The book goes into some depth regarding pilgrimages in the early modern period. While the sale of indulgences is much better known given its importance to the reformation, it is often overlooked that pilgrimages served a similar purpose. The idea of purgatory was such that pilgrims could reduce the suffering of themselves and/or deceased relatives by visiting a site of pilgrimage and receiving a partial indulgence for time in purgatory. It was another way in which the peasants would be essentially emotionally blackmailed into either donating or traveling to a holy site, which of course also had the effect of increasing the prestige and economic power of a church that hosted one of these relics, like the hand of a saint, a piece of the true cross, or what have you.

The main issue with the book is that the sources are very spotty, and so the author basically speculates on a large chunk of them. He at least admits that this is the case and makes clear what is his own imagination and what’s supported by the evidence, but still, it's a rather short book to begin with. Its illuminating at the very least regarding just how fucked medieval peasants were economically, the role of festivals and pilgrimages, and the power of mystics in inciting rebellion.

The Faithful Executioner is a work of microhistory focused on the life of the executioner of Nuremberg during a particularly busy time for such a professional. It has the advantage of drawing upon an unusual source: a detailed journal written by the said executioner during his time working for the city. It was rare for a man like him to be able to read, much less to leave such thorough notes about his work. It's a very interesting tale, which I recommend picking up. It's both a greater history lesson about the role of the executioner and the specific conditions in 16th-century HRE, which led to a significant increase in their work, and the personal story of a man’s quest to advance his and his family’s station from the unfortunate place it was put in. It also does a lot to make us understand the perspective and social attitudes that influenced this institution, which is, to our modern eyes, quite cruel and ghastly, without just making an apology for the indefensible. Its relation to Pentiment is obvious; it is a work that is deeply concerned with justice, crime, and punishment, and the appearance of justice and truth is often times more important than the actual thing itself. In chapter 1, whichever culprit gets selected will get executed violently and publicly, either by the executioner’s sword in the case of the male suspects of lucky or ferenc or being choked to death in the case of the female suspects. Interestingly, in the faithful executioner, we are told that execution by sword at the time was usually reserved for the nobility (even often times being the result of a bribe to the judges to forgo the more slow and painful executions down to the more “dignified” decapitation). I imagine, though, that the choice of the sword was more of a creative decision, being the quickest way to show the culprit being killed. In the case of Prior Ferenc’s execution, it was slightly botched, requiring three slashes to finish him off. In the case of the faithful executioner, part of the titular executioner’s great reputation, which allowed him to eventually appeal his status (executioners were part of the official underclass, unable to perform “honorable” professions, and were oftentimes banned from joining a guild and other legal discrimination), came from the fact that he very rarely botched an execution; indeed, the executioner himself could be in danger when performing a beheading, and it was common for crowds to turn on the executioner if it took more than 3 strokes to fall the criminal. Its not surprising to me that states eventually realized how counterproductive public execution was, with modern ones being performed in some prison room away from the public. The fact is, and Pentiment explores this as well, that it's all well and good to believe that someone deserves to die or that they had their brutal end coming to them; certainly, there are many rapists, murderers, etc., and even if one opposes the death penalty on principle, we would not be sad to hear that they were killed. And yet, I dare to say that if you were to witness such a person being violently killed, well, most well-adjusted people would respond with horror and even sympathy for such a situation.

Certainly, I don’t weep at the thought that some of the hanged nazis at Nuremberg were actually left choking for quite a few minutes before expiring, but even with them, were I to be in the room, I would look away from such a horrible sight. Humans are empathic for the most part, and it's hard to see such things without feeling bad.

It's a sobering moment watching the execution of Ferenc, who might be suspected of performing occult rituals and murdering a man in cold blood, but it's another to see him praying for mercy before being brutally cut down. The victory is hollow; there is a reason why Sherlock Holmes stories end with the suspect in custody and not Sherlock Holmes gloating in front of the gallows with the criminal’s corpse hanging forlornly from the scaffold. Okay, okay, that's enough unpleasantness. Let's move on from this grizzly subject.

The Cheese and the Worms is another work of microhistory, this time on the subject of Mennochio, an eccentric miller in 15th-century France who used his rare literacy and access to a variety of books passed around by his neighbors (who were unusually literate for the time also) to develop his own eclectic brand of religious thought, which eventually got him into trouble with the Inquisition, who were mostly baffled by what seemed to be a unique brand of heresy invented by essentially one random peasant guy, far from the norm of wandering preachers, secret societies, and the like. Its influence is most apparent in the figure of Vaclav, a Romani knife sharpener who will share his equally weird beliefs if you’ll indulge him, which, funnily enough, if you do, he gets burned at the stake for heresy, as evidenced by the town-wide family tree next to the mural in the game's ending. In the case of Vaclav, they’re a weird syncretism of gnosticism, Christian mysticism, and just his own blend of strange esoteric religious theories. The role of increased literacy and the printing press allowing more people to read “dangerous ideas” is brought up often during Acts 1 and 2, with Father Thomas and others being wary of the effects it could have in riling up the peasantry and the danger of certain ideas spreading. The elephant in the room is, of course, the protestant reformation and the 1525 peasant rebellion, which were greatly aided by the increased availability of the written word, further increasing the demand for a translation of the Bible written in German and other vernacular languages as opposed to Latin, which was mainly spoken by the priesthood. Its no surprise that this eventually led to an explosion of different Protestant denominations, as anyone who could read the Bible for themselves could develop a novel interpretation of the scripture.

In the case of Menochio, while from a modern perspective it seems very repressive and authoritarian to be jailed and later executed for having unorthodox beliefs like the universe being created from a primordial cheese eaten by worms who became God and his angels and created the world, it's hard to be sympathetic when the dude just could not shut the hell up about his beliefs. Like, idk about you, Im an agnostic or atheist or whatever, but if I could possibly be executed for it, I would not go around telling people about how god is fake and cringe. Its also funny reading the accounts of the inquisitors, who for the most part, whilst obviously terrible and repressive, would let most cases like a single heretical peasant off with essentially a slap in the wrist, say you’re sorry, do a penance, your priest vouches for you being a good man and for the most part be allowed to rejoin society, but bro just couldn't do it. The number of executions the inquisition actually did was a lot less than we would think; it was usually reserved for wandering preachers, big religious leaders who were trying to get a schism going, etc.

The Return of Martin Guerre is interesting because its “plot” is basically 1-to-1, almost adapted into Pentiment’s character of Martin Bauer. The book was written by Natalie Zemon Davis, a historian and advisor to the French film of the same name based upon the real-life historical figure of Martin Guerre. After her experiences with the production, she decided to write a more “official” account of the story without the necessities of a 3-act structure and cinematic storytelling. Martin Guerre was a peasant in what is now modern-day Basque Country (part of Spain and France) who one day disappeared from his town and, unbeknownst to them, went off to Spain to join the army and eventually got wounded in battle during the Italian wars of the mid-16th century. Meanwhile, a man claiming to be Martin Guerre who bore an uncanny resemblance to the man arrived in Martin’s home town and, after some initial skepticism, was able to slide into his old life through his appearance and seemingly access to knowledge that only the real Martin Guerre could know. It also highlights that under the law of the time, Martin’s wife would not be allowed to remarry, and the way in which women were treated, her standing in society, and her ability to fend for herself were adversely affected by having an abandoned husband. Even worse, the real Martin could have died off in battle, but even this would not necessarily be enough to be able to remarry unless she could somehow prove her husband had been killed. It's not surprising then that she may have been, let’s say, willful to “be fooled” by the impostor, knowing that this was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to solve her situation. Even more so after “Martin” received his deceased father’s inheritance and greatly increased the wealth of his household.

In Pentiment, Martin Bauer similarly runs off during Act 1 after stealing from the murdered baron and “returns” before Act 2 to take over the household after the death of his father. If pressed, you can uncover the fact that this man is actually Jobst Farber, a highwayman who ran off with Martin and eventually, when he died, used his resemblance to the man to take over his life. Similarly, in Pentiment, Martin’s wife Brigita seems consciously or unconsciously aware of the deception but begs Andreas not to rat him out of town, as he’s been a much better husband than Martin ever was, and in a purely utilitarian sense, his identity theft is seemingly the best outcome for everyone. If one remembers Act 1’s Ottilia Kemperyn, households without children or men to inherit property are very much unprotected, and it's easy to see why Brigita prefers to turn a blind eye to this Farber character’s lies. In the real-life case of Martin Guerre, the prosecution was initiated by Martin’s father-in-law who suspected foul play, but “Martin”’s wife was supportive of her impostor husband. Indeed, what ended up resulting in his execution was actually the return of the real Martin Guerre to the town, who, amusingly enough, seemed less able to answer the questions of the judge in regards to information that the real Martin Guerre would know than the fake one! Thankfully for the wife, sometimes misogyny works out in women’s favor, and she was essentially unpunished (and the real Martin Guerre was reprimanded for abandoning his wife and family) for what could have been considered adultery and false witness with essentially the old “ah well, she’s a woman, it makes sense her feeble mind would be fooled by a talented huckster like this” argument. Not as much of a happy ending for the impostor who got executed but was surprising apologetic, much like Martin Bauer is if you accuse him of murdering Otto Zimmerman during Act 2 of Pentiment.

The final book, I’ll admit, is one that I basically skimmed because it was really fucking boring, and I already read a biography of Albrecht Durer a while back, so a lot of it was just stuff I already knew. It was worth owning, if nothing else, A3 copies of Durer’s famous works. Albrecht Durer informs the character of Andreas quite a bit (though he is also a bit William of Baskerville and Andrei Rublev); indeed, his Act 1 design is heavily inspired by a famous Durer self-portrait. They are both painters from Nuremberg; they both (in Act 2) seem to really dread returning to their wives, which they hate back in Nuremberg; and during the lunch with Brother Sebhat, when a kid is having the concept of different ethnic groups and skin colors existing, Andreas chimes in that in the Netherlands he saw art from the New World that was greater than anything Europeans had ever done, echoing Durer’s admiration for New World art in particular made of metal; him being the son of a goldsmith, it makes sense he’d feel particularly fond of such things.

The use of Durer’s famous Melancholia 1 painting is a key aspect of Andreas’ character journey. In Act 1, his inner psyche is depicted as a court composed of King Prester John (a mythical figure in European folklore often thought of as the Ethiopian emperor), Beatrice from the Divine Comedy, St. Grobian, and Socrates. Whenever Andreas is debating a difficult decision, they can be called upon to give their two cents in a sort of id, ego, and super ego-type arrangement. In Act 2, however, it is only Beatrice who gives advice, her moderation and temperance having devolved into self-doubt and fear. At a key point, Andreas finds his court trashed and all absent safe for Beatrice, sitting in the pose of the famous aforementioned melancholia print: “Now I am all that remains, the melancholy of life’s autumn,” a manifestation of essentially a mid-life crisis for Andreas after becoming a successful artist but feeling hollow inside. Its fitting as well given the beliefs about mental health, a common conception of artists and creatives at the time as “melancholics," and a conception of depression and mental illness as markers for creative genius that sadly persists to this day.

4500 words later, and I'm both embarrassed by how long this has been and frustrated by how much more I could have gone into details on each of the entries, but I think that's enough for now. If anything, I hope this encourages anyone who’s played pentiment to check out one of the books and maybe draw their own connections I might have missed or forgot to include. Whenever I think about what differentiates a 5-star game from a 4.5- or 4-star game, I think this is it. A 5-star game will get me to read six books totaling probably like 1000+ pages. I’m currently reading through The Brothers Karamazov as part of The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa’s readable books list (so far I’ve read Winesburg, Ohio, Confessions of a Mask, and Rumble Fish), and maybe I’ll write a similar piece at some point for each (though bear in mind I started reading the first book in this collection a year ago, so y'know).

Finally went back and finished the one that started it all, the OG Fallout 1 from 1997. Its rare for me to go back to a game I dropped, even rarer still for me to actually finish it on a second time around, but I guess this franchise is just built different. Not going back to finish F3 anytime soon though.

There's a simplicity to Fallout 1 which I appreciate. I didnt miss that many quests simply because there aren't all that many. Certainly part of the reason for it is the game's dev cycle led to a whole lot of cut content, but it also means the game doesn't outstay its welcome.

The pre-rendered art deco buildings set atop the grimy post apocalyptic desert's earthy tones look great. Time has not been kind to the game's proportions, in regards to modern displays, a lot of the text is poorly readable and so much of the game is squinting at which indistinct background detail I have to click on to continue, but compared to later entries there is a more inmediate sense of scale and scene that the isometric perspective allows.

The game has a really weird difficulty curve. I am of the opinion that in RPGs areas shouldnt be scaled for the player, but the nature of the overworld grid system and random encounters means there is often one single tile of difference between being jumped by weak ass mole rats who can't even tickle you and a super mutant deathsquad who will fuck your shit up really quickly. I guess thats part of the fun, but I like the approach of New Vegas' relatively signposted dangers tempting new players to be mauled by deathclaws if they rush for Vegas early on.

What was most disappointing, other than the various bugs (one of which locked me out of hardened power armor, because the Boneyard main quest is beyond fucked) was that skill checks were often dice rolls. Now, I'm not so ignorant as to not know why this is; its a CRPG, it owes its DNA to GURPS and D&D and the like, the traditional tabletop roleplaying games where its often about using literal dice to roll for skill checks and whilst I have only played these games a handful of times, I don't think they translate very well to videogames in a literal sense. Maybe this is blasphemy, given the influence they have had on videogames, but when you're playing these games, often the excitement and intrigue comes more from the social aspect and the very literal human game master who is making sure that the results are abided by. Even then, there are re-rolls and stuff like that. These types of dice rolls CAN be used well, for e.g in Disco Elysium where often times failing can lead to just as if not more interesting outcomes than succeeding them, but here they feel kinda token at times.

Case in point, what exactly is the point in levelling up my repair/science skill or whatever if I can just infinitely try until I succeed? Sometimes there is a consequence for repeatedly fucking up checks like a locker rigged with explosives (and I think maybe if your required skill is too low certain options are not even possible to do?) but more often than not there is nothing. You just keep trying until you suceed, which isnt even save scumming, its just, scumming I guess.

Watching interviews on this topic, including GDC talks, there is an interesting evolutionary lineage of how these RPGs handled stuff. Josh Sawyer didnt work on F1 but definitely played it. In Fallout 3 again the skill options are dice rolls but are also visible, you are knowledgeable of exactly what options you can use to advance the situation in dialogue. This trades in a lot of mystery and perhaps the interesting dynamic of not knowing which options are "best", whilst also making save scumming even more viable, but also makes the player more clued in and feel rewarded for their particular build, even if in practice, a 99% speech and 1% speech characters can both pass the check with enough tries. It also removes a slight annoying aspect of 1 wherein if you dont have enough speech or barter or whatever, you will straight up not know if you can actually pass the check, and you'll wonder if there is any point in thinking about any of your choices if the "correct" ones will always be locked away opaquely.

Fallout New Vegas in my opinion improves upon 3 by making them binary threshold checks, which instantly makes build choices so much more instantly satisfying and understood by the player. Not to say that full transparency is the apex of game design, but in the case of what an RPG like Fallout is trying to do, I think it works best. There are numerous skills which help in solving quests through dialogue, not just speech, barter, medicine, intelligence, etc. Its definitely a system which can be improved however, on replay, speech is just far and away the "solve quest" button and running a non speech character nigh on demands either extreme violence or copious use of drugs and armor to make up the difference, and the transparency of it all can kinda ruin the magic, especially when you learn most quest's "optimal" solution after a few runs (though admittedly I have 500 hours in FNV so I guess its fair enough that I know it inside and out)

Disco Elysium came out and whilst it went back to rolls, the games design feels much more conscious of why it works for table top, with skills being their own characters, seemingly non-signposted dialogue choices being counted, rerolls allowed on levelling up certain skills, leading to an attitude of "well, Ill just come back later" rather than reloading a save and the general vibe of the game being one of comical failure being overcome. Most importantly, certain dicerolls being weighed by seemingly inconsequential dialogue options which are shown to the player, is a brilliant system. Not only because it makes you very careful about what you will say and it keeps some of the opaqueness that keeps the game fresh, but at the same time makes the player feel like they have greater agency over the capricious dice rolls.

Pentiment took this last innovation and honestly, it rules. Steal shit if its good man, thats how game design works. It also improves greatly upon FNV by making the RPG skills not inmediately "solve" the issues facing the player. Even though its a very accesible and easy game, there are many really tough challenges like getting on Martin's good side, or convincing sister illuminata to hand over the tome, which if you use certain skill traits will just straight up fail you. Surprise surprise, a 15th century artist making passes at a married woman doesn't go over too well. Indeed, the illuminata check requires you to both acknowledge the struggles of women in the early modern period whilst also putting yourself as the player in the shoes of religious people of the era. "Knowledge is inherently valuable and good"? Nu-uh she doesn't give a shit, this tome could be considered heretical and be bad for the soul. Simply by how these mechanics work, Pentiment is able to get the player to humanize and empathize with people from the past who's lives and viewpoints feel so alien to us via what is essentially a VN with RPG elements. Realistically, if you have the "law" trait making you knowledgeable of imperial law and use it, 90% of the time its met with "shut the fuck up you fucking nerd". Its so fucking good dude, it stands on the shoulders of giants from what feels like a conversation between designers of 1->3->NV->De->Pentiment. Sidenote, Ive actually read through all of the books in the Pentiment reading list, and I think when Im done with uni stuff I'll replay and write some overlong comparative analysis.

Oh shit, I was talking about Fallout 1 wasn't I? Err, okay what else? I did quite liberal use of save scumming, but that feels almost intended to some extent. The combat isnt particularly satisfying or interesting, especially at first when its just 2 groups of people missing 90% of their shots until someone hits a crit. Eventually things click, and somewhat begrudgingly I will admit that the contrast in combat between the initial start and more fluid endgame with miniguns and rocket launchers (on the fastest combat speed of course) were effective in making the latter feel more substantially evolved from the former. I do wish that companions were more fleshed out than just "here's a guy, he shoots people you don't like now" and more to the point GOT OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY WHEN IM TRYING TO MOVE THROUGH A BUILDING, but then this WAS the first game and budgets were low. Its also funny how weirdly the Voiced NPCs are spaced. Theres a guy in the hub with a single quest who then says absolutely nothing else (loxley) and then Im pretty sure there are none in the Boneyard unless I missed something. All that dispute between the Blades and regulators and the gun runners? No voices for you I guess. Originally one of the reasons why I dropped F1 was that the game's personality was hard to gauge when so many of the game's technical restraints seemed to make everything kinda bland, with identical looking mfers with in all honesty not super defined character voices. I think what really sold me on the game was actually having a full conversation with series regular Harold the ghoul, its an endearing performance and probably my personal highlight of the game. All in all, F1 has enough of the good to balance the bad, and Im certainly appreciative of the series it spawned, even if Im not entirely in love with it.

BTW, I wish I could go back in time and erase Monty Python from existence. Old fallout is like patient 0 for how that shit got run into the ground.

Animal Well is absolutely completely utterly - fine! It's good! It's fun! I especially like its visual identity, though I don't love its soundscape too much. The puzzles are creatively designed and the tools you get for exploration were suprising and well utilized. Do I think there's much more here? No, not for me. I read the articles detailing the games' secrets and what I find disappointing that - so far at least - the game's secrets don't really add any lore or backstory or theme to its world, leading to the secrets feeling a little shallow to me. But I'm also not really the person to dig deep in this type of game - if you are, you're probably gonna like Animal Well way more. Maybe it also had the misfortune of releasing alongside Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which scratches that mystery solving itch waaay better - at least for me. Animal Well still is a cute game though that I will probably mostly remember for its outstanding visual design moreso than anything else.

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me, and I walk alone.

Jokes aside, Lonesome road is probably my favourite FNV DLC, which seems like an unpopular take in contemporary critical discourse surrounding the game; on the internet anyways.

I do GET what others find objectionable about the DLC, I'm not super on board with the characterisation of Chris Avellone's pseudo-rantsona and the cardinal sins the game committs in regards to roleplaying are at best misguided attempts at narrative subversion and at worst break the entire game's foundations in half.

Its one of those things, where, even though I myself had not heard of this discourse I intuitively felt something wrong when I played the game for the first time. "You, the courier came through here before and indirectly caused the devastation of the divide" - Ulysses said calmly

"No I didnt. My character didnt do that at all. My courier was a common drifter before he stole a mojave express courier's identity just in time to be shot by a claymation chandler bing". I was mostly confused. I do think its a mistake to take everything Ulysses at face value, and if you listen to his soliloquoys scattered about the various holotapes you come to realize hes a disturbed, traumatized individual who's maybe not quite meant to be taken as gospel. He reminds me of Measurehead's backstory from DE if you do the fascism sidequest.

That being said, the reason for Lonesome Road being my favourite is the gameplay. Its an amazing gauntlet that puts the player's abilities to the test with the various tunnelers, deathclaws, marked men and the like. Chris Avellone's hatred for the post-postapocalypse shines here, albeit appropriately for a recently nuked area, there are nought but the remnants of those who tried to rebuild the divide but were cut down by radiation. FNV is a bit too easy, but Lonesome Road is a nice mix up in this department. This last playthrough I played using the JSawyer mod and a revolver build, both of which made the game more challenging and I had a blast making it through the titular road.

Its unfortunate how the DLC also implies that the mojave will just get fucked again by tunnelers because again, Chris Avellone hates the post-postapocalypse, but my headcanon is that the indomitable will of the player character overcomes this to make sure the future inhabitants of vegas can put up a fight. I mean, a drugged mailman took care of dozens of them with a few hollow points, it won't be that difficult to mount a defensive line against em