Fishing but no night swimming
Hanging out with Dredge
First things first. Thanks to people who have been supportive. You know who you are and I appreciate you.
There are a host of reasons I have not written much the last few weeks, but I am not going to write a “I know I haven’t been writing, but I will from now on, and while I’ve got you here let me tell you how I feel about writing as a process” kinda thing. I mean, yes, the substack gives me blog vibes but some things are best left behind I think.
The short version is that spring semesters, man/guy/friendo/compadre/reader, they can be a thing.
The good news, if it is truly good, is that I have a few things I want to write. So they should be coming relatively soon. You see, the thing about writing and procrastination….
No. I said I’m not doing it.
Let’s talk about Dredge.
Dredge is a game about fishing, and horror. People really like Dredge and I think those people are right. I also like that Dredge is a pretty simple game to sell to other people. Read a review, or watch some footage, and if you think you might like Dredge I’m willing to bet you will, in fact, like Dredge.
I’m writing Dredge a lot.
You could argue a lot of games are like that, though it depends on your temperament too. Not that any of us buy games we never get around to playing, or with a vague idea we want to play them at some point. Nor am I trying to say Dredge is simple - or rather, I’m not trying to say it’s simplistic. It is at its core a fishing game with some simple little mini-games that manage not to grate too quickly. Which in and of itself is pretty impressive. And, if you are the type who enjoys completing a catalog of creatures and filling in mysterious outlines with each new catch, well you are covered here. There is also gear, of course, and upgrades, and a rather trim but satisfying research tree. Dredge rather quietly has a lot going on, but does not demand enormous amounts of your time to get there.
I really rather like that about it. I feel like I’m constantly quitting on games, because I like seeing my wife sometimes and I have other stuff to do, so I just can’t commit what might be the next two months to reaching the Ireland-set DLC in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Not that I have any specific examples in mind. Dredge also tickles, mercilessly, that part of your brain that spent an awful lot of time fishing in games like Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and then, when you told yourself you were playing too much Animal Crossing, games like Harvest Moon: Doraemon or whatever, New World (briefly, for some reason), and - most recently - Kynseed. You sicko.
Like all of those games, where you fish and when you fish matters, with weather and in particular a day/night cycle having an impact on what you catch. What I like in particular though about Dredge is that rather than being anchored to the land with sad little terrestrial feet you take off into the water on an adorable little trawler, stopping at various harvest points to grab different types of fish categorized by the type of water they inhabit. You can float crab pots in the sea, and you can drop a net into the water and traipse around the place just grabbing whatever. Everything feels quite mobile, and the game gradually pushes you to explore the world around you.
Listen, Dredge pushes a lot of my buttons. Its big twist is its horror element. Fishing at night is a different beast entirely to fishing during the day, in large part because you are exposed to various actual beasts materializing around you or skulking nearby just under the surf. This makes the nighttime effectively impenetrable early on, but in fine video game fashion you will be braving the early hours before too long.
That horror element does a nice job of avoiding what sometimes feels like an oppressively permeating “Lovecraftian” tone in video games; but it does feel very nineteenth century.
There are whalers, of course. That’s part of it. Well, a whaler. There is a mysterious figure hanging out in his house who utters incantations to bestow you with mysterious powers, like going faster but only for a little bit, or the power to teleport back to his house instantly in a somewhat personal boundary-warping version of World of Warcraft’s hearthstone. There are lots of beautiful, autumnal trees peering over the coast and characters peering out at you from behind facades of suspicion and fear… ok, I guess it is rather “Lovecraftian.” Beyond the tentacles and other protrusions expanding the silhouettes of the things you catch at night.
But if, like me, you have had quite enough of “Lovecraftian” things thank you very much, and/or if you have other entirely valid reasons to not be thrilled with any allusions to or credit given to HP Lovecraft, I would still urge you to give Dredge a try. It’s a very tightly written little thing, and it has a lot more to offer in terms of an old world vision of the relationship between humanity and the sea than a simple reference to Lovecraft would imply. The central plot revolves around madness and the threat of the deep, but your player-character, who is mostly you but also perhaps something before you came along, is drawn to the sea and will not be leaving any time soon. A lot of the characters you meet (including the really very tightly and pleasantly written traveling merchant who has a nice habit of pulling up outside newly discovered areas) have their own relationship with the sea: not just romantic but passionate, intense and maybe not in a good way.
I have been playing Dredge for a few hours now and it’s clear the narrative is winding up. It is a game that knows itself: it’s not really designed to be played for forty or fifty or sixty hours, though there will be those out there that will. Yet I’m still completely in love with put-putting away from home base as the sun rises, or gliding along the coast as it begins to set. I might hang out for a little while after the story has concluded. If my thoroughly sea-salted fisherman is still around to drive the boat.