Roooooooooogue Tradin'!
What makes a game stick?
I've put just over ten hours into Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader and I just got out of "Chapter One", whatever that means. It was at this point the game decided I was ready for the space warfare mini-game. There has as of yet been no mention of the apparent ability to drop future fascist oil derricks on strange worlds, but there's a greyed out icon beneath every heavenly body I scan.
Meanwhile my favorite companion - because he is incredibly useful in the turn based combat, not because he's the only one so far who has hinted at wanting to get busy with my character - has just told me he's leaving. And sure enough, I can no longer add him to my party. The situation reeks of storyline-determined shenanigans but what if it's not? What if he was just a Chapter One guy?
I have also looted a weapon that no one in the party can wield. On the one hand, it's possible I simply don't have the build anywhere in there. The game is very build happy. But I can't help but suspect I might have an alien friend joining the gang soon. It's not the most original idea in the world. Lots of things in Rogue Trader aren't original, really. It plays like the Pathfinder games Owlcat has made, in a lot of ways. It manages to feel old-fashioned without, somehow, being overly dry. I will say the game is extraordinarily grognardy - the explanations for the advantages to various perks and abilities are heavy on use of parentheses, dividing slash lines and percentages - but Owlcat have pulled off a trick were said grognardiness lends to the aura of the game overall.
I also find myself having fun with the Warhammer 40K universe, which I have on and off for decades but often drift away from pretty quickly. It can be a tough sell: everyone in this fictional world is AWFUL, but the trick to a good Warhammer 40K story or game experience is that you recognize they're awful but still kind of find the whole experience cool. Fascist future Catholics with aliens and honest-to-God demons can be a great mix. Mostly the game is managing it well with companions bringing their own flavor of lunacy to things. It helps too that you are a "Rogue Trader", a kind of super-noble who sells stuff: basically a capitalist warlord. It fits the theme well. I also gave my player-character the background of a crime lord and it comes together nicely. So far she's been a pretty decent human being for the most part, which I've largely been able to do while staying on theme. This is in part because many of the fictional characters in-game clearly think that not randomly killing peasants is just so LAME. I press the 3 button to avoid murdering the poor corporal who survived long enough to tell me what happened to his squad, and multiple characters basically roll their eyes. I'm waiting for one of the companions to do the early 2000s "Loser" sign with her hand against her forehead next time I don't randomly cut down some poor bugger who doesn't seem jazzed enough about an extremely rigid hierarchy that takes economic oppression as a given.
And there's economic oppression. The massive voidship you fly around space is home to thousands of people, most of whom live in squalor with a relationship to their labor and the value that derives from it that would make a foreman at an Apple factory blush. The response of the dirty masses to this situation oscillates from grim resignation to aggressive mass murder. You can kind of see their point. Which I think stands to the game itself. The reliogisity of the world doesn't take a back seat either. Your character doesn't have to be a believer, but there are different flavors of partaking in the cult. I like to think my Rogue Trader so far is someone who is willing to go along in public but doesn't care too much really, when it comes down to it. So, applying the real world Catholic compromise to the future Fascist Catholics. That's all in my head though. Maybe that's why the game is working so well for me. The stories I'm telling around it are great fun.
Nor can you really escape the whole, yes I'm going to say it, grimdarkness of the thing. You kill lots of dudes. Lots of heads explode. I just nuked a planet from orbit. It was the only way to be sure.
So. Why do I like this game? Why am I still playing it?
I don't know!
It's a good game. I'm not SORRY I'm playing it. I really like it. Will I finish it? I mean, who knows. Based on my current gaming habits, given the kids being out of school and writing deadlines and the like, I am apparently set to wrap this game up in early December. I will say I have been trying to enjoy a game like this forever. Character sheets. Inventories full of loot I mostly don't need. Combat that FEELS like a tabletop game but plays like something much more modern. Maybe it's the "fluff", as some RPGers call it, clicking with me in a specific way. I just don't know.
But then why did I never get into Dragon Age: Inquisition. People LOVE that game, and I love Dragon Age. I adored Dragon Age: Origins, and spent a pretty important research trip in DC either in the archive or in my room playing Dragon Age: Origins. I played it for hours on end. Then I played it again. The second Dragon Age game I had issues with but ultimately enjoyed. Then came Inquisition. And no. Just no. But people love it. I know I'm missing something I just can't figure out what.
I thought of Inquisition again this week, when Bioware decided that we had all just become too divided and needed to be unified by a single correct opinion. In this case, that the trailer for their hotly anticipated game was a distinctly potent flavor of awful.
And it was. Listen: it's not good. I'm not sure what they were thinking. I'm always wary of dudes online complaining about art design not being "dark" enough, because we had that conversation about Diablo III and it was silly and it turns out the more of those conversations you have the more likely you are to come into conversation with someone who is mad about Black people in Star Wars, but not, you know, for racist reasons or anything. No, My dislike of the trailer was both deeper and far more shallow, unapologetically so: it just didn't seem like fun. Honestly my first reaction was that some people decided to base their approach entirely on vibes from Baldur's Gate 3 memes, without playing Baldur's Gate 3. That's obviously terribly unfair. The people making Dragon Age 4 (I can't keep up with the different names) obviously love games and play lots of games. But when I sit here trying to think of what makes me stick to games, what makes me play them when I really should go to bed, or really need to get back to that other game, or really need to finish the sci-fi novel, this trailer was the opposite of whatever that concoction is. It just seemed like the opposite of whatever I think is a good time. Which admittedly is a complicated and unpredictable mix of nerdery and accessiblity.
How on earth are you supposed to make games, at this point? It feels like almost every person who plays games has a pretty bespoke set of things they want to do in games. Then Baldur's Gate 3 comes along and everyone loves it. How do you reverse engineer that, if you work for Bioware or anyone else? How do the rest of us even understand it?
Funnily enough my interest in Dragon Age 4 has grown considerably since I saw the trailer. There have been a bunch of "okay, that trailer doesn't seem representative of the actual game" pieces. The concerns about it becoming another Mass Effect don't bother me. That had already begun in Inquisition. The storyline intrigues me (be careful reading up on it if, like me, you haven't finished Inquisition). The setting has a lot of potential. Maybe I can swap Varric out early on. Hey, I don't get Varric. Sue me.
I hope Dragon Age 4 sticks, with me and a few million other people. I like Dragon Age games. And it was fun when the entire world decided it liked Baldur's Gate 3. I like to be reminded that video games are awesome and fun, and full of potential on this insanely broad cultural level. Rogue Trader meanwhile is my own personal little source of pleasure. I'm not even sure if I could recommend it. But it somehow scratches the same itch Crusader Kings has scratched for years. That XCom scratched for a long time. It finally scratches the itch that has driven me to buy a BUNCH of CRPGs and then drift away after hanging out in the opening tavern, or rat-infested dungeon, or whatever. Rogue Trader is nothing like Crusader Kings; I should be careful mentioning XCom, because yes that element is there but it is its own thing; and yes, it's a CRPG. An intentionally, unapologetically retro with modern bells and whistles RPG. But why did this one stick, for me? What will stick next?
The real question is probably why I feel the anxiety. I know I'm not the only one who has this. People don't finish games, and lots of people buy games and play a little before moving on. We crave that experience of actually playing a game all the way through of course. We're just not doing it that much. In my own case, the time's not really there. That's a factor but it's not the only reason. If it was I'd have finished NORCO six months ago.
It's the challenge of understanding video games as a medium I suppose. Imagine if Netflix statistics showed that a LOT of people tended to watch the first four episodes of a ten episode television season and call it a day. Wouldn't that be nuts? But based on the Steam achievements metric, itself pretty imperfect, about half the people who have opened Rogue Trader on Steam have gotten out of the first chapter. Half! There's (checks Internet) 90 hours to go! Ish!
We can relax and enjoy the ride I guess. Maybe we're all just a little weird.