Redwolf's Journal (continued)

The Outer Wilds finished out about how I had come to expect, though not how I would have originally guessed. It veers a bit more into the territory of artistic experience than compelling narrative. It worked well enough and has a certain charm, but I can't say it had deeply marked me or anything. I'm finding I need to start categorizing a game's lore as independent of story/narrative . The *Souls games are known for the depths of the former, but it's all related by inventory item descriptions and a few cryptic lines from NPCs here and there. The Outer Wilds is somewhat similar in that, with perhaps 99% of the information coming from reading text files left behind. There's all of one NPC in the whole system who's looping with the player, and you can't have a very in-depth discussion with them. That makes for a somewhat lonely experience. Now, I really liked the exploration aspects and piecing together the lore mysteries was interesting. I describe the co

I'm pretty damned tired of the same stuff over and over. Sure, my personal life is pretty darn same-y. News is a constant stream of "You won't believe what <politician> said..." After the last few years, not only would I believe it, I would have predicted it. Work sees me regularly wanting to smack my head or eyeroll at how people within the company seem unable to communicate, coordinate, or have any consistent direction. And we're personally hamstrung a lot of the time financially. Maybe I need a vacation ? That's not in the cards, though, for a variety of reasons...

Well, starting the morning off with a frustrating, looping software issue is one way to feel something other than ongoing malaise, right? A flickering ember of undirected anger instead... It's definitely not been a great week for me on the mental-emotional front. Though "alone" at work (ie. the other IT person has been out), things haven't been much busier than usual. Of late, the "usual" has been more boring than anything. I know enough to acknowledge that's not overall a bad thing, especially in any job that involves supporting others. It takes a different sort of psychological toll than being busy, however, rather than none at all. I've been thinking a lot about the not-MUCK of Faire lately and I seem to have reached the conclusion that playing "there" isn't really for me. That is sad and frustrating and a bunch of other muddled emotions that I seem to be moving toward acceptance of. I'm just not there yet. I've said pr

It occurred to me that I never really put forth my thoughts on Pathfinder: Kingmaker . I suppose this is because my playing of it petered out getting into the endgame and I never picked it back up, so I haven't completed it even if I have uninstalled it. As an isometric Baldur's Gate -style RPG, it's perfectly fine. The Pathfinder rules have plenty of build potential. In addition to the typical combat encounters, there are traps and some skill-based situations. There are a few minor puzzles here and there. And we have a story that involves faeries and powerful curses. What sets it apart is the layer of kingdom building/management. Your character comes to be in charge of a settlement in a sort of no man's land between other nation-states and you get to build things up, tame additional areas, and manage relations with neighbors. The decision-making paths aren't massive, but you get some customization. For example, you get to choose where to build a town within a ne

My interest in Satisfactory probably came largely from playing Subnautica , even if the former is much more focused on building and tech advancement. When it was released (into early access) on Epic Game Store, well, I was disappointed and blew it off. Now it's been over a year, the exclusivity is expired, more updates have been released, though it's still in early access. With a slot opened in my gaming interests, I begrudgingly gave it a shot in spite of that last point. On the up side, it scratches the building and development itch pretty well, which is what I expected and wanted from it. There is some sense of exploration that comes from pushing into new biomes. The 3D/FP view is more comfortable and appealing to me than something like Factorio (which I haven't mustered enough interest to try). Setting up an automated manufacturing line can be pretty rewarding. It entertained me for enough hours to be worth the money before I came to the end of the currently-availab