Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem | Superior Realities

Between the Gamescom announcements, other recent teases, and some upcoming releases, there’s an unusually large number of games on the horizon I’m keeping an eye on. I thought I’d do a rundown on everything I’m looking forward to, or at least willing to hear more about. Maybe some will be future favourites. Maybe some I’ll never mention again. Place your bets now!

Aion 2

Obviously this is the big one right now. I was pretty excited when it was first announced and have gone back and forth over how hyped I am since then. Right now I’m expecting it will probably be like Lost Ark: Not something I end up sticking with longterm, but something that will give me a hundred hours or so of good entertainment all the same. I hope for more than that, but I don’t expect it. It’s always good to have managed expectations.

Right now my major concerns are that the endgame seems extremely sweaty, the community seems quite toxic (both problems Lost Ark had as well), and the class design seems a bit uninspired, with little room for meaningful customization. I’m hoping we get the Brawler class with the Western launch; it seems a bit more mechanically engaging than the others from what I can see. Then again, I do like the DPS/healer hybrid role of the Chanter as well.

One thing’s for sure: I’m maining Asmodian. Azphelumbra!

Exodus

Probably the game I’m most looking forward to right now, though a bit farther off than Aion 2. It’s been a long wait for this Mass Effect spiritual successor, but we now know it’s coming April of next year. Some of the early previews looked a bit janky, but the recent Gamescom trailer focused on the intelligent octopus known as Salt was very good.

Again, I try to manage expectations. I’m not expecting a perfect game — the Mass Effect games never were either — but I am hungry for a BioWare style narrative-focused RPG right now, and the world-building looks incredibly fresh.

Warlock

Another thing we got a peak at during Gamescom. This D&D based action RPG looks a little campy, and the trailer seemed very over-produced to the point I question how representative of actual gameplay it is, but the general concept of combining magic and physical skills is appealing, I’m always up for more of Tricia Helfer in anything, and the fact it’s set in Ravenloft is a big plus (even if they picked what I’d consider to be one of the least interesting Domains of Dread — at least it’s not Barovia again).

Path of Exile 2

Having finished the original and declared it to be one of the games of all time, I’m a little lukewarm on PoE2. I’ve been waiting for it to launch and go free to play to give it a shot, but now the time for that is only a couple months away.

I’ve heard it’s going for a slower, more deliberate approach to combat with more actual rotations as opposed to spamming a single nuke, which is very appealing to me, but I’ve also heard it’s been trending away from that and more towards PoE1 combat, which is not. I like the changes to skill gems not being tied to gear, but the passive wheel still seems an exercise in quantity over quality.

I was looking at potential builds the other night, and I was thinking of going either druid or huntress with a mix of shapeshifting, companion, and necromancy skills (going for the “cycle of life and death” vibes), only to discover that the skill nodes for those three things are all in completely different parts of the wheel and thus difficult if not impossible to combine. That was pretty demoralizing. Again, PoE seems to be the champion for the illusion of choice rather than genuine choice.

It’s also a bit of a bad look that PoE2 seems unlikely to launch with all of its promised classes. Makes it hard to want to jump on board when I don’t even have the full roster to choose from.

Wolcen 2

Now here’s something unexpected. After the disastrous collapse of Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, I didn’t really expect its developer to have much of a future at all, let alone produce a sequel.

I have conflicted feelings. Wolcen was in many ways the best ARPG I’ve ever played. Its combat and build system were second to none (here’s the real depth of choice PoE only pretends to). Now whenever I play similar games there’s this nagging voice in the back of my mind saying, “Why doesn’t this feel as good as Wolcen?” But its post launch support was one of the most mismanaged disasters I’ve ever seen.

If they can produce a game that’s as good as Wolcen but actually has a finished storyline in a reasonable timeframe and doesn’t light itself on fire after launch, that’s a game I’d love to play.

If.

Road 96… 2?

The folks at Digixart recently released a brief teaser for what appears to be Road 96 2. Again, not really sure how to feel here. Road 96 was one of my favourite games of the decade, but it didn’t really demand a sequel. Its prequel, Mile 0, already felt a tad unnecessary.

I’m not even sure how you do a sequel to Road 96. The endings are different enough it seems like they’d have to pick one to be the canon ending, which is likely to piss a bunch of people off.

I’d love to revisit Petria in a way that captures the magic of the original, but I just don’t know how likely that is.

Fable

I did play the original Fable a long time ago, and I remember mostly liking it, but it was never a franchise I had much attachment to. Still, the reboot looks very pretty, and a classless RPG with lots of choices to make is always an appealing prospect.

Can’t see myself buying it at full price, though.

Blood of the Dawnwalker

I’m not a big vampire fan, but this looks like it has the potential to be a good “choices matter” RPG. Another one I’m definitely not going to pay full price for, though.

Cinder City

After how The First Descendant turned out, it’s hard to have much optimism for another Korean looter shooter, but the Gamescom trailer did make it seem intriguing. Will keep an eye on it.

1001 Threads of Mizan

The Gamescom trailer for this really impressed me, but the more I read about it, the more I got the vibe it may not be for me. The massive boss battles seems like it will be echoing the Soulslike formula I dislike, and while they say it’s possible to play solo, it sounds like it will be inadvisable to do so.

Still, maybe one day. The magitech Arabic mythology flavour is super cool.

Tarae: The Unbound

Not much information about this so far, but a Diablo-like ARPG based on Eastern mythology seems like an appealing prospect in theory. Worth keeping an eye on.

Marvel’s Wolverine

I just want to say I was really looking forward to this, and I resent Sony for not doing a PC port. Bold strategy, Cotton, we’ll see if it pays off for them.

Silver Palace

This was a trailer that caught my eye during the Gamescom reveals. I’m not big on anime-style stuff as a rule, but the Victorian noir vibe was intriguing, and some of the fight moves looked very cool (though I’m not sure if that’s representative of gameplay or just trailer fakery).

Is it just me, or does a lot of the promotional material for this game feel very sapphic coded?

I’m not really sure what it is, though? It looks like a Genshin style gacha game. The official website is frustratingly unclear, but this site seems to confirm it’s a free to play gacha title. I’ve avoided gacha games until now. Partly because they don’t seem super appealing (bhagpuss’ gushing over Neverness to Everness notwithstanding), but mainly because they all seem to be Chinese, and I’m trying to avoid supporting Chinese games on ethical grounds. Silver Palace’s developer, though, is Singaporean, which I have no objection to.

Miracle

I don’t have anything new to say about this. I just wanted to mention it again because it’s so exciting.

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Guild Wars 3

This one’s still aways off, and I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t get delayed. Not really sure how I feel about it. Guild Wars 2 is a great game in many ways, but it’s just never been able to hold my attention for that long, and one of the biggest factors in that — its poor story writing — is one of the things least likely to change in a sequel.

Overall it’s too early to form any strong opinions. I am hyped for playable Kodan, though. Bearfolk is an underrated archetype. Bears are cool.

Vindictus: Defying Fate

I don’t have anything to say about this I haven’t already said over on Massively, but no list of upcoming games I’m looking forward to would be complete without it. I really like what I’ve played so far, despite being pretty bad at it, and I hope we get a release date soon.

Life Is Strange: Reunion

This is actually already out, but I’m waiting for a discount. I never played Double Exposure and was kind of writing off the franchise for dead until they said they were bringing back Chloe.

Here’s the thing: This is shameless, cynical fan service. But it’s shameless, cynical fan service aimed directly at me and my interests.

It’s a kick in the teeth they didn’t get Ashly Burch back to play her, though. Her performance was absolutely iconic.

And more

I’ve already written about my thoughts on the next round of Age of Empires DLC. I’m eager for AoE4’s Raiders of the North to finally arrive so I can delve into the Crucible. I’m a bit concerned about its replay factor if it’s going to continue to be just wave defence scenarios, but AoE4’s bones are so good hopefully that won’t be an issue. AoE2’s Viking Sagas is, as I’ve said, something I want to play but probably not at full price.

There’s also Godsworn. Still no date for it to finally leave early access, but I believe they’re targeting early next year. I can’t be mad at the developers — there’s only two of them working on the game full-time — but I am impatient to finally sit down and play through the completed campaign.

Then there’s BlizzCon. We don’t know what will be announced for sure, but all signs point to a StarCraft shooter. My money is on “Destiny 2 with a StarCraft skin,” with smaller odds on “Warframe with a StarCraft skin” or “Helldivers 2 with a StarCraft skin.”

As I’ve written elsewhere, I think a StarCraft shooter could be good, but probably won’t be, so I’m not super enthusiastic. StarCraft II was such a near-perfect game I kind of wish they’d just let the franchise lie. There’s nowhere to go but down.

I apologize for not posting more often the last few weeks (I seem to say that a lot lately). I’ve been struggling a lot with motivation these days.

Partly it’s that my new D&D writing gig has taken a lot out of me. It’s probably a bigger workload than I’ve ever dealt with in my life up to this point. Given my disability, that’s not saying as much as it might, but still. I’ve had very little energy left for any other forms of writing, and most of what is left over goes to maintaining my column at Massively Overpowered.

The other factor is of course the pandemic.

On the one hand this hasn’t really changed that much for me. I already work from home and don’t go out that much. Really everyone else has now been forced to live their lives how I’ve lived most of my life.

But then of course that was something I wanted to change. I’ve been working very hard the last few years to go out, experience new things, and form social connections outside of the virtual realm, and now thanks to the plague all those doors are closed to me, and I’m back where I started, at least for the time being. It’s demoralizing.

The monotony of every day being the same is starting to get to me, and that is also really killing my motivation for a lot of things, including blogging.

But I don’t want my blog to die altogether, so let’s try to throw together an update.

My D&D group is still going, albeit online. We’re using Roll20. It’s bad. I won’t sugar-coat it. Roll20 is bad. Like I want to respect it for having so many features, and we are managing games with it, but it’s so clunky and buggy.

Wanting something comforting and unchallenging, I’ve been binge rewatching Star Trek: Voyager lately. I’m not watching every episode; just the ones that jump out at me, which is roughly half of them, I’d say.

I’ll stand by what I’ve said in the past: It’s not great, but it’s not half as bad as people make it out to be. I think the worst criticism you could make of it is that it could have been so much better. It’s a show rife with missed opportunities, underdeveloped characters, and failures to live up to the potential of its premise, but if you just take it for what it is, it’s decent.

Season two was probably the best. At that point they’d gotten over the opening jitters but hadn’t yet completely betrayed the premise of being lost and struggling for survival in a harsh frontier. After that it was slowly downhill. The show lost a lot of heart when Kes left.

As far as video games, my favourite new discovery in recent months — as you might have seen from my MOP column — is Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem.

Much to my own surprise I’ve continued playing for quite a while after finishing the storyline, just grinding dungeons. I love the combat and the build system so much. The nigh-limitless build options really remind me of old school TSW, and I’m having so much fun theorycrafting. I’ve started a new character, a necromancer based on elemental damage, and I love it. I just sit back freezing enemies and setting them on fire while my zombies distract them.

I also finally got around to finally playing Nier: Automata. It’s one of those games that I liked, but I don’t get what the fuss was about. It’s more good than bad, but nothing about it strikes me as exceptionally memorable.

My biggest complaint was the side quests. I think Nier: Automata wins the award for the absolute worst side quests I’ve ever seen in a video game. None have interesting or memorable stories, most involve long tedious travel times, and many throw you against enemies that vastly out-level you, leading to crushingly long and boring fights.

I will say that I only played through it once, and I do understand that the story changes on subsequent playthroughs, so I may not be getting the full Nier: Automata experience. I’m still considering doing the extra playthroughs at some point — a friend assures me I won’t have to repeat the side quests, which makes the idea a bit more appealing — but I was pretty happy with the original ending, and I somewhat resent needing multiple playthroughs to see the whole story, so we’ll see.

In Star Trek Online, I’ve now finished the Iconian War arc, and I’m thinking I may take a break there, as it seems like a good place to pause at, and I’m starting to feel some burnout. Mostly I was happy with how the Iconian plot wrapped up. The ending nailed that morality play feel good Star Trek should have.

Finally, I’ve just started on We Happy Few. It’s a game I’ve been wanting for ages, but I wanted to wait for a sale in case I didn’t end up enjoying it (gods, I miss demos). I’m only a few hours in, so I’m still making up my mind.

So far I love the story, the world-building, the artwork, and the music. The downside is it is very stealth-heavy, and I’m terrible at stealth games. I had to start the game over on a lower difficulty because I was struggling too much. Thankfully I wasn’t that far in, so I haven’t had to repeat much, and so far the lower difficulty seems to be working out better.

So that’s the basics on where I’m at. Let’s hope we’re all out of this virus nightmare sooner rather than later.

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