The State of Things Around Here

Yes, hello, hi, I meant to do this earlier.

I like to give explanations for when I'm gone for a stretch. I've done so before, and I will again, which is to say: ibid.

I'm still mentally ill, and I still fall apart sometimes. I'm getting better, in the sense that I'm back on my feet. Just that this happens when life turns in uncomfortable ways, you forget that you're really actually quite sane normally, and start to believe your own negative self talk. Doing things that you love seems like work. Doing things that are literally play seem like work. Not working seems like laziness, and believe me, that's just one more factor that drives me down more. So I get stuck on my own moving parts, and I go away for a while.

I've come back, and I'm ready to work. So here's what's up.

BASIC and Otherlore

Lord knows I've hyped this business enough, and it's time to put up with what I've been working on. Fortunately, things are further along than they always seem when you get down on yourself, and as it turns out, Otherlore is rapidly approaching a state of being play-testable. I know, megashock, it's been a while since I updated on that front, but I have been working on it, and as it turns out, when you find yourself working on statting out equipment mechanics ahead of anticipating a playgroup wanting stuff to actually play with, well, I guess you're farther along than you thought.

The plan is to have a version of the game out to you in a basic, playable state, with all four of the initially playable Peoples and their Cultures, as well as a smattering of Destinies to start out with- tentatively, six to eight. Along with the mechanics for them, gear, magic and creatures, I'll be putting together a small setting package with Adrienne, as well as a basic adventure to get everyone going. The roadmap from here to there I'm looking at will, again, tentatively, be late spring, early summer. Up to that point, expect to see more updates relating to the development, not to mention more setting writing. Also, an actual roadmap, because I really should put a proper one together.

There will be no microtransactions.

I wish I didn't feel obligated to disclose that was me joking. About the state of the games industry, not that there will be microtransactions, there won't be.

That Thing I Was Up To While Gone

'Aww shit, he's got a new project?' Yeah, but that's what you signed up for, and this is what I do for therapy when things that are a part of my life seem like too much work to enjoy: lose yourself in what you do, just differently. I lost myself in a thing that was different from all this other stuff I've been doing, even if it was still game related.

I developed a real fascination with the debacle that Destiny 2 has become, a mess so undeniable that even people whose most common discontent with videogames is some sanitized permutation of "a woman and/or coloured and/or gay made one about a not-straight not-white not-man" are making salient points.

They can still go fuck themselves, I mean, it's just that Bungie and Activision have crossed a line with their community that even a pack of fucking morons can call their shot. It's like any given EA title these days, only with a far shittier engine, and they roped in Claudia Black to sell their lootboxes. Poor woman, I bet she didn't even know at first. 

Yet still, Destiny is something that is painful to hate, because it's a game that should be good as a whole, not just as an ongoing saga with notable high points in its existence. It moves, looks and sounds like it should, yet its identity is one that's in flux and totally at odds with itself. Its setting work and backstory, bafflingly relegated to a barely-integrated website, is incredible. Flat out, I will say, had Destiny's initial fiction been released in the 60s, it would probably be considered foundational, too weird to be anything other than compelling, but well written enough to stand alone even if it was less intriguing than it actually is.

Destiny the game is Star Wars, written by people who really liked Firefly and like to name things "Wolves." It's almost nothing, but too much to be inoffensive. It's voice cast is an eclectic mix of high profile talent, miscast into roles that had no reason for them to be playing the characters they are. Peter Dinklage, one of our greatest living actors, who was yet untested in a vocal performance, was cast as the voice-in-the-ear role in an ongoing service game, which is one of the dumbest low-key ideas in the entire thing. Lance Reddick, a man with enough physical presence and maniac charisma to tilt Eric Andre on his own show, is placed in the role of Stoic Military Guy, The Man That Gives You Orders.

Nathan Fillion also features, because yeah he does.

More beyond, Bungie never seemed to have any idea what they were doing with the thing. Possibly because at this point, it's clear that they never had any idea what they were doing with the thing. The first game was scrapped and remade at least once that we know of, and now it appears that the second is made entirely out of reclaimed bits from an unused iteration. What good decisions that did occur appeared to come from Bungie's willingness to throw a degree of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, as well as willingness to listen to feedback from its core players in order to further evolve the lategame through expansions. That's the thing about riding the railing on a highway, you get where you're going, eventually, but nobody's willing to give you credit for your brilliant idea, because Jesus Christ, dude.

And now they're not even listening to their core players. Bungie don't seem to be listening to anyone, really.

So I set out to do two things. At first it was one thing, but then it became two. The first was that I was going to theorycraft a better Destiny than Destiny, a first person loot shooter that captures a feel of wonder and danger on a science-fantasy frontier. I wanted to get into my own game laboratory and try to draw up the means to capitalize on every single one of Destiny's mistakes and create something that had real potential.

In doing so, it became making a game that I feel is more Me than anything I've ever made, in the intent of how the game plays, the world it takes place in, and the themes that it incorporates. So I figured that I should start sharing it with you, rather than keeping it to myself, both the theory behind it, as well as the setting. Tentatively, it's called A Strange Wilderness, a first person action adventure, set in the wilds of a New Nature, created by result of our reality converging with, then pulling apart from adjacent ones. It's a game of Hunters and the wild territories they patrol, looking for the things the new Tribe of Peoples need to get by in a world where the ways how things used to work is the new fantasy, and the rules of physics have been rewritten, slightly off, significantly arcade. The surrounding wilds are alive with unnatural invaders, competitors against harmony- a twisted echo of our old humanity, the ghosts of dead universes that unmake our material world with their wailing frequencies, and a living blight that sees us as the disease to be purged. But they are only monsters. And you are a Hunter, a predator that preys on monsters. Show them your teeth, and teach them how evolution can be cruel.

It's a little intense.

I look forward to showing you all it coming soon.

That Time Where I Streamed

Yeah, that was fun. I should do that again. How about tonight? Tonight? Round 6pm Pacific? More Warframe? Or maybe not that, you can see me play Cities, badly?

Viewable live at https://www.twitch.tv/docdestructo? Question mark?