Control

This confinement period sucks, but the good side is that I can play more videogames.

Since last Christmas I got a couple of new xbox games. One of them was The Outer Worlds. The other was Control.

The Outer Worlds seems nice, it's like a different version of Fallout, it's made by Obsidian and they tend to make amazing RPGs (like Pillars of Eternity). It has nice touches but I haven't explored it more yet, because as an RPG it can be a bit overwhelming at times with the number of quests. Plus taking decisions and selecting sides can be sometimes a bit tiring. But I hope I'll get to it.

The one I've just finished now it's Control. And I have to say that I loved it.

In Control, you are Jesse Faden, a girl that is trying to find her brother who disappeared after a mysterious accident, abducted by an organization called Federal Bureau of Control, that investigates paranormal things. So you start the game finding the building where the Bureau is located, entering it and realizing it's in an emergency lock-down because it has been "invaded". You see people floating around and frozen, and start to investigate.

Soon enough you end up gaining a special object, a "magical" gun, that converts you automatically in the director of the place. And you discover that some people are being possessed by the "Hiss", some type of red corruption/vibration/chant that is trying to take over.

This is a horror game, but it's a subtle, mental horror, the type I love. The initial enemies that you find are just people with a reddish glow on them, using guns and weapons to try to kill you, but the weirdness escalates slowly but surely. You find all these log messages and videos explaining some of the core concepts of the game, like the existence of Altered Items (common items that have gained supernatural effects from repetitive use), Objects of Power (beefed up versions of the items that allow people to have cool skills like telekinesis or levitation) and Thresholds (places that basically are intertwined with paranormal stuff or other dimensions).

The building is not normal nor a stable entity, and sometimes it shifts and changes, although mostly you see this happening only after cleaning an area of Hiss. Its proportions are not normal (definitely bigger in the inside) and the atmosphere is that of a bureaucratic office that normalized dealing with strange things, very grey and white. It feels cold somehow, very official, with pictures of the directors on the walls. The graphics are awesome though, and they're mixed sometimes with real-life footage and with the atmosphere it's hard to tell the difference in some cases.

The atmosphere is eerie, and as you advance you keep hearing the whispers of the hiss and see the red lights that mark their presence or areas where they're strong, giving you a certain anticipation but also this feeling of tension. Enemies respawn in certain areas but it's not a sure thing and they don't respawn in the same way, so you're always wondering what will appear this time, if anything. Enemies have levels, even if you don't leel up in the traditional sense, and this helps indicate the difficulty of the game.

The main plot is interesting and suspenseful, a bit typical but executed quite well, and the different videos you find of the people that ruled the building before the breach gives you a nice insight into how things were (plus they're usually fun/creepy/interesting. And the actors doing them are great, special mention to Dr. Darling). Luckily you also find survivors (I don't like games where you never find anyone else, seems unrealistic) and this also creates some safe areas and some sense of normality. The side quests are really good most of the time, and while the main plot there are no "bosses" apart from the occasional named enemy with more life and armor, in the side quests there's a variety of encounters with weird stuff that is quite enjoyable, although also quite frustrating sometimes (I've died a lot in some of them).

Related to dying, if you do die you don't exactly lose progress but you respawn in the nearest control point. Whatever you have done is saved but enemies tend to respawn if you didn't pass an area. Also, you lose money/points/whatever, a percentage of them (I haven't check what happens if you run out. I think nothing, it's just annoying because you don't have any, but killing enemies gives you back lots easily). The game has no levels but it has a point and crafting system, and you accumulate those points, plus strange materials (they have very very strange names), that you can use to upgrade weapons and create special mods for them and for yourself. Even without levels, by increasing your skills and adding these upgrades you can later on breeze through earlier places of the game where enemies remain at low level.

Where the game shines is in certain moments of...wrongness, caused by some paranormal thing. It can be in the side quests, or sometimes in the main plot, but it's these moments where something is not right: The room you're in is too big, the walls are bending strangely, the room is twisted, some door that was not there before appears now, there are strange coloured lights around the room...or stuff like the Oceanview motel, which needs to be experienced, and while not scary per se, it's just...not quite right. And I love games that can pull off this effect, because it's not easy to do and it really fucks with your mind in ways that explicit gore and blood will never manage.

Having said that, there are some unnerving enemies. Without spoiling much, Hiss can also deform their hosts resulting in body horror. Also the more deformed ones tend to scream in  a way, especially next to you, that is quite disturbing (Special mention to the fucking Hiss Distorted, which is also invisible until it shouts and appears next to you and halves your life in one hit). But again, it's not about blood and gore, it's very well done how it creates tension by showing you something clearly very wrong.

Another side that the game does very well is the dream-like moments or the moments when you're clearly in some other dimension, like when you see the foundations of the building or the active threshold (and I'll leave things at that to be all cryptic and not spoil the fun).

One little detail that I loved is that the authors of this game are the same ones that did Alan Wake. Alan Wake was a nice horror game, but while nice it felt somehow a bit repetitive and it lacked a certain something during most of the game . Alan Wake shined the most at the end and in its expansions, but sadly the final 3rd expansion was never released. However, in this game they got a small vindication by including Alan Wake as part of this world, and commenting on the events of the game as part of an Altered World Event (AWE), an event where something para-natural has happened and has altered the normality of a place.

Finally, I have to say the ashtray maze section, done while heavy metal music (the game's company is Finnish and it shows :p ) sounds all around you, it's fucking amazing. Even if they say so in the game...

Highly recommended.

We need stranger stories

I've been living in Gangneung for a bit over 2 weeks now. My apartment is furnished and I'm getting used to live here, and so far it's quite good^^.

Warning: Geeky post ahead, and spoilers for Halo 5.

When I came here, I brought with me a new xbox one that I bought. Since I'm alone, I thought I may have a chance to play a bit, and indeed I have played. Since games are expensive, I currently only have 2 games, one that came with the console and another one. I will bring some of my old xbox 360 games with me soon, and I will be able to play those as well, but for the moment it's quite enough.

The two games are Battlefield 1 (it came with the console) and Halo 5.

I've been a fan of Halo since I discovered it, and I made other posts about it. I think it's a game that combines fun gameplay with story and ambientation (music, scenery) that makes you want to continue playing and advance. It is impressive, epic, dramatic, and also fun. When Bungie stopped developing them it was a big drama, but after playing Halo 4, I saw that the new dedicated department that has the task of continuing with the games was dedicated and similar enough to continue with the original feeling and making an interesting plot.

Halo 4 had some confusing plot elements, but I continued to like it. So, I started Halo 5 with the expectation to be similarly good. And I was not disappointed, I'm enjoying it greatly. After such a long time without playing a Halo, it was like riding a bike or driving a car...all these gestures, movements, actions and possibilities that were new but familiar, that my reflexes learned again by just remembering them.  That was pretty awesome...and the music and atmosphere were still great, epic and strange, maintaining the sci-fi feeling some stories do not manage to achieve.. .


However, there were 2 tings that annoyed me a bit. First one was one new playable character, called Locke. The game changes perspective between him and Master Chief.

In a world full of bland space marines, this character manages to outbland most of them. He's not interesting, he's not dramatic, he does not transmit empathy nor makes me care for him at all. Master Chief, even being pretty bland, has a huge amount of very subtle registers, and a clear inner world that seems interesting. I did not detect any such thing in Locke. He's like your typical "I follow orders" type of military main character,

Also, you're playing in a team with another character voiced by Nathan Fillion, with his looks and part of his tone and characteristic humour. I would much rather play as him, really...no comparison whatsoever....his character is interesting. The one you play, not really.

The second thing is that in this game Cortana is labelled and acts as the bad guy (or girl, or AI). First of all, the most interesting thing in all Halos is Cortana, period. Other characters just do not reach her level at all. Her sarcasm, funny comments, usefulness, depth, etc....cannot really compare with the others. Second, her turning evil is just managing to get to immortality (she was created with an arbitrarily short expiration date) and trying to establish some system to stop people form killing each other constantly. In a world where 2 games ago several species where about to be wiped out because of conflict and war, that seems quite a sensible move, really. I don't see why this is supposed to be bad...Sure, there's the eternal discussion about dictatorships and liberties and all that....but, again, we're taking about a world setting where intergalactic wars are glassing planets and entire colonies get exterminated....and where the guys that are saying "this is bad, she cannot have this control" are the ones that are sent by their bosses and superiors to kill and conquer without much question...hell, the "main character" seems to be a guy that was sent in purely assassination missions ....I mean, the feeling I get is that if it was the human species achieving this power, the game would paint it positively (take Mass Effect's example).

This made me think that I'm a little tired about stories where the omniscient creature is labelled evil when they try to tell humans to stop killing each other or else...plenty of times we get situations where the humans are being forced to be pacific, and this is presented as reducing our liberties....I believe here there's heavy influence from USA's second amendment craziness and the fact that plenty of these stories are made by people in the USA or based in USA's movies and so on... in general, I have repeated this before, but we need to stop focusing on humans when telling sci-fi or fantasy stories....we tend to put the humans as the main characters, and this is the same as putting male bland military protagonists...I don't know at which point someone decided that male guys are the main market for all this fiction and they cannot relate to people unless they're also male and manly....and human, when we add fantasy to the plot...and we need to get rid of this preconceptions.

Stories need to be weirder, more open, more diverse, and take risks, take new stances and original paths. For example, whatever happens in Halo 6, I would love for Cortana to win, and to see that the new results was actually pretty nice. This would be a nice plot twist, something out of the norm, and something to remove humans from the protagonist and ruler point of a sci-fi story with so much more potential than what stupid military space marines offer...

The Last Discworld Novels

So I finished the Shepherd's Crown, and a lot has become clear.

The novel itself....could be better. Much better. Actually, it is similar to the last novels he wrote, and it is painfully sub-par compared with most of other Discworld.

I think his last novels that I read were Making Money (probably the less affected), I Shall Wear Midnight, Unseen Academicals, Snuff, Dodger, Raising Steam and The Shepherd's Crown. And all of them have several of these problems, although the worst offenders were the latest.

It would be a disservice to Terry Pratchett to say that his last novels were really good. They were not. The characters became Mary Sues, perfect, clearly without any problems to survive the story, with everybody agreeing with them or fighting them in a very peculiar way that made them even more correct and successful. And characters were not speaking any more, they were giving monologues,  they were offering speeches. Worst of all, in the last book all of a sudden magic could do everything and all witches had powers never before mentioned. There were even continuity errors with previous books. And it ended with a battle, a battle without soul, without casualties (well, one, but I would not count it), without doubts about who would win.

It saddens me to say so, but Terry's novels died before he did. And well, what would one expect? He had Alzheimer's disease, which made writing hard, and a very limited timetable (his life expectancy after the diagnostic was extremely short). He wanted to write some stories still, but the end result was that he "rushed" his last novels, I guess in fear of not finishing them. This is the hard truth, what my First Sight is telling me.

In the last pages of the book they explained that in 2007 he was diagnosed, after finishing Nation. It is the year when Making Money was published, and you can see that all the books written after this moment decrease in quality. Apart of what I've said, they cram social issues in there in a way that doesn't work, because it is not subtle or woven with the rest of the plot. I'm not saying you cannot explicitly defend social issues in a story, just that you need to know how to fit them inside, and the last books did not manage to do that very well.

The thing is, remembering Terry Pratchett by these books is also a disservice, a huge one. If you want to know Terry Pratchett and why he was one of the greatest writers that have existed, you need to read all his other books.

You can start with Nation, one of the last he wrote, a book that grips your emotions and manages to express sorrows, fears, determination, brutality, love and plenty of other things in its characters and in you. A book that questions who's the uncivilized, the savage, the one without important culture. A book about science and discovery, about survival, about growing up.

You can continue with his early works, Johny Maxwell, the Bromeliad Trilogy, Strata, etc. They may be minor, or smaller in scope, but they teach you about humanity, about youth, about beliefs and traditions.

You can see the genius of Good Omens, genius shared with Neil Gaiman, a book about the apocalypse that laughs at religion while defending belief, spiritual and in humanity, and in our inner goodness.

And you can tackle Discworld. Discworld is huge. The first books are small jokes, good but without a point. But the rest is simply awesome. You can analyze traditions in Pyramids. You can consider revolutions in Nightwatch. You can understand life and death in the Reaper Man. You can see the problem with blind belief in Small Gods. You can enjoy the primordial energy of Rock in Soul Music. You can understand stories and the evils of Christmas in Hogfather. You can see what a good teacher is while pondering about the nature of time in Thief of Time. You can talk about integration in Men at Arms. You can see racial problems and stereotypes in Thud! or Jingo. You can experience that, and a thousand times more, if you immerse yourself in his books. You can experience poetry that leaves marks in your soul, and right afterwards  enjoy a vulgar joke that makes you laugh without control while in the subway. You can ponder deep philosophy while being entertained. You can see that wars are not meant to be fought, and that true heroes do not fight but prevent the fight from happening. You can learn that good people, if they think you should die, won't waste time gloating and will kill you straight. You can see that being human is a state of mind and a matter of choice.YOU CAN HAVE FUN WITH DEATH. You can experience a different world that is exactly like our own.

Terry Pratchett has all this to offer, and I'm not going to insult his memory by saying his last rushed books done while terribly ill are good. I will say that the books before that moment are beyond good. They are amazing. They are incredible. They are mind-blowing. They are hilarious. They are dead-serious. They are totally worth your time, and you should read them. All of them. Even the last ones. And then reread them.

That's how we do proper service to his memory.

Castle And Good Stories

We're reaching the last stages of the project, and soon enough we'll be very busy at work. At home, we're taking care of Elay, and enjoying his first reactions to us (smiles, laughs, sounds, and the funniest of them all: raising arms and legs and rolling to one side when very happy).

With all this, we still have enough free time and we do stuff that we like. Recently we finished watching some series, and since there were no new chapters of any of the series that we still follow, we decided to start something new. We decided to give "Castle" a try, since I had heard it was decent enough.

I enjoy browsing this website called TV Tropes. IT's an informal wiki that compiles Tropes. Tropes are tricks and patterns used in all kinds of fiction, or even in real life. For example, the "Evil Genius" Trope is the one where we have some kind of inventor that has some secret lab and performs experiments that will enable them to rule the world or achieve some other selfish objective. It's an easily recognizable pattern, a building block for stories. Using tropes is inevitable, even when you're subverting them by showing how ridiculous they are.  You may use new ones or more obscure ones, but still any story can be analysed in some way using Tropes. And using Tropes is not bad, or it does not make a story bad.

With that in mind, Castle sounds like this: A famous and rich male writer that lives with his mother and his daughter writes about murders and has similarities with Stephen King partners with a female police detective  thanks to his friendship with powerful people, and together they solve murder investigations with the help of other detectives and forensics.

This is a truthful explanation of the series, and it sounds unoriginal and repetitive, like a detective novel mixed with CSI.

However, this show is awesome. We're completely addicted to it.

The trick here is that the premise is rather cliché, but its all in the execution, and in the characters. The characters are alive. They are funny, they are likeable, they have flaws and qualities...they're very human, and they feel very realistic, they seem real. You can imagine people reacting in the way they do.

The show also tries to be realistic in how to investigate crimes, with a few exceptions or pokes to "super agencies" shows where they have computers that do everything. Mixed in all this are lots of jokes, an incredible amount of pokes and funny references to other shows (since the main actor was in Firefly, there's looots of pokes about this) and pop culture (like the x-files special episode about aliens with Bishop) , and in general a very funny feeling, even if there are dramatic moments too.

This shows that good stories do not need to be original, and they don't need to avoid common Tropes. Good stories take these Tropes and use them wisely for the best effect. When it's done correctly the story will be awesome, even when everybody knows what's going to happen.

For example, one of the last chapters that we have seen was not as good. The reasons for that was that it didn't make much sense, characters didn't behave as normal , and the bad guy had all his plans too perfect while nobody figured his intentions, while they're usually smart in other episodes.

This episode was an exception in this show, and we still think most of the rest is awesome and totally worth watching, but it servers to proof that it doesn't matter how typical a show may seem, it's all in how its done...

With a few exceptions, Castle is very well done.