The news that Microsoft is shutting down the game studio Arkane Austin has me thinking a bit about games that are bad at launch because Redfall, Arkane Austin’s last game, really was terrible on day one, and that probably doomed it (and maybe the studio).
I’d loved Arkane Lyon’s Dishonored and the idea of having Austin’s take on a vampire game I could play with Atmost and Bacon sounded awesome. But then it dropped and it was simply unplayable, and I don’t mean the bugs made it unplayable. For me, the concept wasn’t workable: the slow, consequential exploration of a world can’t mesh with the drop-in-and-out version of the multiplayer game they were trying to make. Or at least, I couldn’t figure out what I should do in order to have fun, and the game itself seemed as confused about this as I was.
That all seems like awhile back now, but when the news dropped that the studio was being shuttered, it all came rushing back. And that in turn got me thinking about other games I’d waited for that were bad at launch.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 was a big one that I was excited about from its early announcements. A cyberpunk sci-fi RPG starring Keanu Reeves? I bought it almost immediately and it was so unplayable that, when I was later offered a refund, I took it. In this case, the problem was a game that was trying to run on equipment that couldn’t handle it. Despite what CD Projekt said, an Xbox One could not handle this game. Once I had an Xbox X (and a first major patch had dropped), I bought the game again and played straight through, loving it.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Baldur’s Gate 3 was another game it seems I waited forever for. I’d played my first D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms in the late–80s and had kept playing them as they came out through the 90s. Blizzard’s games seemed to kill them off, which was fine: their action spin on the RPG formula was fun and fast and more social. Plus, Fallout 4, Oblivion and Skyrim stood in a bit for some of what I missed from those earlier old-school RPGs. Still, when BG3 was announced I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait and then on release day … it was “released” in alpha. I probably should have known this in advance but I don’t really follow game news that closely. So I was surprised and disappointed and the game stayed there in alpha-beta for more than a year. Then, worse, when 1.x was finally released, I bought it, played one afternoon and never turned it on again.
Starfield
Starfield is the latest of these disappointments. I’d had a good run with Bethesda’s RPGs. Yes, I’d misunderstood (like most people I think) what Fallout 76 was going to be and hated what I found when I tried it, but that was on me. Starfield is different though. It’s what it was advertised to be: an open world RPG in the classic style. And it looks great and sounds great…and I can’t get into it. Something is missing in the structure that leaves me completely unable to figure out what options are available and how to choose from those I see. After dozens of hours playing various attempts at a character, my dominant emotional responses are intense stress and persistant boredom. This combo feels like maybe the exact opposite of fun.
So What to Make of Bad Starts?
I’m not sure why I write all this out. Not every game is going to be great, and it’s not a crime for a game not to be fun for me. I get that. It’s okay not to like something and move on. But I notice a few things:
- The vibe of the game world seems very important here. I think the game I want to play is hard to make and hard to find. And when I do find it, I think it’s hard to get started. Loving the vibe of a world or of a play mechanic can carry me through. I got over the hump with Cyberpunk because I loved Night City and because I genuinely love the hacking mini-game. Starfield continues to haunt me because it has a good vibe and a great lockpicking mini-game, and because of that, I really do want to figure out how to have fun playing it.
- Games are supposed to be fun. Making a game fun immediately should be part of the task of making the game. I remember getting stuck in a series of videos and dialogue when first playing Cyberpunk. They took me a full hour to get through. Watching an NPC talk, selecting a dialogue action, then watching them talk, on a loop for an hour is not fun.
- Bad launches drive you out of a game and then make it harder to come back to it later. I don’t want to have to replay the first few hours of Starfield yet again to give it another go. Same for Baldur’s Gate 3. Same for pre-2.x patch to Cyberpunk. And yet the fact that games can be updated completely at any point after purchase seems to have lowered the bar for releases, making it more likely that I’ll burn through my good will struggling through what is essentially an unfinished version. (I read an article where someone suggested that all games were released in beta now, even if they aren’t called that officially, and that it is assumed that even basic gameplay will be changed in later updates. Fine, but there’s a reason betas are shared with “testers” rather than “players”: because testers will encounter problems that break the game. This is not “play” and definitely not fun.)
- I think I miss not having a manual. Apple taught us that with good design we don’t need a manual. In a lot of basic contexts that true. But you can’t play Monopoly or D&D without a rule book. Having an opening ten minutes of play that tells you that you can use the left stick to move forward doesn’t cut it.
And so…
I guess this entire post boils down to me saying:
- I wanted to love these games and don’t and hate that;
- I hope they are just mistakes and missteps and that they’ll get fixed; and
- I desperately need want hope pray that Star Wars: Outlaws won’t be like this.