Still going through some weird emotional ups and downs. These things happen; sometimes it’s a chemical thing and sometimes it’s politics and sometimes it’s a bunch of bad personal/family/friend news and sometimes it’s just out of the blue. At this specific moment, it would appear to be a bit of everything. So I cope as best I can; I play with my son, I turn off social media (for little bits here and there), I engage in retail therapy and accumulate credit card debt. I feel like I’m repeating myself. My wife is out of town tonight and I’m throwing the world’s smallest pity party.
I have to assume, in this day and age, that game developers can keep track of how people are playing their games, even if it’s just from looking at Achievement/Trophy unlocks. It would follow that devs have a relatively good sense of how many people actually finish a story-driven game. As I’ve noted here and elsewhere, games are a unique medium in that, unlike books or albums or films, it is common practice to spend 10-20 hours with a game and never get anywhere close to the “end”.
I bring this up because last night I finally finished the Watch Dogs 2 campaign, and the ending was possibly the most half-assed, anti-climactic snore-fest I’ve ever seen. Indeed, the only reason why I know it was the final mission is because the credits rolled afterwards, and I got an Achievement. Otherwise, I’m honestly not sure I would’ve known the game was over. And it’s entirely possible that the devs didn’t think anyone would get that far, considering how dumb that ending is.
I maintain that WD2 is, on the whole, a rather enjoyable collection of compelling gameplay ideas trapped in some sort of focus-tested narrative hellscape. Unlike the thoroughly unlikable anti-hero of the first game (not that you’d ever have guessed that the devs intended him to be unlikable), WD2 has a diverse group of “good guys” that are still unbearably stereotypical and dumb and desperately “cool”, and as part of the hacker collective they have a Robin Hood-esque ethos – screwing over the rich and powerful to better show the unknowing masses how little control over their own lives they have – but the game also gives no shits about you killing dozens and dozens of people. You can’t have a game about morality and ethics while also being totally unethical and immoral – it defeats the whole point. Why would the unwashed public care about a bunch of hacktivists who not only steal private data but are also domestic terrorists, inasmuch as the murdering of “bad guys” actually means anything? Say what you will about Wikileaks and Anonymous, but I’m pretty sure those guys haven’t murdered hundreds of heavily armed security officers as they infiltrate a private HQ – or murdered police, on the way out of the building. Anyway, the bad guy gets arrested at the end, but who even gives a shit?
I don’t know what else is on my gaming plate, beyond the usual combo of backlog/replays/cheap-as-hell indie titles picked up during summer sales. People seem to be enjoying the Destiny 2 beta; I’m staying out of it for the moment. To be honest, I’m not sure what system I’d play it on, or if I’d play it at all – I liked the original game well enough but preferred the solo experience, such as it was. I’m not necessarily feeling the same itch this time around.
Shouts From The Couch 