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Feature: Choppy waters
Pillars Of Eternity II is seemingly infinity hours long. Despite a week of playing, I'm still going, so here's my in-depth thoughts about the game excluding the impact of its ending. I will update later. What a lot Pillars Of Eternity II feels like it has to do. It needs to be a completely new dozens-of-hours-long RPG, while it also needs to be a sequel…
Feature: The Medium Cheese
Ghost Of A Tale is out of early access, letting you squeak your way past an army of rats, in a rodent stealth-cum-RPG. Is it the big cheese, or lost in the rat race? And considering these incredibly obvious puns, why on Earth isn't it called "Ghost Of A Tail"?
Feature: Tabling a motion
I've recently started playing with a new Dungeons & Dragons group, drafted in after one of their numbers upped and left town. It's my second time playing table-top D&D, after a splendid stint a couple of years back with Jim Rossignol (late of this parish) DMing, and it's a properly good time. And what I've learned is that it becomes a much better time the…
Feature: It's all about freedom
How multiplayer makes Divinity: Original Sin 2’s singleplayer great
This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site]. It’s the holy grail for RPGs, right, that perfect mix of a strong story and freedom to do what you want. But if players can do anything, how do you tell them a story in the right order and without…
I often feel sorry for the World of Warcraft team. You're never far off a million complaints about everything from balance to nostalgic musings about how much better things used to be to the lingering "Wait, how is that clunky old thing still getting so much attention?" whenever anyone says anything nice about it. Today though, I want to put my positive hat on and…
Feature: Real-good-time
Interview: Tower Of Time developers talk ambition, player feedback, and the ancient real-time wars
Tower Of Time [official site] was a tremendous surprise - an early access RPG, from first-time developers, with a unique real-time combat system. That's all three strikes, surely? Except no, it's really fantastic. Having finished the first floor of the tower, what's available for now, I wanted to find out more about how an unknown team from Poland were so audacious as to try (so…
Feature: Early access done right
Tower Of Time is a splendid RPG with tactical real-time combat
You have to respect clever, and clever is oozing out of Tower Of Time [official site]. Not just an RPG with the guts to try its very own combat system far more intricate than us dungeon crawlers are used to, but also the use of Early Access in a way that makes it seem like an advantage to the player rather than the developer.
Feature: End Of Quest
It is said that the greatest test is that of time. Actually, I'm not sure if anyone's said that, except me just then. But that's fine. I'm sure everyone will remember. Anyway, in the final edition of The RPG Scrollbars, let's take a look back to see what the people of the past said about what was the present but is now, by the laws…
Feature: The MMOs that came back from the dead
It is a truth universally accepted as a buggerance that nothing good lasts forever. The server of your favourite online game will go down. History will move on. The Grim Reaper will move in to slash the network server connection, mumbling about what an obvious waste it is of his talents. Ah, but in the world of digital, things are only over when everyone agrees…
Feature: SHODAN at the Better Than OK Corral
Not only does a great hero need a great villain, villains are usually just so much more fun. Whether it's the tortured lost soul who can only find peace by destroying the universe or the cheery psychopath looking to see the world burn, it's no wonder that many of the greatest films of all time have been defined at least as much by the baddie…
Feature: Faster than a bard shot out of a cannon
It's Summer Games Done Quick time again! You know what that means. The final seal has been broken, the rivers are turning to blood, and High Dread Azagorath is free to destroy the land. But while people wait, they're doing speed-runs. And in celebration of that, I thought I'd take a dig through the archives for a few particularly impressive and interesting ones that take…
Feature: Gronda! Gronda!
This week saw the return of one my all-time favourite TV programmes, Channel 4's The Crystal Maze - the knockabout silliness of a team, thankfully not usually including Louie Spence, bopping around four time-zones (Industrial, Aztec, Medieval and Futuristic) in a quest to recover magic time crystals, win distinctly underwhelming prizes, and ideally not look like a complete arse. It's a wonderful show. But, sadly,…
Feature: Might need to squish up a bit
For a few horrible minutes during E3, it looked like Bethesda might seriously claim that The Elder Scrolls and Fallout were part of the same universe. Thankfully, not. Despite this being an era where Sony wants a Ghostbusters universe and Universal thinks demeaning the Universal Monsters by linking them with a top-sekrit monstah hunting group led by Dr Jekyll is anything other than schoolboy fan-fiction,…
Feature: Get in lane
It's not enormously likely you've heard of Nadia Was Here [official site]. It came out at the end of last month and I'm not sure anyone noticed. Turns out, after stumbling on it today, everyone really should have. My early impressions are that this pixel RPG is something rather special. And that's a lot to do with some completely intriguing combat.
Feature: Or maybe minus
Tyranny's [official site] announcement of an expansion pack coming this September somewhat overshadowed the more immediate news of a DLC pack with core game tweaks released yesterday, as well as the introduction of a 'new-game-plus' mode in a new patch to the core game. Tales From The Tiers is a £4.50 collection of bits and bobs that makes changes throughout the game, introducing new quests,…
Feature: World of Absence
There's a real urban fantasy gap in the gaming industry, and it's never made much sense. We see a thousand Tolkienesque fantasy games a minute (rough napkin calculation) and the future's typically so bright, even the lens flares need shades. Yet when it comes to that line where the mundane meets the magical, mostly what we've had for the last few years is false hope.…
Feature: Getting your keks
The sign of a truly hardcore world is that it has its own languages. Klingon. Dothraki. Elvish. The term for these is 'Conlangs' - aka 'constructed languages' - and whether you see them as a vital part of world-building or a joke-in-waiting on The Big Bang Theory (they're due a third one one of these days), there's more to them than just slapping together some…
Feature: Sympathy for the damned
Kickstarter's been pretty good for RPGs. We may not have seen the next big leap yet - Divinity: Original Sin 2 is looking pretty damn special, mind - but it's certainly breathed new life into the classics. Wasteland and Pillars of Eternity are both returning. Numenera went down well, despite a little over-promising. Divinity was superb. Have I left anyone out? (Oh yeah, don't forget…
Feature: HP Source
"mage food pls" Gladly! Speaking as a carbon-based lifeform with the need to convert sustenance into continued existence and also poop, I consider myself quite the food devotee. I'm not sure what I'd do without it, except to curl up and die. This, of course, is where most RPG characters have the advantage over us, or at least, have for the last twenty years. Who…
Feature: Having a bawl
Composer, performer and now developer Laura Shigihara’s first game, Rakuen [official site], is out now, and it is something truly special. In a To The Moon sort of way. A hilarious and heartbreaking tale of loss and redemption, with songs. Here’s wot I think:
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