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 The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a short but very atmospheric horror adventure game created by Polish developer The Astronauts and released in 2014. We take on the role of paranormal investigator Paul Prospero as he follows up on a letter he received from Ethan Carter and explores what happened in the boy’s small, ramshackle mining village of Red Creek Valley, Wisconsin. The horror is subtle, mostly looming and hinting, and the main draw of the game lies in gradually uncovering the story by solving puzzles, piecing together past events through both ordinary as well as paranormal detective work. Spoiler Policy This is a zero spoilers zone, please. Unless they’re really well veiled, no sly hints either by people who have already played the game. I do, however, invite speculation. The majority of the game consists of discovering the story and figuring things out is most of the fun. Thread participation The puzzles in the game involve two parts. One is the traditional adventure game activity of exploring areas, inspecting items, and collecting stuff. The second part revolves around putting it all together, weaving the fragmented evidence into a coherent narrative that gives us a glimpse into what happened. Well, that sounds grander than it actually is, but it’s an interesting way of telling a story. Moreover, it allows for some thread participation. I’ll make sure to collect everything and put the parts in their proper spots, but I’ll leave it up to the thread to tie it all together, which means coming up with a rough theory and figuring out the chronological order of various scenes. Index        
Fleve fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 18:39
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 In the first part we’re introduced to pretty much all of our paranormal abilities. Some items are part of a larger story and give us a vision. Inspecting other items simply makes us speculate. And then there’s the murder mysteries. Our first murder consists of 6 scenes and to figure out what happened we need to put them in the correct chronological order.  A. Old man with hat picking up stone.  B. Old man with hat (and stone) talking to black haired, middle-aged fellow.  C. Old man (with crank) standing over black haired, legless fellow.  D. The only scene with all three persons. Ethan Carter, the legless fellow, and cranky old hat man.  E. Fellow with black hair, but legs still attached, crouched in front of the railroad.  F. Ethan, tied to the railroad, with black haired fellow crouching nearby. So how does this story fit together? Stories, Texts, and Articles   Sap, by Ethan Carter An old man came to the forest every day to drink sap from the trees. To get there, the old man had to step around many dangerous traps. The villagers believed this old man have One cool fall night someone set fire to the forest, and the fire spread to the village. The old man escaped the fire by covering himself in sap. When he returned to the village, he found all the villagers’ bones. The old man sat down and cried. Then he found more sap to drink. // The Steam achievement you get for finding all the traps is called, unsurprisingly, ‘Sap’. But the subtitle of the achievement is more descriptive. If you like speculating without hints, skip the next spoiler. The subtitle reads Survivor´s Guilt  ONE DEAD IN HOUSE FIRE By Jeff Jurmu BAYFIELD COUNTY - - Fire damaged a historic home in Red Creek Valley Wednesday morning, according to officials from the Bayfield Country Fire Department. A family of six was asleep when the blaze broke out at the remote house once owned by Albert Vandegriff, by the Ogden Lake in Red Creek Valley. Gayle Carter, 58, was pronounced dead at the scene. Remaining family members were able to escape. Carter’s husband, Edwin, 62, told investigators he may have fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand. Firefighters were dispatched to the scene at 1:22 a.m. and remained at the scene until around 5 a.m Wednesday. They returned to the property four hours later to extinguish hot spots which hand rekindled.  AFTER HEATED PUBLIC HEARING, NO ANSWERS FOR VANDEGRIFF HEIRS by Tom Auten BAYFIELD COUNTY - - Members of the Vandegriff family again gathered in the Bayfield County Courthouse today to debate the fate of the Vandegriff fortune, which has remained in escrow since 1961, when family patriarch Albert Vandegriff, 71, died in a mine accident, the aftereffects of which nearly destroyed Vandegriff Industrial and severely damaged the local economy. James Vandegriff, 38, of Chicago, argued that his father’s demands were “unreasonable,” and that many Vandegriff family members have “personal reasons” for wanting to avoid living in Red Creek Valley on the Vandegriff estate, as stipulated in the elder Vandegriffs will. The recent fire in which the Vandegriff home was damaged, he said, only underlined his family’s concerns.
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Jan 15, 2016 18:39
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Yeah I got stuck as well once when I left a 'blue' area without finishing it because I thought there must be another scene elsewhere and then things just stopped working until I restarted. I didn't know photogrammetry existed before this game came along and impressed the hell out of me. It looks like an insane process to build the graphics of your game by considering that, for example, it took 26 photo's of a rock to produce, well, a rock, but it definitely shows. I'm really glad YouTube didn't screw up the quality of my recording too much, 1080p is my max and I was considering upscaling so as to make use of the higher bitrate, but things turned out alright.
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Jan 15, 2016 19:23
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I never tried actively breaking the game because it constantly auto-saves whenever you complete any kind of task, but as I'm already maintaining manual backup saves for the LP now's a good time to try. When you ignore the first letter, the skulls remain and you simply don't finish that part of the mystery. Same with the train; there's some junk on the bridge and rubble at the other end of the tracks, neither of which allows you to drive your train through. I've never tried ignoring everything and doing sortof an Ethan Carter speedrun, which sounds like a terribly odd idea. But I think you could get pretty far by just walking, the world is wide open and there's very few puzzles that bar your way.
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Jan 15, 2016 20:58
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anilEhilated posted:I think you can speedrun your way through most of the game simply by knowing where to go and doing the - I think two - mandatory puzzles. There's a lock right before the end that requires you to do them all though (although I vaguely seem to recall reading somewhere that they patched that out because people complained about being forced to backtrack - but maybe that was only in the redux version). The redux version doesn't fix the lock but, from what I've read, it gives you portals to earlier areas so you don't have to walk back when backtracking. I'm not entirely convinced that was necessary, but as I won't skip anything I doubt we'll need them. Well, I'll probably skip that secret achievement, it just doesn't feel like it fits into the game. Oh and was it possible to run in the non-redux edition? Cause it's possible to run now, which isn't a whole lot faster, but it's nice. I was never big into walking simulators or horror games, but this one really drew me in with its environment and story building. And turns out I kinda like horror when it pits me against my own imagination and makes me dread things, rather than just straight-up showing it.
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Jan 16, 2016 02:08
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I like making this LP. It feels like I’m producing story-time with grandpa Fleve. The reasoning for the last puzzle was correct. No new puzzle for now, but we do get another somewhat cryptic story. Every one of them seems to focus on one of Ethan’s family members; his grandfather’s penchant for drinking ‘sap’, his brother being a dick. I won’t draw (too much) attention to details that will only matter later on though, and some things might not make sense at first sight. The achievement we get for solving the death of Travis is titled Depression Stories, Texts, and Articles   “Fangs” The beast had fangs, but was heavy and slow. So when it saw the light in the sky, it waited, thinking the light would go out, like the others before it. When it did not, the beast rose up on its legs and went to the place where the fire was still burning. As the orange light died, another took its place. This one was blue, a bright and pure blue that the creature had only seen along the edges of the stars. The beast showed its fangs and the light vanished. A moment later, the light appeared again between two distant trees. The beast wanted to go home, but could not ignore the light. So it chased it deeper into the forest. When the light stopped, it did so in a clearing of trees. The beast entered the circle, feeling no fear. The trees turned toward the beast pointing at it like needles, but the tops of the trees lowered and dug into the ground. The trunks and roots were raising into the air and closed around the beast like walls. As the ground disappeared, the beast realized it would never use its fangs again. // The achievement for this story carries the same name, “Fangs”, subtitled “A beast outsmarted” 
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Jan 17, 2016 17:56
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Carbon dioxide posted:I wonder if the land, with the lake and hills and dam, is based on a real place. It certainly looks inspired. Yep. Because the graphics of the game relied heavily on photography, almost everything actually exists. The dam and the surrounding area is part of the Krkonoše or Giant Mountains in the south-west of Poland. I can't seem to find an English name, but the dam seems to be the Jezioro Pilchowickie, or Bobertalsperre in German. Both of those wiki pages have images at the bottom that should be rather reminiscent of what we've seen so far. Working from Google maps provides better results. Well, prettier images at least. It looks like a gorgeous place to visit, and quite a bit less haunting and ancient than in the game. There's also a kotaku article that shows various locations and their real-world equivalents, but that includes areas we haven't seen yet. So it's a bit of a spoiler: here's a link
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Jan 17, 2016 19:24
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Part of what I like about the game is that it leaves a lot open to interpretation. Not because there's little to work from but because the references as well as the story are subtle, it's a web of hints that allows for plenty of ways to draw connections. According to the guy credited as The Astronauts' game designer and one of three founders, Adrian Chmielarz, Prospero was indeed inspired by The Tempest, as well as Prince Prospero from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death". I really like Chmielarz’s approach to storytelling. He’s got a long blog-post up on their website about the ending, but I’ll reserve that for once we get there. Also, I’ll have another episode online later today.
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Jan 18, 2016 15:00
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Lots of additional material this time. I’ve added a few notes below on some of the texts, marked with // in front. Stories, Texts, and Articles  I invoke the Boneless One, the One of Voids, Destroyer of Ships and He who is feared by the Wind. Hear me! Great Minister Focalor, I wish to make a pact with you to confound my enemies and protect my possession! Use the Doors of Confusion to cloud their judgment! Seal the path with Falsity and Guile, and permit only those who can discern every True Interior to pass! Aglon, Tetragram, vaycheon stimulamaton esphares Tetragrammaton, olyaram irion esytion existion eryona onera orasim mozm messias soter Emanuel Sabaoth ADONAY, te adoro et te invoco. Amen. // Focalor seems to be a Duke of Hell with power over wind and sea, according to the 17th century Lesser Key of Solomon. According to The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca, the string of strange terms at the bottom also comes from the Key of Solomon and are used to conclude the conjuration of demons. // For solving the portal house we get an achievement titled ‘Behind the Veil. Discovered the magic behind the potions’. Exploring the other house confirms it’s the Carter residence as we get the achievement ‘Home. Explored the family house’.   A magician once lived inside an old house and made potions that let him see the future. People from the village came to the magician’s house and demanded he share his potions with them. “We want to see the future too,” they told him. But the magician said no. The people from the village grew angry and burned the magician’s house. But the magician knew this would happen. He had already cast a spell on his potion room. The house burned, but the room did not. The people from the valley waited but the magician never came out.  BLAZE REVEALS MOONSHINE OPERATION By Daniel Josefson BAYFIELD COUNTY - - Ashland Township volunteer firefighters discovered an apparent moonshine still while battling a blaze in the woods off Old Ogden Road. According to authorities, the still comprised a propane stove and four-gallon stainless steel pot, which was used to hold the whiskey mash. Based on the size of the still, Bayfield County Sherriff Hank Shafel believes it may be part of a small operation, though he admitted “there could be other stills” in the county. Officers on the scene recovered a half-gallon of apple pie moonshine and one gallon of unflavored moonshine. Apple cider and cinnamon sticks were found adjacent to the still. The police have been unable to determine who owns the still. Sherriff Shafel said a cigarette butt tossed at the scene likely caused the fire.  NASA LAUNCHES ATS-6 SATELLITE By the Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - - NASA launched what has been called the world’s first educational satellite in Florida today, giving the United States a powerful edge in tele-communication technology. The Applications Technology Satellite-6 will directly broadcast educational programming to several countries, including the United States, Canada, India, and Australia. NASA believes the satellite will remain in constant contract with earth for at least the next five years. // This satellite, incidentally, was quite real and was launched on May 30, 1974.   From left to right: Ethan Carter, Edwin (grandpa), Travis (brother), Mom, Dad, Chad (uncle)
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Jan 18, 2016 18:12
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JamieTheD posted:Yeah, I figured that was Goetic from the sigil at the top, and looking up Focalor confirmed it. Forty First Demon of the 72, a Great Duke of Hell, commanding the winds and the ocean, looks like a bloke with Griffin Wings, and is rather pissed that when his hopes to return to Heaven after 1000 years were dashed. But wait, what's Goetia? Well, let's talk magic! When I was going through google and google scholar to find out whether that text was based on anything I was already surprised at how much background there seemed to be, I didn't know there'd be that much though. Fun to discover that words which I previously only knew as specializations of magic in my Baldur's Gate manual (in- and evocation) actually have a history to them. Most of it seems to be post-Reformation? The closest I've come to the topic was when studying medieval heresies, but those revolved more around different interpretations of faith. anilEhilated posted:Ugh. I'd love to make some notes here but it's all loving spoilers. I imagine most of the discussion here will start after we actually wrap the game up. Yeah that's a bit of a problem with LP'ing this game. There are plenty of things that, in the end, I still don't quite get, but a lot of it depends on later information first. Still, some of the stories we find are on their own little mysteries as to what they mean. After I posted the Fangs story it struck me that Travis' interpretation of the story led me to, possibly, also interpret it differently and perhaps wrong. The rocket could be a fantasy unconnected to the Fangs story, and neither Travis nor the beast actually 'get away' at all, and they could just as well be said to be caught.
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Jan 18, 2016 21:00
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:Oh, man, I really like this game. There have been a lot of games people have snarkily called "walking simulators", but this is a game I think not only fits that label, but does so in a way that's totally great and not at all derisive. The environments, especially the natural vistas, are so fantastic-looking. This is the game that first made me excited for VR headsets, actually - I don't know if they have any plans on adding that, but I'd totally go back and play this game again when that time comes if they did, just to look at all the scenery. What's more, the story actually ended up blindsiding me, which is a nice change. Well, there used to be VR support in the Redux edition, but according to the developers that was accidental and they removed after a few days. They did say though that they'll work on VR support in the future, but that it'll probably be released as a separate game or DLC. If ever there's a game that I'd like to play in VR, it's this. Heck, for all I care they release a hiking simulator in the same environment and I'd play that too, I already enjoy Euro Truck Simulator.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:18
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I love alliterations, I fondly use them in my titles wherever I tastefully can. Alliterations, incidentally, also featured prominently in Edgar Allan Poe's poem ‘The Raven’, which fits the imagery of this episode quite well. Some Scotsman uploaded a pretty decent reading of it to Wikipedia. And there’s also a new murder mystery. This one can be a bit tricky, but I think you can reason your way through it. Stories, Texts, and Articles  Scene A: Missy with dagger and lamp standing over Chad, who is choking dad.  Scene B: Dad stands a bit back, Missy with lamp, standing near Chad who is holding his head/face; close to crypt.  Scene C: Dad, Missy with lamp, and Chad, next to crypt entrance.  Scene D: Dad and Missy, near the church.  Scene E: Missy looking around, with lamp, and Travis.   A beautiful woman sat by a river. A witch approached and told the woman she was to have a child. The woman began to cry with joy. But the joy turned to fear and she could not stop crying. Fear turned to sadness; the woman continued to cry. She cried for months, hardly sleeping, until the child was born. But the crying had aged the woman and she was no longer beautiful. When he was old enough, her son climbed the mountain to find the home of the witch. He asked her if she could make his mother beautiful again. The witch asked the boy many questions. After hearing the answers, the witch told the boy she had lied to the mother about her child. The boy disappeared and the mother was beautiful again.  Ethan, honey - - I’m sorry I yelled at you. I want you to keep this note and read it every time I lose my temper. I don’t mean it, and know I got a snake’s tongue. You’re my little guy, my precious bean. You just gotta pull your head out of them clouds, okay? Love, Mom // The achievement for the witch’s puzzle reads: The wish. Wish come true. // Might be nice to have the witch’s monologue as well: People come here for many reasons. They want to ask me questions about the future. But I can see the future. So it is the past that interests me. If you want to find my house, you must answer the questions I ask of you. Does death bring peace or suffering? Would you prefer anonymity over notoriety? Do you feel victory when your words cause pain? Do you take that which you know you will not return? Is betrayal caused by inequality or injustice? Does sin come from the heart or the mind?
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Jan 20, 2016 17:50
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No new texts, but we do get another puzzle. I seem to have not made the appropriate sacrifices to the dark gods of electronics. A few days ago a fuse blew somewhere down the street and we had to call a guy to fix it. Now my external hard drive seems to be on the fritz and I had to do the encode twice. Anyway, solving the death of Chad gets us the achievement Denial Stories, Texts, and Articles  Scene A: Missy and Dad entering the scene of the crime.  Scene B: Dad picking up a pickaxe.  Scene C: Missy inside the lift, Dad standing in front of it. Neither of them have any props.  Scene D: Dad in front of the lift controls, but without a pickaxe.  Scene E: Dad carrying a pickaxe, ambling about around the lift controls, off to the side.
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Jan 22, 2016 18:09
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It’s about as old as to have become cliché, but I still quite like duplicitous prophecies as with Greek oracles or MacBeth’s witches. How knowledge can be so destructive simply through the knowing. Reminds me of the proximity between madness and magic in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell which I recently read. I’ve never actually read anything from Lovecraft but playing through the game again is also making me interested again. Perhaps this time I’ll actually follow up on it and pick up some of his books. The puzzles are a bit unfair sometimes, especially if you have to do without the trial & error. The last puzzle showed that the scenes aren't always complete either (Ethan wasn't, but still ended up appearing in some of them). Items like the lantern or the pickaxe are quite reliable though; probably on purpose.
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Jan 22, 2016 20:38
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Thanks for the recommendations! That makes it easier to pick a book from his, pretty large, bibliography. Dad's name is easy to forget; Dale sounds a lot like Dad, and I also almost always just call him Dad. Anyway, just gotta get youtube to process stuff while I go cooking, and then I'll have the next part up somewhere in the hour.
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Jan 23, 2016 17:45
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There’s a jump-scare in here, but I’m terrible at acting scared, so I didn’t. To be honest, the first time you get down there and hear and see something threatening move around, after all the time of building up tension, you freak the gently caress out. But once you’ve experienced it, you’re automatically a whole lot more blasé about the whole thing and you can’t really go back to not-knowing. It’s kind of like the FedEx arrow, or how you dread a rollercoaster before, but never after the first few spins. Solving the death of Missy gets us the achievement Anger. The other puzzle just gives a descriptive achievement, "The Curse of the Sea-Thing. The Cursed World". Stories, Texts, and Articles  He is not dead but eternal lie. The god of strange aeons cannot die. We open the gate, the gate of old. Its guardian eyes have long grown cold. The name of our god: our truth, our key. He is that which is, which should not be.  “THE CURSE OF THE SEA-THING” The Enochian Necronomicon! The iron-ore miners had finally found it! But not all of them wanted to perform its ritual and summon the sea-thing Gnaiih. One miner realized the ritual would unleash Gnaiih’s flood upon this world. And so the miner had no choice but to stab the others with shards of magick Eltdown. Gnaiih, in response, cursed the miner, who now wanders the mine, doomed to prevent others from summoning the sea-thing and flooding the world forever.  UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE Re: REQUEST FOR CLARIFICATION Dear Mr. Carter, The United States Patent and Trademark Office has received your January 27, 1973, letter requesting “further explanation” as to why your recently submitted patent 527F2d was rejected by this office. As we explained in our previous letter, the patent was rejected for infringing upon a previously existing patent. We have on record from you more than four dozen requested patents submitted in the last sixteen months. None has been successful, and all have been met with challenges by you. Mr. Carter, we would like to consider this matter, and future matters, administratively closed. Sincerely, James Maki Administrative Director  Dale: GET YOUR poo poo OUT OF OUR BASEMENT. BRING IT TO THE GODDAMN DUMP. I am so sick of stepping over your lifetime of failure on my way to the washing machine. I’m not kidding. Either you move it or I burn it. - - M
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Jan 23, 2016 18:22
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anilEhilated posted:This is really the annoying part of the game. I'm not good at getting scared either so once you figure out the trick, running the maze looking for bodies is just tedious. That vision at the end is so much worth it though. Crane Fist posted:This update feels like kind of a misstep on the game's part? Like they suddenly remembered it was supposed to be a horror game, whereas before it was working a lot better when instead of being trying to be frightening it was just incredibly melancholy Yeah, that part could’ve been handled better. The miner quickly turns from a horror into a traffic warden who tells you that, no Sir, can’t go down this tunnel right now, please, turn around. In earlier versions it used to be even worse, the miner spawned a lot more often. And the whole area being a maze doesn’t improve things either. Luckily it's the only section of its kind. Next part I'll probably already finish the game. There are a few more puzzles to come, but asking the thread to solve them would be asking to point out the obvious, they're too simple. JamieTheD posted:Ah, those would be the Enochian Alphabet, created by John Dee in the 1600s, (...) Do you mind if I include your posts in quotes once I ask baldurk to archive the thread on lparchive.org? I feel like a lot of people, myself included, probably suspect the game based all of its materials on something, but then never got around to actually looking everything up. Finding out there was so much behind the scenes is pretty neat.
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Jan 23, 2016 22:50
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And with that, we’ve finished the game. There are some theories on how the ending can be interpreted, but I’ll wait for the discussion to open first. For now, let me just say that I appreciate the developers’ approach to storytelling. I think they made a good decision when later on they said that “we swore to never tell what our own takes on the event at Red Creek Valley are”. The achievements we've gained during this part are for solving Dad’s death, titled Bargaining, and for solving Ed’s, Acceptance. Finishing the game gives another one, but that’s simply a quote, What happens then?. Finally, while looking through the credits I saw something credited as a prequel comic. Turns out they still have that online. It’s a neat little thing. Also, I didn’t record the credits at the end, but here’s the song that only plays during them. Stories, Texts, and Articles  I am not myself. Have not been myself. Voices again today. Same as yesterday. This is most vexsome.  I tried to brick her up in the wall, but she fough me. In the end, I couldn’t do it. Not to my wife. Neither she nor the Sleeper is pleased. Now I must decide whom I fear more.  What I must do is clear to me now. The Sleeper resides in a prison of death, and pain is the key.
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Jan 24, 2016 18:39
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I have mixed feelings about the ending, but mostly positive. I was a bit miffed the first time I finished it, but the second time around it grew on me. Part of the problem of having a story that ends with a twist is that it runs the risk of cheapening everything that preceded it, making it feel like it didn’t matter. And that’s true to a degree. Speculating about a lumbering Lovecraftian evil that causes all the killing seems in vain when you realize that it’s all ‘just’ stories. Ignoring the question what is and isn’t a story, I think it’s still fun to speculate about them on their own, as well as how they make sense together, even if from a fictional perspective. And for what is lost, we’ve also gained. At the end we’ve come to learn a surprising amount about the Carter family solely from Ethan’s stories and a handful of background articles. Replaying the game, you re-evaluate the scenes. The stories turn into little studies of characters and their relationships. Grandpa who feels guilty for his dead wife, drinking in the forest, but who also ends up accepting death as a part of life in Ethan’s story. Dale, who probably feels akin to Ethan with his failed patents, but is too timid to stand up to his wife, or to Chad, or Travis. Even in Ethan’s stories, under the influence of the ‘Sleeper’, the characters act true to themselves; albeit often grotesquely and exaggerated, like in a play set on a stage. Doing a story with a twist is a difficult thing and I’m impressed with how they managed to work in little hints without telegraphing the end (too much). Like how you begin the game going from a dark tunnel towards the light. Or how the clocks are all set to 7 or 7:04 and time never seems to move. For more things like that, there’s a Russian (?) guy who made a huge effort blog post, analyzing all the different layers of the story. It’s a thorough and interesting write-up, but also a bit dissecting. One of the developers wrote a response to the criticism that the ending was simple or cliché, a week or so after they had released the game. I feel he makes a fair point when he says that the game isn’t really about the twist. But then what’s it about? At first glance, it seems lazy to say that ‘it’s about whatever you make out of it’. Perhaps it’s about Ethan dying. Perhaps it’s about stories, and even the ‘real’ ending we see is part of another story. A non-ending, you might say, the refuge of a writer who doesn’t know how to end his story. But on the other hand, where’s the fun in knowing? There’s value in mystery. The game is a web of possibilities. Singling out one interpretation, you kill all the others, like gluing a kaleidoscope into place.
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Jan 25, 2016 01:52
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It was all part of my sly plan to reinvigorate the young generations' love for Shakespeare. Moonlight as an LP'er and then sneakily play games tangentially related to The Tempest, MacBeth, etc. Perhaps, in time, I'll manage to even fork in the Henry's somehow. To preserve my public image I have taken on the role of a half Dutch, half German fellow who used to live in Germany and then moved to the Netherlands. I've got this really huge background story for him too, it's far too elaborate. Sometimes I think I'm him. It's fun. I have a slight Dutch accent in my German, a barely noticeable German accent in my Dutch, and something in between with my English. My old French teacher once told me I sounded like someone from Brittany in French and I'm still figuring out whether that was an insult or not. ----- Anyway, I've been thinking about what to LP next. I thoroughly enjoyed Aarklash: Legacy, but the game is mostly real-time tactical combat with a pause function. It’s hella fun to play, but to watch? I don’t know. Same with The Banner Saga, or Pillars of Eternity. I played the poo poo out of Pillars in the last weeks. It’s the best game I bought since a long time. But a full LP experience would involve a lot of reading, probably better suited for a SSLP. According to the LP master list there were a total of 5 Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines VLP’s here, all of them ended up abandoned. What the hell? Then there's a few other ones that I thought would be fun, like Severance: Blade of Darkness, This War of Mine, or Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death. Finally, I’ve been working on a narrative LP of The Long Dark, but goddamn, a decent narrative LP takes a ton of time to craft. Gameplay, script, acting; it’s like a one-man show. No surprise not a lot of people are trying that kind of style.
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Jan 30, 2016 23:01
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Well now, that’s pretty much a vote for everything I listed. Heck, I’d take suggestions too. I always spend too much time looking for good games to LP. anilEhilated posted:Anyhow, if you're taking votes, I'd repeat Severance the inexplicable cult classic or Marlow Briggs the best 1 euro game no one played. Vampire is great but I suspect most people know it by heart and from what I've seen of Banner Saga it seems pretty drat hard to make watchable videos. I think I’ll LP Marlow regardless of what other plans I make. It simply has to be LP’ed and it’s a pretty short game. I like short games. Aarklash is good and worth getting when it´s on sale. It doesn´t have much of a story, the items are mostly unimaginative and randomized, and there are too many puzzles at the end; but drat the combat is great. It’s difficult but fair, lots of tactics involved. Everything else about it is passable, but for roughly 18 hours of amazing combat, I'm happy with what I paid for it. Summarizing it like that, though, it doesn't sound like it'd make a good LP anymore. I'll probably decide on and start a new LP somewhere next week. I've got a Payday 2 video I've been itching to finish first and somehow those things are inexplicably popular.
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Jan 31, 2016 18:41
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