ISSN 2572-5572 UNWINNABLE MONTHLY Volume 4, Issue 10 - October 2017

THE RELIGION OF SPACE • MASS EFFECT MURDERSPIES U N W I N N A B L E

Monthly

96 Editor in Chief | Stu Horvath

Managing Editor | James Fudge

Editor | Amanda Hudgins

Design | Stu Horvath

Asst. Editor | Jason McMaster

Social Editor | Melissa King

Copyright © 2017 by Unwinnable LLC Unwinnable All rights reserved. This book or any 820 Chestnut Street portion thereof may not be reproduced Kearny, NJ 07032 or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission www.unwinnable.com of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For more information, email: [email protected] Unwinnable LLC does not claim copyright of the screenshots and promotional Subscribe | Store | Submissions imagery herein. Copyright of all screenshots within this publication are owned by their respective companies This machine kills fascists. Shortform a brief introduction to the issue Letter from the Editor | Stu Horvath the games untouched on the shelf Backlog | Gavin Craig must-watch streaming documentaries Documentary Sunday | Megan Condis what’s new, undiscovered and unholy in metal Battle Jacket | Casey Lynch horror games of the 20th century Monster Closets | Brock Wilbur fictional companions and goth concerns This Mortal Coyle | Deirdre Coyle the intersection of games and world history Checkpoint | Corey Milne ridiculing and revering everything Rookie of the Year | Matt Marrone dissecting the world The Burnt Offering | Stu Horvath three fingers of analysis when two will do The Heavy Pour | Sara Clemens a monthly soapbox Here’s the Thing | Rob Rich board games and ennui The McMaster Files | Jason McMaster art, and words about making it Artist Spotlight | Zi Xu our monthly recommendations Playlist | Reading List | Now Playing | our monthly crossword puzzle Unsolvable | Brian Taylor

Longform the quest to travel the stars is a kind of religion Gods & Astronauts | Oliver Milne Shepard is always right, no matter what I, Murderspy | Bill Coberly a developer Q&A, sponsored Revving the Engine: The SoulKeeper |

Contributors From the Desk of the Editor in Chief | Stu Horvath

K, I literally have a kid coming any second now, so I am going to do this Olighting fast, OK? First, let us appreciate Zi Xu’s cover art. If I were in space, I would be in a constant state of prayer, and I’m an atheist. That image is your lead in to Oliver Milne’s fascinating feature on science fiction and how the language of space travel mirrors the langauge of religion. In another one of our accidental themes, Bill Coberly’s feature also hinges on space as depicted in Mass Effect, and the shocking amount of freedom Shepard gets as a Spectre. Like, a suspicious amount of freedom. So much freedom that maybe there’s something wrong with it. Read on to find out what Bill uncovers. In the columns, Gavin seems a little overwhelmed by his ever-growing backlog. Megan Condis is chilled by the implications the documentary The Confession Tapes has for our justice system. Casey Lynch, meanwhile, brings the metal (I’m digging the new Ancient VVisdom, Grave Pleasures and Korrupt). Brock Wilbur regrets checking out Geist for the Nintendo GameCube and makes us suffer along with him. Deirdre Coyle reveals her interesting relationship with Drakan: Order of the Flame, a game that probably does not deserve the amount of thoughtfulness she brings to it. Despite his best efforts, Corey Milne can’t escape Severed and Matt Marrone, to his dismay, has to escape his son. Speaking of sons, did I mention mine is coming ANY SECOND? I am calm, I promise. Not freaking out at all. But I didn’t have a lot of time to whip up a full column, so you get like four mini-columns instead. Sara Clemens picks up my deep think slack with an excellent essay on The Exorcist TV series, which I had avoided and, it seems, I am poorer for it. Weighing in on the great contet vs. creator debate, Rob Rich gave me the opportunity to use a header image of H. P. Lovecraft in this not as spooky as I’d like October issue. And finally, Jason McMaster professes his love for a little game called Destiny 2. Oh, and Brian Taylor’s excellent crossword is back! And there’s a profile of Zi Xu. And we’ve got a fun interview with the folks behind the VR RPG The SoulKeeper. And lists! OK, I gotta go pace. So much pacing to do. Pace, pace, pace.

Stu Horvath Kearny, New Jersey October 12, 2017 Backlog | Gavin Craig

The Games I’m Not Playing

alendars are liars. At the moment, my calendar says October, but it is Cfunctionally for the vast majority of working critics the end of the year. In a few weeks, editors will be asking for year-end lists of the best media of 2017, so for those of us hoping to make something resembling a contribution to these lists, there are just a few weeks to try to catch up on all the games/ books/films/music/TV/etc. that we haven’t quite gotten to yet. This is, as one might imagine, exacerbated for a writer whose one regular outlet is a short monthly column about games not released this year. The list of my favorite ten games from 2017 currently includes eight games. I have some catching up to do. There are, however, a number of games that I can tell you right now will not be included, not because of any necessary deficiency on their part, but because there is no way that I will have played them enough to have formed a meaningful opinion of them. This is at times an entirely practical matter. Cuphead, for example, is an Xbox/Windows exclusive, so I can’t play it. Sometimes, this a matter of deep and ongoing frustration — NaissanceE, I’m looking at you — but right now it is in all honesty a relief. I can in good conscience simply mark Cuphead off my list. It’s out of my hands, so there’s no point in worrying about it. Similarly, I haven’t updated from the Wii U to the Switch, so neither Splatoon 2 nor Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will be making appearances on my ballot. Are they really new enough to be considered more than updated rereleases of their Wii U incarnations? Would the Wii U version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild merit inclusion on a year-end list, even if it’s not quite as shiny as the Switch edition? I’ll admit that neither of these questions strikes me as compelling enough to justify the investment required to answer them. Other exclusions are a bit more subjective. (And this is one of the reasons I tend to describe my year-end lists as my “favorite” games rather than the “best” games. I don’t have the luxury of playing widely enough to really make an argument that my favorite games are objectively better than every other game released in a given year, and I’m more than a little skeptical that such a thing is really possible in any meaningful sense even for better and better- played critics than me.) I’ve never played any of the Dark Souls games, and I’m not going to play Nioh any time soon either. This isn’t Nioh’s fault. I’m sure it’s magnificent. But it isn’t really for me and I don’t feel terribly bad about that. I do feel a twinge of guilt, though, that I’m probably never going to play Rain World deeply. There are dozens of games where I can swing a sword in a lushly-rendered digital environment, but the non-anthropomorphic survival premise and idiosyncratic 2-D visual design of Rain World strike me as being much more interesting. I’ve even loaded Rain World up once or twice, but I’m not sure I’ve even figured out the basic controls and I simply don’t have enough intrinsic motivation to overcome the initial difficulty curve. I’m sorry Rain World. It’s not you; it’s me. Destiny 2, for me, is this year’s Overwatch. All my friends seem to dig it, but it’s not going to overcome my aversion to multiplayer games. Like Overwatch, I’m sure that Destiny will carry on just fine without me. On the other hand, it’s not quite as simple for me to write off some of the other games that I’m just not going to be able to fit in. I’m going to fight to make it through Nier: Automata (I’ve started, but, yeah, let’s just say that I’ve started). Chances are good that I’ll get to play Tacoma, if only because it’s just a few hours long. I might even get to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, but if I’m honest, I probably won’t before it becomes eligible to be a column entry next year. Persona 5 just isn’t a possibility. Horizon Zero Dawn and Rime are going to have to wait. Resident Evil 7 is right out. And life goes on. I still haven’t played The Last Guardian from last year. In all honesty, I’ve never finished Shadow of the Colossus. In fairness, I wasn’t assembling a year-end best games list in 2005, but in any case, it’ll still be waiting for me when I’m ready. Games don’t disappear after the year-end lists are compiled and published. Sometimes it’s good even for a critic to remember that. U Documentary Sunday | Megan Condis

etflix has been home to some of the most impressive, hardest-hitting Ndocumentary series about the justice system in recent memory. From last year’s smash hit Making a Murderer to the harrowing tale of violence and sexual abuse told by The Keepers, the streaming network is serving up must- see TV for fans of true crime. The Confession Tapes (Kelly Loudenberg, 2017) is no exception. But while Making a Murderer and The Keepers are compelling because of their commitment to excavating the tiny minutia of a single case, this new series is terrifying because of the breadth of cases it covers. The series looks at the phenomenon of false confessions or cases where suspects plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit. Saul Kassin, a Psychology professor at Williams College, argues that “lay people have an easier time understanding why someone would kill themselves — they understand suicide and the motivations for it — than they do why someone would confess to a crime he did not commit.” According to Kassin:

What makes the confessions so compelling that even DNA can’t destroy them, is that the confessions in these cases were not simple admissions of guilt. Rather, a confession is a statement that says, this is what I did, this how I did it, this is why I did it. These are statements filled with vivid details, often accurate details that only the perpetrator could have known. They are statements that contain expressions of remorse and apologies. As a result, “It’s virtually impossible for judges and juries to see past confessions whether they’re true or false.” Yet, according the The Innocence Project, “more than one out of four people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement.” At first, this seems unimaginable. Why on Earth would anyone willingly implicate themselves if they weren’t guilty? Unfortunately, as the series amply demonstrates, there are many reasons why a false confession might, in the moment, seem like a good idea to a defendant. First, many of the cases The Confession Tapes chronicles are centered on extremely vulnerable defendants: the poor, the uneducated, the mentally impaired. These folks either aren’t aware that they have the right to ask for an attorney to be present while they are being questioned or they are completely unaware that they are under suspicion. Several episodes show interrogation sessions that look eerily similar to the ones that Brendan Dassey was subjected to. Police officers grill these suspects for up to thirteen hours at a time, depriving them of food and sleep until they are barely able to stand let alone string together a coherent narrative. They feed suspects clues about the case and bait them into repeating them back. They gaslight suspects, convincing them that their own memories are not to be trusted, that they’ve blocked out the heinous deeds they committed and that the officers are simply there to help them overcome their psychological barrier. In one especially disgusting case, police even disguised themselves as mobsters in order to convince a couple of teenagers to confess to the murder of one of their parents. The police recordings of these interrogations seem somewhat coercive upon a first viewing, but they become even more suspect when one realizes that, for the most part, the cameras were only ever turned on many hours into the process when the defendant was already physically and emotionally worn down. In other cases, false confessions resulting in plea bargains for reduced sentences are the only rational choice for innocent people who don’t have the means to mount an effective defense. According to Gaby Del Valle: . . . people in jail are more likely to plead guilty, studies show, because it’s typically the fastest track to getting home. By design, plea bargains are supposed to be a way of avoiding lengthy, costly trials for defendants who are clearly guilty. Instead, they’ve become a way for low-income people to get out of jail as quickly as possible, even if it means pleading guilty to a crime they didn’t commit.

In fact, an astonishing 94 percent of state-level felony convictions and 97 percent of federal convictions come about as the result of plea bargains. That’s potentially a whole lot of inmates rotting in jail without a trial by a jury of their peers because they simply don’t see another way out. So what is the solution? In the first place, we need to demand thatall criminal interrogations be recorded from start to finish. We can also outlaw manipulative interrogation tactics and permit defendants to introduce expert testimony about how false confessions happen. And, in the meantime, as The Confession Tapes demonstrates, we should always, always demand to speak to a lawyer when engaging with the police. U Battle Jacket | Casey Lynch

Battle Jacket - \ˈba-təl\ \ˈja-kət\ noun

1. A denim or leather jacket or vest, usually covered with sewn patches embroidered with the names/logos of killer metal bands.

2. Unwinnable Monthly’s metal column, your best source for what’s new, undiscovered and unholy in metal.

October is the most metal month of the year (duh), so it’s fitting that there’s a new anthology coming from the king of horror film and soundtracks himself, John Carpenter. His upcoming Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998 isn’t “metal” in the traditional headbanger sense of the word, but this collection of his most memorable themes are immediately evocative of his most recognizable work – Halloween, The Thing, They Live and more. To promote it, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross released a cover of Carpenter’s seminal Halloween theme on Friday, October 13. Clearly, Carpenter is metal AF. There’s a lot of metal to like this month, so get to it.

Listen now to the Unwinnable Metal PlaylisT October 2017

METAL ALBUM OF THE MONTH The Black Dahlia Murder – Nightbringers DEATH THRASH One of the most likeable metal bands in the business, The Black Dahlia Murder are as cool as their music is brutal. Nightbringers finds the band realizing what is arguably their most aggressive and cohesive album since 2007’s Nocturnal. Which is remarkable considering the band has endured countless line- up changes (singer Trent Strnad and guitarist Brian Eschbach are the only two remaining original members) while releasing eight studio albums since starting in 2001. The fact that Nightbringers is the largest direct to consumer pre-order ever for Metal Blade is a testimony to how beloved they are, how hard they work and how awesome Nightbringers is. WATCH: “NIGHTBRINGERS”; LISTEN: “MATRIARCH”

BEST METAL OF THE MONTH And So I Watch You From Afar – The Endless Shimmering INSTRUMENTAL POSI PROG Lyrical, reverb-soaked guitar lines ping pong around stuttering time changes, soaking each sheet in droning sheets of instrumental metallic goodness. WATCH: “A SLOW UNFOLDING OF WINGS”; LISTEN: “DYING GIANTS”

Lo! - Vestigal GUTTERAL POST Best known for its disturbing, Pepto Bismal-inspired “Orca” video, Sydney, Australia’s Lo! returns to smash conventions and eardrums again on their 3rd full length (with an equally creep video for “Locust Christ”). LISTEN: “GLUTTON”; WATCH: “LOCUST CHRIST”

Grave Pleasures – Motherblood DEATH ROCK Break out your eyeliner and spark up a clove, Grave Pleasure’ new LP smashes up driving metal guitars with crooning gothy vocals to produce some of the catchiest bleak rock of the year. WATCH: “INFATUATION OVERKILL”

Zaius – Of Adoration INSTRUMENTAL ATMOSPHERIC From the glacial school of Pelican and If These Trees Could Talk, Of Adoration rises and falls with dense rhythmic patterns that teem with melody and feel. WATCH: “SEIRENES”; LISTEN: “PHANERON”; LISTEN: FULL ALBUM Ancient VVisdom - 33 RITUAL DRONE Cleveland, Ohio’s premiere doom occult rock outfit explore empowerment through ritualism, Satanism and pessimistic musical minimalism. LISTEN: “LIGHT OF LUCIFER”; LISTEN: FULL ALBUM

Spirit Adrift – Curse of Conception HEAVY DOOM PROG This sophomore long-player from Phoenix, Arizonan quartet Spirit Adrift combines Maiden-esque overtones with burly vocals and stomping grooves reminiscent of 20 Buck Spin label mates, Khemmis. LISTEN: “STARLESS AGE (ENSHRINED)”; LISTEN: “CURSE OF CONCEPTION”; LISTEN: FULL ALBUM

Veil of Maya – False Idol DJENTCORE Here’s some metal for the kids, complete with djenty riffs aplenty, mangled screaming and soaring clean choruses, making it one of the busiest, catchiest and crushing-est releases of the year. WATCH: “OVERTHROW”

Korrupt – Preachers and Creatures BLACK CROSSOVER Part Kvelertak, part None More Black and all awesome, Norway’s latest crossover export focuses on anti- authority and anti-religious themes, all set to straight ahead blackened rock. LISTEN: “REVOLT”

Archspire – Relentless Mutation EXTREME TECH DEATH PROG With the technical prowess of The Faceless and Necrophagist and the classical prog production chops of Muse, this Vancouver, BC, quartet wows with its surgical speed and cavernous interplay of guitars and rhythm section. LISTEN: “RELENTLESS MUTATION”; LISTEN: “HUMAN MURMATION”; LISTEN: FULL ALBUM U Monster Closets | Brock Wilbur

n the great scheme of Nintendo, only a few Nintendo titles snuck through Ifor adults. Each generation, much like the Slayer of Buffy, a few random games are chosen to stand against the darkness. In this case, Nintendo refuses to abandon its “all ages” image, but alongside each console there are a few bizarre exceptions to that rule and they are almost always worthy of note. Most of my generation will remember this divide as the Mortal Kombat moment: when Sega’s Genesis system allowed angry testosterone monsters to punch and stab and occasionally freeze each other in the pursuit of gibletted revenge, Nintendo replaced each instance of unwarranted cruelty with repurposed colors for sweat. Yeah, I agree with you, it isn’t the best replacement and also it isn’t a bad replacement either -- because it is horrifically stupid. There are plenty of other strange exemptions. Goldeneye, one of the best shooters of all time, came out on a platform ostensibly for kids. Remasters of the Resident Evil games started here, the spacewitch Bayonetta who is naked except for a layer of magic hair she uses as a weapon also started at Nintendo and Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem showed up on the Gamecube out of nowhere and remains just about the tops of the horror survival genre. One other adultish horror title came to the Gamecube and it followed in Eternal Darkness’ footsteps as a new IP unrelated to any Nintendo properties, intended for a mature audience and offering a chance to do something bigger, scarier and better on a game system mostly meant for games with “Mario” and/or “Sunshine” in the title. The game wound up in development limbo for two years after being shown off at E3 – while Nintendo and the original dev team fought over what kind of game they were making. The result is a game that has been both praised and pointed to as one of the worst games of all time. That game is Geist. Originally sold as a game called Fear (yes, that’s how general the concept of horror was in this game) the company N-Space pitched a sort of Invisible Protagonist shooter title. Nintendo loved it, but turned it into something more spirit based while also pushing to make the game more of an adventure puzzle game in first-person. That back and forth resulted in a lot of ideas being tossed into play far later in development than ever should have been approved. The result is a game that is more silly than scary (except when it is absolutely out- of-nowhere terrifying) and a style of gameplay that switches from military shooter to otherworldly joke puzzles on the goddamned fly. It’s a clunky disaster that it is stupidly fun, but is also mostly fun because of this cool set of ideas it horribly mangles in its implementation. Geist is a better idea than an experience, but ignoring the good/bad dichotomy, it is absolutely a memorable Experience. Firing up a Gamecube for the first time in years made this entire revisit worth it. The controller still feels weird and the box itself even sounds like there’s something broken as it tries to read the disc. Was this ever a good system, or even a good idea? Probably. I’ve had a beer and the idea of games coming in cubes is already funny to me. This’ll be a fun playthrough. Geist opens with you, a scientist (sigh) slash anti- terrorist soldier-man (?) who is part of a military anti-terrorism unit that is ALSO undercover in a place of Bad Science Experiments but also your best friend is a cool black dude who runs this team. It feels like an improv team coming up with an action movie. You break into a secret underground lab base but also your friend is already here but also everyone is very scared of you? This is like Mission Impossible if the mission was indeed impossible because no one could get on the same fucking page as early as minute two. The Volk Corporation is working on something that “sounds like” Demon Virus. Knowing that an American company made this, let Nintendo do two years of rewrites, and then released is like knowing it was just Babelfished to death. It’s worth noting here that the graphics of this game are rather spectacular and the animations are super not. This underground lab has so many hues and textures and breakable surfaces and such – it feels like the sort of game that must have been ahead of its time. And then you have to interact with one other human and it falls a-fucking-part. The members of your team address you with only one line “What’s going on, Raimi?” They say it back to back to back. This includes line by line introductions to the mechanics of the game. Cool Black Friend shouts “What’s going on, Raimi?” and then I learn how to operate my PDA. Why is a PDA part of the game? I don’t know and it barely comes into play again. In fact, the entire intro level of the game introduces game mechanics that don’t come back. If it was an intentional fake-out, it would be brilliant. It isn’t. It’s just dead threads. You go from looking in a microscope at some kind of haunted blood cells to suddenly engaging in a gigantic firefight with your team of military dudes versus another team of military dudes. Right off the bat, the movement and firing of your pistol feels clunky to a degree that a game made after Goldeneye should not. You just . . . don’t move right? It feels like Resident Evil tank-controls but instead it’s a normal layout, just done bad for no reason. Also, and especially in this first round of battle, everyone else has automatic machine gun death-devices and you have this stupid pistol. Again, if level one was designed to remind you that you aren’t a military guy and have no business dabbling in this weird, this choice would seem supremely well handled. It really isn’t that. Meanwhile, your support team has the kind of AI that forces them to stand directly in front of your gun when you fire, because yet again, this squad mechanic is not a thing that returns in the game. What does stick out even in the earliest gameplay is this weird sense of horror comedy in the timing and execution of things. One guy tries to shoot you and gets crushed by a gigantic pipe. Another dude opens a door and is perforated with bullets. When you and your team try to cross a bridge over an open pit to Hell, the guy in front of you trips on his shoelace and the music stops. He says “I’m fine,” and then a gigantic piercing tentacle beast pulls his body apart while biting his head off. Again, no idea that it was this sort game? Where did the angry insect god come from and why is he impossible to kill? You’re just left with your head spinning here. You and your team reach an extraction point, which is when a ghost possesses one of your friends and he shoots everyone including you. Yeah. This is one of those games where you’re already dead. Geist is basically Sunset Boulevard if instead of being ready for a close-up, Norma Desmond literally tore the soul from a man’s body. That’s what happens here. You’re placed in a machine over a Hellpit and it pulls your soul out but leaves your body . . . not dead, I guess? Maybe you can get back to that? In the meantime, we meet a bad military man and an evil scientist man in a wheelchair and oh boy do they have plans for you. Those plans include something called Project Z, because we’re still letting an improv troupe do the plot here, and previously all the Real Military Dudes they’ve ghost-sucked have wound up going insane instead of being Cool-Ass Ghost Soldiers – which is why they want to try this on you. First, you absolutely just spent 100% of this game in military shootouts where you were doing the military shooting. You are not a civilian and this plan is dumb. Second, what do Insane Ghosts do? Do they die? Do they just not follow commands? Do they possess other ghosts in a mobius strip of plot holes? Finally, how do you control a ghost? This feels like an Incredible Hulk origin film where they accidentally give the serum to, like, ISIS and then spend the film wondering why ISIS Hulk isn’t doing what they asked for – but with ghosts. This is a mess. You have a botched extraction from a subterranean lab and then a botched murder and then a pretty good soul extraction that feeds you into a machine designed to train you on how to be a ghost. This is when shit really goes off the rails, inside this ghost holodeck school for ghosts. The pleasant lady robot voiced narrator introduces you to a hypnotic, technicolor dream world where you float around dissolving plants and then inhabiting the body of a rabbit that you can make hop around. I’m not making this up. I wish I was. There is absolutely no consistent tone in this game. Less than five minutes ago, I watched a Cthulhu Bug decapitate my friend and now I’m digging up Mr. McGregor’s garden because I’m super dead but not done with school. Your ghost machine falls apart into a weird wire frame world, which is one of my favorite in-game error sequences I’ve seen. Can the whole game be this? No, because the machine was just broken by a Victorian Era Child Ghost who can only address me in audio form by Hauntedly Singing “Raimi...” and the ghost is named Gigi and I want to hatefuck whoever made this game. This is truly a disaster of mythical proportions and I am losing my mind. Gigi teaches you how to be a ghost, which involves learning to float and possess things. You can only ghost-about for so long before your life force slips away and you become Actual Dead, so you jump into living things or inanimate objects. Gigi takes you to a weird closet somewhere in Evil Lab and shows you how to suck yourself through holes in the wall and then you possess the following items: a mop bucket, an antique shooting gallery arcade machine and a power generator. I am, once again in disbelief, knowing that a Nintendo title about poltergeisting an old mop bucket did not become the AAA sales blockbuster Geist was meant to be. If you remember my love of Haunting: Starring Polterguy then you’ll know what comes with the possession of inanimate objects in this game. See, in order to get into a human or a dog or a rat or whatever else you might body-steal in this game, you first have to scare them to the point their aura turns red. I’m so excited. A first personHaunting game? This is exactly what I want. I want to be a ghost who uses weird real-world stuff in weird ways to scare people until they pee. I am back in. I use a spooky mop bucket to scare a soldier and then I jump into his brain and now I have guns and can do things. This is pretty okay. In the very first room I infiltrate, the military folks going about their Evil Science Work love talking to me about everything that has ever gone wrong in their Evil Science Lab. Everyone thinks it is business as usual that some invisible force has definitely escaped into their base. I think to myself that later in the game, the difficulty will ramp up when they have some kind of Ghost Detection Checkpoint and in that very same room, this early in the game, there is a Ghost Detection Checkpoint. My dudes, at least let me have some Ghost Fun before this gets out of control. It turns out that checkpoint looks scary with a whole laser grid system, but it’s actually just a dog that barks at possessed folks and then everyone shoots you. I possess this dog – and that didn’t go as planned. I get shot to death, but now I just grab another dude’s body and infinite gun ammo. I don’t have to scare guys when we’re in combat which I think is a giant flaw, and then I remember human beings in giant gun fights are probably at least somewhat stressed, so of everythingGeist fucks up I’ll give this a pass. There are cutscenes involving the dogs in this game that make you say, “WHAT A GOOD BOY” to the cute pupper doggo on screen just before you fill it with machine gun bullets. I fucking hate this choice. Pupper doggos did not chose to live in an underground ghost lab – no one would. Unfortunately, the next fours don’t bring anything new of worth talking about to the table here, which is such a disappointment. You mostly jump between soldiers and animals, solving puzzles with only one solution and lamenting the possibilities of what this could have been if Geist picked a lane. Most of the Haunted Object stuff you pull off has to come in one specific order. There’s no openness to who you might possess next or even in what order you can scare them. Haunting gave you a big open world to scare around in and that was two generations ago. The stakes never have weight when you can just die and jump into another enemy, and every boss battle is an unrelentingly long bullet-sponge for shooting their weak point while dodging projectiles. It gets un-fun and it gets un-fun fast. As for the story, you wind up escaping and being recaptured by the Volk Company three times throughout the game. The only good twist is that an evil insane ghost winds up taking over your body and killing your best friend. Again. Also, the little girl is the old evil wheelchair man’s sister who died as a child and he brought her back as a ghost but also a demon took him over and is using capitalism to bring down the world. These are all bullshit ideas, but kinda expected. What isn’t – and what winds up being the biggest letdown of all – is the interdimensional monster brigade. Basically, the ghost-making oven that stripped you from your body malfunctions a couple different times and unspeakable creatures from the ghost world flood into the lab. They can’t be seen by the scientists/janitors/shooty-men, so they kill a lot of the other humans. Almost all of this is off-screen or doesn’t matter. It’s like they set out to steal from Half-Life but then forgot to? This game brings so many concepts to the table and does nothing with any of them. The ghost baby basically disappears, whole big characters in a game with very few characters are just forgotten about and what the fuck happened to absorbing plants in order to keep existing on the ethereal plane? This is survival horror where the survival doesn’t matter and the horror is a lack of identity. One of the bosses in this game is just a dick named Cord. I want this to count against the game too, except the joy of killing a man named Cord by possessing his own stupid grenade is what I will remember most from my time here. Also, at one point, I became a ladder and I fell on a guy. SimLadder. That’s what this is. I am increasingly upset. The game ends with something happening at the Paris Accords but honestly what are we supposed to take from any of this? I do love taking pot-shots at bad storytelling, but when you can see the patchwork where one team was taken off the project and another team put in a different game, it is barely fun. It’s insulting. Perhaps the best way to end this is to take this shit out of a piece of gameplay that perfectly reflects 2003: the multiplayer mode. Throughout the game, you can find collectibles that can either be picked up only in ghost form or only in human form. This isn’t too difficult because people you un-possess never walk away – you can always just take them over again. That’s . . . fine. But the collectibles unlock new parts of multiplayer. Guys . . . why? There’s a bunch of different modes which you and up to four local buddies who LOVE GEIST can tackle together. In one, you try to possess your friends and make them walk into big stupid deathtraps like spikes and shit. This was a box to check-off that Nintendo super-shipped a product with a multiplayer component, for an IP that is so based in the solo experience that it barely knows what it wants to be. Geist is truly The Camel of adult Nintendo titles, and now you never have to play it. You’re welcome. U This Mortal Coyle | Deirdre Coyle

n elementary school, I had a recurring fantasy about a white dragon Ibreaking through the walls of my school and taking me away. I’d dreamed about this white dragon, and my subconscious felt as real to me as anything else, so I waited impatiently in waking life. When my dragon friend broke into my classroom, I’d climb on his back and ride off into the Virginia sky. The other kids would be very impressed. They’d realize they hadn’t known me at all. Dragons are the cool eighth graders sitting at the back of the bus, except they’ve already eaten the bus and every brat on it. Smaug says, “My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!” You can not sit with him. Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles was my favorite book series growing up; it stars a wayward princess who runs away from home to join a dragon gang. I also loved The Dragon Chronicles, a series about several women who fall in with dragons. At the library, I found Paul and Karin Johnsgard’s zoological treasure, Dragons and Unicorns: A Natural History, which taught me dragons’ evolution and anatomy. At my local new age store, I picked up The Book of the Dragontooth, which made me consider going on a quest to find a mystical molar. I never went on that quest, but in the summer of 1999, I did go to Circuit City. I know what you’re thinking: nobody has ever gone to Circuit City. Well, I’m here to tell you that in the ’90s, we went to Circuit City to buy videogames, and we liked it. Perusing box art in the PC section, I saw her: a sword-wielding, ponytailed woman riding a fire-breathing dragon. Destiny. Drakan: Order of the Flame, a third-person action-adventure by Psygnosis and Surreal Software, opens with a buxom, ponytailed woman, Rynn, watching her village get destroyed by some monsters indistinguishable from Orcs. Rynn’s brother gets kidnapped by the baddies, and she goes on a quest to save him. Before leaving town, she awakens an ancient dragon named Arokh, with whom she mind-melds. The player can then either hoof it or wing it; on foot, Rynn hacks and slashes with a bevy of weapons; in the sky, Arokh breathes fire. The game was thematically perfect for me: a fantasy kingdom, a female lead, a dragon, giant spiders and gothic cave exploration. Hungry for dragon knowledge, I searched Drakan on the quaint ’90s internet. Every review I remember talked about Rynn’s boobs and compared her to Lara Croft: “Rynn’s just a medieval Lara Croft riding on your average dragon . . . with her absurd Barbie-doll figure and her poker face,” said Gamespot. GameOver called her “the medieval equivalent of Lara Croft, but much sexier and more of a warrior.” “There’s no doubt that someone in the Psygnosis offices not only saw some cleavage when they were playing Tomb Raider, but saw some pretty bouncy dollar signs as well,” said IGN. A user review on GameFAQs (the user is “DC,” but I swear it wasn’t me) wrote, “Sick of Lara this, Lara that? Here’s another adventure game with a babe for you to control. This time, her name’s Rynn, and she’s almost as good as Lara.” My personal favorite comment comes from GameFAQs user “JW Ace,” who wrote, “Ryhn [sic] is hot, (I would say hotter than Ms. Croft, yes even after Angilena [sic] Jolie played her)…I mean a female who won’t take crap from even a dragon!!!Whats [sic] this girls [sic] phone number? Why aren’t there more women like you? I mean 50% of the women I know are scared of grasshoppers.” C’mon, Ace, how big was your sample size? In an interview with IGNPC, Surreal Software’s Alan Patmore said that “the only similarity between Drakan and Tomb Raider is that both games feature a lead female character.” Honestly, I was indifferent about the whole cleavage thing. While I knew Rynn’s proportions were unrealistic, her scant armor illogical and definitely unsafe, her dragon-riding prowess made her relatable. If everyone in her village hadn’t been murdered, they would have been impressed when she rode off on Arokh’s back. They’d realize they hadn’t known her at all.U Checkpoint | Corey Milne

The Labyrinth

There’s a faint memory in the crevices of my mind regarding a friend’s computer, a notion from my younger days that the PC was an otherworldly piece of equipment. They had one of those low texture maze games installed. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called. It could have been some freeware for all I know. There might have been a dinosaur in the maze, but I can neither confirm or deny the existence of labyrinth raptors. Anyway, it scared the pants off me so I left it alone. I’ve never been one for maze games in the vein of those old dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master. That was an era of gaming I missed by a large margin. Not that I didn’t try my hand at the genre. I attempted to take on the Legend of Grimrock, a modern throwback to the tile based adventures of the DOS age that sees you trying to escape a dungeon while solving puzzles, avoiding spike traps and dying at the claws of various roving bands of undead soldiers. I think Grimrock convinced me I didn’t like being lost in those claustrophobic tunnels with only 90 degrees of turning power. Then I played Severed and discovered the rigid, D&D-inspired mechanics might have done in my head. Developed by DrinkBox Studios and released in 2016 specifically for touchscreen-based devices, Severed uses the old dungeon crawling format to great effect. The game focuses on a young girl waking up after an attack on their home. Having lost an arm and her family, they must navigate a surreal landscape and defeat its twisted denizens in order to recover what they’ve lost. Designed specifically for a console such as the Vita or 3DS among others, the game rips your viewpoint straight from the likes of the classics I mentioned earlier. Your movement follows strict paths. In combat, you spin around in precise movements to face foes that lie outside your line of sight. Whether you’re traipsing around a decrepit crypt or lush alien jungle, you feel penned in. For someone who has lost not only physical but also emotional parts of herself, the isolation is amplified. In a dungeon crawler, those low ceilings and imposing locks on gated entryways encourage a sense of powerlessness to wash over you. Severed achieves the same effect even when it swaps the familiar grey cobblestones with lush fluorescent alien flora. The way each scene fades into existence as you take a step forward means that you’ll never be completely sure about what you’re about to stumble across. You always feel a little off balance. We all know what to expect from the standard fantasy dungeon. The more Harryhausen the skeleton warriors the better. There’s nothing familiar about the hostile land of Severed. Each encounter with the horrors is a chance to leave more body parts strewn in your wake. The combat is frantic. Your finger makes practiced but frenzied sweeps across the screen. You plow through monstrosities by severing their limbs and using them to enhance your own powers. As your inventory starts to bulge with various arms, legs and miscellaneous bits of flesh, you start to wonder if this is still a rescue mission. With minimal dialogue, there’s a poignant story being told about exploring the spaces left behind by that which is lost. Our protagonist is trapped. Their path seemingly laid out before them. The screen only showing us what it wants us to see tempers our control as players, helping to bring our objective into focus. Beneath Severed’s bright colour palette beats a dark heart. We know there are times when it looks like there’s only one course of action available to us. The deeper the plunge, the harder it can be to resurface. Until, clad in the records of your actions you end up looking at a reflection you’re not sure you recognize anymore. Covered as it is in the scars of battle. You must always take care not get lost in a maze of your own making. U Rookie of the Year | Matt Marrone

The ‘Oh!’ Sound That Means Yes

t’s early. You’re not going to the office today. It hurts too much. You’ll work Ifrom home. A noise comes from the small bedroom. You open the door with a creak. You whisper: Good morning A big hello hug, the lights go on, the diaper is changed. He rubs his still- sleepy eyes. Want to come lie down in Daddy’s room? The “Oh!” sound that means yes He slumps over your shoulder as you lift him up and carry him down the hall, half of him resting, half of him holding. The blackout curtain is open and light pours into the bedroom. It’s still early, though, and it still hurts, and you’re still working from home today. Want to listen to music? The “Oh!” sound that means yes You pull out your phone and find the song. It starts to play. It’s the song you sang last night, when you all spontaneously held hands around the dinner table. It’s his first time hearing it, not just the snippets you remembered last night, the ones you belted out that made him laugh, the ones that drew an impromptu call and response: Hands across the water ...... wahdr! Heads across the sky . . . Sky! Sky! Skyskysky! As you watch his face light up in recognition, you remember how many parts the song has and are delighted with each bit that makes a new impression. Words like “sorry” and “pie.” The exaggerated British accent. There’s even a chance to blow raspberries in the air. They each become their own tiny moment. And of course: Hands across the water ...... wahdr! Heads across the sky . . . Sky! Sky! Skyskysky! And when it ends, you’re smiling at each other and laughing and also it hurts and you’re going to work from home today. More please! You play it again and you’re right back there, singing along together and laughing and finishing each other’s lyrics and the light is pouring through the open bedroom window. More please! You’re alive in the moment but you also know this is probably the last time. So you pull him close to your chest and hold the camera up for a selfie. He loves selfies and you’re making all kinds of funny faces — scary faces, super happy faces, silly faces and you’re laughing and pressing the shutter button and you’re going to work from home today after you drop him off at school. He rolls over to his side. As the song continues he makes more faces just for you and you snap a few more photos to remember it forever. All the emotions are there that you need. And then the song ends again and it’s time to dress him in his brand new Paw Patrol shirt, feed him his cereal, put his shoes on and grab his backpack and lunch and head through the front door and outside onto the porch and down the block and around the corner until you get to the school. He runs to his teacher for a big hug and, just like that, looks back at you and says: Bye! You wave goodbye and it’s early and it hurts and you’re working from home today. And then, before you turn to leave him, you blow each other a kiss. U The Burnt Offering | Stu Horvath

A Miscellany

haven’t had time for weighty thinking on culture this month. I’ve been Iviewing my son’s impending birth as a sort of hurricane warning and using my time to frantically complete as many projects as I can before he arrives. As such, I have a nice new patio now (ugh, my aching back) but have not had the time or energy to write. I fear that “I have not had the time or energy to write” is going to become my mantra over the next several months. Instead, I’m going to offer up the columnist’s equivalent of a clip show and briefly mention a few things that have been kicking around my brain but likely won’t ever support a full essay. Let’s start, shall we?

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Well after publishing last month’s column on memory and history and my hypothetically imminent son (as of this writing, he’s late and seems to be taking his time), I had a new realization along similar lines. My life, up till now, has been very much about me. I don’t mean that in a selfish way, but rather, more in a Cartesian sense of “I think, therefore I am.” Having a child has made me think about myself less as a person with a biographical narrative from birth to death and more as a set of recollections that will inform someone else’s story. Everything I do once he is born will be edited down by his brain until, at some point in the future, I will exist only as interconnected memories. Human ego (or at least, my ego) makes it a curious thing to realize that you might not be the main character of a story. This isn’t a surprise on some level, of course, but I rarely think about how life is actually a tapestry of shifting, Roshamon-like perspectives. As a rule, I’d wager no one else does in their daily lives. We’re too much bound to the I.

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The last decade has produced a lot of brilliant horror movies and even more flawed gems. Since February of 2015, I’ve been endeavoring to assemble a viewer’s guide of them, focusing on films that might be more apt to fall through the cracks. I’ve recently written another 20 entries, which will be published shortly. You can check the guide out in its entirety here, but I wanted to draw attention to one film in particular. Here’s my forthcoming entry for A Dark Song:

A DARK SONG – 2017 – LIAM GAVIN A powerful bit of character driven horror, A Dark Song follows the grieving Sophia (Catherine Walker) as she enlists an occultist, Solomon (Steve Oram), to lead her in a months- long magickal ritual in a remote house in Wales. Trapped in the rented mansion until the completion of the ritual, the two work through their personal demons, as well as some other entities drawn to the power of the working. The process is grueling. It is rare to find any kind of movie, let alone a horror film, whose construction – in this case, the 90-minute depiction of the performance of a European-style Kabbalistic magick ritual – mirrors not only the substance of the movie (the transformation of the characters by that ritual) but also the effect it has on the viewer. We are running the psychological gauntlet along with these characters, purifying ourselves, supplicating, enduring it to the end. While A Dark Song is creepy as all get out, it is also deeply transformative. Not a pleasant experience (little in life is), but one I am happy to have had (several times, nearly back to back, if I’m going to be completely honest). My favorite horror movie of 2017, it has lingered in my mind far longer than most movies and has colored my reactions to everything I’ve seen since. | Trailer

Consider giving it a try if you’re in need of an unusual horror film this spooky season. * * *

In a weird (and awful) bit of kismet, another essay of mine from 2015 (little over a month after the initial publication of the horror movie guide, in fact) is suddenly worth a re-read. It was called “The Tyranny of the Fan.” I thought to read it again in the wake the McDonald’s Rick and Morty Szechuan sauce incident, the attempt by lingering GamerGate trolls to fire up a new front in the comic book industry (idiotically called ComicGate) and a swirl of about a dozen other fandom-related flashpoints in recent months. It wasn’t hard to predict that the toxic elements of fandom would gain prominence in the wake of GamerGate, but it is a bit staggering to see the scale and scope of it all two years later. Nazis were a problem in GG (Nazis are always a problem, I say, as someone who grew up in the North Jersey punk rock scene), but it is infuriating to look back and see how brazen they were in exploiting fan dogmas that exist in traditionally “nerdy” spaces to foster, racism, sexism, and fascism (and a whole wheelbarrow full of other negative -isms). And not just a little fascism. Like, a nearly out of control, barely held in check, my god, these people put a moron in the White House fascism. We’re in these trenches together. I don’t need to tell you how it is. But looking back gave me an eye-opening bit of context. It might do the same for you.

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Finally, there’s been a bit of hubbub in the games journalism community about the notion of freelancers “talking shit” and how that can cost you gigs if you get a rep as a shit talker. Which is nonsense. Freelancers should be free to talk about what outlets pay on time (full disclosure: Unwinnable doesn’t always manage to do that!) and what editors are assholes and any other aspect of the business they think they need to put the word out on. Not talking about this stuff is one thing that enabled the games journalism vampire lord Kill Screen to suck the lifeblood out of so many writers for so long. We need more people talking, not less. But I get it. It is a small pool. You don’t want to burn bridges and risk shrinking your potential revenue. So I have an offer for you. I don’t freelance. I’m not beholden to other editors or outlets. If you have some bullshit weighing you down but are afraid of the blowback you might get for speaking out about it, you can always write about it for Unwinnable under a pseudonym. U The Heavy Pour | Sara Clemens

Demon Days

October has finally arrived, bringing with it crisp winds, decorative gourds, readily available Count Chocula cereal and death. All around us, leaves wither and fall lifeless to the ground, leaving behind barren branches reaching up towards grey skies like skeletal hands from a grave. It is, truly, the most wonderful time of the year. It’s also the time I hold an annual viewing or two of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. I’ve loved horror movies and Halloween and all kinds of spooky things since I was kid, but The Exorcist has always ranked near the top of my list. It’s one of my favorite movies, period, so you can imagine my delight when I checked out last year’s television version and found it to be far from the derivative, clumsily modernized adaptation I feared. It managed not only to expand the world of The Exorcist to include new characters and higher-stakes plotlines, but to fit a new story neatly (and surprisingly!) alongside the plot of the original film. Demonic possession is a concept both terrifying and thrilling to me, and the world of The Exorcist handles it particularly well. The idea that a demon could posses a human being via supernatural occupation of a shared psychic space is scary enough, but Pazuzu (et. al.) also having the capability to probe the deepest fears and desires of literally anyone else they talk with gives me chills even as I write this. Fears and desires can be weak spots in a person’s sense of self. To quote Dostoevsky, “there are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.” Someone giving voice to and weaponizing any of my deep-seated fears or fantasies would leave me shaken, let alone if they were using a loved one’s body as an avatar. The decision to use an actor to embody the demon in The Exorcist television series is one of the best choices the show makes. Having the film version manifest entirely through Regan is interesting, of course. There’s a lot going on there. From a certain point of view, it’s a movie about a pubescent girl suddenly acting so intensely erratic that official representatives of perhaps the most patriarchal institution in the world have to be called in to wrestle her into submission. I’d argue it was a bit sexist if puberty weren’t actually such a bitch. The movie plays heavily on the psychological fears of the characters – mothering a stranger, aging, the nature of faith, the constant balancing of good vs. evil within the human heart. It doesn’t do the seduction of evil, so much. At least, we aren’t privy to Regan’s internal experience of it. With Casey, the possession victim in the first season of the TV series, we get to see her actually interact with her demon. In his first appearance, he’s a grandfather in Willy Loman’s suit, bending a sympathetic ear to a teenager who feels alone in the world and isolated from her family. The who-is-this-character meter oscillates between invisible friend and benevolent spirit. With each new appearance, however, his suit becomes slightly more and more tattered – torn with blackened, burnt edges and stained with ash. His teeth get tarry and he looks like he stinks of sulfur and smoke. He can only maintain the glamor for so long. I appreciate seeing things from the possessed girl’s point of view. I was close enough to Regan’s age when I first saw The Exorcist to be afraid for her. What a horrifying ordeal to go through (again, not unlike actual puberty). Ultimately it’s revealed she doesn’t remember anything, thankfully, freeing me up to worry along with Father Karras about God, faith and the inherent evil within men upon subsequent viewings. I would still wonder, though, how the hell did Pazuzu get to her in the first place? There’s a moment in the show’s first season when a man sexually harasses the teenaged Casey on a Chicago L train. The harassment is slightly amped up for dramatic effect, but it’s a fairly straightforward example of what many city-dwelling women have experienced at some point while riding public transportation. Immediately afterwards, the demon appears to Casey. He whispers in her ear, tempting her to take revenge on the harasser, promising her the power to make it so he can never say another filthy thing in any woman’s direction ever again, just so long as she lets Grandpa Smoky all the way in to her mind. Casey accepts the terms, then removes the douchebag’s lower mandible with her bare hands. The first time I saw that scene, a single thought zipped through my mind like quicksilver, taking the form of the internet’s favorite term of agreement for complex situations and feelings: same. A second later I made it official by crossing my arms, nodding, and audibly announcing, “same.” That’s when I knew a demon could steal my soul. Happy October, everyone. Keep it spooky and have some Count Chocula for me. The second season of The Exorcist is airing now. U Here’s the Thing | Rob Rich

Content vs. Creator

lichéd though it may be, the internet and social media have metaphorically Cmade the world a whole lot smaller. Being able to follow (or even have a brief dialog with) the people who make the things we love is freaking amazing when you stop and think about it. Here’s the thing: these days, nary a week goes by where a fan learns something about one of their favorite actors, directors, cartoonists, game developers, authors, or musicians that ends up casting a shadow over their work. So, what do we do when the people who make the things we love turn out to be sort of horrible? I want to be clear: this is not a condemnation of people who know that a creator has problems but continue to follow their work. This is a massive grey area, and I don’t think anyone should be shamed for liking a thing an arguably bad person made. Especially if they didn’t know in the first place. Also keep in mind that I’m not referring to silly stuff like pineapple on pizza - I’m talking about serious things like racism, misogyny, transphobia and the like. If you have an average set of morals and spend any amount of time online, chances are you’ve stumbled upon a story about someone who made a thing that has been influential in your life and now you kind of wish you hadn’t read it. I won’t be naming names because this isn’t the place for that, but stuff like that sucks. Absolutely loving a TV show only to find out the person who created it is a sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing feels like a betrayal. Learning that a designer who was responsible for several of my favorite videogames growing up had very bad things to say about the LGBTQ+ community (and having said designer try to send a hate mob after me) is disappointing, to say the least. The thing is, there are no easy answers for how to deal with something like this. On the one hand, you’d be perfectly justified in never supporting any of the creator’s future projects because of this fundamental ideological (or even moral) difference. On the other hand, things like TV shows, movies and videogames are the product of the hard work of many people and it would be a shame to punish them all just because one person on the project is an asshat. Then there’s the matter of how you yourself feel about all of it. Does knowing what you know make you feel a little disappointed but not much else? Does it turn your stomach and make it difficult for you to look at any of their work (past, present and future) the same way again? The problematic person’s level of involvement is usually a good barometer when it comes to deciding how much you can separate their bad from the good. Of course, the severity of their “views” can also be a contributing factor, as can their apparent willingness to be less awful. Heck, even if you find a creator to be absolutely despicable but just can’t bring yourself to stop monetarily contributing to their work there are still ways you can offset the Ick Factor. Consider something like donating the same amount you paid for your ticket or download or whatever to a charity that opposes the thing(s) they’re being nasty about. Wait for a sale. Watch it online instead of buying the DVD. I don’t have any real answers. Finding out someone you respect – either directly, or indirectly via appreciation of their work – has such ugliness in their heart can be tough to deal with. It sucks and I’m sorry. Just know that you’re not alone, and that only you can decide how much is too much for you – don’t let anyone else tell you you’re being too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Short of actively trying to destroy said creator’s career or actively trying to champion their awfulness, there aren’t any real “wrong” answers. U The McMaster Files | Jason McMaster

estiny 2 surprised me. Not that I didn’t expect a well-designed game, or Dthat it would lack production value. No, as always, Bungie has done a top- notch job in offering a slick experience for their fans. All of these have been, for them, a given in recent years. What surprised me is that Destiny 2 is, for someone who didn’t play beyond vanilla Destiny, a completely different experience. From the get-go, Destiny 2 has refined every part of the original Destiny formula into something better than what came before. Many videogame sequels give players what they want – more and faster – but the overall feeling of this game isn’t just that. It feels honed and perfected in an expert way. This isn’t particularly surprising if you consider the developer. One standout story from the making of the Halo franchise was just how much time the team at Bungie spent studying data gathered from their multiplayer servers. The team would break down the movement and combat statistics of thousands upon thousands of players in order to streamline and ultimately fine-tune the multiplayer maps, so they could better understand what players do and do not enjoy. This approach is the difference between Bungie and other developers. So, what’s different, other than “everything?” There are many interesting new features and systems, but a few things stand out. The areas that you play in are noticeably larger and more interesting than the original. The ruined, somewhat ominous feeling of the EDZ (European Dead Zone), the crystal blue waves of Titan (sadly, I couldn’t find Unk) and the haunting firma of Io go quite a way towards setting the game’s grand, yet somewhat melancholy tones. The EDZ, one would imagine, is full of of rot and the sickly sweet process of decay. Nature has begun to reclaim it. The worlds you explore are already lost. This is the end for mankind. The only thing keeping us alive is the Traveler, and it’s not doing very well. The lore for Destiny is convoluted and a bit of a mystery, but the storyline to Destiny 2 is fairly straightforward and enjoyable. The Cabal, a warlike race of aliens, has come to our solar system to harness the power of the Traveler. Everywhere they go, when they conquer, they destroy everything and move on. The guardians are all powered by the Traveler, so when it gets manipulated by the Red Legion (the specific enemy faction of the Cabal) the guardians lose their power. You find a piece of the Traveler and your power returns, making you the last hope for our species. No pressure. I say all of that to comment on the campaign, which can be played single or co-op with friends, and is a highlight. Each of the missions have cool trappings and interesting design, and the overall campaign wraps up in a very satisfying way. More than once, while play through the story missions, did I comment to my friends, “Sometimes, I really miss Halo,” and felt the itch to return to I. But there’s no real need, because Destiny 2 fills that void nicely. After the campaign is over, there’s still stuff to do. Constant public events and quick access to PvP or Strikes (the games dungeons) remain a quick and enjoyable distraction, but there are plenty of missions and side-quests to do that take you well beyond your initial adventures. A new activity is never more than a few menus away. Destiny 2, like the original, is also an MMO with all the MMO stuff, though it is well hidden. There’s certainly a loot chase and higher level activities for those who want to engage in the grind or partake in raids. Your weapons and equipment have something they call a “Light Level” and it’s used to judge whether you have good enough equipment to participate in some of the tougher challenges. There are ways to increase your light level, but to get above a certain point you have to grind. However, it’s not an impossible task. At a casual play level, I’ve reached above raid gear in less than a month’s time. The higher level content might require a bit more dedication, but the bar for entry is not quite as time-detrimental as has been in other MMO designs. Destiny 2 rewards you for what time you put in, but doesn’t make it a requirement. I went in to Destiny 2 with a bit of trepidation because it was a gift from a friend. I had prepared myself to play a little, and if it was bad, just to play long enough to not seem like a complete ingrate. A month later, I’ve spent a good bit more time than originally expected and am looking forward to attempting to complete the raid. Sometimes a developer just nails it. U Artist Spotlight | Zi Xu

Hi Zi! Tell us a bit about yourself? Hello! I am a freelance illustrator and senior currently studying illustration and art history at the Maryland Institute College of Art. My interests include inking, film, archaeology and anything related to sci-fi.

How did you get into art? What inspires you? I’ve always loved to draw and have been drawing since I was very little. As a young teen I was heavily influenced by videogames and how immersive the worlds can be (eg. Mass Effect, Mirror’s Edge, Deus Ex, etc.). This is what drives me to better my craft and develop my own characters and worlds, although as of late I’ve been getting more and more inspired by film.

I’m fascinated by your archaeological work. Can you explain both how you approach this aspect of your art and the purpose it serves? Me and a few art history teachers and classmates from my college have been trying to develop a new methodology for technical illustration with a few archaeologists working in Colorado and Poland. Most archaeologists are trained in technical drawing because they need to draw artifacts and all that, but what me and my classmates have been doing is drawing and painting the landscapes surrounding these archaeological sites to help archaeologists document the surrounding area. We’ve even been invited back and given grants to work in Colorado a handful of times to do this (next spring will be my fourth time going back!). Whenever I tell people about this, they usually say something along the lines of, “that’s cool, but why do archaeologists hire you to do this when they can just take photographs?” The answer is actually really simple - because we’re the only people doing this right now and photographs are boring. In publications, magazines and museums for example, people will respond much better to a pretty drawing than a photograph. Furthermore, drawings also convey the most important feature of a landscape/ artifact easier than photographs do. Going to Colorado to paint landscapes for archaeologists was possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever done at college and I hope it opens new opportunities for artists to branch out into academia.

What do you hope people take away from your art? I really hope people get the sense that I’m a pretty technique-driven person from my work. I’ve always loved observational drawing as well as working with black and white lineart more than color, and I hope that my work can reach a stage where it’s on par with some of my favorite artists. U plate 1. plate 2. plate 3. plate 4. plate 5. plate 6. Playlist |

“16 Psyche,” by Chelsea Wolfe “Everyday People,” by Sly & the Family Stone “Seconds” by Pulp “A New Career In A New Town,” by David Bowie “Halloween,” by Siouxsie and the Banshees “Gravel Pit,” by Wu Tang Clan “Move Your Still,” by Feed Me Jack “Aquarian,” by Grizzly Bear LISTEN NOW ON SPOTIFY “Elysium,” by Portishead “Thriller (Steve Aoki Remix),” by Michael Jackson “Days of Daze” by tfvsjs “Form Constant; The Grid,” by Ex Eye Selected by Stu Horvath, Austin Price, Ken Lucas, “I Wanna Destroy You,” by The Soft Boys Jeremy Voss, Gavin Craig, Sara Clemens, Erik “Tyson vs. Douglas,” by The Killers Weinbrecht, Khee Hoon Chan, Levi Rubeck, Deirdre “Praying,” by Kesha Coyle, Melissa King, Amanda Hudgins, Sam Desatoff, “I Won’t Back Down,” by Tom Petty Gingy Gibson, Don Becker and Corey Milne

Reading List |

Deadfall Hotel, by Steve Rasnic Tem Ghostland, by Colin Dickey

Alone with the Horros, by Ramsey Campbell The Internet of Garbage, by Sarah Jeong

End of Watch, by Stephen King The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

Begin With a Failed Body, by Natalie Graham Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

All These Worlds, by Dennis E. Taylor Judge Dredd: Satan’s Island, by John Wagner

The Secret History of Twin Peaks, by Mark Frost Selected by Stu Horvath, Austin Price, Jeremy Phasma, by Delilah Dawson Voss, Gavin Craig, James Fudge, Sara Clemens, Erik Weinbrecht, Levi Rubeck, Deidre Coyle, Amanda Ada, or Ardor, by Vladimir Nabokov Hudgins, Sam Desatoff, Gingy Gibson and Corey Milne Now Playing |

DARKWOOD - Darkwood is the reason I refuse to buy Early Access games anymore. By Polish developers Acid Wizard Games, it looked like everything I wanted out of a horror game — soaked in darkness, trading in dread, deeply mysterious. And the controls were absolute garbage. To the point that not only was the game unplayable, but I questioned whether the developers had ever played a top-down game previous to sitting down to make theirs. Years later, the controls are fixed and the game delivers on its terrifying promises. But I almost never got to experience that because of the bad first impression. If you had a similar experience, though, take it from me: pick it back up again. You won’t be disappointed. (Stu Horvath)

FATE/GRAND ORDER - Yes, I know I kvetched about this two months ago, but the new expansion drops tomorrow! And I’ll finally be able to push my Lancelot to his 4th ascension! And add the biblical David to my roster of heroes! And . . . and . . . and!!!! (Please, put me down . . . ) (Austin Price)

CLICKER HEROES - I have an unhealthy obsession with idle clickers and goddammit, here I go again. Truth be told, I’m in between a whole bunch of games at the moment — post-campaign Destiny 2, Ys VIII, Everybody’s Golf, Hob, Steamworld Dig 2 just off the top of my head - and I’m also in a bit of a holding pattern as I impatiently wait for the fall’s big releases. Clicker Heroes is a dumb idle clicker and I’ve been obsessed with it in some form for years now; now that the Xbox has Spotify, it’s far too easy for me to fire up some tunes and level the hell out of my heroes as efficiently as possible and also refresh Twitter while waiting for the inevitable heat death of the universe. (Jeremy Voss)

SLIME RANCHER - The titular ranch business has the potential to turn the game into a tedious chore or a depressing factory farm, but as an excuse to explore a peaceful alien world and engage with its ecosystem, it does the job alright. (Joe Köller) SONIC MANIA - I finally got my hands on a Switch (oh how I love it so), and downloaded this little nostalgia bomb as soon as I had the system set up. I’m appreciating how difficult even the early stages are, and I’m finding myself surprisingly moved by the music. As soon as I (finally) progress to a new stage, I get flooded with memories of sitting on the floor of my bedroom, playing my Genesis or Sega CD, dust motes dancing in a late-afternoon sunbeam. (Sara Clemens)

METROID: SAMUS RETURNS - 2D side scrollers have been taking up all of my time between this and Sonic Mania. This game on the 2DS is gorgeous and maddeningly difficult. I love everything about it. (Erik Weinbrecht)

LIMBO - Limbo’s monochromatic world feels dreary and nightmarish. Everything in the environment is out to kill you. Mutated creatures abound and are extremely carnivorous. Even the few humans you meet are hostile and want you dead. Regardless, the young boy in Limbo keeps trudging on. I wasn’t sure what would compel him to do so aside from sheer desperation, but his hazy motivation is mostly what keeps me playing. Puzzle games aren’t usually my cup of tea. Plenty of folks have told me the game is great — and objectively speaking, I know it is a beautiful one — but Limbo is still barely keeping me interested. I hope the experience is worth it. (Khee Hoon Chan)

MEGA MAN X - Yeah, I got an SNES mini and, yeah, the first thing I did is fire up a game I can pretty much zoom through in my sleep. MMX hardly needs me to boost it, you’re either in or out at this point, but that dash *kisses fingers* it’s just too sweet to pass up. I feel like an Olympic runner with an arm cannon, an un-traceable ninja, in complete control of a false physics and sense of place in a very specific world. Going through with only the buster makes the boss fights a kind of meditative soiree, a dance where I am two steps ahead, starting into the future like a rainbow tunnel past the void. (Levi Rubeck)

BLOOD CODE - So far, my only complaint about this vampiric murder mystery dating sim is that there aren’t enough vampires (this could change, of course, as the game progresses). The mechanics are interesting and the art is adorable. Bonus: the heroine is named Leia. (Deirdre Coyle) STAR OCEAN: INTEGRITY AND FAITHLESSNESS - I’ve been living the past year and a half in denial. Only in the discount game bin at Walmart did I get the kick in the rear I needed to acknowledge that this game signals the death of the series. It lays on my game shelf, ready for me to crack open. Wish me luck, y’all. (Melissa King)

DERBY OWNERS CLUB: WORLD EDITION - Stopping by the Akiba Arcade in Columbus, I settled in for several runs of Derby Owner Club: World Edition. With its own seating and cards printed with the names and characteristics of the horses, I played for a long time carefully racing and breeding horses until they retired from the races. It’s a ridiculous game and I want to play it forever. (Amanda Hudgins)

CUPHEAD - Cuphead is a game that wants you to look at it and appreciate the aesthetics, but the mechanics are actively at odds with that sentiment. It’s been a while since I’ve been this conflicted about a game. On one hand, it is certainly one of the most beautiful games I’ve played, and I think it’s legacy will be that it shifted our perception of what games should look like. On the other hand, it’s damn hard to really appreciate the animation when you’re concentrated on not constantly dying. I wish Cuphead’s art style was in a less difficult game. (Sam Desatoff)

HUNIEPOP - This is the game for those of you wondering, “I’m already pretty trash, but how can I become a true human dumpster fire?” The game is built around taking women on a series of dates with the end-goal of getting them into your bed. Success or failure depends on the power of your Bejeweled skills, along with managing resources to get better power-ups to improve your match-3 abilities. It’s surprisingly addictive for such a simple concept, and just this month they’ve announced a sequel for 2018! (Gingy Gibson)

YAKUZA 0 - This is my firstYakuza game and I’m very excited to see what this seemingly zany series is all about. So far, I’ve kicked a man out of a window so hard, that protagonist Kiryu almost went out the window after him. I like his style. (Corey Milne) Unsolvable | Brian Taylor

“IS ENOUGH”

ACROSS 42. Country in east Africa 6. Animal corpses 35. Step 1. Al dente nosh 45. * Eminem biopic 7. It’s buried (and, according 36. Greek Cupid 6. Give (in) 48. Artist and activist (in bed!) to my dad, often forgotten) by 38. Maddest, in Britain 10. Fan’s hotly defended 49. Punjabi princess squirrels (That’s why they’re 40. Type of behavior Trump creation, maybe 51. Multiple stitched items (I’m nature’s foresters!) won’t tolerate 14. * Film stock sorry, but I couldn’t find any 8. Italian region home to 43. Hang on 15. High (or low) cards better fill) Romeo, Shylock, Kate, and 44. Days ___ 16. Pitch 53. Cockney way of speaking Bianca 46. Inclined 17. Church location, in some 57. Check 9. Repair shop fig. 47. South African news cities 58. Lightable gas 10. Puttings on (of a play) network 19. “___ Lang Syne” 59. Wine valley 11. * Shift length to thank 50. Incoming call option 20. Bag 63. Highlands hillside unions for 52. Fire up 21. Plot part 64. Alternative to man-bunned 12. Cove 53. Jewish congregation 22. Match 66. Pet Shop ____ 13. Feet, medicaly speaking leader 23. Meaning studiers 67. Air bear 18. Well-known 54. A Great Lake (not the 26. Centuries-long cold snaps 68. Stopped sitting 22. Weight loss berry (is there canal one) 29. Middle Eastern country 69. Facil. peer-reviewed evidence this 55. * Fogg travel time with its own gulf 70. Rind is true?) 56. * Netflix show about a 30. Something you get from 71. Loudly laments 24. Latin I cluster... the military (or prison), along 25. Global debt machine 60. Succulent balm with three hots DOWN 26. Part of a nuclear arsenal, 61. Serf 31. Praise poems 1. “hey” for short 62. Annexes 33. * Skating maneuver 2. Not manual 27. RC 64. Little doggie 37. Yak 3. Difficult position 28. Roman others 65. Inquire 39. Melancholy 4. Mother ___ 32. Friend of Frodo 41. Railroad addition 5. It comes after you 34. Stratford-___-Avon By Oliver Milne GODS & ASTRONAUTS ow do we know what we really the Internal Revenue Service,” he says. Hbelieve in? Sometimes it is clear “When you look at those criteria, you see from the moment we first ask the they map very nicely onto beliefs about question, and we can simply stand up spaceflight.” and say, ‘I believe in – democracy, or the “In the context of religion,” he Resurrection, or the inevitable coming of continues, “there’s always some sort of Communism. Other times, though, our salvation message, whereby humans will real beliefs can lie hidden – only showing accept something that is not provable up through the gaps in our thinking that – that’s a faith statement – about their they silently fill. ultimate fate. You can see the same Roger Launius, senior curator at the with spaceflight – although it’s not an Smithsonian National Air and Space individual salvation mentality, it is a Museum, was NASA’s chief historian for species salvation mentality: ‘getting off 12 years. While he was there, he noticed this planet will ensure that humanity something strange about the way the will not become extinct here when it is organization justified itself to the US no longer capable of surviving on this Congress. “People would ask us the planet’ […] There are saints, there are question, ‘Why are we doing this?’ And martyrs, there are sacred spaces that the answer, most of the time, was, ‘Well, exist […] All are part of the religion of it’s going to take a rocket that is this big, spaceflight.” that can lift this much payload and with He’s not the only one to make astronauts being able to survive for a the connection. Thore Bjørnvig, a certain period of time…’ – which doesn’t Copenhagen-based historian of religion, answer the question. It doesn’t answer has been working on the religious aspects the ‘why’ question.” When pressed, he of space travel for a decade. “I basically says, the reasons they came out with came from the comparative study of were strangely weak. “I’ve heard NASA religion and stumbled across this,” he spout their, you know – it’s this ethereal says. “I came across something called the thing – that ‘It’s human nature to explore Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and that we’ve always crossed the river and I thought, ‘What the hell? Are people and crossed the ocean and climbed the actually looking for aliens?’ And the mountain and did all that kind of stuff’ more I began to study these things the – which is just plain baloney.” There’s more I began to think that – ‘Hey, this is something missing here, he thought. quite weird,’ […] I began to see that there “What are we trying to do?” were quite a lot of things that I stumbled The theory he arrived at is that the across where I thought ‘Well, this sounds drive for human spaceflight is a kind of extremely religious to me,’ but nobody religion. “I used essentially the criteria seemed to be able to see that it was for the definition of a religion used by religious.” The Overview Effect, space author Frank White’s 1987 magnum opus, is probably the most significant attempt to present an argument for human space colonisation, and is, for Bjørnvig, one of the standout examples of this hidden religiosity. “The whole reason why he has written this book is to present the ‘greatest argument ever’ for spaceflight. And the Overview Effect is basically a religious tract, in my reading,” said Bjørnvig. “As Frank White so meticulously portrays in his book, the idea is that this view [from space] is somehow extremely privileged and it will be transformative of the human spirit and even Earthly civilization. It will set in motion an evolutionary revolution, you might say, that will end up turning the whole universe into one intelligent self-conscious being. And, I mean, to me, it’s very difficult not to think of this as basically mystical, religious-mystical thinking, about uniting everything into one godhead.” Sometimes, the beliefs we can’t give voice to find expression in other ways. Over the past few years, more and more popular sci-fi books, films, games and TV shows – from Gravity to Kerbal Space Program to The Expanse – have tried to portray space as realistically as they possibly can. “I’m not sure that it’s really a niche anymore,” The Expanse’s Ty Franck says. “I mean, The Martian sold about a jillion books and was a quite successful hit movie, so maybe it’s no longer a niche. Maybe it’s a thing that people are really looking for in their sci-fi right now.” Bjørnvig concurs: “[The Expanse and The Martian] signify that maybe we are getting closer to a point where we will see more and more realistic sci-fi stuff.” The appetite is there. But what underlies it? On the face of it, it’s a little bit odd. Nobody is that interested in making ultra-realistic westerns, or historical films. But in science fiction it’s a different story. Why should anybody care whether the engines on the protagonist’s spaceship make real, physical sense? Why is that what we want to see? Franck had part of the answer. “The problem that I have with very strange sci-fi, very far-distant future sci-fi, is that I have a hard sense seeing myself in those stories,” he said. “When you have something that has a certain level of plausibility, it also grounds the characters, and it also grounds the action, and it doesn’t tip its hand quite as much to the arbitrary nature of fiction in general.” But this is just as true of Star Wars, or any other well-constructed, self-consistent sci-fi universe, as it is of the modern crop of realistic (or would-be realistic) sci-fi. The reason we want our science fiction grounded in our reality is that, on some level, we really, really want something like that to come true. We know we can never have Star Wars. But when we watch The Expanse, we can pretend, to ourselves, just a little, that one day that’ll be us out there. In a moving review of the show in The Baffler, columnist Laurie Penny wrote: “[Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents protagonist Lauren] Olamina’s job is to fight the rotting propaganda of violent when humankind suddenly enters into nostalgia with a vision of the future this place where there once were angels for people who have all but forgotten and God, somehow man is becoming what it means to anticipate one. She divine himself.” does this with didactic prayer-poems, The very act of flying into space and her repeated refrain is as follows: lends itself to, as Bjørnvig puts it, The destiny of Earthseed is to take root mythic narrative. The sublime terror of among the stars. spaceflight – the tremendous speeds, the You know, I believe that. I believe that incomprehensible distances, the prospect the human race belongs in space. It might of sudden death, the sheer astonishment be silly, it might be naïve, but I know provoked by hurling a tower into the sky people who believe all sorts of ridiculous on a pillar of flame – primes us to look things that do a lot more damage.” for contextualising stories on a suitable The religion of spaceflight is alive and scale. well, then – not just among NASA staff or This is the real beauty of spaceflight. cranky authors, but for a congregation It is a hidden spring from which great of millions of people. Why? Why does causes flow. It doesn’t give us reasons, the sky call to us? What is it about space it makes us go and find reasons good travel that evokes these feelings? enough for it – not just good enough “One of the most basic things to excuse it, but good enough to do it underlying this is that space is up there,” justice: ‘This is sublime, therefore it said Bjørnvig. “It is where Heaven must have a sublime meaning.’ Saving traditionally has been placed […] You mankind – that’s sublime. “Making life have a whole group of people in the multiplanetary,” as Elon Musk puts it – United States and Europe – and to some that’s sublime. These aren’t the reasons extent also of course Russia - who have we believe in spaceflight, they’re the ways been primed into thinking that what is up we’ve devised to live up to it – because if there in the heavens – that is where the we can only touch it, match up to it, then most important stuff is going on […] So perhaps we can be sublime, too. U I, MURDERSPY By Bill Coberly The first Mass Effect sure thinks the Commander Shepard, is a soldier and solution to complicated galacto- war hero who has been chosen by both political problems is the deployment of human and alien leaders to become the unaccountable government murderspies. first human to join the ranks of Council The Citadel Council, an interspecies SPECTREs. In the fiction of Mass Effect, space-UN that governs most of the humanity has only recently joined the galaxy, has access to its own military galactic scene and the first game begins police force (Citadel Security, or C-Sec,) only 27 years after humanity first and can usually expect to command the encountered aliens. Thus, for a human to militaries of its various member species. join the Council’s Secret Murderspy Police But when it needs to perform complex is treated by the game as a momentous operations that require a finer touch, it occasion, marked by considerable turns to the SPECTRE program and the political discussion and fanfare by the men and women within it. SPECTREs folks back on Earth. The player gains (short, hilariously, for SPECial Tactics and this status after the game’s prologue, and Reconnaissance) have almost complete the plot of the rest of the game is shaped authority to do as they please, and are by the privileges and responsibilities generally considered to be above the law. of SPECTRE-hood. Shepard is granted Developers working on the Mass access to secret places, given interviews Effect franchise have described the first by important people, and allowed to game as being about “becoming the first make outrageous decisions, all because human SPECTRE.” The player character, of her SPECTRE status. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shepard’s with Shepard’s performance and choices interactions with the Council are fraught (whatever they were), and Shepard can from the very beginning. The Council is immediately either hang up on them or skeptical of the very concept of a human ignore their criticisms. The game wants SPECTRE, and Shepard’s insistence on you to fight with the Council, and it talking about godlike robots coming consistently frames Shepard and the to Kill Us All rankles them. (The plot Council as adversaries. Shepard, however of the first threeMass Effectgames is never wrong, and the bureaucrats in revolves around an inbound armada of the Council are never right. If the Council Lovecraftian robot squids, the Reapers, would simply believe Shepard and get that harvest all life in the galaxy every out of her way, she could have saved the 50,000 years). But what’s curious is that galaxy much sooner and with much less the game gives the player relatively loss of life. few opportunities to try to mend this This is a common trope in genre fiction relationship or remain diplomatic with generally: the badass cop or starship the Council. Despite Mass Effect’smuch- captain who is continually hampered vaunted dialogue system, which purports by the red tape and the sniveling to give the player a multitude of ways bureaucrats in the office. If only these to respond in a conversation, there are heroes could escape all those pesky rules, frequently no options in which Shepard and that ridiculous need for oversight, treats the Council with deference or they could protect us so much more much in the way of tact. Early in the efficiently. But inMass Effect’scase, this game, when Shepard is still trying to trope is made even more pronounced by convince the Council of the threat of the its place in a choice-driven RPG. These Reapers, the most polite response to one games have an almost pathological need Councilor’s doubts reads “I tried to warn to fawn over the player and their choices. you about [the badguy] and you refused For all that Mass Effectis a relatively to face the truth. Don’t make the same mature science fiction universe, it’s also mistake again,” which is not what I would escapist fantasy, committed to making call a diplomatic tack to take with one’s the player feel important, respected, and, boss. above all, powerful. But even when the game gives the The reason for the SPECTRE’s supra- player the opportunity to be polite to the legal status thus has less to do with the Council, it always dangles the temptation setting or creating an interesting plot, to do something rash under their nose. and more to do with the fact that Mass After each major mission, the player Effect is a videogame. Choice-driven has the opportunity to call the Council RPGs like Mass Effectwant to give their and report what happened. At least one players different ways to approach the member of the Council is always grouchy scenarios they present. Is it better to storm the front gate or sneak in through war hero and the savior of the galaxy, no the sewers? Should you bribe the matter how many rules she breaks. bouncer, knock him out, or charm him But Shepard can get up to some into letting you into the club? Baldur’s real nonsense without ever getting Gate wanted to give players the option to more than a finger-waggling from the be good or evil, Knights of the Old Republic Council. Shepard can: physically assault lets the player character succumb to a journalist for asking her an annoying the Dark Side of the Force, and Mass question; straight-up murder the last Effect wants to let the player choose survivor of an ancient alien race; assist “Paragon” or “Renegade” approaches to in corporate counter-espionage; destroy difficult situations. (Roughly, “ends don’t ancient ruins; smuggle illegal technology justify the means” and “sure they do,” past customs; get tangled up in mafia respectively.) If the game slapped the politics; and, you know, just generally player on the wrist every time they chose kill a whole bunch of people. Shepard’s a “Renegade” option, it would diminish authority to do these things is rarely that radical freedom which games like questioned by the Council – although Mass Effect purport to offer. Although on a few occasions they may berate her half the fun of playing a game like Mass for her choices, none of these actions Effect is seeing the consequences of your results in a hearing or any sort of formal actions throughout the franchise, these disciplinary action. consequences always play out in the So no matter the player’s choices, lives of other people. Shepard remains a Shepard ends the game a hero, and is

The villain Saren, also an unaccountable intergalactic murderspy. consistently praised by friends and at the civilian authority overseeing the enemies alike. Shepard is the only military. I don’t feel powerful, watching one who can save us, and although it Shepard threaten civilians, I feel dirty. is possible to annoy her teammates, To be fair, I think the developers of the these doubts are treated by the game as game may have also felt some discomfort heretical. Shepard may make difficult – the later Mass Effect games put much choices, but she mostly doesn’t make less emphasis on the SPECTREs, and mistakes. The game deliberately tries not Shepard can get through all of Mass Effect to have an opinion about whether the 2 without ever even officially acting as a “Paragon” or “Renegade” choice is the SPECTRE. Further, many (if not most) of correct one, which means that whatever the SPECTREs you encounter throughout the player chooses to do is treated by the the franchise are revealed to be bad narrative as the right thing to do. actors, and the immediate villain of the As a teenager, I loved this sort of first game is a “Rogue SPECTRE.” Maybe thing. It’s fun to imagine yourself at the the franchise as a whole can be read as a center of the world, and it’s doubly fun critique of the idea. to imagine that the authority figures But I find it harder and harder, as I get don’t really know what they’re doing. older and more politically literate and It’s hard not to enjoy thumbing your less easily led by narratives that tout my nose at the stuffy politicians that seem own importance – I find it harder to enjoy to make one’s life so difficult in the real power fantasies. I become more and world. But maybe I’m just getting old more skeptical of stories where the hero and grumpy, or maybe I’ve just gotten cops just have to get past the red tape and used to reading everything through the the bureaucrats in order to save us from lens of 2017 politics, but it’s hard for me the great evils of the world. I have a hard to enjoy watching Shepard punch an time separating media that touts this Arabic reporter in the face because she narrative from real-world examples of disapproves of the way she asks questions. law enforcement and military agencies I’m uncomfortable playing a game which that skirt or ignore the rules in ostensible constantly dares me to thumb my nose service to the greater good. U REVVING THE ENGINE A SERIES PROFILING THE RECIPIENTS OF UNREAL DEV GRANTS

THE SOULKEEPER

This series of articles is made possible through the generous sponsorship of Epic's Unreal Engine 4. Every month, we profile the recipient of an Unreal Dev Grant. While Epic puts us in touch with our subjects, they have no input or approval in the final story. Click here to learn more. ’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying Igames since I was in elementary school. Videogames have always offered something more visually beautiful than a pen and paper game could provide, but often at the cost of freedom. I think I will always prefer the theater of the mind, but the idea of standing face to face with a dragon in virtual reality? That might change my mind. The SoulKeeper is an episodic VR RPG, the tip of the spear of a larger fantasy IP – a vast, dark world full of adventure and danger. HELM systems, the folks behind The SoulKeeper, know that developing an RPG, a type of game known for intricate mechanical systems, for VR wouldn’t be without challenges. However, their first project, more than a decade ago, was a total conversion mod of Unreal Tournament 2003 into – you guessed it! – an early version of The SoulKeeper. They’ve got staying power. The mod was successful and received some recognition, including an IGF award nomination. Between 2007 and 2012, they developed their own engine, a challenging but rewarding experience. Still, the siren call of Unreal was strong. By 2013, they were back to experimenting with UDK/Unreal Engine 3. As many indie developers have found, developing an engine can distract from creating the worlds. Unfortunately, licensing Unreal was still out of reach financially. That changed in 2014, when Unreal Engine 4 released. HELM started working with it on day one. Having had the experience of working with Unreal Engine since its first generation, as well as having gone through the effort of building an in-house engine, moving to Unreal Engine 4 was a natural transition. Ever since, they’ve been prototyping and developing The SoulKeeper as a single player open world RPG. Virtual reality didn’t come until 2015, when the team began to experiment with Oculus. They were pleased with how their assets looked and how alive the world felt inside a VR headset. From that point on, despite the challenges it would pose, developing The SoulKeeper as anything other than a virtual reality game was unthinkable. The SoulKeeper VR is currently available on Steam Early Access and coming soon to the Oculus store. Myron Mortakis, HELM Systems’ studio lead, took time out of working on a forthcoming update that includes new levels, game modes and monsters to talk to Unwinnable about the game’s development. First off, let’s talk inspiration. What made you want to tackle a game like this in VR?

It was a very risky decision and, to be honest, it is still too early for us to know if we will be rewarded for it. At the end of the day, we see ourselves as a progressive company. We want to experiment with new and exciting things and we are unafraid to deal with the challenges they present. VR brings a lot of challenges, and nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is standardized either, so it is hard to follow a “successful” formula. Up to less than a year ago, “experts” were advocating that free form locomotion is not a good practice for VR. They had valid points for sure, but the market dictated otherwise. Many games have been criticized for the lack of freeform locomotion. It is easy to think that something innovative and groundbreaking will be well received, only to find out that the market thought the opposite, or even worse it is split into half of them supporting it, and the other half condemning it. The VR market is small, so developers try to please all VR gamers. No matter what genre you choose to work on as a developer, you need to act as if you are addressing everyone that has a VR headset, regardless of their personal genre preferences. No sane developer would want to engage in VR. It is one of the reasons(probably the main reason)we don’t see any big companies investing in VR yet. At the same time, when an industry is at such an early and risky stage, it provides the opportunity for experimentation, for innovation. If everything was already set and defined, there wouldn’t be much room for exploration. We believe that VR can be the perfect platform for a genre like RPG, because of its power to take you to another world. We believe RPGs have always been about immersion. VR can give new, unseen levels of immersion. It won’t be easy, it will take a lot of trial and error, but we think that from this risky and potentially painful period, great things will come. We want to be contributing to great outcomes.

There’s not much precedent for large scale RPGs in VR, where small- scale environments seem to be the norm. Can you talk about your approach to developing the game? Does this question of scale pose any particular challenges?

It is challenging indeed! This is why we decided to start with an Early Access release. There is a lot of unknown territory and it is hard to know what works and what doesn’t unless you let users play the game. Being indie developers in such a risky venture requires funding as well. We have often seen commentary that is against Early Access titles and there are some valid points being made, but developers take huge risks, even more so as indies, and that holds especially true in VR. Technically any game being released for VR should be treated as an Early Access title since all developers are experimenting to find what works, what doesn’t, what differentiates one genre from another and so on. For us, Early Access meant we can break down the full game into stages that are manageable, all the while allowing our players to communicate their feedback to us before we proceed to the next stage. Early Access allows us to gather much needed funds for the development, which will start increasing the scope of each subsequent update. We start with a more linear and limited approach, working towards a large-scale open world experience with each major update.

I can imagine firing off a spell with a gesture in VR is pretty wild. How does VR changes the way we interface with the standards of the RPG genre?

There are many standards to explore in VR, which we are accustomed to in traditional RPG gaming, yet don’t translate to VR. It takes a lot of trial and error and we need to maintain an open line of communication with our audiences. What might feel great to us might not translate well to the user experience, or the other way around. RPGs in general are challenging projects, even more so in VR, so it takes patience and persistence to get RPG elements right in VR. On the brighter side, it is more immersive, so it allows the player to actually roleplay and not just be an observer. VR allows us to take the player and literally transport them into a fictional world, whereas non-VR gaming has been more of a window to another world. Characters also feel more alive in a VR environment. It is one thing having a large dragon breathing fire on the player on a flat screen, and it is a completely different experience standing in front of the same beast in VR. Everything feels more alive, more immersive.

You play multiple characters over the course of the full game. Can you talk about them and how the shifting perspectives effects the story? How does the idea of multiple characters square against the long time RPG mechanic that calls for a long time invested in a character as they gradually progress in power?

Multiple playable characters bring a breath of fresh air into a long reused (even if effective) formula. Playing through multiple characters not only offers a variety of gameplay mechanics, but allows players to see the world from different perspectives, hence be more emotionally invested and connected to the entire fictional world rather than just one character. Of course, for those wishing to fully invest in one character, we will ensure that there is plenty of content for each playable character to offer a full experience should a player decide to play with no other characters. Still, we want the incentives that encourage players to try out different game styles and different viewpoints, to be there. How does Unreal Engine help in developing a game like SoulKeeper? Are there any unexpected benefits or challenges?

We have used each and every version of the Unreal Engine since Unreal Engine 1 (Unreal Tournament days). With every generation, Unreal Engine has been the most intuitive and fluent engine to work with, allowing us to achieve the best levels of quality not only visually but in all other aspects as well. Obviously, with each new generation and with each new update, we see the engine growing stronger and more useful to us. Even when we think it has peaked, Epic surprises us and introduces new features that make our lives easier. The engine inspires us to create and to push the envelope. Perhaps most importantly, the engine is developed by people that want to fully support it. That counts by far the most. U Contributors

ZI XU is a freelance illustrator and art student ROB RICH has loved videogames since the with an interest in technical illustration, film 80s and has the good fortune to be able to and science-fiction. When she is not drawing, write about them. Catch his rants on Twitter at you can find her watching a movie or taking @RobsteinOne long walks near the harbor at night. JASON MCMASTER is a writer and editor STU HORVATH is the editor in chief of with a lifelong passion for games. When he isn’t Unwinnable. He reads a lot, drinks whiskey and working on Unwinnable, he’s either on his PC spends his free time calling up demons. Follow or playing a board game. Follow him on Twitter him on Twitter @StuHorvath @mcmaster

GAVIN CRAIG is a writer and critic who lives BRIAN TAYLOR lives and works in Pittsburgh, outside of Washington, D.C. Follow him on Pennsylvania. Twitter @CraigGav OLIVER MILNE is a PhD student and MEGAN CONDIS is an English Professor at sometime game designer from Newcastle- Stephen F. Austin State University. Her book, upon-Tyne, UK, who spends most of his time Playing Politics: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Game trying to prove computers can’t think, and the of Masculinity in Online Culture, is forthcoming rest of the time daydreaming about spaceships. from the University of Iowa Press. She also He lurks on Twitter @oliver_milne designs video games based on her research, which are available for free at her website BILL COBERLY is a lawyer and occasional writer-of-things who lives in Minneapolis, CASEY LYNCH is editorial director of Square MN, with his wife, Erin, and two small and Enix where he works on Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, snuggly terriers, Azathoth and Nyarlathotep. Hitman and more. His first metal show was Follow him on Twitter @BillCoberly Anthrax, Testament, and Metal Church in 1987. Djent with him on Twitter @Lynchtacular

BROCK WILBUR is an author and comedian from Los Angeles who you can follow Illustrations @brockwilbur on most social media platforms and at brockwilbur.com All screenshots, film stills and promotional images courtesy of their copyright DEIRDRE COYLE is a goth living in Brooklyn. holders. All photography is in the public Find her at deirdrecoyle.com or on Twitter domain unless otherwise noted. Original @DeirdreKoala. works and Creative Commons licenses below. COREY MILNE is an Irish freelance writer who likes to poke at that strange intersection Cover: Zi Xu where games meet history. A roundup of his writing can be found at coreymilne.com. You can join his Rad-Lands motorcycle bandit gang on Twitter @Corey_Milne

MATT MARRONE is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.

SARA CLEMENS thinks too much about things, generally. She runs a site called Videodame and retweets stuff on Twitter @thesaraclemens