Hardspace: Shipbreaker and the impact of visual storytelling

Tags

audio storytelling, blackbird interactive, design, early access, focus interactive, game design, hardspace, hardspace shipbreaker, narrative, single player, steam early access, story, storytelling, visual storytelling

I’ve got a new gaming obsession. It’s Hardspace: Shipbreaker, a game where you play the role of a Cutter that chops up derelict spaceship and repurposes the various components, either by refinement or straight-up salvage. It’s already a brilliant and unique bit of gaming and is only just in early access, meaning that its already impressive gameplay can only grow from here on out.

I could write up plenty of effusive praise on this game as it is, but I’m not really here to write a review on the title as a whole. Instead, I want to focus on one aspect of this one that it absolutely nails: telling a story without outright writing one out.

Stormblood Squee Week: Hopes for the Stormblood MSQ

Tags

ffxiv, final fantasy, final fantasy xiv, main scenario quest, MMO, msq, patch 3.5, patch 4.0, quest, stormblood squee week, story, storyline

SPOILER WARNING: This post will absolutely be talking about plot points from questlines that are recent as of this writing, February 23rd. Ye be warned!

For this entry, I decided to gush over, cross my fingers for, and otherwise wiggle excitedly about the upcoming story for the Main Scenario Quest of the Stormblood expansion. While MMO narratives are pretty throwaway on many occasions, Final Fantasy XIV is one of the few games that has a fun story. Not a particularly deep one, and sometimes a disappointing one, but a fun story nonetheless.

Excluding Minfilia. She’s a mistake.

Death of the Author

Tags

character, narrative, purpose, roleplay, rp, sorry, story, this is probably my woriest post ever, writing

Snow, she decided, was incredibly boring to see already.

The cold wasn’t an issue–Steel Wolf was dressed for that, more or less.  It was the snow.  How it coated everything in her vision.  How it sat on every surface.  How it even floated across the very air.  It was a relentless, oppressive blanket of boring, chilling white.

The immense Roegadyn woman shrugged in to her armor, the fur-lined collar pulling up closer around her neck and ears.  The wind cut across her form like a series of magical blades.  She had elected to keep her chocobo stabled at the fort that was behind her, the idea being that she would be able to more nimbly adjust to whatever danger the lands of Coerthas held.  She was beginning to regret the decision.

Then, she heard a shriek of fright.  Forms in the distance, one trying to pull away from the other two.  Steel unhooked her massive battleaxe from the baldric lashed across her chest and broke in to a full run.  Questions could be asked later.

Blaugust Day 27 – Side Dishes

Tags

main quest, pve, questing, side dish, side quest, story, swtor, themepark, xiv, xp

This post was prompted by Syp’s excellent post about SWTOR, but I was otherwise diverted from posting this by other, shinier topics that came to mind.

“Dooood….”

In it, he discussed his feelings on the planetary missions of SWTOR and how the 12x Experience Boost for current subscribers rendered all of that work obsolete.  Is that such a bad thing, though?  In my mind, it isn’t.  And SWTOR isn’t the only one that could benefit from this design idea.