Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Half-Life 2 w/ Bludgeons?

One-point-five gigs is awfully hefty for any demo, and doubly so for a game that only contains fifteen of actual game (on my Methuselah box it took longer to load the levels than it did to play them). But Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is certainly entertaining enough to warrant it.

What's exceptional about Dark Messiah, based on the wonderous Half-Life 2 source physics engine, is that it may just do what no RPG up to this point could: it will the make environment a part of the game. For those of us who began our RPG lives with pen and paper, the true excitement was never garnered from the game or system itself. It came from the constant battle of wits that emerged in a game of good players. Who could come up with the most entertaining, most exciting, most brillant new way to deal with a situation that would knock the GM's socks off. And the key to this way being able to improvise with what was at hand.

Unfortunately, this was never quite an option in PC RPGs. Because of graphics and game constraints, PC RPGs became more about story. And from those few companies that knew how to tell a good story, these were exceptional.

But the game that catalyzed it for me was Neverwinter Nights. While certainly a benchmark of customization with its DM toolset, I never liked the game and didn't understand why until I played it a little more thoroughly. I realized that while the settings were interesting, the characters developed, what was lacking was environmental interaction. Labyrinthian pipe systems of some abandoned underground sewer were wonderful atmosphere, but they were truly that, a grand intanglible, something that was never really part of the world.

But imagine a game where an enemy could be hiding in such a pipe system waiting to strike. Or a thief who could as easily snag a pipe and escape into a vast firmament of metal. And image if you could follow just as easily. If there has been any trend we have yet seen in "next-gen" this has certainly been one. The propsed ease of running up or climbing anything in Assassin's Creed (which, if not released for PC, may just bring me to tears as I hand away months of room and board to purchase a PS3) and the destructible enviroments of Company of Heroes are all ways to make the game world a little more real.

And that brings us to Dark Messiah. The game is not too far from its source (pun intended) material. Think Half-Life 2 with swords and orcs. And while the use of the enviroments is clearly staged (the interior decorator that places a giant log held by a single rope over your door jamb is not your friend), it allows a slight reclaiming of that which was so engrossing about pen and paper RPG's. If I want to clear out a room filled with orcs by slicing, or even cooler, shooting out with an arrow, that one precarious rope, the option is there. The proposed multiplayer for the game has the chance to be wonderous.

What worries me is the chance that the technological innovations will be all the game has to present and will be an RPG only because it reminds one of hobby shop rejects eating their ketchup packets because their mother refused to give them an extra five bucks until they clean their room. The story portion of the RPG, which has become so finely honed, may be put aside. Looking at the demo, the story of which contains the exciting adventures of finding a rock and searching for something that smells like suflur, is not reassuring.

Regardless, the Dark Messiah demo reeks of, if not that ever-elusive sulfur, than cool. I've already played through it twice, each time opening up a little more excitment about just how exciting this world could be. The little pleasure of kicking an ambitious goblin of a high cliff has never before been so accessible.

The Wii - Not a Revolution

There was a time when I expected the Wii to become the gateway to a new age of game design. And no, not for the nifty controller/katana/baseball bat/additional way to get young boys to exercise their forearms. I assumed that for an entirely new generation of youngsters, The Legend of Zelda, Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger would become easily accesible.

This excited me, as perhaps with the combination of modern technology and simplified access, people would look at the games that had succeeded in the past and using those principals to make something new. Who knows what a young designer could see in manic design of Uniracers or the ultra-tongue-in-cheek-itude of Clay Fighter that the rest of us missed and turn it into something exciting. It appeared to be a creative font.

But after some thought, I found myself eating my own words. What Wii does, that video did for film, is not make games accessible. It makes games available. These are two essentially different points. For the great games of the past never went away. If a feature was said to be amazing, then all you had to do was stalk a EB or 2, maybe even emulate it like an anti-idleness internet Robin Hood, stealing from "them that weren't using their license." The games have always been here. All this does is make is easy to get at them. And what passionate filmmaker ever waited until video?

They hunted their loves down.

And what is the value of what the Wii is bringing back? While early Nintendo was certainly ground-breaking, as we reached 64 bits, the PC took over as the truly groundbreaking source for gaming. And no one is talking about making lost wonders like Sam and Max or The Neverhood available.

I will not rule out the chance that some wunder-kid could find his/her way through the Wii's downloadable Library of Alexandria and be inspired to rewrite Homer, but it seems something of a false prophet. I guess we'll just have to enjoy Wii for what it is - a near bottomless source of enjoyment.

Darn.

Beginnings and Ideas

Welcome to Cahiers du Gaming, a blog dedicated to the discussion and interpretation of the future of gaming. This space will act as something of a personal soapbox/mental drawing board for my own hopes of what's to come for video games as a medium.

So what's with the snooty name, you may be asking yourself? Is this some kind of blog for French Gamestop employees? Close, but its actually a play (read: rip-off) on the journal that turned mainstream American cinema into something that could be looked at for arts sake. Before Cahiers du Cinema came in, no one thought of film as anything more than entertainment, but thanks to a few French Cinephiles, men like Franky F. Coppola and Quentin Tarantino are considered more than just guys who know how to entertain.

They're artists.

I likewise have the same goals for this post, both analyzing games technically and trying to draw out the art in what is thought to be only entertainment. And while snag their moniker, I certainly don't claim to be on par with Andre Bazin or Francois Truffaut. My adoption of the title is more a statement of purpose rather than belief in skill. So if you haven't fallen asleep, I would be honored if you would read on and post any legitimate critizisms or critiques that come to you. Thank you.