Back to Tyria once again

Warning: Videogame things ahead. Enter at your own risk.

Full disclosure: I’ve been favoring distraction over substance lately.

Some people find their escape going on exotic vacations to exotic places. Some people go out drinking and carousing with their mates. Some people watch paint dry.

Me? I tend to lean into music or videogames when I need to escape.

The only problem has been that there has been a dearth of options out there that scratch my itch. Part of that is due to the rising popularity of game design that I find largely uncompelling.

Rogue-like/rogue-lites, survival (horror or elements), base-building, Soulslikes (tough as nails games, “git gud” mechanics), 8-bit retros, team shooters, side-scrollers; with sometimes several of these elements combined…

While I don’t mind these types of games on a short-term scale, it’s often all there is around for new games. And most of the game designs I do like have been poorly executed in the chase for something that resembles the first group’s game designs (but not really, if that makes sense).

There’s a reason that the turn-based Baldur’s Gate III was so popular — it ignored much of the current conventional game design thinking and focused on making a darned good role-playing game (RPG) with deep story choices and reasons to go out adventuring in the world the developers created. No real-time action elements and no “discovery” icon barf in the heads-up display (HUD) compass — there were objects and stories that you would not find unless you did some old-fashioned exploration.

And, while I like my grimdark elements in games, there are times when I am tired of persistently crapsack worlds when I am trying to distraction from the crapsack in real life. And, instead of everyone having an ulterior motive (other players or game characters), I like having some helpful, nice people hanging around in colorful, brightly-lit environments.

So, not much has grabbed me lately as a result.

One of the things that came up was some news about a very old massively-multiplayer game I used to enjoy that is still alive and kicking called Guild Wars. The parent company who owned it pushed through a recent overhaul of the game (within the limitations of the game engine) to make it work better with game controllers (or those who want to use them over keyboard and mouse), improve some of the graphics, and generally clean up the game’s setup. It was a vast game world with four different places in which the games could be played. I loaded it up and was fairly impressed with what I saw. But some of the old creaky stuff showed itself when I played a bit and I began to long for its better-realized child, Guild Wars 2.

GW2 ties together the multiple regions into a single game (rather than four different regions to explore with four different characters). It has better graphic fidelity, better cooperative elements for the players in areas designated for Player versus Environment ((PvE) some would say “forced” cooperation), has more beautiful lands and, while it can have difficulty spikes, that is more of a warning sign that you either need to respec your character’s abilities, or that you are under-leveled for that area.

Or, it might very well be one of those L2P (learn-to-play) things as well if your character is dying all the time. There are a lot of people who go in “guns blazing” without a single dodge roll and they wonder why there is low survivability.

It’s a simple, complex game with oodles of things to do (e.g., crafting, fighting, exploring, laughing, dancing, healing, mobbing big bad monsters, playing war with other players, playing capture the flag with other players, sitting down and watching clouds roll by at a clifftop vista…)

The problem?

I played the hell out of the game in the years right after it released. HUNDREDS of hours. Maybe thousands… It’s a big game, and I had fun when I was doing it.

I was looking into some of the details about the older game and discovered that GW2 had added significant content updates (paid and unpaid). Since I had last played it, they have added FOUR new paid content updates, which add large new regions and new gameplay mechanics. The new addition probably add 200 more hours of gameplay in addition to the hundreds already embedded in the game.

I loaded up the old game a few days ago and started playing again and that old vibe is coming back — I call it Zen playing because you find a rhythm, discover new things, and explore. There will be fights along the way with ne’er do wells, but that’s a small price to pay to be a world explorer. That, and about $25 for access to each large section of land contained within the new lands. Again, that’s small for the amount of escape each one gives.

Look out Tyria. Here I come.