Retro Gaming: Planetfall part 3

(This is part of my journey going checking out Planetfall. You can follow the entire series on the Retro Gaming page.)

Back when I was a kid, I used to create games all of the time in BASIC on my family’s PC. Because graphics were tough to do (outside of basic ANSII mockups), most everything I did was text, and thus I loved whipping up text adventures and text RPGs. If nothing else, it gave me a deep appreciation for how tricky and complex text adventure design is, because you have to have a parser that understands a wide range of commands, you have to figure out how to deal with inventory (both on the character and in the game), and you have to deal with issues like the passage of time and events that fundamentally change a room or character.

So I am pretty impressed with what Planetfall’s doing here, even though I’m more than a little annoyed at the inventory limit and the need to constantly eat and drink. On one hand, it delivers a feeling of immediacy and urgency, but on the other hand, in adventure games all you want to do is explore and experiment at your leisure, not under a gun. I guess the limitations upped the replay value somewhat, because you could be looking to do better the next time around.

Anyway. Where were we? Oh yeah, we just encountered Floyd the robot.

True love is always painful. And always worth the risk of electrocution.

Who didn’t want a robot pet in the ’80s? I don’t think you could legally be a cartoon kid without one as a sidekick.

Floyd comes across as a hyper child, which is better than complete silence and isolation. I’ll take it. Plus, his comments and actions are somewhat entertaining as you go around doing normal adventure game stuff.

Floyd is a little put out that I deactivated him to find this card, but dude, you’re in an adventure game. You know what you signed up for. I’d loot the sun if I could.

Now it’s getting interesting. In the comm room, the game gives me a few narrative tidbits. The first is a distress call from the ship I was on before it mysteriously blew up (don’t know why that happened either). The second is an outgoing call in that badly spelled English asking for help due to a planetwide plague. The weird spelling — phoenetically correct but just barely — indicates that the people’s facilties were going. Or they were just idiots, which might be the case because all of the signs in this place are spelled like this too.

I spend a good amount of time getting the proper liquid to repair the comm system, because all high technology can be fixed the same way that you fill up your car. By the way, have I said how much this game’s parser irks me? Pouring the flask isn’t allowed but emptying it is. They couldn’t have anticipated pouring?

Oh well. At least the distress message has gone out, and here’s hoping that someone will come to answer it and help me out!

Well this was… random. Floyd is extremely emotional — y’know, for a robot — and he’s mentioned Lazarus before. Guess it was his friend? Mentor?

You would think that getting into a bed in an infirmary would be safe. You would think. And you would be wrong, because you’re playing this game.

The infirmary has a computer spool (very, very old tech from a 2015 perspective) that ends up telling me the dire news, which I’ll sum up here to save you the headache of reading the above: I have less than ten days for the unnamed disease to get me. The first symptom is a high fever, followed by the increasing need for sleep. That is not going to help me.

What might help me is some experimental medicine that’s nearby. What the heck, bottom’s up!

Pinpointing where Guild Wars 2 lost me

Yesterday during the poll I put up, Wollydub asked me, “I’d be really interested in a blog or column about why GW2 fell completely out of favor with you. Not even a mention here. I am in the same boat. I can’t put my finger on it to put it into words though like maybe you can.”

Following a post I made a couple of weeks ago about parting ways with Guild Wars 2, I had very little intention of writing about the game unless I returned to it. I don’t want to get into that state where you’re a bit burned out and negative about a game and having nothing upbeat to say at all. I’d rather step away and see if the feeling comes back, allowing for a potential re-entry that rekindles better emotions.

But hey, since Woolly asked and I’m a little starved for post ideas today, why not?

Here’s the weird thing about this topic: I have extraordinarily positive things to say about Guild Wars 2. I can’t deny that I really enjoyed my time playing it, that it has a very casual-friendly approach, that it’s beautiful or has a stellar soundtrack, that the classes and combat drew me in, and that there’s always something to do. After all, I played for almost two years, so there must have been some pull going on. I’m not that much of a masochist.

So where did it lose me? As with many trends in life, it wasn’t one thing but a death from a thousand cuts.

First of all, there’s the spectre of burnout that looms larger the longer one plays an MMO. It doesn’t always happen and doesn’t always stick to a timetable, but I’d easily say that every successive year in a game, the chances of having my interest plummet increases unless the game does something to replenish that interest.

And that’s maybe where Guild Wars 2 failed for me. Even with all of its feature packs and living world updates, so little of that got me personally excited. The story very rarely engaged me, which was always frustrating because I could see that it was extensively written and there was tons of lore, etc. But the characters were largely a snoozefest and as season two went on, it felt like a trudge through setpieces that looked pretty and were as annoying as possible to finish.

That’s another thing: the tougher fights started to get to me. There are fun challenging fights and then there are fights were plants are vomiting red circles everywhere, knocking me down, and rendering melee all but useless. Remember that missions where you were Caithe fighting those centaurs? That took me so dang long with numerous deaths that I started to wonder if I’d ever see the end of the mission. When at least two-thirds of your game is combat, then that combat better hold up. I felt it starting to crumble.

I guess the final straw — again, for now — of my interest is that Heart of Thorns is heading off in a direction that quite frankly bores me. The new class is not a huge draw and I haven’t seen any “must have” elite specialization reveals yet. Guild halls? Wake me up when there’s real personal housing, thanks. Guild housing has never, ever gotten me excited about playing MMOs, especially when it comes instead of individual houses (City of Heroes, Neverwinter).

But seriously, the devs could not have turned me off more when they announced that we were getting even more of the jungle motif (I’ve yet to see bloggers rave about the decision to go with this) and even more platforming and even more grinding. Platforming in Guild Wars 2 is not the game’s strength, but ArenaNet obviously believes in it, because the studio has crammed it in everywhere, increasing it in frequency with the more recent zones.

I guess that’s about it. I don’t care what’s coming next in the story. I’m not enjoying the current design direction of the game. And there’s no “must do” goals that I want to keep pursuing. So I’ll be content to let the game be and see if my interest ever returns. Heaven knows that there are enough other games right now that are yammering for my attention, so I don’t feel a great void from putting this MMO down.

Battle Bards Episode 54: Winter is coming

It might be the middle of the summer in the northern hemisphere, but it’s never too early to start getting ready for the cold! On this episode of Battle Bards, the crew takes on the theme of bitter, desolate, and beautiful winter soundscapes from a wide range of MMO scores. Winter is, after all, coming. Let’s prepare!

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• Episode 54 show page

Episode 54 show notes

• Intro (featuring “Snowcloak” from Final Fantasy XIV and “Winter Theme” from Allods Online)
• “Sillus Mountains” from Aion
• “Wintertusk Hrundle Fjord” from Wizard101
• “Iron Pine Peak” from RIFT
• “Winterspring (Cataclysm)” from World of Warcraft
• “Iceclad Ocean” from EverQuest 2
• “Hoth, the Frozen Wastes” from Star Wars: The Old Republic
• “The Shiverpeaks” from Guild Wars 2
• Which one did we like best?
• Outro (featuring “Dazzling Snow” from Ragnarok Online)

Listen to episode 54 now!

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• Special thanks to Tesh for the Battle Bards logo!
• Battle Bards is part of The Gaming and Entertainment Network of podcasts

Going forward with gaming plans for 2015

With the standard disclaimer that plans are made to be broken and Syp’s whims are often prone to change depending on the day, here are some of my plans and thoughts about what I’m gaming now and what I’d like to be gaming for the rest of the year.

WildStar

I’m still working my way up to level 50 and the final batch of zones, but at my pace it will take me most of the summer to get there. I anticipate dropping my subscription when free-to-play happens, but not my interest. Still having a great time with this second go-round and there are so many things I want to do with my housing plot.

Marvel Heroes

I have tons of goals in this game but no overarching goal, if that makes sense. Squirrel Girl is the character I’ve chosen to gear out as good as I can get her, but everyone else is just there to enjoy. I picked up Emma Frost last night and am looking forward to trying her out tonight (Big 10 + Midtown Monday = hopefully crazy fast leveling).

The Secret World

Right now my lowbie project is on the backburner (ready to be picked up at any time, of course) while my main character is simply redoing Orochi Tower floors once or twice a week to see if she can catch ’em all eventually. I don’t anticipate massive play time in TSW until the next issue comes out, but it’s nice that it’s still there.

Lord of the Rings Online

Haven’t re-installed this on my new computer. Became so burned out on it that I knew I needed some serious distance, even with the new summer patch coming along soon.

Villagers and Heroes

Would like to dip into this every week or so, to at least get a better feel for it and start crafting my way through it. It’s there as a sample title at least for when my appetite demands it.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

It’s weird — the announcement of the fall’s expansion has me incredibly excited, yet I do not really want to play the game until it lands. I don’t have any goals or levels or solo content left for my Operative and I don’t want to speed-level a new character up. So I’ll wait for Fallen Empire and concentrate on other titles in the meantime.

Skyforge

Yeah, I guess I’ll load this up when it goes live. It was fun enough in a mindless Neverwinter action combat sort of way. Not sure if I’ll be bugged by its apparent narrative weakness or it’s weird character models.

Shroud of the Avatar

After spending a couple of days with it, I felt that it was best to just wait until episode 1 launches this year and then giving it a full go. Active community or no right now, it bugs me to play beta.

Anarchy Online

I really, really need to load the new graphics engine and see what there is to see here. I anticipate a day or two of tourism followed by my usual drop-off in interest, but I owe AO enough to at least see what it’s been doing.

Other games, other possibilities

It’s great to see everyone so thrilled about Final Fantasy XIV’s expansion, but I really don’t ever think I’ll be able to get over my apathy toward the franchise and the style to play it. ArcheAge… well, it’s on my computer whenever I feel like trying it. Neverwinter might be a “come back someday” title, especially since I didn’t get much into playing the warlock class. World of Warcraft always beckons, but just when I think nostalgia is going to get me to sub up, I look at garrisons, blanch, and go do something else.

Poll: What MMOs have you played in the past 30 days?

Excluding MOBAs and fringe titles, what MMOs have you played in the past 30 days? Check all that apply!

My Marvel Heroes strategy sheet

So… are you supposed to be goth with a black eye? I don’t quite get your look here, and this is from a person wearing an aviator outfit and sporting a giant bushy tail.

It’s the last week of Marvel Heroes second anniversary, and finally it’s getting really interesting — Gazillion’s turned back on its Big 10 event, with so much going on that it’s hard to figure out what to do first. There’s the new free Iron Man team-up and daily gifts, then daily quests for extra omega files and fortune cards. Lots of extra birthday cake and cosmic worldstone drops, so I’ll stock up on those.

But once Odin’s Bounty kicks in, I’ll be following that rotation to get the most out of everything. When the schedule hits terminals, I’ll do cosmics with Squirrel Girl to keep farming for her Octobot Controller (plus, cosmic bosses award extra loot during the event). When it’s ICP or Midtown, I think I’ll work on leveling up some of my non-60s.

I’m trying to get organized with working on my whole roster, so I made a list of everything I’m leveling and where I’m at:

Unlocked Heroes (20 out of 48)

This week’s event with the daily eternity splinter bonus should put me over 400 by the end, which means that I’ll be grabbing Emma Frost as my 21st hero (I have a costume for her, so why not). Past her, I wouldn’t mind getting Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Iron Man, Nightcrawler, and maybe Thing or Iceman.

But truth be told, I have a LOT her that still needs leveling, and now that I’m getting the hang out of speed-leveling (thank you Monday Midtown Madness), I’d really like to get all of them to 60. Only have four out of 20 so far, mostly because a bulk of my playtime goes to Squirrel Girl these days. There are a chunk that I’ve barely even touched. My plan is to go down the list as ordered, starting with the highest non-60, Psylocke.

• Squirrel Girl (60, main)
• Cyclops (60)
• Rocket Racoon (60)
• Rogue (60)
• Psylocke (40)
• Doctor Doom (39)
• Black Panther (35)
• Scarlet Witch (32)
• Cable (25)
• Daredevil (25)
• Gambit (21)
• Star-Lord (17)
• Spider-Man (8)
• Thor (5)
• Ms. Marvel (3)
• Wolverine (2)
• Colossus (1)
• Hawkeye (1)
• Punisher (1)
• Storm (1)

Team-Ups

I feel as though I have an overabundance of Team-Ups, but I’m kind of addicted to them, especially after their 2.0 revamp. It’s fun to see them use their various powers and ultimates. Same plan as with heroes, working my way down the list. Cosmic terminals are helping a lot with rapid team-up leveling. Currently Domino is getting her time in the sun.

I splurged and bought the advance team-up pack 2.0 yesterday because I realized that it had a lot of characters I wanted, including Rescue, Carnage, and Spider-Gwen. Plus it will give me a Spider-Gwen outfit for Spider-Man, and how cool is that?

• Arachne (60)
• Magik (60)
• Domino (49)
• Holiday Groot (46)
• Falcon (28)
• Wasp (28)
• Firestar (25)
• Spider-Man (25)
• She-Hulk (14)
• Angel (1)
• Quicksilver (1)
• Iron Man (1)

Pets

My smallest roster by far, but that’s fine. I’m feeding all of this excess (non-unique) farming loot to them and went from one maxed to three within a week. I like having the choice of pets depending on what bonuses I want out at any given time.

• DOOM HERBIE (maxed)
• Potted Groot (maxed)
• Incredibly Normal Shrunken Cow (maxed)
• Great Ultron (needs more levels)

Retro Gaming: Planetfall part 2

(This is part of my journey going checking out Planetfall. You can follow the entire series on the Retro Gaming page.)

Yesterday’s adventures in Planetfall left me thinking about how interesting it was that even though this was a turn-based text adventure game, the whole sequence with escaping the ship (and then the escape pod) was tense and gave the impression of a clock ticking down.

But now the immediate danger is over and silence reigns. I’m on an island on an alien world, standing in the middle of a courtyard with only a few meager possessions — a survival kit, a watch, a towel (’cause you should never leave home without a towel), and an ID badge.

So what is this place? It’s a huge castle, although it has elements of higher technology (including a moving walkway). It’s somewhat in ruins and obviously deserted.

Jackpot! It’s a storage room full of… stuff. I recognize the oil can. I do not recognize “bedistor” or the rest of the junk. But hey, it’s an adventure game, so you know it’ll all come in handy.

So fun — well, not really — Planetfall fact. Apparently the game has a rather limited inventory of six items, which might be realistic but it’s also incredibly annoying. So to make progress, I guess you have to keep dropping stuff to pick up new things. That bugs the part of me that loves to collect EVERYTHING in adventure games.

Another fun Planetfall fact (not really) is that your character has an internal hunger/thirst timer that’s always counting down. Once the game starts telling you that you’re hungry, you better darn well eat one of the three globs of goo from the survival kit soon or that’s it for you. What do I do when I’m all out of goo? Goo ‘R Us?

Can’t say that I’m too fond of this castle so far. There’s not a lot happening to entertain me here, so mostly it’s wandering corridors, picking up and dropping stuff, and trying to set events into motion so that I can progress.

But hey, magnet gets the key. Gotta be something good, right?

This game’s a complete jerk to me.

What’s kind of weird is that there’s lots of labels and numbers here that are in semi-English, like “spam and egz” or “sistums moniturz.” What’s that all about?

Another thing that must occasionally be done is to sleep. Which you can only do in beds, of course, and this game is very finnicky about how you go about doing it (you can’t say “sleep in bed,” you have to get into the bed first and then type “sleep”).

Oh you know what else Planetfall does? It strips you completely when you sleep, meaning that I ended up waking up then walking around naked for a while until I needed to use something and discovered I had no inventory. All of the items were neatly piled up in the dorm, probably applauding sarcastically when I came back to get them.

After getting up, the game informs me that I’m feeling “weak and slightly flushed,” which I’m sure marks my imminent doom. Radiation poisoning? Who knows.

I fill up my canteen from the kitchen’s goo faucet (it’s high protein!) and then explore around some more. I come across a robot room, where there’s one whole specimen that’s waiting to be activated. And activate it I do.

Hi Floyd! Good to have a companion at last!

WildStar: Interior decorating

Because I continually* get requests to show off my WildStar housing project, here’s another EXTREME** INSTALLMENT of Syp’s interior decorating!

Actually, I’ll start with the outside because I’m kind of proud of this. I had a bunch of greenery I didn’t know what to do with, so I decided to build a flower garden outside my front door. Wish I could fill it up with dirt so that the grass doesn’t show… maybe there are brown rocks or something I could resize. Work in progress!

Kitchen area. I am very pleased with the decision to turn the lighting in the house to dark, since it allows the light fixtures I do use to “pop” more than they would otherwise. I still have some more work to do here, but I am glad how well the rug works as a way to visually separate the kitchen from the rest of the pad.

Turning to the right a bit is part of my living room. There’s that window with the lighting fixture behind it to provide those beams of light I talked about a while back. Always love that fireplace, and I put a sleeping hoogle on top of it because why not. The glowing column there spans both floors of the house, as you’ll soon see.

I really would love to get a few nice pieces of furniture for the middle of the floor — a sofa and a highback chair, perhaps.

Rotating more to the right is my display area. I have two shelves stuffed with plushies that this game seems to love rewarding for everything. I recently got that Aurin orange window, which I gladly put up to add more color into the room. Not sure if I’m going to keep the pressure divider there, tho. Trying it out for now.

I spruced up my sad stairway with a couple of scones and three pictures. Really happy with how this looks. All stairs need pictures hanging by them, right?

Top of the stairs, second floor. There’s the rest of that glowing column (the lights keep moving on it, I love that). I’m particularly fond of this trophy cabinet, as it has twinkling Christmas lights. I really should look into if there are strings of Christmas lights that I can get. I’d do up this entire room with them if I could.

Over to the left there is a floating TV set. Seems like that frame would get in the way of seeing what was broadcast, but it’s futuristic, so nevermind.

General (wo)man cave stuff. Desk. Dragon with swords in its head. A Lopp fireplace. I just like how cozy all of this feels.

And here’s where I hang out, on this ratty couch underneath a blinking beer sign. Classy!

So obviously lots more to do with all of this, but it’s coming along nicely and I enjoy visiting my house at the end of a session to adjust and add in an object here and there.

*Never

**Lazy, what-the-heck-am-I-going-to-post-this-morning

Retro Gaming: Planetfall part 1

(This is part of my journey going checking out Planetfall. You can follow the entire series on the Retro Gaming page.)

It’s been a long, long time since I tackled a text adventure from my GOG library — Zork, to be precise. I remember being really excited to play it and then disheartened when it was confusing and lacking any real narrative thread.

Still, it’s been weighing on me that I really needed to give another text classic a try: Planetfall. This was one of the most famous of the Infocom titles, created by Steve Meretzky back in 1983. It was quite influential for several reasons, using humor and a well-written companion to create a memorable impression on players. The lead character as a space janitor was clearly an influence on Sierra’s later Space Quest.

Yet I’ve never played it. It’s on my gaming bucket list, titles that I feel I must at least try sometime in my life.

Love this ad. This was back when you sold games to players with a MIGHTY WALL OF TEXT. Of course, it’s a text adventure game, so what better way to appeal to your target audience?

So here I go with Planetfall for the very first time. Time to start drawing a map! I expect that this will be charming for the first two sessions and a pain in the butt thereafter.

Behold! Advanced computational entertainment!

So I begin my adventures as a janitor — sorry, “Ensign Seventh Class” — scrubbing the floor of a ship. After typing “scrub floor” a few times, a slimy alien ambassador slithers by, mucking up my beautiful work. ARGH.

OK, that genuinely made me laugh out loud. Sorry, 1983-era game. I didn’t me to disparage you. Of course, a list of usable parser words would be helpful. Hm, help. Wonder if typing help will pull up a list.

Let me hop into my time machine and make that order happen!

I pause and look up a copy of the manual, since this is the internet and everything is on here. I do find a PDF of the 47-page (!) book and print out the page that has some common commands.

I want to say that it’s more than a little disconcerting that there’s a “MOVES” counter at the top of the screen that’s constantly ticking down with each command I write. Currently it’s at 4,518, so I think I’m good for a while.

The alien ambassador makes a few weird comments, offers me some celery, and then slithers off elsewhere. In comes my boss, Ensign Blather, who is a total dink:

You can’t blame me for trying, right? Also, I don’t know what kind of outfit I’m part of, but this guy straight-up murders me in a serial-killer fashion for hitting him. That calls for an investigation.

I reload and start exploring the ship, which really ticks off Blather. After screaming at me and making me do push-ups, he throws me into the brig. Smashing. At least there’s graffiti on the wall to read, most of it limericks about Blather. Guess he’s not very well-liked.

Wow. This is boring. Hm, what to do… what to do…

I miss boring! Take me back to boring, please!

Ah crud. I’m guessing my survival rate is not going to be high, sitting here in this cell. Sure enough, a couple of explosions later and I’m toast. Two deaths so far and I haven’t even left the ship!

From now on, I’m making it my mission to smell everything in this game.

I’m having a devil of a time getting off this ship. So if I go anywhere, Blather accosts me and I run the risk of getting thrown in the brig. I have to stay near the escape pod for when the explosion happens and get in before the bulkhead crashes down. The game won’t let me in there before the explosion happens, so there’s a timing issue here.

It takes me a couple of tries, but I make it into the pod in time. I take note of the game’s description of the safety webbing, something I should probably use before this thing gets moving. Tied in, the pod automatically ejects and starts searching for a crash landing site. Why the pod can’t just float in space and issue a distress signal is beyond me. Guess that would make for a boring game.

Long sequence short, the pod crash-lands on an ocean planet with very few islands (fortunately we get near one). The pod teeters on a cliff as I struggle to get out of the webbing, grab the few supplies in there, and get out. Of course, by now it’s fallen into the ocean and I have to swim out and then climb up a cliff. No sweat.

All alone, I stand shivering on a balcony of an alien world. What have I gotten myself into now?

Villagers and Heroes: Syp, Coward

If it’were possible for one to fall in love with a game from its character creation process alone, then Villagers and Heroes would have had me from the very first screen. Of course, character creation does not a game make, but I genuinely had more fun making a new toon in this game than I have in most MMOs to date.

Bhagpuss has been talking up V&H for a while now, and that coupled with some others’ word-of-mouth testimonies about this indie title convinced me to load it on my hard drive. It looked like a relaxing, colorful title to enjoy in small chunks. Plus, V&H just updated to a new version — Reborn — which is its third, I think, so it felt like a good time to check it out.

So! The character creation. I know that this is one of the systems that received an overhaul as of late, and I must say that the team knocked it out of the park. It’s a rather lengthy series of selection screens that encourage you to take your time in molding a character rather than choosing a head, a class, and hitting the “PLAY!” button.

Choices are key here, and some fairly nail-biting ones. If I have a hard time picking between options because two or more sound fairly desirable, then the game’s done a good job in this area.

Right at the start, I had to pick a personality for my character which was mirrored in his or her stance. I was tempted, oh-so-tempted, to pick the coward option, because how many MMOs let you be a coward from the first get-go? I still may go back and do this, but instead I chose pious, because what else should a pastor pick?

While I was making my selections, the game entertained me in the audio department with somewhat pleasant music and a droll narrator who both commented on my picks and provided a bit of the background to the game world. Gotta say, I love me a good narrator.

OK, so character creation. The next stop was choosing my character’s homeland, a choice that came with a small pile of gifts. I went with Stormhold because it gave me a magic helmet that supplied some extra run speed. I was less thrilled with gifts that said they’d be recalled in 30 days, although I suppose that’s more than enough to give you a good head start in harvesting and crafting.

Then it was on to choosing between one of four generic classes (warrior, priest, mage, and thief/archer/ranger… I forget the name of it). I went priest, because what else would you choose with a pious background? I made him a dour-looking bald guy. Then you get to choose a sub-class of sorts, although I suspect this is more just for starting gear. Finally, there are picks of initial spells and proficiencies (talents). I gravitated to giving my guy a nice DoT.

After all of that, I thought I was done, but oh no — that was only half of my character. The game’s name actually means something here: your character is both a hero and a villager. So the second half of character creation has to do with your avatar as a commoner — what crafting/gathering skills does he/she have? What type of house (each with a specific buff) does she/he live in?

I went with Jack’s House, because it had a nice spread of bonuses with no standouts (jack of all trades, natch), although I was really tempted by the Spooky Safehouse.

Anyway, with all of that done and my character creation needs fairly sated, I had a few minutes to get into the game proper. There’s an introductory fly-through with more narration, talking about a bad wizard who was super-bad until four elders killed him (OR SO THEY THINK). Then I was plopped down in a valley and told to go attend a festival.

Villagers and Heroes most definitely reminds me of early World of Warcraft, with a dash of RuneScape thrown in. Its graphics are more simplistic, with that chunky, colorful, stylized approach. But there’s the same floating shield on my back, the same auto-attack/special skill combat system, the same exclamation marks, etc.

And you know what? That’s not a bad thing. It felt comfortable and inviting. I spent some time poking around the various menu options before doing a couple of quests. Nothing astounding, but nothing off-putting either. Going to need to pour more time into this later on!Oh! One last thing because this amused me. There’s an achievement screen that gives you little presents every time you fulfill one. I got one in the first second for creating a character. Thank you, thank you. I need the validation!