DISPATCHES
DIALOGUEbooks, it’d be appreciated if the magazine
produced unambiguously thorough reviews.
Robert August de MeijerA good point well made, as ever, and we’ll take
it on board. With so much of the joy of Outer
Wilds tied to discovering its secrets for
yourself, we were deliberately careful (Post
Scripts are where we usually delve into spoiler
territory). The Last Of Us Part II, however, was
a whole different kettle of embargo.Over and over
Are we the baddies? I just read through the
Play section in Edge issue 342 – specifically
the Darwin Project review. What a refreshing
idea it was, having someone be the ‘director’
of the round. I immediately started thinking
about dropping my love-hate relationship
with Warzone and telling my squad about this
new cool game.
It’s been three months since this issue
released (I’m a little behind). I go and search
online about the game. First result: “Google:
93% of users liked this game”. I then go to the
Wikipedia, and find out the studio announced
in May that they would stop all development
of the project. They said, “We’ve tried every
idea we have – nothing’s been enough. This is
unsustainable for us.” We as players can
complain that there are no new ideas, that
everything’s a copy of successful games. But
then, a game with new and interesting ideas
comes up. It tries its luck with giants such as
Fortnite, and makes the game actually fun to
stream. Still not enough?
A journey that started two years ago died
in less than a year after its full release. This
makes me sad. The gaming community
complains about everything being too ‘samey’,
but when cool ideas come up, they don’t gain
enough community support. Maybe the new
battle royale games will need a radical idea
to gain a chance to play with the big boys.
I glance at the issue’s back cover for a few
seconds, and put it away. I go to bed feeling
deeply for Scavengers Studio.
Adrián ToscanoWe must admit, our hearts broke for the devs
too when we first saw Hyper Scape. Still, that’s
not doing so hot on Twitch right now either.
We wonder what might have been, had The
Darwin Project’s distinctly more exciting take
on streamer interaction had the weight of a
Ubisoft-sized company behind it.Go your own way
You’re all familiar with the Sandwich
Alignment Chart, I’m sure. Is a hotdog a
sandwich? Is a Jaffa Cake really just an orange
ravioli? Important questions, but they raise a
more vital point – all of those food items exist
on a spectrum, and the boundaries between
them are more flexible than they seem.
Purists might say a pizza isn’t a sandwich, but
put two of them together, and what do you
have if not a big, round sandwich?
In fact, I would go so far as to argue that a
sandwich is actually beer. It’s wheat and yeast
with added ingredients for flavour, and it has
roughly the same amount of calories, one just
happens to be a bit wetter. Once you realise
this, it starts to make a lot of other things
make sense. People have tried to define what a
game is for centuries – is it just playing but
with rules, is it art or education, does it need
to be interactive or have a story? Even
deciding what the point of a game is has
seemed impossible to pin down, as everyone
plays them for different, personal reasons.
Cut through the illusory barriers on the
Game Alignment Chart though, and it
becomes clear that a game is really just a thing
humans like to do, and they can do any of the
things humans want them to. They can be an
escape, or a fight. They can help us reach out
to each other, or even teach us how to become
another person entirely.
Games aren’t a walled garden, they’re just
another place in the real world, and there
aren’t any rules in the real world. I do have
a few tips and tricks though: try to have fun,
help whenever you can, and always be kind.
David MearHello, police? Right over here, please. Qprocess – if only a certain proportion of the
videogaming audience would give it go, we
wonder how their attitudes might change.
Fingers crossed it comes to PC: in case it
does, we’ll send you an 8BitDo controller.
Second hand news
Your review and game of the year award
for Outer Wilds convinced me to buy it.
However, I eventually got fed up with
searching for and figuring out eccentric
physics as described by oblique ancient
graffiti. As much as I respected the game,
I didn’t feel like I had a reason to delve
deeper. That is, until I ignored the spoiler
warnings of Errant Signal’s video essay. Oh,
the game is actually about metaphysical
LSD fever-dream concepts like the moral
imperative of perceiving reality, and the
beauty of playing music with friends in
harmony! I’m back in action!
Meanwhile I had been reading a few The
Last of Us Part II reviews. I wanted to love
the original because folks kept harping on
its strong emotional impact. Alas, it didn’t
work for me. According to the reviews, Part
II is also stirring, but none of them had said
how or why. And so, I figured it would be
more of the same. Luckily, I stumbled across
a Girlfriend Reviews video earnestly
describing the sensation of playing as the
story’s antagonist. Oh, this game apparently
uses interactivity in an innovative and bold
way! It forces us to empathise with the bad
guy like no other medium can. Sold!
I find myself wishing videogame reviews
wouldn’t be so careful about spoiling an
important part of what makes it work. If
somebody says, ‘Trust me, it’s great, but you
have to play it for ten hours to find out why,’
you’re competing with all the other people
saying the same thing. There are many
excellent games. But if the thing that makes
them stick out is considered a spoiler, how
am I supposed to know? As for Edge,
considering how printed media usually gets
into my hands a few days after all the online
reviews, and then is stashed like library