Day Twenty

I Don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You 

 Margo Guryan

A Trip To Deadville

 Actually, I've been there a few times, now. It's the closest place I know of, where I can pick up my mail.

Let's start with that. I have to go to town to get my post. Can you imagine it? I mean, I know it's the apocalypse and all but they have teleportation but no home delivery? Has no-one at NetEase seen The Postman?

Maybe there is some kind of technomagical delivery system. I'm not sure. Ever since I started playing, there's been a tiny message in the lower left corner of the screen - a picture of an envelope with the ominous word "Unread" next to it. There's also the icon of a bell, the universally acknowledged signifier for "Attention Required" and a little box with F5 in it, suggesting that's what I should press. 

Well, I pressed F5 a bunch of times and nothing happened. I clicked on the image and the bell and the message and nothing happened then, either. Maybe it was a bug - this is beta, after all - or maybe it was me. Either way, I didn't like it but there didn't seem to be much I could do about it, so I tried to put it out of my mind and mostly succeeded. 

And then I got to Deadville and the first thing I saw was a mailbox. No, I lie. the first thing I saw was the gate, then the guards, then Clair and her big, red truck but that doesn't really help the narrative flow all that much, does it? So we'll skip all that for now. We'll get back to Clair later. 

I'm amazed it all fits in the box.

When I finally got to pick up my mail there was a ton of it. A bunch of freebies for signing up to play the beta, for not being able to play the beta when the servers were down, for logging in to play the beta every day. For something as over-subscribed as Once Human's current closed beta, NetEase seem ridiculously eager to keep everyone sweet. Honestly, they could probably charge for access and still have the original twenty thousand volunteer testers they were looking for but let's not give them ideas.

I took out all the stuff and very handy a lot of it turned out to be, too. Since then I've been back twice to collect my mail and I plan on doing it every day. It would be nice to be able to use the F5 button and have the goodies sent directly to my backpack but there's a teleport tower right in the middle of the town so it's hardly a problem, getting to the mailbox from wherever I happen to be.

I called Deadville a town just now. That's flattering it, really, although it does have a Mayor. Does having a Mayor automatically make somewhere a town? Not sure of the rules there. 

Deadville is basically a big house with a stockade around it, a few outbuildings and a bunch of vehicles. The Mayor, naturally, lives in the big house. I'm guessing Clair sleeps in her truck, although since she's both a mission NPC and a vendor she probably doesn't get to sleep at all. 

That's a bit of a fourth-wall-breaker. Pretend I never said it.

Inside the Mayor's house. I think he has kids. I hope he has kids...

I spoke to both Clair and the Mayor at some length. Once Human is on the higher end of the verbosity scale for a Survival game, I'd say. Everything has lengthy, explanatory tool-tips. There's a whole collection mechanic using found texts that I ought to post about some day, when I figure out how it works. Most named NPCs have some kind of dialog and the ones who give missions sometimes get cut scenes and dialog trees and all the good stuff. 

And it is pretty good, too. Someone in a Massively OP comment thread about the game observed that the text in OH was obviously machine-translated, which made me think either they'd formed that opinion in an earlier beta or they must know some damn smart machines. I'd say most of it is clearly not machine-translated but done by someone with a solid grasp of contemporary spoken English. I'm not saying it's literature but it's decent genre writing for sure.

Both Clair and the Mayor (Sounds like an educational kids TV show...) have backstories they're not slow to share but the central narrative behind their personal histories all revolves around the aftermath of the Starfall and how its ongoing reverberations affect the town. There's something eerie going on that makes Deadville the local equivalent of Hotel California - people come to stay for a while, then find they can't leave.

It's not so much a psychic anchor as a lack of fuel. Some unexplained phenomena keeps draining batteries and making gas last a fraction as long as it should. It could be the baleful influence of a Great One. In the old days the townsfolk would have asked the Mayflies to look into it but no-one's seen a Mayfly for a while.

Yadda yadda yadda - It's a Mission, right?

Oh, hey! Didn't you used to be a Mayfly?

Well, so they tell me...

So off I went to investigate. Boy, that was a trip...

It was chaotic, in fact. Fun but nuts. I did another survey at the end of last night's session and in the part where they ask if you have any suggestions on how to improve the game I put "Stop everything happening all at once!" Have you ever tried to listen to two ghosts having an argument while a zombie tries to eat your brains? It's not as relaxing as it sounds. 

This is where I should mention the Q key and rifts. Except I probably need to do a bit more research on that before I make any solid statements. The basics, though, those I can give you.

If you press "Q" the screen washes blue as a wave of arcane energy ripples out with you at the center. Anything of interest lights up, especially ghosts. You know there might be ghosts around because you get an onscreen message about a rift in reality or time-space. I forget the exact wording.

I'm calling them "ghosts" because that's what they look like but they might be morphic resonances or holograms for all I know. I'd lay odds it was explained when it first happened but so much happens all the time in this game, I don't take it all in. 

I had to kill an entire pack of corrupted wolves before I could listen to what Mary had to say! And that was after we started chatting.

Whatever they are, you're supposed to watch them and listen to them as they rehash old conversations and fill out the plot. Listening to them triggers updates in the relevant mission until eventually, when you've heard all there is to hear, the mission completes. Or that one did, anyway, and another one I did the next day. I don't imagine all missions involve spying on ghosts and the ones that do also include a lot of killing and thieving but ghost-listening is definitely a skill you'll want to focus on.

Oh, sorry, no... there isn't an actual skill called Ghost-Listening. I bloody wish there was! It would be a lot easier than trying to read the text while you load and aim your pistol or trying to hear the dialog over all the screaming and gunshots. I had to jump out of a freaking window in the middle of one ethereal exchange just to stay alive!

The whole thing took place on an estate where, as far as I could make out, a family business had been disrupted by a corrupt family member, who may or may not have had links with organized crime but who definitely was infected by Stardust. Exactly what he did and to whom I couldn't tell you. As I said, the finer details were lost in the ongoing chaos, although there is a handy recap in a conversation you have later - which is where I'm getting most of this from.

There's another reason I was distracted during the whole thing, besides the hitting and shooting and running away; someone in the design team had the wild idea to name the villain Keefer Sutherland. Why? I mean, just, why? I think one of the other ghosts had the name of a famous actor, too. 

I didn't take a picture of Keefer so here's one of the Mayor instead.

One way or another, I got the whole thing done and enjoyed it, too, although I'd have enjoyed it more if the ghost convos could have happened in some kind of safety bubble, where I could have given the dialog the attention it deserved. I went back to Deadville for a debrief. I told them it certainly looked like ol' Keefer might be a Great One now so I only have myself to blame for what happened next, which was that I somehow agreed to go do something to stop him.

I'll precis that part: I went to a big factory, where I killed a lot of zombies and spiders and some ghouls while I was looking for the two "anchors" I needed to set, or unset, or something. Click on them and hold for five seconds, basically. One I found right away; the other took me ages because of the blasted z-axis. You know the story.

The facility was sprawling and complex and just barely over my level. I dinged while I was there so that was perfect. The combat was a lot of fun. It reminded me very much of New World. Lots of big, violent, kinetic action that feels visceral and intuitive. Movement and animation isn't as slick as Amazon's game, yet, but it wasn't in New World at this stage of beta, either. 

I'll get back to you one that one...

The finale of the mission saw me facing off against the first Big Bad of the storyline in a red room worthy of an industrialized Twin Peaks. In a less than immersive but very welcome design choice, when the mission marker leads you to the point of no return you have to opt in to an instanced battle to take on the boss. 

Since the advisory note recommended two Level 10s and I was one Level 8, I decided to leave it for a while but I will have to do the fight, eventually. Once Human uses the exact same progression mechanic as Valheim and Dawnlands, gating tech tree progress behind boss kills. It's not my favorite system but it doesn't look as if leveling itself is gated by those same bosses so as long as I can outlevel them in other content and come back when I'm ready, I should be fine.

All things considered, I'm very happy with the way progression works in the game. I also like the combat and the story is interesting enough to want to find out what happens next. The world itself is a constant stream of sensory pleasures, quirky and peculiar but with a discomfiting relatability. I'm having a great time.

My main concern is for the future. I strongly suspect Once Human is going to be one of those "Better in Beta" games, where the tighter, more commercially-tuned release version lacks the endearing abrasiveness of the earlier iterations, while also somehow becoming more challenging and less fun. But then, maybe I'm just negatively projecting. New World turned out okay in the end, even if there is still a whiff of "Better in Beta" about it at times.

If Once Human goes the same way, I'd settle for that. For now, I'm just going to enjoy it while it lasts.

How long is this beta, anyway?

Day Nineteen

Christmas Is My Time Of Year - The Monkees

You're Not Going Out Dressed Like That! (Once Human Edition)

There's much to say about what I've been doing in Once Human since last time I wrote about the game but before I get to any of that, I thought I'd better re-assure those who may, quite reasonably, have felt  concerned about the way my character's been dressed in every screenshot so far. The outfit she's been wearing has seemed weirdly out of keeping with the gritty, post-disaster backdrop, even though there is a logical reason for her seemingly insouciant state of déshabillé.

It all refers back to the very start of the game. The story begins with a cut-scene of an unidentified technician completing some kind of procedure on a human figure in a pod. The facilty where this is happening undergoes an attack, bringing the procedure to a premature end and spewing the contents of the pod into the lab; the contents of the pod being, of course, the player character.

So far, so lore-appropriate. What happens next, though, is arguably less convincing. I suspect that most people, awakening to find themselves wearing not much more than a one-piece bathing costume with a lot of plastic tubing sticking out, then being set loose in open countryside with no more protection than the little they're hardly wearing, would make getting some clothes an early priority. It seems not.

The situation doesn't go completely ignored. V, the bird-shaped avatar personifying the brain-scan of your former Mayfly colleague stored in your backpack (Don't ask..) does make a comment fairly early on, suggesting you might think about getting some clothes. It would be perfectly possible, not to say sensible, to take him up on that suggestion right away, but you'd have to be paying attention to notice. It's mentioned just that once and never again.

BEFORE

As I think I said in a previous post, the game itself provides you with a framework of sorts. It's called The Journey and it's very easy to find yourself thinking of it as a linear set of objectives, to be completed in the order they come up on the tracker in the top, left corner of the screen. If you do that, as I did, you'll find yourself running around in your swimsuit for several game sessions, feeling slightly self-conscious and wondering when the prompt to do something about is going to appear.

The approximate answer to that, in my case at least, was around six hours in, when my character had just dinged Level 7. I'd been waiting with increasing impatience for the Journey to tell me it was time to make the Armor Workbench. 

By then I'd already been told to make the Primary Supplies Workbench, the Synthesis Workbench, the Weapons Workbench, the Disassembler, the Forge and almost certainly something else I've forgotten. I'd been told to make a base to put them all in and even a bed to sleep in but until then the idea of making myself something to wear just hadn't come up.

This makes it sound as though the developers must have had some rather strange ideas about acceptable daywear, let alone what the average, modern, post-apocalyptic survivor is wearing these days to go scavenging for scrap in a zombie-infested trailer park, but in fact the problem lay mostly with my own expectations as they've been formed by other games.

AFTER

The Journey, as I gradually came to understand, isn't a linear, quest-like sequence of stages to be ticked off one after another. It's a menu of possible activities to be undertaken in whatever order you choose. That really should have become apparent to me when I first received retroactive credit for doing something that turned out to have an entry in the Journey I hadn't gotten to yet.

Unfortunately for my credentials as a free-thinking individual, even once I knew I could take the stages out of order, I still found myself almost slavishly following each completed segment with whatever on-screen prompt popped up next. In my defence, I would point out that the crafting process does somewhat rely on making the basic stations in roughly the order they come up but, even so, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from choosing to make yourself something more suitable to wear before you get stuck into the enticing prospect of guns, drugs and explosives.

It's not just a matter of seemliness and decorum, either. There's a reason it's called the Armor Workbench not the Wardrobe or the Changing Room. The first sets of clothing may look like workwear with a few modifications but they come with a range of stat boosts that significantly enhance your ability to survive in the wilderness - and to take more hits from those pesky snipers and flying montrosities.

The first thing I did after I made myself a full set of clothes was to go to the Stronghold just up the hill from my base to see how much tougher I felt. OK, no it wasn't. Obviously the first thing I did was take a bunch of screenshots of myself. But the first thing after that...

I'd been doing fine scavenging in my skivvies but there had been more than a few times where I'd had to duck into cover to avoid sniper fire and blasts of indeterminate energy from hovering nightmares. Even when I had some bullets for my pistols, I had to be careful not to stand around for too long as I tried to bring the damn floaters down. 

With some heavy denims and a flak jacket, everything was a lot easier. And remember I said it was already easier than I felt I had any right to expect. Then again, by this time the mobs were three or four levels lower than me. I could really have done with getting dressed sensibly before I outlevelled the content. If only I had some iniative of my own...

Crafting in Once Human is fun, I think. I'm not a hardcore crafter by any definition; I'd classify myself as an enthusiastic bodger. I like making my own stuff but I don't relish the fine detail. Consequently, I'm not crazy about quasi-realistic crafting systems that have you refining all your own ores and then making all the component parts individually before combining them into whatever it was you actually wanted at the start.

On the other hand, the ultra-simplistic systems that give you a recipe for a particle accelerator and tell you to put two copper bars and a jug of water into a synthesizer and press the big red button don't really do it for me either. Once Human straddles the two extremes quite satisfactorily. 

You do have to gather and make your own mats from ore, wood, stone and various scrap parts but so far it's not only quick but also easy to do. Trees and boulders are everywhere, as you'd expect, but so are copper nodes. They all give large yields with even the most basic tools and you can chop wood and mine ore with the same pickaxe, something I have to say makes a lot of sense - I mean, it's even called a pick-axe, right?

Recipes ask for a lot of seemingly complicated, not to say fiddly, components, some of which you do have to make yourself as sub-combines. Most, however, can be acquired by simply throwing everything you loot from buildings and mobs into the Disassembler, which instantly breaks everything down into useable mats and sorts it all neatly into your bags. 

Even better, when it comes to subcombines, the grunt work is all done for you. Taking my new pants as an example, there are three subcombines right there on the main recipe screen. If you click each of them it tells you what mats you need and if you have them it populates the fields. All you do is click once and that subcombine happens instantaneously.

As soon as you have all three done the "Insufficent Materials" notice turns into a Combine button. Press that and your pants are ready in a matter of seconds. That's another nice thing about crafting in OH; combines don't take long. It's a matter of seconds not minutes or, god forbid, hours (Hi, Fallen Earth! How's it going over there these days?)

That said, I am extremely low level still. There is a Crafting Queue, which does suggest that at some point you're going to want to cue combines up and go of to do something else until they're finished. Looking down the crafting trees, the whole thing looks pretty deep and complex so maybe it does get a lot slower, later.

For now, though, it's fast enough not to be frustrating while also interesting enough to be fun. It's a combination I find almost dangerously addictive. If combat and exploration in the game weren't easily as satisfying and exciting, I might never leave my base. 

Well, except to go up the hill behind my house to the local Stronghold  for supplies, of course. I think of it as the corner store...

Day Eighteen

Merry Christmas From The Family 

 Jill Sobule (Robert Earle Keene cover)

Day Seventeen

Santa Doesn't Cop Out On Dope

Original: Martin Mull

Cover: Sonic Youth

Day Sixteen

Santa's Got A GTO (Ramonas cover) 

Jessy and the Jingle Belles