I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV for nine years, which is a mildly alarming sentence to write down. Nine years is long enough for jobs to change, friendships to begin and end, and hobbies to come and go. Some of my real-life friendships haven’t lasted...
I love a good character creator. Hair? Yes. Faces? Yes. Body options, makeup, tattoos, scars, colours, voices? Yes. Let me rotate the character properly and see what I’m doing while we’re at it. My considered position on character customization is essentially: yes....
I love unique names. This is an excellent quality when you’re making up characters and a considerably less useful one when, several months later, you can’t remember the name you personally invented. I also write a lot. I’m a chronic list maker, and have Google...
People have surprisingly strong opinions about how other people should press buttons. Ask whether a controller or keyboard and mouse is better for an MMORPG and you’ll find plenty of arguments for both. Keyboard players have more keys and quick access to menus....
An RPG can give you an enormous map, hundreds of NPCs, several cities and enough map markers to make the local cartographer quietly resign. None of that necessarily makes its world feel alive. We’ve all seen game worlds that are technically full of things but somehow...
There is a particular kind of logic that only makes sense while playing an RPG. You find an incredibly powerful healing item. It can completely restore your party, cure every status effect and possibly make everyone feel better about several poor decisions made...
The kingdom is burning. An ancient evil has returned. Reality itself may collapse by Thursday. Anyway, somebody in the village has lost their cat. We have priorities. RPG side quests have a peculiar ability to derail even the most urgent heroic journey. The main story...
I have unfinished games, and then I have unfinished games. Sometimes I start something, discover that I’m not particularly enjoying myself, and stop. No tragedy occurs. The game and I simply acknowledge that this relationship has run its course and go our separate...
Most RPGs spend a great deal of time convincing us that something terrible will happen if we do not act immediately. Kingdoms are collapsing, gods are waking up, armies are advancing, and someone somewhere has definitely found an artefact they should not be touching....
An RPG gives you three dialogue options. You think about what your character believes, pick the answer that feels right, and prepare for whatever follows. Five minutes later, everyone is standing in exactly the same room discussing exactly the same problem, which...
