Thursday 15 February, 2018

Spent another two hours or so playing last night and I have become totally disillusioned of my earlier fangirlism. I don't seem to be making any tangible progress apart from picking up a few runes, talents, and so forth - merely retracing my former progress ad nauseum. I openly admit to being an altoholic in World of Warcraft but, at the very least, that involves over two hundred distinct combinations of races, classes, and specializations.

Here, there's only Talion...

...dealing with the same uruk bosses time and again...

...who become significantly more powerful, win or lose...

...again.

And again.

I feel I have a sense for what the designers and developers meant to accomplish, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The longer I play, the greater my sense of frustration and futility. Death is meaningless, for both hero and enemy, and 'freed' prisoners are simply recaptured or replaced with new prisoners. What tiny scraps of advancement and improvement are gathered along the way feel insignificant in the face of such rote monotony.

Maybe I'm just overlooking some key detail which would make everything else fall into place, like those magic pictures which suddenly appear when you squint your eyes just the right way. But, as things stand, this is likely going to be among the rare titles that I actually trade for some other game.

Sorry to hear about losing your first entry. One suggestion I have to avoid this in the future I suggest to write your entries in a google doc prior so that the website won’t lose your work. As it comes to the gamelogs, while your critical eye towards the game allows you to analyze the game’s problematic design your overall negativity towards the game seems to be distracting from your analysis of the moral implications of the game. A good place to look for an ethical question would be in the nemesis system and how this system makes the player reflect on the violence they are taking part in.

Sorry to hear about losing your first entry. One suggestion I have to avoid this in the future I suggest to write your entries in a google doc prior so that the website won’t lose your work. As it comes to the gamelogs, while your critical eye towards the game allows you to analyze the game’s problematic design your overall negativity towards the game seems to be distracting from your analysis of the moral implications of the game. A good place to look for an ethical question would be in the nemesis system and how this system makes the player reflect on the violence they are taking part in.