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But Shadows & Silk has been made in conjunction with the rest of Bloodlines 2. It’s been designed to be experienced at launch. This is not “new”; it’s effectively part of the base game. But it’s been purposefully siloed away to encourage players to shell out more cash. It’s just a bad look.
This sums up my issue with this DLC. The two clans were part of the dev time when it came to developing Bloodines 2.
Collective Shout describe themselves as a “grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls”, but are associated with outspokenly homophobic and anti-abortion Christian conservative groups, according to a now-deleted Vice article. They recently claimed credit for the campaign that saw payment providers pressuring the online storefronts to remove content the group deemed unacceptable.
It’s not hard to empathise with the folks behind Itch for being placed in an impossible position, but their lack of forewarning has left creators blindsided and in some cases, seemingly without income. “I wish we had gotten some warning from Steam and Itch,” wrote game developer Robert Yang on Bluesky, “but we already know it’s Collective Shout + payment processors waging culture war against LGBTQ people and sexual expression. I guess there’s nothing else for Steam and Itch to say”.
Personally speaking, I’d be willing to extend that good faith to Itch.io themselves, but they aren’t the one holding the gun to their own heads here. That’d be financial companies, pressured by Collective Shout, who themselves have ties to an organisation whose CEO once described gay marriage as an “unspeakable offence to God”. It’s not difficult to imagine what kind of expression these groups might decide to deem as unacceptable next.
Collective Shout is a self-described feminist non-partisan organization, but has alleged ties with anti-trans and conservative organizations. The group has developed a reputation as a sort of puritan crusade that targets everything from Detroit: Become Human to Tyler, the Creator.
This one quote tells me what kind of people Collective Shout are. First, Collective Shout will go after the low hanging fruit and then will move to LGBT themed games.
I think a better example would be net neutrality. The whole purpose of the payment provider is to move money from Person A to Person B. Just like how ISP is meant to get you from Website A to Website B.
It would be like your ISP going “Woah there buckeroo. You can’t go to Duck, Duck Go to search. We only let you go to Google.”
And I will be that sicko.
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.
I always enjoyed the story of 2. Origins and 3 both fall for the same story beats aka “You are the Chosen One. Only you can save the World.”
Origins, you are the last of the Grey Wardens in Felderen. Only you can reunite everyone to stop the Blight.
3, only you can close the rifts, reunite everyone, and stop the Big Bad guy.
In 2n Varic actively mocks that in the beginning. Hawke is portrayed as the Chosen One. When challenged, Varic admits that he made it up. Hawke is a nobody in beginning, only kicks start the mage and templar war because of the people that they associated started everything. Cough Anders Cough Hawke really just stumbles from adventure to adventure because of their companions.
It’s a story about unintended consequences and how small events can lead into big events.
2’s biggest failure was the over use of the same assets. The is cave/house/ruin is the same layout all the other cave/house/ruin. It was fine when it made narrative sense however that it is only for a minority of the time.
It’s more like we didn’t like pay2win on online games, so they started making it “just cosmetic” in those, and somehow now people think it’s acceptable to have to pay for parts of a game they bought, in every game ever?
Warhammer: Total War really annoyed me on it’s DLC. Some the DLC factions were already in the base game. I would be paying to unlock factions that were part of the dev cycle.
I could at least understand it, if the factions were released after the base game.
Splattercat covered this game. For those who want to see what the game is about and how it plays.
Edit: The game is called Arco.
There is the Baldur Gate 1 and 2 Enhanced Edition that has multiplayer. I never really tried it, so I can’t say how good it is.
Another one is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. The multiplayer has standalone campaigns. Definitely need to get the fan patches for this game.
Character stats is just something DnD came up with and everyone goes “character stats = RPG”. DnD had character stats because Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson all played table top war games before creating DnD.
Some of my favorite TTRPGs, don’t have character stats; looking at you Under the Autumn Strangely, Dread, 10 Candles, For the Queen, and that one game were I play tested characters playing Truth or Dare.
At the end of the day, playing a TTRPG is about telling a story. If the Chinese Room can tell a great story with light character customization. I will take that.