+ It's 2025 and I am playing a D&D Game... +
+01/02/2025
++ ... and it's not Baldurs Gate 3; it is, however, equally 7/10. +
++ OK, now I've got my hot take out the way, let's talk about a fun + game from 2013 called Call of Juarez: Gunslinger that is very + much not the game I have been playing. I promise I'll bring it + round though. +
++ The Call of Juarez series isn't particularly interesting outside + of this title. They're very average Western first-person + shooters from the late noughties and early 2010s. I imagine, + having not gone back to them, that they are also probably quite + racist. One of them is about two brothers fighting in the civil + war who desert as the 'war nears its end,' which sure sounds + like they were on the losing side. +
++ Gunslinger, however, is different. It's actually a game about + storytelling. You're Silas, a cowboy sat in a saloon telling his + life story - the hook of the game being that Silas is an + unreliable narrator. As Silas tells the story, and the people + around him pick holes in his tale, the world you're playing in + changes rapidly. The launch trailer shows how that works, skip + to 1:12 for the relevant bit. +
+ ++ And this is extremely cool, right? It feels futuristic, and + honestly it feels like kind of how the future of video games + should have been. But I don't think I ever saw this kinda thing + again? We have 'dynamic' worlds in some sense in that a building + will fall down, or a new route opens up somehow, but nothing on + the scale of the world shifting around the player. +
++ And I do understand why. This, as with anything, is down to + budget. if you have a scene that changes as the story changes, + that's expensive. But it feels kind of revolutionary in a way + that, frankly, I don't think video games have felt in a long, + long time. +
++ So yeah, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. Cool experiment, fun game, + weird vision into a future that never was. +
++
+
+ Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a 2022 Borderlands spin-off that + is that imagined future. +
++ OK, preface, I know that one of the words in that sentence has + probably immediately turned off quite a lot of people reading + this. I am aware Borderlands is extremely marmite. I have played + most of the games and I would struggle to call any of them + "great" - they're competent shooters, they nail the + looter-shooter loop that so many games since have tried and + failed to imitate (Destiny has and will always suck, don't + start) and they are famously groan-worthy when it comes to + writing and story. +
++ I played quite a few games in January and towards the end I was + itching for a shooter, ideally one fit for the Steam Deck. I'd + tried Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel before and bounced off it, but + I picked it up for another go on Valve's miracle machine and had + a great time. I think that game is helped by it being developed + by 2K Australia, a studio with Bioshock pedigree, so it's a + really really solid shooter; but it's also honestly pretty funny + when it gets to be properly Australian. it also leans heavily on + Handsome Jack, the antagonist of Borderlands 2, and inarguably + the series' highpoint when it comes to character writing. it + still has its 'cringe' moments, but I think it's generally + better written than 2 (and certainly 3) and also it has lasers. + Which are fun. +
++ After finishing that, I remembered I'd tried Tiny Tina's + Wonderlands on deck sometime in 2023. it didn't run + great, muddy visuals and a very janky framerate making it + pretty painful to actually play. But hey, these things get + patched, and after a reinstall and some fussing in the settings + (specifically, turning FSR2 on and setting it to 'Balanced') I + ended up with a game that both looked pretty reasonable and ran + very well! It's 60fps most of the time, but does drop to + mid-forties when the vistas are big or there's an excessive + amount going on on-screen. But it's certainly playable. +
++ With those fixes in place, I rolled a new character and dove in. + About an hour in, after the tutorial has concluded and you enter + the main town to find it ransacked, the game's magic trick + begins. Fighting your way to the centre square and freeing 'Butt + Stallion,' the kingdom's ruler (yes, I know. Unfortunately this + one is a Gearbox in-house production, with all that entails), + Tiny Tina, the DM of the game, tells you about the city + repairing itself in typical lyrical DM fashion. +
++ And then the city changes around you. Fires extinguish, bricks + that had crashed to the ground float and repair into pristine + buildings. Rainbows sprout around the castle. It's honestly + pretty magnificent to watch. +
++ This isn't actually the first time the game has pulled this + trick, but it;'s the first time your focus isn't on the combat, + so it's hard to ignore. Earlier, as youre fighting towards the + town, Tina describes a siege happening around you, and in an + adjacent field, siege engines, vast armies, ramparts and + defences materialise, a battle suddenly taking place where + before there was green grass and tranquil hills. She details a + ship full of skeletons and it shores up next to you, a fresh + barrage of foes to fight. +
++ It's hard to overstate how magic this feels, and it's spread all + through the game. The grander changes to the world around you + are kept for story beats, of course, but this game being a tale + told at a D&D table is weaved throughout in other ways. + Borderlands isn't exactly a choice-heavy RPG, the main quest is + laid before you already written, and side quests can only really + go one way as well, with maybe a minor amount of variation. But + in that outwardly restricting framework is how the spirit of + TTRPGs thrives here. You can choose to seduce a character + instead of fighting them in one side quest; a D&D classic. Your + other friends at the table talk amongst themselves, arguing + rules or paths forward, making dice checks and complaining to + the DM. +
++ And honestly, I think it's an interesting way of adapting a D&D + session to a video game! Baldurs Gate and its ilk are + laser-focused on player choice in both the micro and macro, they + implement the rules and functions of a tabletop rpg as if + they're set in stone, the inarguable realities of these games. + But isn't the real magic of TTRPGs in the unexpected? Humans are + unpredictable; a video game is never able to expand the + possibility space in a way a human DM can. +
++ So instead, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands doesn't try to. You're the + player character, but the players themselves are the others at + the table, improvising and adapting. The result is a game that + feels closer to playing D&D than any CRPG ever could, + even if the choices are entirely out of your hands. +
++ It means that these wild storytelling swerves can be designed + for. Baldurs Gate 3 couldn't have an entire ocean evaporate, + entirely changing the world, because, well - what if the player + chooses not to do it? By being strictly linear, the world feels + strangely more real than Faerun ever did for me. +
++ That's not to say the spectre of budget constraints don't haunt + the game, mind. Unlike every other Borderlands game, the world + isn't contiguous, instead each 'adventuring area' is separated + by an overworld, which is designed to resemble a DM's map, with + miniatures dotting it. It acts kind of like a classic Final + Fantasy overworld. There's also the audiologs/comms of the game, + which appear on screen without even an ease-in fade - suddenly + there's a character's unanimated face in the top-right of your + screen as they speak. +
++ And I will admit it's distracting. It feels like the cuts taken + to accommodate the wild creativity elsewhere can be pretty + brutal and in many cases stick out like a sore thumb. But + personally? I think it's worth it. +
++ You don't get to take swings this big without sacrificing some + parts of the game that would usually have zero rough edges. But + I'd always rather a game be ambitious and occasionally cut you + with their rawness than be designed-by-committee, smoothed over + globs of nothing. +
++ Despite ultimately being just another Borderlands, I will be + remembering beats in Wonderlands for far, far longer than + anything 2 or 3 offered up. And that's something that really + should be celebrated. +
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