Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We’ll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you’re playing this weekend, and what theories it’s got you kicking around.
January traditionally isn’t the most robust time for game releases. Nobody wants to get their big title in stores after the Christmas sales rush, and even indie games are going to be in recovery from the glut of sales that most digital storefronts end the year on. Which means we tend to start the year in a bit of a dead zone, looking forward to anticipated releases later in the year—our own list of which will be arriving next week, by the by—or, if we’re, say, the person in charge of organizing a pop culture web site’s gaming coverage for the coming months, looking at February with a slowly dawning sense of horror. (Shout-out to Ubisoft for delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows this week; you might have done it for the shareholders, but those of us trying to fit Civilization VII and Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii and Avowed and Monster Hunter Wilds into their schedules appreciate it, too.)
Of course, you can’t play “look ahead for releases planned for later in the year,” so January was usually a month behind schedule for me. That means enjoying those genres that consume tons of time or attention, delving into esoteric RPGs and puzzles that make my inner child’s nerd center go into overdrive. Last week I wasted almost an entire day, for example, on Epigraph, a game I discovered because I was craving the kind of “translating a non-existent language” thrill of titles like Heaven’s Vault or the more esoteric parts of Tunic, and I went looking in the Steam store other same elements. What I discovered was a minimalist experience that made me tear my hair out, but also activated all those delicious epiphanic neurons that the most productive puzzle games fit with.
The concept of Epigraph, created and published through a designer named Matthew Brown, who has published several games like this, is very undeniable: you are presented with seven artifacts, all with inscriptions in an unknown language. A letter provides a little context, some advice on where to start, and an example word or two. . . and that’s it. The next few hours will be spent going back and forth between multiple virtual blocks of stone, seeking to lay out the regulations of grammar, word construction, and even questions as undeniable as “What is an individual symbol?” in an invented language, even supposed? make up? I wouldn’t say I enjoyed every single moment I spent with the game; my frustration threshold was seriously lowered through *vague gestures towards each and every facet of elegant living*; However, little by little I discovered the meaning and logic. hidden beneath the hard-to-understand symbols. It was an exclusive experience. I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed all my time with Epigraph, but it’s the kind of game I wish we had more of.
On a slightly less esoteric note, I finally put the final nail in the coffin of my Dragon Age: The Veilguard game as well, not because I finished it, but because I started a very clever new 2023 game. Owlcat Games’ Warhammer 40K RPG: Rogue Trader, and the thought of returning to Veilguard is now officially too miserable to contemplate. (True story: I reloaded this set a few days ago, walked 20 feet, picked up a piece of “5 golds” trash from the ground, and without delay gave in to the urge to turn it off. )Rogue Trader is rarely very, very Best: I like it better than Owlcat’s previous two RPGs, basically because I find its fighting to be more strategically engaging; However, the feeling of being in a universe with an explained point of view was so overwhelming that it destroyed everyone. persistent, I definitely need to go back to Veilguard’s beige fantasy heroism.
Rogue Trader (and its more recent DLC, Void Shadows, which I installed for this new run) is so deeply invested in presenting a vision of life in the Warhammer universe—with all its Gothic goofiness, body horror, and rampant zealotry—that it can occasionally border on stifling. But the power fantasy of presenting a rigidly hierarchical, often explicitly fascist society, and then dropping the player in at the very top, in a position where they’re allowed to break almost any stricture with near-impunity, is incredibly compelling. (On a sheer surface level, the ability to start nearly every conversation by having my personal Seneschal announce my magnificence, and end it by ordering whoever I’m talking to executed as a filthy heretic, is very addictive.) All three of Owlcat’s games—Rogue Trader, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and Pathfinder: Wrath Of The Righteous—delight in putting players in positions of major power in their fictional worlds, but Rogue Trader feels like it goes even further, just because of how dogmatic Warhammer‘s Imperium Of Man is. Veilguard does something that’s ostensibly similar, pushing you into leadership positions or having characters shill for how amazing you are. But its actual respect for player decisions is so superficial that it feels like getting an unwanted pat on the head from the designer. Whereas, when Rogue Trader invites me to, to pick an early example, decide whether to blow up an entire planet rather than let it slip into the perfidious grasp of Chaos, it makes me feel like my choices genuinely matter. Void Shadows, which adds a fun new (very Goth) companion, only adds to the queasy fun by adding more content to the flagship my Rogue Trader’s dynasty is based in, highlighting just how much strangeness and suffering powers my character’s life of privilege and opulence gives each of those big choices a little added weight.
So yes: the January dead zone may just be painful from a media policy perspective. But as a way to look for those hidden gems that will get me excited about gaming in 2025? Pretty difficult to beat.
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