Who was that masked samurai?

I had a weird criticism about the last book. It was a request to put a Dramatis Personae in the back.

I've never liked those. I've only really seen them on epic fantasy and MilSF which seem to go out of their way to have oodles and oodles of characters. Especially the MilSF, where they are endless lists of people who are in exactly one scene, on a radio, but we need to know where they sit in the Org Chart by rank and official position.

Well, I'm not going back and editing the book this week, even if I thought it was a good idea. Some people haven't quite made the jump to the electronic life. When I read, it is usually with a computer or smart phone near at hand so if I start wondering (as I did during brunch) what language a scene set in Tel Aviv would be in, Wikipedia is only a few clicks away.

(In fact, from within Kindle it is one click away).

But that's not it.

It took a while to understand this wasn't even about my core cast. Apparently I wasn't supposed to list those (after I'd gone and done so on my Author Web Site). It was the historical characters that were a problem.

In a book set in Japan, and that's getting close to the meat of it. My argument is that when I bring up, say, Ishikawa Goemon in the book, it is almost always put in context with "Ishikawa Goemon, the legendary ninja and bodyguard for the Tokugawa Shogunate." And that's all that matters for the story. (It is also most of what we know in history, as with so many other people of the period the story-tellers got into it big time and there is more strange stuff coming out of the kabuki theater than is ever documented about his actual life.)

And that got me to the edge of this complaint, but it took me another day to finally get it. It's the problem of feeling left out. Like you the reader are expected to know certain things. It can be a barrier; something I've cautioned new readers to, say, Military SF about; these books are in a field that has been developed since at least Heinlein and Haldeman, and there are a lot of internal terms and slang and assumptions about how the world works that you as a reader are expected to bring with you to the book.

And this is already a problem with Japan. Japan attracts Japanophiles. You cross the line very quickly between some assumed "normal" person who has heard of samurai but their understanding stops there, to someone who can tell you the complete List of Battle from any random engagement of the Genpei War.

Same with language; there the line is between "that's hardly Japanese at all" like "sushi" or "tofu" to "oh my god, you are one of those people" for "katana" or "geta."

The problem is basically one of trust. And I understand, and I have grappled with it. The reader has to trust that they aren't being expected to know this entire backstory, all sorts of things that will be narratively important but aren't going to be told to them. The previous book concerned the London Blitz and at no point did I go out of my way to explain that England was at war with Germany -- I expected the reader would know that.

And that's why I find this insolvable. For my critic, it seems so obvious; "You have to explain the stuff most people won't know." So I've got a story taking place in Paris. Do I need to explain that it is in France? Do I need to explain what the Eiffel Tower is? What about the Louvre? And, yes, at some point between the Pompidou Center and la petite Palais and Musee d'Orsay the reader isn't expected to know what that is or what they should know about it.

That part isn't as hard. I am quite comfortable in assuming this imaginary average reader has heard of James Bond but hasn't heard of Lupin III. (I can't think of any actual historical characters name-dropped in the Kyoto book that I could safely assume the reader had heard of.)

The real problem is, how do you assure the reader that you've told them what they need to know? I mention the Emperor Meiji several times. He's the emperor of Japan, I told the reader, he was a force behind the modernization of Japan, his rule marked a return to Imperial power (whilst constitutional) and the last of the Shogunate.

But this is where trust comes in. How does the reader know I'm not glossing this for the sake of the reader who already knows the importance of the Meiji Restoration? That I'm not expecting them to already know some other important detail about the man or his rule which is going to be important in solving the mystery/the climax of the book?

That's the thing. If I show them an obviously made-up person (or place) they are comfortable with the idea of "Her name is Natsumi, she's a schoolgirl who works at a shop, she's shy" being everything that is going to matter about this character. But there is some dark magic when they recognize that Yukio Mishima is a real person, and they get this terrible fear that they are being left out, no, that they are about to be kicked out of the club of True Believers for not being enough of a Japan addict to know ALL about Mishima.

And this was the last problem I had with the argument I had. Which is, how does repeating, "He's the emperor, etc. etc." at the back of the book fix anything?  

(And, yes, this can exist for fictional characters too. I always make a point of giving a few extra details when I pick up a character that hasn't been on screen for a while. I try not to just name-drop "Sakai" and risk leaving the reader floundering. Instead it will be something like, "And there was Security Chief Sakai, glowering as usual, in his spiffy red athletic jacket.")

(Of course, if the reader does have this terrible impression they should have remembered some important detail about this character from the last time they appeared -- how is a one-sentence blurb in an index at the back of the book going to do damn-all?)

My latest thought came in two stages. First off, that it may be a mistake to have, "Ishikawa Goemon, the legendary ninja" in the narrative, because it looks like you are saying, "You know, that famous guy." Again, I'm not sure why "Dale Carnegie, the race car driver" gets a pass but "Tokugawa Yoshitsune, Shogun" does not. But anyhow! It would be better to set this up as a lecture; "Yoshi-who?" "He was one of the Shogun who ruled Japan." "Oh. Thank you."

The second part of this, though, is what the index at the back is doing. It isn't supposed to provide any more explanation than is in the text. But when you see "Ishikawa Goemon: Legendary ninja" in the index, it tells you that, in fact, this is all the author thought you should, would, or needed to know. And, sure, the reader might flip to it in the middle of reading* but it it just to assure themselves that they didn't miss "And a notorious cross-dresser" or something that they really, really should have either remembered from a previous scene, or known themselves because the guy is so damned famous.

(He isn't.)

* Another blind spot for me. I read in Kindle. I originally wrote for Kindle. Flipping to the index is not quite the same as doing it in a paper book. You are always afraid the Kindle will lose your place if you flip around too much. And also, since you are already on a computer, if you are worried there's something about Yoshitsune you were supposed to remember, you can just double-tap the name and the Wikipedia page will pop up for you right there in the ap!

Writing about not writing

I'm still too disheartened to write, and either that or the slump of cold season and a week off work has kept me from wanting to create anything. Dabble, yes. Think about stuff, yes. But I don't feel like writing novel or recording instruments or even painting some of my 3D prints.

The KDP news is bad. I ended my advertising campaigns with no unit sales to show for it. Not a single copy. I did get over a thousand Kindle Unlimited page reads but it cost me over two hundred in advertising to do it.

Amazon is a numbers game. The more sales, the higher you list in the rankings, and the better you look to customers. Even better looking to customers is a high number of reviews. Even if they aren't all five star, as long as they aren't mostly negative it gives the reader confidence that other people thought it was worth picking up.

And I am suspicious. I haven't had a single unasked review myself. That is, they are either from people I know, or people I essentially traded reviews for (just done in a way that remains legal -- at the moment.) There are other sites and venues where you can grow visibility, including (shudder) Facebook (or whatever they are calling it these days). It just seems so much work and also seems very mercenary. But basically when I see a book which really isn't that great with a ton of reviews I suspect someone was out working Goodreads or something and begging reviews.

So with all that said:

I'm trying to reduce what is in the Paris book. This would be a great place to talk about colonialism and exoticism in art. But I'm not going to. There are some very strong economic and ethnic undercurrents, lots of intriguing subculture stuff, but I'm not going to go there. I really do aim to stay within the tourist-safe areas, sit at cafes and talk about Art; classical art, Academy art, not so much street art or outsider art or appropriated art.

I'm also going to largely skip the down-and-out. This is going to be budget travel, but middle class budget travel, slumming. As much as Penny can talk about having to watch her last euro, she comes from a comfortable middle-class background and she hasn't had to and never is going to have to live for years in a state of grinding poverty.

Things I'm not sure I can keep; Fantomas and the early generation of superheroes and villains in fancy-dress. The off-Broadway (or whatever stands in for Broadway there) theatre scene, cafe theatre and street theatre.

I'm not even sure I can do the Dan Brown clue hunt properly. I have mostly decided that although I love a good Dan Shea-complicated Illuminati conspiracy, I just can't indulge it properly in this book.

My cavalry officer and his adventures in the Great War...possibly the actual War Horse story. And for that matter, Colette, the Moulin Rouge, 1907 and the Rêve d'Égypte. That sexy mummy dance, and Colette herself, might be at the heart of the story. Or might not...I need to take more time to really sort out the pieces so I have a novel that can come in under 70K and not require massive re-writes to make all the mismatched parts fit.

It's not like I don't have time.

"On the third day it rained again..."

Video games have become the major platform for the epistolary story form. I finished both the main campaign and the Frozen Wilds DLC of Horizon Zero Dawn several days ago. Went back through to see if I could do a few things more elegantly -- craft more of a stealth build (sigh) and this time paid attention to upgrading gear. 

It did have one payoff. There's this one side-quest where you deal with a swarmy noble named Zaid. Aloy goes to a remote fort to rescue a captive, and on the way out Zaid pops up in ambush with a bunch of bully-boys and the Horizon-equivalent of a machine gun.

So I vaguely remembered this ambush on my second play-through. Went and mined the courtyard in anticipation and, it turns out, I was able to call the strider I had hacked earlier into the courtyard, too.

So I rescue the captives, Zaid does his big entrance... And his men stumble into the booby traps and the former captives polish them off neatly. Zaid does his big "I have you now, my pretty" speech anyhow while raising the machine gun -- I promptly knocked him over with a concussion arrow and Sparky the Wonder Horse ran over and stomped him to death.

So satisfying!

Anyhow, epistolary material in games is nothing new. Some games, like Bioshock and other Bioware entries, have all sorts of fascinating side-stories that are unfolded through logs and audio tapes. Even overheard NPC chatter can have little side stories. In some, the main plot engine is also explored through these -- often optional -- narrative clips. 

And games have an advantage over the novel in that, depending on the style of the game, they can be manuscripts that are read by a voice actor, voice recordings, actual video or holographic displays. So a bit more like those experimental theatre things where you walk around a site getting snippets from the actors.

There are games in which that is more or less the whole point. I think they call them "walking simulators" now. Basically Myst without the puzzles. Interestingly, a growing number of the big AAA games that have an interesting story to them -- like Mass Effect and as it happens Horizon Zero Dawn have a "story" mode that nerfs the difficulty allowing you to progress more easily from story point to story point. And, of course, explore the game world.

If I recall correctly, the original Mass Effect 3 added a third option; to automate all the dialogue for you so you could get back to the fighting!

In any case, I am very impressed by the way Horizon Zero Dawn handles the info-dump. In many games, there is a division between what are clearly side stories and the big background information, and the latter is pushed on you. This does happen somewhat in HZD, but even then the excepts are never "here's how we got here" or "as you know, Bob." They are made by people who are still concerned with the trivia, going about their daily lives and dealing with their own concerns, and the clues to what happened in the past are only read between the lines.

Even when you get a big dialog scene, where someone actually explains things to you (many of these are optional, too!) they are consumed by their own cares and give things their own spin. Nobody is going out of their way to paint a clear picture for the player. In fine epistolic fashion, the reveal of the war machines which wracked such havoc on the old world is in the form of a sales presentation!

(The closest moment I can think of to a "as you know, Bob" is when a Matriarch explains the origin story of the Nora -- Aloy's people -- to a group of children and young mothers during the evening festivities before the Proving. There is a level of euhemerism here as it does capture, however poetically, some of the ground truth of what happened in the past and how the world got the way it is. But you pretty much have to finish the game first in order to understand that!)

Of course HZD has an unfair advantage. Well, Bioshock opens with a complete outsider to the sunken city trying to figure out what is going on. HZD, however, very neatly maps the inner story of young Aloy trying to discover why she was cast out of her tribe and what happened to her mother, to her discovering not just how her tribe works, how their world works, but the quest takes her out into, first, interacting with other civilizations (the game calls them "tribes" but then Aloy is the POV character and that just may be how she views it), and then discovering not just what happened to the old world but that it is still happening -- and the mystery of her birth is of pivotal importance to the greater world.

I am slightly unhappy because of the usual AAA conundrum; for over a hundred bucks pre-paid the gamer is expecting at least forty hours of play. And that means the game has to both change things up to keep it fresh and also, unfortunately, it becomes a set of sequels to itself, each time upping the stakes.

You start the game as a Nora hunter silently stalking herd machines (which only turn hostile if provoked). By mid-game you are carrying a dozen kinds of high explosives and trick arrows and everything is a stand-up fight in a closed arena against a war machine the size of a condominium. But even Aloy realizes this; at some point she bitterly remarks that she went from being called "dirty outcast" by her fellow Nora, to being called "our savior, the Anointed One" and she finds the one fully as isolating as the other.

This is a smart game, in other words. It doesn't hold your hand...well, except literally, as the tutorial section is a very well done and admirably brief section where the child Aloy is instructed in hunting by her guardian and fellow outcast, Rost. And just when you might start to get tired of having everything explained for you, it dumps you into a scary, unarmed, cat-and-mouse against a dozen searching Watchers.

But this isn't a review. This is just me talking about a master class in backgrounding without making an annoying info-dump out of it.

I Love Paris in the Winter

 ...which is a song lyric from the musical Can-Can. And, no, I don't. I would like to go to Paris again but I've seen Paris in winter and I had some very cold days and one much worse night. A story I might borrow from for the next Athena Fox book.

Which is on again. More or less. I have a theme now with some degree of emotional investment from Penny and a change arc of sorts. Which is enough. I want her to continue to change and grow through the series but I can't put her in personal crisis in every single story. I have the bones of a plot and the basic forces involved in it.

I don't have anything close to a resolution. That's bad.

Anyhow, it is cold here as well and I'm well over it. Was sick with the chills for the last couple of days -- Sunday spent half the day wrapped up in every blanket I had with the heater running full blast and was still shivering. Bounced back today and went out with only my Henley in lieu of jacket. But still not quite feeling up to running down to the wood shop to record some more music.

I am still, all in all, feeling creatively depressed. I feel like creating again, and I have confidence in the act of creation itself, but it feels so futile. I am dumping advertisement money on Amazon right now and I gave away a bunch of ebook copies last week but the series just isn't catching on. Having a low number of reviews is a flag...not a red flag maybe but at least a yellow flag...to potential readers. There are probably other amateurish signs on my Amazon pages.

At least I've got a slight uptick on KEDP reads but as far as those numbers go...I'm paying THEM about three cents a page (if you go by what I'm spending on advertising.)

And, oh yeah, although I am feeling more creative, it all seems to be writing-oriented. Not feeling like doing music and more's the pity as I have this nice empty shop I could be hanging out at right now and at least get some practice in without feeling so self-conscious.

(Actually, some of my neighbors might be working anyhow. And trumpets and violins are LOUD. The sax is worse -- there is no mute for the saxophone, not a practical one anyhow.)

Cognitive Evolution

 I'm reading up about early humans. Realizing just how much work goes into planning out a new fantasy world. Except that this is faster work. Dreaming up shit is so much easier than trying to research.

Oh, but that's where I am right now. Yes, there is a fabulous space after the Toba Eruption; multiple human species, some of them retreating back again from what might have been a global cooling, the development of many of the attributes of recognizably human culture (roughly, the neanderthals had cave painting and flutes and burials but the whole package is probably later).

And today I got a glimpse of what the emotional structure should be for the Paris book. Now that I have admitted it really does need an emotional structure. This can't just be a mystery but I need that inner plot arc as well.

I hit #26 in Travel Adventure Fiction but I am also basically paying people to read the book. Spending about fifteen bucks a day on Amazon advertising and giving away the first book for free. But, hey, yesterday a Kindle Unlimited reader finished off the book in one day and that's money in my pocket there.

I should probably be getting involved at Booksy and Goodreads and all that to gain more publicity. I still have no confidence in my writing, though. Not enough to be that aggressive about getting people to read it.

Still not writing

It isn't exactly burn-out, and it certainly isn't block. I more than half wonder if the stomach pills I am on are doing something, because I'm just not that excited about anything creative.

Including music, although I have fond hopes I might actually record a new piece over the just-announced winter break at work. (The reason? Besides being too burnt out by evening, I'd have a quiet space at my shop to record.)

Put the first book on a one-week give-away. Two downloads so far. Also made it up to #57 in Travel Adventure (Fiction).

So anyhow, the Paris book. Once again, despite having other ideas that might even sell better, (at the very least, I can place them more firmly in genre, and genre signaling is a much more sure way to find your readership) it is the next Athena Fox that is closest to being able to start now.

I think what I am missing on this one is the emotional connection. I wanted this to be the vacation episode. After all I dragged her through in the Kyoto adventure, I wanted to back off from the angst and have her, for once, face things as a confident hero. But I'm realizing that without the inside/outside plot structure, I am lacking much of the thrust that makes me want to write it.

And I've been wool-gathering too long. Brainstorming is cool but you tend to think of too many ideas. The part that I need to be getting to is plotting, where I focus the book in on the idea that will work. I still feel that this episode's MacGuffin is a National Treasure type hunt, with all the crawling around famous buildings and well-known artworks finding unlikely hidden clues. But I still haven't been able to work out what that actually means in terms of action.

There's also a few other stories I want to tell. I call this the Steampunk Superhero story, but that's a phrase that is likely to give the wrong idea. Exploring Steampunk in several ways; as a fairly shallow mining of history for flash and nostalgia for a class-ridden and yet somehow "more innocent" time. As the actual future shock of the trenches of WWI, but also the earlier glow of the fin de siécle era and the charming gadget future lightly mocked in the En l'An 2000 postcard set. And in the form of the tricked-out heroes and costumed villains of the turn of and the early 20th centuries, the Arsene Lupin and the Fantomas.

Oh, and there's also my La Boheme group of artist friends trying to navigate the search for a voice amidst all the pressures of popularity, Academie, criticism, and far from least, finances.

So I think this is mostly a story about the story of Paris, the illusions of Paris, the symbols that have grown up around Paris. The Paris of the Paris Syndrome, not the living city.

But, then, I intended for most of A Fox's Wedding to be in the areas of international hotels and the modern equivalent of the jet-set, a global culture of well-to-do that is almost completely divorced from anything specifically, organically, or traditionally Japanese.

And that didn't happen.

The Map, Please

I am SO over book covers. See, this is why people do traditional publishing; you let the publisher worry about figuring out markets, handling advertising, doing book markup and hiring artists and all that.

Out of all the Fiverr artists I've worked with, I'd say only one has my whole-hearted approval for what he provided and how easy (and fast) he was to work with. My last cover artist -- well, it wasn't his fault, he had a life event and that happens to all of us.

But I got so damned tired of looking at what were supposed to be temporary covers I finally broke down and just took the false starts and unfinished work of my last two artists and finished the damned things myself. They aren't as good as they should be. But they are better than they were.

Athena Fox Series Page at Amazon

And as soon as Amazon finishes approving the new uploads I'm going to put Book #1 on sale (99 cents, or maybe just give-away) and throw some new advertising money at it. I am feeling it is likely this series will never do well but I've been going through a ton of other books and the faults I know about in mine, I'm seeing in other books that are at least making some sales.

Not that I expect to make money. I just want the damned thing read!

***

So I had an alternate idea. Not for the first time, and an artist I brainstormed with came up with the same. I've gotten bored on my cover-and-branding research because as far as I could tell it was largely random where Amazon places a book. I mean, I got up to #120 in "Japan Travel Guides" with the Kyoto book. And I certainly didn't place it there.

Artifact covers are sort of the thing, if you include sites in your artifacts (aka, Great Pyramid, etc.) The exception seems to be female leads that aren't historical or cozy's (Amelia Peabody is both) -- those get the only three-quarters-and-up shots. Like I am using currently. (Some of the solo male protag or more commonly team-based ones have a distant figure, usually silhouette as well.)

Anyhow, so I could do map covers. Map and artifact, but this being something small and portable. The devil is in the details, and the worst is that maps have copyright. Anyhow; London book would work with map of the Underground, of the Northern Line Extension, or Bazalgette's sewer plan (at least that one isn't copyright!) And a dupondius of course. That properly suggests the "Roman stuff found under London."

Athens book? Oh, I have so much Athens stuff I'd love a street map, but also could push the Odyssey theme with a nautical map, particularly of the waters South of the Attic Peninsula. A potsherd would look weird, though...so a Medusa medallion.

Kyoto is weirder. I don't think a map would help. But building plans of the cult compound could be cool. Artifact almost certainly a magatama necklace.

And Paris ain't written yet.

Toba! Toba! Toba!

I'm still not feeling up to creating anything. I don't mean non-creative; there are still ideas coming. I meant I lack heart to follow any of them up.

Still working on ideas for the Paris book. That series is not selling at all (and I am in despair about all my efforts to get the covers revamped. Everyone I hired ended up having...issues.) So something SF would be good.

Fantasy doesn't normally do it for me, but the game I've been playing recently has some nice future-tribal stuff with a variety of decently deep cultures.

But I am so tired of post-apocalypse. I found myself asking; "What about a pre-apocalypse?" Well, I have no idea what that might be, but pre (known) civilization civilizations isn't completely overdone.

That's Ignatius Donelly, if you don't recognize him. Which immediately leads to the though of what might have actually went down if...the crew of the Dark Star (well, not them, but something a lot like them) are tasked to go to Earth to keep humanity from extinction. So, basically:

And way back, early enough so this could be believably our own past, with all evidence of whatever civilizations the aliens nurtured mostly lost. Although my first thought was not quite long enough ago; that would be during the "nuclear winter" and (today controversial) genetic bottleneck following the Toba eruption.

No, that's Toba.

There is a prior genetic bottleneck pointed at by mitochondrial DNA at something like 1.2 MYA. A bit earlier, still essentially genetically modern humans, still in the Age of Mammals -- but even at 75 KYA you've got smilodon and giant sloth to play with. (The Terror Bird, alas, died out around 1.8 MYA.)

But in any case I'd be writing fantasy. Aliens, psychic powers (call them psionics if you like, I call it another scientifical name for "magic.") And besides...even though we have archaeology from 75 KYA, it would be fun to use it. There are known stone tools, cave paintings, even musical instruments.

Because the essential idea was that the humans react in various and fractious ways to the aliens' efforts. Some of them rejecting the new ways, some embracing, some stealing the best ideas and running off to form their own civilizations. So lots of divergent peoples with their own cultures and languages who can be interacting in all the good fantasy-novel ways with each other.

And it occurred to me that the aliens might not be terribly practiced at this either. So they are fractured, with strongly different opinions and ways of interacting with the humans.

And then there's the idea of technological dead ends, whether the alien tech is naturally that way or whether they are afraid the human species may become a competitor if they learn too much. All in all causing us to go rather more bronze age combined with a hefty dose of magic quartz crystals.

Except for that one ornery group of humans who decided to take up metallurgy...and it won't be long before that results in a little war.

And with us close to genetic bottleneck, it is entirely possible for an entire culture and all their cities to number in the tens of thousands, tops. And for there to be characters who are the last of their peoples.

Which peoples might not even be the main genetic body of modern humans. The Neanderthals are still around then. All in all, every element you need for a good action-fantasy book.

The Ludonarrative Disconnect and Collectables

It has become a scourge on open-world AAA games. They all have a core gameplay loop and often that works well (sometimes it doesn't). And then they have dangly bits all over because they have to have some nascent RPG character building, dialogue choices, a crafting system, collectables, challenge missions...

Plus of course the basic RPG-lite upgrade path for clothing, armor, weapons, potions, other equipment.

The thing is, these can be from jarring to completely disconnected from the game world. In the mad rush to stop the Storm King of Maud your character is approaching the last Great Black Doom Castle through a shattered burning wasteland of blood and dead bodies...and here's this merchant with his cheerful little stall set up right in front of the spiked bronze gates of doom. "Hey, stranger, you know you can buy healing potions for only a few squirrel skins and grass?"

Or, hey, real example; Tomb Raider 2013, serious student archaeologist Lara stops to loot a few war graves...on her way to fight through hundreds of crazed cultists before they can sacrifice her best friend.

Sometimes you can sort of justify it in your mind. You know you are the only one who can save the world and you know if you run out of ammo that world is going to end. So in the middle of a desperate race to get to the world-ender you stop to open every random crate you see and loot their contents. Or in the middle of a big serious conversation with the Admiral you are wandering around opening lockers right in front of everybody. Heck, I loot bodies in the middle of melee!

But picking up playing cards because there is this out-of-game bonus for each complete hand? Urg. Even games that try to justify it by having this one card collector in the wasteland who, when you find him, will offer you a couple of bucks for them...yeah, it doesn't do it.

And it's a weird thing, but so many of these seem to have been done by a different team. They are just a little brighter in color (so you can see them in the challenge runs), less organically designed (because they have to fit different aesthetic needs). It all gives off the vibe of crass commercialism. On a heavily thematic game with really nice design, they stand out like a t-shirt stand on the Giza plateau.

***

Another thing that bugs me is maybe just a problem of first loves. You learn how to use the bow and you are finally getting through the story with it and it feels good, it feels natural, it feels powerful. But games inevitably level everything. The monsters get tougher, there are more of them, the basic cannon fodder start wearing extra armor and helmets so you can't take them out with the old headshot anymore, and so the game basically forces you to throw away that sweet little bow that's been your faithful companion for so long and pick up this monster with glowing bits and spikes and feathers that fills up half the screen when you use it. And just just barely enough more damage to make it necessary.

I'd been getting pretty good at stealthing my way through Eclipse cultists in Horizon Zero Dawn when the "Mother's Heart" fight came along. And there were so many damned enemies on the screen there was no longer a point in trying to use all the well-crafter sneaking and silent kills and what not. So I went back to my all-purpose AAA fighting style; run at full speed into the middle of the enemy formation and start swinging madly.

It is sad how many games this works for. The enemy AI loses lock on you and even though you are actually rubbing shoulders it still counts as "surprise" and half the time you get a stealth kill on them. The other half the time you knock them down and then you get another chance.

I have lost track of the games in which I'll jump around like an Australian jumping shrew. Because any game that gives you "death from above" as a special kill, you can activate it by jumping off a barrel, awning, wrought-iron railing, Louis XVIII chair, etc.

And I know, some people like the look, and you are really supposed to be looking at the scenery, but I hate the new clothes thing. I guess I'm fond of classic looks anyhow and the starting costumes and particularly the early armor pieces are in most games practical-looking and flattering. But, no, you are forced into combat with baddies who will one-hit-kill you if you don't put on the thing that looks like you are a broken LEGO kit covered in barbed wire...on fire.

I'm not even fond of the powered armor in Fallout 4. The armor bonuses aren't that great and the HUD is terrible. I'm more fond of stealth when I can anyhow.

***

When I said "nascent," what I meant is most of the parts are there but they don't work properly. There may be a skill tree, but I've found it inevitable that all the skills you really, really want in early game -- you can't afford. And then when you have points coming out your ears and you finally buy the "get fresher vegetables" perk you are entirely past the part of the game where you need to cook your own meals.

When you are in later game any idea of a specific "build" goes out the window. Sure, you leaned on the crafting tree. You were going to make an artificer character and you bought every crafting-related skill and left all the "better dance moves" stuff alone. But by mid-game you've already bought all of that tree, and you can't afford the top-tier stuff anyhow...so you start filling in the lower ranks and branching out into botany and music composition.

Dialogue wheels are also...poorly handled. In many, many games there is a benefit to following up all the branches. Often the game won't even bother to notice that you already asked the first question, and you have to go through that all over again. But the fact that you could ask about The Storm King first, or the Storm Castle first, means both answers have to be less organic than they could be.

And when the questions are more probing, more emotional...they can't be acted as such. Because you might have asked the "I'm sorry I was rude earlier" question before you got to the "Are you lying to me?" question. So all of the voice acting has to underplay and thus undercut any emotional arc to the conversation.

I'd favor closed trees. Mass Effect sometimes did this; if you started down one path, you'd never be able to go back.

Related to this is dialogue trees/character play. Because of the way games are structured, you need to go to the thing or clear the room before the next level loads. There isn't an option within the combat to spare the bad guy or chose to sacrifice an ally or whatever. All of that has to happen in dialogue.

Kotor led in having dialog choices play in specific directions you could build. And it mattered; at certain junctures of the game you couldn't do certain things if you were too far down the Light Side path or vice-versa.

Mass Effect used this less effectively; it really didn't matter whether you were Paragon or Renegade, it only mattered if your score was high enough to unlock the special options. By the third game it was no longer a see-saw and you could be both the baddest and the goodest commander in the Alliance.

Horizon Zero Dawn gave a promise early on with the "heart, intellect, skill" wheel; the game talked it up as if these would matter. Well, I can understand why branching story lines are too much pain (Dragon Age manages it, or so I am told). But the promise of being able to make early-life personality choices and have those reflected in all the dialogue later...well, that's a lot of lines to record, but I'd love to see it.

I give Horizon Zero Dawn a pass because this is Aloy's story. It unfolds the way it does because of her character. Same for Lara Croft in her stories. It is nice to be able to sometimes chose compassion (or fisticuffs!) but most of the interactions play out the same regardless.

Mass Effect again gets kudos because there's something about Jennifer Hale's voice that the same recorded dialog, the same programmed facial animation, reads differently if there is a different emotional context going on. You do make choices that matter in Mass Effect, even if they don't cause your day-to-day interactions to change (much!) but the fluidity of that voice actor makes it feel as if they do.

Mugato, Gumato

Did they not have Frat Row where they went to University?

I've been amused by listening to newspeople and other radio folk trying to pronounce "Omicron." I don't just mean short versus long "i" -- which I think may be another English/American English thing. I discovered during Doctor Who that "Omega" has the stress on the first syllable.

No, I've been hearing "Omacron," and "Ohmaicron" from various people. The "Macron" almost makes sense for French speakers...

And then there's the ones who can't remember where the "r" goes. From a labored attempt to follow the "m" with an "r" ..."Ohmcrama..." and that person gave up at that point -- to a more successful "Ocremon." Ah, Ocremon -- the sand-colored Pokemon. Evolves into Omega, one assumes...