Drifting along in Fallen Earth
A bit later than usual today dear readers…believe it or not I actually went outside today. It seems that it was the perfect day for sucking a yard full of leaves. It reached the point where the neighbors called and said, “Gee you seem to have all the leaves from the neighborhood on your lawn!” And in case you haven’t guessed, that is “neighborese” for “When are you going to rake the leaves?” However it was a good day for it – after all it was Caucasian summer…I mean “Indian summer”…I mean a warm fall day.
So if you saw the title on your reader and expected to find an article about a Cole Porter song you are, as you can tell from the picture above, mistaken. Instead this is about a time in the not too distant future (150 years to be exact) as a rough character named “Auntie Maim” rides across a plateau somewhere in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon (that’s a great big hole in the ground in the south west area of the U.S. for all of you out of the country readers).
So why the night and day title?
Quite simply I have had the pleasure of sampling Fallen Earth since early closed beta thanks to the kind folks at Icarus Studios. Yes, I will be the first to admit that some of the early days were rough. But things have changed since then, and even since the opening days of the game. And as the title of the article suggests I have found it to be a change of “night and day” by comparison.
Lag?
Not a bit of it – and we are running it on a desk top that is a far cry from being a “top end” machine. Even when I rode in to town with all the other post apocolyptic residents of Depot 66 around me there wasn’t so much as a sputter.
What about that tutorial?
One of the regulars that writes in the our little corner of the blogosphere (no names please – except to say it isn’t anyone from the Virgin Worlds collective) faulted Fallen Earth’s tutorial. They said that they felt dumped out into the world by a tutorial that had no resemblance to the rest of the game. Before the changes to the new player experience I still thought that it was a great way to introduce the game mechanics to the players. I always appreciate devs who try and make the new player experience interesting and involve me in a story right from the get go. After all, consider the alternative from some of the games that have been around awhile – in those “other” games a dwarf hands you a rusty axe and tells you to go kill ten wolves. Exciting eh?
Even though all that was added to the tutorial was a series of optional quests once you hit your first town (where you first appear in the game after the tutorial and you have selected your starting town) they made a big difference. Before I still felt a bit lost after the tutorial but not this time. The beginning quests showed me around town, introduced me to how the various systems work like crafting and combat. I even ended up with a horse from square one, rather than having to take half of forever to earn the darn thing in those “other” games. O.K. so the horse was an “old nag” but by the end of the second play session, as you can see above I sat astride a much higher priced model.
And speaking of horses…
One of the things I am sure you all heard us talk about with Keen on show number 47 was games that have a bit more “virtual world” in their “game world” (for a difference between the two see our earlier articles about our discussions with Dr. Richard Bartle). One of those nice touches that really impressed me was the fact that horses don’t “disappear” like the mounts in so many other games. In every other game I have ever played you get off your horse, turn around and say “who the heck stole my horse”? In this game you get off your horse, walk into the local store, and when you come out your horse is still waiting there. (no worries, no one can steal it),
So when I am online the rest of the weekend, most of it will be riding across the plateau of post apocalyptic Arizona.
If you see Auntie Maim say hello!
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather