ya poss tlarn

I've been playing Dragon's Dogma 2 and while I'd love to talk about gameplay or interesting moments, the game's found itself something of a cultural lightning rod. It is a game with many friction points arising in a cultural moment where gamers are, perhaps more than ever, convinced that "consumers" are kings.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is not readily "solvable" and you can't min-max it. You will make mistakes. You will be scraped and bruised and scarred. Pain is sometimes the only bridge that can take us wher ewe need to go. And gaming culture, fed the lie of mastery and player importance, does not understand that scars can be beautiful. I love this game. I think it's a miracle it came out at all.

I also think in spite of the success it's found... that 2024 might be the worst possible year for it to have released.

Let's ramble about it..

also wanna add that one of my favorite examples of friction via intentional inconvenience is in Caves of Qud.

the game's economy is largely barter-based, but the measure of value and thus the currency is fresh water. this actually presents multiple problems for the player: your character needs water to live, and water has weight. you can't just carry your wealth with you in water, you'll quickly hit your encumbrance limit. on top of that, you can just find sources of fresh water in the world, sometimes substantially sized sources, but again, you just can't carry it all.

so, there's a constant tug of war you're juggling in Qud where you're carrying enough water both to keep your thirst under control and to have some spending money between visits to merchants. when you go to town to cash out your loot, you don't take it all in fresh water, you buy trade goods and pocket-sized technology that have high value but won't weigh you down. it's neat!!