Eight weeks of playing roles: Shadowrun Returns

 

Roleplaying winter couple of months continues with some sort of successful kickstarter game. Hurray. It's cold out! Let's play the role of someone who can open their not frozen shut windows. Because I can't open my window. It is covered in ice. Is this ok?

I don't have any strong memories of Shadowrun as a teen; I'm not sure if I was too old or too young. I have the weird luck of having read Neuromancer in my formative years - like, to the point I was young enough that William Gibson marched me right past a sex scene and I didn't even know what they were doing - which I think shaped a lot of my ideas about how the future is going to go. Everyone should read Neuromancer, even if it isn't Gibson's best work. Shadowrun is, to my loose grasp of cyberpunk as a conceptual predecessor to the eventual genre it "became" Neuromancer by way of magic and other wackiness, likely making it more akin to the early Warhammer 40k lore which was also something of a melting pot of concepts.

Did you know Warhammer 40k actually originally had a sense of humor?

As for kickstarters, I was really excited when kickstarter first came into being as it represented gamers being allowed to choose what would be developed and influence the market in a more hands on, or wallets on, manner.  The end result however has been something of a mixed blessing. The whole cycle of Kickstarter into Early Access into Steam Cards into Steam Sale has really highlighted a lot of points where the game industry has problems that we all gleefully blamed on like, Electronic Arts and Bobby Kotick for the last decade and as it turns out those perceptions might not have been on the money.

See the joke there is kickstarter has wasted a lot of people's time and money, though I think it is less egregious than the whole green light early access "give me money for an unfinished product I don't plan on finishing chortle" set up.

But SR:R is a kickstarter "success"; the game was made on time, I think, came out and people reacted to it in a pretty reasonable fashion. I've heard mixed opinions on it, but it's a roleplaying game and I had more interest in playing it than finally trying to get through Fallout: New Vegas (which is just so hyped I'm scared) and trying to figure out what the first Dragon Age actually "is". Is it Origins? No I mean yes it is on Origin and I have the full version, but which one actually is it? I don't want to think about it. What happened to putting numbers or clear titles after games?

Right I'm getting distracted. SR:R is a top down, isometric RPG with guns, magic and trolls. It is a mix of cyberpunk and magic, though it ends up feeling like the cyberpunk side is pretty subdued compared to the magic, so that might disappoint a little. As I hinted by mentioned Neuromancer, it takes from an oddly bog standard view of the future, in which nations no longer quite exist and huge megacorps do things for money. Very close to Syndicate, I believe, which this game feels like the more honest RPG cousin of.

I'm referring to the shooter that people wanted to be an isometric RPG there, in case you didn't care. You don't. Let's move on.


I am under the impression that you can take this first campaign (Dead man's switch) and import it into the newer 'Dragonfall Director's Cut' which I did also buy during the Steam sale. That being said, I wanted to pick up and play the game as is, even though I've heard the game is better if you buy both and use the upgraded UI or whatever. So yeah, the option is available, I just chose not to use it.

The Shadowrun world, which this game comes off as more or less a tutorial slash introduction to, is a bit of a weird one. I don't mean it is weird in the melting pot sense, because the grab bag of ideas things is pretty present in most older RPG systems - seriously, this has got nothing on how bizarre Spelljammer reads a decade later - but I mean it is weird in just realizing how people were very right about the developing world into the future and very wrong too. I dunno, there's just something so very goofy about the asiatic focus mixed with first nations shamanism that it kinda takes me out of the moment. I get that you want to put in a lot of touchstones and the like, but maybe they should have reworked a new set of foundations from the ground up for a game released in 2014.

I kinda had the same feeling while playing Baldur's Gate 2, though that was just weeaboo apex material. Katana just did more damage because...  Shadowrun Returns isn't that bad, except the black ex-shadowrunner lady you meet who peppers her dialogue with little bits of Japanese. I don't know a lot of people who fluidly shift from one language to the next, but my one friend that moved to Japan has never randomly peppered in bits of Japanese except as a joke, so yeah it kinda totally weirds me out. In all the conversations I had with Europeans who were bi or trilingual, they would only ever shift to their native tongue out of frustration, but I guess that is a little different.

Anyway - as I said, SR:R comes off more as a tutorial to the world, setting, game system and all of its elements joined together than a story someone sat down to make a story out of. This is: Good. Maybe it feels a little silly or stitched together in parts, but the game is legitimately introducing you to a giant info dump and it does it with exposition woven in through a narrative. There's a ton to the Shadowrun universe and this gives it the space to just dump it all on you without feeling quite so much like you're being dumped on from moment to moment. If you step back and look at the plot progression, yeah, it becomes rather obvious. But each scene is well crafted, so I forgive it.

As an isometric RPG Shadowrun feels like a mix of "Western CRPG" and I think the closest modern analogue is probably the X-Com remake I never managed to get into? You have a pool of action points to move, move more or use abilities. The Game also features a lot of of reloading! The cover system is pretty direct in its methodology, with the cursor highlighting the quality and positioning of cover when you consider your moves. The game doesn't really explain the impact of cover, but it seems like a pretty big deal when you actually fight people so I'm just going to get into cover as quick as possible.

One thing I really like, if very specific, is the fact that overwatch is explicitly set and references a range in front of the chosen character. I haven't quite nailed down if you can make the visual distinction as to whether or not an enemy is in overwatch, and where they are pointed, but it feels like this and it is a nice update. The game doesn't explicitly tell you what the overwatch button is, which took me a mission or three since it looks like a little wifi broadcasting icon and sometimes you wonder why you can't remote hack in this game...

There are a variety of classes in SR:R, but it doesn't really seem to progress quite far enough to really differeniate them into being too different. Mostly they're shooty types who use firearms, and then you have a set of class based cooldowns that help out in a pinch. It feels like at the end of the game you're just rolling over that threshold, but the system for leveling doesn't allow you to level up other characters, and your own character needs to put a fair amount into being tough and quick so I didn't really get up to massive amazing spell casting. There are mages and pet classes and hackers and so on, lots of variety, but it doesn't really seem to gloss over the fact you are playing a shooty games and people gonna shoot. The shooting is pretty satisfying though it leads me to my first problem with the game.

In terms of audio and music, SR:R is "good" but hampered by two things. First, like Shovel Knight which I'll have a review up in a day or two, the music tracks just aren't long enough and you end up finding even the tracks you like get too repetitive. I really have no idea about game music or how much it costs, but it feels like something they could have put more money into to get more length out of.

Then again my solution to game music would be 'hire Celldweller' and 'hire those guys on the same label as Celldweller' so I'm probably not the best at thinking this one out. Still: The tracks are good, but too short, and they can get a little ear grindy. The second thing is I also wish they were set a little more to the mood of the engagement, but maybe I just don't notice since a lot of the game's combat for me was pretty not desperate. The game could also, frankly, do with a little bit more silence or more ambient tracks. Ambient music is pretty in tune with cyberpunk, being what it is.

As for sound effects, the game sounds pretty good - the firearms make nice noises, for one and things sound correct - but once again there just isn't enough variety. It becomes especially weird when you hit a big honking ass orc or troll with a shotgun, and the shotgun sounds correct, but the troll squeaks out pain like a little boy.  It is a minor issue, but it sort of knocks your immersion down a notch and makes you giggle.

On the other hand the art assets are well done and have tons of variety. Scenes are built out of a vast arrangement of bits and bobbles, and while I think the level design could use a little work on feeling less 'room no hallway another room chest high walls for all' the levels all look good. Character animations aren't quite perfect but they're rarely if ever outright bad, basically giving you the impression of a visually attractive update to the whole isometric CRPG / X-Com sort of feeling.

So as an engine, a set of assets and a tutorial to the game world I think SR:R is pretty damn successful. You get a good thorough melding of the world demonstrated, albeit sometimes in sort of a silly way, that ties itself together and hints at the bigger, deeper stories. You also get pretty good combat, though I do feel like the game's rules are somehow not quite right. It might be that the moveset and rules lend themselves to running battles, but the AI doesn't quite seem to be aware of this and you end up doing running battles while the AI falls all over itself.

I had read the interface was in need of serious upgrades but I largely didn't think it was too bad. There are problems - weird things like it not being obvious how to pull your gun, or 'use' icons not appearing at all times, or various quest items not really functioning properly. I had a moment, for example, where I was supposed to use a quest item and had to look up how to get it to trigger. It can take a bit to figure out basic stuff you would expect would be more readily visual, but I found it generally pretty functional.

I also feel like mouseovers could do more. Looking at loot on a table really shouldn't require Infinity Engine era trudge over inspect to see what it is. Can't I just look at it and get a description? The inventory system as well just feels a bit dorky to me, but again, maybe this has all been improved in the next version.

I should note one real disappointment with the game is gear progression is very, very fixed. It is sort of weird, I always liked that element of cyberpunk, where you piece together your outfits from recovered gear. The game doesn't really seem to have any of that, loot is rather static and fixed. Even the elements of money and its usage feel really weird. There is a point where the dude offers you a million dollar reward and I just about spittaked. Adjusting for inflation a million dollars in 2054~ is just ... Really?

As for the story itself - As I said, it is more or less a simple introduction and not really about trying to tell some grandiose story. It does go toward deeper elements and it does hint at the bigger world, but it generally keeps it pretty compact. This is both a blessing and a curse. It reminds me a lot of playing the first Baldur's Gate, but it lacks the connective tissue to really build the world and some of the systems actively get in the way of progression.

So in conclusion - a pretty good introduction to a system I've never played and a world I've never played in. If you're looking for something deep and moving, the game doesn't manage that, but it does manage to be a pretty robust introductory scenario. Sometimes that isn't a bad thing, and it was on super cheap over the holidays so I think for the sale price it was more than a good deal, but not necessarily the best RPG I've ever playd.