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Penny Arcade - Comic - Drizzt
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Drizzt
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Aren't we kinda dark-elf'd out by now? Let's just have the goddamb panther.
A lot of us did, I think. I'm super disappointed in WotC here.
PAX. PAX. PAX. Boom.
Yeah, I kind of agree. I was so hyped when I saw the trailer a long time ago, but now... Drizzt? Name brand Drizzt? Great. Cool. I didn't want this to be about my experience in this fantasy world at all, I wanted it to be about WoTC's Mary Sue. The character who's been a boring Mary Sue for DECADES, but whose damn fan club won't stop vomiting money to Wizards, so he can just die. I really enjoyed the fact that the original Dark Alliance didn't have Drizz't proper. And to be fair, I don't know a lot about Drizzt myself, but if you're old enough to remember the days when everyone was ABOUT like, Drizzt and Sephiroth, I'm sure that you can imagine hearing these nerds go on swooning about either character, and deciding to never consume the content, because jesus I don't want to be one of those people. Both Drizzt and FF7 were severely tainted by their fan club. To those of yall not old enough to remember that period of time, when people had these conversations more in real life than online, it was way worse than you think. The internet will tell you when you've started being an obnoxious ass. That's a lot harder to when you're face to face with someone. Imagine the worst of every modern fandom's fanboys let off of their leashes, because everyone else is too polite to tell them to please shut the f*** up, and we didn't have an entire online culture where people visibly told OTHER fanboys to shut up, either. People often see this as a negative point of the internet, that you can be as abrasive as you want in a lot of places, but by gods has it helped some nerds realize they need to reign in it, or at least only engage in this level of fanboying when they're with someone who is interested. Not just lobbing it at anyone with whom they happen to be friends.
Tangentially, I'm also really curious why he's still around in such a prominent way, when we've been having a pretty hot discourse these past few years, over D&D's treatment of race and "monsters" and how some of it clearly feels a lot like racially coded hatred and stuff. I'm reminded of a very relevant clip of some Sonic cartoon my husband showed me sometime in the past week. I may not get this word for word, but it went like this:
So along these same lines of thinking, how do they keep justifying making Drizzt their poster boy? The fact that he is a relatively good person made him exceptional among the drow. His existence in any IP, implies that all of the drow are evil. That good-aligned drow are not part of the status quo, and that entire races are still being treated as horrible magical evil things. Until Drizzt goes away, this conversation hasn't changed, but they're not going to care until people stop giving them money for content containing Drizzt.
I hate to say it, but I think now that I've had this conversation with myself? I sorta... can't buy Dark Alliance on principle. I would've been on the fence if the gameplay was just 'not great', because I like to be the judge of it myself. But when I add this thought in... nah. Nope. Scratching that game off my list.
At the start of Dark Alliance 1, you get ambushed by thieves. A guard looks at your unconscious body and comments, "Those damn thieves grow bolder with every passing day!" You wake up moments later and he tells you, "It was those damn thieves! They grow bolder with every passing day!"
Like he was so satisfied with his word choice that he had to use it on someone else.
I want that guard in this game.
In all seriousness, selling a new Dark Alliance to me would be trying to sell me on a nostalgic experience of playing on the couch with a buddy, shoving each other off ledges, and making fun of the odd story beats on what, overall, was a pretty good game as far as atmosphere was concerned (like all of that era of playstation, it seems). But I don't have a console even if this game did offer couch co-op, which of course it does not.
So unless this game comes with a time machine and can also give me my innocence back, I think I'll have to pass. (If it does come with those things, I should probably consider reliving a better moment than playing Dark Alliance with my roommate: but I can't think of any right now).
The combat is not great, there is no lock-on and when performing combos you are not locked to the ground and can just follow the enemy you are beating down right over the edge. It is obvious the devs knew this was an issue because you are then teleported back on solid ground. You have two attacks strong and weak and I dont know man the combat just does not feel good. It is frustrating targeting enemies, I imagine you are supposed to feel like a badass (I did pick Drizzit as the first character I played) but I dont, unlike when you play the Batman Arkham games or even the Shadow of Mordor games. In both of those the combat is amazing. Block and parry dont seem to work half the time and the difficulty curve for enemies seems really out of whack. Also the panther bar only fills up on crits not just from attacking and with only 3 health potions to start off with taking on bosses is difficult more than it should be for a player just starting out. Even if you find more health potions you can only ever hold 3 to start. I find I have to kite the bosses and wait for my abilities to re-charge and cheese them. I dont know maybe after grinding a bit and leveling up the characters and equipment it will be better. Even though I feel it should be at least good starting off.
Sorry to pull a "Well, ACH-TUALLY" here on you, but you're about 10 books behind on the Drizzt if you feel like this is where the story is at. Getting caught up on the Drizzt/Companions of the Hall narrative might change your view point here. Salvatore's last 3 books series especially...
Fun times.
pleasepaypreacher.net
pleasepaypreacher.net
I mean fair, but can we expect the audience for this game to have all that context ahead of time? That knowledge is out there, but is it in here? Evidently, the players of this game don't strictly have that information. Nor should they be expected to. If WOTC designed this game solely for people who have read all the books, that's a REAL blunder.
I assume you're not worried about people who haven't read any of the books. Tell us, what's the exact level of book reading we should worry about?
Or maybe they should just make a game, and you should judge it on that game. It seems like there's plenty to criticize there without worrying that people read some thirty year old books.
Now that roleplaying has expanded to a wider frame of reference than "like D&D", properties that specifically reference D&D seem to eschew the "you can be anything you want in any world you want" aspect of roleplaying in favor of "here's stuff you might recognize from Forgotten Realms!"
I bought Betrayal at Baldurs Gate because I liked Betrayal at House on the Hill and thought it could only be improved by a fantasy reskin. But it's not a fantasy reskin: it's a tour of D&D references. "Here's a faction, or monster, or character you might recognize from our popular line of products!"
Heck, many D&D players I know (not all, of course) seem to have bought into this. A great D&D campaign is one that includes as much D&D specific stuff as possible. It's obvious why the publishers of monster manuals want this. But to me the value of fantasy roleplaying has been playing in a fantasy world of my own making, themed off of fantasy tropes from all sorts of sources.
Getting off topic here, but I'm still mystified by how many people think it's somehow more interesting and clever to encounter D&D's list of products, like illithids and drow, than the "boring" stuff like elves, minotaurs, fairies (the "real world" myths that drew many of us into fantasy in the first place).
All this to say that I'm not at all surprised that a property themed around D&D is leveraging Forgotten Realms instead of telling it's own story. Now that people have so many options for imagination-based games in Tolkien inspired fairy tale settings, D&D seems to have leaned into self reference at the cost of openness and freedom.
I'd imagine it's because it's very difficult to make something that malleable into a videogame without becoming AI Dungeon or something, so sadly that aspect is bound to the tabletop or D&D Beyond where it's forever gonna be less approachable.
It's why they make Tomb Raider games, and Nathan Drake games, and Gears of Wars games, and Final Fantasy. They're games about certain characters or worlds. They're not about creating your character.
From the start, computer/console "roleplaying" games have always had almost zero roleplaying. I think they were only called roleplaying games because they were regular computer games, but with the setting of roleplaying universes painted atop them. They've been like this from he beginning. It's just that as time went on, they got more specific reference material to base things on.
It doesn't really matter where they went. I know he went into wildly different territory. But this is where he started. It's his basic conceptual root, part of his character. Unless they REBOOT Drizzt entirely and take that way, or amend it so that there's something different, they're still perpetuating a storyline wherein All Drow Are Evil Forever Except This One Special Marty Stu. You can build golden castle on a foundation of shit all you want. It's still gonna stink.
Also this. If they change the dialogue around drow on like, book #9487575, that doesn't really make it better. Nobody should have to be a dozen books into a series for it to become okay. If someone played this game and then became interested in Drizzt, the first book you would hand them is now what we consider Capital-P Problematic in a modern context. Most nerdy stuff gets reboots from time to time. Nobody starts people out with Superman comics from the 30's. If you did, even the least sensitive people would cringe at some of the material. You start them with one of the more recent reboots that has rewritten the character to be more in line with modern sensibilities. Drizzt is either SORELY overdue for a reboot, or needs to go.
Those four letters are the reason I resolved to wait. WotC doesn't make good games.
For the PS2 game, you were definitely not playing Baldur's Gate. For this game, you're not playing D&D. Both of them have horribly janky moments that you can laugh at. A lot.
But a lot like the original 2 games, I feel like if you're playing by yourself you're missing out on the only major draw. Looking at your friends dead in their eyes the next day, and still not being able to stop laughing as you ask them what in the Nine Hells they were thinking.
Ironically enough, it was a conversation like this that motivated me to actually engage with the entire series. Starting in mid-2015, I listed to every single Drizzt book from start to finish on Audible, including the last book with came out in 2020.
I don't think someone who hasn't read any of the books has the foundation for demanding a reboot of the character.
At the very least, I challenge you to read the last series that came out, Generations, because everything you're saying is terribly biased and flat out wrong.
I also know that WotC is working through the history of racism in D&D, just as they started working through the sexism that was prevalent in the system when they released their 4th edition material.
It actually makes me wonder why they chose this period to dive into. I wonder if there's something between Salvatore and WotC that's preventing WotC from utilizing the most recent source material, versus having to dive into 33 year old books.
Which also leads me to ask if there is anything truly offensive, racially insensitive, or cringe in the game (outside of the actual game apparently not be very good), or if this is just a manufactured outrage based on uninformed opinions by people who haven't played the game or read any of the source material?