Author: Trafficblast

Legends are slippery things. One tells of Arthur, the once and future King of Britain who united the realm against the Saxon invaders. Where historical fact is elusive, literary fancy has imagined Arthur’s idyllic court of Camelot, its chambers populated with knights, wizards, and witches, its halls reverberating with chivalry, romance, and betrayal. In exploring the legend of Arthur, Pendragon mixes interactive fiction and tactical combat within a short-form roguelike structure to tell myriad tales. As a study of how myths are formed from countless half-truths, it’s effective. But as a narrative journey, it feels slight, its more admirable efforts undermined by repetition and an uneasy relationship with combat.

In this particular rendition of Arthurian legend, the story always begins in 673 A.D., about a week before Arthur reaches the castle of Camlann to face his son, Mordred, whose challenge for the throne has ignited a civil war. Each time you roll a new game, you’ll play as one of Arthur’s court–his estranged wife Guinevere, her possible lover Sir Lancelot, the enigmatic Merlin, to name three of the more familiar characters–dashing across Britain to aid the king in the climactic showdown. En route, you will run into characters that you can convince to ride with your banner, others you’ll need to put to the sword, and an alarming number of wolves, snakes, giant spiders, and rats to fight or flee from. Though rest and rations will help the wounded recover, all members of your party–even your starting character–can die permanently, and the journey is over if everyone falls in battle. A complete run will typically take only 20-30 minutes, depending on how quickly you find Camlann.

The rapid turnaround of a run serves to highlight the dynamic nature of Pendragon’s storytelling. By embarking on a new journey, you’ll quickly find yourself exploring a reconfigured map, discovering new locations and story events, and accumulating alternate perspectives on the core myths of the land. And the game does a remarkable job tying together the many disparate narrative threads you can follow throughout one run. In one run, I began as Morgana Le Fay before meeting and recruiting Guinevere. Morgana was later wounded in battle while Guinevere fled, leaving me to play on as the latter. By the time I reached Camlann, Guinevere too had perished and so I ended up facing Mordred’s knights with just Arthur’s brother, Sir Kay, and a strong-armed peasant blacksmith in tow. What’s impressive is that the dialogue doesn’t miss a beat; conversations feel coherent and reactive to whatever choice and chaos has occurred along the way.

Of course, there are limits. By the time I was on my fifth or sixth journey, I recognised that certain scenarios were repeating. I could tell, for example, upon arriving at the burned-out village that this was where I’d be able to recruit that blacksmith. But while some of the individual components do become familiar over time, the unpredictable order in which they occur and the different choices you’re able to make ensure that each journey, when considered as a whole, feels unique.

Encounters, regardless of whether they’re friendly or hostile, play out on a small isometric grid, often no more than half a dozen tiles squared. Characters switch between stances that inform their movement and available actions; with your weapon drawn you can attack but can move only linearly, while diagonal movement is possible only with your weapon sheathed. As a combat engine, it’s relatively simple yet capable of presenting interesting challenges through some further complexities. Outwitting a group of enemies–baiting them with one character while a second deploys a special ability from the flank, or switching stances at the crucial moment to prevent an attack–feels well-earned since every fight carries real danger. The condensed nature of a run means there’s no grinding and little filler.

You’re also not always fighting. Indeed, many encounters conclude without any steel being drawn. Characters engage in conversation as they move back and forth across the board, weighing up the situation. This verbal sparring, in conjunction with the gliding movements as each participant adjusts their stance and demeanor, feels like some kind of formal dance routine with each step accompanied by a witty riposte.

By contrast, such encounters underscore how Pendragon is at its weakest when not telling a story. Straight combat dulls the momentum of the journey. I had one run where Merlin and his companion fled from a pack of wolves only to meet another they couldn’t defeat. After fleeing from that, they ran into yet another pack and, with the ability to flee now removed, were killed in a premature and underwhelming end to their quest.

In general, the various wolves and wild dogs you meet, not to mention the giant spiders, snakes, and rats, seem out of place, a relic from another more combat-focused design. Encounters with wary peasants or knights of uncertain loyalty wring far greater tension out of the delicate “Are we gonna fight or are we gonna talk?” balance inherent in the combat engine. The stakes are raised here, and you come away feeling better informed about the politics of the world.

But even when you’re able to best appreciate Pendragon’s procedural storytelling, when you’re able to grab a handful of its narrative threads and weave them together across multiple half-hour playthroughs, the returns are diminishing. Each session is too short to allow for the consequences of your actions to carry real weight. By the time you make it to Camlann, you’re only just getting to know Lady Niambh or Sir Lancelot, and now it’s farewell until you are reunited on a future playthrough–minus any memory of what you just experienced together. And as the scenarios start to repeat, you’ve got to dig deeper to find something fresh.

Pendragon is a fascinating experiment in trying to marry procedural storytelling to a roguelike structure. It does so with mixed success. With smart writing at the forefront, it delivers a rich and evocative world steeped in fantastical adventure. But when its more mundane systems intrude, you find that reality is a little more prosaic.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Some of the most popular Animal Crossing Amiibo can be hard to find in stock, at least at a reasonable price, but fortunately, the Animal Crossing Amiibo card series is making a comeback. Nintendo announced today that series 1 through 4 of the Animal Crossing Amiibo card series will be available at select retailers this November for just $6 per pack–just in time for the holidays.

The Animal Crossing Amiibo cards come in blind packs of six, and four different “series” are available. You can see the full list of possible characters at Nintendo. You’ll be able to use the Amiibo cards to invite characters to live on your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. You can also take photos with them in a photoshoot mode called Photopia. It’s unclear if Nintendo is adding any new in-game bonuses for the re-release of Animal Crossing Amiibo cards.

Nintendo seems to be on a kick this week with bringing back hard-to-find Animal Crossing products. The company recently announced the long sold-out Animal Crossing-edition Switch console will be making its return to select stores, and we’ve already spotted it in stock at GameStop.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

And now for something completely different: Bill Murray is being threatened by ’70s mellow rock band The Doobie Brothers for unlicensed use of their song “Listen to the Music” in an advertisement for his golf shirts.

In a filing unearthed by The Hollywood Reporter, the easygoing band surprisingly bares its fangs–their attorney Peter Paterno chastises Murray, writing: “It seems like the only person who uses our clients’ music without permission more than you do is Donald Trump… We’d almost be OK with it if the shirts weren’t so damn ugly.”

For those who didn’t even realize Bill Murray has a golf-shirt business, you can go over to William Murray Golf’s official website and decide for yourself about the actor’s sartorial tastes. However, to be fair, it should be noted that golf is a sport where wardrobes are typically garish–anyone who has ever caddied for a summer knows this all too well. (The lawsuit also finds Murray joining his Chicago hometown fellow superstar Michael Jordan in being called out for bad taste: In 2012, Jordan, a man who has long lived by his own rules, was banned from La Gorce Country Club in Miami for not abiding by the dress code, and his repeated wearing cargo pants cited as the inciting offense.)

In the two-page filing, Paterno continually tries to outdo himself in flinging insults Murray’s way. The allegedly offending ads are for the Zero Hucks Given golf shirts, which the lawyer says should be rechristened as “Zero Bucks Given.” Later in the email, Paterno says he’s “too lazy to look up and threaten you with eternal damnation” over what specific United States Copyright Act Murray is not complying with. Added Paterno about the forthcoming punishment: “You already earned that with those Garfield movies. And you already know you can’t use music in ads without paying for it.”

Murray’s camp has not yet responded, but given what a deep and established tradition there is of lawyer jokes, even if Murray is in the wrong he will likely gain the upper hand.

It’s been an absolutely huge week for Xbox. Opening preorders up for Xbox Series X and Series S alone would have been a momentous occasion for the company, but ahead of doing that it dropped a bombshell: Xbox has acquired ZeniMax Media. The purchase includes Bethesda, and properties such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Dishonored, and Wolfenstein, among others.

In this episode of Generation Next, Lucy, Jordan, and Tamoor talk about the implications of Xbox’s acquisition, what it means for PlayStation 5 exclusives that the company was working on, and the impact it could have on Game Pass. They also look at what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadela has said previously and discuss whether Xbox could make further acquisitions.

Of course, the crew also cover Xbox’s preorder process which, while not as disastrous as PlayStation’s, still was much rougher than most people would have liked. Retailers struggled to meet demands and, in some cases, outright didn’t make preorders for the Series X and S available at the time prescribed by Microsoft. Were Lucy, Jordan, and Tamoor able to get one? Watch and find out.

Generation Next is GameSpot’s dedicated show that’s all about the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Each week we’ll be digging deeper into the biggest news stories, as well as talking to the developers that are charting the future of gaming. You can catch up on previous episodes here.

As we move into the new generation, it appears the industry is taking big steps toward creating the eventuality of an all-digital future. Both PlayStation and Xbox are offering lower-priced all-digital consoles–the PS5 Digital Edition for $400 and the Xbox Series S for $300–which may make up an increasing share of their console sales as the generation continues. But a digital future poses a unique challenge for disabled gamers, and one that requires laying the groundwork for solutions now.

The benefit of an all-digital future for Microsoft and Sony is clear. With a discless console, you’re locked into their respective ecosystems and the companies get a cut of your purchases. It’s entirely conceivable that the shift toward all-digital will be partly organic, but also pushed hard by the platform-holders themselves. The lower price points for each appears aimed at incentivizing digital consoles to spur on this vision of the industry’s future.

The issue with all-digital consoles was flagged on Twitter by accessibility advocate and consultant Steve Saylor, aka the Blind Gamer. Saylor works with Can I Play That, an online resource for disabled gamers to find accessibility options in games. Saylor noted that disabled gamers often rely on trading in physical games to act as a stopgap, almost-refund policy if they come to realize a game isn’t well-suited to them. The concern is caused by a combination of generally poor pre-release information on accessibility options from publishers and the lack of refund policies on many digital storefronts.

“We don’t really get a lot of accessibility info about games beforehand,” Saylor told GameSpot. “We get it, maybe, about two weeks before the game comes out, if at all. And sometimes it’s just a blog post on a website. It’s almost buried in either the news cycle or social media timelines. There’s never really any big push for it.”

As an example, he cited Cyberpunk 2077. Despite having known about the game for almost eight years, and a promotional campaign that has included trailers, preview events, and regular Night City Wire streams, we know precious little about whether gamers with disabilities will be able to enjoy it.

“We’re getting so much information about the game, including [that] you can customize your character’s genitalia,” Saylor said. “And yet, as far as accessibility info, there literally has only been one tweet [about subtitles].”

That lack of information for most games leaves gamers with disabilities in a bind: take a gamble on purchasing a game without knowing if it will be playable, or wait and be left out of the digital water-cooler conversation that other gamers take for granted. Physical copies allow for somewhat of a compromise, letting disabled players recoup some money if the gamble doesn’t pay off.

Digital storefronts on consoles offer no such simplified solution. Saylor said Microsoft is the most lenient, offering a contact form that can be submitted for the company to evaluate providing a refund on a case-by-case basis, but usually only within 14 days of purchase. (He also notes that Xbox Game Pass is a handy solution for disabled gamers, letting them sample a wide variety of games to find the ones that work.) PlayStation’s refund policy requires you not to download or stream a game before getting a refund, though Sony can be contacted for special exceptions as well. Nintendo, Saylor said, is the most opaque, offering no digital refunds at all. GameSpot has contacted Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for comment on their policies but as of press time has not received a response.

But physical purchases are still a less-than-ideal solution, and as the industry leans more toward an all-digital future, navigating the accessibility issue will become even more pressing for gamers with disabilities. To truly tackle the problem going forward, the industry needs to adapt–developers should be both clearer and more consistent in advertising the accessibility information for their games, journalists should regularly pursue trying to find this information when it isn’t public, and console storefronts should have broader digital refund policies.

“Obviously, knowing about it allows us to make our proper purchasing decisions,” Saylor said. “I think that the easy solution would be to change the refund policy–but not to do it in a way that will single out people with disabilities, because there’s always going to be people that are going to take advantage of that. And that, essentially, is a subtle form of discrimination, if you are only given the refunds based on the accessibility standpoint.”

Saylor said that accessibility info should be included in the marketing plan from the beginning–not only because it gives disabled gamers plenty of time, but also because it lets them engage with other fans who are excited about the game. He said Ubisoft’s recent reintroduction of Immortals: Fenyx Rising (previously Gods & Monsters) was a good example, as the company invited content creators with accessibility needs to participate in a preview demo and give their impressions.

One digital storefront that has attempted to tackle the problem is Steam, which offers digital refunds as long as your total time played is less than a certain amount. That’s a good solution, but Saylor said it isn’t a magic bullet.

“The caveat to that is that sometimes there are gameplay elements that are a little bit further into the game, past the first few hours, that might become difficult for disabled players to be able to play,” Saylor, who consulted on TLOU2, said. “Say for instance, The Last of Us [Part 2], with the Rat King. That was really difficult for some players to play. [Naughty Dog] actually did release a patch later to remove some barriers to be able to complete that section. But we didn’t know until, obviously, about 15 hours in.

“So yes, I think having within the first few hours, if you try it and you know you can’t play it, yes, a hundred percent, of course, a refund would be great. But in a way, I think also the timeline of within the first 14 days or first 30 days, whichever, would probably be better.”

All this said, Saylor recognizes that disability is “more of a spectrum than an on-off switch.” Accessibility tools fall under a wide umbrella of those meant to assist with vision impairment, hearing impairment, or limited motor capabilities. The breadth of different types of disabilities means the more information available before launch, the better.

“There are certain things you can talk about that are just, in general, able to benefit in multiple disability types,” he said. “And that’s great and that’s kind of all we want. If you really want to [provide] as much information as possible, then studios can put out basically the entire list of all the settings that are in the game, accessibility or otherwise. At least then, we know beforehand what’s available. Because we disabled players, we know what we would need. Sometimes we can be surprised and find that a feature that we didn’t think about would benefit. But we know exactly what we’re looking for.”

Following a much-publicized, lengthy controversy over representation, whitewashing, and stereotyping sparked by comedian Hari Kondabolu’s 2017 documentary The Problem With Apu, The Simpsons’ 32nd Season kicks off this Sunday with some course corrections enacted: Variety is reporting that in the season premiere, Carl Carlson will be voiced by Alex Désert (Better Things, Better Call Saul) instead of Hank Azaria.

Désert will be taking over the role of Homer’s co-worker and Lenny Leonard’s best friend at the nuclear power plant–although it’s not yet clear whether he will be permanently replacing Azaria and/or other characters as well. Reportedly, Dr. Julius Hibbert–another Black character who under a recent decision by producers would require recasting characters of color to have corresponding voice actors–appears in the episode, but does not speak.

Azaria has publicly grappled with the preceding controversy in media and late-night interviews, before finally announcing earlier this year that he will no longer voice Apu. Last year, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening said that Apu will not be written off the show.

The premiere, an episode titled “Undercover Burns” sees Mr. Burns going undercover as “Fred” at the power plant to discover what the blue-collar employees truly think of him, and after making moves to improve their working conditions and personal lives, a jealous Smithers plots to bring back the old, bitter Burns. In other words, the episode draws inspiration from the CBS reality show, Undercover Boss. The season premiere will air on FOX at 8PM ET.