Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness

March 12, 2021March 12, 2021 ilyapodLeave a comment

“Chaos and despair spread throughout the Kingdom of Isilmerald. Its desperate people cry out, praying to the gods for help. But the force they face is no mere plague of the undead, or demonic attack… Something far more sinister, far more primal is afoot. Avarice!

Law and order quickly collapses as everyday citizens turn outlaw, attacking anyone unfortunate to cross their path…all for a few more gold coins. From high-born to low, greed spreads. Infecting the land like some divinely inspired disease, intent on purging the world of men. And it comes for you next!

Will you yield to the dark tendrils of desire coiling around your heart? Become an agent of greed and usher the kingdom into chaos. Or rebuke its seductive advances? Vow to discover the truth of the madness and restore the kingdom to its rightful glory? The choice is yours.”

Welcome to Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness, which takes players on a journey through the fantasy world of Yerengal.

A Kickstarter-funded single-player game developed by Austrian and Hungarian videogame developer GrapeOcean Technologies, the isometric cRPG takes more than a few cues from the Black Isle and Bioware games that inspired it – including the title, which has the same initials as Baldur’s Gate. No doubt intentionally.

Featuring real-time with pause mechanics, an isometric camera angle, an original rules system, and a mix of conventional and original high fantasy races and factions, the game has been in development since early 2018 and is expected to be released to PCs, Linux, and MacOS operating systems on both Steam and GOG.

Having clearly taken a few cues from more recent isometric cRPGs such as Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin II, the interface will no doubt seem a bit familiar to players of those games – which is arguably for the best, as both titles built took the ideas established by Bioware and Black Isle and enhanced them, by including features such as a party war chest and crafting skills and options. It’s not surprising then, that Black Geyser would do much the same.

Despite having been publicly backed by prominent industry figures such as Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart and InXile CEO Brian Fargo, the game has maintained a strangely low profile the last few years. Despite having a dedicated website and a semi-active presence across their Facebook, Youtube, and Kickstarter pages, there’s been very little active marketing for the game–which is unusual, given GrapeOcean’s intention of releasing the game some time in 2021.

Hopefully this relative silence will change as the game approaches completionm, as this game deserves the biggest audience possible.

At present, beta demos have been issued to backers of the project, and the company itself has released several free-to-watch demo previews on their Youtube channel (see below). They’ve even released some music that will be heard in the final game.

Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness is scheduled for release in 2021.

The Trials and Tribulations of the Nerevarine

March 6, 2021March 6, 2021 ilyapodLeave a comment

After 40 hours, and 13 levels, another box has been ticked, another accomplishment made, another goal achieved – I’ve finally finished The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Originally released on 1 May 2002, Morrowind is the third main entry in the Elder Scrolls series, and was preceded by The Elder Scrolls: Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall – the latter of which is commonly cited as the biggest single-player game ever made.

Confession: I did not like Morrowind upon release. Terrific score by Jeremy Soule aside, the interface irked me, the lack of any guidance from the game as to where players ought to go or do frustrated me, and the excessively open-ended game design failed to captivate me as a player.

A very similar feeling was had with the fourth entry in the series, Oblivion.

It was not until I met my fiancee and was introduced to her favourite game – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, that I became hooked. On her recommendation, I purchased the Legendary Edition on Steam for $60AUD and was hooked instantly. Its cinematic opening, comforting wintry landscape (a familiar sight to this Russian-born New England native), majestic score courtesy of Jeremy Soule, satisfying marker system, and expansive modding community resulted in a gaming experience that consumed over 400 hours of my life.

And after some hemming and hawing, led me to return to the previous games in the series that had, earlier in my life, left me feeling indifferent.

So I’ve gone back to both Oblivion, and more recently Morrowind, and have completed the main stories in both games, as well as multiple side-quests. And I have already started making mental notes on the write-up that will eventually make its way here.

But for the moment, I’m happy to celebrate an achievement 19 years in the making.

It’s still a frustrating game, with a UI that lacks the kind of flexibility that I would prefer (wherefore art thou, sorting columns?). But it’s undeniably a gorgeously designed game, and one that famously saved Bethesda Games from closing shop. In 2021, it’s a game that absolutely requires a few basic quality of life mods to be enjoyed – primarily in the form of the OpenMW mod, which updates the graphics, resolution options, and fixes a few bugs as well. That, alongside the Real Sign Posts and Run Faster mods (all of which can be found at Nexus Mods), dramatically improves the game.

And now that I’ve finished Morrowind, it’s time to revisit and finish the biggest game of them all.

It’s time to pay a visit to Daggerfall.

Behind Sydney

March 4, 2021 ilyapodLeave a comment

Years ago, I tried keeping an online blog, but struggled to find any meaningful use for it, and subsequently abandoned the project altogether.

I did, however, keep some of the material I wrote during that time, as I thought some of it was interesting and worth keeping. Here is one such piece, written originally on 19 March 2013.

For many years now, I’ve wanted to live somewhere that would allow me to come home to a balcony with a westerly view. And so, now I come home, plop down on a chair on the balcony, and watch the sunset, whilst sipping a glass of wine. A portion of our balcony looks out over a moderately crowded street. The other side looks out onto a side-street featuring something that, at first glance, would seem rather unremarkable. Houses. Trees. Apartment blocks. But it’s far more appealing than the main road, which features, apart from some tree-lined side-walks, a park, and some buildings built well over 50 years ago, which now sit unloved, rotting away, featuring about as much aesthetic appeal as a turd.

So it is with the main streets of Sydney. We don’t know much about how to make our main thoroughfares [outside the CBD] of any interest. Parramatta Road? It’s a dour piece of work. Unimaginative, tacky store-fronts for miles on end. One stretch of road (near the Italian quarter) features, at last count, six different stores selling wedding dresses. A whole half-mile that takes the highway car-dealership approach, and simply stuffs them close together, like members of an unhappy family. Later spots along the road? Car repair stores. Dingy pubs. Fast food chains. Houses framed by rusting fences, overgrown weeds.

Sydney, lovely Sydney, is only lovely behind the scenes. The arteries of our city feature an almost relentless lack of beauty. I wonder sometimes if the people involved in the development of these major arties thought “Beauty? When yer goin’ fohty kay down the bloody street? Whatcha be goin’ on about?” (That may have been an Irish accent, it may have been Scottish…let’s just call it a pan-anglo accent).

And the good people of Sydney, being a fairly practical lot said: “Well this is a bit shite, innit? Let’s just make sure the rest of our city doesn’t look like this” and set out to build a lovely set of side-streets alongside 19th century churches, micro-parks, and even places to barbeque near cricket ovals.

It makes me think that perhaps I should give tourists a walking map of Sydney, and say “Now, when you get a bit outside the inner city, it gets a bit suss for a few suburbs, but if you hit the side-streets, well golly it gets pretty”. Because that’s where Sydney’s prettier locations are hidden. And it’s worth taking a visit.

Luckily, my balcony looks out onto just such a set of side-streets. And it’s a pretty marvellous sight at sunset.

D&D Strikes Back

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 ilyapodLeave a comment

Remember Dungeons & Dragons? It was a fun, goofy, and lovingly-made passion project of writer/director Courtney Solomon. It came out almost exactly a year before The Fellowship of the Ring (D&D: 8 December 2000, Fellowship: 19 December 2001), and was not a financial or critical success. You may remember its rather interesting cast, which included the likes of Justin Whalin, Thora Birch, Marlon Wayans, and of course, Jeremy Irons – who ate the camera whenever it was pointed at him.

It spawned two direct-to-DVD movies: Wrath of the Dragon God and The Book of Vile Darkness, which failed to make much of an impact among anyone other than die hard D&D fans.

So wind the camera forward to the year 2021, where a new D&D project is about to begin filming – with an equally interesting cast. This time around, our principal actors include Hugh Grant (playing the villain Forge Fletcher), Chris Pine, Sophia Lillis (playing a character named Doric), Michelle Rodriguez, as well as Rege-Jean Page (seen most recently and excellently in Bridgerton) and Justice Smith (Pokemon Detective Pikachu, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom).

An interesting pattern reveals itself: both Dungeon and Dragons films feature established American actors acting alongside established British thespians.

The writer/directors this time around as John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the writer/director team on Horrible Bosses, Vacation, and Game Night.

There’s no indication that this new film will have any ties to the previously-released films. No release date has yet been announced for the Dungeons and Dragons film, with filming intended to start in North Ireland in the next few weeks.