My ideal would be a pet, since this would mean I'd still feel like the star, the main character, but there'd also be someone else to share the experience with. I mean an NPC with whom your character engages in hardcore bants. I don't mean co-op, although that of course takes care of the problem if you're playing with someone worth chatting to. Two characters, engaging in conversation as they go. What I think these games need is dialogue. I think it needs something more sophisticated than that.
"Good work everyone! We've got a story! Now hire some freelancers to write four hundred thousand lines of people being initially upset about the monsters, and then later grateful about the removal of the monsters." There's a big baddie, and it's causing lots of monsters to be everywhere, and people talk to you about that an awful lot in between your hitting said monsters with your preferred stick. The missing third isn't necessarily something as simple as "a story". Actually having at least some substance, a Z to reach from your A, and it's obvious why these ARPG games are so enjoyable. They are the reductio ad absurdum of the format. Heck, I think there's probably a very strong argument to be made suggesting that Action Role Playing Games were the genesis of the modern "clicker", those infernally compelling and utterly stupid games about tapping at your phone screen until your finger is a skeletal stump. You could try to argue with me that there's more to these games than that, that if played on a super-high difficulty level then it's about astoundingly precise min-maxing of all your equipment and skills, spending hours drawing out plans on pieces of paper and pinning them to your wall, lines of red string threading between them, but I'd look at you like you're silly. Then to pick up improbable piles of loot, and sell it for money I will absolutely never use at any point because of all the improbable piles of dropped loot. "Blather blather Ancient Greek reference blather." Sure, sure, get on with it! Tell me where you need to me to go click on stuff next! The game here is to semi-distractedly tap-tap-tap on crowds of satyrs, while keeping an eye on my health and springing into more focused action when it's threatened. Yes, people want to talk to you, but oh lordy I don't want to listen. But just on their own, ARPGs leave a big hole, and I think Titan Quest perhaps leaves the largest of them all.
TITAN QUEST ATLANTIS MINI BOSSES TV
Listening to a podcast is my favourite option, or perhaps putting on a crappy TV show that doesn't require much watching. I feel like this because I can't just play them. Booting up Titan Quest for a couple of days has been such a pleasure. I love the lot, I've played them all for vast amounts of my time. I'm also not entirely sure Diablo, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, and all the rest of them are actually that great. You know what, I'm not entirely sure it's a great game. (That is, if you're able to leave the opening scene.) Then you're bashing mobs, lugging loot like a loot mule, and endlessly charging through its ever-growing maps. You pick a character, and very splendidly nothing else about them beyond their sex, the rest decided by the choices you make as you level your way up. If you've never played it, Titan Quest is a Diablo-style game, initially set in ancient Greece before mythological creatures went extinct. Most especially, call your GP, and if they don't help, call another GP. If you're struggling, there are amazing people out there to help. I share these things because I know from experience that each time I do, someone else is helped. And it turns out it's just what I needed. Because it felt like it was going to be a familiar, simple place. And that's why I returned to Titan Quest. I feel like I'm a really weakly version of Spider-Man in that moment where he's trying to hold a collapsing building with webs in all directions, as gravity tries to tear it down around me. This situation, this lockdown, it's triggering my mental health issues in so many directions, and I'm really having trouble holding it together. But while I'll get to that, I need to begin with the real introduction:
One about how odd it is that Titan Quest should be a game I so frequently return to given its being the antithesis of much of why I play games. I wrote a different introduction to this one. Past Perfect is a retrospective column in which we look back into gaming history to see whether old favourites are still worth playing today.
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