The Longest Journey, "Truckers-2" - review addiction

Let’s go for gaming memories in April 2016, 2011, 2006 and 2001.

You are reading What We Played, a monthly column where we remember which games came out exactly five, ten, fifteen and twenty years ago. In the April issue, we gathered four sequels at once: one put an end to the history of the series, the second and the third, on the contrary, developed their franchises, and the last, perhaps, even changed someone’s life.

5 years ago – Dark Souls III

What we played 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago: Dark Souls III, Portal 2, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Truckers 2

Five years this April marks the last, third part Dark souls… In 2016, it became for someone a disappointment and a reason for accusations of self-repetition, for someone, on the contrary, a breath of fresh air due to its accelerated pace, and for someone – just one of the worthy novelties of the year, where it was possible with a pleasure to spend a hundred hours. One way or another, it will not be called a failure even with a big stretch: in the first four years it sold more than 10 million copies – many other AAA blockbusters never dreamed of such numbers.

But now, looking back in time, I would like to call the main merit of Dark Souls III the not perfect (although, of course, many will argue with this) gameplay and not the grandiose design to match the epic ending of the series, but the very fact of having this ending. Completing a large and lucrative franchise successfully and on time is a task that many studios are unable to do. And then I want to take my hat off before FromSoftware: not only for the fact that they did not put their offspring on the conveyor, but also for how convincingly they put an end to its history.

The parade of familiar faces and locations from the previous parts, which seemed to many players to be evidence of those very self-repetitions, in Dark Souls III serve a much more important purpose: to show that the game world itself and its inhabitants are no less tired of themselves than the developers are from trying to maintain them life. The Souls series, of course, has never been particularly optimistic, but in no previous installment has the overwhelming depression and entropy of a dying world been felt so clearly. Golden Anor Londo from the first part here turns into its own shameful shadow, inhabited by the death masks of the former inhabitants; the bosses – partly familiar, partly new, but terribly similar to their predecessors – are more exhausted by their existence, ever.

The overwhelming sense of hopelessness and lack of ideas is usually not the emotion that developers want to evoke in players, but FromSoftware has ingeniously turned it around to their advantage. Dark Souls III knows very well how secondary and tired she can seem – moreover, she deliberately pushes this feeling. Returning the player to the half-decayed symbols of the past greatness of the series, she seems to be saying: “Look how monstrously all this has aged. Isn’t it time to put an end to this already? “

The Dark Souls universe has always been obsessed with this question: whether to continue or not, to maintain the flame or let it go out – but in the third part, this decision no longer belongs to the player. We can stay sitting over a barely smoldering fire under an extinguished sun, we can carry the flame with us, we can extinguish it with both ends – but one way or another, all decisions lead to the same conclusion: the world of Dark Souls is terribly tired of burning, and it can no longer do it. As YouTube essayist Jacob Geller has aptly noted, Dark Souls III, like the hero of the film of the same name, “is thinking of ending things”, is so convincing that it simply does not turn the language to demand from the developers of the fourth part or a complete restart.

Feelings of hopelessness and despair have been firmly associated in the mind with the series before, but in Dark Souls 3, in every bit of history, you feel that this journey is the last. We have never seen this world in such a deplorable state.

10 years ago – Portal 2

But which studio, on the contrary, revels in the endless pleas of fans who are ready for decades to wait for the next part of their favorite story, is this Valve… Although who knows – maybe everything works differently: maybe the company does not like to release games with the number “3” in the name so much precisely because it feels that it will be difficult to surpass the brilliant sequel, and it will be difficult to end the story on a farewell note and thereby admit defeat pride allows – endless waiting is better.

Born from a student experiment Portal, it would seem, did not require a continuation at all: the three-hour vignette, built around a single witty mechanics, worked ideally as an independent work, and the ending offered itself completely closed (it was changed with a patch only in March 2010 to make the second part possible) … But, as practice has shown, sometimes the desire to make a good thing twice as long and witty is already a sufficient reason for the release of a sequel. And while Portal’s perfect formula could be easily spoiled by adding new elements, Valve managed to strike a delicate balance. The transport funnels, light bridges and other suspicious gel substances that appeared in the second part did not take the players’ attention away from the central mechanics of the gameplay, but only added depth to it, forcing their brains to work at full capacity. A separate find that turned Portal 2 from just an extended version of its progenitor to something completely different, there has become a cooperative mode: add a second head to the puzzle, which will try to solve it at the same time with you, and you will either get a disaster or a triumph of the human ability to negotiate (but more often both at the same time) …

But, of course, the main merit of Portal 2, for which the game will be remembered for a long time, no matter how far the game industry has gone in terms of technical progress, its plot and humor have been and remain. Solving a difficult problem and enjoying your ingenuity is, of course, always a great pleasure, but reveling in your own talent is always more pleasant in someone’s equally gifted company, knowing that the work of your convolutions will be appreciated. And in this regard, Portal 2 gave the players a real feast: not only brought back the beloved GLaDOS in all its potato splendor to the stage, but also introduced the hilarious Wheatley into the plot – not to mention the defective turrets. The humor in Portal 2 has been turned from pleasant, but not obligatory entertainment for the player into a key component of the gameplay: without the glib comments from Chell’s in-game companions, solving puzzles would not bring even a fraction of the ecstasy that makes you want to replay Portal 2 even years after release.

All journalistic grumbling gets stuck in a portal in your throat as a blue gel floats in front of your nose, gurgling and wriggling in a transparent tunnel. Yes, Portal 2 remains a Deborian spectacle, where all the action is neatly separated from each other by an invisible intermission. Yes, it is still a thing in itself, a genre of one game for which its own authors cannot think of a practical application. But Portal 2’s puzzles flawlessly stimulate some kind of secret nerve endings that you didn’t even know you had.

15 years ago – Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Fifteen years this month equaled Dreamfall: The Longest Journey – another brilliant sequel that no one really expected, but for which everyone was deeply grateful in the end. The genre of classic quests was going through hard times in 2006: after the release of the legendary Siberia in 2002-2004, new adventure games became less and less, and those that did hit the market could not offer anything new against the backdrop of the technological boom of action games. Projects like The longest journey, the predecessors of Dreamfall, seemed almost a relic of the past: they say, walls of dialogues and primitive puzzles were appropriate in 1999, when iron still did not really allow more, but what kind of competition they can make the same Half-life 2?

Before the team Funcom there was a serious task: not only to write a successful continuation of a rather confusing story from a quest seven years ago, but also to somehow update your project for the realities of the market. Bright 3D graphics and cinematic staging partly helped in this, an attempt to add stealth and primitive battles to the gameplay, on the contrary, failed miserably, but, as in the case of the first part, all the technical shortcomings of the game were more than paid for by the plot. Although, I must admit, he was not particularly friendly to new players. Despite the fact that Dreamfall started on behalf of the new main character Zoe, who at first knew about Stark, Arcadia, the Dream World and everything else no more than a puzzled user, it was frankly difficult to understand the meaning of all the twists and turns of the second part without knowing the plot and characters of the original. But for everyone who still remembered the story of April Ryan and her friends – well, or went through The Longest Journey in a hurry before launching the sequel – Dreamfall was a real homecoming.

And not only because it allowed fans to once again get into the magical world at the junction of cyberpunk and the Middle Ages and see their favorite heroes, who managed to mature a lot during the ten years of in-game time that passed between the two parts. The main thing that Dreamfall has preserved and in many ways has multiplied is the melancholic and in some ways even existential spirit of the series. Despite the fantasy setting and sometimes frivolous humor, all parts of The Longest Journey are frankly dark games that do not shy away from the injuries of their characters, or their troubling questions about what the hell they are doing with their lives and whether they their attempts to save the world make any sense. But it’s this grain of healthy realism in the midst of a shared carnival of magic, dragons and unthinkable future technologies that makes Dreamfall so unique. The central conflict and motivations of the characters here do not bribe with feigned tragedy and not with Nolan’s script structure, but with purely human sincerity – and that is why, at every unexpected plot twist, one wants to grab hold of the heart, and the traditional morality about belief in goodness does not sound like an empty phrase. Indeed, in Dreamfall, the “chosen” heroes are no less creepy to climb into the hell than it would be for you in their place – and if they did, then, probably, not just like that.

Dreamfall captures how a very interesting book captures in childhood: without blinking and holding your breath every minute, you follow the adventures of the main characters, empathize with their thoughts, watch, think, analyze. In short, you live their life. Is this not the main thing that computer games should give? Full interactivity and “getting used to” the role? If this is Dreamfall, an exemplary game of its kind.

20 years ago – “Truckers-2”

And our homegrown hero of the day – a survival simulator on the Russian roads of the early 2000s called “Truckers-2”… Trying to convey its significance for the players of that time is rather pointless: like “Space Rangers”, “Corsairs”, “IL-2 Sturmovik” and other domestic mastodons of the turn of the millennium, “Truckers” do not arouse much interest in modern gamers, but they cause large tears of nostalgia on the faces of those who find them.

The essence of the gameplay, as well as the simple plot of the plot, is easy to understand from the title. Novosibirsk studio SoftLab-NSK did not reinvent the wheel, but put the player behind the wheel of a completely ordinary ZIL and sent them to deliver goods across their native spaces to an equally native soundtrack from the best songs of “Aria”. And this, by the way, is not a joke: for “Truckers-2” the band re-recorded some of their old hits in good quality for the first time, so for someone the scratched box with the disc has probably become not only a game, but also a musical relic.

But “Truckers-2” survived in history not only due to its specific atmosphere. It was also just an addictive game: from a simple race, which was the first part, it turned into an almost economic simulator like Elite 3… The player in it was not limited by one given route – to look for the shortest road from point A to point B had to independently, cutting off the path through the fields and roadsides in order to overtake annoying rivals on their own trucks. And the trucker’s sphere of influence was not limited to his personal truck: he could hire other drivers and build his own trucking empire. But, of course, not without annoying attention from the police, which regularly fined for violation of traffic rules and transporting suspicious powders, and the active participation of brothers on black SUVs, who, depending on the situation, could rob, and, conversely, help squeeze the coveted tractor from a competitor …

In favor of the persuasiveness of “Truckers-2” is also evidenced by the fact that someone even switched to a real profession after the game – one such story was published on the ati.su freight exchange.

I remember that I drowned my opponent in a puddle under the bridge on the way to Klyuchi, his white body was sticking out of the water for the whole game.

Reisenman

What did you play in April five, ten, fifteen and twenty years ago? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

The Longest Journey, “Truckers-2” – review addiction

5 years ago – Dark Souls III

10 years ago – Portal 2

15 years ago – Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

20 years ago – “Truckers-2”

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