Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness's Downloadable Content

A single add-on for an extremely obscure game that didn't really interest me to begin with?  Why wouldn't I want to spend my time ranting about such a worthy subject?



Tales of the Moon Cult: Yeah, don't buy this.

...

Oh, what's that?  You want me to actually put some effort and life into this rant and my opinion?  Well isn't that interesting: an audience that wants some investment from the creator they're giving their time of day.  What a crazy notion!  Well, if there's 1 thing that Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness has taught me, it's that audience engagement is strictly optional, so you're gonna just have to suck it, nerds!

Okay, look, I'm sorry, I'm being harsher than I should be here.  I don't actually think that Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness is a product of a lack of interest or effort.  But it IS a product of a lack of competence, and Tales of the Moon Cult suffers the same problems that the rest of the game does:

- The story has nothing in particular to say.  The main plotline of this DLC simply involves foiling some cultists' plans because bad guys are bad, and its sidequests don't amount to much more than standard fodder for killing time in an RPG.  And when the story has nothing below its surface level, the fact that said surface is narrated in a voice that's functional but lacks any real flourish comes across as lacking.  There's no satisfaction to this tale to be had in its conclusion; when it's all said and done, the only thing you'll feel was accomplished was that you put something sharp inside a bunch of guys who were bad enough that it wasn't immoral to do so.

- The lore and worldbuilding are uninteresting.  The new settings are generic, and even if they weren't, I'm not so enamored with Isilmerald that I'd be enthralled by a barebones island populated by cannibals* and another vineyard.  And the main antagonistic entity of the DLC is another evil cult?  Yeah, I'm sorry, but the threshold for evil cult fatigue in storytelling is actually remarkably low; once you've already got 1, that's it!  That's all the audience needs.  We're not gonna gasp and sit on the edge of our seats at the revelation that there're more 1-dimensional baddies in robes with curvy knives hanging out in a cave drawing pentagrams all day.  And even then, the evil cult of this DLC is functionally indistinguishable from the evil cultists you regularly fight in the main game; they're all violent nutters in service to a god/goddess who's a big jerk.  They give no greater personality or narrative weight to their deity than was already established, and the world of BGCoD is no richer for their inclusion.  The most weighty addition that this DLC provides to the game's world is that fish-people exist and they're not used to getting drunk, a fact which seems more interesting in this sentence than it does in the game itself.

- The cast as a whole is lifeless.  Most of the sidequests' characters are the NP'est of Cs.  The instigator and surprise villain of the main quest is so dull and by-the-book a questgiver and traitor that there is genuinely no possible chance that you'll ever be angry that I've just spoiled that twist for you.  The rest of the villains have no nuance whatsoever.  Now, I will at least give credit to Tales of the Moon Cult on 1 matter: your party members noticeably have more lines in reaction to the events transpiring before them than they did during the main game.  Whereas most of the main characters say very little during BGCoD proper, they're almost chatty in this add-on, and I do appreciate it when a developer takes a moment to address a flaw.  Unfortunately, it's a limited win, because most of the party members of this game have the same problem of lacking much personality that the rest of the cast has, and giving them more time only improves that situation so much.  Even the ones with a more standout personality tend to just use this extra dialogue to further hammer in their single and repetitive character traits--Jade's still being used for the same mildly sexual, mildly Addams Family-esque, mildly mild laughs, Rabinandera's still fixated on money and violence, and Phimm is still truly just the most titanic of douchebags.

So yes, the same flaws that made completing Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness a matter of determination rather than enjoyment likewise plague its add-on, and for all my blathering above, it really just comes down to the fact that this game's writing just isn't very interesting.  You follow the quest parameters, you kill some dudes and fetch some things, and once it's over, you'll never think about it again.  Frankly, the thing that most stands out about Tales of the Moon Cult is the fact that it's extraordinarily overpriced and oversold--they're really actually trying to say that 3 new map locations, half a dozen minor sidequests, and a maybe 2 hour main quest, constitute an "expansion" and justify a $12 price tag!  Hell, I don't even know how they justify calling it Tales of the Moon Cult; there's only a single "tale" being told here.

No.  This is not an expansion.  It is only a DLC.  And it is not worth $12.  $3, maybe.  If somehow Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness speaks to you in a way that it just never has to me.  But no more than that, and probably not even that.



Well, there you go!  A no doubt invaluable opinion piece on a DLC for a game you've never heard of and won't remember exists 10 minutes from now.  Well, I've rarely pretended that this blog is for anything in particular beyond my own amusement and satisfaction, and this little tirade gave me a chance to air out some of my overall frustrations with a game that I helped Kickstart, so mission accomplished!  Nonetheless, thanks for sticking with me through to the end all the same, assuming any of you actually did so.  Who knows, perhaps next time I'll be ranting about the add-ons of a game that some of you, any of you, might actually someday play!

...But don't count on it.










* Which, when I think about it, feels vaguely racist?