Just as a warning, today's rant has not had the benefit of having been proofread by my sister. She was quite ill recently, and I didn't want to worsen her condition by exposing her to my ramblings while she was in a weakened state.
Picture this: you’re playing an isometric RPG where more or less every action and interaction is handled by selecting stuff with the mouse. You want to choose your response from a list of dialogue options whilst having a conversation with a random bystander? Select it with the mouse. You want to bring the pain to some security goon so pathetically stricken with Stockholm Syndrome for his corporate overlords that the last thing he was doing before this fight broke out was defending Diablo Immortal on Twitter? Make with the clicky-clicky on the bullet icon in the menu, then another clickety-clicker on the Kotick apologist. You want to get from 1 side of the map to the other? Scroll on over and plant that pointer right where you aim to be.
So you’re doing this. Playing the point-and-click game, and doing it like a pro, or an amateur, because let’s face it, putting a cursor over something and hitting a button has a very low ceiling for mastery so there’s little discernible difference between an expert and a first timer. In the first scenario, your character delivers a witty 1-liner to the NPC, and the conversation moves along. The second, you fire a round into the corporate stan, and now Wyatt Cheng’s back to ineptly fighting his own battles. And in the last, you start making your way to your destination, sprinting so fast that an observer might think they’re witnessing a SquareEnix executive fleeing in terror from a good idea.
All’s well, right? Expected results all around. Great. But oh, hey, here’s a fun idea. Having efficiently run from 1 side of the map to the other as speedily as I move toward most things that involve ground beef, let’s now set our sights on a destination just about, say, half a screen away. Considering the brisk pace at which we traversed the full scope of this entire area, it’ll surely be the work of a moment to cross a distance equivalent to the average driveway, right?
Wrong. Because for some reason, any time you want to get somewhere that’s actually close by, this game reduces your pace down to about as fast as I move toward most things that don’t involve ground beef.
The game? Shadowrun Returns. And Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Also Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Basically, every PC-based Shadowrun. They all run on the same engine, and thus all regulate your party’s sprinting based on how far away the destination is from them.
It’s 1 of those gameplay ideas that looks deceptively alright on paper, like the Tales of series’s cooking feature, or Pokemon’s HM system. I mean, it sounds completely reasonable in theory: make the characters in the game move the fastest when they’ve got more ground to cover, and a “normal” pace over short distances. That’ll make the travel time relatively equal each time you want to move somewhere, and equality is a good thing, right?
Unfortunately, in practice, it’s just frustrating and makes the process of moving through these games seem plodding for no reason. First of all, the majority of your non-combat movements in the PC Shadowrun trilogy are generally going to be over more moderate distances--while crossing the entirety of the map is certainly not uncommon to be doing at any given time, most of the time you’re gonna be moving towards spots that are much closer, so the majority of your experience with your characters’ running speed is gonna be of the slow variety, so the balance of paces for which the developers seemed to be aiming is skewed noticeably, and not to the player’s benefit.
Secondly, the glaring divide between the paces of the fastest run, and the “normal” speed, does not help matters. Even if the majority of your commute wasn’t spent on crossing small distances and thus going at the slower jog, it’d still be at least a little annoying to see the sprinting that the game CAN provide, and yet have it frequently deny that pace to you for basically no reason. I’M the one playing the damn game, so why am I not the one deciding how much hustle to apply to any given situation? You’ve shown me that you CAN move my characters faster, so why am I not allowed to?
Third, I gotta say, even outside of the perception of slowness created by the first 2 issues, the basic pace of Shadowrun characters is objectively too damn slow. I feel like the game industry moves toward ethical standards of conduct faster than a Shadowrun protagonist crosses the street. These damn games take place in major urban centers, in the gritty, fast-paced setting of cyberpunk corporate dystopia; where the fuck is the hurried, frenzied lifestyle that this setting implies? For the love of Kofusachi, I’ve seen characters in slice-of-life animes glorifying the relaxed, peaceful existence of rural Japan comport themselves with greater overall speed than these constantly endangered urbanite mercenaries do in Shadowrun!
And fourth, beyond these errors in execution, the whole idea is honestly just flawed from the start. I don’t want equity in travel times in my game. The time it takes to get from downtown to the city limits shouldn’t be comparable to the time required to cover a city block. Players crossing larger distances in a game expect and accept that it’s going to take a longer time because that’s how distance works. Lowering that travel time via use of a running feature is certainly encouraged and should absolutely be mandatory, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of making other traveling longer!
There are ways to work around this whilst playing, I admit. When playing Shadowrun titles and mods for them, I’ll generally just quickly scroll over to whatever side of the map is in the general direction that I want to go in, and let the game think I’m telling the protagonist to emulate Forrest Gump’s cross-country trek, then just have the characters cease their Usain Bolt-ing when they get to the spot I actually want them at. But am I really supposed to be less annoyed by this situation because there’s a work-around? Now I’m spending the entire game dragging my pointer to every corner of the map and back like I’m trying to reenact 1 of those stupid Family Circus strips following Billy’s path while also being drunk. The fact that I can counteract 1 inconvenience by engaging in a less severe inconvenience isn’t an excuse.
Like a lot things I rant about, this doesn’t really matter, of course. The important things about Shadowrun’s PC trilogy are their stories, characters, purposes, themes, explorations of their setting, and so on. And on those terms, the trilogy is decent, great, and pretty good, in that order. Still, it IS annoying, and also, just honestly really weird. It’s not some oversight; it requires conscious effort from the developers to code a system like this, and more of that effort, for that matter, than it would have been just to create a damn run button, or a single sprinting pace. They chose to do this, and I don’t get why, because it couldn’t have taken very long into the testing phase for it to become clear that this wasn’t a very functional system.
Shadowrun? More like Shadowstroll. Shadowmeander. Shadowtoddle.
Showing posts with label Shadowrun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shadowrun. Show all posts
Thursday, August 18, 2022
The Shadowrun Series's PC Titles' Running
Thursday, March 18, 2021
Shadowrun: Hong Kong's Downloadable Content
You know, thinking about it, Indie RPGs like Shadowrun, West of Loathing, and Celestian Tales might represent the few times where a DLC rant of mine might actually make a difference to someone’s purchase decisions. I mean, a game like Fire Emblem 16 comes out with an add-on, and you don’t need to wait for me to tell you why it’s a load of crap, because there’s already a buttload of Youtubers and what few fools like me remain who actually commit their opinions to text who can tell you all about the subject. But an Indie game? Far fewer other resources to compete with. As long as I can get it out in a kinda-sorta timely manner, a DLC rant from me about an Indie RPG might actually influence a reader. I could actually make a bit of difference, guys!
Unless I were to do something dumb like play a game’s DLC and then just not bother writing a rant about it for over 5 years.
Shadows of Hong Kong: Purchasing the Extended Edition of Shadowrun: Hong Kong, or purchasing the upgrade to said edition if you already have the game normally, gives you a few little extras for the game, and most notably, a post-game adventure to continue the story after the main plot is all over and done with, called Shadows of Hong Kong.
It’s alright.
See, that’s why making this rant has just continued to be pushed further and further out on my schedule, again and again: I don’t really have much of anything to say about this DLC. It’s okay. Fine. Decent, even. Nothing worse than that. And certainly nothing more.
What’s the plot like? It’s okay. It’s more of a return to social conflicts, and after the heavy focus on all the supernatural stuff that was Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s primary plot, that’s a positive. But there’s not really much gravity to this story, either; it’s just sort of there. Like, if this were an actual tabletop Shadowrun session, this would clearly be 1 of those pre-generated basic adventures that come with the whole kit to give you the fundamentals of the franchise. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it lacks the personal touch of themes of family and obligation found in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, the underlying questions of anarchy vs. the imprisonment of corporatism and the great focus on community and personal legacies found in Shadowrun: Dragonfall, or the spectacular stories, messages, philosophies, and themes of society and personal connection to be found in the fan-made Calfree Trilogy. Shadows of Hong Kong is enjoyable, but it doesn’t say much of anything.
What’re the characters like? Again, they’re okay. Nothing wrong with Gobbet, Kindly Cheng, Is0bel, and all the rest. Their character development extends into this new adventure well enough. But then, most of them weren’t all that compelling to begin with; while Rachter is a very interesting character, and Gaichu and Duncan have their moments, this isn’t a cast with the heart and personal draw that the Shadowrun: Dragonfall crew had. It’s nice to see more of them, but not to the point that it’s gratifying.
I guess I can express actual discontent with 2 parts of it. A: It’s an adventure that takes between 6 - 8 hours to play, and is sold for $10, so it’s not a good value of time to money spent. You know my rule of thumb: unless the quality is truly noteworthy, an add-on should give you an hour per dollar spent on it. And B: the hook to the whole story relies on an enmity that I don’t think many players really felt towards the antagonist.
See, Shadows of Hong Kong is basically about getting all up in the business of and putting a stop to a corrupt and antagonistic police administrator who was a bit of a pain in the ass to the heroes during the main game. While corporate masters pull her strings (this is Shadowrun, after all), the story and premise of this DLC seems to stake itself heavily on a player’s having formed a personal enmity toward her during the main campaign, and I just don’t think that happened for a lot of people. Certainly it didn’t for me. I disliked her and wouldn’t have said no to seeing her get her comeuppance, but I never picked up on any strong, personal hostility there that demanded a follow-up adventure to give her her due. Frankly, I had much stronger negative feelings toward that dumbass cop in Shadowrun Returns who you can get canned during the game’s ending.
So that doesn’t really help the DLC’s plot. While it doesn’t stand out in general, it might have been a little more memorable and gripping had its major villain been as dislikable and revenge-worthy as the developers seemed to assume we’d find her. As it is, it feels like a story all about finally getting full vengeance on some random mid-boss.
I will say that 1 of the most common complaints I see about this DLC, the ending, didn’t really bother me. The general consensus seems to be annoyance that the player’s actions ultimately don’t change the way major events regarding Ares’s presence in Hong Kong go down, which I guess is too bad, but on the other hand, Harebrained Schemes is just trying to work within the actual canon of the Shadowrun universe. I didn’t see such complaints about Shadowrun: Dragonfall’s ending, with the anarchy of Germany falling to corporate invaders regardless of your relevant choices, and that was much the same case--the game’s characters may certainly have made an impact in how things went during such major events, but the overall outcome remains the same. I also, if you remember, generally liked the personal ending choice offered that allows the protagonist and Duncan to get out of their indentured servitude to Kindly Cheng, and that feels like the more important angle of the ending, anyway.
Anyway, I’ve dragged this out long enough. Bottom line: Shadows of Hong Kong is fun and engaging enough as you’re playing it, but will leave very little impact on you, and does have a few flaws. It’s neither long nor good enough to justify the difference between it and the regular edition of the game, but if you see it on sale for, like, 50% or more off, then you could do worse than continue your Shadowrun: Hong Kong adventure with this add-on. Hell, it’s still in the upper half of DLCs I’ve seen overall--even a strictly middling Shadowrun adventure is still reasonably fun, after all.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
The Shadowrun Series's Calfree Trilogy Mods Are Seriously Awesome
Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and Shadowrun: Hong Kong are all swell RPGs (well, okay, Returns really isn’t, but 2 out of 3 ain’t bad). They do, however, come with some unfortunate baggage for me: I didn’t realize just how much I need a cyberpunk RPG adventure periodically in my life until Harebrained Schemes brought the defining franchise of the genre to RPG form. And unfortunately, HS apparently decided to call it quits on the franchise for the foreseeable future after Hong Kong, meaning that since late 2015, I’ve started jonesing for more cyberpunk goodness. Dex helped me a bit with it, but hang it all, 1 cyberpunk RPG in 3 years just wasn’t enough, and it’s at least another year until CD Projekt Red’s done with Cyberpunk 2077!
Thankfully, though, Harebrained Schemes provided some relief for junkies like me, in that the Shadowrun PC trilogy wasn’t meant to just be the single campaign story of each game. In the tradition of Neverwinter Nights, the Shadowrun games were made with the intent that fans would use the game’s engine to create their own adventures and campaigns out of it, to share with other players. It’s a great idea, really, because it worked very well with Neverwinter Nights 1, with that title becoming 1 of the first huge mod scenes of PC games, and Shadowrun, like Neverwinter Nights, is based on a tabletop RPG, so people sharing campaign ideas is already a part of the culture of the series. And so, in this terrible post-Harebrained-Schemes period of drudgery, I thankfully do have some options for getting my cyberpunk RPG fix, in the campaigns that other players have created for the Shadowrun PC trilogy.
Unfortunately, like any junkie, I have very little self-control or logic when it comes to my drug of choice, so once I started playing these mods, I just went through them all at once, like an idiot. So I’m screwed until Cyberpunk 2077, after all.
Still, if I’ve run out of new Shadowrun mods to actually play, then perhaps I can at least get a contact high from talking about them, right?
There is a decent handful at this moment of mod campaigns for the Shadowrun trilogy available for runners to enjoy, and most of them are pretty good. I like A Stitch in Time, Mercurial, and Nightmare Harvest to varying degrees, and you should check them out if you feel yourself adrift in the same cyberpunk doldrums within which I find myself floating aimlessly. But what I want to talk about today is a trilogy of mod campaigns by one Cirion, or Seberin, depending on whether you get it through Steam or Nexus. And the reason I want to talk about these 3 user-generated campaigns is because they are fucking AWESOME.
Cirion’s trilogy, which I have decided to call the Calfree Trilogy since it takes place in the California Free State of the Shadowrun universe, is expertly crafted, in all regards. It plays as smoothly as any officially published RPG might. In fact, in terms of technical prowess, it goes beyond what you could expect from an official publisher, because Cirion has actually added features to 2 of the 3 campaigns he’s made--most notably, a character Influence system, where no such thing had existed in the original schematics of the Shadowrun games. That’s a pretty damn complicated feature to add to a game not originally designed for it, I would think!
More importantly for me, the story, characters, and themes of this trilogy are smooth, natural, and skillful, to a greater extent than most “real” RPG publishers manage. Additionally, these adventures provide great side-stories and fleshing-out of the lore that Shadowrun has already canonically established for Calfree, which will provide a pleasant anchor to more intense fans of the series, while the campaigns remain standalone enough as stories that players not entirely familiar with the long history of Shadowrun (which, honestly, is mostly the case for myself) won’t have any problem keeping up.
So, to start with, we have The Antumbra Saga, a mod for Shadowrun: Dragonfall. This is an episodic story which is engaging from the start with a tiny little shadowrun underneath a nightclub, which snowballs into an all-out war for the future of the California Free State. The pacing is great, which is essential in this sort of small-adventure-turned-grand-epic, and the characters are well-written, nuanced, and fun. It’s really good as a story for the sake of the adventure and conflict, and while I don’t think you’ll be moved or find much in the way of deep ideas or wisdom, The Antumbra Saga keeps you invested throughout its course. And it obviously was a great test-run for Cirion in Shadowrun mod-making, because he took the characters he had created and adapted, and used the knowledge he had gained to make the next mod campaign even better.
If the Antumbra Saga is awesome, The Caldecott Caper, its sequel, which is a mod for Shadowrun: Hong Kong, is super awesome. I greatly enjoyed The Antumbra Saga, obviously, but it was, for me, limited by its nature of being an adventure focused upon its own events and story than upon the human element within. It’s got solid characters, and a purpose, don’t get me wrong, but The Antumbra Saga was an adventure for the sake of its adventure, where the focus was more on what was happening and how it was happening, rather than the who and why, if that makes any sense. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing! The Antumbra Saga was, obviously, very good, and there are some legendary RPGs that share that focus on the events and overall story over the individuals involved, such as Deus Ex 1, Romancing Saga 1 + 2, and Fallout 1. Still, to me, a really great story usually comes from the heart, really speaks to us on a human level, and you’ll see that reflected in my list of the greatest RPGs I’ve played: the vast majority of them put a substantial focus on the human element of their stories, making a priority of developing their characters, capturing the audience’s emotion, and making statements about us as a people.
And The Caldecott Caper does that excellently. If I were to draw a comparison between TCC and other works, I’d say that this mod feels, in many ways, like an excellent Bioware-styled game from back in the days when the company knew what the bloody fuck they were doing with themselves. The cast is exceptionally likable and interesting, not to mention well-written and dynamic, and your interactions with them are as much a part of The Caldecott Caper’s greatness as any other component of the campaign. Each team member is a unique personality, easily as skillfully written and memorable as you might expect to find in a ‘real’ game--more than that, in fact! I daresay not even half the published RPGs I’ve played have casts as solid as this mod’s ensemble. The NPCs are very good, too, and the villains are serviceable. Finally, the romance subplots are top-notch stuff...in fact, as I have mentioned previously, the romance with Persi in this mod was the best love story I encountered in all the RPGs I played during 2017!
And make no mistake: Cirion did not have to compromise on the story’s quality to achieve this, because, if anything, this adventure’s plot is several steps up from The Antumbra Saga’s. It begins as a simple train heist, and, as Shadowrun stories do, develops into a bigger story of power struggles and social conflict. And the interesting thing about this one is that, though it is well-written, creative, and purposeful, it is also perfectly balanced. Things never get so grandiose in The Caldecott Caper that you lose the excitement of the simple heist story that it is, and yet, the events of preparing for said heist all unexpectedly but with subtle method coalesce into the grander schemes that the heroes suddenly find themselves intruding upon and entangled by. This mod has all the basic pleasure of a classic run through the shadows, but keeps that undercurrent of thoughtful substance strong with its musings about the society of the Shadowrun universe.
Ultimately, The Caldecott Caper is a terrific slice of Shadowrun, the kind of adventure that perfectly embodies the style of the series, and shows off the potential of user-generated content in games like this. It was, at the time I played it, second only to Shadowrun: Dragonfall in terms of quality of all the Shadowrun adventures I’ve experienced. So you can imagine my thorough delight when Cirion unexpectedly released a third and final campaign mod that was even better.
Calfree in Chains, also a mod for Shadowrun: Hong Kong, is the finale to Cirion’s trilogy, and it’s pretty fucking amazing. It honestly might be better than Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and if it’s not, then it’s at least equal to it--and I'd like to point out that Shadowrun: Dragonfall is so excellent an RPG that it frequently just barely misses getting onto my list of the greatest RPGs ever created. This mod is basically a perfect balance between The Antumbra Saga and The Caldecott Caper, in that it’s got a major, epic story much like The Antumbra Saga did, but it’s also majorly focused on the characters and human element of the players involved, as The Caldecott Caper was. Calfree in Chains is also even more than that, because this mod also has major themes running throughout its story of racial conflict and of whether it is better to respond to evil with violent or nonviolent resistance. And Calfree in Chains does a stellar job with exploring that question of violence versus nonviolence, too. Aside from Undertale, I daresay this is the best RPG I’ve played that examines the subject of nonviolence, and it’s less of a second-place and more of a good companion to Undertale, because where Undertale examines the concepts of violence and pacifism at their core and essence, Calfree in Chains examines them in terms of real-world application and conflict. It shows both the strengths and limitations of each philosophy, and the consequences of your actions and inactions are a constant aspect of the game’s environment and characters as you go along--which is, in itself, another virtue of Calfree in Chains, since western RPG players are very fond of both having choices in their games, and of those choices having consequences and weight.
As a standalone adventure, Calfree in Chains is great. The cast is solid, the romance (particularly with Arelia) is wonderful.* The story is engaging, meaningful, and natural, and it comes to have a powerful hold on its audience. It has worthwhile messages to convey and significant philosophy to explore: this is a work with purpose. And, quite frankly, there are multiple moments in this game which will hit you, and hit you hard. Some of my most powerful, emotional moments in 2018 as an RPG player have been with Calfree in Chains, in fact--I played The Witcher 3 and Bravely Default this year, and neither of those RPG titans possess moments of such emotional power as I found in Calfree in Chains. Romanced Arelia’s speech at the end of the game is just utterly beautiful.
And as a finish to this trilogy, Calfree in Chains is great, too. It brings the simmering issues of the previous 2 adventures to a head, feeling like it is, indeed, the story and conflict that Cirion’s works have been leading up to. And it uses the characters and lore established in The Antumbra Saga and The Caldecott Caper exactly as they should be used: as a foundation, as a point of familiarity to start at, without leaning on them so heavily that it can’t introduce and spotlight its new characters and lore.
I am completely serious, not exaggerating whatsoever, when I say that Cirion has crafted, in his Calfree Trilogy, the best video game Shadowrun experience to date. I’ve been a lifelong fan of the original SNES title, I really like Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and Shadowrun: Dragonfall keeps only barely missing my list of Greatest RPGs, but I say, with sincerity, that this collection of adventures that Cirion has created is the best Shadowrun experience out there. And I mean that both in terms of being the best example of a Shadowrun story, and in terms of being the best work as a whole. Shadowrun: Dragonfall might still be the best individual Shadowrun adventure, or it at least might be tied with Calfree in Chains...but if you put the actual, official Shadowrun trilogy of games that Harebrained Schemes created next to Cirion’s Calfree Trilogy, you will find, pound for pound, that Cirion’s work’s virtues outweigh Harebrained Schemes’s. I emphatically recommend the Calfree Trilogy to anyone who owns the Shadowrun PC games--and frankly, if you don’t, then you should strongly consider purchasing them, not just for their own virtues, but also for the fact that you can, through them, experience the genuinely superlative Calfree Trilogy.
* Though I do admit I still think Persi’s love story in The Caldecott Caper is the best of the trilogy.
Thankfully, though, Harebrained Schemes provided some relief for junkies like me, in that the Shadowrun PC trilogy wasn’t meant to just be the single campaign story of each game. In the tradition of Neverwinter Nights, the Shadowrun games were made with the intent that fans would use the game’s engine to create their own adventures and campaigns out of it, to share with other players. It’s a great idea, really, because it worked very well with Neverwinter Nights 1, with that title becoming 1 of the first huge mod scenes of PC games, and Shadowrun, like Neverwinter Nights, is based on a tabletop RPG, so people sharing campaign ideas is already a part of the culture of the series. And so, in this terrible post-Harebrained-Schemes period of drudgery, I thankfully do have some options for getting my cyberpunk RPG fix, in the campaigns that other players have created for the Shadowrun PC trilogy.
Unfortunately, like any junkie, I have very little self-control or logic when it comes to my drug of choice, so once I started playing these mods, I just went through them all at once, like an idiot. So I’m screwed until Cyberpunk 2077, after all.
Still, if I’ve run out of new Shadowrun mods to actually play, then perhaps I can at least get a contact high from talking about them, right?
There is a decent handful at this moment of mod campaigns for the Shadowrun trilogy available for runners to enjoy, and most of them are pretty good. I like A Stitch in Time, Mercurial, and Nightmare Harvest to varying degrees, and you should check them out if you feel yourself adrift in the same cyberpunk doldrums within which I find myself floating aimlessly. But what I want to talk about today is a trilogy of mod campaigns by one Cirion, or Seberin, depending on whether you get it through Steam or Nexus. And the reason I want to talk about these 3 user-generated campaigns is because they are fucking AWESOME.
Cirion’s trilogy, which I have decided to call the Calfree Trilogy since it takes place in the California Free State of the Shadowrun universe, is expertly crafted, in all regards. It plays as smoothly as any officially published RPG might. In fact, in terms of technical prowess, it goes beyond what you could expect from an official publisher, because Cirion has actually added features to 2 of the 3 campaigns he’s made--most notably, a character Influence system, where no such thing had existed in the original schematics of the Shadowrun games. That’s a pretty damn complicated feature to add to a game not originally designed for it, I would think!
More importantly for me, the story, characters, and themes of this trilogy are smooth, natural, and skillful, to a greater extent than most “real” RPG publishers manage. Additionally, these adventures provide great side-stories and fleshing-out of the lore that Shadowrun has already canonically established for Calfree, which will provide a pleasant anchor to more intense fans of the series, while the campaigns remain standalone enough as stories that players not entirely familiar with the long history of Shadowrun (which, honestly, is mostly the case for myself) won’t have any problem keeping up.
So, to start with, we have The Antumbra Saga, a mod for Shadowrun: Dragonfall. This is an episodic story which is engaging from the start with a tiny little shadowrun underneath a nightclub, which snowballs into an all-out war for the future of the California Free State. The pacing is great, which is essential in this sort of small-adventure-turned-grand-epic, and the characters are well-written, nuanced, and fun. It’s really good as a story for the sake of the adventure and conflict, and while I don’t think you’ll be moved or find much in the way of deep ideas or wisdom, The Antumbra Saga keeps you invested throughout its course. And it obviously was a great test-run for Cirion in Shadowrun mod-making, because he took the characters he had created and adapted, and used the knowledge he had gained to make the next mod campaign even better.
If the Antumbra Saga is awesome, The Caldecott Caper, its sequel, which is a mod for Shadowrun: Hong Kong, is super awesome. I greatly enjoyed The Antumbra Saga, obviously, but it was, for me, limited by its nature of being an adventure focused upon its own events and story than upon the human element within. It’s got solid characters, and a purpose, don’t get me wrong, but The Antumbra Saga was an adventure for the sake of its adventure, where the focus was more on what was happening and how it was happening, rather than the who and why, if that makes any sense. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing! The Antumbra Saga was, obviously, very good, and there are some legendary RPGs that share that focus on the events and overall story over the individuals involved, such as Deus Ex 1, Romancing Saga 1 + 2, and Fallout 1. Still, to me, a really great story usually comes from the heart, really speaks to us on a human level, and you’ll see that reflected in my list of the greatest RPGs I’ve played: the vast majority of them put a substantial focus on the human element of their stories, making a priority of developing their characters, capturing the audience’s emotion, and making statements about us as a people.
And The Caldecott Caper does that excellently. If I were to draw a comparison between TCC and other works, I’d say that this mod feels, in many ways, like an excellent Bioware-styled game from back in the days when the company knew what the bloody fuck they were doing with themselves. The cast is exceptionally likable and interesting, not to mention well-written and dynamic, and your interactions with them are as much a part of The Caldecott Caper’s greatness as any other component of the campaign. Each team member is a unique personality, easily as skillfully written and memorable as you might expect to find in a ‘real’ game--more than that, in fact! I daresay not even half the published RPGs I’ve played have casts as solid as this mod’s ensemble. The NPCs are very good, too, and the villains are serviceable. Finally, the romance subplots are top-notch stuff...in fact, as I have mentioned previously, the romance with Persi in this mod was the best love story I encountered in all the RPGs I played during 2017!
And make no mistake: Cirion did not have to compromise on the story’s quality to achieve this, because, if anything, this adventure’s plot is several steps up from The Antumbra Saga’s. It begins as a simple train heist, and, as Shadowrun stories do, develops into a bigger story of power struggles and social conflict. And the interesting thing about this one is that, though it is well-written, creative, and purposeful, it is also perfectly balanced. Things never get so grandiose in The Caldecott Caper that you lose the excitement of the simple heist story that it is, and yet, the events of preparing for said heist all unexpectedly but with subtle method coalesce into the grander schemes that the heroes suddenly find themselves intruding upon and entangled by. This mod has all the basic pleasure of a classic run through the shadows, but keeps that undercurrent of thoughtful substance strong with its musings about the society of the Shadowrun universe.
Ultimately, The Caldecott Caper is a terrific slice of Shadowrun, the kind of adventure that perfectly embodies the style of the series, and shows off the potential of user-generated content in games like this. It was, at the time I played it, second only to Shadowrun: Dragonfall in terms of quality of all the Shadowrun adventures I’ve experienced. So you can imagine my thorough delight when Cirion unexpectedly released a third and final campaign mod that was even better.
Calfree in Chains, also a mod for Shadowrun: Hong Kong, is the finale to Cirion’s trilogy, and it’s pretty fucking amazing. It honestly might be better than Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and if it’s not, then it’s at least equal to it--and I'd like to point out that Shadowrun: Dragonfall is so excellent an RPG that it frequently just barely misses getting onto my list of the greatest RPGs ever created. This mod is basically a perfect balance between The Antumbra Saga and The Caldecott Caper, in that it’s got a major, epic story much like The Antumbra Saga did, but it’s also majorly focused on the characters and human element of the players involved, as The Caldecott Caper was. Calfree in Chains is also even more than that, because this mod also has major themes running throughout its story of racial conflict and of whether it is better to respond to evil with violent or nonviolent resistance. And Calfree in Chains does a stellar job with exploring that question of violence versus nonviolence, too. Aside from Undertale, I daresay this is the best RPG I’ve played that examines the subject of nonviolence, and it’s less of a second-place and more of a good companion to Undertale, because where Undertale examines the concepts of violence and pacifism at their core and essence, Calfree in Chains examines them in terms of real-world application and conflict. It shows both the strengths and limitations of each philosophy, and the consequences of your actions and inactions are a constant aspect of the game’s environment and characters as you go along--which is, in itself, another virtue of Calfree in Chains, since western RPG players are very fond of both having choices in their games, and of those choices having consequences and weight.
As a standalone adventure, Calfree in Chains is great. The cast is solid, the romance (particularly with Arelia) is wonderful.* The story is engaging, meaningful, and natural, and it comes to have a powerful hold on its audience. It has worthwhile messages to convey and significant philosophy to explore: this is a work with purpose. And, quite frankly, there are multiple moments in this game which will hit you, and hit you hard. Some of my most powerful, emotional moments in 2018 as an RPG player have been with Calfree in Chains, in fact--I played The Witcher 3 and Bravely Default this year, and neither of those RPG titans possess moments of such emotional power as I found in Calfree in Chains. Romanced Arelia’s speech at the end of the game is just utterly beautiful.
And as a finish to this trilogy, Calfree in Chains is great, too. It brings the simmering issues of the previous 2 adventures to a head, feeling like it is, indeed, the story and conflict that Cirion’s works have been leading up to. And it uses the characters and lore established in The Antumbra Saga and The Caldecott Caper exactly as they should be used: as a foundation, as a point of familiarity to start at, without leaning on them so heavily that it can’t introduce and spotlight its new characters and lore.
I am completely serious, not exaggerating whatsoever, when I say that Cirion has crafted, in his Calfree Trilogy, the best video game Shadowrun experience to date. I’ve been a lifelong fan of the original SNES title, I really like Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and Shadowrun: Dragonfall keeps only barely missing my list of Greatest RPGs, but I say, with sincerity, that this collection of adventures that Cirion has created is the best Shadowrun experience out there. And I mean that both in terms of being the best example of a Shadowrun story, and in terms of being the best work as a whole. Shadowrun: Dragonfall might still be the best individual Shadowrun adventure, or it at least might be tied with Calfree in Chains...but if you put the actual, official Shadowrun trilogy of games that Harebrained Schemes created next to Cirion’s Calfree Trilogy, you will find, pound for pound, that Cirion’s work’s virtues outweigh Harebrained Schemes’s. I emphatically recommend the Calfree Trilogy to anyone who owns the Shadowrun PC games--and frankly, if you don’t, then you should strongly consider purchasing them, not just for their own virtues, but also for the fact that you can, through them, experience the genuinely superlative Calfree Trilogy.
* Though I do admit I still think Persi’s love story in The Caldecott Caper is the best of the trilogy.
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Shadowrun: Hong Kong's Ending Choice
Interestingly, the ending of each of the recent Shadowrun games has presented the player a choice in career path, and each of the choices have a similar theme. In Shadowrun Returns, the protagonist is presented with the opportunity to become a personal security officer for some wealthy, powerful bigwig. And in Shadowrun: Dragonfall, a representative of Lofwyr, the tremendously powerful dragon who heads the largest corporation in the world, offers the protagonist the opportunity for her/his team to become a retained group of mercenaries for Lofwyr. I say this is interesting, because both of these choices are basically presenting the issue that defines the entire Shadowrun franchise: the choice between the comfort and security of being owned by the enslavers of man (government, religion, and, by far most of all, corporation), and the hard, usually short life of refusing to give up your freedom to those who see you as nothing more than a resource to be possessed.
Now, almost needless to say, in both of these games, I told the mouthpieces of oppression to fuck off, and stayed a Shadowrunner. If I was possessed of the opinion that trading away your self-determination for comfort and security was a worthy goal to pursue, I wouldn’t be playing a damn Shadowrun game to begin with! Easy decision, right? Of course. Screw personal luxury, a Shadowrunner stands on her or his principles!
Which is why it would probably seem odd to you that in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, when this choice was presented again, I totally had the protagonist go for it.
So, see, at the end of Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s Extended Edition (which basically adds a small post-game storyline, much like how Fallout 3’s Broken Steel DLC extended the game past its ending), a moment comes when you have a choice similar to that offered at the end of the Shadowrun titles I mentioned above: you can follow through with the deal you’ve made with Qiu and the corporation she represents, or do as Kindly Cheng, the leader of the Triad group that you’ve been working with until now, orders. The former option will earn a reward from Qiu’s corporate backers in the form of restored SINs (System Identification Number) for the protagonist and the protagonist’s adopted brother Duncan--essentially, they’ll both be able to go back to a legal life within the social system like they had before Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s events. The latter option will be giving the finger to all involved corps and supporting the criminal organizations that live outside corporate law.
So, you’d expect that I would have chosen to side with Kindly Cheng and tell the corps to fuck off, right? But I didn’t. My decision in this scenario is to help Qiu and her corporation out, as promised, and have the SINs restored for the protagonist and Duncan. It seems hypocritical, I know, but hear out my reasoning:
First of all, the end result, on the large scale, is the same either way. Hong Kong is still doomed to become a plaything of the Ares corporation regardless of whether Qiu’s company can fight back or the Triads have a better starting position. If this was a decision that made a true difference for the citizens and runners of Hong Kong, I’d surely side with Cheng, since, though in an unpleasant way, her gang represents the freedom from the system that the Shadowrunners live by. But because this decision changes only the fate of the game’s core cast, more leeway is allowed for selfish reasons.
So, with that understanding, here’s the big thing about this issue: being a Shadowrunner is ultimately meant to be about having control over how you live your life, and refusing to relinquish your self-determination to some unchallenged, unchecked, and undeserving authority. Being a Shadowrunner is a choice to live free to who you are, instead of submitting to who someone else wants you to be.
But the protagonist of Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and her/his brother Duncan? They never got to MAKE that choice. The circumstances of the game’s plot forced them to become SINless and to live as soldiers of fortune.
The protagonists of Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall were both Shadowrunners already when those games started. It’s right for them to reject the offers of the powerful to keep them in cages, because these characters’ lifestyle implies that they have already made that choice in the past. But Duncan and the protagonist of Shadowrun: Hong Kong are bound by no obligation to stay true to a past choice, because that choice was stolen from them by the circumstances of fate.
Additionally, Duncan and SHK Protagonist’s lives as Shadowrunners have not really been a particularly good representation of the freedom of living life in the shadows. They’re allowed to take jobs on the side, but ultimately, they answer to Kindly Cheng as their master, again as a result of circumstances beyond their control more than any choice. That’s basically almost the same as it would have been for the Shadowrun: Dragonfall team if I’d had them take Lofwyr’s deal: life as another’s pet, simply on a longer leash than most. In a case such as this, being returned to the regular social system would actually represent a life with more self-direction than the current life in the shadows allows. Hell, the protagonist could choose to have her or his SIN restored, leave Hong Kong, and then become a Shadowrunner again, this time on her/his own terms.
Furthermore, there’s Duncan to consider. It would be one thing if this choice only affected the protagonist, but the restored SIN deal is offered to both her/him, AND Duncan. Even if the protagonist wants to continue as a Shadowrunner, it’s not just herself/himself that she/he is choosing a lifestyle for, it’s also Duncan. Duncan eventually becomes resigned to a life of running the shadows during the events of the main game, but he doesn’t like it, and when the possibility is raised that he could have his SIN restored and live a lawful life once more, he jumps at the chance.
Like I said, if the protagonist likes being a Shadowrunner better than living a normal life, she/he can always choose at a later date to give up the standard life again and return to the underworld--and do so without being eternally indebted to Kindly Cheng, to boot. This isn’t the protagonist’s only chance at living as a Shadowrunner. But this IS Duncan’s only chance at getting out of the shadows and living a life he wants to. To give up on the chance to have their SINs restored is to screw Duncan, the longest and most loyal companion the protagonist has, over horribly.
And frankly? If you do that to Duncan, you’re no better than the careless, selfish corporations and wealthy assholes who are the villains of the Shadowrun franchise. No, really, how would you be any different? You’re taking a man’s ability to decide what he wants to do with his life out of his hands, deciding his fate for him with no regard to what he wants. That’s the thematic definition of everything the entire Shadowrun franchise stands against!
In Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall, I told the messengers of society’s oppression to take a hike, because I believe in self autonomy, in the freedom that Shadowrunners represent. But it’s because I hold that belief that I chose the exact opposite in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and allowed Duncan and his sister/brother to escape their lives in the shadows: because this time, that’s the choice that means freedom. And I say kudos to Harebrained Schemes for having the skill and creativity to flip the situation around in such a way.
Now, almost needless to say, in both of these games, I told the mouthpieces of oppression to fuck off, and stayed a Shadowrunner. If I was possessed of the opinion that trading away your self-determination for comfort and security was a worthy goal to pursue, I wouldn’t be playing a damn Shadowrun game to begin with! Easy decision, right? Of course. Screw personal luxury, a Shadowrunner stands on her or his principles!
Which is why it would probably seem odd to you that in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, when this choice was presented again, I totally had the protagonist go for it.
So, see, at the end of Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s Extended Edition (which basically adds a small post-game storyline, much like how Fallout 3’s Broken Steel DLC extended the game past its ending), a moment comes when you have a choice similar to that offered at the end of the Shadowrun titles I mentioned above: you can follow through with the deal you’ve made with Qiu and the corporation she represents, or do as Kindly Cheng, the leader of the Triad group that you’ve been working with until now, orders. The former option will earn a reward from Qiu’s corporate backers in the form of restored SINs (System Identification Number) for the protagonist and the protagonist’s adopted brother Duncan--essentially, they’ll both be able to go back to a legal life within the social system like they had before Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s events. The latter option will be giving the finger to all involved corps and supporting the criminal organizations that live outside corporate law.
So, you’d expect that I would have chosen to side with Kindly Cheng and tell the corps to fuck off, right? But I didn’t. My decision in this scenario is to help Qiu and her corporation out, as promised, and have the SINs restored for the protagonist and Duncan. It seems hypocritical, I know, but hear out my reasoning:
First of all, the end result, on the large scale, is the same either way. Hong Kong is still doomed to become a plaything of the Ares corporation regardless of whether Qiu’s company can fight back or the Triads have a better starting position. If this was a decision that made a true difference for the citizens and runners of Hong Kong, I’d surely side with Cheng, since, though in an unpleasant way, her gang represents the freedom from the system that the Shadowrunners live by. But because this decision changes only the fate of the game’s core cast, more leeway is allowed for selfish reasons.
So, with that understanding, here’s the big thing about this issue: being a Shadowrunner is ultimately meant to be about having control over how you live your life, and refusing to relinquish your self-determination to some unchallenged, unchecked, and undeserving authority. Being a Shadowrunner is a choice to live free to who you are, instead of submitting to who someone else wants you to be.
But the protagonist of Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and her/his brother Duncan? They never got to MAKE that choice. The circumstances of the game’s plot forced them to become SINless and to live as soldiers of fortune.
The protagonists of Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall were both Shadowrunners already when those games started. It’s right for them to reject the offers of the powerful to keep them in cages, because these characters’ lifestyle implies that they have already made that choice in the past. But Duncan and the protagonist of Shadowrun: Hong Kong are bound by no obligation to stay true to a past choice, because that choice was stolen from them by the circumstances of fate.
Additionally, Duncan and SHK Protagonist’s lives as Shadowrunners have not really been a particularly good representation of the freedom of living life in the shadows. They’re allowed to take jobs on the side, but ultimately, they answer to Kindly Cheng as their master, again as a result of circumstances beyond their control more than any choice. That’s basically almost the same as it would have been for the Shadowrun: Dragonfall team if I’d had them take Lofwyr’s deal: life as another’s pet, simply on a longer leash than most. In a case such as this, being returned to the regular social system would actually represent a life with more self-direction than the current life in the shadows allows. Hell, the protagonist could choose to have her or his SIN restored, leave Hong Kong, and then become a Shadowrunner again, this time on her/his own terms.
Furthermore, there’s Duncan to consider. It would be one thing if this choice only affected the protagonist, but the restored SIN deal is offered to both her/him, AND Duncan. Even if the protagonist wants to continue as a Shadowrunner, it’s not just herself/himself that she/he is choosing a lifestyle for, it’s also Duncan. Duncan eventually becomes resigned to a life of running the shadows during the events of the main game, but he doesn’t like it, and when the possibility is raised that he could have his SIN restored and live a lawful life once more, he jumps at the chance.
Like I said, if the protagonist likes being a Shadowrunner better than living a normal life, she/he can always choose at a later date to give up the standard life again and return to the underworld--and do so without being eternally indebted to Kindly Cheng, to boot. This isn’t the protagonist’s only chance at living as a Shadowrunner. But this IS Duncan’s only chance at getting out of the shadows and living a life he wants to. To give up on the chance to have their SINs restored is to screw Duncan, the longest and most loyal companion the protagonist has, over horribly.
And frankly? If you do that to Duncan, you’re no better than the careless, selfish corporations and wealthy assholes who are the villains of the Shadowrun franchise. No, really, how would you be any different? You’re taking a man’s ability to decide what he wants to do with his life out of his hands, deciding his fate for him with no regard to what he wants. That’s the thematic definition of everything the entire Shadowrun franchise stands against!
In Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall, I told the messengers of society’s oppression to take a hike, because I believe in self autonomy, in the freedom that Shadowrunners represent. But it’s because I hold that belief that I chose the exact opposite in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and allowed Duncan and his sister/brother to escape their lives in the shadows: because this time, that’s the choice that means freedom. And I say kudos to Harebrained Schemes for having the skill and creativity to flip the situation around in such a way.
Monday, July 18, 2016
Shadowrun: Hong Kong's Typos
Come on, Harebrained Schemes. COME ON.
Look. I think we can all agree that the occasional error in our RPGs’ dialogue and narration is no big deal, right? We all make mistakes here and there. My rants certainly aren’t always perfect, even by the somewhat loose standards of English composition that I hold myself to. There’s an insane amount of text in your average RPG, so the rare mistake must be allowed for.
But there are typos all OVER Shadowrun: Hong Kong. And they get distracting. And that’s a problem. Because when you’re writing out an interesting, nuanced story with interesting, nuanced characters (well, some of them, at least; Is0bel’s just kind of there), the last thing you want is for your audience to split their attention from appreciating your art’s sophisticated content and chuckling at your art’s crude presentation.
It’s like if you took, say, Toy Story 3--we can all agree that movie was great, right?--and had a prominent animation error show up every 5 or 10 minutes. Is the story still engaging? Are the characters still lovable? Does everything still look mostly great? Yes! But are you going to leave the theater thinking, “I can’t believe the movie had all those errors,” and think it was unprofessional? Also yes!
This ain’t like the translation of Eternal Senia. Eternal Senia was produced by like 1 guy with a few contributions from a couple others, who didn’t speak English, and the game is free. No one’s making money off of it. It is allowable that Eternal Senia’s English is not perfect...hell, it’s actually a little endearing at times; I mentioned in my rant on the game that there are times when the crude translation actually kind of adds flavor to the dialogue.
But Shadowrun: Hong Kong costs 20 bucks, was fully funded by both a Kickstarter campaign and proceeds from previous Shadowrun games, had a complete development team working on it, and was created by a company based in the USA. Not to mention, the overall content of the game’s text makes it clear that these writers know their way around the English language pretty darned well! So what gives?
I wouldn’t be making such a big deal out of this, except for the fact that it’s not the first time Harebrained Schemes has been so damn sloppy in its dialogue and narration. Shadowrun Returns was crawling with spelling and grammatical mistakes! And people noticed, and ridiculed appropriately. So then, what do you know, Shadowrun: Dragonfall comes out a while later, and it’s on point with this, burdened with barely any typos, no more than you’d expect a professional game to have. And now the third game's brought back the typo issue. What gives, Harebrained Schemes? You FIXED this problem! There is actual, tangible evidence that you know better! It just makes no damned sense; they’re repeating a mistake they already knew enough to avoid!
I dunno. Maybe I’m overreacting. But I dislike sloppy work, and that’s certainly what this is.
Look. I think we can all agree that the occasional error in our RPGs’ dialogue and narration is no big deal, right? We all make mistakes here and there. My rants certainly aren’t always perfect, even by the somewhat loose standards of English composition that I hold myself to. There’s an insane amount of text in your average RPG, so the rare mistake must be allowed for.
But there are typos all OVER Shadowrun: Hong Kong. And they get distracting. And that’s a problem. Because when you’re writing out an interesting, nuanced story with interesting, nuanced characters (well, some of them, at least; Is0bel’s just kind of there), the last thing you want is for your audience to split their attention from appreciating your art’s sophisticated content and chuckling at your art’s crude presentation.
It’s like if you took, say, Toy Story 3--we can all agree that movie was great, right?--and had a prominent animation error show up every 5 or 10 minutes. Is the story still engaging? Are the characters still lovable? Does everything still look mostly great? Yes! But are you going to leave the theater thinking, “I can’t believe the movie had all those errors,” and think it was unprofessional? Also yes!
This ain’t like the translation of Eternal Senia. Eternal Senia was produced by like 1 guy with a few contributions from a couple others, who didn’t speak English, and the game is free. No one’s making money off of it. It is allowable that Eternal Senia’s English is not perfect...hell, it’s actually a little endearing at times; I mentioned in my rant on the game that there are times when the crude translation actually kind of adds flavor to the dialogue.
But Shadowrun: Hong Kong costs 20 bucks, was fully funded by both a Kickstarter campaign and proceeds from previous Shadowrun games, had a complete development team working on it, and was created by a company based in the USA. Not to mention, the overall content of the game’s text makes it clear that these writers know their way around the English language pretty darned well! So what gives?
I wouldn’t be making such a big deal out of this, except for the fact that it’s not the first time Harebrained Schemes has been so damn sloppy in its dialogue and narration. Shadowrun Returns was crawling with spelling and grammatical mistakes! And people noticed, and ridiculed appropriately. So then, what do you know, Shadowrun: Dragonfall comes out a while later, and it’s on point with this, burdened with barely any typos, no more than you’d expect a professional game to have. And now the third game's brought back the typo issue. What gives, Harebrained Schemes? You FIXED this problem! There is actual, tangible evidence that you know better! It just makes no damned sense; they’re repeating a mistake they already knew enough to avoid!
I dunno. Maybe I’m overreacting. But I dislike sloppy work, and that’s certainly what this is.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
The Shadowrun Series Theory: The Shadowrunner's Motto
“Watch your back, shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never, ever cut a deal with a dragon.”
This is the classic motto of the Shadowrunner, a combination of survival advice and well wish that those who live outside the tyranny of corporate law in the Shadowrun universe espouse, the closest thing to a common code that those who run the shadows possess. It’s an iconic phrase of the Shadowrun franchise, which its fans recognize and hold dear the same way fans of Planescape: Torment do for the question, “What can change the nature of a man?”, and fans of Fallout do for “War. War never changes.” It’s a cool phrase, summing up the survivalist mentality and reality for a Shadowrunner in a manner that’s simple and straightforward.
Or...is there something more within it?
This motto of the Shadowrunner is meant to be interpreted literally, yes. To survive as a free soldier of fortune, you must be wary and ready for attack, you must be competent and possess sharp skills, and you mustn’t be wasteful of your resources. And of course, to survive, you must not let yourself fall into the clutches of that which is too powerful and too clever for you to overcome, the mighty dragons who rule society and claim the world’s resources and people as their treasure hoards. And maybe that’s all there is to it, the literal interpretation. Still...I think that this motto, at least its final part, is also metaphorical. The motto is not just advice on how to stay alive as a Shadowrunner...it’s also the guideline to how to live as a Shadowrunner.
It comes back to what dragons are in Shadowrun. On the surface, the great dragons of Shadowrun are both major characters in the overall story of the Shadowrun world, and essentially a foundational part of the series’s lore. Through one method of control or another (though most commonly via heading the mega corporations that rule and spiritually enslave humanity), the dragons have become the puppet masters of the world, using humanity and metahumanity as resources with which to play a long game of global chess against each other to see who can hoard the greatest wealth of resources.
But it might also be that we’re meant to see the dragons of Shadowrun as something other than just powerful, scaled overlords. More than just physical players in the plot, entities unto themselves and separated from humanity, dragons might also be allegories, representations of greed and covetous control in its highest form. After all, the Shadowrun dragons have, in their short time in the world of humanity, quickly positioned themselves into the places of power over countless others. They are the heads of government, they are involved in organized crime, they head social and religious organizations, and, most importantly, they head the colossal, international businesses, the “megacorps,” that control the peoples of the world over any other force. Follow the trail of any influential and powerful organization, particularly those which are for profit, and you’ll almost surely eventually find a dragon at its end, pulling the strings and consolidating the world’s resources and people as its own, its only true competitors in global manipulation its draconic peers. Sometimes, as in the case of the infamous Lofwyr, you don’t have to follow the trail for very long.
And yet, the ones who cut the trail, who pave it, who serve as its cobblestones, are humans, selfish, short-sighted, power-hungry, greedy little humans. It was no dragon that created the concept of a corporation that puts profits before people, no dragon that invented the concept of political groups and national governments, no dragon that first organized religion. These tools for holding humanity in place and subjugating the everyman were thousands of years old before the dragons arrived on the Shadowrun world scene, created, enacted, and even perfected by human beings. Dragons simply play the game better than people, and seat themselves in the throne that mankind thought it was building for itself. Or at least, its own elite.
In a sense, then, dragons are more than just the characters that the Shadowrun series’s surface presents them as. Dragons are not an alien, outside force, but a foe that lives within our own creation, our own being. I submit that the Shadowrun dragon is intended to be a representation of the extreme of certain faults within humans. They are the embodiment of greed, of corporation, of power lust...they are the embodiment of the desire for the one to make the many dance to his or her whims, and for no sake but simple, covetous want.
Having established that, then, let us look at what a Shadowrunner is. You can find a Shadowrunner in any person. The crusader against social wrongs. The narcissist desiring a bigger piece of the pie than his day job allows. The survivor trying to get out of a bad situation. The ex-soldier who’s lost her way through a combination of circumstances and bad decisions. The anarchist out to disrupt the dragons’ puppet show. A shy computer nerd. A framed cop. A light-hearted street rat with no taste. A selfless community leader. A former lead vocal from a punk band. A psychopath with a vision for humanity. From the virtuous to the deeply disturbed, for grand reasons or petty, it seems that you can find just about any kind of person running the shadows.
There is only one thing that unites them all, and that is the basic definition of a Shadowrunner: one who chooses to live outside the social system, by their own rules. Whatever else a Shadowrunner may be, at the core of their being, they refuse to live within the absolute control of another, refuse to be a cog in the machine, and desire to live free and true to themselves, with only the masters they themselves choose.
“Watch your back, shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never, ever cut a deal with a dragon.”
Thus, I think that the Shadowrunner’s motto is more than just advice or a slogan. I think that when it avows to “never, ever cut a deal with a dragon,” it’s an affirmation of the core principle of what it is to be a Shadowrunner, and thus, a free man or woman. The “dragon” is the system, the means by which the many are controlled by the few, and it is an absolute. You can give into it and be a part of it, or you can stand on your own and never relinquish your autonomy; there is no middle ground. Once you engage with the “dragon,” you are no longer a Shadowrunner, but a cog in the machine and a pawn in someone else’s manipulations, no matter what you may believe. To me, this motto does more than tell how to survive as a Shadowrunner--it also tells how to live as one.
I leave you now with Harlequin’s words of wisdom from Shadowrun Returns:
"The lesson is this - the game is rigged. The cards are stacked. The dice are loaded. It's the same as it always was. Every cycle. People in power exert power. Little people cower in their homes, think what they're told to think, and buy whatever product will help them forget how horrible their lives are for another day. And that's why we don't *play* their fragging game. We don't swallow their drek sandwich and politely ask for another. It's why we run the shadows. That's where real life is, kiddo."
This is the classic motto of the Shadowrunner, a combination of survival advice and well wish that those who live outside the tyranny of corporate law in the Shadowrun universe espouse, the closest thing to a common code that those who run the shadows possess. It’s an iconic phrase of the Shadowrun franchise, which its fans recognize and hold dear the same way fans of Planescape: Torment do for the question, “What can change the nature of a man?”, and fans of Fallout do for “War. War never changes.” It’s a cool phrase, summing up the survivalist mentality and reality for a Shadowrunner in a manner that’s simple and straightforward.
Or...is there something more within it?
This motto of the Shadowrunner is meant to be interpreted literally, yes. To survive as a free soldier of fortune, you must be wary and ready for attack, you must be competent and possess sharp skills, and you mustn’t be wasteful of your resources. And of course, to survive, you must not let yourself fall into the clutches of that which is too powerful and too clever for you to overcome, the mighty dragons who rule society and claim the world’s resources and people as their treasure hoards. And maybe that’s all there is to it, the literal interpretation. Still...I think that this motto, at least its final part, is also metaphorical. The motto is not just advice on how to stay alive as a Shadowrunner...it’s also the guideline to how to live as a Shadowrunner.
It comes back to what dragons are in Shadowrun. On the surface, the great dragons of Shadowrun are both major characters in the overall story of the Shadowrun world, and essentially a foundational part of the series’s lore. Through one method of control or another (though most commonly via heading the mega corporations that rule and spiritually enslave humanity), the dragons have become the puppet masters of the world, using humanity and metahumanity as resources with which to play a long game of global chess against each other to see who can hoard the greatest wealth of resources.
But it might also be that we’re meant to see the dragons of Shadowrun as something other than just powerful, scaled overlords. More than just physical players in the plot, entities unto themselves and separated from humanity, dragons might also be allegories, representations of greed and covetous control in its highest form. After all, the Shadowrun dragons have, in their short time in the world of humanity, quickly positioned themselves into the places of power over countless others. They are the heads of government, they are involved in organized crime, they head social and religious organizations, and, most importantly, they head the colossal, international businesses, the “megacorps,” that control the peoples of the world over any other force. Follow the trail of any influential and powerful organization, particularly those which are for profit, and you’ll almost surely eventually find a dragon at its end, pulling the strings and consolidating the world’s resources and people as its own, its only true competitors in global manipulation its draconic peers. Sometimes, as in the case of the infamous Lofwyr, you don’t have to follow the trail for very long.
And yet, the ones who cut the trail, who pave it, who serve as its cobblestones, are humans, selfish, short-sighted, power-hungry, greedy little humans. It was no dragon that created the concept of a corporation that puts profits before people, no dragon that invented the concept of political groups and national governments, no dragon that first organized religion. These tools for holding humanity in place and subjugating the everyman were thousands of years old before the dragons arrived on the Shadowrun world scene, created, enacted, and even perfected by human beings. Dragons simply play the game better than people, and seat themselves in the throne that mankind thought it was building for itself. Or at least, its own elite.
In a sense, then, dragons are more than just the characters that the Shadowrun series’s surface presents them as. Dragons are not an alien, outside force, but a foe that lives within our own creation, our own being. I submit that the Shadowrun dragon is intended to be a representation of the extreme of certain faults within humans. They are the embodiment of greed, of corporation, of power lust...they are the embodiment of the desire for the one to make the many dance to his or her whims, and for no sake but simple, covetous want.
Having established that, then, let us look at what a Shadowrunner is. You can find a Shadowrunner in any person. The crusader against social wrongs. The narcissist desiring a bigger piece of the pie than his day job allows. The survivor trying to get out of a bad situation. The ex-soldier who’s lost her way through a combination of circumstances and bad decisions. The anarchist out to disrupt the dragons’ puppet show. A shy computer nerd. A framed cop. A light-hearted street rat with no taste. A selfless community leader. A former lead vocal from a punk band. A psychopath with a vision for humanity. From the virtuous to the deeply disturbed, for grand reasons or petty, it seems that you can find just about any kind of person running the shadows.
There is only one thing that unites them all, and that is the basic definition of a Shadowrunner: one who chooses to live outside the social system, by their own rules. Whatever else a Shadowrunner may be, at the core of their being, they refuse to live within the absolute control of another, refuse to be a cog in the machine, and desire to live free and true to themselves, with only the masters they themselves choose.
“Watch your back, shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never, ever cut a deal with a dragon.”
Thus, I think that the Shadowrunner’s motto is more than just advice or a slogan. I think that when it avows to “never, ever cut a deal with a dragon,” it’s an affirmation of the core principle of what it is to be a Shadowrunner, and thus, a free man or woman. The “dragon” is the system, the means by which the many are controlled by the few, and it is an absolute. You can give into it and be a part of it, or you can stand on your own and never relinquish your autonomy; there is no middle ground. Once you engage with the “dragon,” you are no longer a Shadowrunner, but a cog in the machine and a pawn in someone else’s manipulations, no matter what you may believe. To me, this motto does more than tell how to survive as a Shadowrunner--it also tells how to live as one.
I leave you now with Harlequin’s words of wisdom from Shadowrun Returns:
"The lesson is this - the game is rigged. The cards are stacked. The dice are loaded. It's the same as it always was. Every cycle. People in power exert power. Little people cower in their homes, think what they're told to think, and buy whatever product will help them forget how horrible their lives are for another day. And that's why we don't *play* their fragging game. We don't swallow their drek sandwich and politely ask for another. It's why we run the shadows. That's where real life is, kiddo."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)