Welcome to the first Farlands weekly newsletter where I’ll write about what’s been happening with the project and me in general.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
So I’ve been playing quite a bit of Ocarina of Time recently. For the first time. In fact, this is my first Legend of Zelda experience ever. It’s surprising how one can play thousands of video games and still never experience some classics.

I’ve enjoyed the beginning quite a lot. The whole young Link section has some excellent world-building, as well as very cool design decisions. And the dungeons have good difficulty ramp up.

For me, however, the game started falling apart a bit in the Adult Link section. There’s a number of design decisions that lead to frustration. For example, Forest Temple has a chain of locked doors one after another, I think there’s four in total. So many locked doors in a row make exploration quite a chore, honestly.

Fire Temple is much better in that regard, however the way we get the Fire Tunic makes absolutely no sense. We need to stop a rolling goron in the Goron City with a bomb. There’s a similar situation when we play as Young Link, and if we do that we get a bomb pouch. So you don’t expect this other rolling goron so important, especially considering that it’s clear that you need to go somewhere in the Death Mountain crater anyway.

These are just some of the frustrations I’ve met, there were more, and by the time I got to the infamous Water Temple, the act of taking Iron Boots on and off really just made me quit. And it’s a shame, because I think the game is good, exemplary even in a lot of areas, but it feels like the development through the Adult Link section was either rushed or not playtested as much as the Young Link section.

Next Video
Mentioning Ocarina of Time is very relevant, as currently I am working on the script regarding its current reputation as the best game ever, and the implications of that fact. I have noticed that topics along these lines can be considered touchy among gamer population, but I hope that, with me being constructive and respectful, there’s not going to be any pointless controversy risen, but a healthy discussion.

I also would like to note that this topic came to my mind while I was still playing the Young Link section before the frustrations of the Adult Link part started adding up, so that didn’t have any effect. I would just like to make that clear.

Hopefully the video is gonna be released next week, but might be later depending on my schedule.

BioShock
I started playing BioShock two times, and for some reason I’d always abandon the game after reaching Arcadia. However, recently I started playing BioShock for the third time, the Remastered version, and now I finally got further than Arcadia, beaten Fort Frolic recently. And… while I do want to keep going, I don’t know.

Even back in 2007, I didn’t really understand BioShock’s reputation as a game with absolutely masterful storytelling and narrative, and still don’t. It’s true that I didn’t get to the twist back then which got spoiled for me, but even knowing it and that it’s coming… I don’t know.

It’s a great game! It’s tense, suspenseful, the world-building is amazing, level design is great. But does it have masterful narrative as a whole? Eh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll change my mind once I get further into the game.

But let’s even take Fort Frolic. It’s a section that doesn’t have anything to do with the main conflict, literally puts you out of it and blocks from even listening to the other characters until you complete it. People call it the greatest BioShock level, and on its own merits I agree, the level is amazing, but I can’t get rid of the feeling of just being ripped out of the whole narrative to just do something absolutely unrelated, even though Cohen is a very interesting character.

ABZU
Courtesy of PS+, I played through ABZU. It was an enjoyable meditative experience that I recommend to everyone, however it feels like it tried to emulate Journey too much. And I don’t mean the art style (the game’s creator is Journey’s art director, so that makes sense… plus the art style is very cool), but the overall experience.

ABZU is trying to pull the same strings in players that Journey does, and just like Journey its narrative and level design/progression are fully based on the monomyth, but for me it wasn’t as emotional as Journey. Still a great game, though!

Tales from the Borderlands
Another game I’m playing thanks to PS+ and enjoying quite a lot. I’m just two episodes in and I’m really interested to see where it all goes. Episode 1 was pretty fine, but Episode 2 is the one that sealed the deal for me to keep playing. And I gotta say, this TellTale series is worth playing just for the masterfully done intro sequences alone, they’re amazing.

So this is all I have to say this week. Thanks for your time! Feel free to leave any comments below. If you’d like to keep an eye on my future blog posts, feel free to follow me on Twitter @farlander1991 🙂

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