Nuclear Monster

  • Lucas Pope of various independent adventures and most notably Papers, Please has been working on Return of the Obra Dinn for at least four years. The Obra Dinn is a ship, a good ship, that was lost at sea in 1803. Here, now, in 1807 it “drifted into port” and you’re an insurance investigator sent to assess the damage and find out how each member of the crew fared.

    If you followed development of the ship’s return you might have seen the prototypical demonstration versions Pope released, one is still available on itch. Obra Dinn has what was an original mechanic the first time I played it, and is now a bit like what players found in last year’s Tacoma — scenes of a crew interacting that aren’t with the ship (or station, in Tacoma’s case) anymore.

    That’s confusing if you haven’t played either, in Tacoma it was like watching a holographic replay of the crew’s life. Of course, in 1807 the fictional setup for how you can view those replayed scenes is different from a space station in the future, but I fell in love with the prototype’s beautifully stippled 1-bit graphics and the brutal still scenes of the Obra Dinn’s crew paired with just enough voice acting. If they were TV shows I’d say that Tacoma was a great “SyFy” original and what I’ve played of Obra Dinn is a Netflix Marvel series minus the 3-5 extra episodes of cruft.

    The trailer above demonstrates many changes to just about everything from the prototype, so there are still plenty of unknowns here. I’d recommend sticking with the trailer and skipping the old GDC demo, to avoid spoiling too much.

    Return of the Obra Dinn will be $20 on Windows and macOS on October 18th, which is very soon now, via Steam, Humble, and gog.

  • If it hasn’t been hijacked yet, PSN is finally going to allow you to change your username. Sid Shuman says it’ll be free the first time, and $10 or $5 (for PlayStation Plus subscribers) after that, and the feature has some odd limitations:

    When you change your online ID, you will have the option to display your previous ID with your new ID, so your friends can recognize you. Once you decide to display your old ID or not, you won’t be able to adjust this after completing the online ID change process.

    The name-changing feature will be in a temporary “preview program”  in November for people who have registered to test pre-release versions of the PlayStation 4 system software, and it may break some recent games:

    This feature is compatible with PS4 games originally published after April 1, 2018, and a large majority of the most-played PS4 games that were released before this date. However, please note not all games and applications for PS4, PS3 and PS Vita systems are guaranteed to support the online ID change, and users may occasionally encounter issues or errors in certain games. If for any reason you experience issues after changing your ID, you can revert back to your original ID for free at any time (you will only be able to revert once during the preview program). Reverting back to an old ID will resolve most issues caused by the ID change. In addition, when this feature officially launches, a list of compatible games published before April 1, 2018, will be provided on PlayStation.com for reference before you make a change.

    Yikes.

    It sounds like some games may just be broken for anyone who wants to play them after changing their name. I hope that Sony has a better workaround than “pay us to change back so you can play old games” before the name-changing feature ships to everyone early next year.

  • Jason Schreier has the scoop:

    Microsoft is finalizing a deal to acquire the independent development studio Obsidian Entertainment, according to three people briefed on the negotiations. We don’t know if ink is on paper yet, and plenty of major acquisition deals have fallen apart in the final hours, but those close to the companies believe it is all but done.

    Obsidian’s RPGs could work very well over a streaming service.

  • Patrick Klepek has a terrific read up on Waypoint about his investigation into Sony’s incompetent security practices around user accounts, and the social engineering crews that steal them:

    $1,200. That’s how much someone is asking for a PlayStation Network account I’ve been investigating for the past few weeks. “Secure,” the person calls it, claiming the account will “never be touched” by the original owner again. “He won’t be getting it back,” they claim. More than a thousand dollars? That’s a little rich for my blood, and so I counteroffer: $700.

    He also has a few updates on twitter for after you’ve read the article.

  • Microsoft is making good on their E3 promises and has announced a marketing name and demonstrated their Xbox cloud gaming streaming service, xCloud in a video and news release attributed to Kareem Choudhry, their Corporate Vice President of Gaming Cloud:

    Today, the games you play are very much dictated by the device you are using. Project xCloud’s state-of-the-art global game-streaming technology will offer you the freedom to play on the device you want without being locked to a particular device, empowering YOU, the gamers, to be at the center of your gaming experience.

    I hate that we don’t own games today. What we “buy” to download from services like Steam, PSN, Nintendo’s eShop, or Microsoft’s store that doesn’t have a sassy marketing name, is so ephemeral.

    Subscription services like PlayStation Now, Plus, and GamePass take that to another level. The second you stop paying them, every game you were enjoying with your friends, and experiencing alone or with somebody on the couch is gone.

    It’s the same for Netflix, and Apple Music, and all of the other video and music streaming services.

    We own nothing with these services and platforms, nothing lasts, if we can’t pay and keep paying for multiple services we don’t get to continue to enjoy creative works and participate in culture.

    I can understand how it could be exciting to work on the technology behind these services, and it will enable some people to access things that they would never be able to, but the real goal is obvious and I’m not excited for it.

    Microsoft, Sony, EA, everybody who already has a platform and an audience are all rushing to be the platform that gets your $10 or $15 or $20 a month and hooks you for as long as you can pay. They want to convert us from people who buy a box and a few games a year to people who are just paying them all the time for access to whatever games will work with the latency their service has.

    How many services are you subscribed to? I can think of so many that my family uses: Netflix; Hulu; Apple Music; PlayStation Plus; 1Password; iCloud storage.

    Subscription services, and game streaming subscriptions in particular, are the opposite of the “empowerment” Chowdry is talking about. I don’t doubt that Microsoft will come up with a more compelling pitch when there are new games that can only work on their streaming service.