Jank Mail: Halo falling

Welcome back to another week of Jank. We are steadily accumulating more freelance contributions thanks to the slowly expanding number of smart and generous people who are supporting the site - this week's new arrival is Joshua Rivera, who railed against playtime metrics.

I read those words and I feel foolish about the practice of counting all these hours, as if I know how many I have to draw from, or that I'm even wise enough to know how best to spend them. If I find that I've racked up 300 hours this year swearing at roguelikes and clicking through RPGs, what am I meant to do with that knowledge?

Nic Reuben marvelled at the detail of Total Warhammer 3, and the stories it implies but does not tell:

I'm thinking about the wolf and the granaries and the docks because it's taken me facing the end of the world - courtesy of three new apocalyptic end-game scenarios that devastate the planet's surface - to finally stop and smell the roses.

Sin's adventures in the archives surfaced Stellar Monarch 2, which hands off the main 4x burdens to your middle management layer:

Its recent-ish DLC added minor noble houses, and a bit more detail to managing their opinions, but Stellar Monarch 2 remains a game of quick decisions and convenient choices, rather than a ponderous one of carefully weighted moves, or the personal and narrative chaos of a Crusader Kings.

Brendy reviewed Ace Combat 8, which is almost the right amount of stupid:

The arcadey and battle-tested flight formula of Ace Combat offers only the surface level reason to play. The other reason is that these games are basically the Yakuza series but with airplanes. They are just the right blend of dumb leaning into wow-I-almost-made-you-think. They are very fun to read in a 16-year-old doing media studies sort of way. One interpretation of Ace Combat 8 hinges entirely on dirtball D.D: he exemplifies the idea that falsehoods are the fuel of war and peace is attainable only when we commit to truth. He also needs to get off TikTok.

He was also delighted by the millennial corridors of Derelikt:

It's the variety of sci-fi corridor on show that most impresses me. You have circular shafts with suspended walkways. Radiation flooded maintenance drains. Laboratory hallways with big test tube aliens which I am sure will remain motionless and contained. Some passageways include the de rigeur flickering of a red light that travels the length of the steel corridor in a state of silent alarm.

In this week’s Total Playtime, the gang listed out the games that would most benefit from resurrection by a billionaire benefactor, and heard a bit more about village life and speculative fiction about dogs. In The Lie-In, Graham highlighted the wisdom of a 94-year-old and dropped a savage burn on the old country.

Out there in the wider world  I regret to inform you that Xbox happened, again, marking Ninja Theory for death (sentence: insufficient commercial value, despite what I’m told were quite good terms) and Halo, Rare and World’s Edge for Activision, which is to say the ruthless publishing factory that will demand new Product every eighteen months or else. Halo will now be made by a “new, purpose-built team that is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty” while Halo Studios will be made of like fifteen people left standing to sign off on DLC drops and Master Chief T-shirt designs. Age of Empires will be made by approximately half the previous team, the rest of them and their next project having been jettisoned as part of a process that Activision president described as “an honour and a responsibility that we do not take lightly.”

Other changes included foldinging Obsidian into Bethesda, Turn 10 into Playground and Undead Labs into a worker-owned business with substantially fewer workers and a deal with an unnamed new publisher who will nevertheless “bring State of Decay 3 to Game Pass on Day One,” which is absolutely not something that was at the front of anybody’s mind. This brings the total bloodletting to “roughly three-quarters” of the 3,200 total, which means that 800 people at Playground, The Coalition, InXile, Blizzard and King have another nine months of dread ahead of them, save for the handful that were caught already. Obviously this industry has always been big on “congratulations on finishing the game; you’re fired” but rarely has the axe been so pointedly sharpened in advance.

Across town, Bungie promised to bring back Destiny 2 content in a post that was criticised for sounding like an abusive partner promising change, but could just as easily read as an abused partner apologising for suggesting they would ever leave, or perhaps an AI prostrating itself after being caught completely making things up. It also confirmed that it’s going to try making Marathon easier to play because people were not enjoying being stuck in a “constant loop of failure”, an experience I’m sure the developers would also enjoy. Just a real bad time up in Redmond this week, basically, to a degree that I’m sure would be crushing to the OG Bungie crew if it wasn’t drowned out by their Ferrari collection. 

Other things we learned this week: Rockstar wishes to make clear that you cannot tell stories in GTA without official approval, in case you get the knob gags wrong. GTA 6 got a £400 collector’s edition that goes heavy on an as-yet-unintroduced mascot character and does not include the game, in case you were worried that capitalism was going to change anything for the digital era. Starfield probably didn’t sell enough to merit a sequel. 

Quake Champions is no longer free. In a followup to last week’s bombshell the Breaking Benjamin guy told his story in an interview with Nexus Mods, which I think brings this whole thing full circle. People Make Games published a video about the continuing contributions of Bobby Kotick’s lawyers to any article ever written about him. Control Resonant patched out PC Gamer’s review which is unsporting but also quite funny. ARC Raiders is testing an all-peacenik mode. 

Meanwhile in the comments section, Sin Vega craved the forbidden chiropractic: 

god i bet getting reloaded feels so good 

Agingdanform is no longer drawn to extended game duration:

In my teens/20s, there was an undeniable allure of a game being vast and all-consuming, and in my 40s the exact same thing is rendered a warning 

Rob Fearon has the solution:

Honestly, we should just ban videogames from going near numbers. It would save so much bother in the long run.

That’s all for this week. Go and play some PC games.