Richard's Online Journal

[27/11/07] Tabula Rasa

For a game I’m not sure is even particularly good, I’ve spent far too much time this month playing Tabula Rasa. You may not have heard of it. I mean of course, Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa - and sorry for any confusion that shameless abridging may have caused.

“I’ve watched Starship Troopers a lot. Would you like to know more?”

It’s a deeply bizarre game, broken on so very many levels, yet strangely compelling, almost despite itself. Every other quest seems broken or bugged. The world is so flat and devoid of interest that even the NPCs can be seen grumbling about it. The economics and crafting systems are just… the only appropriate word is “No.”

And yet I’ve clocked up more time with it than any MMO since World of Warcraft. No clan. No power-gaming. Just me, lots of enemies, and the trusty click-clack of a shotgun that knocks them down to the floor, ready for a lightning spray to strip the armour off their alien backsides, a force push to keep them at a distance, and finally a visit from my good friend Mr. Rocket Launcher to seal the deal.

It may be level based, it may lean more towards the roll of invisible dice than tactical skill, but it’s the first MMO since City of Heroes to realise that kicking arse is more fun than sitting around crafting bubblegum. Quests are fast and mostly profitable. You quickly gather all the equipment you need. The different character classes are well differentiated. In short, it’s… fun.

Surprisingly good fun, really. Despite the total lack of incentive to explore, the lack of variety, all the other problems, it’s satisfying to play. Just ambling around, the battlefield feels alive - friendly and enemy soldiers constantly thrashing it out, huge drop-ships swinging in with reinforcements instead of enemies simply appearing, the boom of mortars defending bases, and the terrific fun of being in a base when the enemy kicks down the walls and everyone has to hold the line, hurling rockets and setting up turrets and joining the out-and-out warzone just beyond the force-fields.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that Tabula Ra- sorry- Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa is almost the action MMO equivalent of Bejewelled. Challenge as and when you feel like it, but nothing you can’t handle, and nothing to slow you down for long.

So what’s the problem?

“I’ll take ‘Quests That Should Run Completely In The Background, Presenting Players With A Nice Surprise Without Drawing Attention To Themselves, Just Like In City Of Heroes’ for $500, Alex”

In a word: it’s insane. Clinically insane. Tabu- Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa didn’t need beta testers - it needed a shrink. Here’s an example. The economic model is staggeringly broken, with generous drops and constant cash rewards meaning that you’re loaded with money after a couple of levels, with little to spend it on beyond medical kits and ammo. Why soldiers are expected to buy their own gear, or pick it up off the battlefield and end up looking like Jacob’s Magic Technicoloured Battle Armour, I have no idea. It makes no sense to even bother with money when you could simply requisition kit based on rank or similar… except that MMOs traditionally have an economic model, and Tabula Rasa’s nowhere near the blank slate it claims to be.

That schizophrenia constantly comes back to bite it on the ass. What works in World of Warcraft, where you’re a 100% freelance agent out for yourself, is absolutely broken in a military context. An army can’t have all its best people just run random errands the whole time, with absolutely no thought for campaigns, structure, or even basic survival instincts. As just one example, you’d think you’d be alerted if a base - a base on the frontlines of a battle to save humanity - was suddenly under siege - but no. Even Warcraft flashes up “Ashenvale is under attack!”, but here, you won’t be told unless you watch the map.

As for fighting the good fight, half the time you’ll just be snapped at for not letting the enemies win - a bizarre long-term quest on every level involving (amongst a shopping list of other insanely long-winded mission objectives) collecting far too many Assault and Defense tokens to exchange for Clone Credits. Clone Credits that should be free, to encourage experimentation.

Honestly, NCSoft keeps pulling this kind of crap - City of Heroes’ endless grind/debt tag-team being the prime offender - and it’s always annoying. If you want one of everything, you should be able to roll them up quickly. The leveling curve in an action game like this should just be the process by which you learn how to play as your class, not a time-sink that punishes you for wanting to see what else it offers.

All else is madness. Especially the inclusion of up to 15 minutes of ‘resurrection trauma’. Why? For the love of Lord British, why? Cheap medical kits be damned. If any game should just throw you back into the fray, no messing around, it’s this one.

Logos, as left by the Eloh - a god-like race (literally, etymologically speaking...) who thought it a wicked wheeze to give every nutball race their advanced technology. They have a lot to answer for, really.

On the plus side, when you do get a decent character together, the quests can be great fun. The best ones are the Instanced missions, although they could do with being more solo-friendly. Completing them’s not usually difficult, but they do tend to turn into a war of attrition rather than a One Man Army rampage, not least because of the bugs (such as enemies being able to teleport in, even when their teleporters are slag metal...)

Outside these, there’s a good mix between all out action, solo-friendly stuff, and a few weird and wonderful ones thrown in for the heck of it. One sees you gambling with a bored soldier on who can get kills in a forthcoming attack. Another has you picking flowers, just to annoy a native. And a few even mix things up a bit, giving you a choice between curing a plague, or following orders, even if the outcome doesn’t seem to make any difference to anyone at the time, never mind long-term.

The plot itself is okay, not great. There’s no feel that you’re trying to accomplish anything in particular, and no big arc in evidence as reasons for why you’re going from area to area. Still, much of the backstory is pretty entertaining if you bother to dig into it, beyond the superficial space-elves and flouncy alien languages. I especially like the M*A*S*H style radio announcements in the main Foreas base, and some of the asides from the NPCs. The details aren’t bad either - especially when it gets into things like the Cormans, USENET geeks turned Earth refugees who fled to the game’s first alien planet in the Roswell ship and now live as pacifists in the middle of an interstellar war between alien assholes, and… well… human assholes. The AFS really needs a slap.

The future’s a confused place. Too alien to be familiar, too familiar to feel alien. A more Stargate modern-tech vibe would likely have worked better.

All that said, there’s absolutely no connection between the backstory and most of the actual game elements. It’s especially obvious in the case of what the developers call ‘Ethical Parables’ - missions with multiple outcomes that ask you to make calls and live with the consequences. Ignoring the fact that they mean ‘Ethical Dilemmas’ (parables are intended to convey a specific lesson, not offer two morally divergent choices in variously grubby shades of grey) they’re little more than a gimmick so far, but their presence could mean cool stuff later on.

On the other hand, even now, they do lead to some hypnotically strange quests. My favourite by far is the alien in the jail cell I befriended through gifts of food (as opposed to handing it over to the unpleasant official in charge), who helped ‘us’ out with some intel on his friends. So far, so good. Until for his next quest, he asked “Could you take this note back to my people for me?” Uh-huh. No problem. Deliver a note to someone in the main enemy base. Need me to post anything through Hitler’s letterbox while I’m at it?

But that’s nothing. By the time you’re done doing errands for the enemy, you’ve invited a whole drop-ship full of enemy troops into the main good-guy base, had a full-on firefight with them, and pocketed the names of several traitors and collaborators, plus killed several loyal officers who attacked you for collaborating yourself…

Can you do anything with this information? Apparently not. And to think, I just handed over the food because starving prisoners is mean, even if they are xenocidal aliens.

Not only are the areas very dull to explore, they don’t feel lived in. The aliens on Foreas only have a few tiny tree-houses, while the military bases look like they were thrown up in a weekend. By Ikea.

Similarly bizarre moments run through the entire game - often ones you can’t believe people missed. Taking out enemy Mortars can be next to impossible without the right couple of weapons on hand, and the lack of an auction house means that if you haven’t found them, you’re out of luck. The Cloning system lets you save your character at different tiers, which is good, as it cuts down the amount of time you have to spend levelling up. But since there’s only one real route through the game at the moment, you’re still going to have to do at least 15 levels over again to try out another advanced class, and there’s no way to respec your main if you screw up.

And with no endgame to work towards, no bigger picture to feel part of, and no character development beyond being a generic soldier with your class’s standard armour and equipment… well… what’s the point?

As for PvP, it’s in there, but I haven’t played it because the whole idea makes no sense. Everyone’s a member of the same army, and supposedly united in an attempt to save humanity. Having random scraps is just nutty. If anything, it needs something like Lord of the Rings Online, where players can play the baddies. Not as a whole seperate campaign, a la the Horde, but just jumping in and giving some elite alien squads the benefit of proper tactics and squad play, then jumping into other ones, and so on. It’d offer a chance of pace, and nobody need get hauled away on disciplinary charges.

“What do you mean ‘let the baddies win’? Traitors! Get me a firing squad!”

Bluntly, the whole experience is frustrating, buggy, unfinished, and frequently just plain nutty. Over and over, bits of the game feel like someone got them 75% done, only to be distracted by a bit of shiny metal. Even for an MMO, it’s sloppy. Yet when I’ve finished typing this, I plan to fire it up anyway and go do a couple of instances - the mission based areas that offer narrative missions, exciting base attacks, new magic-words (Logos - the TR equivalent of magic, coupled with an alphabet that seems pretty well designed, especially if you miss the Ultima runes of old) to uncover, and good old fashioned Crap To Blow Up. And I’ll probably be there for a couple of hours.

I’m not sure how I’m Not Calling It Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa Again manages to be so much fun despite itself, but a mix of the weapons’ oomph, the arcade-game feel of the movement (not unlike City of Heroes) and little touches like the way that the difference between Level 18 and 19 isn’t life and death, and you can often hold your own against enemies that would splat you into goo in most games, all give it a compelling element that’s tough to heartily recommend, but impossible to ignore.

Yes, I expected a lot more. And I’m disappointed that the game the developers have been talking about for the last couple of years isn’t the Tabula Rasa they finally shipped. But I’m off to save the universe anyway, so never mind, I guess…

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