I would imagine that are quite a few video-game-playing James Bond fans who've been holding their breath for a while in the hopes that IO Interactive would make a 007 game. The pairing seems like a textbook example of the right license being given to the right developer. Honestly, I don't think I've seen a pairing that seemed this ideal on paper since the publisher of Stellaris announced a Star Trek strategy game. Thankfully for James Bond fans, First Light turned out a lot better than the ill-fated Star Trek: Infinite.

IO Interactive's resume primarily consists of the Hitman games, which (despite liking stealth games a lot), I have actually never gotten around to playing. Hitman has been near universally praised for its immersive-sim stealth gameplay, and sprawling, open-ended level design. First Light ended up being my introduction to IO's particular brand of stealth game, and it sure makes an excellent first impression!

Becoming Bond

007: First Light's prologue and tutorial are absolutely top-notch narrative game design. In the prologue chapter, the player is given a disguise while infiltrating a heavily-guarded enemy-occupied outpost. This allows the player to move about somewhat freely while getting used to the basic controls and game systems, while still maintaining a sense of threat and tension.

The first proper chapter is a training montage in which the player will likely screw up their first attempts at tasks.

It then proceeds to put the player in a montage of bootcamp training scenes that serve as quick tutorials for the more intermediate and advanced mechanics and controls. This sequence is one of the best-conceived video game tutorials that I've ever played. It throws the player right into a task with only the bare minimum of guidance. This might initially seem unfair or counter-productive for a tutorial. But since it is framed as a training montage, the game expects the player to barely succeed at the task -- and maybe even fail it outright. And it jumps to the next training scene before you really even have time to worry about the fact that you didn't perform very well -- let alone to try to pause the game and restart at a checkpoint (more on that later). As the montage goes on, however, you'll get other chances to perform these tasks with a bit more knowledge of what to expect and also often with more favorable conditions. As such, each time the player is tasked with performing a specific type of task, you'll probably be more successful at performing it, and will likely perform it more quickly, more skillfully, and more instinctively, which perfectly mirrors Bond's own improvement within the story.

It's quite a clever bit of level design, and this tutorial is a near-perfect marriage of gameplay, narrative, and learning under pressure. Obviously, this sort of tutorial wouldn't necessarily translate to other games. I would assume that in any potential future sequel to First Light, James Bond won't be going through basic training again as part of the story. So unless a potential sequel has the player playing as a new recruit (a 008, perhaps?) before being put in the tux of Bond, this tutorial is likely a one-of-a-kind lightning-in-a-bottle situation. In its context as a prequel/reboot/origin story, this is a damn near perfect introductory couple of hours to both the character and the gameplay.

Near perfect marks, all around! I have basically no notes.

In my previous post, I discussed my thoughts regarding the new "Test of Time" update for Civilization VII. In summary, I feel that it does not really address the main problems that I had with the game since its launch. My core complaint with Civilization VII is the arbitrary and jarring nature of age transitions, and how they skip over large periods of the in-game history. I've also previously written about suggestions that I have for improving age transitions, and some of those ideas have been added to the game by Firaxis in its patches over the past year and a half. But now that "Test of Time" has made a major revision to the core design of Civilization VII, in the form of both civ-switching and in the new Triumphs and victory systems, I want to re-visit the idea of improving age transitions.

So what else could Firaxis do to fix these remaining problems, now that the vocal subset of civ-switch-haters have hopefully been appeased? Well, I already proposed one possible solution in my previous video about Ara and Civ VII. I'm not going to repeat all of that again here, even though a lot of this video is already rehashed from that previous script. But basically, I had proposed that perhaps Civ VII (or Civ VIII) could take a page from Ara's playbook, and use the crises as a true "boss fight" at the end of an age that actually culls out civilizations who fail to resolve that crisis.

I don't want to rehash that entire idea, but I do have one idea for expanding on it in a way that utilizes the new Test of Time gameplay. Instead of be eliminated from the game if any civ fails the Age transition crisis, the game could force that civ to change civilizations at the age transition. The idea here being that the failing empire collapses sufficiently such that its old culture and governance did not survive the crisis in-tact, and new culture and governments have taken over. The crisis resolution could even be tiered, such that at the highest tier, your empire survives and you're allowed to keep the same civilization into the next era with all your dedications. The middle tier would require switching civilizations, and you would not be able to select as many dedications. At the bottom tier, your empire collapses entirely, and you are eliminated from the game.

That's one idea which combines the Test of Time concepts with the design philosophy of Ara's act scoring. Floundering civs being forced to transition between ages would add context to the civ-swapping that might make the idea more palatable for some subset of players who disliked the civ-switching mechanic at launch. Further, adding player elimination would expand upon the idea of the crisis itself being a "Test of Time", acting as a sort of "great filter" that decides which civs survive and which civs die out.

How well an empire performs in a crisis could mechanically determine whether they must switch civs.

Player elimination would also have some of the benefits of Ara's design, which would be that it would free up space on the map for the surviving civs to expand in the following ages, without necessarily having to resort to military conquest. It could also tie into other Civ-specific systems, such as providing new open spaces for Independent Civilizations and city states to emerge, and it could be tied into the archaeology systems of the Modern Age.

But that still doesn't necessarily address the fundamental problem of the ages feeling like they end prematurely, and skipping over chunks of history. So to that end, I have more suggestions.

A few weeks ago (or I guess more than a month ago, at this point -- geez I'm slow at writing these), Firaxis released it's "Test of Time" update for Civilization VII. Civ VII players can now finally play as the same civilization throughout the entire game, which addresses one of the player base's biggest criticisms with the game. The internet is now abuzz with the question of whether or not this patch "fixes" or "saves" Civilization VII. From what I've seen so far, it seems to be very well-received, with many internet pundits saying (or implying with their YouTube thumbnails) that Civ VII is "fixed".

Test of Time certainly is a good update. The biggest change is that players now have the choice to play as any civilization in any age, and can choose to play as the same civilization for the entire game, if you choose. To accomplish this, Firaxis gave every civilization an "apex age" in which they are the most powerful. During the apex age, their abilities are the strongest, and they have access to all of their unique units. During non-apex ages, each civ has less powerful versions of their ability, and they are stuck with stock units.

Players can now choose to keep the same civilization when transitioning into a new age.

This approach is similar to Humankind, which also gave players the option to stay as the same culture when progressing to a new era. The big difference is that in Humankind, staying with the same culture would give that culture the same generic bonus every time; whereas in Civ VII, each civ still has a unique ability, it's just a weaker version of their apex unique ability. So Civ VII's approach is a little bit more flavorful in that regard. Basically, Humankind's version of this feature was (as far as I can tell) just a fall-back option if all the good cultures have already been selected by other players. If you don't want any of the available cultures, you can just stay as the same culture, and continue to field their unique units and build their unique infrastructure, and get some small buff. In Civ VII, by contrast, sticking with the same civ is framed as a more assertive decision. You choose that civ because you want their abilities, not simply because you don't want the other civs.

Personally, I still prefer Humankind's method of culture-switching over Civ VII's. I prefer how it is tied to the individual civilization's progress through the eras, and doesn't stop the game at arbitrary points to force everyone to switch. I also like how there's a competitive, first-come-first-serve aspect to switching cultures in Humankind, which lights a fire under the player's butt to make sure to advance fast enough to get a prime pick of the upcoming era's cultures. Humankind's approach feels like a much more organic and natural part of the game that doesn't interrupt the game's pacing at all (but in fact, adds to the pacing). This is in stark contrast to Civ VII's design, which feels forced, arbitrary, and exceedingly "game-ified".

But perhaps a full analysis of Humankind's culture-switching compared to Civ VII should be the subject of another essay, similar to what I did with Civ VII and Ara: History Untold... For now, I want to talk about Civ VII specifically.

In addition to being able to play civs outside of their apex age, Test of Time completely replaces the Legacy paths with new, more granular and more varied "Triumphs". These are smaller goals and milestones that unlock dedication bonuses for the next age. This is intended to add more variety to each age, and make it so that players don't feel like they're following the same rote steps to achieve the same 4 goals every time they play.

Legacy paths were replaced with more varied and granular Triumphs.

Again, this is a good change.

The biggest piece of video gaming news this past week was Sony's announcement that it would end production of physical game discs in January of 2028. This won't just affect any potential upcoming PS6 console. This decision will affect future PS5 games as well, which as of 2028, will no longer be available in physical disc formats.

If it were just a simple matter of transitioning from ownership of physical media to ownership of digital media, I would be all for it!

Games being digital only would mean that publishers wouldn't have to mine for materials, pollute the environment with manufacturing discs, or burn gasoline (and emit greenhouse gases) from having to transport those discs across oceans and continents to retailers. It also means they won't end up in landfills. These would all be positive changes for the environment, which I think would outweigh the downfalls of physical discs being un-available. The biggest problem with digital-only ownership would probably be distribution for people with limited (or no) internet access. I do think that is a problem which should be addressed. Poor rural gamers deserve to be able to play new games too. But a digital-only ownership model would be, I think, a net positive.

The problem, of course, is that Sony (and other media companies) are not switching to a "digital ownership" model; they are forcing consumers into a license-leasing model. They are stripping away consumers' right to own the media we purchase. All digital purchases can be revoked from our libraries at any time, for any reason (or for no reason at all), completely at the whims of our wannabe corporate overlords. Worse yet, as far as I can recall, courts have generally upheld that "buying" a digital good is, in fact, a temporary lease of a license. I did a quick Google search for a case precedent, but couldn't find anything specific. So take that with a grain of salt, but I remember reading about some case in which Amazon (or somebody) won a lawsuit involving the revocation of digital purchases.

In fact, California is further codifying this with a consumer protection law that requires retailers to clearly disclose that the customer does not own the media they are buying. This sort of disclosure is good, but I think what the laws should be doing is codifying that the consumer does, in fact, own the purchases media, and that the retailer cannot prohibit the consumer from copying or preserving the media for personal use. But we live in a corporate dystopia that only cares about protecting corporate profits instead of the rights of the public.

I may have posted a written review of Return To Silent Hill, but there were still other things that I wanted to expound upon that I did not feel were appropriate (or in the scope of) a simple movie review. So I decided to adapt my extended thoughts into a video critique. I was planning on doing after having seen the movie in theaters and writing the review, but things kept coming up, and I kept pushing it back until eventually it got to the point that the movie was already available on DVD and streaming.

I decided to split the critique up into 2 separate videos. The first video is already available on YouTube. It is specifically about the sexist and chauvinistic attitudes and biases that I felt underlined many of the creative decisions that went into butchering Silent Hill 2's stories. More specifically, I compared and contrasted how Christophe Gans chose to adapt the characters of Harry Mason (from the first game) and James, and how these adaptation decisions seem to reveal those underlying sexist attitudes and biases. I used this video to vent some long-standing frustrations that I had with the first Silent Hill movie, and its gender-swap of single father Harry into married mother Rose.

Obviously, I don't have a problem with gender or race-swapping in adaptations of media. But, as I explain in the video, I felt that the character of Harry Mason presented a golden opportunity to present a competent single father character in a medium that is largely devoid of such examples. The gender-swap from male-to-female, in this particular case, and the reasons that director Christophe Gans cites for having made the casting decision, only serve to reinforce out-dated gender stereotypes, while also missing out on an opportunity to present a particular demographic that is under-represented in popular media.

The second video is about the other characters in the movie, with an emphasis on Mary -- considering that she is basically the only other character in the movie.