You can watch the same intro we did if you want to, and you should. If I suggested that Final Fantasy XV had a wild tone - Monster Hunter Road Trip + heartthrob warlocks - the austerity and documentary presentation here will twist your head a few degrees past its stated tolerances. Some have found it confusing! As usual, I stand ready to part the veil.

It’s entirely possible I’ve already talked about this particular thing, but I can’t risk it: I am not good at golf. I am the only person I have ever heard of who has managed to putt into a sand trap. Weirdly, this was an improvement from my earlier efforts, which involved me moving the ball a couple inches. Under ordinary circumstances, I’m drawn inexorably to holes. In this context, however, they have proven elusive. The advice I was given by my cohort is that the ball has to go past the hole to go in. Which is good advice there but for some reason it seems like creative advice, also. You have to be willing to overshoot in order to hit. So, as much fun as I might make of what you might call The Square-Enix Style, I love the arc of that swing. I like how far it goes. Most games - most writers - don’t take chances like this. They don’t have it in them, or they aren’t afforded the space by the structure that contains them.

Do you know what I actually wonder? I worship the Epic because it represents a scale I don’t get to work in, and possibly couldn’t execute. But I bet that grand scope is just as stifling, in its way. I wonder if those motherfuckers desperately, perpetually want to work at Popcap. In their dreams, are they matching three gems, over and over? Do they see a four or five gem combo, and pass it over?

In any case, I want to investigate more of that tone. But do I want to investigate that tone more than I want to figure out what the fuck is going in Bloodborne? It’s close enough to Werewolves in Top Hats to be a real danger, and its iconic pistol/massive razor combo already has its black mold growing in the creases of my brain. Is the roguelike multiplayer - not typically a focus for them - truly a marquee feature? I want to be a Bloodborne person, like I am a Menite, or any of my other signifiers. But it’ll barely be hatched by the time Pillars of Eternity comes out on the 26th. I think most people would probably be safe from this conflux, but as Penny Arcade’s Lord High Genre Fetishist, I am routinely boned.

(CW)TB