If you won’t expand, we have to move on.
This week, I pose a question of squeaky critters versus a squeaky coat.
What’s better: a level 1 rat, or Alone In The Dark’s jacket inventory?
The innkeeper looks you up and down.
“Two days to pull all that together.
For now, aye, I can offer you a ‘quest’.”
She snarls that last word, not that you notice, then jerks a thumb towards the cellar door.
Bring me ten rat tails and you’ll earn room and board until your order’s ready."
Reader The Dear, my friend, swallow your spite.
Punch down the feeling that you are being insulted.
Question your knee-jerk reaction that this is beneath you.
She doesn’t know you.
These ten level 1 rats are a test.
Could you kill a rat?
I’m asking both physically and emotionally.
Have you seen how fast rats move?
Have you seen how cute they are?
Can you kill one and then keep on killing after the first fleck of blood hits your face?
Can you heave aside the sacks of neeps and tatties his family will flee behind?
She can’t keep doing this.
Judith has seen more than her share of heroes, mind.
Raven Void Abyssnia was a sweetheart.
And The Magnificent Gladys, gods, wasn’t she just!
At first, she tried to warn your punch in.
She learned this only encourages you.
She sighs to herself.
She has learned, too late, to spot dangerous customers with a glance.
She’s now fairly confident she can spot a killer.
But heroes, ah, that’s trickier to tell.
Maybe you have that ineffable ‘it’.
Maybe you don’t.
It is the perfect inventory for a game where our man (voiced by Max Payne) says e.g.
“I don’t have your stone, and fuck you anyway”.
I would very much like to see similar ideas in more games.
Immersive sims in particular have slept on this for too long.
It’s like “I can see my legs” game design but even better.
Thinking about inventory as actual physical objects you carry is mostly confined to serious sims and survival games.
some other noughties Eurojank?
But which is better?
I like a level 1 rat so much.
I can’t resist that jacket.
