Gorf wrote up a post about Batgirl's latest video.
YOUTUBE: Batgirl’s State of the Game, January 13th (This is the longest Batgirl SoTG episode I’ve ever seen. Forgive me if I dispense of the first half hour pretty briskly, there is so much here not worth covering and I’m going giving that latter part extra attention.)
It’s over an hour and a half and one of the first things out of her mouth is a statement of confidence that 2018 is going to be an amazing year for Star Citizen.
She starts things off hopping in her much-beloved Mustang and is off in search of adventures, the sort that await a courier accepting a pickup and delivery job a half hour out of town. It’s a riveting experience even for a viewer, just watching her navigate through nothingness for minutes at a time as she races towards the dark side of a barren moon to pick up a box.
Alas, in her nascent encounters with emergent gameplay, a plot complication ensues. Almost a half hour into her mission,
the lurking horror slowly, inexorably dawns upon her. She brought the wrong ship! You can’t haul cargo in the Mustang, Batgirl!She cuts back to Olisar, gets kicked off the terminal a couple times trying to get a ship that can actually carry cargo. Then does the whole corridors to ship to jump to descend to the moon thing again. We are 40 minutes in to the video now and still nothing resembling gameplay has transpired, just lots and lots of monologing. But as she approaches the 40 minute mark, things pick up. She gives her opinions about Pay To Win, then discusses
her fury and grief when Bensdays with Batgirl was cancelled. Apparently others complained that Batgirl was getting preferential treatment from CIG via direct access with the Master of Ships.
—> 44:44!She has found the black box and begins the long jog back to her craft. Futzing ensues until she figures out how to put it down.
She decides to return to the shipwreck and explore. What’s this?
Another box?! Well it looks like this 45 minute long fetch quest
sans combat or adventure par excellence just got
doubly fun! She picks up yet another box, begins the trek back to her ship, decides to
retrieve yet another box!Welcome my friends to a little thing we call a game loop of emergent gameplay.
“This might take a while folks — sorry about that... but this is FUN!”Moments later she explains that she parked far away from the shipwreck because she loves walking towards her ship. So get comfortable because she’s going to be doing that marathon for a small eternity a half dozen times.
Yet while she performs this ritual of the highest fidelity mundanity ever unleashed upon the world, she strikes up a conversation with her viewers.
51 minutes in, “So tell me folks... what is the most exciting part of 3.0 for you?” You’re playing it, Batgirl. Oh, but then she asks what the most disappointing aspect of 3.0 has been for viewers, and
proceeds to answer the question herself.She talks about those like her who have long supported the game out of love of Chris Roberts, ”Anything Chris makes turns to gold. Well not always.”[/b]
And then, as if she is being tested by the gods of irony, she attempts to lower the
gold cargo box she’s been carrying and watches it clip through the floor of her ship.
She goes beneath the ship to retrieve it, musing about the timing of her Chris Roberts praise. She picks it up, carries it inside, and this time it stays. Back to the grind!
Boredom returns for several minutes. She searches further, hoping she might find a dragonfly. Chris did during his Gamescom 2016 playthrough, so it’s not that big a stretch. Then again, do you
really think Chris would give away that which he could sell?
Well, this post is already long enough so I’ll spare you too much additional detail on Batgirl’s big mission.
Here, an hour and twenty minutes in, is the final punchline. Voiced with two different accents and three different personalities.
I don’t want to give anything away. Sometimes, despite enormous effort and endurance on your part,
you can’t. ”This is becoming a nightmare. A nightmare of futility.”Not one to give up without a fight, Batgirl tries yet again, leaving the station and returning, traipsing through the corridors
to once again plead with the NPC who can compensate her for what was surely two hours of her time.But he’s got other words for this backer, and in many ways they’re about the truest words ever uttered about the 6 years in development $180 million pre-Alpha.
”Hey, take your shit.”And that, dear friends, is The State of the Game.
