Deus Ex: Human Revolutions (PC)...

The original Deus Ex (2000) is one of those classic PC games considered sacrosanct by the community. Many 'Top 100 Games of All Times' lists put it at #1 and a lot of PC gamers evangelize it at every opportunity. I admire Deus Ex for what it accomplished - It was arguably the first game to successfully pull off a blend first-person shooter and deep RPG mechanics - but I wasn't ga ga over it myself. Deus Ex tought me that when it comes to action games, quite a bit more care has to be put into how the RPG elements are handled than in turn-based games. Action games have to be fun to play before skill points and level-ups are awarded; and yet so many begin as a chore to play.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DEHR; 2011; Eidos Montreal) is a prequel, set in a near-future where cybernetic technology is becoming available to the general public. While the medical benefits of replacement limbs and organs are clear, many people fear a future in which wealthy people will gain even more of a competitive edge over plebes by implanting 'neural-stimulator chips' or synthetic muscles, etc. You take the role of the chief of security for one of the major manufacturers of cybernetic technologies when, on the eve of a major government hearing on cybernetic regulation, your company is attacked by terrorists. What follows is a quest to get to the bottom of who the terrorists were, and what they thought that they would accomplish (hint: it's a Deus Ex game, which means that it's going to be filled with conspiracy theories).

A digression. Unlike review sites, I tend to pay only the most lip service to video game stories. As I've said before, this is because most of them don't hold up to comparisons with any other type of media. Let me reiterate this: With only a few exceptions, the best that the vast majority of game stories can claim is that they're comparable to the pulpiest of pulp fantasy/sci fi novels or cheaply produced television shows. Some people get really offended when I say this, but I'd challenge them to go out there and read some books, watch some great classic movies, and then come back and tell me about how 'original' this or that game's story really was. Here's a paragraph from PC Gamer's review of DEHR:

The full story is vast and complex, crammed into every corner of Human Revolution’s world. Every apartment you break into, every secret room you find, every rooftop you clamber across has little scraps of personality and history to read and interpret. It’s a story-junky’s blissful overdose.

While I agree that there's a lot of fluff to read in the game (too much), we have very different definitions of 'vast and complex'. If you were legitimately surprised by the 'twists' in this game, I'm sorry for you. The foreshadowing is so clumsily heavy-handed that some characters may as well enter the stage for the first time wearing devil-horns1.

The game's dialog system is quite good, with one caveat: There's an absolute must-buy ability (it should be your first upgrade) that allows you to sense the NPC's mood, determine whether you're pursuing the right conversation choices, and ultimately influence their behavior. Given how important influencing others is to this game (it gives you massive xp rewards and perks), it's a bit ridiculous that you can actually accidentally ignore this upgrade.

With that out of the way, I was genuinely impressed by how much DEHR stuck to the formula and feel of the original. The layout of the worlds feels very similar in style, and the way that you can approach challenges from various angles (sneaking, shooting, hacking, etc.) cleaves very close to the best intentions of the first title. I say 'intentions' because I think that many reviewers forget that there's a huge difference between intention and execution, and it's in the latter that the game stumbles.

DEHR is perhaps the worst-balanced game that I've ever played - at least when it comes to titles published by professional studios. What a mess. Where to begin?

Take the upgrade system - it's terrible. For starters, at least in the early game, upgrades are very expensive (all upgrades have the same point 'cost'), and you're given a surfeit of uninterpretable choices: This upgrade protects me from poisonous gas... Is there a lot of gas in the game? (no). To make matters worse, there are entire upgrade trees that are completely useless. Seriously, go and read upgrade guides to see how they spell out why this or that 'feature' provides no benefit in the context of how the game actually works. When points are scarce, accidentally wasting them on useless upgrades is a massive drag.

Another problematic feature is the combat balancing: the main character is very, very weak, whereas some of the enemies are quite strong. Looking broadly at the skill trees, it's pretty clear that the game really wants you to lean towards stealth (annoyingly, you also get more experience for non-lethal takedowns so there goes that whole 'play any character you want to' thing). Inexplicably, however, the game forces ~4-5 'boss' encounters where you absolutely have to fight. Every review agrees that these fights are handled terribly, and even more so if you've invested all of your points in stealthy abilities. The developpers seem to have realized this as well, so they included a very cheap upgrade that gives you a limited-use instant-kill attack called the 'Typhoon'. Realistically, you may only find about 40 cartriges for this thing in the game, but it kills anything in 1-2 hits, including major bosses. I only used the ability about 8 times in the whole game, but 4 of those times were to instantly skip the awful boss fights.

I'm not a big graphics person, but given how terribly this game runs - with frequent frame-rate drops - I'd expect it to be a lot better looking than this. The character models are particularly stiff and bland, with flat textures. For comparison's sake, I can run Skyrim, a contemporary title, with all options maxed and no frame-rate issues at all. I've seen a lot of complaints about this on the forums, so I know it's not 'just me'. 

Finally, I want to point out that this is yet another example of a game where you have to upgrade your character a number of times before it's actually fun to play. The basic character can only run for 2.5 seconds (some super-soldier, hunh?), dies from a single shotgun blast, and sneaks like he's trailing a dozen empty tin-cans behind him on a string. You're constantly presented with alternative routes that you'll need this or that upgrade to take, so the game world feels like an endless series of limitations rather than 'opportunities'. I wish that more devs would make the basic game fun to play and use upgrades as 'perks' rather than necessities.  

I kept playing DEHR because many people were very positive about the game and I wanted to be able to criticize it from a knowledgeable perspective. Yes, the black-and-gold cyberpunk aesthetic is cool and the Blade Runner vibe is somewhat refreshing in the sea of overused military/space marine settings (I'd argue that the original Mass Effect did an excellent job with this same vibe). But none of this elminates my feeling that the game just isn't any fun to play. Compared to other sneaking games (e.g. Metal Gear or Splinter Cell) it leaves much to be desired, and as a third-person shooter it's too clumsy2.

When a game's fundamentals fail on so many levels, I don't understand why so many people feel compelled to stick around for the setting or story. There's so much better stuff out there to waste your time on. 

1Simply understanding 'The Law of the Economy of Characters' makes it very difficult for overly simplistic 'twists' to have any impact.

2The enemy AI is absolutely abysmal. For instance, foes can spot you through glass windows, andwhile this will trigger the alarm, they'll just stand there and shout at you. No enemy will actually bother firing at you until you shatter the window yourself, allowing you to line up a great free headshot, grenade toss, or rocket strike before you're even threatened.

Diablo III (PC)...

The original Diablo (1996; Blizzard) was quite an important PC game. At the time it was credited with ending a few years of RPG stagnation that had occurred on the platform as many developers jumped on the twin crazes started by Doom (First-Person Shooters) and Myst (multimedia content). It was nevertheless, quite controversial as many die-hard PC RPG fans felt that the action-based clicking was a huge step down from classic titles that emphasized strategy and tactics. Regardless, it was a huge success that really launched the idea of online, co-operative multiplayer1. I bought the original Diablo on day one and put many hours into it, but D2 (2000) kind of missed me until I played through it with a friend a few years ago. I remember that the game was heavily delayed, and by the time it came out, it looked terribly archaic compared to some of its own clones.

These 'clones' have always been the series' curse. A lot of companies have had vague notions about what aspects of Diablo lead to its success: The constant gaining of 'loot', the randomized dungeons, the customizable characters, etc. As far as I'm concerned, the real 'secret' to Blizzard's success came from the very delicate balance of all of these factors - plus high production values, a great atmosphere, and awesomely unique music. Too much or too little loot makes the game tedious or boring, too many skills and customizable abilities leads to choice paralysis, low production values create a less-than-compelling play experience, etc. These complaints could be levelled at any number of genres, but the somewhat simplified (click, click, click) gameplay of Diablo and its clones seem to expose such faults in a glaring fashion - and there have been oh so many clones2.

After a dozen years of absence, Blizzard finally decided to release the third installment, and playing it has coalesced my feelings about the franchise such that I understand why I can enjoy this company's efforts while being mind-numbingly bored when playing so many others.

Yes the gameplay remains a click-fest and yes the primary drive behind playing is watching better and more powerful equipment drop from slain foes. But Blizzard appears to have tested and refined the formula such that the frequency of the upgrades makes continued play incredibly addictive. Furthermore, at least as compared to D2, individual areas are smaller and more varied, so you constantly feel as though you're making progress. The game is also gorgeous and cinematic, so each weapon, piece of armor, or ability that you use looks cool and incentivizes you to further develop your character(s).

The different classes, Monk, Barbarian, Wizard, etc. all look really cool and unique (although the Barbarian female may be a bit... huge). Compared to the previous titles, much more of your equipment is uniquely represented on your character, so there's a constant aesthetic drive to seek out new sweet looking loot.

While the base gameplay may be quite conserved from previous entries, character development has been simplified considerably: you no longer distribute stat points and have access to all abilities given to your class. You simply swap them in and out as needed. While this reduces the degree of differentiation among players, it fixes one  of the major issues underlying D2: there were too many useless abilities while others were 'obvious' bests. It also prevents you from creating a 'gimped' character - you can't mess up. I'd personally prefer having a few meaningful choices rather than many useless ones.

While the changes to character creation were a minor controversy, a very controversial aspect to D3 is its requirement that you have a constant internet connection to play - even in the single-player mode. Admitedly, the title is so multiplayer-focused that I can understand this choice: There's no distinction between offline and online characters, and there's an ever-present online auction house where players can buy and sell sweet loot. However, the arrangement does pose some odd peculiarities. For one, you can experience server lag in single-player. It doesn't happen often, but it's odd. In addition, whenever the servers go down for maintenance, you can't play the game at all. This has already happened to me once in the couple of weeks that I've had with the title, which isn't fun. 

Everything about D3 oozes with that typical Blizzard gorgeousness. The company's also got a reputation for making games that are highly scalable - I can play it on my MacBook (with settings turned low) or my 2 year old Windows PC (at 1080p with settings on max).

As I've alluded to above (as somewhat in previous posts), the loot-based Diablo-style of game hasn't always been my thing. I felt that even Diablo 2 relied too much on exploiting player's OCD tendencies to make a compelling game rather than actually putting any substance into the experience (I feel quite strongly that this is one of the major failings of Torchlight, a game that many people evangelize. Take away the OCD hunt for loot, and you're left with a very boring game). But in D3, Blizzard's really crafted a much richer experience - there's a lot of narative for people who want that, visual flair for those who like graphics, loot for the OCD in all of us, and co-op multiplayer for teaming up with friends. It has some failings, such as having to beat the game once to unlock a reasonable challenge in single player, but they didn't detract from my enjoyment.

If nothing else, Diablo 3 reveals how sub-par many of the genre's titles have been, which, if we're really lucky, will push other companies to improve their own mediocre efforts.   

1Yes, yes, previous games had done this - Neverwinter Nights (1991), among others - but they tended to be very niche and buried behind pay-to-play systems.

2I highly reccomend Dungeons & Desktops to anyone who's interested in PC RPGs. The author has a great chronicle of the many, many Diablo clones to grace the PC. This doesn't begin to cover the number of such games that graced consoles.

Record of Lodoss War (Dreamcast)...

I've begun picking up a few titles to play around with on my new Dreamcast. The one that I've played around with the most is an action-RPG called Record of Lodoss War (2001; developed by Neverland). RoLW is (loosely) based on a 90s Japanese cartoon series of the same name that was itself heavily derived from the tropes of Dungeons & Dragons1. It's partially for this reason that I wanted to play it - I used to be a big D&D fan - but also because the action RPG is one of my favorite genres, and I'm always looking to try out new entries.

RoLW is quite fascinating if for no other reason than historical interest. It's very similar to a later, much more popular game called Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on PS2 (2001; Snowblind Studios) though it incorporates some gameplay elements that are superior in many ways than its spiritual successors. (Note that while both games came out in the same year in North America, I believe that Lodoss War came out two years earlier in Japan).   

One way in which RoLW is substantially inferior to later, similar action RPGs is in its graphics, which really are quite abysmal. I've heard from retro podcasts that many Japanese developers were taken by surprise in the move to 3D graphics - some studios stubbornly refused to switch, producing 2D games for many years while others attempted rather poor forays into 3D and ended up closing their doors.

Lodoss War looks only slightly better than a PS1 game because of the noticeably crisper polygons. The devs would have been so much better off by stylizing the characters rather than going for 'realistic' proportions. Notice the complete lack of shadows on anything; something I'm finding quite common on Dreamcast games. I can't take my own screens, so this one's from Gamespot (here).

Neverland was clearly unprepared for the transition to 3D: character models are flat, simple barely shaded polygons. While all equipment is technically represented on the character, it doesn't really matter as this essentially translates into some smudge becoming a different colored smudge. Animations are also laughably bad: characters run as though they're skating around, with nary a bob or swagger. It's easy to chalk this up to RoLW being an old game, but there are many N64 titles that looked a lot better than this.

If one can overcome the horrible eyesore there's quite a bit to like about Lodoss. For starters, the game features a neat weapon/armor upgrade system that takes the place of the 'loot' so common in other Diablo-esque clones. On top of allowing quite a bit of variety in terms of play style and customization, the key breakthrough in the system is that you can easily transfer any upgrades placed onto an item to any other item of the same type. Furthermore, all upgrades 'stack' without a limit on the number of upgrades other than their rising cost. A common problem in Diablo-type games is the fear of 'wasting' upgrades on equipment that may quickly become obsolete.

In RoLW's case, you're actually just carrying stats and skills forward onto each new piece of equipment such that by a few hours in, your stuff is pretty crazy 'epic'. This also has the benefit of allowing players to experiment with different upgrade paths (eg., boosting critical hit chances, damage, weapon speed, etc.) with very little consequence. (I should also note that a recent rather under-appreciated title, Two Worlds II, also implemented a somewhat similar consequence-free upgrade system that made experimenting pretty awesome - why don't more games do this?).

Note the 'quick' item bar on the right side of the screen. It's pretty useful and easy to cycle through, even if it's typically only filled with green healing potions. Screenshot from here.

Also, it's somewhat mind-blowing to me that Lodoss War lets you save almost anywhere (the only exceptions are boss battles). At any time you can town portal home, save, and when you load, the portal is still there waiting to take you back into the fray. This comes at the price that savegames chew up just under 1/3 of a memory card, but it's rather shocking that a very early game in what became a rather popular genre2 offered an awesome feature that none of its successors, even on hardware with HDDs, did.

Among its other neat features are an excellent automap, and a host of optional dungeons and content that seem interesting even if they're only there to pad out the experience somewhat. I guess I should mention that in typical Diablo fashion, the story is near non-existent - basically you've been revived from the dead to halt the ressurection of a dark Goddess. It's a bit of a departure from the theme of the original cartoon (which a friend loaned me when I was 16), but you do meet and team up with some of its main characters. These NPC sections are actually quite fun, as your helpers are powerful, and generally allow you to be more reckless than you can be solo.

While it's clear that RoLW is a product of its era, the number forward-thinking elements it incoporated into its design made it quite easy for me to overlook its general ugliness. The appeal of such a title, being tied to a classic cartoon, would have made it niche no matter what, yet it's unfortunate that more games of the genre weren't influenced by its efforts. It certainly deserves a look from anyoen who's into loot games or classic RPGs in general.

1For all I know, the game could be based on the novel/comic book series, but I'm not up on that sort of stuff.

2'Rather popular' was sarcastic. After Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance was a smash success, we got such titles as: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (2003), Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes (2003), Champions of Norrath (2004), Xmen Legends (2004), Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), The Bard's Tale (2004), Champions: Return to Arms (2005), Xmen Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (2005), Marvel Ultimate Alliance (2006), Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009), Deathspank (2010) and sequels, and Bastion (2011). On top of that, we have many games that are only slight variants of the above model including Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003), Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (2004), and Too Human (2008) among what I'm sure are many others. The point I'm trying to make here is that I don't hear enough people talk about what an INCREDIBLY PLAYED OUT GENRE these boring hack-and-slash, loot-based RPGs have been. Please come out with something with the semblence of originality!!!

Eschalon: Book 2...

I was so impressed by Basilisk Games' Eschalon: Book 1 that upon completion, I immediately went to Steam and picked up Book 2. I've already blogged a bit about some of the specific mechanical changes made to E:B2, so here I'll focus more on the game in general.

It's clear that the developers wanted to build upon the core foundation that made Book 1 a success: the combat and exploration mechanics remain essentially the same but almost all of the details have been expanded. The world is larger and more complex (areas are no longer simply big open fields), there are many more types of items and gradations of equipment, and they've added quite a few new skills.

Another facet that's been improved is the narrative. I didn't even bother talking about the story of E:B1 because it was so generic - goblins have stolen the magic crystal that kept the kingdom safe and you have to find and return it. In EB:2, you find out that your efforts were for naught as the goblins were actually under the control of a much more sinister force whose machinations you've been tasked with foiling. your character is a bit more developed as is the history of the world. The entire plot is an mystery that gets unravelled bit-by-bit, so any detailed description would be a spoiler. I only wanted to note that character interactions and dialog have been improved and the overall plot beats driving the game were interesting enough to keep me entertained beyond my basic enjoyment of character progression and combat.

The overall game world of Eschalon: Book 2 has been expanded in many great ways. There are now large cities to explore with all kinds of things going on within and more interesting characters with which to interact.

Not all expansion is improvement however, and Book 2 suffers from its attempt to add complexity while keeping the gameplay balanced. For instance, some of the new skills seem ridiculously useful when compared to others (the same 'cost' applies to increasing all skills). Pumping a few points into the 'repair' skill - which makes your character repair equipment automatically while resting - early on will have a massive effect on your ability to afford new items and on your cash flow in general. On the other hand, it takes large investments in the 'mercantile' skill in order to have any meaningful effect on your ability to haggle over prices in shops. I tried out most of the skills over the course of the game and more than I would have liked I was shocked and a little upset when I realized that had I distributed points a bit differently, I would've had a much more smooth experience.

The devs also upped the game's default difficulty, which is a good thing overall. I mentioned in my post about Book 1 that you could basically play any character you wanted and make your way through. By increasing the challenge in the sequel, Basilisk made all of the skill and item choices more meaningful. While this does lead to the problems mentioned above, it also has makes combat and adventuring more strategic. You're not going to be playing the Eschalon series for the graphics, so this method of beefing up the strategy was a good choice overall.

All of our ideas are completely original! The combat is tougher than in Book 1, but you're also given a lot of options and abilities to help you deal with trickier foes.

Unfortunately, the one big downside to beefing up the challenge is that there's a massive difficulty spike right before the end of the game. I played a very similar character to what I'd chosen in Book 1: a jack-of-all-trades who got to experience a bit of each of the skills the game has to offer. The enemy types I met in the last act of the game required me to cast every buff I had, fight a battle of attrition, and camp out after every individual fight. This turned the final couple of hours into a boring slog and I came very close to simply giving up. It's a tough challenge to try to balance a large open game for every class, but I've noticed that many games of this style tend to edge toward balancing the final dungeon for the most combat-focused classes. As a former games writer once poignantly asked, why do so many developers insist on making your final experience with their titles one of screaming frustration?

If Eschalon: Book 2 hadn't of added so many new aspects to the formula - weapon degradation, hunger and thirst, more complex combat, expanded weapon subtypes, new spells, etc. - I'm sure that people would've complained that it was just 'more of the same'. In fact, most of the additions are ultimately good and set up the trilogy for a stellar finale. Lest the post seem overly negative, with the exception of the frustrating end, I quite enjoyed the ~20 or so hours that I pumped into the title and am looking forward to concluding the adventure in the sequel. I have to admit though that because I'm such a sucker for tight, balanced mechanics, I think that I enjoyed the original more. I guess all things must change and we can only hope that Basilisk learns from the good and the bad of Book 2 in their design of Book 3. 

The Best Intentions of Bad Mechanics...

One of the things that disappoints me a bit about 'professional' video game sites is that they often treat game mechanics very superficially, at least compared to other aspects of game design like graphics or 'story'. I've frequently been puzzled when reading praise on how a game offers 'so many options' when it's utterly clear to anyone playing said game that only one or two of these options is actually useful.

In the defense of the critics, there's a pretty good reason why detailed analysis of game mechanics is often avoided: balancing game systems is really, really tough. Even the best games often have one system or another that feels 'not quite right' - combat's too easy/hard, level progression eventually slows, later game items lead to skills becoming obsolete, etc. Nevertheless, I do remember a time when PC gaming mags used to spend quite a bit of page real estate on detailed dissection of mechanics; obviously they knew their audience.

I'd like to talk about two illustrative examples of good intentions gone awry in Basilisk Game's Eschalon: Book II. I'll state from the outset that I'm really enjoying the game and haven't finished it yet, but it's clear that a couple of additions to the Eschalon formula - neither of these mechanics were in Book I - haven't paid off quite in the way I'm sure the devs expected.

I said in a previous post that the Eschalon series was clearly inspired by Ultima, and in the second game they've decided to bring back an aspect of the classic franchise that I remember being quite controversial at the time of Ultima VII: hunger and thirst. On the surface, having to feed your characters could add an extra layer of strategy and complexity to adventuring. It works very well, for instance, in Legend of Grimlock where survivial is a core part of the mechanics, but it breaks down in a big open-world game.

Here's why: In the early game, food is scarce and expensive (actually, in Eschalon it's a bit too expensive, with food being more costly than weapons). You spend a significant amount of your cash and effort in the early stages just keeping yourself alive. At some point this reaches an equilibrium where your returns from adventuring begin covering the cost of food, but this equilibrium is very short lived as you will either a) develop the ability to cast spells that create food and water, and/or b) develop skills that mitigate the frequent need to consume. These abilities are not 'costly' in game terms once you've gained a few levels, and so feeding yourself becomes nothing more than an annoyance - you're never going to starve, but every 15 mins or so you have to waste a few seconds casting a bunch of spells and clicking around in your inventory. Much like in Ultima VII, feeding your characters becomes a Tamagotchi mechanic rather than any type of strategy/challenge (an Ultima VII expansion added the ability to auto-feed all characters due to complaints).

I've always been a 'mechanics' guy, ever since I first played roleplaying games when I was a teen. If all I cared about were graphics or a story (not to say that they're unimportant) I'd watch a movie or read a book. The numbers behind the visuals matter and figuring them out is a big part of the fun.

The second interesting mechanic is yet another one steeped in historical controversy: weapon degradation. The benefits of having to spend money to repair your weapons is clear - it acts as a 'sink' on the player's economy, pulling gold out of the world. So long as the cost of upkeep of items is proportional to their value, and if well balanced, this mechanism can prevent the accumulation of vast reserves of cash, which leads to economic irrelevance in the mid-to-late stages of many RPGs.

The difficulty lies in the knife-edge balance in the cost of upkeep (I'm unaware of single-player games that have any type of market model to adjust upkeep prices if they're poorly balanced). A classic example of a bad upkeep mechanic was that of System Shock 2, where weapons degraded so quickly that before the system was patched, you'd run out of available firepower before you'd find replacements.

Upkeep isn't completely broken in Eschalon: Book II, but it is disproportionately penalizing in the early game. On top of the need to feed yourself as discussed above, weapon degradation is so costly in the first several hours that the costs of adventuring frequently outweigh the benefits of doing so. You read that right - you can go on a quest only to find that the quest rewards (items found + the gold received from turning it in) don't quite cover the repair/food costs of having done the quest itself! I found myself stealing items and gaming the system (e.g., reloading quick saves if enemies dropped bad 'loot') in order to make ends meet.

On top of this, the high costs of upkeep create a strange sense of disappointment when you find a new item of superior quality to that which you're using but choose not to use it because you know that you won't be able to afford the upkeep. This actually persists throughout the game - it's the first RPG that I can remember playing in a long time where you have to conscientiously think about 'budgeting' if you plan to use advanced items. If you don't keep a hefty supply of cash or 'liquidateable' goods on hand, you may be unable to cover the costs of repairing your equipment, requiring you to store it and downgrade until you secure some more scratch. It's an interesting mechanism that I find fascinating for academic purposes, but it doesn't exactly inspire the high-fantasy butt-kicking awesomeness that most people probably come to these games looking for.

Again, neither of these details ruins the experience, though they do make the early portion more frustrating than necessary. Also, you can choose to turn them off when you begin a game, creating some sort of final ending score penalty (whatever that means). I've often heard that when critics say that a game 'should have had feature X', it's almost certain that this was tried and didn't have the effect that was expected. This is what seem to be the case here. It can be argued that the implementation of weapon degradation in Eschalon: Book II is interesting and somewhat unique, but it's clear that hunger/thirst are simply unnecessary. 

I'll end by saying that there are some changes to the mechanics in Book II that enhance, rather than detract from the gameplay, and I'll reserve those for a future, positive version of this post.