Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

My recent gametime has been positively dominated by Shadowrun: Dragonfall.  I picked it up a while ago as part of a bundle, probably? and didn't really give it a go until I was reminded of it by a different Shadowrun game popping up on Steam.

In past Shadowrun runs (da doo ron ron), I've always gone for the Street Samurai.  I usually try to wrest as much uniqueness and novelty from games as I can, since I know I'm probably only going to be visiting briefly.  Much in the way that it behooves one to order a Bloomin' Onion to get the real Outback Steakhouse experience, I would roll up a Street Samurai, because I don't already know what that is.

This time I went with a Decker, the character class that realizes the Neuromancer hacker dream--data jacks being incorporated into your body for Reasons, computer systems somehow recontextualized as physical reality that can only be rendered in wireframe, the whole nine yards.  This appears to have been a good choice!  Staying somewhat clear of physical combat steered me into more of a charismatic and intelligent role, which (as it happens) is a good way to open up a bunch of interesting little plot widgets along the way.

Chiatra, Elven Decker.

The plot is good, but not great.  So far I've taken away a feeling similar to a well-executed tabletop session, helped in large part by the conversation/decision trees that account for your character traits.  My Decking skills have whisked me past more than a few encounters that would have been difficult to manage otherwise, and Charisma often gave me nonviolent solutions much more satisfying than the tactical combat version would have been.

Every time I interact with Shadowrun's combat, I feel like there's something I'm missing.  There's plenty of information about what's going to happen (hit likelihood percentages display above enemies, and so on), but my plans don't usually work out as I expect them to.  My team gets hit too often, the enemies don't get hit often enough, and the whole time there's a sense that that wouldn't be the case if I was just better at it.

At the same time, I often find myself thinking that the combat is too simple.  Every encounter seems to revolve around cover.  If you have cover, great; if you don't, Game Over.  Obtaining cover for yourself and denying your enemies the protection of cover is so crucial to success that I feel robbed of creativity.  Why waste time "exploring your options" when there's one optimal solution that will yield victory?  Nevertheless, I do like tactical combat, and I have a good time running those scenarios despite the potential for falling into a rut.

One thing I notice (though I can't say for sure whether it's something I like or dislike) is that the other options in a conversation or decision are still visible, even when you don't meet the requirements to take them.  This serves as a kind of advertisement for the replay value on offer.  "Imagine how things could have gone if you had enough medical training to mention the NPC's chronic illness by name!"

At the same time, the game has to transmit all the important information to all players regardless of their character choices, so more often than not the "different paths" all circle back to the same dialogue path anyway.  Will I remember enough about a specific encounter to get anything out of that difference if I rolled up a new character and played through the whole game again?  I'm not sure.  I do like having an idea of what I could have seen, though.  Really I think I'd want a "check this out" option to show me the other dialogue without needing to play through the hours and hours of (probably still fun!) content I'd need to to unlock it with another character.

One quibble: for a game so dependent on text and reading, the lack of options for the font size is frustrating.  Always has been, with the Shadowrun games--it's the reason I never played Shadowrun Returns for very long.  My PC gaming setup is on a large-screen TV in the living room, which admittedly is not ideal for text, but I've seen plenty of other games (even less text-heavy games!) that let players bump up the font size on the UI.

However.  However.  I've been having a great time with it!  I've put in twelve hours already, and I'll be happy to put in as many more as it takes to see Chiatra through her trials and tribulations.  The Berlin imagined in Shadowrun: Dragonfall gives just enough context to get you interested, but not so much that you get bored clicking through pages and pages of data.  Most of the information about the world is transmitted through conversations, so it's much less "In the year 2030, the great states of man..." and much more "goddamn anarchy can be a real pain in the ass sometimes".  Which somehow makes it easier to fill in the blanks with my own imagination.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut costs $15.  That's less than any of these hamburgers.  And you'll take a hell of a lot more away from the game than the burger.