14 DAY TRIAL // There's a moment in Sunless Sea, relatively close to the start of the game, when a player who ventures to the North will get his first glimpse of giant blocks of ice who seem to be able to guide their movements and fiercely track and attack all ships that that are foolish enough to enter their territory and linger.
My captains and my crew were killed by smart icebergs no less than three times in a row before I decided that it would be a good idea to try and solve some missions, get some upgrades and only then venture north in order to try and discover the mysteries of the freezing sea.
I then got sufficiently wrapped up in other stories that Sunless Sea can create that I forgot to go and try to break through the iceberg line, although since then I have visited Brite and other ports in the region.
Failbetter Games has managed to create a universe which takes a relatively simple premise, that of London sinking underground, and manages to push it into a number of surprising directions, creating a world where the player never knows exactly where his decisions will lead and how far long it will take for the consequences to manifest.
The stakes always feel relatively low but it's easy to connect to the captain's predicaments.
Dragon Age: Inquisition targets grandeur
The new BioWare title is the, on its surface, more ambitious than Sunless Sea and the player, in charge not only a ship but a huge organization that can challenges nations, makes decisions that can impact the entire world.
The entire game experience is calibrated to make gamers feel like the center of the world, both when it comes to combat and to the way dialogues and other interactions are set-up.
By the time the single player campaign is done gamers will have made plenty of choices about both small and big issues and Thedas is changed by their actions, with dragons dead to prove their worth in combat and kings ready to do obey orders.
But, even if I played through Dragon Age: Inquisition three times, I never got the feeling that I was connected to my avatar, in part because the entire experience makes him seem larger than life and incredibly important even when his actions are mundane.
Future titles should aim to mix Dragon Age and Sunless Sea
The two titles approach story and world building in very different ways, some might say even opposite, but I believe developers who care about narrative will need to learn from both of them in order to create more engaging experiences in the coming years.
For a long time AAA video games have relied mostly on their looks and their gameplay to satisfy audiences but these days even shooter have complex universes for players to explore a lot of lore to dig through.
Sunless Sea shows how even a complex fantasy setting with a lot of twisting stories can quickly become intimate and can capture the attention of the player even if might never discover all the story threads included.
Dragon Age aims much higher, with a protagonist who can seem like an unstoppable force to those around him, and can dazzle with the complexity of its conversations or its interactions.
I would love to see a title that managed to combine the two views on narrative, which can deliver incredible moments of heroism but also situations where the player lacks all the details in order to create a min-max decision and needs to act on instinct rather than based on a cold calculation of what choice will give him the best possible outcome.