#xdefiant

Hoo boy so if you've never heard of it, Xdefiant is meant to be Ubisofts take on a free2play Call of duty, much like Combat Arms, Blacklight Retribution, Crossfire X, Ironsight and so on and so forth. The most i've heard about was a lot of Cod streamers/"gamers" were raving about how this game will be better then the game they usually play because it removes skill based matchmaking or something.

By the looks of things though, it doesnt seem to have done much since its beginning its sunsetting process before being shutdown within June 2025. And of course because the game industry has a habit for it, 277 employees are losing their jobs. Great, wonderful, really making the industry seem apporachable and worth building a career in arent we?

I'll link a pcgamer article covering it, lets just move onto to our game.

We are approaching the moment in which indie games that echo the elder scrolls series are starting to pop up and I for one am all for it. For as much as Bethesda has earned negativity from their decisions lately, the elder scrolls is atleast an enjoyable series of open world rpgs that folks have created fond memories with, from traversing dungeons, fighting dragons, doing quests for daedra to get their artifacts, joining every faction to do their quests and end up being in charge of them all. Yep good memories. Anyways were seeing some elder scrolls-likes popping up and one we'll be looking at is Dread Delusion, a game that uses Morrowind as its inspiration, allegedly I think I dont lf the devs were inspired by it, though there is definatly large mushrooms.

DD's world is a bleak one in which an event known as the World Rend which messed the world up real bad, leading to Humanity and their gods to flee to floating islands in the sky to survive. Eventually humanity got fed up with the gods, started a war were they proceeded to kill most of them along with their followers and 40 years later are colonising various floating landmasses as the dogmatic Apostatic Union, who banned all worship and brought with them mechanical technology and trade.

You're a prisoner (as is tradition for elder scrolls games and such is for this scrolls-like) who is tasked by the Union Inquisition to apprehend a disgraced mercenary captain who plans to create an afterlife for humanity. My time in the Oneiric Isles got as far as Harrowshire for this playthrough, I havent gotten to the endless realm or the clockwork kingdom yet but I've enjoyed what I played so far. The game outright encourages you to explore and do quests as your main method of leveling your abilities depends on embracing delusions, which can be found in various places, temples, caves and ruins, with quests being another way to gain delusion.

Combat itself is a bit basic with a block that if timed correctly can parry an enemy leaving them stunned momentarily, along with a light attack or a heavy attack. So far I only had a sword as my weapon and i'm not sure if theres any other melee weapons to find. Theres definitely some ranged weapons with the throwing knives you can equip and I've picked up plenty of arrows but found no bows yet. Spells however is something i've managed to find in some places which is good since i've built my guy into a spellcaster, often hitting any enemies with a cipher bolt and then finish off with a stab when they get close. Hell once I got the spell that boosts your movement speed, I basically treated the Oneric Isles as my own personal Green Hill Zone.

So something I wanted to touch on was the games lore on the Union and Gods in this world. A lot of the people in the skylands used to work out a deal with a local god with the help of Wikkians, a sort of lawyer that covers Divine Affairs. The people get some help in boosting their harvests and population, the god gets some faith from the people. However a lot of these deals tend to be quite faustian with a terrible price needing to be paid in order to gain the gods help. One village you visit early on had a deal with a god where they had bountiful harvests of mushrooms for their tea. The catch? They had to sacrifice their young every now and then. Given how the wars ended 40 years ago, you can definatly find folks who lived in the pre-war time and consider the deals with gods to be absolutely cruel. Its easy to understand for folks in this world, why they'd want to do away with the gods, figuring they'd be better off without them.

However without the gods to help, the harvests end up going badly. Harrowshire, the next area you go to after the early game, is stated to be going through a famine with the unions only solution to import food from far away. This only ends up helping those that can afford the prices for these imported foods while others who cant are left to starve, the Union more interested in torturing and hanging suspected cultists then in looking for a more reliable solution to the famine crisis. In a way, the Union didnt really stop the cruelty from the days of god worship so much as replaced it entirely, without any of the benefits that the devout got in return. For folks who felt the worship of gods was cruel and oppresive, the god wars was a form of liberation that saw humanity break free and establish their independence. For the folks who felt the god worship offered more good than bad, a sort of necessary evil needed for prosperity, the wars are a dark time of oppression as gods are slaughtered, hundreds if not thousands of humans are killed as the Union proceeds to subjugate people under their rule. You can find folks and books in this game from both sides of the coin, both giving a point of view of such a large event that occurred in this ruined world. And thats fascinating as hell to me. Very good worldbuilding indeed.

So yeah, I liked Dread Delusion. From what i've played so far its a fascinating world to explore with its lore quite captivating. I'd recommend giving it a go. Now before I finish this off, I wanted to take a moment to share an observation I have so please bare with me.

So your most typical fantasy stories tend to feature the general tropes. Magic, dragons, elves, dwarfs, goblins and orcs, that kind of stuff. There are plenty of shows, films, games that have their own version of those general tropes and they can be sourced to J R R Tolkien who, while not the inventor of these tropes, is atleast the one who popularised these tropes into the main culture mindset. So many of these fantasy series feature these tropes so miluch that its become almost mundane. Easily recognisable and understandable by nearly everyone. Now that mundanity is not a dig at their overall quality, its perfectly fine for these fantasy stories to rely on these tropes and build on top of them.

Now on the other side is the kind of Fantasy that dont rely on these tropes, instead creating worlds that are outright alien. These worlds may or may not have some swords and sorcery, maybe some dungeons and some sort of "dragon" but theres a lot about these worlds that are outright unfamiliar and strange compared to the tolkienesque worlds. And i'm gonna call these Acid Fantasy, shamelessly stealing from the name of the bundle that Dread Delusion is a part of along with Lunacid (which I should definatly play for Midnight Gaming).

So we have Tolkienesque and then we have Acid Fantasy. A lot of it depends on how much it relies on the common fantasy tropes vs creating it own original ideas and worlds. Whether they play it safe and stick to whats familiar or change things up and get weird with it.

Tolkiens works are obviously Tolkienesque while Dread Delusion is Acid Fantasy along with Lunacid.

The Elder Scrolls series could definatly be Tolkienesque with some different stuff such as the khajiits and argonians. Though the deeper you look into the lore, the more Acid Fantasy it becomes with Morrowind itself being a whole region thats Acid Fantasy as hell. I'd put this as between the two but slightly towards Tolkienesque.

Warcraft could definatly fit in the same sort of space since while it has a lot of fantasy tropes, theres definatly some differences that set them apart from them. The orcs being from a different world, corrupted from drinking blood from space demons is just the surface of that universes lore. So it sits between but leaning towards Acid Fantasy.

Game of thrones doesnt have any orcs or elves, though it is very grounded with maybe some magic and definatly some dragons, so thats definatly in the Tolkienesque corner.

You'd probably say the same with Discworld but that series tends to usually feature those tropes solely to parody them or poke fun, usually to put its own twist on them, with a lot of its world mostly being its own unique brand of fantasy. Though not quite to the point of Acid Fantasy, it can sit squarely between the two.

Hylics, Acid Fantasy no contest, it is 100% weird as hell from what I saw.

This was just a small observation about fantasy worlds and you maybe wondering what was the point of this? To establish boxes to push different works in to judge and critique them on? To encourage a form of discussion about how fantasy worlds mingle with common tropes and ask why they tend to stick to whats familiar? Is it just an excuse to recreate that calvin and hobbes meme of his dad talking about earthbound and undertale??

Definatly the third, maybe the second...