My Unfinished Norse Project
Nascent and perhaps never to be finished, but relevant with respect to Too Human was a project I played with a couple of years back reimagining Norse mythology through a sci-fi lense. It was begun as a project for NaNoWriMo. I figured that aping Norse mythology might make it easier to write and more likely to finish, but I got caught up in research and world building and never quite came up with a story path that I was comfortable with, partly because I was certain I didn't want to tell a Ragnarok account and partly because with all the world building I was more interested in finding some sort of exploratory reason to wander throughout the concept, but I'll come back to that.
The only piece that I actually "finished" is the brief "future Wikipedia page" Creation Myth, which I never could decide if it was more fitting as introduction or appendix to a novel. It sets things up pretty simply as a norse-influenced colonization effort, admittedly similar to the backstory of Pern amongst other works. The general idea was that with a whole solar system to play with each of the worlds of Norse mythology gets its own planet. Ymir, the great giant, is the colony ship and Audhumla (Ymir's cow) it's mind vault and gene bank. I believe the idea was that the old frost giants were the cryo-stasis "old crew" of the ship and the new gods the rebellious first restorations/creations of Ymir's mind vault.
One of my favorite conceptions of the project was the use of Yggdrasil, the great world tree, as a solar system spanning space elevator complex, "rooted" in the outer planets and asteroid fields (drawing materials from them) and "grown" towards the solar system's sun ...
Too Human: The Wonders of its Flaws and the Paucity of its Story
Too Human is almost fascinating because it is mediocre. Most of its flaws, beyond the obvious graphical glitches or industry par bad voice acting, seem deliberate and it could just be from sort of "design by committee" or it could be from actual attempts to branch out and attempt originality just outside the standard lines of (A)RPG design, that just don't quite grab players the way the designers were hoping/expecting. In theory there are a bunch of individual pieces that could work well on their own: the crafting system is complicated and well balanced on top of an interesting random drop mechanics; the skill system seems interestingly diverse and assumedly well balanced; the random naming system is fun and amusing; the right stick combat system, at its best, is a unique take on the Diablo mouse click system and kinder on the fingers than traditional button mashing; the use of Futhark in the UI is cool (but underutilized in my opinion). Together the whole seems somewhat haphazard and underwhelming.
I've got a level 27 Cyber Bioengineer and believe I've only the need to grind out the final boss (got two phases in before I got bored last night) to see the end of the campaign story. I've been playing Too Human in contrast with Castle Crashers and I find the "stick mashing" a little bit more fun than the button mashing, and Too Human's odd pacing (long walks, the wells and Aesir, weirdly long death animation) does a better job of keeping me from "battle fatigue", but Castle Crashers does a better job at intangible rewards (more interesting music, more variety in the animation and level design).
It should come as no shock that rather than the gameplay my biggest complaints are in ...
