The Wheel of Time

My first encounter with The Wheel of Time, a 1999 first person spell shooter by now-defunct Legend Entertainment, was an article in some gaming magazine around the time of the game's release: I remember the article appreciating the ceiling architecture in the game. The book series is awesome but I had never gotten to play this oddball of an adaptation. It was not being sold anywhere for years but GOG managed to get it on their store in 2022 and I bought it last year, solely due to the license: I doubted a shooter from that era would be very satisfying gameplay-wise now.

A spell shooter from an Age long past

I believe some modernization work was done on the game -- by Nightdive Studios, I reckon, for they're tagged on the store page. An original copy of the game might not install and run as smoothly but who knows. There is a score of minor issues present, though, like how the menus have no mouse support.

Other issues include there being no option to turn off mouse acceleration which caused some trouble for me as I have the Windows setting on so high. But I did work around it by limiting twitchy movements. Music also sounded like it was mixed to come louder from the right speaker -- weird. One might also expect that a game so old would have nearly instantaneous loading times from an SSD. Maybe all the rendering wrappers and whatnots add overhead to the process, making it slower. And UI doesn't scale with resolution, though I think it's possible to make it do so on a different renderer I didn't use.

It's always so disappointing to have modern titles avoid functional mirrors and reflecting surfaces when in older ones they're so common. Just the tutorial in The Wheel of Time has a random room with a mirror ceiling. You can't see any part of your character model in first person but it is visible in the reflections. And because of that, looking directly down when on a reflective surface allows you to see the model is textured under the robes too. I thought that was amusing and took a screenshot of it which led to another amusing thing.

For some reason, Nvidia and Gamebar overlays both captured the game really dark. (Nvidia's also labeled the shots as 'War on Terror' -- where did that come from?) I brightened the shots up a bit in Microsoft Designer (that I apparently have on the PC) but when I got to the screenshot in question, the program refused to perform its auto enhance: AI had detected the upskirt picture as inappropriate -- a real "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" moment.

Another little cool technical thing The Wheel of Time does is how at one point there is a passageway that starts from a portal frame that is away from the room's wall: the passage is not there if you go around the frame. The effect looks so eerie in some games -- like this and the looking glasses in Prey (2017) -- but in something like Portal it's less so for some reason.

The Wheel of Time runs on an early iteration of the Unreal Engine. The lead designer and writer -- I'd say game director -- Glen Dahlgren showed the game's prototype to Epic's Tim Sweeney who reacted with: "This is my engine?" Sweeney has later stated that to have been the moment he realized engine licensing was a viable business.

That I learned from the novella-length post-mortem Dahlgren has written of the game's troubled development. Legend had been making graphic adventure games and this one was supposed to be one as well. But when Dahlgren had finally figured out what exactly the game was going to be, the author of the novels, Robert Jordan, shot it down: he didn't want an adventure game retelling of a story he was still working on (and never got to finish.) To save the license deal, the game was pivoted into a multiplayer shooter that in the end got a single player campaign as well.

Fast and loose with the lore

The Wheel of Time has surprisingly long between-chapters cinematics. The opening one also does very good job at laying out the setting's premise.

You play as Elayna, an Aes Sedai of the Brown Ajah. Her name is very safe lore-wise, considering that 'Elayne' and 'Elaida' are characters in the books.

But that's where playing safe ends: Elayna can Channel only a speck's worth of the One Power. How the fuck she was allowed to become a Sister in the White Tower? In the books, she would've been taught how to control the little ability she has to not cause accidents and then sent back home. She would have never made to an Accepted, lest a full Aes Sedai. She is particularly Talented at using ter'angreal (artifacts that Channel specific Weaves in stead of the user) but I'm not sure if newcomers are ever tested in that. And if it would even be good enough reason to let her become an Aes Sedai.

But that's not all: she's also the Keeper of Chronicles who is the right hand, the second-in-command, of the Amyrlin Seat. The Aes Sedai have an unwritten pecking order based on how strong channelers they are. Every Sister knows who among them in a room is in charge. Elayna would have absolutely no authority despite her position.

The Keeper is usually chosen by the Amyrlin Seat but Sitters can overrule her choice and pick their own: usually done if the Amyrlin doesn't enjoy the trust of the Sitters. It's as if either the Amyrlin or the Sitters chose Elayna as a cruel joke. Her life would be miserable.

The story starts with some guy breaking into the White Tower, killing a bunch of Sisters -- just how?! He's there to steal the cuendillar Seals that keep the Dark One trapped in his hole -- or I suppose keep track of when he's about to get out as they start breaking. Instead the invader flees with a ter'angreal of unknown purpose. It's apparently important and so the Amyrlin sends Elayna to get it back. The Amyrlin knows the assassin is going to Shadar Logoth of all places and so she sends the weakest Aes Sedai of all time there, armed only with a weak Air Pulse ter'angreal? Elayna doesn't even have a Warder.

Another silly thing is Tar Valon and the White Tower being besieged by an army of Trollocs and Myrddraal when you return from Shadar Logoth. This timeline seriously has the worst Aes Sedai; they wouldn't survive to even see Tarmon Gai'don, the Last Battle. The Whitecloaks in the game also have their leader use ter'angreal, which shouldn't fly with them not wanting to have anything to do with the One Power.

To the game's credit, it does a little twist with Elayna's weakness. However, it doesn't solve the issues with her position. That would require a lot more explaining. I could buy a strong Amyrlin being able to exert her will to let a particularly weak channeler to become a Sister and maybe even get her as far as the Keeper. But that would look so insanely suspicious to everyone in the Tower. They would want to know why.

Not the easiest shooter

I had to restart the game on the lowest difficulty after I learned how long it takes to kill the first enemy with the Air Pulse. I wasn't going to tolerate such a struggle. But even on Easy, the Air Pulse isn't much stronger. You do get better offensive ter'angreal soon but even something like the Fireball takes many uses to kill enemies. The power level in the game doesn't match up to lore accurate Channeling. To have an even fight in the books, you'd need to throw a horde of non-channeling enemies against one Sister -- or catch her off-guard.

Balefire was the only offensive ter'angreal that to me felt equal to its book strength. Although, even on Easy, bosses take more than one fully charged bolt to kill. In the lore, in addition to killing, balefire burns the target's Thread off the Pattern: the stronger the blast, the further their Thread is erased. That can lead to things done by the target getting undone, the timeline changing and only the people there remembering it doing so. Heavy use of balefire in an area also starts ripping the Pattern apart, breaking down reality. Thus the Weave's use is avoided when possible.

I tried at first to save the charges of the Balefire ter'angreal in case it would be a super rare pickup. But Myrddraal and Black Sisters have so many hit points and especially the latter dish out so much damage that it's simpler to charge up a balefire bolt and one-shot them once you have the ter'angreal. At least on Easy you'll have plenty enough Balefire for the bosses too.

The setting needs more video games

Despite The Wheel of Time's shooter simplicity and lore inaccuracies, it was cool to experience the setting in an interactive medium like this: seeing the fog tendrils of Mashadar in Shadar Logoth and travel the dark Ways where Machin Shin, the black wind, comes after you. You hear Machin Shin approaching from the rising howling of wind and once close enough, you see the wall of screaming faces. It was quite incredible.

It's a shame the rights to The Wheel of Time video game adaptations have been held by a company (called Red Eagle Entertainment at some point at least) that seems to be able to work out only some half-assed attempts every once in a while -- to not lose the license or something. It's like as if they're doing it out of malice. In last December, there was this card game released into early access, only to be canceled in July. And now there's a similar attempt coming in Q1 next year. How awesome it would be to get an actual roleplaying game using the license from a big studio?

Admittedly that's not a thing that simply happens. I feel established names in the industry are not likely to go after book licenses; it's the smaller, ambitious teams, looking their breakthrough.

Amazon's Wheel of Time show I'm still not intending to ever watch. I did, however, watch the critique that youtuber Man Carrying Thing did of the first season. Turns out, the show is even worse than I thought! It's amazing how an enormous amount of money can produce such dogshit. I knew the show wasn't going to be good when the first season was still being made and they teased with Mat's dagger -- which didn't match its book description. If they couldn't get something so small right, what hope did anything else have?