#64 - Enshrouded (Revisted)

Welcome back! Today we're going to be doing an in-depth look at the first game I ever posted here: Enshrouded. Now that I do long-form blog discussions instead of just screenshot posts, I figured it was time to revisit this game and give it a solid overview.

This is the third most-played game in my Steam library, which says a lot considering I have over 4,000 games. My friends and I have put about 532 hours into this game so far.

Enshrouded has been in early access for about a year and a half and the developers are still actively working on it. I'm kind of glad I waited until now to give it a full review because it's received tons of new content in the past year, and it's only getting better.

Enshrouded is unique in that it's a third-person open-world fantasy game, but it's also a crafting/survival game where you can dig/mine anywhere there is terrain and destroy almost everything placed in the world.

You can travel the world, discovering new quests and lore and improving your weapons, armor, and skills. Or, you can pick a place to settle down and build your own fantasy home, literally from the ground up. By the current endgame, you can have up to ten city-wide bases established anywhere in the world, where you can build to your heart's content.

You can also host your own public or private server and invite up to 16 people to quest in your custom world. You can fine-tune the settings of your server, so players or NPCs are stronger or weaker, determine how quickly weapons and tools break (or set them to never break), adjust how long daylight and nighttime is, and a ton more detailed customizations. Not needing food and water to survive is a default setting, although you can turn it on if you want the true survival feeling. You can also lock down your builds so strangers joining your game can't just destroy your cities and loot your resources.

I just started a new character to get screenshots for this post and I was surprised to see an opening cutscene explaining the lore of the game! That's a new addition.

Long ago, a stranger traveled to the lands of Embervale and presented the humans and Ancients with "The Elixir," a potent drug that boosted one's natural abilities. It was highly addicting and humans, of course, went a little nuts over this miracle drug, attempting to harvest their own elixir straight out of the earth themselves.

But like the Mines of Moria, humans delved too greedily and too deep, and they awoke The Shroud - a terrible fog that poisons the land and turns people into a sort of mindless undead creature called The Fell.

As The Shroud overtook the lands, humans and the Ancients worked together to create "The Flameborn," a type of person attuned to the power of fire, who is more resistant to The Shroud. This is your character.

It's never really explained, but Flameborn are essentially immortal. If you die, you just respawn from the last Flame Altar or Return Beacon you visited, so you can't ever truly have a game over. Also, you're resistant to fire.

By the way, if you find vials of the elixir in-game, it'll give a 30-minute buff of 30% damage increase and let you stay in The Shroud for up to a minute longer while it's active.

After you've built your custom Flameborn character, the game opens with you awakening within a Cinder Vessel. You climb out to find yourself in a long-forgotten Ancient Vault. Society has basically collapsed long ago and despite some scattered "Scavengers" (humans driven mad by elixir consumption) who roam the lands, there's no sign of people.

Traveling through the halls of the vault, you find a Flame Shrine, which ignites in your presence. (All sources of light in the world - even extinguished flames - will automatically flare up when you approach them.) The flame whispers to you, urging you to create a Flame Altar in the world to shelter yourself from the dark. The vault doors open, allowing you to explore the ruins of the world.

You step out onto a crumbling and overgrown terrace, where you get your first glance at the outside world and its various ruins. There are weather events in this game and it happened to be overcast at this point of my gameplay, but you'll see random sunny days and rainy days as well. Even snowfall if you're high enough up in the mountains!

The plains below are marked with a tall red flame, showing the general area for you to build your first Flame Altar. But to get there, you have to travel through a Shroud-filled cavern down the mountain.

This is your first experience in dealing with The Shroud. When you step into it, a timer bar appears at the top of the screen, counting down to your end if you don't escape The Shroud. You start with about 5 minutes of time, but as you strengthen the flame at your Flame Altar, you'll improve the amount of time you can spend in The Shroud.

When you make it to the plains, you'll need to pull up your crafting menu to make a Flame Altar. Make sure you have the proper materials to make it! In this case, you need 5 stones, which you can literally pick up off the ground.

Once you have made your Flame Altar, you need to place it in the world. See the faint yellow square around the borders of the plains? That designates the build area near the Flame Altar. Anywhere within that square, you can build whatever you want. As you level up your Flame Altar, that square will get exponentially larger, until you have space for a small city!

It's actually a cube space; you also have a limit to how high and how low you can build from that shrine. But as with the sides, that space will grow as you level up the Flame Altar. You can eventually build a massive tower to the heavens! Or a dungeon deep into hell...

Put multiple Flame Altars within range of each other to expand a single base's build region, or place them randomly around the world. Flame Altars are not only build areas, but also fast-travel points, so scattering them in hard-to-reach areas saves you on travel time around the massive map.

Remember that you can only place two Flame Altars when you start the game, so don't make a bunch of them. As you strengthen the flame at your Flame Altar, you will be able to use more. Ten is the current max number of Flame Altars you can have in the world, so place them wisely. You can always deactivate them and re-place them somewhere else, but anything you've built in their region will eventually disappear if you walk away for 30 minutes.

The flame at your new Flame Altar whispers to you, telling you to seek out more survivors who are slumbering in other nearby Ancient Vaults. At this point, you can either dedicate your time to crafting a base, or going out to find other survivors in the world. I chose to track down the first survivor - a blacksmith.

There are currently nine craftspeople, five assistants to the craftspeople, and ten villagers to find in the world. The craftspeople have specialized skills that will expand your crafting capabilities, the assistants have duplicate skills of specific craftspeople, so you can have two people with the same crafting skills scattered around your base, and the villagers are just NPCs to make your bases look more lived in.

Now that I have a blacksmith, I need a shelter for him. I guess I should at least build a house. You need to craft a workbench first, which will give you more advanced crafting abilities than what you can access from your crafting menu.

Once you've placed a workbench, accessing its menu will give you blocks of building materials you can craft. As you discover new materials in the world, this menu will expand with new types of building blocks.

I know the numbers don't add up - 100 stone blocks from 2 stones?! But hey, if I have to mine 100 stones to craft 100 stone blocks, I'll be mining all day! And 100 blocks don't go very far when building. So I'm glad I can craft more materials with limited resources. It keeps the gameplay moving forward without bogging you down with (excessively) repetitive tasks.

Once you have blocks crafted, ensure you have a construction hammer on your toolbar. (You can craft one from your crafting menu or from the workbench menu). Switch to your construction hammer, open the building mode (Tab button on PC), then select the shape and material you want to construct.

You can lay one individual brick at a time, or select a custom shape to build a platform, wall, giant block, ramp, roof, etc. If you have dirt or stones in your inventory, you can also create various shapes and sizes of terrain and edit the shape of the land around you.

You can also craft an axe and pickaxe to cut down trees and dig up the terrain. Everything is destructible around the world and will restore to their original setting if you leave the area for about 30 minutes. Except for anything within the build area of your Flame Altar; those changes are permanent until you remove the Flame Altar and leave the area for 30 minutes. So don't go mining in your backyard unless you want to destroy the natural terrain. Although you can always manually fill it back in with the construction hammer and some stones or dirt.

I found some flint to mine on a cliff side here, which is one of my favorite building blocks. There are dozens of different materials to be found around the world, so you can customize the look of your bases however you want.

I finished building a small rough stone house with plant fiber roof just as it started raining. Which was good, as the blacksmith was starting to complain about not having a roof over his head.

Then the blacksmith informed me of a nearby Elixir Well that needed to be cleared out. Yeah, yeah, as soon as I'm done taking a nap.

The Elixir Wells are home to Shroud Roots: giant red fungus-looking things which are the cause of The Shroud. Chopping them down with an axe will clear the area around the Elixir Well of any Shroud. Although if you leave the area for 30 minutes, it will revert to its original state and the Shroud will come back.

Shroud Roots are guarded by large bosses; in this particular case, a Fell Thunderbrute. When you take down these boss-level characters, you can claim their heads, which you can later mount on your wall in your home. I've been meaning to build a trophy room in my original game's castle...

Destroying the Shroud Root will give you a skill point, which you can spend in a skill tree to further spec your character. There are twelve categories to build out. By the endgame, you will have enough skill points to have nearly maxed out three of them, so you're not locked into one specific category of gameplay. I personally chose Battlemage, Wizard, and Healer. (Since my teammates are always jumping head-first into fights they can't handle, ha!)

As you play on, you'll find more enemies around the world, plenty of quests, materials, and cosmetics to discover, and tons of lore hidden in books and scrolls.

There are varying climates, like desert wastelands, freezing winter mountainscapes, forests, plains, and of course, Shroud valleys and mines everywhere. Or you can get to work building a cozy hobbit hole deep underground, a castle way up in the mountains, or a fairy home deep in the woods.

Don't forget to craft a glider, so you can coast quickly across the various regions. Besides fast travel between Flame Altars, gliding is the best way to travel between places. I like to place my Flame Altars high up on mountains so I can fast-travel there and then jump and glide to my nearby destination.

Just keep an eye on your stamina gauge while you're gliding. Nothing worse than being a mile up in the sky and all of a sudden falling to your doom. If you're about to run out of stamina, the best thing to do is just drop, which will stop consuming stamina, then glide again when you're just about to hit the ground. You'll tuck and roll and take no damage.

Here's my first attempt at building a small castle in the starting zone prairie. You can garden and plant pretty much anything that grows in the game, which is where that massive perfectly-aligned forest came from in the background. You can also build farms and raise animals, or find dogs and cats in the world to keep as pets in your base.

Here's a shot of the main floor inside the castle. The back wall inside the giant fireplace is a secret door, with steps leading down into an underground cavern where my alchemist and blacksmith hang out.

Here's my first attempt at building a castle wall near the top of a mountain. I used glowing blue blocks to create the impression of a moat, which looks fantastic all lit up at night. Water is the one resource you can't build with in this game. (Yet!) The developers have mentioned that it's something they'd like to do, but it's on the back burner for now.

Oh, and that dragon in the first screenshot? My buddies and I took it down. That was a rough fight.

This "Fell Dragon Youngling" is currently the endgame boss. I dunno how big an adult one of these will be, but there are dragon skeletal remains scattered around the world that are bigger than cities! I hope the developers incorporate an adult Fell Dragon in a later update, because that would be an epic endgame challenge!

The map is only about 1/3rd open for exploration, and since early access dropped, two new regions have opened up with new content, including several non-Shroud dungeons with rewards for completion. So there's tons more to come with this game. It's so much fun, no matter whether you enjoy questing, base building, crafting, or just exploring. I highly recommend you check out Enshrouded!

#59 - Far Cry 5

Welcome back! For my next screenshot-laden game discussion, I'm going to be talking about my favorite of the Far Cry series, Far Cry 5.

The original Far Cry was released in 2004 by Crytek to demonstrate the expansive capabilities of their brand-new CryEngine. As such, it was more of a tech demo than a solid video game title. Sure, it had a story and missions to complete, but it was mainly focused on showing off long-distance outdoors scenery, something that was difficult to render in those days. The game took place on a lush green tropical island and pushed computer hardware of the time to the limits of their functionality.

Ubisoft quickly bought up the Far Cry franchise from Crytek and proceeded to remake the original game, including several direct spin-offs/sequels of it, all for consoles. These were severely limited due to console hardware at the time, so they were far more linear and lower quality than the original open world PC game.

Crytek, meanwhile, made a deal with EA to develop a whole new game called Crysis, which would become famous for having realistic physics rendering and graphics far beyond consumer PCs' capabilities. Crysis would become the benchmark for high-end computers for many years afterward. But that's a game discussion for another time...

When it came time to make a true numerical sequel to Far Cry, Ubisoft decided they needed to get away from the tropical jungle setting. A lot of games at the time were focusing on that setting, including the new Crysis franchise. Plus, they felt like the main character from Far Cry just wasn't interesting enough to become the face of the franchise. So Far Cry 2 was actually a completely new game, with a new story, a new protagonist, and set in an unnamed African nation.

And thus began Ubisoft's trend of resetting the whole franchise with each new title. So jumping to the 2018 title Far Cry 5 isn't skipping any important story or background; it's an original standalone game. Although Far Cry: New Dawn is a direct sequel to this game; don't play it unless you want spoilers to the ending of Far Cry 5.

If you want a cool intro to Far Cry 5, Steam has a free 30-minute video called Far Cry 5: Inside Eden's Gate. It's a live-action prologue, following three people (one of which is a vlogger) who attempt to infiltrate the Eden's Gate cult. They meet with a local man who claims his sister just abandoned her home and joined the cult. She's changed, dedicating her whole life to the cult's religious beliefs, and refuses to come home. This video shows how people are brainwashed into joining Eden's Gate, as well as how news of the cult spread outside of Hope County, Montana, which brings us to the intro of the game.

Far Cry 5 begins with clips of a documentary talking about Eden's Gate, a dangerous cult in the fictional Hope County, Montana. They discuss how the cult started buying up land, then the local radio station, then even the cops. Before the locals realized it, Eden's Gate was in control of all of Hope County. They're a militant religious doomsday cult, preparing for the End Times, which they believe is coming soon. Their leader, Joseph Seed, is worshiped by the cult followers as a prophet. He's also known as "The Father."

We cut to you riding in a helicopter over Hope County. You play a rookie deputy to the local sheriff's department, accompanying a U.S. Marshal. You, the Hope County Sheriff, and another local deputy, are escorting the U.S. Marshal to an Eden's Gate compound. The sheriff keeps mentioning "Peggies," which he explains is what they call the cult followers here.

Your helicopter lands in the compound and you find yourself in a tense situation. Peggies are everywhere and not happy at your presence. The four of you nervously walk up to the church in the compound and let yourselves in, approaching Joseph Seed at the altar as he gives his congregation a dangerous sermon.

Despite the sheriff trying to keep the situation calm, the hot-headed U.S. Marshal walks up to Joseph and thrusts a warrant for his arrest in his face, demanding he turn himself in. The crowd gets agitated and you suddenly find yourself surrounded by angry, armed Peggies... until Joseph himself calms them down. He tells them that it's all right, they planned for this, and he will NOT be taken. He then offers himself up for capture.

Now, here's an opportunity to play a secret (and quick) ending to this game. You can choose not to cuff Joseph at this point and instead walk away. If you do, the sheriff will comment that it's best to leave the cult alone and that the team would likely die if they attempted to arrest Joseph anyway.

But then we wouldn't have a game to play, so... you cuff Joseph and escort him back to the helicopter. The Peggies outside are highly agitated at this turn of events and the closer to the helicopter you get, the more tense the situation gets.

You strap Joseph into the helicopter and are prepared for takeoff, but the Peggies don't want you to leave with him. They start jumping on the helicopter and the team is forced to fight them off as they lift off into the air. One climbs over the windshield and into the blades, causing the helicopter to come crashing down!

You awake to find Joseph recovering from the crash. He calls off support over the radio, then tells you, "I told you God wouldn't let you take me." He gives you a grave warning:

Peggies gather around Joseph as he rallies them toward action. Which begins by taking you and your team captive.

The Peggies manage to grab the deputy, but a burst of flames from the helicopter holds them back long enough for you to unhook yourself and bolt into the woods. You run from shouting and gunfire, quickly learning how to hide in the foliage and silently pick off stragglers.

Arming yourself, you meet up with the U.S. Marshal in a trailer house, where you have a stand-off with a wave of Peggies. Hopelessly outnumbered, the U.S. Marshal jumps into a pickup truck and instructs you to ride shotgun and keep the Peggies off your tail. Thus ensues an action-packed car chase, through blockades, gunning down trucks and ATVs filled with Peggies, and even an airplane armed to the teeth!

Despite your best efforts, the U.S. Marshal ends up crashing the truck into a river. He's captured by Peggies, but some stranger fishes you out of the river downstream. You wake up in a bunker, facing an older guy who calls himself Dutch.

He explains that your coming was prophesied by Eden's Gate and it's set off "The Collapse." Basically, they think society is on the brink of destruction now, so they're leaning hardcore into their plans to secure Hope County. All roads are blocked, all signals in and out of the valley are cut. We're completely isolated out here. And now they're going to force all the locals to "save themselves" and convert to their cult... or die.

Dutch tells you to change clothes so he can burn your uniform. It's just going to make you a target from now on, so best to get rid of it. This is your first opportunity to customize your character's appearance and clothing outside of just picking a gender.

When you find Dutch, he's hanging out in a sort of war room of the bunker, with an information board on the wall showcasing the four leaders of Eden's Gate. You can read the bios on all four of them at this point. There are the three brothers: Joseph, Jacob, and John Seed. Then the "sister" Faith, a woman who mysteriously showed up one day to join their family. Joseph is leader over all of Eden's Gate, while each sibling controls a region of Hope County.

Dutch's bunker is on an island between all three regions of the map. He sends you out to help him clear Peggies off his island before you set off to build a resistance and liberate all three regions of Hope County. Every mission you complete, whether it's part of the main story or side missions, helps to free more citizens in a region and build a stronger resistance against the Eden's Gate leader in that region.

Once you clear the island, you're free to go anywhere on the map you desire. There are three main quest lines for you to follow, one per region. They will eventually lead to toppling the leader of that region, which you have to accomplish before you can go after Joseph himself. Or you can just explore anywhere and knock out any side quests or other objectives you come across. You can also rescue and hire resistance members to follow you and help out.

While approaching enemies, it's best to first look at them down your sights or through binoculars to tag them, so you can follow them no matter where they go in the area. You can even tag objectives in an area, to help you plan your strategy accordingly.

You get bonus points for clearing missions undetected, so I highly recommend the stealth approach. You can sneak up and break enemies' necks or use silenced weapons from afar. My preferred weapon of choice is the bow and arrow. No one ever hears it coming! Just remember to hide bodies, because roaming patrols will alert a whole compound if they find a body. And some compounds have alarms that will draw in reinforcements. Make sure to disable the alarms before assaulting a compound, or take out anyone running to set off the alarm.

This game also includes hunting and fishing, as you need supplies to trade, barter, and survive in the wild. The wildlife in this game is very diverse, and some deadly if you're not careful. I've been bitten by several snakes and my only warning was a rattling sound just before they struck. The sound effects are not just ambient noise! Pay attention to them!

If you lose all your health, you pass out and get a cutscene of being captured by the leader of whatever region you're in. They go over how they're going to "free you of sin" in their own sick twisted way, before you're shipped off to a detention center.

But your prisoner transport is ambushed by the local resistance and you manage to escape! Then you have to fight through the internment camp, clear it of Peggies, then survive wave after wave of Peggies before a rescue helicopter comes for you. Only then can you go back to exploring the map. So losing all your health (without a resistance member nearby to quickly revive you) is kind of an ordeal.

I really like that they include this gameplay in the game. It allows the story to continue, so there's no actual death of the player. And it ties into the lore of the game while making you work to get back on track with your mission; a sort of entertaining punishment for failing to survive. It's much more creative than just showing a "Game Over" screen and then resetting you at your last save point, and it gives you motivation to stay alive and not just accept a quick defeat.

These same prison vans can be found driving all over the map and you can assault them and free the captive locals inside. After being captured once yourself, you'll likely feel the need to chase after every prison van you see afterward. No one should be subjected to that torture!

I absolutely love the visuals in this game! The forested mountainous region of Montana is absolutely gorgeous and they do an excellent job showcasing it, especially if you have a computer than can max out this game's graphics. Here are a few screenshots of my actual gameplay in the world, no cutscenes involved. Open them in a new window to enjoy their full 4K quality:

I guess this game resonates with me because I used to be extremely religious in my youth. I even carried a pocket Bible with me everywhere I went and would quote scriptures as I felt they applied to situations. My friends all voted me most likely to become a pastor one day.

But I was also a very curious person who loved to learn and study new things. I wanted to understand the Bible as much as I could. And when I started to find contradictions and inconsistencies in my Bible, I turned to my pastor and congregation for answers. But I received a resounding "have faith; don't question the Lord" dismissal, from pretty much everyone. The more I looked into it, the more problems I found, and the less friendly my religious community got about helping me resolve it.

After giving the Bible a full read from cover to cover, I discovered that it was an awful book full of glorified rape, torture, infanticide, bestiality, war, incest, as well as plenty of other horrifying topics, all sanctioned by God. It's no wonder we cherry-pick passages every Sunday! There are too many stories that aren't church-friendly in that book. You can't do a straight reading of the Bible without losing your congregation. I turned atheist pretty quick and learned to apply critical thinking and logic in the future instead of blindly trusting something to be true.

This game is all about the extreme end of that religious faith. Joseph Seed is considered a prophet, supposedly given direct communications from God about an upcoming apocalypse and how His chosen few can survive. Joseph's methods are based on the concept of "the ends justify the means." He will do whatever it takes to save "his people," even if it means violently kidnapping, torturing, and brainwashing them.

Even worse, the way the four Seed siblings preach to their congregation, the serene country/gospel music, even the way cult members worship, all remind me of my church-going days. Which were very happy, nostalgic days for me. So I personally feel this nostalgic pull toward this very evil cult and I have to remind myself that this cult is doing an excellent job in making it seem so appealing.

Joseph Seed is what happens when a cult is designed to dominate a culture and indoctrinate all its citizens, and this game is a good look at this kind of world from an outsider, trapped within it. It is a terrifying concept, but all the more fun to play a protagonist who is able to resist and fight back against this fascist takeover of an indoctrinated region. Which seems rather relevant in today's world.

If/when you find Boomer, make sure to give him lots of pets! He's a very good boy.