CHENNAI: Like a good TV show or a book, you know a story-based game (games very unlike PUBG) you play is exceptional when it’s not just the A-story that you care about anymore. You play it obsessively over and over again — for the characters, the environment, the story and that ‘100% completion’ trophy. You watch YouTube videos discussing game theories, and you get bored because you already know all of them. You start correcting, maybe even adding content to its wiki pages. You begin to wonder what happened to some other important characters in the story.
And that’s why we need side-stories. The developers owe it to the clingy fandom to give them some more of the game. GTA IV, for example — went the ideal amount of overboard for their spin-offs. The game had a sufficient amount of quirky side characters to warrant a lot of side missions. ‘The Lost and the Damned’ was one such. It was Liberty City, but fresher and faster — not like the scary new place for a foreigner like Niko Bellic (the original protagonist). It was the perfect version of Liberty City for someone who’d played the game enough time to be a Livery City local.
Assassin’s Creed 2 was perhaps the first game in the series that most of us started out with. I remember replaying the DNA memories and spending hours to find those eagle feathers spread across the country to get the extra game credit. ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ — although a short side-story, was a welcome one. It unlocked a new district in Florence, and all of us would agree on the unparalleled picturisation of any new monument in AC. Also, it’s nice to have some new towers to do a leap of faith from, in addition to the main mission of retrieving ‘pieces of Eden’.
These side-stories also go by the name of ‘Downloadable Content’ (DLCs), now a infamous and very undesirable term tainted by a few big game producers pitching the A-story and main missions as a DLC. But never forget the legacy of the true DLC. Never forget what they stood for those of us who obsessed over the same stories for years.