Bytes ‘n’ Blurts: Playing Through It with Veilguard, Pokémon and Grimstone

Wondering what the Paste Games team has been playing lately? Don’t have time to read new game reviews, and prefer something quick and direct? Just looking for 1000 words to eat up a couple of minutes of your wait at the doctor’s office or airport lobby? Bytes ‘n’ Blurts offers a quick look at what games editor Garrett Martin and assistant games editor Elijah Gonzalez have been playing over the last week—from the latest releases to whatever classic or forgotten obscurity is taking up our free time. This time we try to escape the news by pouring more hours into Dragon Age: The Veilguard, returning to the classic Pokémon card game in a new format, and disappearing into one of the best RPGs in UFO 50.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Year: 2024

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

So, uh, how’s your week been?

I tried sleeping through it. I tried drinking through it. I tried playing through it. None of them work, but the last one is somehow the healthiest of the three, so it’s what I’ll be sticking to. (No, I did not try working through it.) And of course it hasn’t even started yet, and there’ll be four years of it once it does, so there’ll be a whole hell of a lot of playing through it to do. This week that meant playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, still. By late Tuesday night it turned into a quaint reminder of how things used to be, a relic from the far-gone before times of Tuesday afternoon, when there was still reason to believe that America hadn’t fully given itself over to hate. It came out a week ago and it might as well be four years old.

One of Veilguard’s many story threads involves the Qunari dragon hunter Taash as they grow more comfortable with their non-binary identity. It’s a relatively minor part of the game, all things considered, and yet has somehow become a primary focus for the grifters and bigots who helped make this week what it is, and who decided long ago to make Veilguard one of the many, many, many targets of their unceasing and soulless culture war. A fairly simplistic and cautious story of a badass minotaur finding the language and support to become their true self has been twisted into something it isn’t by people who haven’t played the game solely to get off on their own cruelty and squeeze a few bucks out of the people they manipulate and condescend to. Thus is life in the 21st century.

Taash’s missions made playing through it with Veilguard sting a little at first, as they inevitably made me think about the real world bullshit I was playing this game to forget. I hated that I felt that way, even for an instant; now more than ever we need to support and stand up for the most vulnerable in society, everybody targeted and dehumanized by the compassionless con artists and extremists working hard to make this a less empathetic, less safe, less free world, and playing a videogame that portrays them with love and respect is literally the absolute least we can do. If a basic story of self-acceptance bums me out, even for a moment, because it spoils the escapism I was desperate for, that’s a problem with the world and with me and not with the story itself. Nothing about Taash’s story should be the least bit controversial, and nothing about it is objectionable or worth getting angry about, but the assholes who make this a worse world have poisoned the well so thoroughly that even a positive and accepting story about gender identity can feel sad.

Well, fuck ‘em. I’m still playing through it with Veilguard, and Taash’s story is one of the game’s highlights. It’s inoffensive but ultimately positive, which makes it a good fit for this week. The next four years are going to be bad; things are only going to get worse, and there’s no guarantee they’ll ever get better, not with a Republican Party built on hate and prejudice and a feckless opposition party that thinks it needs to become more hateful, too, to compete. And games really aren’t going to help change any of that, especially massive, multimillion dollar games about dragons and mages and whatever the hell the Qunari are. But every little bit helps, and don’t let the bastards grind you down, and other cliches, too. This week might have made it clear that one of Veilguard’s biggest fantasies is a world in which almost everybody is fully supportive and respectful of people like Taash, but if that world is ever to become reality, it’ll come through the kind of understanding and acceptance found in Veilguard. So let’s keep playing through it.—Garrett Martin

Pokémon TCG Pocket

Year: 2024

Platforms: iOS, Android

In the right circumstances, trading card games can rule. Whether it’s throwing yourself into deckbuilding to craft cool combos or the tactical challenge of facing off against others, there’s a great deal of fun to be had with these overpriced playing cards. In some ways, Pokémon TCG Pocket, a mobile take on Pokémon’s trading card game, taps into much of this fun in a streamlined package. You can assemble decks, admire your collection of ‘mons, and test your mettle online. Many mechanics from the physical game have been altered to create quicker matches, and while this makes things less strategically rich, it also makes it much less of a time sink than most of its peers.

But, of course, there’s a catch: the game’s another digital casino. It inherits the grimy practices of both mobile games and trading cards, and your ability to craft the deck of your dreams is gated behind random chance. In classic exploitative mobile game fashion, progress starts out smooth, and you’re treated to a flood of in-game currencies that let you open pack after pack. The boosters hover on the home screen like toys in a store window, wrapped in impossibly shiny digitized plastic, and each time you open one, there’s an alluring crinkle noise that’s likely been scientifically engineered to make you drool like Pavlov’s dog. But then it all dries up, and the packs stop coming in. Sure, you get two a day for free (three a day if you subscribe for $9.99 a month), but after the initial flood of happy brain chemicals as you unlock Mewtwo and Articuno and rare cards with ornate artwork while cracking through dozens of these bad boys it feels damn unsatisfying when you suddenly hit a progression wall and progress slows dramatically. That frustration is very much by design because it may tempt you into spending real world money to return to that previous burst of card opening. As much as I enjoy the idea of having a mobile TCG that fits neatly into the margins of my life, this game is another reminder that this convenience comes with a cost, in this case, quite literally. Also, Pikachu EX is annoying as hell.—Elijah Gonzalez

Grimstone (part of UFO 50)

Year: 2024

Platforms: PC

I gotta repeat myself here: I don’t know if I’ll ever be done with UFO 50, the peerless collection of new retro-style games that make up the fake ouevre of a fictional ’80s game studio. My latest obsession is Grimstone, an old-school RPG in the style of the original Final Fantasy that’s set in an Old West that’s been sent to Hell. Imagine all the stereotypes of a western—cowboys, outlaws, mysterious strangers, sex workers tired of their abuse—but add in demons, angels, oceans of lava, psychedelic cactus juice, and more fanciful hoohaw that you’d never find in any John Wayne movie. Like the best games in UFO 50, Grimstone looks and feels just enough like something that could’ve have existed in 1988 to suspend your disbelief. It then comes up with unique narrative and mechanical concepts that make it very different than its obvious inspirations; here that includes the setting, but also a rhythmic approach to turn-based combat that requires you to hit a button at the exact time in order to hit your enemy. Imagine Final Fantasy‘s turn-based squad combat scenes, with Paper Mario’s rhythm-based attacks and visible enemies on the map that make it possible to avoid encounters, a la Zelda II, and you’ll have an idea of Grimstone‘s distinct approach to combat. It gleefully embraces some of the most eternally annoying aspects of ’80s RPGs—constant encounters, limited save opportunities, a general lack of direction that leads to a lot of aimless wandering and desperate quests to find the nearest town—but becomes an almost wholly original creation. It’s one of the best games in UFO 50, and I’ve grinded through it for hours without finishing yet. Like Veilguard, it’s also been a key part of my plan to play through it. If you own UFO 50, make Grimstone a priority.—Garrett Martin