Page 103 of Looking for Group
Drew swivelled round, scurfing up the duvet. “I’d rather do something with you.”
Kit’s eyebrows went up.
“Not in a sex way. Not that I wouldn’t in a sex way. I mean. Um. Do you want to play a game or something?”
“I’d love to.” Kit slid to his feet, grabbed his laptop, and came back. “I’m not sure I’ve got much that’s two player.”
Thinking about it, Drew couldn’t remember the last time he’d played a co-op game on one screen. That was what the internet was for. But then he remembered Sanee and Steff, and their weekends playingTotal War: Era Number,X-Com, andEuropa Universalis. “I’ve got a couple of mates, I mean I’ve got mates who are a couple, who play strategy games together. They pause a lot and argue about what they’re going to do next. Like, ‘No, flank the catapharcts.’ Or ‘We have to core Granada.’”
“That sounds really nice except, y’know, the arguing. And the only strategy games I’ve got areCivandCKII, and that’s only because—”
“—it’s secretly an RPG.”
Kit beamed. “Aw, you remembered.”
“So what are we going to play?”
“I’ve mainly got RPGs.”
“I’m good with anything. We can decide which elf to sleep with and whether the Staff of Whatever is better than the Sword of Thingamy.”
“I think you’ll find”—Kit gave him an arch look—“that what we’ll be doing is engaging with complex moral questions throughan interactive medium which will aid us in our task by helpfully highlighting all of the evil options in red.”
Drew laughed. “Bring it on.”
Kit fired up Steam, and scanned down his library. “The problem is a lot of these are a bit too action-heavy. Weirdly, we might be better off with something turn-based.”
“Wait. I draw the line at musicals and JRPGS.”
“How do you feel about retro?”
“Isometric retro or ASCII retro?”
“Black Isle retro.”
“You mean the guys who turned into the company who are legendarily incapable of finishing games?”
Kit closed down Steam, and opened the GoG launcher. “Jacob’s got me hooked on Good Old Games. Um, the site, but also games that are old, and also good. He’s kind of convinced that PC games are dwindling into the west like Galadriel, and every game worth playing was made in the late nineties.”
“Back when everything came on twenty CDs?”
“Pretty much, but now you can just download them for about five dollars.” He double-clicked on a picture of an angry-looking blue man with dodgy dreads, and a tiny little cinematic popped up of an island and a storm. “This is one of his favourites, but I haven’t actually got round to trying it yet. It’s calledPlanescape: Torment. It’s about this guy who—”
“Kit, I’ve heard ofPlanescape: Torment. It’s like theBreaking Badof RPGs. People who’ve played it won’t shut up until you do.”
“We can try something else?”
“No, it’s cool. It’s like a gamer rite of passage, and I’ve been meaning to look at it for years.”15
On the screen, a slightly blurry zombie was pushing a slab with a grey dude on it slowly through some kind of dungeon.
“Wait,” said Drew. “Do we start off dead?”
“Only mostly.”
“Hang on, what’s the pillar? Why are there skulls? Who’s that chick, and why is she on fire? Is the guy in the mirror us? Why are we a zombie? Is that the same chick and is she dead now? Is she the ghost as well? Hey, stop laughing.”16
“Sorry.” It wasn’t a very convincing apology, especially because Kit was still smiling. “I’d say it was an old-games thing, but to be honest I think it’s just a Black Isle/BioWare/Obsidian thing. You just kind of have to go with it.”
