Author: jasonloch

The trouble with Torment

As many of you know, I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Torment: Tides of Numenera later this month. Unfortunately, what should have been an exciting and happy time has been marred by a number of PR blunders on the part of the developers.

The most visible issue has been the news that some of the stretch goals from the Kickstarter campaign won’t make it into the finished game. The crafting system and at least two of the companions are gone entirely, while the Bloom has replaced the Oasis of M’ra Jolios as the secondary hub city.

The latter change is probably the most defensible. The Bloom is a city within the guts of a vast interdimensional creature, while M’ra Jolios is an aquatic community within a giant orb of water in the middle of the desert. M’ra Jolios is cool and all, but the Bloom is arguably a better fit with Torment‘s themes (M’ra Jolios will still be in the game, albeit in a smaller capacity).

I can’t get terribly worked up about the lack of crafting. I find it a chore in most games, and I agree with the designers that it didn’t mesh well with the Torment paradigm. It always seemed like something that had been tacked on in order to pad out the stretch goals, so its departure is probably a good thing.

The loss of two companions is more lamentable. I like being able to choose from a large pool of companions. Being able to go through the game with an entirely different group each time is a lot of fun, and it adds a lot of replayability. But in Torment, the total companion pool will be six. Since you can have up to three companions in your party, it won’t take many playthroughs to experience all of the companions. I’m also bummed that one of the companions I was most excited about, a numenera known as ‘The Toy,’ is one of the ones that got cut (The Toy was supposed to be a protean object that would change based on your character’s wishes, and I thought it would be a great way to show the Ninth World’s pervasive weirdness). The developers argue that they had to reduce the number of companions in order to ensure a satisfying level of depth and reactivity for each one, but this excuse rings a bit hollow given how long the game has been in development and how much money inXile has raised.

But missing stretch goals aren’t Torment‘s only problem. InXile also announced that the game won’t receive Italian localization. This wouldn’t be a big deal if they were making an ARPG like Diablo III or Grim Dawn where the story is secondary to the action. With games like those, you don’t need to have a solid grasp of English to enjoy the game. On the other hand, you need to be very comfortable with the language in a story-driven game like Torment. (I’m decent at reading German, but I couldn’t imagine playing the German version of Torment; I think I’d miss out on a lot of the little nuances and subtleties that make the writing pop).

InXile argues that, given the game’s titanic script, localization would be extremely pricey, and if their past sales in Italy are any indication, they are unlikely to recoup that money. But this wasn’t a stretch goal–they’ve been promising Italian localization from Day 1. That seems like an odd things to do if Italian sales were likely to be so anemic. Surely it would have made more sense to focus on the most profitable localizations first and save the less lucrative ones for stretch goals.

Also troubling is the uncertainty over whether or not current backers can opt to receive the console version of the game instead of a computer version. When Torment was first announced, it was supposed to be a computer-only title, but toward the end of the game’s development, inXile entered into an agreement with Techland to bring the game to consoles as well. A number of people who backed the game when it was computer-only now want to avail themselves of the console version, but inXile hasn’t offered them the chance to make the switch. To be fair, this matter might well be beyond their control. Consoles are closed ecosystems, and if Microsoft and Sony won’t let them offer a switch, there’s nothing they can do about it. Still, it’s a shame that the people who supported the game from the very beginning could find themselves at a disadvantage.

This isn’t the only way that backers are being shafted. As part of their deal with inXile, Techland is releasing their own Torment collector’s edition that includes special goodies that won’t be available to backers, including a smaller version of the First Castoff statue that only available to backers who pledged $2,000 or more. The retail collector’s edition, on the other hand, will cost less than $100. To make matters worse, backers won’t even be able to purchase the Techland swag a la carte. 

Technically, this won’t impact me since I’m getting the digital collector’s edition, but I understand why some of my fellow backers are upset. It’s a bit obnoxious that the people who supported the game from the very beginning won’t have access to the full suite of bonus items. The smaller version of the statue is a particularly galling example. InXile should have known that it would generate a lot of interest from backers since the larger version would have been beyond the reach of a lot of people. I realize that backers get certain benefits that ordinary Day 1 customers do not (e.g., having their name in the credits, designing in-game monuments), but that’s beside the point. As a matter of principle, backers should be able to choose any reward since their support made the game what it is.

To be fair, inXile is aware of these issues and appears to be trying to make amends. Italian customers have been offered refunds, and inXile is trying to figure out a way to allow backers to exchange the computer version for a console version. They’ve also hinted that some of the cut companions might be introduced later as DLC, which backers will get for free. Alas, it doesn’t seem they can do anything about the Techland swag due to the nature of their agreement with Techland.

The sad irony in all this is that these mistakes were basically own goals on inXile’s part. If inXile had been honest and upfront with the fans, there would probably be a lot less anger. The fact that fans only found out about some of these issues thanks to the detective work of other fans only exacerbated tensions between the community and the developers. Amazingly,  inXile does not seem to have a dedicated PR person, relying instead on members of the development team. The problem with this approach is that it’s easy for team members to  get swamped with other things and let PR fall by the wayside. I got a glimpse of this when I was writing an article about Torment for Urban Gaming Elite and discovered that some of the information about the game on inXile’s own website was woefully out of date!

These quibbles aside, I’m still stoked for Torment‘s release. The beta has been awesome, and I believe the game will go down in history as a worthy successor to Planescape: Torment. I just hope inXile learn from these last-minute problems so that future projects can avoid this type of drama.

Some thoughts on Diablo III’s latest developments

Blizzard used the Blizzcon opening ceremony to announce a bunch of new stuff for Diablo III. The biggest news is that the fan-favorite Necromancer will be added to the game as a special DLC pack, but there will also be a number of smaller additions as well, including two new areas and some quality-of-life improvements to the UI. Initially, I was excited by this news. The Necromancer was one of my favorite characters in Diablo II, and I’d love to have a chance to play him again. But my excitement was short lived, and I’ve been trying to figure out why that is.

I think the bottom line is that there’s nothing left for me to do in D3 now that I’ve reached level 70 with almost every character. I could keep going in order to rack up paragon points, but that whole system feels bland. The points themselves feel like naked game mechanics, and it’s hard to see them as achievements when they’re shared among all your characters. I don’t particularly enjoy doing rifts or even bounties. They both feel pointless after a while. In Campaign Mode, you have a purpose; in Adventure Mode, you’re just grinding for the sake of grinding. It’s bearable when you’re leveling and getting new abilities, but once you’ve unlocked everything, it becomes tedious. I’d probably enjoy it more if I were more invested in the loot hunt. This isn’t because I think the items are bad or uninteresting. I’m just reluctant to spend hours and hours and hours killing monsters in the hope that I’ll be favored by the RNG. The investment is too steep, and the reward too nebulous.

This isn’t to say that D3 is a bad game. Far from it. I’ve spent over 430 hours in Sanctuary, and I enjoyed every minute. But my taste in games has changed since D3’s release. My focus now is on story-driven games where the replayability comes from your choices rather than your loot. That’s why I love Pillars of Eternity, Planescape: Torment, and Skyrim and I’m stoked for Torment: Tides of Numenera and Tyranny. Part of the fun of rolling a new character in those games is being able to make a different set of choices and seeing how they play out in the gameworld.

Unfortunately, D3 is severely lacking in the story department. The plot itself is nothing spectacular, but there are ways to compensate for that. After all, Skyrim has a rather generic plot, too.  But it’s less of an issue because there’s so much else to do. I’ve played Skyrim with five different characters, and each playthrough has felt different from the others. Sometimes, it feels like I’m playing completely different games. In D3 on the other hand, every playthrough is more or less the same. Sure, you might get different random events, but there will be no meaningful differences between each playthough. Obviously, D3 is not going to have as much content as an open-world game like Skyrim, but Blizzard could have added a lot more plot-related diversity. Looking back at the developers’ pre-release comments, it seems they were originally planning to include a lot more story content, but those ambitions went unrealized. Without more story options, there’s not much to keep me invested in the game given my antipathy toward grinding.

Despite my bellyaching, I’ll almost certainly buy the Necromancer pack when it comes out. It’ll give me an opportunity to reach level 70 with a new character, and The Physicist and I can have some fun with him in multiplayer. I’ll probably try Campaign Mode again as well just so I can have a sense of purpose. But that may be my last visit to Sanctuary for a while.

Some thoughts about Brexit

As many of you know, I blog about the British constitution over at A Venerable Puzzle, so the United Kingdom is a subject that’s close to my heart. I was surprised by the result of yesterday’s vote. Despite the shifts in the polls, I assumed that the uncertainty surrounding Brexit would ultimately encourage people to vote to remain within the European Union. But as I watch the reaction to Britain’s decision, I find myself growing frustrated by the superficiality of it all. According to the Twitterverse, anyone who voted to leave is a xenophobic relic. Donald Trump has been thrown into the mix, too, and there has been lots of hand-wringing about what this means for the presidential election in November.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned as a historian, it’s that the decisions we make are rarely straightforward, and events are shaped by a multitude of factors. Therefore, the narrative that the vote to leave was simply motivated by distaste for foreigners strikes me as too simplistic. It glosses over the fact that there are other reasons to leave the EU, including legitimate concerns over national sovereignty and a lack of European accountability. But instead of recognizing the fact that people might have genuine issues with the EU, it’s easier to dismiss their views as the product of ignorance and hate.

A lot of the American commentariat also seems unaware of the fact that yesterday’s vote was hardly a bolt from the blue. Britain has been ambivalent toward the EU for a long time, and successive Governments have rejected key aspects of the European project, including the Euro, the Schengen Area, and the commitment to ever-closer union. In other words, Britain’s estrangement from the EU predates the rise of Trump and the migrant crisis.

As is so often the case, people seem to assume that there was a Right Answer and a Wrong Answer in the Brexit vote. I see it as a choice between two paths. Both have hazards, but both have opportunities as well. Britain is neither doomed nor saved by yesterday’s vote, and it will be some time before we can accurately gauge its impact. Nevertheless, I hope that the chaos of the present will soon give way to better things.

The state of Torment: Tides of Numenera

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

As you know, I’ve been participating in the beta for Torment: Tides of Numenera. InXile recently released a huge patch that substantially alters the game, so I decided to jump back into the Ninth World and see the changes for myself.

The biggest change is probably that the beginning of the game has been completely retooled. The game still begins in media res with the Last Castoff plummeting to earth, and he/she still ends up within their own mind after being knocked unconscious by the fall (trust me, it makes sense in context!). But the beginning plays much differently.

There used to be a fairly involved Crisis where you had to run around to different tanks while avoiding mooks sent by the game’s Big Bad. Within each tank was a creature, and you were treated to a flashback from its life. Your choices influenced how the flashback would play out, and these decisions had an impact on the LC’s development. This Crisis presented an interesting challenge. Brute force wasn’t an option. The LC had to focus on the flashbacks, and the Specter (a ghostly companion who served as a guide) could only push the mooks away. It was a nice way to show players that TTON favors creativity over combat, though it may well have  grated after multiple playthroughs.

Now, the introductory Crisis is much simpler. You still have to fend off an attack by the Sorrow, but the tactical element seems to have vanished. Now, you just whack some memory specters that are being devoured by the Big Bad. The patch notes say whether this Crisis is a placeholder, but it definitely feels like one.The Big Bad looks cool, but the whole thing feels perfunctory. There doesn’t seem to be any challenge to it. Mooks spawn periodically while you’re destroying the specters, but they simply fly off without attacking.

I can see why the designers felt that the old Crisis needed improvement. There was arguably too much style and not enough substance in the early game. I loved learning about the creatures in the tanks, but I’m also the sort of person who reads every single lore book in a game. If you’re not a lore freak like me, the original introduction might have felt unbearably slow. Unfortunately, the new Crisis goes too far in the opposite direction. There’s a lot more action, and it feels more like an ARPG than an RPG.

I also think that the way the Tides are handled is unsatisfactory. The game has never really done a good job of explaining what they are or why you should care about them, and the latest patch has made them even more nebulous. You periodically see pop-up messages telling you that your alignment with this or that Tide has increased, but it feels divorced from your in-game choices (you can see numerical values for each Tide in the character screen, but the numbers don’t have enough context to be useful). In the old version, your initial Tidal alignment was determined by the choices you made during the flashbacks. The process was opaque, but it felt more meaningful than the present system. At the moment, the whole thing feels random.

The biggest problem that I’ve seen so far is combat. Despite the patch, it’s horrifically glitchy. In many cases, I couldn’t even start a fight because my first character wouldn’t respond to my orders and I couldn’t end the turn. I’ve also experienced issues with the game hanging during an enemy’s turn. There was a point where I couldn’t finish exploring an area because I came under attack whenever I loaded a game and then had to quit the game mid-battle due to bugs (I was only able to break the cycle by engineering the LC’s death!). It’s certainly caused me to make liberal use of the feedback button!

Thankfully, the game is still a ways from release (inXile recently said that the release window has been postponed until early 2017 due to localization issues), so there should be plenty of time to iron out these kinks. Despite my complaints, I’m still pleased with the game overall. The writing is absolutely top-notch, and the developers have done a fantastic job of interpreting Numenera’s innovative mechanics. I’m sure that, come release day, these problems will be nothing more than bad memories.

Thoughts on the Queen Mary 2’s refit

I’m a huge fan of the Queen Mary 2. My Dad and I did a transatlantic crossing on her not too long after she entered service, and it remains one of my all-time favorite vacations. The QM2 is a splendid ship. Her interiors are beautiful, the food is first-rate, and the atmosphere on board is pleasantly relaxed. She also retains a sense of intimacy despite the fact that she’s the largest ocean liner ever built. But after twelve years of service, Cunard has decided that it’s time for a change. Next month, she’ll travel to the famous German shipyard Blohm + Voss for a month-long refit.

Carinthi-Cam01_37V PICTURE 1_zps0lygzqz8
A rendering of the Carinthia Lounge courtesy of Cunard.

One of the biggest changes is that the Winter Garden will be replaced with the  Carinthia Lounge. For me, it’s a sad development. The Winter Garden was one of my favorite public rooms on the QM2, though I realize that’s a minority opinion. Critics and passengers alike tended to view it as the weakest of the ship’s public rooms. Many saw it as kitschy, and they had a point. Originally, the Winter Garden featured a mural of tropical birds sitting amidst a backdrop of generic jungle foliage and an equally leafy carpet, and they both looked like something from Blanche Devereaux’s bedroom on The Golden Girls (sadly, the mural seems to have been replaced with a frosted-glass version of the same motif, as seen here). There was also wicker. Lots and lots of wicker.

Winter-Garden
The classic incarnation of the Winter Garden, complete with birds. Photo courtesy of Cunard.

Nevertheless, the Winter Garden has a place in my heart. It was usually fairly empty, and it was a great place to have a drink since there was a bar right there in the room. I also liked the fact that the Winter Garden had a sense of history behind it. Winter gardens, verandah cafes, and the like were fixtures on transatlantic liners throughout the golden age of ocean travel. The following photos come from a 1920s Cunard brochure in my collection:

mauretania
Mauretania
lancastria
Lancastria
andania
Andania

 

Their decorative DNA lived on in the QM2’s Winter Garden, but the Carinthia Lounge lacks any connection with the past beyond its name (the Cunard fleet had four separate Carinthias over the years). Although the space is named after the Carinthia that entered service in 1925, the decor doesn’t do much to evoke the feel of the 20s. On the contrary, it seems more reminiscent of the 50s. That’s not to say that it’s an ugly room; far from it. It just feels rather generic. Say what you will about the bird mural, but at least it was memorable.

However, most of the changes to the QM2 are to be welcomed. I’m particularly pleased that Cunard has decided to downsize the casino in order to add single-occupancy cabins. This is a wonderful development. For me, one of the biggest impediments to cruising is that the fares are based on double occupancy. My usual travel companions aren’t terribly interested in cruising, which means I’d have to either pay the exorbitant single occupancy surcharge (which can be 150-200% of the advertised fare) or allow the cruise line to match me with a cabinmate for the voyage. Neither option is particularly appealing, so I never considered cruising a viable vacation choice. Until now.

I’m also glad that King’s Court will be overhauled. It always seemed like a problematic space. When I was on board, it felt like a glamorous cafeteria, which seems a bit incongruous given the QM2’s reputation for luxury. To some extent, there’s not much Cunard can do about that. Any place where you collect your food from serving stations and carry it to a seating area to eat is going to feel like a cafeteria. I do think that the proposed changes are a step in the right direction, though. It won’t change the way people interact with the space, but it will make it more appealing.

One thing that surprised me is that G32, the ship’s nightclub, won’t be axed. It’s a bizarre place. Tucked away at the stern, you can only get to it by walking through the ballroom. It’s also tiny, and there’s not much room for dancing. When I poked my head in, I saw a bored DJ playing songs for an empty room while the bar staff huddled around the bar, chatting. Of course, with the average QM2 passenger being in their mid-60s, it’s hardly surprising that nobody’s interested in hitting the club, which makes one wonder why they’re keeping it at all.

All in all, I’m happy with the changes Cunard is making to the QM2. I think they’ll hold her in good stead as she sails through her second decade.

 

*SPOILERS* Thoughts on the Torment: Tides of Numenera beta

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

For almost three years now, I have been eagerly following the development of inXile Entertainment’s new cRPG Torment: Tides of Numenera. It’s been a long road, and the game’s release has been repeatedly delayed (though, as a Diablo fan, I’m no stranger to long waits!). Happily, TTON is now in beta and players can experience a sliver of the game for themselves. So far, the omens look good.

First, a caveat: TTON is very much a work in progress. This is not like Diablo III where the beta was more less identical to the finished game. InXile still has a lot of work to do. In some cases, entire areas have yet to be implemented, and the game is quite buggy (though the first beta patch has made things better). 2016-01-31.png

TTON is a spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed Planescape: Torment. It’s set in the world of Numenera, a science fantasy RPG created by industry veteran Monte Cook that is set on earth a billion years in the future. The basic premise of Numenera is that eight hyper-advanced civilizations have come and gone and a ninth is just beginning. Although these prior civilizations are long gone, remnants of their technology remain (these are the titular numenera). Most Ninth Worlders view them as magical, though the clever can sometimes use them in new and inventive ways.

The beta comprises the very beginning of the game, including character creation and the first town. You play the role of the Last Castoff, and your body was originally created to serve as a vessel for the Changing God, a mysterious figure who has figured out how to use the numenera to transfer his consciousness between bodies. When he leaves a body, it gains a consciousness of its own, and these ‘castoffs’ can then go on to lead lives of their own.

TTON takes an unusual approach to character creation. Most cRPGs make you allocate stat points and choose feats before the game begins. This approach makes a certain amount of sense, but it’s also rather artificial. But in TTON, the choices you make during the tutorial phase help determine the Last Castoff’s characteristics. It’s a more organic approach to character creation, though it may prove frustrating for dedicated min-maxers since it’s not always easy to predict the outcome of your choices. This also gives the tutorial stage some real replayability–one of the biggest annoyances in Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II was that the tutorials felt repetitive after the first playthrough.

TTON does a good job of implementing Numenera’s unique mechanics. Characters have three point pools (Might, Intellect, and Speed) that function like a combination of ability scores and hitpoints in D&D. Broadly speaking, any task in Numenera involves one of those pools, and you can spend points from them in order to reduce the difficulty of a task. For example, if you are attacking someone with a sword, you can use points from your Might pool to make it easier to land a blow. Points aren’t just for combat–you might use Speed points to pickpocket a nobleman or Intellect points to bluff a guard. While it can be tempting to spend points freely in order to make tasks as easy as possible, you have to be careful that you don’t deplete your pools. Spent points can be recovered, but that requires a rest or the use of certain items or abilities. Unfortunately, TTON doesn’t do a very good job of explaining these concepts. If I hadn’t already been familiar with them from the pen-and-paper version, I think I would have been rather lost. Fortunately, this can be remedied with the addition of a few tooltips.

The beta allows players to experience several ‘Crises.’ These are one of the more unique features of TTON. They’re basically challenge scenarios, and unlike the rest of the game, they are turn-based. I had misgivings about this when it was first announced, but having tried it for myself, I can see the wisdom of their decision. Combat in Planescape and Baldur’s Gate was never actually real-time since you had to make liberal use of the pause feature in order to command your party, so it makes a certain amount of sense to just go ahead and make it turn-based. It certainly makes for a less frustrating experience.

The designers are trying to make Crises as multidimensional as possible. For example, after you complete the tutorial portion, you and your companions are accosted by a group of thugs who have come looking for the ‘falling star’ (i.e., you). At first glance, it looks like a straightforward combat encounter, and that’s how I played it at first. But when I went through it again, I chose to surrender. I half-expected to get a game over, but instead I ended up in a different area without suffering any ill-effects. In fact, I’m pretty sure I received more experience points for surrendering than I did for fighting. Since I left the lead thug alive, I was able to help him out later on (he’s actually not a bad guy), and I was rewarded with additional XP and a cool item.
One of the best things about Planescape was its pervasive sense of weirdness and wonder. It’s a place where you can talk to a letter in the divine alphabet and help an alley give birth. Fortunately, the Ninth World is just as strange as Sigil. There’s a cool moment early in the beta when you stumble upon a pair of whirling pink cones. If you touch them, you’re rewarded with a vision of an alien landscape. It’s not clear that this has anything to do with the game’s plot, but I love it because it shows just how weird the Ninth World can be.

Things only get stranger from there. You see a man being executed by being wrapped in his own words made flesh (did one of the designers hear John 1:14 in church one day and start daydreaming?). You encounter members of a cannibalistic order that can experience the memories of those they eat (they’re actually a reasonably friendly bunch). You find a fountain of squirming fish-like creatures that speak in dead languages. If the rest of the game is as weird as the beta, TTON will be just as memorable as its predecessor.

Aside from the glitc2016-02-20.pnghes and bugs, TTON appears to have a solid foundation. But I do have a few minor complaints. For example, at one point I died (like in Planescape, you’re immortal, and you simply respawn when you die), and I ended up in a totally different part of the city. There is no world map or fast-travel feature, so I had to spend a lot of time running around in order to find my way back to where I needed to be. At the time, I happened to be in the middle of a quest to save someone from execution, and I wasn’t sure if I had time to explore since one of my companions kept reminding me that the condemned man would soon be dead. Happily, inXile appears to have taken steps to fix this in the first beta patch. After dying post-patch, an NPC gave me directions to get me back on track. But his directions were connected with a specific quest, and I don’t know what would have happened if that quest hadn’t been active.

I also wonder if TTON wouldn’t benefit from a bit more combat. While Planescape was less combat-oriented than Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale, you could find opportunities to fight if that was your thing. In TTON, on the other hand, combat is rare indeed. During my first playthrough, I only fought a handful of times, and they were all set-piece fights (according to the TTON website, there will only be a dozen or so Crises throughout the entire game).  I realize that the designers really like the idea of hand-crafted Crises, but I kind of missed the trash mobs since they added a bit of variety to the gameplay. I’m not saying that TTON needs to be a hack-‘n-slashfest like Diablo III, but it could have something like the random fights with the Hive thugs that you’d encounter in Planescape. I probably shouldn’t hold my breath–the developers have made it clear that they want to keep dungeon crawls and trash mobs out of TTON.

So those are my thoughts on the TTON beta. It’s a solid game with a lot of promise, and I’m even more eager for its release than I was before. Unfortunately, there’s still no word on a release date, and judging from the rough state of the beta, it seems that our vigil may be far from over. But with any luck, we’ll have an excellent game at the end of it.

Close to Home: A Musical X-File

If the end of the X-Files revival has you going through withdrawal, I may be able to provide some relief. A good buddy of mine recently wrote and composed a hysterical parody of one of the original series’ most infamous episodes entitled Close to Home: A Musical X-File. The episode in question,”Home,” was so dark and disturbing that it was prefaced with a viewer discretion warning, and Fox never rebroadcast it except for a special airing on Halloween in 1999.

This show is frickin’ amazing. My friend has some serious musical chops, and Close to Home is brimming with catchy songs. If you’re an X-Files fan, or if you’re just in the mood for something wickedly funny, you should definitely check it out. But be warned: although it’s all in jest, the subject matter is rather gruesome. You can watch the whole thing here:

Keeping Up Appearances may get a prequel!

The Daily Telegraph reports that the BBC may commission a prequel to Keeping Up Appearances. Tentatively titled Young Hyacinth, it would focus on Hyacinth’s life as a 19-year old maid to an upper-middle-class family.

I’m thrilled by this news–KUA is one of my all-time favorite sitcoms. Despite being ruthlessly formulaic, it was consistently funny throughout its run (sometimes British Brevity can be a good thing). The idea of a prequel has a lot of promise. We never learned much about Hyacinth’s backstory during the show’s original run. It was hinted that she may have grown up in an environment similar to Daisy and Onslow’s crumbling council flat, and it would be interesting to see how she became a maven of poshness. This gives series creator Roy Clarke a lot of freedom to develop Hyacinth’s backstory without resorting to retcons.

There’s no guarantee that YH will actually make it to broadcast, but the fact that they’ve asked Clarke to pen a script is encouraging. At the moment, it’s scheduled to be a one-off, but there’s talk that it might eventually become a series if viewers like it enough. The fact that KUA is currently the BBC’s most popular export might provide added inducement.

Old posts

As some of you may know, my blog used to be located at jasonloch.net. Initially, the move to this site was supposed to be a total reboot, and I wasn’t going to import any of my old posts. But as the days passed, I began to question my decision. It just seemed wrong to junk six years’ worth of posts (I’m pretty sure the history police would have confiscated my history license for such a sacrilege!).

In the end, I decided to import my old posts. WordPress did a good job with the move, though there are some weird formatting issues. For example, a lot of my old posts included footnotes that I created using a special plugin, but that plugin doesn’t work with this site. As a result, the footnotes now appear as ugly bits of code in the body of the post. I could go back and re-insert them using HTML, but I don’t think the game would be worth the candle. So readers of the archives beware: there be formatting monsters.

Can we really call Locusta a ‘badass chemist’?

Esther Inglis-Arkell recently wrote a short piece for Gizmodo about Locusta, the infamous poisoner who allegedly helped the great and good of first-century Rome dispose of difficult individuals. Unfortunately, Inglis-Arkell’s narrative is problematic in many respects.

The biggest problem is that the article makes a number of questionable assertions. For example, she claims that Locusta helped Agrippina the Younger dispose of two husbands. Inglis-Arkell never identifies the first victim, but she probably meant Agrippina’s second husband, Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus. The second victim was Agrippina’s third husband, Emperor Claudius.

Inglis-Arkell makes it seem as if Locusta’s role in both deaths is a known fact, but that’s not true. On the contrary, there’s no evidence linking Locusta to Crispus’s death at all. It’s not even clear that he was poisoned. We don’t actually know much about Crispus, and what little we do know comes from the scholiast on Juvenal, who records that he was “slain by the treachery of Agrippina.” There’s no mention of poison or Locusta. Inglis-Arkell doesn’t explain why she links Locusta with Crispus’s death, but she may have been led astray by a toxicology textbook that she cites later in the article. Toxicology by Thomas J. Haley and William O. Berndt does indeed claim that Locusta helped Agrippina get rid of Crispus, but it doesn’t cite any sources. At any rate, a toxicology textbook isn’t necessarily a good source for Roman history.

As for Claudius, it’s true that many Roman historians alleged that he was poisoned at Agrippina’s behest. But Locusta’s role in his death is far from clear. Suetonius doesn’t mention her at all in his account of Claudius’s murder, but Tacitus and Cassius Dio do. Tacitus gives the fullest account, claiming that Agrippina hired Locusta to poison a dish of mushrooms. However, he says that the physician Xenophon ultimately ended up killing Claudius when Locusta’s poisoned mushrooms don’t work (Tacitus, Annals, 12.67). Cassius Dio also mentions Locusta, but he claims that the poisoned mushrooms did the trick (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 61.34).

Even though Tacitus and Dio seem to provide clear evidence of Locusta’s role, we have to take their claims with a grain of salt. They weren’t writing history in the modern sense of the term. For starters, they didn’t cite sources. When Tacitus writes that Agrippina used Locusta to poison Claudius, we have no way of knowing where he got this information. Did he actually see documentary evidence linking the two women, or was he simply reporting rumor as fact? One of the most frustrating things about studying Roman history is the fact that some of our most detailed sources of information aren’t as objective as we would like. Locusta may well have been involved in Claudius’s death, but that is far from certain.

Inglis-Arkell’s claim that Locusta was a ‘badass chemist’ who taught her art to others is also suspect. Although a number of secondary sources claim that Locusta operated a school for poisoners, the primary-source evidence for this seems to be scanty. The only references I can find are Suetonius and Juvenal. Suetonius claims that, as a reward for helping him get rid of Britannicus (Claudius’s son), Nero gave Locusta an estate in the country and sent her pupils (Suetonius, Life of Nero, 33.3). The reference in Juvenal is a brief claim in his Satires that Locusta “teaches her artless neighbours to brave the talk of the town and carry forth to burial the blackened corpses of their husbands” (Juvenal, Satires, 1.71-2).

Claiming that Locusta was a ‘badass chemist’ on these basis of such slim evidence seems unwise. Suetonius is the more credible of the two, but even then we can’t be sure whether he’s telling the truth. Without corroborating evidence from other sources, the idea of Nero sending pupils to Locusta could easily be a bit of slander intended to make him seem even more monstrous. As for Juvenal, it seems unwise to place too much reliance on a few lines from a poem. He wasn’t writing history, after all. We have no idea whether or not his reference to Locusta should be taken literally or if it’s simply a product of his imagination.

I can’t claim to be an expert on Locusta, and it’s possible that Inglis-Arkell drew on sources that I’m not familiar with. However, I suspect she relied too heavily on secondary sources and failed to question their claims. The result is an article that, while entertaining, is ultimately misleading.