Aurora
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
‘
–Walt Whitman
What IS it about airships that so ignites our imaginations?
In real life, airships are little more than floating cameras for football games. In fantasy and science-fiction, however, airships are everywhere. As I sat down to compose this article, I started thinking about all the various novels, movies and games I’ve experienced that had airships in them.
A Meeting With Medusa. Orion Shall Rise. The Jerle Shannara. With the Night Mail. The Shape of Things To Come. Warlord of the Air. The Ill-Made Mute. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series. Sky Captain. Crimson Skies. Don Karnage’s Iron Vulture. Airships from various Final Fantasy games. Matsumoto Leiji’s Queen Emeraldas. The Mortal Engines Quartet. Nearly anything by Miyazaki Hayao. Robur-le-Conquérant. Stardust. Hell, I bought the entire Last Exile series on DVD just because it had really cool airships. Even though the series itself wasn’t particularly good, it had style.
Why are airships such a staple of fantasy and science-fiction? Is it the appearance of something manmade in the sky that has no visibly aerodynamic properties? Is it the yearning for a slower pace of life, with proper Victorian culture and less population? Is it simply man’s desire to reclaim the elevated vantage point we lost when we fell out of the trees?
Whatever the reason, we seem to have a love of airships, and all the magic and whimsy and adventure they imply.
One of my personal criticisms of Home is that at times it seems a bit too grounded in reality. I know that sounds like an odd statement, but before you rush to attack it, I freely acknowledge that there are plenty of fanciful elements throughout Home. Rather, I’ve simply wanted to see Home spaces that truly bend and play with the concept of reality.
I’m talking about David Bowie singing to Jennifer Connelly whilst walking sideways through the Labyrinth. I’m talking about Leonardo DiCaprio watching a city block folded over itself in Inception. I’m talking about every single episode of The Prisoner. Reality — but surreality.
The greatest strength Home has is not in its endless avalanche of t-shirts or mini-games. Home is at its best when it provides experiences. Human beings are drawn to spectacle — to a sense of wonder. Recently, HSM examined what the elements of a successful public space are, and Cubehouse pointed out (correctly, in my opinion) that visual spectacle — a sense of wonder — is one of the most critical elements.
When I sign into Home, I want it to be an experience. Specifically, an experience beyond what I could have in real life. (As an aside, I think this is perhaps one of the subliminal motives behind glitching.) And while Home does a lot of things right and generates quite a bit of well-deserved profit in the process, I’ve often felt that it hasn’t really pushed the Escher envelope far enough.
It’s virtual reality, for god’s sake! Take the 1.5 update and push the envelope all the way to the cancel stamp!
One exception to this, however, is nDreams.
I absolutely love nDreams. To me, nDreams is Home designed by Terry Gilliam. Every time nDreams releases something for Home, it feels like it had to go through an approval committee chaired by Lewis Carroll, Joseph Campbell and Abe Kōbō. Look at their virtual apparel. Their virtual pets. Their private estates (particularly Musicality). And, of course, Xi.
nDreams holds Home up to a funhouse mirror inside a TARDIS and shakes it to see what falls out of its pockets. And the results are always outstanding.
And now we have Aurora.
Let’s be honest for a moment: Aurora rocks. I know it hasn’t been publicly released yet. But just look at the video:
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeZkta8PY7I
From Patrick O’Luanaigh, nDreams CEO:
We’re launching Aurora 1.0 – it’s the first look at Aurora but is very much a ‘first step’. We are planning lots of exciting things for Aurora over time and it will be updated regularly.
Players will be able to level up in Aurora. Each day that they come into Aurora, their best result in ‘OrbRunner’ and ‘Aurora Defence’ (if they own the Aurora Island apartment) will add to their experience; there are lots of hidden reward items to win as your experience increases.
There are several new items in the Aurora Shop which haven’t been seen before – most notably, the Aurora Defence apartment; a floating island with a working turret cannon which you can use to fend off attacking craft.
If you want to level up even quicker, there are items that you can get for both OrbRunner and Aurora Defence to increase your effectiveness. You can even unlock mystery islands.
Aurora is a beautiful floating archipelago, and will be nDreams official ‘HQ’ in Home. On launch, players can help power the islands by taking part in OrbRunner, or check out the Aurora Defence preview to see some stunning views of Aurora from the air. Players can gain experience every day and climb from level to level, with secret rewards and bonus items given out along the
way.
Also available is the stunning Aurora Island apartment which includes an action-packed playable combat game (which also provides experience points) as players help defend the skies of Aurora from a range of lethal enemies. And there are also several unique new items in the Aurora shop. Aurora will be evolving regularly with lots of new games and content on the way. Keep coming back regularly to make sure you don’t miss out!
All I have to say is that this is more like it. Contrary to a lot of the whinging that takes place in the Sony forum, I don’t think Home is “boring” or “pointless” — it has far too vibrant of a social scene for that — but I do think it can sometimes be a bit mundane. This year, however, has already seen some dramatic improvements to the depth of the Home experience: the introduction of diurnal cycles in a private estate, the Helghast Central Plaza event, the forthcoming SodiumTwo explosion, and now Aurora.
If Home continues to deliver these sorts of spectacles throughout 2011, then perhaps this year will be viewed retrospectively as the year in which Home truly came into its own.
So now then. Does Aurora live up to its hype?
Yes.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, mind you; there are one or two flaws in it, which I’ll discuss momentarily. That said, it’s a masterpiece. There’s a Musicality dance floor (which, oddly enough, didn’t have that many people on it), a portal to the Xi Museum, a small tip of the hat to the Pirate Galleon estate, and a really fun mini-game called OrbRunner which requires a certain amount of strategy to maximise.
What I personally appreciate, though, is the ambience of the space. There’s no shortage of background music. There are lovely ambient sound effects near the Information points. There’s a wonderful whimsy and mystique to this floating world. If it had diurnal controls (akin to what the Sunset Yacht now offers), it’d be unbelievably immersive. The fact that nDreams has stated that this space is to be their “headquarters” in Home suggests that it may actually receive semi-regular updates — a welcome change indeed from the usual gamut of static spaces that haven’t changed for years.
The drawbacks:
1. There frankly are an intrusive number of commerce points throughout Aurora. A little bit of that goes a long way.
2. Aurora has everything you could want in a space: a cool mini-game, a dance floor, great music and scenery, unlockable extras…yet I’ll admit it feels a touch on the small side. Maybe because I want to check out more of those other islands in the sky, suspending tantalizingly out of reach.
3. This is the big one: your in-world level is plastered to your avatar’s backside. This is wrong. This almost kills my enjoyment of Aurora. As soon as I saw that, my inner Patrick McGoohan bristled. Remember his famous quote? “I will not be filed, labeled, briefed, debriefed or numbered!” In short, a human’s worth is not measurable by some sort of rank or level.
Yes, it’s a big deal. It’s the same reason I’m frankly put off by elements of trophyism: because the introduction of conspicuous “status” levels introduces divisiveness. Look, I don’t begrudge people who enjoy earning trophies — I myself am the proud owner of a Golden VICKIE — but Home’s programmers were smart enough to not plaster that information above your avatar’s head. In Aurora, however, you have a giant number attached to your backside, with no way of turning it off. And I’m sorry, but this is a bit like taking out your John Thomas at a dinner party. It’s just wrong.
To me, Aurora is about relaxing and drinking in the ambience of a setting straight out of a Dr. Who episode directed by Terry Gilliam. Instead, I have to stare at this number placed on my avatar’s backside without my consent. This subliminal coercing to play the mini-games and improve my level so that I can keep up with everyone else. I should, at the very least, have the ability to turn that marker off. And I do frankly hope that such an ability is granted, because it really does affect my enjoyment of Aurora.
All that said, do I still support Aurora?
Yes, absolutely. And I’ve already bought the private apartment that goes with it. Because spending money on nDreams gives them money to further expand and improve this space, and voting with my wallet tells nDreams and Sony that I want more of this sort of fantastical, surreal, nature-themed experience in Home.
March 17th, 2011 by NorseGamer | 5 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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OK -- the new apartment will be MINE! Expect a whole slew of pictures in the HSM Forum tomorrow morning as I will add some of the new Lockwood furniture and other goodies and take pics.
The beauty of the space is that Patrickol has confirmed that it will be a LONG TERM project for them. That means that there will be continuing updates to it over time. We simply get too many spaces that are dropped into the Navigator by developers never to be heard from again.
Home needs to new content to keep spaces fresh. It also need spaces where people want to spend time because they are fun to be in with friends. The loss of the EA Complex was a major lass for socialization and community building in Home. Hopefully Aurora will fill that void in a major way.
Can’t wait to see what they have in store for us.
i’ m totally agree with your drawsback Norse’!
i m a little disapointed after my visit to aurora, perhaps coz the massive buzz around this space? it ‘s less social than i suppose (expect?)…
so, wait and see…..
They need to expand the view. One of the reasons the space itself “seems” small.
When your avatar is standing on the edge of one of the islands, your view (looking in) is like being up against a wall.
For such a huge looking space, there are few areas that do not make one feel closed in.
My main annoyance (besides the embarrassing numeric score riveted to my back) is the fact that all the visitable islands are basically commercials for other nDreams products. A bit of bragging, of “Look at all the other cool stuff we’ve done!” is all right. But for every single island? Give me a break!