Playing Esoteric Ebb is like rolling the dice with a great DM

游玩《Esoteric Ebb》就像与一位出色的地下城主（DM）掷骰共舞

It took me a while to get into Esoteric Ebb, a new CRPG from developer Christoffer Bodegård. The elevator pitch is basically Disco Elysium, but in the fantasy style of Dungeons & Dragons: You play as a cleric wandering around a small town who’s trying to figure out, among other things, the mystery of why a tea shop in town exploded, and all the while, you’re having conversations with different character traits in your head. 我花了一段时间才沉浸进《Esoteric Ebb》这款由开发者 Christoffer Bodegård 制作的全新 CRPG 中。如果用一句话来概括，它基本上就是《极乐迪斯科》（Disco Elysium）的奇幻版，并融入了《龙与地下城》（D&D）的风格：你扮演一名在小镇中游荡的牧师，试图解开镇上一家茶馆爆炸的谜团，与此同时，你还要不断与脑海中不同的性格特质进行对话。

Like Disco Elysium, you see the world from an isometric, top-down perspective. Also like Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb requires a lot of reading, weighing the opinions of your competing voices, and making some bold dice rolls that don’t always work out. The first few days I played the game, I felt like I was slowly and aimlessly mucking through. But by the end, I found myself engrossed — and laughing out loud more than I have with any game in recent memory. 和《极乐迪斯科》一样，你以等距视角俯瞰这个世界。同样地，《Esoteric Ebb》也需要大量的阅读，你需要权衡脑海中不同声音的意见，并进行一些并不总能成功的冒险掷骰。游戏的前几天，我感觉自己走得缓慢而漫无目的。但到了最后，我发现自己完全沉浸其中，并且笑出的次数比我近期玩过的任何游戏都要多。

When you start Esoteric Ebb, you build your cleric by assigning out different ability scores — the traditional D&D ones like strength, wisdom, and charisma — and a background focus to give your character some history. There are also a handful of prebuilt characters if you don’t want to spend too much time tinkering, and I picked the one with the highest charisma stat, “Unstable Cleric,” because I like having persuasive conversations in these types of games. (This option also has a high dexterity score, which was great for pickpocketing things off of people.) 在开始《Esoteric Ebb》时，你需要通过分配不同的能力值来构建你的牧师——即传统的 D&D 属性，如力量、智慧和魅力——并选择一个背景焦点来赋予角色一段历史。如果你不想花太多时间调整，游戏也提供了一些预设角色。我选择了魅力值最高的“不稳定牧师”（Unstable Cleric），因为我喜欢在这类游戏中进行富有说服力的对话。（这个选项的敏捷值也很高，非常适合从别人身上顺手牵羊。）

After I set my character, the game’s intro said I was the “dumbest cleric imaginable.” You can get other descriptions of your cleric depending on your starting stats, but in my case, it was very useful framing; instead of always trying to get the “best” outcomes, which is what I often default to in RPGs, I instead followed my silliest instincts just to see what would happen. 设定好角色后，游戏的开场白称我是“你能想象到的最蠢的牧师”。根据初始属性的不同，你可能会得到对牧师的其他描述，但对我来说，这个设定非常有用；我不再像往常玩 RPG 时那样总是追求“最佳”结果，而是跟随自己最愚蠢的直觉，看看会发生什么。

Over the course of the adventure, this led to all sorts of ridiculous moments. As part of an ongoing election plotline, I encouraged everyone to vote for me, promising I would rule as a god-wizard-king. (The citizens were generally wary of my suggestion.) One time, while fishing with a merman who was also a landlord, I chose a dialogue option to bite my tongue instead of commenting on the fact that my conversation partner was a merman, and the game described how my character literally bit his tongue such that blood pooled around his boots, which the merman apparently ignored. 在冒险过程中，这引发了各种荒谬的时刻。作为选举剧情的一部分，我鼓励所有人投票给我，并承诺我将以“神-巫师-国王”的身份统治他们。（市民们对我的提议普遍持怀疑态度。）有一次，在与一位同时也是房东的人鱼钓鱼时，我选择了一个咬舌头的对话选项，而不是去评论对方是人鱼的事实。游戏描述了我的角色是如何真的咬破了舌头，以至于鲜血汇聚在他的靴子周围，而那个人鱼显然对此视而不见。

Every once in a while, you’ll get into a combat scenario. While they’re still mostly weaving through text conversations, you’ll have some tense dice rolls that can affect the outcome of the fight. I died often, but since I usually saved before meaningful encounters, this wasn’t much of an issue. You can cast spells to influence situations, improve your dice rolls, or open up new opportunities to talk with characters of all kinds in the game. I even chatted with a giant snail. 偶尔，你会进入战斗场景。虽然战斗主要还是通过文本对话来推进，但你仍会遇到一些紧张的掷骰环节，这可能会影响战斗的结果。我经常死亡，但因为我通常会在重要遭遇前存档，所以这并不是什么大问题。你可以施放法术来影响局势、提高掷骰点数，或者开启与游戏中各种角色交流的新机会。我甚至还和一只巨大的蜗牛聊过天。

In retrospect, I think my initial, unfocused-feeling experience is actually the intended experience of Esoteric Ebb. Like a great fantasy novel, it just takes a little while to settle into the game’s world, and over time, I realized its characters are interconnected in ways that would slowly reveal themselves. After I bit my tongue in front of the merman, for example, he told me a surprising fact about my cleric’s past. 回想起来，我认为我最初那种漫无目的的感觉，实际上正是《Esoteric Ebb》想要传达的体验。就像一部伟大的奇幻小说，你需要一点时间才能融入游戏的世界。随着时间的推移，我意识到游戏中的角色以一种会缓慢揭示的方式相互关联。例如，在我当着人鱼的面咬破舌头后，他告诉了我一个关于我牧师过去的惊人事实。

Esoteric Ebb’s introduction is actually signed by Bodegård, and he says that “we’ll play” for about “5 to 8 sessions.” It sets the tone that you’re in the hands of a capable Dungeon Master who has worked hard to craft an entertaining campaign but who will also work with your wildest instincts to create an interesting journey. Bodegård succeeds, heartily. As I neared the end of the game, I was so caught up in the story — and seeking out every ridiculous situation that I could — that I was racing to see it to the end. Somehow, the narrative threads actually ended up tying together, making my 16-hour journey feel worth it. I learned that even my bumbling cleric could become a hero. 《Esoteric Ebb》的序言由 Bodegård 亲自署名，他提到我们大约会进行“5 到 8 次游戏会话”。这奠定了一种基调：你正处于一位能干的地下城主手中，他不仅精心打造了一个有趣的战役，还会配合你最疯狂的直觉来创造一段有趣的旅程。Bodegård 成功了，而且非常出色。当我接近游戏尾声时，我完全沉浸在故事中，并竭力寻找每一个荒谬的场景，以至于我迫不及待地想要看到结局。不知何故，叙事线索最终竟然交织在了一起，让我 16 小时的旅程显得物有所值。我明白了，即使是我这个笨手笨脚的牧师，也能成为英雄。

Esoteric Ebb is now available on Steam. 《Esoteric Ebb》现已在 Steam 上架。