Well. March 6th looms, and you know what that means. Or if you don't, you will, after finishing this paragraph, because I am about to say it. March 6th is Mass Effect 3's launch date, AKA the day The RPGenius will cut off all forms of human contact for however long it takes to complete this final installment in Commander Shepard's trilogy of ass-kicking. And since this is the last rant scheduled to occur before that day, what better way to celebrate the Mass Effect series than a rant that complains about it? A lot of things, really, but I can't be bothered to do any of them, so you're stuck with this.
A common aspect to Western RPGs is the option for a player to choose the general traits of the game's main character at the game's beginning. You almost never see this in Japanese RPGs,* but that can be a real benefit to them at times, since a malleable protagonist is more difficult to strongly connect to the plot. One of these traits of the protagonist that the player has the option of determining is the character's gender. Typically this decision doesn't actually change all that much about the game's proceeding's, save for the protagonist's potential romantic options--in Dragon Age 1, for example, one of the love interests for a male hero will be Morrigan, while a female protagonist will be able to court Alistair instead.** Sometimes the gender of the protagonist doesn't even affect that much--it's basically negligible in Fallout 3 and Baldur's Gate 1, for example. Either way, it's usually an enjoyable little feature, I suppose, and usually the only harm I can think coming from it is what I implied before--the fact that leaving so much of a protagonist up to choice means less potential for him or her to get significant character development. Otherwise, I generally don't think much about this feature.
There is, however, one game series where this gender ambiguity is problematic to me: Mass Effect.
Now, just to reiterate what anyone who reads these rants with any regularity already knows: I am not a gender-biased kind of person. And I am all for feminism, for female empowerment in my video games. I have many times mentioned in my rants mentioned dissatisfaction with how many more male protagonists there are than female ones. I am always annoyed when female characters aren't allowed to fulfill anything beyond a cliched, traditional, often insultingly limited female role. I hate the way video games force female characters to dress in ridiculous, ineffective outfits clearly designed only to arouse a male audience. I don't deny that gender may have an influence on a person's character, but I oppose the notion that it is the defining trait of that person's character, and that a character role has to be gender-specific. That's why I've made rants of admiration for Wild Arms 3's Virginia as a female effectively fulfilling a particular brand of heroic role that most would associate only with males, and for Tales of the Abyss's Ion as a male effectively fulfilling a damsel in distress role. So I hope you will believe me when I say that my statement below has, to the best of my ability to gauge, absolutely no gender bias associated with it.
Commander Shepard needs to be a man.
I'm sorry, but it's just how it is. The female model for Shepard just doesn't work for the feats Shepard performs during Mass Effect 1 and 2. The best piece of evidence for this is in Mass Effect 2, concerning the battle against the Shadow Broker. If you have played it then you will recall that the Shadow Broker is...big. He's real big. He is to a Krogan what a Krogan is to a Salarian. There are times during that battle--awesome times--when Shepard goes in close for hand-to-hand combat, striking physical blows and body-slamming the big jerk. Well, seriously, now, let's look at this. It's only barely believable that the male model of Shepard could summon enough physical force to knock the Shadow Broker around as well as he does, and the male model of Shepard is a decently sizable guy with some (not really enough, if you ask me) muscle tone to him. The idea that the female Shepard model could perform the exact same physical feats is...well, it just lacks credibility.
I am NOT saying that females cannot be strong, large, and capable of great feats of strength. Hell no. I fully believe that a woman could, with comparable training and naturally gifted physique, do what male Shepard does in this fight (at least, I believe it as much as I believe he could). But not the woman that the female Shepard is. Because Bioware, for some idiotic reason, decided that the female Shepard would conform to stupid societal expectations rather than to common sense and the Shepard character history, and have a less solid frame and show basically no indication that she even exercised regularly, let alone went regularly into combat situations and had relevantly recent military training. I believe that the physical prowess to knock the Shadow Broker around isn't limited to a man--but I believe just as strongly that it sure as hell ain't possible that some casual soccer mom could manage it.
I mean, for God's sake, look at her. Now look at the Shadow Broker. Now compare them when put face to face. How the HELL are we supposed to buy that she could physically attack that guy and have any effect at all?
The Shadow Broker fight's my main line of argument here, but only because it's where the discrepancy is most noticeable. There are plenty of other occasions in both Mass Effects that have Shepard engaging in physical activities that rely on a body type and level of physical fitness that female Shepard just doesn't have. And hey, again, I do admit that there are times when I find myself thinking that the male Shepard should probably be a bit bigger or more noticeably strong than he is, but at least he's got something to him that he can throw around. The female Shepard model just doesn't work.
Maybe I'm being a little too nitpicky on this; I can't rightly say. I mean, if you look at the Fallout games, which also let you determine protagonist gender, it's not like your female character is physically impressive, and those games involve lots of similar action to Mass Effect. And yet...it just doesn't seem the same. For one thing, the build of the female models is fairly comparable to the male ones; you don't have the female protagonists so significantly less sturdy than their male counterparts. And the physical demands just don't get so glamorized with Fallout characters as they are with Shepard. One of the many ways that the Mass Effect games emphasize what a badass Shepard is is by showing Shepard's physical feats in dangerous and combat situations from time to time; Fallout just slow-motion captures killing blows (ones which are already usually pretty ludicrous, as opposed to the realism that Mass Effect tries to convey). Then look at Dragon Age--there's a fair difference between the male and female models, yes, but the parts that emphasize physical prowess do so using weapons and abilities more than just physical power and endurance. Knights of the Old Republic, you've got Jedi, who fight using the Force and nearly weightless weapons more than they do with any physical prowess. Baldur's Gate, everyone's too damn small on the screen to really tell anything anyway and the fighting is again not emphasized the same way. So I don't know, but I don't THINK I'm holding Mass Effect up to any standards that I don't hold up to the other Western RPGs I've played where gender is an option.
I guess the problem really just is that ME wants to convey that sense of realism in its confrontations, particularly those it emphasizes in special scenes, and this winds up just really emphasizing the (completely unnecessary, not to mention morally questionable***) differences they've made between the male and female Shepard models, making one fairly viable and unfortunately making the other one realistically unsuited for the demands that will be placed on it. A female model with a better physique would have been just fine, and made a lot more sense for the character anyway.
It's all the same to me for my playing style, since A, I am a hardcore Shepard - Tali fan and thus need Shepard to be male anyway, and B, male Shepard's voice actor has a feeling of a strong, demanding, and capable presence (at least in ME2; I've mentioned before he kind of came into his own in that game after a less impressive performance in ME1), which is what Shepard is regardless of how you play the game, while female Shepard's voice actress sounds like a tired, mentally detached traffic cop at the end of a long day. It doesn't affect my run through the game either way. Still, this is one of those inconsistencies that bug me, particularly when it really shouldn't be there anyway.
* Games where you choose at the beginning between 2 or more characters of different genders (such as Star Ocean 2, or Children of Mana) don't count. These are games with multiple possible protagonists that you choose from, not games with a single protagonist whose gender does not significantly change the protagonist's role and personality in the game. You can choose between a few different characters at the start of Seiken Densetsu 3, for example, but each one has a different character history, different beginning, different personality...you're picking which already complete person will be the hero, rather than determining the characteristics of the 1 hero of the game, like you do in Western RPGs.
** Man, did the male protagonists ever get screwed over in that trade-off.
*** Because, I mean, seriously, what reason COULD there really be for having the exact same character, who has done and must be able to do the exact same things, be smaller and have less physical presence, that doesn't boil down to mild sexism and/or fanservice? If anyone's got one, and it's reasonable, then I'm all ears.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
General RPG Maker Nintendo: Why I Respect It So Much
I've always liked Nintendo, ever since I got my NES so many years ago. So, so many. Too many. I don't like to think about how many.
Anyway! I've always liked Nintendo and supported them, but in recent years, I've come to really appreciate the company as a game developer as a whole.* They seem to really strive to put artistically creative quality into their titles as a general rule, they aren't afraid to make family-friendly titles in a world where other media creators of all kind are often terrified to try to make a product that can be enjoyed by more than one age group, and you can tell that they make a solid effort on nearly all the titles they create. These are the qualities from which classics are born.
First of all, the creativity. Now, I wouldn't call almost any Nintendo game art, per say. Off the top of my head, I'd say the only Nintendo games I've played that qualify as art are Mother 3, maybe Earthbound, and possibly The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, although that's really stretching it. But even if it doesn't lead to art, Nintendo's creativity with their games is unparalleled. The gameplay is creative, the settings are creative, the characters are creative, over and over and over again. They invent and revolutionize game genres like Platformers and Action RPGs, create memorable and unique characters like Samus and the Mario brothers, and come up with terrifically original game concepts like those in Pikmin and Kirby: Canvas Curse. And this is to say nothing of the innovation they often display with the game systems themselves, such as with the DS's stylus and the Wii's motion sensor.
And to try to tie this relevantly to the subject of these rants (RPGs), there's certainly a lot of creativity to be found in their RPG offerings. The puzzles and mazes of Startropics 1 and most The Legend of Zelda titles? Pretty creative! Fire Emblem 4's having a plot that starts with 1 generation of heroes and then continues on to conclude with the focus on the original heroes' children? Creative! The Paper Mario series? Very creative! The tone, look, characters, and general plots of Earthbound and Mother 3? Insanely creative! Even a lot of their lesser RPG titles have strong innovation attached to them. I mean, just because The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and Mario and Luigi 3 are fairly boring, that doesn't mean they didn't have some creativity in their idea of train themes and having half the game take place in Bowser's stomach, respectively. Maybe the ideas couldn't save the titles from uninteresting writing, but they're still creative, at least.
Then there's the effort that Nintendo exerts in making its games. Whatever else you may or may not say about Nintendo games, it's hard to deny that they control pretty much exactly as they're meant to. The gameplay in a Nintendo title is tight, it works the way it was meant to work, and the challenges you face are against the game's obstacles and potentially your own limits and reflexes, not against poor design. The tricky bits like slippery ice, wall-jumps, and really annoying countdowns until the moon hits the world are difficult and even frustrating because they're supposed to be, not because the control of the character isn't up to par. And while I won't say Nintendo has NEVER half-assed a title (the plot of the RPG Mario and Luigi 2 is extremely forgettable, not to mention the story and characters of most Pokemon games), they nonetheless maintain the level of quality that comes with solid effort to make a good game pretty consistently, even when they don't have to. I mean, let's face it--you can slap Mario's name on any platformer and it'll enjoy at least moderate sales. Yet even on titles Nintendo is practically guaranteed to do well with, they still clearly go to great lengths to make games that are better, or at least very interestingly different, than their predecessors. Rarely (admittedly not never, but rarely) is the time that I play a Nintendo title that feels at all like a slapped-together attempt to cash in on a franchise name with little real care for the quality of the product. Compare that to a company like SquareEnix, which has its own franchises that basically sell themselves, and as a result the company produces boring and/or crappy installments like Children of Mana, Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings, and dozens of insanely over-priced re-releases.
Again, tying this to the RPGs, the same is basically true of Nintendo's RPGs. Again, everything basically works exactly as it's meant to (even when you don't like it, like the Sailing in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker), and as I said, new titles in a franchise are given just as much attention as any other game, not just halfheartedly thrown together and then shipped to fill store shelves. How big a departure in style and substance was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess from TLoZ: The Wind Waker? And that from the previous Zelda title? Earthbound had quite a cult following, but instead of just relying on that and a quick copy-paste to sell its sequel, Nintendo took Earthbound's quirky, fun, bizarre nature and injected powerful emotion and creative plot into it, making Mother 3 an even better RPG than its predecessor. Nintendo could have done just about anything to make its first Mario RPG since Squaresoft's original Super Mario RPG a reasonable success, but they went the extra mile and gave it a pop-up storybook look and feel with Paper Mario. No moss grows on this stone, no sir.
And there's the fact that Nintendo games, as a whole, are family titles. I really, really appreciate products that are made for children, but are made with such quality and integrity that there's plenty for an adult to enjoy, as well. Things like most Pixar films, Batman: The Animated Series, Gargoyles, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Tangled, Hey Arnold!, most Muppet ventures, these are all products made for children that are so excellent, so created with care for the audience and the product, that they appeal to individuals of any age. In fact, I daresay I have enjoyed all of the things I just mentioned more as an adult, who can appreciate their subtleties and artistic merits, than I did/would have as a kid. And Nintendo games are generally the same. Mario 64, Donkey Kong Country, Super Smash Brothers, Kirby's Adventure...these games are innocuous fun, suitable for basically any age at which a controller can be held, yet just as enjoyable for an adult. And again, the same holds generally true of Nintendo's RPGs. I'll grant you that the plots and general goings-on of Fire Emblem titles lend themselves much more to a mindset of someone of an age in the double digits, and the same is true of a few The Legend of Zelda titles, too. But Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi, Pokemon, Earthbound, most The Legend of Zeldas, Startropics, these are all RPGs that are accessible to kids of whatever early age at which they can solve puzzles and manage turn-based combat. Even Mother 3, though loaded with emotional themes more in tune with adult sensibilities, doesn't have anything I can immediately recall that would make it kid-unfriendly.** Nintendo's are the kind of games that prove your product doesn't have to be bristling with sex, violence, and special effects to be worth experiencing.
So yeah, Nintendo is one of the best game developers out there, in my opinion, and that's why I've always held some respect and loyalty for them. What really impressed me and earned a huge dose of respect from me, however, was a decision by the company made last year.
Last year marked the launch of the 3DS, the next of Nintendo's long line of awesome portable game systems. Apparently, its initial sales were sluggish. For whatever reason (and I imagine there were quite a few, honestly; I know I had no need for an upgrade at that time), it just wasn't selling all that well.
So how did Nintendo respond? After laying off countless underpaid bottom-rung employees who had nothing to do with anything in an effort to make up for the loss with their meager paychecks, it put all the blame on the consumers, whining about gamers not properly appreciating the 3DS and completely dismissing any and all concerns and criticisms with the company's approach to the product as insignificant or ignorant, doing all but openly insulting the people whose money supports the company's existence. It completely refused to take any responsibility for its own failure and turned it around on the customer.
Oh, no, wait, I'm sorry, that's not what Nintendo did. That's what Sony, and SquareEnix, and countless other major companies would do and have done in similar circumstances. Because their representatives are assholes.
No, what Nintendo did was a little different from the corporate norm. The head honcho of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, officially announced that he took the blame for the company's losses, and cut his own paycheck in half to help make up for it. Not only that, but the other upper executives of the company also lessened their own salaries by varying percentages to make up the difference. In addition, given how lousy the times are economically for everyone, the company also slashed the price of the 3DS to make it more affordable for the common gamer, who is not exactly flush with cash at the moment.
How amazing is that, really? I mean, seriously, this is a case where a major company is admitting that it made poor decisions with its approach to its product and apologizing for it--good luck getting even that much from most other companies and individuals who create products, who often seem to think they're living gods. For example, you make even the slightest allusion that Marvel Comics writer Dan Slott is less than an icon of perfection--and really, it's hard NOT to suggest such a thing in any discussion about his work--and the guy comes screaming to your internet doorstep to hurl personal attacks at you in a fit of childish rage.***
More than that, the company is taking responsibility for the problem it's apologizing for, owning up to it--that in itself is also rare. I mean, look at the official "apology" that the CEO of Netflix gave a few months ago to his customers who were (justifiably) angry with how the company was handling its price increases--he basically gave a very phony-sounding "sorry" and then immediately launched into his new (and terrible, though that's not relevant) idea for splitting his business up, which had absolutely nothing to do with the problem he was supposedly apologizing for and basically seemed to just be a distraction so he didn't really have to address the real issues.
Nintendo, on the other hand, has executives who take the blame for their company's problem, and accept the consequences for it themselves. Any other company I know of would have rather downsized like crazy than let its precious execs miss out on even a dollar of their bloated bonuses, but Nintendo has the guys at the top, the ones actually conceivably responsible for the problem AND the ones who can actually afford to take a pay hit, foot the bill. That's a far cry from the infamous bank executives who used the bailout money funded by the American people to give themselves bonuses as a reward for running their businesses into the ground.
And while I recognize that lowering the price of the 3DS makes good sense for promoting its sales, that's still something deserving of a certain amount of respect, I think. I mean, they ARE basically lowering their opportunity to profit from selling a product that has already cost them more money than it's made for them. It is, at the very least, a level of awareness of their customers' financial considerations that you won't find in, say, SquareEnix, who re-releases games over 10 years old at the same price of a brand new title, then complains about customers not buying enough of them (even when they outsell many newer games released and considered successful by this same company).
People, we live in an age where providers of goods and services are typically callous toward we consumers, and often outright abusive. Just finding a company that genuinely wants to treat its customers well and values them is getting more and more difficult, but one that will step up, take responsibility, and make morally admirable choices when the going gets tough? Nintendo is some kind of corporate miracle.
So yeah, there you have it. Nintendo has a shocking amount of integrity as a business, and its creativity and effort in its creations are consistent. Aside from perhaps Atlus, I'm not sure I've seen any other RPG developer (or game developer, period) that so reliably makes quality its primary focus with its products, and the way they reacted to the 3DS situation last year was incredibly respectable, maybe even noble. And that's why I'm a Nintendo man for life.
* Yes, this means that the rant's more about video games in general, but Nintendo DOES make quite a few RPGs like Fire Emblem and The Legend of Zelda, so I figure it's legitimate.
** Yes, yes, I know the game's wise mystical folks are all male cross-dressers. I don't think it's really a big thing. It's not delved into enough in the game for a kid to see it as anything more than something humorously weird (assuming he or she isn't already familiar with the idea). You get more questionable antics from Bugs Bunny when he disguises as "pretty" girls and lays big juicy kisses on Elmer Fudd, for heaven's sake.
*** Luckily, this blog is so obscure and unknown that even he may miss this dastardly and completely accurate attack on his character, so I should be safe.
Anyway! I've always liked Nintendo and supported them, but in recent years, I've come to really appreciate the company as a game developer as a whole.* They seem to really strive to put artistically creative quality into their titles as a general rule, they aren't afraid to make family-friendly titles in a world where other media creators of all kind are often terrified to try to make a product that can be enjoyed by more than one age group, and you can tell that they make a solid effort on nearly all the titles they create. These are the qualities from which classics are born.
First of all, the creativity. Now, I wouldn't call almost any Nintendo game art, per say. Off the top of my head, I'd say the only Nintendo games I've played that qualify as art are Mother 3, maybe Earthbound, and possibly The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, although that's really stretching it. But even if it doesn't lead to art, Nintendo's creativity with their games is unparalleled. The gameplay is creative, the settings are creative, the characters are creative, over and over and over again. They invent and revolutionize game genres like Platformers and Action RPGs, create memorable and unique characters like Samus and the Mario brothers, and come up with terrifically original game concepts like those in Pikmin and Kirby: Canvas Curse. And this is to say nothing of the innovation they often display with the game systems themselves, such as with the DS's stylus and the Wii's motion sensor.
And to try to tie this relevantly to the subject of these rants (RPGs), there's certainly a lot of creativity to be found in their RPG offerings. The puzzles and mazes of Startropics 1 and most The Legend of Zelda titles? Pretty creative! Fire Emblem 4's having a plot that starts with 1 generation of heroes and then continues on to conclude with the focus on the original heroes' children? Creative! The Paper Mario series? Very creative! The tone, look, characters, and general plots of Earthbound and Mother 3? Insanely creative! Even a lot of their lesser RPG titles have strong innovation attached to them. I mean, just because The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and Mario and Luigi 3 are fairly boring, that doesn't mean they didn't have some creativity in their idea of train themes and having half the game take place in Bowser's stomach, respectively. Maybe the ideas couldn't save the titles from uninteresting writing, but they're still creative, at least.
Then there's the effort that Nintendo exerts in making its games. Whatever else you may or may not say about Nintendo games, it's hard to deny that they control pretty much exactly as they're meant to. The gameplay in a Nintendo title is tight, it works the way it was meant to work, and the challenges you face are against the game's obstacles and potentially your own limits and reflexes, not against poor design. The tricky bits like slippery ice, wall-jumps, and really annoying countdowns until the moon hits the world are difficult and even frustrating because they're supposed to be, not because the control of the character isn't up to par. And while I won't say Nintendo has NEVER half-assed a title (the plot of the RPG Mario and Luigi 2 is extremely forgettable, not to mention the story and characters of most Pokemon games), they nonetheless maintain the level of quality that comes with solid effort to make a good game pretty consistently, even when they don't have to. I mean, let's face it--you can slap Mario's name on any platformer and it'll enjoy at least moderate sales. Yet even on titles Nintendo is practically guaranteed to do well with, they still clearly go to great lengths to make games that are better, or at least very interestingly different, than their predecessors. Rarely (admittedly not never, but rarely) is the time that I play a Nintendo title that feels at all like a slapped-together attempt to cash in on a franchise name with little real care for the quality of the product. Compare that to a company like SquareEnix, which has its own franchises that basically sell themselves, and as a result the company produces boring and/or crappy installments like Children of Mana, Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings, and dozens of insanely over-priced re-releases.
Again, tying this to the RPGs, the same is basically true of Nintendo's RPGs. Again, everything basically works exactly as it's meant to (even when you don't like it, like the Sailing in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker), and as I said, new titles in a franchise are given just as much attention as any other game, not just halfheartedly thrown together and then shipped to fill store shelves. How big a departure in style and substance was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess from TLoZ: The Wind Waker? And that from the previous Zelda title? Earthbound had quite a cult following, but instead of just relying on that and a quick copy-paste to sell its sequel, Nintendo took Earthbound's quirky, fun, bizarre nature and injected powerful emotion and creative plot into it, making Mother 3 an even better RPG than its predecessor. Nintendo could have done just about anything to make its first Mario RPG since Squaresoft's original Super Mario RPG a reasonable success, but they went the extra mile and gave it a pop-up storybook look and feel with Paper Mario. No moss grows on this stone, no sir.
And there's the fact that Nintendo games, as a whole, are family titles. I really, really appreciate products that are made for children, but are made with such quality and integrity that there's plenty for an adult to enjoy, as well. Things like most Pixar films, Batman: The Animated Series, Gargoyles, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Tangled, Hey Arnold!, most Muppet ventures, these are all products made for children that are so excellent, so created with care for the audience and the product, that they appeal to individuals of any age. In fact, I daresay I have enjoyed all of the things I just mentioned more as an adult, who can appreciate their subtleties and artistic merits, than I did/would have as a kid. And Nintendo games are generally the same. Mario 64, Donkey Kong Country, Super Smash Brothers, Kirby's Adventure...these games are innocuous fun, suitable for basically any age at which a controller can be held, yet just as enjoyable for an adult. And again, the same holds generally true of Nintendo's RPGs. I'll grant you that the plots and general goings-on of Fire Emblem titles lend themselves much more to a mindset of someone of an age in the double digits, and the same is true of a few The Legend of Zelda titles, too. But Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi, Pokemon, Earthbound, most The Legend of Zeldas, Startropics, these are all RPGs that are accessible to kids of whatever early age at which they can solve puzzles and manage turn-based combat. Even Mother 3, though loaded with emotional themes more in tune with adult sensibilities, doesn't have anything I can immediately recall that would make it kid-unfriendly.** Nintendo's are the kind of games that prove your product doesn't have to be bristling with sex, violence, and special effects to be worth experiencing.
So yeah, Nintendo is one of the best game developers out there, in my opinion, and that's why I've always held some respect and loyalty for them. What really impressed me and earned a huge dose of respect from me, however, was a decision by the company made last year.
Last year marked the launch of the 3DS, the next of Nintendo's long line of awesome portable game systems. Apparently, its initial sales were sluggish. For whatever reason (and I imagine there were quite a few, honestly; I know I had no need for an upgrade at that time), it just wasn't selling all that well.
So how did Nintendo respond? After laying off countless underpaid bottom-rung employees who had nothing to do with anything in an effort to make up for the loss with their meager paychecks, it put all the blame on the consumers, whining about gamers not properly appreciating the 3DS and completely dismissing any and all concerns and criticisms with the company's approach to the product as insignificant or ignorant, doing all but openly insulting the people whose money supports the company's existence. It completely refused to take any responsibility for its own failure and turned it around on the customer.
Oh, no, wait, I'm sorry, that's not what Nintendo did. That's what Sony, and SquareEnix, and countless other major companies would do and have done in similar circumstances. Because their representatives are assholes.
No, what Nintendo did was a little different from the corporate norm. The head honcho of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, officially announced that he took the blame for the company's losses, and cut his own paycheck in half to help make up for it. Not only that, but the other upper executives of the company also lessened their own salaries by varying percentages to make up the difference. In addition, given how lousy the times are economically for everyone, the company also slashed the price of the 3DS to make it more affordable for the common gamer, who is not exactly flush with cash at the moment.
How amazing is that, really? I mean, seriously, this is a case where a major company is admitting that it made poor decisions with its approach to its product and apologizing for it--good luck getting even that much from most other companies and individuals who create products, who often seem to think they're living gods. For example, you make even the slightest allusion that Marvel Comics writer Dan Slott is less than an icon of perfection--and really, it's hard NOT to suggest such a thing in any discussion about his work--and the guy comes screaming to your internet doorstep to hurl personal attacks at you in a fit of childish rage.***
More than that, the company is taking responsibility for the problem it's apologizing for, owning up to it--that in itself is also rare. I mean, look at the official "apology" that the CEO of Netflix gave a few months ago to his customers who were (justifiably) angry with how the company was handling its price increases--he basically gave a very phony-sounding "sorry" and then immediately launched into his new (and terrible, though that's not relevant) idea for splitting his business up, which had absolutely nothing to do with the problem he was supposedly apologizing for and basically seemed to just be a distraction so he didn't really have to address the real issues.
Nintendo, on the other hand, has executives who take the blame for their company's problem, and accept the consequences for it themselves. Any other company I know of would have rather downsized like crazy than let its precious execs miss out on even a dollar of their bloated bonuses, but Nintendo has the guys at the top, the ones actually conceivably responsible for the problem AND the ones who can actually afford to take a pay hit, foot the bill. That's a far cry from the infamous bank executives who used the bailout money funded by the American people to give themselves bonuses as a reward for running their businesses into the ground.
And while I recognize that lowering the price of the 3DS makes good sense for promoting its sales, that's still something deserving of a certain amount of respect, I think. I mean, they ARE basically lowering their opportunity to profit from selling a product that has already cost them more money than it's made for them. It is, at the very least, a level of awareness of their customers' financial considerations that you won't find in, say, SquareEnix, who re-releases games over 10 years old at the same price of a brand new title, then complains about customers not buying enough of them (even when they outsell many newer games released and considered successful by this same company).
People, we live in an age where providers of goods and services are typically callous toward we consumers, and often outright abusive. Just finding a company that genuinely wants to treat its customers well and values them is getting more and more difficult, but one that will step up, take responsibility, and make morally admirable choices when the going gets tough? Nintendo is some kind of corporate miracle.
So yeah, there you have it. Nintendo has a shocking amount of integrity as a business, and its creativity and effort in its creations are consistent. Aside from perhaps Atlus, I'm not sure I've seen any other RPG developer (or game developer, period) that so reliably makes quality its primary focus with its products, and the way they reacted to the 3DS situation last year was incredibly respectable, maybe even noble. And that's why I'm a Nintendo man for life.
* Yes, this means that the rant's more about video games in general, but Nintendo DOES make quite a few RPGs like Fire Emblem and The Legend of Zelda, so I figure it's legitimate.
** Yes, yes, I know the game's wise mystical folks are all male cross-dressers. I don't think it's really a big thing. It's not delved into enough in the game for a kid to see it as anything more than something humorously weird (assuming he or she isn't already familiar with the idea). You get more questionable antics from Bugs Bunny when he disguises as "pretty" girls and lays big juicy kisses on Elmer Fudd, for heaven's sake.
*** Luckily, this blog is so obscure and unknown that even he may miss this dastardly and completely accurate attack on his character, so I should be safe.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Pokemon Generation 5: Why I was Disappointed with It
As a whole, the Pokemon series is...not a shining example of powerful storytelling, deep and involving characters, or artistic ingenuity. While Generation 4 (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) did have a somewhat decent plot and a surprisingly respectable villain, everything up until that point had been a varying blend of generic and silly. Yes, yes, most people like the Pokemon games, and I can see why they tend to addict their players so effectively, but keep in mind, I play RPGs, including Pokemon, with an interest in their intellectual content: the quality of storytelling, the depth and emotional strength of their characters, their creativity, the worth of their plot and setting, and so on. Whether or not I can catch'em all and get to Level 100 and so on isn't important to me, so you can see why most Pokemon games don't impress me.
So, basically, I wasn't expecting much from the 5th Generation of the franchise when I started it. But the game has nonetheless been quite a disappointment to me. Remember my La Pucelle Tactics rant, where I basically explained that my disappointment with the game wasn't that it had let down expectations I'd had for it before playing, but rather that it so utterly failed to live up to its own potential even though all signs early on indicated that it would be great? Same basic premise here (though to a lesser extent). Pokemon Generation 5 fails to live up to the expectations it gives us early on.
The heart of the matter lies with the premise of the game's story. Basically, the conflict of Pokemon's 5th Generation games is that a group named Team Plasma is out to get trainers to free their Pokemon and no longer keep them as...partners? Friends? Pets? Slaves? Whatever you'd call them. Team Plasma claims that Pokemon suffer when kept by Trainers and must be liberated, and is willing to force the issue through theft and violence.
Now, this is a pretty loaded issue for a Pokemon game to bring to the table. The fact of the matter is that it very much IS morally questionable to keep Pokemon the way most trainers do in the Pokemon universe's games, anime, manga, and so on. After all, let's look at this issue. The most common way of acquiring a Pokemon is to forcibly remove it from its natural environment. Just that alone seems kind of immoral--presumably most of these creatures have an established life that they're being taken from. This capturing process is made worse by the fact that it usually involves battling the Pokemon until it's weak enough that it can't fight back against the Pokeball used to catch it. So we're not just talking about removing it from its natural environment--we're talking about doing so by hurting it until it's too weak to evade capture. Exceptions exist, of course, and some Pokemon, I believe, welcome the opportunity to belong to trainers, but most resist the process.
So once they belong to a Pokemon Trainer, what happens? Well, it depends on what the human's interests are. The Pokemon may be entered into beauty contests, or put on the stage in rinky-dink little plays, or just hang out with the trainer in normal life. I guess this is okay, sort of, provided the creature's cared for well enough. But, the most famous and presumably common thing to do with a Pokemon is to find other trainers and have one's own Pokemon fight theirs in physical combat, until one combatant is no longer conscious. Uh...that's...pretty hard to justify. One of the more vile and morally reprehensible acts one can perpetrate in real life is to force animals to fight and hurt each other for the amusement of human onlookers, and it sure seems a lot like what's happening in these games. Not just that, but consider the fact that many Pokemon exhibit a level of intelligence that makes them seem as sentient as any given human being. It's not just that these trainers are forcing helpless creatures to harm one another, they're doing it with intelligent, rational beings.
Now, this all paints the world of Pokemon to be pretty fucked up. To be fair, there's a lot of reasonable arguments defending its ways, believe it or not, like the fact that it's hard to conceive of how a Pokemon could really be forced by a human to do things against its will, given that most of them are capable of lethally powerful actions. I mean, if the fire-breathing lizard and super-powerful psychic whatsit really don't want to battle or even be kept any longer, all that needs to happen is for the lizard to turn around and blast his 11-year-old captor in the face with a skin-melting stream of fire, while the other Pokemon grabs its trainer's brain in a psychic fist and squeezes it like a stress ball. Nonetheless, it's certainly a pretty big moral question that's been brought up by many players, viewers, readers, and so on of the series, so the game making the focal point of its plot a conflict with a group advocating Pokemon freedom seemed quite a gutsy move by Nintendo and Game Freak, and I was looking forward to seeing the question finally explored.
Well, that never happened.
See, after introducing this huge concept into its game, of whether it's right to keep Pokemon, the game backpedals like HELL away from ever addressing it. I mean, it is like some kind of low-achieving ART, the way Game Freak manages to completely avoid the issue for the entire game. The sleaziest of politicians could learn something about dodging uncomfortable questions from this game. This total avoidance is achieved through 3 major cop-outs:
A. Non-acknowledgement by the good guys. While some NPCs allow themselves to question their lifestyles at the words of Team Plasma, the characters of importance to the plot (Gym Leaders, the protagonist's friends, etc) uniformly dismiss and ignore the question raised by Team Plasma. While they will sometimes mention a reason why humans and Pokemon living in this societal system is positive for both races (they are really fond of playing the angle of both trainer and Pokemon growing together through their experiences), they never really debate the points made by Team Plasma. And it's not the ignoring that comes off like the good guys are unable to get around the argument so they're going to just shun it and hope no one notices, like all those angry Anons who comment on my Fallout: New Vegas's Lousy Karma System rant. It's more like the narrative of the game itself just isn't going to bother with them, and so these quite reasonable arguments against keeping Pokemon as slave-pet-friends seem like they must be irrelevant.
B. Mustache-twirling Team Plasma. What's the best way to make a point of view seem absolutely wrong with no room for exceptions or gray areas? Probably to make the people advocating it into one-dimensional bad guys. Eventually the player finds out, from speaking to Team Plasma members, that more or less every single member of the group, with the one exception being their semi-puppet leader, does not actually believe in the cause that Team Plasma claims to be for. As it turns out, Team Plasma's goal is to convince the rest of the world to separate from Pokemon so that the only people left in the world who have Pokemon are the Team Plasma bunch. At that point, the masses will be, by and large, helpless to stop Team Plasma's rise to world domination, as the group will be the only ones with the overwhelming and deadly powers of Pokemon at their disposal.
Making Team Plasma turn out to be simple villains is a masterful way of avoiding dealing with any issues they might have otherwise brought up. First of all, it eliminates any possibility that the player could question whether the protagonist should be fighting them, because it shifts the focus of the conflict completely away from the rights of Pokemon to a quest to prevent evil world domination. Even if the player (and thus, protagonist) would normally advocate Pokemon freedom, it's now their heroic obligation to stop Team Plasma.
Secondly, and far less subtly, this dismisses the issue by associating the idea of Pokemon freedom with one-dimensional bad guys. It would be different if the members and command of Team Plasma were villains with some depth of character; we could at least take their perhaps misguided ideals seriously enough to give them a little thought were that the case. But by having them just be simple, nefarious jerks, no shades of gray? The obvious course of action then is to just ignore anything they say, and so, the issue raised by them can and will just be dismissed as evil-talk.
C. The manipulated antagonist, N (yes, N is the only name we're given to refer to him as, and no, I don't really know why). N is the one and only member of Team Plasma that we see who earnestly believes that it is wrong to keep Pokemon and that they will be better off if freed, and maintains that keeping the creatures is harmful to them. Where most see Pokemon battles as a fun pastime or inspiring experience, all N sees is his friends being hurt. He's the figurehead and token leader of the group, and he fights only for ideals, not for the underlying villainy that the rest of the group secretly does.
So why would N be a tool for Game Freak to avoid properly addressing this issue of whether it's wrong to keep Pokemon and battle them, you might wonder? Because Game Freak comes in at the last moment to completely and totally undermine N's credibility through his origin story. Late in the game, the details of N's life are revealed to the protagonist, and it turns out that N was raised by Team Plasma's leaders, kept isolated from the rest of the world in his room with nothing but carefully selected entertainment and Pokemon to keep him occupied. The Pokemon brought to him were always ones who had escaped abusive trainers (which the game is very quick to claim are rare aberrations). So the message here, which the game itself is all too happy to point out, is that N has a perception of the world and its ways regarding Pokemon that is extremely incomplete and has been designed to give him a bias. And thus, his concerns about the welfare of Pokemon can be and are dismissed as naive misunderstandings of the world, instead of the legitimate moral issues that they should be and are.
So you see, both overtly and subtly, Game Freak completely minimizes any and all possibility for considering and debating the loaded issue it introduced as its main source of conflict for the game. The potential the game promised by connecting the issue of Pokemon rights to the plot is completely passed over. Why? Why even HAVE the question of whether it's right to keep and battle Pokemon if it's going to be so totally ignored? You can't tell me they couldn't have thought of some other schtick for Team Galaxy. Team Magma and Aqua in Pokemon Generation 3 showed that the game makers would accept just about any idea for a team's goals, no matter how ridiculous they may be. Did they put this in because they actually did want to address this issue? Because if that was the intention, this is the biggest RPG storytelling failure I've seen since Rogue Galaxy tried to convince its audience that it was interesting in any way. You can't address an issue and put it to rest if you childishly refuse to legitimately engage any of one side's arguments.
Speculative intentions aside, what matters here is that the game's conflict, the foundation for its plot, is massively disappointing, because it promises an examination of an issue that has great potential for intellectual exploration, and then backpedals the hell away from it faster than Sarah Palin from a question requiring knowledge imparted in the second grade.* Bad show, Nintendo and Game Freak.
* Actually, I suppose that's not totally fair. She doesn't retreat from basic knowledge questions she can't answer so much as blunder blindly into them.
So, basically, I wasn't expecting much from the 5th Generation of the franchise when I started it. But the game has nonetheless been quite a disappointment to me. Remember my La Pucelle Tactics rant, where I basically explained that my disappointment with the game wasn't that it had let down expectations I'd had for it before playing, but rather that it so utterly failed to live up to its own potential even though all signs early on indicated that it would be great? Same basic premise here (though to a lesser extent). Pokemon Generation 5 fails to live up to the expectations it gives us early on.
The heart of the matter lies with the premise of the game's story. Basically, the conflict of Pokemon's 5th Generation games is that a group named Team Plasma is out to get trainers to free their Pokemon and no longer keep them as...partners? Friends? Pets? Slaves? Whatever you'd call them. Team Plasma claims that Pokemon suffer when kept by Trainers and must be liberated, and is willing to force the issue through theft and violence.
Now, this is a pretty loaded issue for a Pokemon game to bring to the table. The fact of the matter is that it very much IS morally questionable to keep Pokemon the way most trainers do in the Pokemon universe's games, anime, manga, and so on. After all, let's look at this issue. The most common way of acquiring a Pokemon is to forcibly remove it from its natural environment. Just that alone seems kind of immoral--presumably most of these creatures have an established life that they're being taken from. This capturing process is made worse by the fact that it usually involves battling the Pokemon until it's weak enough that it can't fight back against the Pokeball used to catch it. So we're not just talking about removing it from its natural environment--we're talking about doing so by hurting it until it's too weak to evade capture. Exceptions exist, of course, and some Pokemon, I believe, welcome the opportunity to belong to trainers, but most resist the process.
So once they belong to a Pokemon Trainer, what happens? Well, it depends on what the human's interests are. The Pokemon may be entered into beauty contests, or put on the stage in rinky-dink little plays, or just hang out with the trainer in normal life. I guess this is okay, sort of, provided the creature's cared for well enough. But, the most famous and presumably common thing to do with a Pokemon is to find other trainers and have one's own Pokemon fight theirs in physical combat, until one combatant is no longer conscious. Uh...that's...pretty hard to justify. One of the more vile and morally reprehensible acts one can perpetrate in real life is to force animals to fight and hurt each other for the amusement of human onlookers, and it sure seems a lot like what's happening in these games. Not just that, but consider the fact that many Pokemon exhibit a level of intelligence that makes them seem as sentient as any given human being. It's not just that these trainers are forcing helpless creatures to harm one another, they're doing it with intelligent, rational beings.
Now, this all paints the world of Pokemon to be pretty fucked up. To be fair, there's a lot of reasonable arguments defending its ways, believe it or not, like the fact that it's hard to conceive of how a Pokemon could really be forced by a human to do things against its will, given that most of them are capable of lethally powerful actions. I mean, if the fire-breathing lizard and super-powerful psychic whatsit really don't want to battle or even be kept any longer, all that needs to happen is for the lizard to turn around and blast his 11-year-old captor in the face with a skin-melting stream of fire, while the other Pokemon grabs its trainer's brain in a psychic fist and squeezes it like a stress ball. Nonetheless, it's certainly a pretty big moral question that's been brought up by many players, viewers, readers, and so on of the series, so the game making the focal point of its plot a conflict with a group advocating Pokemon freedom seemed quite a gutsy move by Nintendo and Game Freak, and I was looking forward to seeing the question finally explored.
Well, that never happened.
See, after introducing this huge concept into its game, of whether it's right to keep Pokemon, the game backpedals like HELL away from ever addressing it. I mean, it is like some kind of low-achieving ART, the way Game Freak manages to completely avoid the issue for the entire game. The sleaziest of politicians could learn something about dodging uncomfortable questions from this game. This total avoidance is achieved through 3 major cop-outs:
A. Non-acknowledgement by the good guys. While some NPCs allow themselves to question their lifestyles at the words of Team Plasma, the characters of importance to the plot (Gym Leaders, the protagonist's friends, etc) uniformly dismiss and ignore the question raised by Team Plasma. While they will sometimes mention a reason why humans and Pokemon living in this societal system is positive for both races (they are really fond of playing the angle of both trainer and Pokemon growing together through their experiences), they never really debate the points made by Team Plasma. And it's not the ignoring that comes off like the good guys are unable to get around the argument so they're going to just shun it and hope no one notices, like all those angry Anons who comment on my Fallout: New Vegas's Lousy Karma System rant. It's more like the narrative of the game itself just isn't going to bother with them, and so these quite reasonable arguments against keeping Pokemon as slave-pet-friends seem like they must be irrelevant.
B. Mustache-twirling Team Plasma. What's the best way to make a point of view seem absolutely wrong with no room for exceptions or gray areas? Probably to make the people advocating it into one-dimensional bad guys. Eventually the player finds out, from speaking to Team Plasma members, that more or less every single member of the group, with the one exception being their semi-puppet leader, does not actually believe in the cause that Team Plasma claims to be for. As it turns out, Team Plasma's goal is to convince the rest of the world to separate from Pokemon so that the only people left in the world who have Pokemon are the Team Plasma bunch. At that point, the masses will be, by and large, helpless to stop Team Plasma's rise to world domination, as the group will be the only ones with the overwhelming and deadly powers of Pokemon at their disposal.
Making Team Plasma turn out to be simple villains is a masterful way of avoiding dealing with any issues they might have otherwise brought up. First of all, it eliminates any possibility that the player could question whether the protagonist should be fighting them, because it shifts the focus of the conflict completely away from the rights of Pokemon to a quest to prevent evil world domination. Even if the player (and thus, protagonist) would normally advocate Pokemon freedom, it's now their heroic obligation to stop Team Plasma.
Secondly, and far less subtly, this dismisses the issue by associating the idea of Pokemon freedom with one-dimensional bad guys. It would be different if the members and command of Team Plasma were villains with some depth of character; we could at least take their perhaps misguided ideals seriously enough to give them a little thought were that the case. But by having them just be simple, nefarious jerks, no shades of gray? The obvious course of action then is to just ignore anything they say, and so, the issue raised by them can and will just be dismissed as evil-talk.
C. The manipulated antagonist, N (yes, N is the only name we're given to refer to him as, and no, I don't really know why). N is the one and only member of Team Plasma that we see who earnestly believes that it is wrong to keep Pokemon and that they will be better off if freed, and maintains that keeping the creatures is harmful to them. Where most see Pokemon battles as a fun pastime or inspiring experience, all N sees is his friends being hurt. He's the figurehead and token leader of the group, and he fights only for ideals, not for the underlying villainy that the rest of the group secretly does.
So why would N be a tool for Game Freak to avoid properly addressing this issue of whether it's wrong to keep Pokemon and battle them, you might wonder? Because Game Freak comes in at the last moment to completely and totally undermine N's credibility through his origin story. Late in the game, the details of N's life are revealed to the protagonist, and it turns out that N was raised by Team Plasma's leaders, kept isolated from the rest of the world in his room with nothing but carefully selected entertainment and Pokemon to keep him occupied. The Pokemon brought to him were always ones who had escaped abusive trainers (which the game is very quick to claim are rare aberrations). So the message here, which the game itself is all too happy to point out, is that N has a perception of the world and its ways regarding Pokemon that is extremely incomplete and has been designed to give him a bias. And thus, his concerns about the welfare of Pokemon can be and are dismissed as naive misunderstandings of the world, instead of the legitimate moral issues that they should be and are.
So you see, both overtly and subtly, Game Freak completely minimizes any and all possibility for considering and debating the loaded issue it introduced as its main source of conflict for the game. The potential the game promised by connecting the issue of Pokemon rights to the plot is completely passed over. Why? Why even HAVE the question of whether it's right to keep and battle Pokemon if it's going to be so totally ignored? You can't tell me they couldn't have thought of some other schtick for Team Galaxy. Team Magma and Aqua in Pokemon Generation 3 showed that the game makers would accept just about any idea for a team's goals, no matter how ridiculous they may be. Did they put this in because they actually did want to address this issue? Because if that was the intention, this is the biggest RPG storytelling failure I've seen since Rogue Galaxy tried to convince its audience that it was interesting in any way. You can't address an issue and put it to rest if you childishly refuse to legitimately engage any of one side's arguments.
Speculative intentions aside, what matters here is that the game's conflict, the foundation for its plot, is massively disappointing, because it promises an examination of an issue that has great potential for intellectual exploration, and then backpedals the hell away from it faster than Sarah Palin from a question requiring knowledge imparted in the second grade.* Bad show, Nintendo and Game Freak.
* Actually, I suppose that's not totally fair. She doesn't retreat from basic knowledge questions she can't answer so much as blunder blindly into them.
Friday, January 27, 2012
The Baldur's Gate Series's Add-Ons
Bioware's awfully fond of add-ons for their games. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are practically swimming in downloadable content. Sometimes they're good (most of Mass Effect's), sometimes they're bad (most of Dragon Age's). But what I didn't know until recently, when I finally played the Baldur's Gate games, is that Bioware was playing this game even over a decade ago, with their expansions for Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. And I figure, hey, I do a rant on add-ons for all the current games I play with them, so why not take a look at some from the good old days.* I mean, I'm sure there's something worthwhile to be gleaned from such analysis. It's certainly not just that I'm trying to do an easy rant to buy myself time until I can think of something actually worth discussing.
Certainly not.
Tales of the Sword Coast: This is the expansion for Baldur's Gate 1. It's...well, it's alright, I guess. Most of it's just not terribly interesting. It basically adds a half dozen or so locations to the game, but...eh. It's basically just a collection of slightly longer-than-usual sidequests. Most if it's just not terribly interesting or relevant. The investigation of Baldur's final voyage is not nearly as interesting as it should be, and the song-and-dance with the ice dungeon is rather pointless. The expansion does do well with Durlag's Tower, though. It's pleasantly challenging, but more important than that, it has a pretty cool story to it that's told very well. I'll give Bioware credit for that; their story-telling prowess is in full swing as the player explores Durlag's Tower.
So is it a good add-on? Well, it's hard to say. First of all, I don't know how much it cost back when it was released--any copy of Baldur's Gate 1 purchased nowadays is going to include the expansion in there anyway, so I can't really gauge how good of a deal it was monetarily. It's also hard to judge because the expansion is pretty much representative of BG1--some good story-telling is there, but a lot of it is methodical sidequest filler. So it's questionable how much can be held against the expansion pack, when its flaw is perhaps just being too accurate an extension of the game. Nonetheless...I just can't say that Tales of the Sword Coast is worthwhile, if not in regards to money, then at least in regards to time. Most of it just isn't particularly compelling. As I said, Durlag's Tower is really good, but that's only one part of the expansion. I wish Bioware could have made the whole thing with the narrative care they put into Durlag's Tower.
Of course, whether or not you should get it is entirely irrelevant nowadays, since, as I mentioned, the expansion will come with the game anyway. But that's gonna eventually be true of any add-ons I talk about for RPGs, so I'll still just put it out there.
Throne of Bhaal: The Throne of Bhaal expansion for Baldur's Gate 2 is...odd. It's less an extension of BG2 as it is a second story taking place after the events of BG2. The odd part of this is that Throne of Bhaal's story is really...kind of more relevant and important than the story of BG2 was. BG2's plot is kind of irrelevant to the overall story of the Bhaalspawn, which is what Baldur's Gate is supposed to be focused on, while Throne of Bhaal resumes focus on the Bhaalspawn and follows that story to its conclusion. It's like the Throne of Bhaal expansion is the true story of BG2, and the game proper was just a long side story.
It's kind of hard to gauge as a result. I mean, it's basically re-opening the overlying plot of the series, exploring it briefly, and then concluding it. What could have been a game's worth of plot is condensed into a sizable but ultimately too short period of time. Things are very rushed with this expansion, like it's an abridged version of what should it should have been. At the same time, though, I don't feel like it's fair to hold that against the expansion too much. There was never a Baldur's Gate 3, so Throne of Bhaal was likely the only opportunity the developers were going to have to bring closure to the series, so at least we GOT that closure.
Additionally, regardless of what it could have been, Throne of Bhaal IS an expansion, not its own game, and as an add-on, it has many good qualities. Even if it's rushed, the plot is decent. It re-introduces BG1's villain, Sarevok, as a party member, and gives him the character development he sorely lacked in the original game. It also gives a bit more character development to the rest of the cast through a few of their interactions, and it picks up from where BG2's romance ended and further develops that, as well. While Aerie and Anomen's romances still weren't terribly interesting to me, I found Throne of Bhaal further developed Jaheira's romance well enough, and it really did a great job in renewing Viconia's romance and developing both the relationship and her character through the course of the expansion. Throne of Bhaal also attempts to develop the protagonist somewhat through the inner trials he/she must face, although this is not really accomplished effectively--it's just hard to properly develop a character so completely open-ended. Still, it gets props for making the attempt. And finally, Throne of Bhaal provides a fairly satisfying conclusion, giving the player a finale that truly marks the end of the Baldur's Gate series.
So overall, I'd say this is a very solid, engaging expansion. Again, it's been long enough that any copy of BG2 you buy is going to include it anyway, so I can't really guess as to what cost it was, but I'd say it was probably the money back in the day, and it's a definite step up from BG1's expansion. Good stuff.
Well, that was fun. Overall, I think the Baldur's Gate series did alright for its add-ons. BG1's wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible, either, I suppose, and BG2's more than made up for it. The overall experience was certainly more rewarding than the add-on experience for Dragon Age 1 and, so far, the main DLC packages for Dragon Age 2.
* Note: "Good old days" not actually all that long ago, nor significantly better than current times.
Certainly not.
Tales of the Sword Coast: This is the expansion for Baldur's Gate 1. It's...well, it's alright, I guess. Most of it's just not terribly interesting. It basically adds a half dozen or so locations to the game, but...eh. It's basically just a collection of slightly longer-than-usual sidequests. Most if it's just not terribly interesting or relevant. The investigation of Baldur's final voyage is not nearly as interesting as it should be, and the song-and-dance with the ice dungeon is rather pointless. The expansion does do well with Durlag's Tower, though. It's pleasantly challenging, but more important than that, it has a pretty cool story to it that's told very well. I'll give Bioware credit for that; their story-telling prowess is in full swing as the player explores Durlag's Tower.
So is it a good add-on? Well, it's hard to say. First of all, I don't know how much it cost back when it was released--any copy of Baldur's Gate 1 purchased nowadays is going to include the expansion in there anyway, so I can't really gauge how good of a deal it was monetarily. It's also hard to judge because the expansion is pretty much representative of BG1--some good story-telling is there, but a lot of it is methodical sidequest filler. So it's questionable how much can be held against the expansion pack, when its flaw is perhaps just being too accurate an extension of the game. Nonetheless...I just can't say that Tales of the Sword Coast is worthwhile, if not in regards to money, then at least in regards to time. Most of it just isn't particularly compelling. As I said, Durlag's Tower is really good, but that's only one part of the expansion. I wish Bioware could have made the whole thing with the narrative care they put into Durlag's Tower.
Of course, whether or not you should get it is entirely irrelevant nowadays, since, as I mentioned, the expansion will come with the game anyway. But that's gonna eventually be true of any add-ons I talk about for RPGs, so I'll still just put it out there.
Throne of Bhaal: The Throne of Bhaal expansion for Baldur's Gate 2 is...odd. It's less an extension of BG2 as it is a second story taking place after the events of BG2. The odd part of this is that Throne of Bhaal's story is really...kind of more relevant and important than the story of BG2 was. BG2's plot is kind of irrelevant to the overall story of the Bhaalspawn, which is what Baldur's Gate is supposed to be focused on, while Throne of Bhaal resumes focus on the Bhaalspawn and follows that story to its conclusion. It's like the Throne of Bhaal expansion is the true story of BG2, and the game proper was just a long side story.
It's kind of hard to gauge as a result. I mean, it's basically re-opening the overlying plot of the series, exploring it briefly, and then concluding it. What could have been a game's worth of plot is condensed into a sizable but ultimately too short period of time. Things are very rushed with this expansion, like it's an abridged version of what should it should have been. At the same time, though, I don't feel like it's fair to hold that against the expansion too much. There was never a Baldur's Gate 3, so Throne of Bhaal was likely the only opportunity the developers were going to have to bring closure to the series, so at least we GOT that closure.
Additionally, regardless of what it could have been, Throne of Bhaal IS an expansion, not its own game, and as an add-on, it has many good qualities. Even if it's rushed, the plot is decent. It re-introduces BG1's villain, Sarevok, as a party member, and gives him the character development he sorely lacked in the original game. It also gives a bit more character development to the rest of the cast through a few of their interactions, and it picks up from where BG2's romance ended and further develops that, as well. While Aerie and Anomen's romances still weren't terribly interesting to me, I found Throne of Bhaal further developed Jaheira's romance well enough, and it really did a great job in renewing Viconia's romance and developing both the relationship and her character through the course of the expansion. Throne of Bhaal also attempts to develop the protagonist somewhat through the inner trials he/she must face, although this is not really accomplished effectively--it's just hard to properly develop a character so completely open-ended. Still, it gets props for making the attempt. And finally, Throne of Bhaal provides a fairly satisfying conclusion, giving the player a finale that truly marks the end of the Baldur's Gate series.
So overall, I'd say this is a very solid, engaging expansion. Again, it's been long enough that any copy of BG2 you buy is going to include it anyway, so I can't really guess as to what cost it was, but I'd say it was probably the money back in the day, and it's a definite step up from BG1's expansion. Good stuff.
Well, that was fun. Overall, I think the Baldur's Gate series did alright for its add-ons. BG1's wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible, either, I suppose, and BG2's more than made up for it. The overall experience was certainly more rewarding than the add-on experience for Dragon Age 1 and, so far, the main DLC packages for Dragon Age 2.
* Note: "Good old days" not actually all that long ago, nor significantly better than current times.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Secret of Mana's Cover Art
Tell me something: Have you ever just stopped and LOOKED at Secret of Mana's cover art? Like, just sat and really gave it a proper once-over? If you haven't, here's your chance:
SoM Cover Art
Now is it just me, or is that a ludicrously good piece of art for a video game cover? I mean, look at the damn thing. Look at the complexity of it! Save the picture and then zoom in on it if you want to. Look at the lines in the bark, the detail given to the individual leaves. I'm no artist, so describing this properly is not a task I'm likely to succeed at, but the dedicated level of detail in this piece alone is way beyond almost any other RPG official art I've seen to date, and certainly far, FAR advanced of any RPG of the 16-bit era Secret of Mana hails from.
Beyond just the skill and depth, though, the art for this game's impressive also for its size. It's not just that it's a great piece of work--it's really quite big, to the point that Squaresoft unfortunately had to crop out a fair chunk of it for the actual game cover and instruction manual. A shame, really, because the quality of the picture is consistently high from top to bottom. This is no small, simple picture; this has not only the quality of a real piece of art, but the size as well.
Lastly, I'd like to note that SoM's cover art also has merit in true artistic value. I mean, so far I've mentioned the technical qualities, and those are impressive, but this scene is more than the sum of its parts. It directs your attentions and imparts meaning, even emotion. Look at the way it's arranged. The entire thing is meant to express the incredible grandeur of Nature, embodied in the monumental central figure of the Mana Tree. This is a picture that gives exactly the sense of awe that standing before a massive tree of life should.* While the game's major characters are present in this picture, they are dwarfed, and so removed to their corner at the bottom that I daresay no one who sees this will realize at first that they're even there. That's certainly a different perspective to have in a game's main art piece; usually any characters who make it onto the cover art are thrust to the center of the picture's attention, sometimes in an almost painfully crude manner (see Breath of Fire 1 and 2's cover art for a couple of examples of this). Here, however, it is the power of the scene itself that is emphasized as important, and by extension, the overall theme, tone, and purpose of the game, rather than just the actors that see its events through. To supplement this idea even further, the first colorful, non-plant thing the eye is drawn to in this picture are the flamingos flying past, again putting a stronger emphasis on the natural world, and hence the scene itself, than on the human factor.
It's very different, very artistic, and very, VERY far above the norm for RPG cover art. Hell, half the time the cover art for RPGs is just the game title done up all fancy, maybe with a little uninspired background design. Even when you do get a proper scene or character shot or something, it's never anything you'd really call art, at least not on the level of Secret of Mana's. I suppose it doesn't really matter too much as long as the art attracts the attention of potential buyers, or whatever function cover art is supposed to serve. Nonetheless, the one for Secret of Mana is really just awesome, and deserves some praise.
* Ironically, the actual scene in Secret of Mana in which the party reaches the Mana Tree not only fails totally to recapture the moment's majesty that this picture depicts, but seems to basically not even bother to try to.
SoM Cover Art
Now is it just me, or is that a ludicrously good piece of art for a video game cover? I mean, look at the damn thing. Look at the complexity of it! Save the picture and then zoom in on it if you want to. Look at the lines in the bark, the detail given to the individual leaves. I'm no artist, so describing this properly is not a task I'm likely to succeed at, but the dedicated level of detail in this piece alone is way beyond almost any other RPG official art I've seen to date, and certainly far, FAR advanced of any RPG of the 16-bit era Secret of Mana hails from.
Beyond just the skill and depth, though, the art for this game's impressive also for its size. It's not just that it's a great piece of work--it's really quite big, to the point that Squaresoft unfortunately had to crop out a fair chunk of it for the actual game cover and instruction manual. A shame, really, because the quality of the picture is consistently high from top to bottom. This is no small, simple picture; this has not only the quality of a real piece of art, but the size as well.
Lastly, I'd like to note that SoM's cover art also has merit in true artistic value. I mean, so far I've mentioned the technical qualities, and those are impressive, but this scene is more than the sum of its parts. It directs your attentions and imparts meaning, even emotion. Look at the way it's arranged. The entire thing is meant to express the incredible grandeur of Nature, embodied in the monumental central figure of the Mana Tree. This is a picture that gives exactly the sense of awe that standing before a massive tree of life should.* While the game's major characters are present in this picture, they are dwarfed, and so removed to their corner at the bottom that I daresay no one who sees this will realize at first that they're even there. That's certainly a different perspective to have in a game's main art piece; usually any characters who make it onto the cover art are thrust to the center of the picture's attention, sometimes in an almost painfully crude manner (see Breath of Fire 1 and 2's cover art for a couple of examples of this). Here, however, it is the power of the scene itself that is emphasized as important, and by extension, the overall theme, tone, and purpose of the game, rather than just the actors that see its events through. To supplement this idea even further, the first colorful, non-plant thing the eye is drawn to in this picture are the flamingos flying past, again putting a stronger emphasis on the natural world, and hence the scene itself, than on the human factor.
It's very different, very artistic, and very, VERY far above the norm for RPG cover art. Hell, half the time the cover art for RPGs is just the game title done up all fancy, maybe with a little uninspired background design. Even when you do get a proper scene or character shot or something, it's never anything you'd really call art, at least not on the level of Secret of Mana's. I suppose it doesn't really matter too much as long as the art attracts the attention of potential buyers, or whatever function cover art is supposed to serve. Nonetheless, the one for Secret of Mana is really just awesome, and deserves some praise.
* Ironically, the actual scene in Secret of Mana in which the party reaches the Mana Tree not only fails totally to recapture the moment's majesty that this picture depicts, but seems to basically not even bother to try to.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
General RPGs' Wasted FMVs
Happy New Year, all. This year we're going to mix it up by updating on the 8s of the month instead of the 5s, because 8 is clearly the best number.
Ever since the era of the Playstation 1, Full Motion Videos have been a major component of console RPGs (and a few PC ones) and their storytelling process. They're not as big a thing as they used to be, as more and more games reach a level of visual prowess that makes the game's regular graphics close enough to an FMV's quality that the cinema just isn't really worth it. But they're still around, and still important.
Back on the PS1, FMVs were, for quite a while, a really big deal. Eventually we got used to them, and by the PS2 era they were the status quo. But on the PS1, FMVs were new and exciting. They were also more attention-grabbing than nowadays for their contrast--even the lower-quality FMVs were so much of a jump from the visuals of the game proper that they seemed incredible by comparison. FMVs come, past and present, in a couple varieties, most commonly your standard CGI stuff, like you find in Chrono Cross or Final Fantasy 7, or anime cut scenes, such as those you see in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and 4, for example. Sometimes they'll be showing scenes of action, battle, and destruction, like many of the ones you find in Final Fantasy 10. At other times, they'll be used to show a scene deemed especially important to the plot's course or the development of characters, such as the dancing scene from Final Fantasy 8, or the majority of Lunar 1 and 2's cut scenes. Of course, you'll often have FMVs made for the intro to the game, and for the game's ending, cuz, y'know, that stuff's important.
And then there are the rather pointless, boring mini-FMVs that several older RPGs are fond of using to show new places when you reach them, like some of the ones in Planescape: Torment. I've never really seen the point of using CGI to introduce a new location. It's a new place, big freaking deal. Instead of blowing their budget and disc space on scenic shots of some stupid mountain or town or such that you're going to be spending hours familiarizing yourself with anyway as you wander around it, why didn't the developers give us scenes of things happening, characters doing plot stuff, things that will actually hold our interest in some way? It feels like some idiot tourist's vacation video. With all the cool shit and memorable moments of character interactions in the classic Grandia 1, for example, did we really need to use a minute of the game's limited FMV time on a sky overview of the Garlyle Base? It's a base with tanks and machinery and so on; there's absolutely nothing in this FMV that couldn't have been depicted equally effectively with the game's normal graphics. We get a cut scene of that, but none for the heartbreaking scene of Sue's farewell, or Gadwin and Justin's fight to test determination and growth? No FMV for the powerful, triumphant moment where Justin and his friends stand atop the purported End of the World and see the limitless potential hidden behind it? The hell is up with that?*
It just seems like a waste, you know? It's only in the recent age of video games that FMV has become relatively easier to insert into games. During the 1990s, space on game discs was precious, and CGI was, I think, more work to create and program in, being a newer idea and practice. The idea of the FMV cut scene has always been, to my understanding, a way to add in visual enhancement to emphasize something to the player, grab their attention and make some part of the game really memorable. So whose stupid idea was it to waste time, money, and game space on showing off some fucking buildings, or a forest, or such? They couldn't have used those resources to make FMV that we might actually care about? Why the hell, for example, does Baldur's Gate 2 have a cut scene for the sun setting or rising over a town when you're there for the changing of evening to day and vice-versa? Is it supposed to impress us? Because it doesn't impress me. It just makes me wonder why the time of day gets its own FMV sequence, but nearly nothing else in the game does. Why not instead an FMV scene when you first meet a potential party member? Or even just for a couple of the really important ones? Even a brief rendering of Minsc and Jaheira in their cages at the game's beginning, or Viconia surrounded by an angry mob when you first rediscover her, would have been better than being expected to ooh and ahh over going from day to night.
The really annoying kind of FMV, though, way worse than the vacation video brand I just mentioned, is the Legend FMV. The Legend FMV is a cut scene which, for reasons far beyond my comprehension, chooses to blow multiple minutes' worth of disc space and game budget on a fully rendered depiction of scrolls, hieroglyphics, runes, wall carvings, tapestries, texts, and the like being read (always in a serious, learned voice) to establish the game world's nonsensical yet plot-essential religious hokum. Sometimes important scenes or characters in the legend will be depicted in some boring single frame, if you're lucky. Best case scenario, you might get some narration over a scene of some ancient civilization's everyday life with all their technological whatsits, like in Grandia 1's example of this FMV style...which just makes it a vacation video from the strangely more advanced past.
Thankfully, the Legend FMV isn't and hasn't ever been all over the place, but there are a good amount of games that have one, or more. The Legend of Dragoon, for example, just seemed to have one Legend FMV after another. Sometimes the stupid mural would be the whole FMV, other times it would take up part of the cut scene and then the player would get some real CGI action once it was out of the way. But overall, The Legend of Dragoon spent a good several minutes' worth of FMV on hearing people talk while looking at boring, stupid cave paintings and such, and that's just so damn annoying to me. There are some people who find cinematic cut scenes to be boring anyway, but even an FMV enthusiast like me just wants to get back to the game while these things are going. It's even worse when you consider how awesome some of The Legend of Dragoon's other FMV sequences are; just thinking of the lost potential makes me scrunch my face up in bitterness.
Like I said, there are thankfully not too many Legend FMVs to contend with (hell, there's even a couple good ones--going back to Grandia 1, its Legend FMVs actually were kind of acceptable, largely because they actually showed the ancient civilization they were talking about rather than just a bunch of smudges on some scroll or something). Still, with all the great moments of danger and excitement, emotion and intrigue, and grandeur and creativity that you can find in RPGs, it's just disappointing that so many FMVs in the genre focus on uninteresting stuff like scenery and wall carvings. It's always seemed like a tremendous waste; if you're gonna spend the time and money on CGI to make your game flashier, make it COUNT for something.
* I should note, in defense of this personal favorite RPG of mine, that Grandia 1 DID later on include many big moments rendered in CGI, and overall was not wasteful of its limited FMV time, when you compare it to several other RPGs of the same time period. But I do feel it's still a good example, because with a game like Grandia 1, that's chock full of classic moments, even a little FMV time wasted instead of devoted to portraying these moments is a damn shame.
Ever since the era of the Playstation 1, Full Motion Videos have been a major component of console RPGs (and a few PC ones) and their storytelling process. They're not as big a thing as they used to be, as more and more games reach a level of visual prowess that makes the game's regular graphics close enough to an FMV's quality that the cinema just isn't really worth it. But they're still around, and still important.
Back on the PS1, FMVs were, for quite a while, a really big deal. Eventually we got used to them, and by the PS2 era they were the status quo. But on the PS1, FMVs were new and exciting. They were also more attention-grabbing than nowadays for their contrast--even the lower-quality FMVs were so much of a jump from the visuals of the game proper that they seemed incredible by comparison. FMVs come, past and present, in a couple varieties, most commonly your standard CGI stuff, like you find in Chrono Cross or Final Fantasy 7, or anime cut scenes, such as those you see in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and 4, for example. Sometimes they'll be showing scenes of action, battle, and destruction, like many of the ones you find in Final Fantasy 10. At other times, they'll be used to show a scene deemed especially important to the plot's course or the development of characters, such as the dancing scene from Final Fantasy 8, or the majority of Lunar 1 and 2's cut scenes. Of course, you'll often have FMVs made for the intro to the game, and for the game's ending, cuz, y'know, that stuff's important.
And then there are the rather pointless, boring mini-FMVs that several older RPGs are fond of using to show new places when you reach them, like some of the ones in Planescape: Torment. I've never really seen the point of using CGI to introduce a new location. It's a new place, big freaking deal. Instead of blowing their budget and disc space on scenic shots of some stupid mountain or town or such that you're going to be spending hours familiarizing yourself with anyway as you wander around it, why didn't the developers give us scenes of things happening, characters doing plot stuff, things that will actually hold our interest in some way? It feels like some idiot tourist's vacation video. With all the cool shit and memorable moments of character interactions in the classic Grandia 1, for example, did we really need to use a minute of the game's limited FMV time on a sky overview of the Garlyle Base? It's a base with tanks and machinery and so on; there's absolutely nothing in this FMV that couldn't have been depicted equally effectively with the game's normal graphics. We get a cut scene of that, but none for the heartbreaking scene of Sue's farewell, or Gadwin and Justin's fight to test determination and growth? No FMV for the powerful, triumphant moment where Justin and his friends stand atop the purported End of the World and see the limitless potential hidden behind it? The hell is up with that?*
It just seems like a waste, you know? It's only in the recent age of video games that FMV has become relatively easier to insert into games. During the 1990s, space on game discs was precious, and CGI was, I think, more work to create and program in, being a newer idea and practice. The idea of the FMV cut scene has always been, to my understanding, a way to add in visual enhancement to emphasize something to the player, grab their attention and make some part of the game really memorable. So whose stupid idea was it to waste time, money, and game space on showing off some fucking buildings, or a forest, or such? They couldn't have used those resources to make FMV that we might actually care about? Why the hell, for example, does Baldur's Gate 2 have a cut scene for the sun setting or rising over a town when you're there for the changing of evening to day and vice-versa? Is it supposed to impress us? Because it doesn't impress me. It just makes me wonder why the time of day gets its own FMV sequence, but nearly nothing else in the game does. Why not instead an FMV scene when you first meet a potential party member? Or even just for a couple of the really important ones? Even a brief rendering of Minsc and Jaheira in their cages at the game's beginning, or Viconia surrounded by an angry mob when you first rediscover her, would have been better than being expected to ooh and ahh over going from day to night.
The really annoying kind of FMV, though, way worse than the vacation video brand I just mentioned, is the Legend FMV. The Legend FMV is a cut scene which, for reasons far beyond my comprehension, chooses to blow multiple minutes' worth of disc space and game budget on a fully rendered depiction of scrolls, hieroglyphics, runes, wall carvings, tapestries, texts, and the like being read (always in a serious, learned voice) to establish the game world's nonsensical yet plot-essential religious hokum. Sometimes important scenes or characters in the legend will be depicted in some boring single frame, if you're lucky. Best case scenario, you might get some narration over a scene of some ancient civilization's everyday life with all their technological whatsits, like in Grandia 1's example of this FMV style...which just makes it a vacation video from the strangely more advanced past.
Thankfully, the Legend FMV isn't and hasn't ever been all over the place, but there are a good amount of games that have one, or more. The Legend of Dragoon, for example, just seemed to have one Legend FMV after another. Sometimes the stupid mural would be the whole FMV, other times it would take up part of the cut scene and then the player would get some real CGI action once it was out of the way. But overall, The Legend of Dragoon spent a good several minutes' worth of FMV on hearing people talk while looking at boring, stupid cave paintings and such, and that's just so damn annoying to me. There are some people who find cinematic cut scenes to be boring anyway, but even an FMV enthusiast like me just wants to get back to the game while these things are going. It's even worse when you consider how awesome some of The Legend of Dragoon's other FMV sequences are; just thinking of the lost potential makes me scrunch my face up in bitterness.
Like I said, there are thankfully not too many Legend FMVs to contend with (hell, there's even a couple good ones--going back to Grandia 1, its Legend FMVs actually were kind of acceptable, largely because they actually showed the ancient civilization they were talking about rather than just a bunch of smudges on some scroll or something). Still, with all the great moments of danger and excitement, emotion and intrigue, and grandeur and creativity that you can find in RPGs, it's just disappointing that so many FMVs in the genre focus on uninteresting stuff like scenery and wall carvings. It's always seemed like a tremendous waste; if you're gonna spend the time and money on CGI to make your game flashier, make it COUNT for something.
* I should note, in defense of this personal favorite RPG of mine, that Grandia 1 DID later on include many big moments rendered in CGI, and overall was not wasteful of its limited FMV time, when you compare it to several other RPGs of the same time period. But I do feel it's still a good example, because with a game like Grandia 1, that's chock full of classic moments, even a little FMV time wasted instead of devoted to portraying these moments is a damn shame.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Annual Summary: 2011
Wow. 2011's at an end, and this rant blog is still going. I must REALLY like talking.
So. 2010 was a good year for me, RPG-wise, so I figured I'd pay the piper this year and have a whole slew of crappy ones. Well, I was half right...there really weren't many RPGs I played this year that I can even call decent, let alone good. But at the same time...nearly none of them were really all that bad, either. 2011 was just a year of very...lackluster games. Run-of-the-mill RPGs that left no particular impression everywhere I turned. I had a good mix of older and newer games, tried to cover several different genres and styles of RPGs, but in the end, there just weren't very many that provoked a strong response, positive or negative.
Anyway, the games I played this year were, in alphabetical rather than chronological order:
Alundra 1
Alundra 2
Avalon Code
Baldur's Gate 1
Baldur's Gate 2
Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled
Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
Children of Mana
Dragon Age 2
Fallout Tactics
Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings
Fire Emblem 7
Fire Emblem 9
Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
Glory of Heracles 5
Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics
Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals (Not actually counted as a new RPG played by me, as it's a remake of Lufia 2)
Mario and Luigi 1
Mario and Luigi 2
Mario and Luigi 3
Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch
Pokemon Generation 5 (AKA Black and White)
Radiant Historia
Sakura Wars 5
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
The World Ends with You
A fair sight more than the last couple years. I have the Nintendo DS to thank for that; nothing like getting some RPG-playing in during down-time at work or while waiting for appointments and such. I didn't even really lessen how much time I spent on other stuff--still got the 2 jobs, still watched a bunch of stuff (rewatched Batman Beyond, Doctor Who's first 4 seasons, and Torchwood's first 3 seasons, as well as watching for the first time the entire run of Star Trek: The Next Generation (which took some time, lemme tell you), all of Spectacular Spiderman, IT Crowd and A Bit of Fry and Laurie in their entirety, Doctor Who's 5th season and Seasons 1 and 2 of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and of course watching several times every episode to date of my newest obsession, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), still played a couple non-RPG games (ICO and Shadow of the Colossus), still played previous games' add-ons (Fallout: New Vegas), and still showed my sister some RPG stuff (the ever-amazing Planescape: Torment). Plus I kept pretty consistent on 3 blog rants a month, read several books (I love Isaac Asimov and Agatha Christie), and even wrote a couple of Pony-related fanfics on the side. Goodness I kept busy.
The year didn't start out terribly boring. The first RPGs I finished were Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch and Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, which basically meant I started 2011 with something funny and engaging (MLRotB), and something so horrible that there should be an entire special ops division created just to prevent anything like it from happening ever again (LCotS). And yet, for the first half of the year, that was basically it for games that invoked any strong response--Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, Avalon Code, the Mario and Luigi series...I didn't have any games for several months that were particularly noteworthy, until I got around to playing Dragon Age 2, and even then, that was an odd mix of some good ideas with disappointing lack of narrative skill and a terrible ending (see previous rant on this). Thankfully, the end of summer saw me playing Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, Radiant Historia, and The World Ends with You, all of which are really good. But from there, I again had a slew of dull titles that were okay at best, until finally I ended with Baldur's Gate 2, which was pretty good. I mean, it's not that a lot of the games didn't have some decent things about them...Glory of Heracles 5 had clever dialogue, Alundra 1 had some genuinely emotional elements, and Alundra 2 was amusing at times, for example...and it's not that some games didn't have negative aspects (Final Fantasy 12: Revenant of the Wings is even more boring and pointless than the original FF12 was, if it can be believed), but as a whole, just not a lot that was really noteworthy, good or bad, came to my attentions this year.
But anyway, let's see what interested me this year, and the best and worst aspects of this motley assortment of RPGs.
RPG Moments of Interest in 2011
1. This year was the first time I experienced an RPG entirely through a Let's Play. In keeping with my intent not to in any way support SquareEnix until they radically adjust their business plan to place even a little value on artistic integrity with their products and more importantly stop outright abusing their audience with their game content, public statements, and project decisions, I was not going to buy Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals new. And in keeping with my intent not to pay multiple times to play the same game, I wasn't thrilled with the concept of even buying it used, since it's essentially a (poor) remake of the classic game Lufia 2. So I watched the game via a Youtube Let's Play, figuring that if it turned out to be significantly new and well-made, I would buy a copy to properly show support for something decent. As it turns out, it's a good thing I chose this course of action, because I would hold a grudge against myself to my dying day if I had spent a single penny on that piece of shit. Worst remake of anything, ever, and probably one of the top 10 worst things Squaresoft/SquareEnix has ever been responsible for--and there's a LOT of contenders for a spot on that list. But yeah, first time doing a Let's Play for experiencing an RPG; may try it again (probably for another SquareEnix venture).
2. This year was also the first time I've tried an Independent RPG, in the form of Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch. The game mechanics are a bit glitchy and at times don't work as well as they should, and I can't say I liked all the jokes, but overall, that game's a riot, and it was a very good experience.
3. Played the oft-acclaimed RPG The World Ends With You this year. While it actually really is very good...the look of the game, the characters and their issues, the themes it addresses, its portrayal of afterlife junk, just makes me want to pat SquareEnix on the head in a patronizing manner and say, "No SquareEnix, it's TOTALLY not painfully obvious that you're out to clone the Shin Megami Tensei games."
4. Played a couple of Fire Emblem games. It's an RPG series with 10 or so installments. I played 1 of them, FE4, something like 8 years ago, and never touched the series again. No good reason for that, since I liked FE4. Really no idea why it took me this long to pick it up again, but at least I finally have.
5. Along with Fire Emblem, Alundra, and Mario and Luigi, another famous RPG series I tried this year that I'd had little to no experience with previously was Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. It was actually kind of interesting to see this very early RPG of Bioware's as a fan of their recent games, because there's all sorts of little references in Dragon Age and Mass Effect to elements of Baldur's Gate that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Learning the origins of Commander Shepard's space hamster was quite amusing. It was also interesting because Baldur's Gate 1 isn't just an RPG that takes place within the Dungeons and Dragons universe--it kind of feels like an actual D+D campaign in itself, a video game version of a regular tabletop session. You've got a ton of sidequests and exploration of towns and forests and so on, a very light over-arching plot tying everything together, and the companions you can find range from those that actually take the game seriously (this amounts to characters like Jaheira and Kivan) to that one guy in every D+D group who is a complete and total nutcase and just plays an apeshit crazy person who is almost more trouble than they're worth (this amounts to characters like Tiax and Minsc...who I fucking love). Interesting experience.
6. I decided to start trying to support Nintendo as much as I can with buying decisions, after hearing that the company's CEO cut his own paycheck as well as the other highest-paid board members to cover low sales of the 3DS, and make it available at lower prices to consumers. I intend to do some decent research into the whole thing and make a proper rant out of it, but in a world where careless companies like Marvel Comics, SquareEnix, Netflix, and so many others insult, abuse, and treat with hostile disdain their customers, and other corporations so often try to cover costs by cutting salaries of their lower-paid employees or just outright firing them, it's amazingly refreshing to me to see a company trim the fat of those who can actually afford it, and admit to the problem being with their own decisions, not with the market. What OTHER company would do that? Most corporations would just send a chunk of innocent workers a pink slip rather than let their executives miss out on a bonus, and blame it all on the consumer end rather than admit to doing any wrong. Go Nintendo for being a class act.
Best Prequel/Sequel of 2011:
Actually, I really don't have enough for this category this year. There were really only a couple of RPGs I played that were particularly relevant to previous ones in their series, and of them, Baldur's Gate 2 is the only one that really ties in all that strongly to its predecessor. The others either weren't very good (Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings), were okay but only somewhat built off of an established canon (Mario and Luigi 2, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence), or just plain had nothing to do with the previous game(s) (Alundra 2).
Biggest Disappointment of 2011:
Loser: Dragon Age 2
It's...it's not that Dragon Age 2 is BAD, persay. I mean...there's a lot of good qualities to the game. I might even go so far as to say that it is, as a whole, a decent RPG. But Dragon Age 1 was just a really, really good game, and it seems like most of the really memorable areas of DA1 are so much less interesting in DA2. The story's not as grand, for one, and although I understand it's meant to be a more personal tale of a single hero, city, and culture rather than the exploits of a group of heroes saving a country and world, it just doesn't do this kind of story as well as DA1 did the world-saving brand. The cast of DA2's not bad, but the characters most deep and interesting of DA2 (Sebastian and Anders, I guess) really just can't compare to the depth and personality of nearly all of DA1's major characters. The villain of DA1 was of far greater quality than either of the major DA2 ones. Some of DA2's romantic subplots are decent enough, but again, they really just pale before most of DA1's. And the ending of DA2 is just absolute trash, an embarrassing failure of writing, while DA1's was, while admittedly fairly generic, cool and engaging. I try not to get my hopes up about games just because they come from a good series (I learned my lesson with Grandia 3 and Shadow Hearts 3, thank you), but it just seems like most everything that made DA1 so good is barely more than passable in DA2. And having a rotten ending to a game is by itself a huge factor for disappointment, so, there you go.
Almost as Bad: Children of Mana; Fallout: Tactics; Pokemon: Generation 5
I didn't think much of Seiken Densetsu 3, and honestly, looking back at Secret of Mana, it doesn't seem all that great without nostalgia goggles on, so I didn't expect much of Children of Mana (haven't played any other Mana game besides those 2). But even so, this game is so incredibly generic and boring! It's like they went out of their way to avoid putting anything worthy of note in this title. SquareEnix might as well have just called it Filler Fantasy: Repetitive Dungeon Game We Made Between More Important Titles. I'd heard Fallout: Tactics wasn't all that interesting, so it wasn't too much of a disappointment when I found out that it definitely wasn't, but it still should be here since Fallout RPGs are traditionally engaging, amusing, knee-deep in symbolism and cultural references and analysis, and epic, and this one is just...bland. There are a couple amusing joke encounters and such, but the plot as a whole isn't interesting in the slightest, there's no characters to speak of, and there's certainly no deeper significance or food for thought about America that I can find. As for Pokemon: Generation 5...well, despite Generation 4 having some actual plot, a couple fairly okay characters, and a villain that was actually pretty good, I didn't go into Black/White with high expectations, given that the first 3 generations of Pokemon were a bunch of dull, punctuated by brief bouts of silliness. But Generation 5 actually seemed like it would be interesting early on, with the question of morality in Pokemon training, but it just let its potential sit in a corner for the whole game, alone and unloved, until it died from neglect. I'd go into specifics, but I'm planning for that to be a rant in itself.
Best Ending of 2011:
Winner: Radiant Historia (Best Ending)
As a whole, Radiant Historia's finale's pretty good, but the ending, provided you properly completed all the side quests that affect it, was really very nice. It satisfactorily tied everything up, big and small, engaged me emotionally, made the adventure as a whole seem satisfying and epic, and even threw in an unexpected twist that made it better still. Can't ask for much better than that.
Runners-Up: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon; The World Ends with You
First year for this category; let's see if it holds up (assuming I can manage to drag rants out of me for another year hence). The World Ends with You has a positive ending that satisfies and leaves you feeling good. Not much more I can say about it. And while Fragile Dreams's ending has some aspects that are really kind of a bummer, it's handled with the same artistic grace and emotional intensity as the rest of the game, and leaves you feeling as impressed with the little RPG gem as you should be. In fact, if I didn't feel that the downer in the ending wasn't unwarranted and even arguably against the game's theme, it probably would have been the winner this year. But it's still good.
Worst RPG of 2011:
Loser: Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals
Yeah, so, I did a very long and involved rant at the beginning of the year explaining why this title is a piece of dog shit that poisons any DS it touches. Refer to that for details. Suffice to say here that this is the worst remake ever created for anything, that it is monstrously horrible both compared to the original Lufia 2 and just on its own, and that you probably couldn't harm your mind more with a self-performed Egyptian brain-removal ritual than by playing this game.
Almost as Bad: Children of Mana; Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings; Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics
Thankfully, this category was easy to determine, because these games weren't just the worst of the year, they were also the only ones that I can really say were outright bad. Anyways! The word of the day is: BOREDOM. Oh my GOD are these 3 titles ever boring. Just...Jesus Christ. On the one hand, you have Children of Mana, a game whose plot and cast were probably penned by 1 writer over the course of 10 minutes who was tired and just wanted to go home for the day. You can practically SMELL the crap that SquareEnix didn't give about this game. On the other hand, you have Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics, which ISN'T generic but is just as boring and meandering and totally forgettable as Children of Mana. HSLT's instruction booklet is more interesting than the game itself. And as for FF12: Revenant Wings...by God, guys. I wouldn't have believed it possible, but this title actually makes the original Final Fantasy 12 look GOOD by comparison. I mean, at least in FF12, Fran had a moment that was good with Eruyt village, and the character of Balthier was done well. The trite, bland little foray into pointless boredom that FF12RW is doesn't even have that much; Balthier is just as boring as all the rest of the cast. Well...maybe that isn't fair. Yes, Balthier is boring, but most of the rest of the cast is actively annoying, so I guess he's still one of the least bad aspects, sort of. And there's certainly no part that stands out as having any compelling emotion this time around; you're lucky to find a time in the plot where everything makes a proper amount of sense and isn't weighed down by an overabundance of magical plot doohickeys and painful contrivances. Tie up that bag of suck with the fact that Vaan somehow seems just as superfluous (not to mention annoying) as he did in FF12, even though this story's plot actually does focus on him. I don't know how you manage to suck enjoyability and excitement out of a game that had none to begin with, but SquareEnix managed it somehow with FF12's sequel.
Most Improved of its Series of 2011:
Winner: Baldur's Gate 2
BG1 is a fairly decent RPG, I suppose, but its plot is ultimately kind of light and not terribly exciting, and though its cast is pretty varied and interesting, not a whole lot is done to develop them, and the villain's just plain one-dimensional. BG2 fixes just about every shortcoming of BG1--the plot is far more present and if not amazing, then at least a bit more interesting. The cast is as varied as ever, but now almost every party member has at least one mission in which they receive some decent exploration and character development, they have more lines to say during general plot events, and a few of them can be pursued romantically, the events and dialogue of which are sometimes quite good. Finally, the villains...well, actually, the villain of the main game, Shadows of Amn, is just as one-dimensional as BG1's villain was, and the villain of the Throne of Bhaal expansion is only so-so, so I guess that's a wash, BUT the former villain of BG1 does return, and NOW he gets some decent character development! So it sort of counts as better villainy. So yeah, overall, BG2 improves just about all the important areas of BG1 that could have been better, turning an okay game into a solidly good one.
Runner-Up: Mario and Luigi 3
Well, honestly, Mario and Luigi 3 isn't all that great, but it's more creative than the previous MaL games, and the plot's slightly interesting sometimes, which is an improvement on MaL2 at the very least. And I'd rather have the Mario Brothers work with Bowser than with baby versions of themselves, as the latter idea is really just pretty damn stupid. So I'd say it's an improvement.
Most Creative of 2011:
Winner: Radiant Historia
I'm pleasantly surprised that there's some real competition this year, but ultimately, I think Radiant Historia's schtick is the most creative, having its protagonist, Stocke, work his way through points in his own time line where he makes/made decisions that greatly altered the future, hopping from one alternate course of history to the other over and over to try to find the one set of countless courses of action that can lead to the salvation of his world. And that's just the premise--there's lots of neat, creative stuff in the game's twists, setting, and characters, too. Very cool!
Runners-Up: Avalon Code; Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon; The World Ends with You
Really, The World Ends with You might have had a shot at placing on top if I weren't fairly convinced that it was conceived as a way of competing with Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei series as an "edgy" modern culture RPG. Nonetheless, its premise, plot, and twists are all very unique and cool. Avalon Code doesn't do much with its creative ideas that really catches my eye, but I have to give it credit--the idea of having a game where you carry a book that can absorb the spiritual blueprints of all of creation, which allows you to craft tools of great power by mixing these spiritual components into basic blueprints of weapons and items, and to alter the strengths and weaknesses of all enemies you face by messing with their spirit bios, is pretty innovative. As for Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon...well, it's basically an interactive anime movie of great artistic quality that feels like a Japanese version of Fallout, that explores spiritual emotion rather than American culture. It's very different, in a great way.
Stupidest Weapon of 2011:
Loser: Filo's Hoverboard (Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings)
Blatantly stolen from Back to the Future 2, the Hoverboard in FF12RW defies one's imagination when one attempts to envision exactly how this little pink floating skateboard is capable, while being ridden by a child whose age has only barely hit double digits, of inflicting any significant harm on half of the large, sturdy, and dangerous creatures in the Final Fantasy bestiary. One's defeated imagination might turn to the question of why someone would think sending a preteen into combat against unnatural killing machines while armed only with a floating plank is good, or sensible, or even just acceptable...only to find one's mind inadequate for that task, as well.
Almost as Bad: Butterfly Net (Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon); Dual Blade (Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals); Gemini's Mech's Gunblade (Sakura Wars 5)
Gunblades are incredibly stupid, as I've detailed in that stupid weapons list rant from a while back. The Lufia 2 remake's Dual Blade is nothing short of a joke--it looks absolutely absurd, and for all appearances its balance, shape, and handling requirements make it completely impossible to wield effectively in combat. And finally...a butterfly net? Really, Namco?
Best Romance of 2011:
Winner: Good Protagonist and Viconia (Baldur's Gate 2)
BG2 goes to great lengths to develop the 4 potential romances it offers, doing so over the course of dozens of conversations during the main quest of BG2, then further exploring the relationship in the Throne of Bhaal expansion. Assuming you know what dialogue choices to make to prevent the romance from ending prematurely, that is, which can be tricky, but we'll assume here that you do and that we're looking at the completed relationship. Normally, this extra would make the game's 4 romances shoe-ins for all the slots on this list, but unfortunately, I just didn't feel like the love stories for Aerie and Anomen were all that compelling, so in those cases it wound up just being a lot of extra development for romances that didn't seem particularly noteworthy anyway.
Viconia, however...now here's a touching love story, which fits in very well with her general character development. As a creature of Evil who unwillingly fights against her inherent nature, Viconia is a perfect candidate for a touching story of the redeeming power of love. It's interesting and touching to watch Viconia struggle with an emotional connection she cannot help but make with the main character as they travel together and become sexual partners, at first shrinking back in fear and revulsion from her growing feelings, trying to force them and the protagonist away from her with her typical venom and finding that she can't destroy her emotions so easily...it's good stuff, and when the romance picks up again during the Throne of Bhaal campaign, it only gets better. With acceptance of her love for the protagonist comes the opportunity for Viconia to better explore her own conflicting inner nature, all culminating in the protagonist helping Viconia to change herself for the better, to change her philosophy of life from Evil to Neutral, a massive achievement for her and, if my limited knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons is correct, a significant achievement by the rules of that world. It's all very touching and quite impressive to me.
Runners-Up: Neku and Shiki (The World Ends with You); Protagonist and Jaheira (Baldur's Gate 2); Ratchet and Shin (Sakura Wars 5)
Not a terribly inspiring year for RPG love stories for me. The winner wasn't hard to pick; everything else was mildly nice at best. I would've had Dragon Age 2's Isabela and Hawke Rivalry romance in here, as I really think that the later parts of that are very good and convincing, but honestly, pursuing a Rivalry with Isabela instead of a Friendship* gives you all the really good scenes toward the end whether or not you're factoring in the love angle--all the emotional strength of the scenes occurs whether they be platonic or romantic, so I don't really think I can count that.
Anyway! Neku and Shiki's romance is quiet, more implied than really outright stated, but it's convincingly done, showing them coming together to be stronger in emotional union than they were separately, with Shiki becoming a more self-confident and whole person with Neku's companionship, and Neku finding an emotional anchor to connect him to his social humanity and give him a reason to keep going. Admittedly, a lot of this one is simply seeing how dedicated Neku is to Shiki once she's absent and her future is in his care, rather than seeing developed feelings through a lot of interactions between them, but it's still pretty good. The romance between Jaheira and BG2's protagonist is decent, covering several bases, such as Jaheira moving on from her late husband Khalid, Jaheira questioning how far the protagonist can be trusted, Jaheira choosing to fight her fears and trust her instincts and the person she cares for even to the point of renouncing her way of life when it conflicts with her loyalty to the protagonist, and then...about 500 more discussions wherein she wonders if the protagonist truly can be trusted with so much power. Her never-ending lack of certainty that the person she loves isn't going to just up and decide to start randomly smothering babies with puppy pelts DOES kind of get repetitive a bit, but other than that, the romance is a decent one. Lastly, there's Ratchet and Shin in Sakura Wars 5. It's possible that its quality as a tale of love is exaggerated through comparison to how bad most of the other romantic options are in that game.** Nonetheless, I feel that the connection between Ratchet and Shin seems simple but genuine, and I like it. The added scenes during the finale that come from this romance sell it well. A shame the idiot developers only made it accessible in New Game+...
Best Voice Acting of 2011:
Winner: Dragon Age 2
It's got some flaws (Male Hawke never seems to sound right, and Female Hawke has trouble being convincingly mean for some dialogues), and only a couple voice actors really give a particularly ear-catching performance, but DA2 is overall a good, solid game for voice acting from start to finish--and considering how much dialogue is in this game, ALL of which is spoken, that's laudable. Particularly good are the voice actress for Merrill and the voice actor for the Arishok, and the voice actors for Varric and Fenris really help to define the characters.
Runners-Up: Baldur's Gate 1; Baldur's Gate 2; Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
Though limited, the voice acting in BG1 and BG2 is decent, with a couple voice actors doing a notably fine job, such as the actress who plays Viconia, and Jim Cummings, who plays, in addition to like 50 minor NPCs and enemies, the unforgettably awesome and batshit crazy Minsc. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon does an adequate job. On the one hand, I wouldn't say any part of its voice work really stuck with me, but at the same time, everyone seemed to fit their roles, and the voice acting kept up with the atmosphere and emotion of the story well, which might be harder than it sounds, given the high bar FDFRotM sets in that department.
Best Villain of 2011:
Winner: The Arishok (Dragon Age 2)
Way outshining the true villains of DA2's story, the Arishok is a leader whose orders and religious doctrine (which are basically one and the same) force him into an incredibly frustrating position for years, years in which he is surrounded by a culture that he finds revolting, cut off from his homeland until he completes a mission he cannot, and feared and hated by ignorant racists and religious zealots that he does nothing to provoke. After 4 years of such misery, it's no damn wonder he eventually loses his temper and gives the fanatics the fight they've been baiting him into for years. The Arishok is a neat villain for how he raises sympathy in the player for his plight, for his insight into the Qunari culture in Dragon Age, and for the fact that his virtues almost overpower his vices.
Runners-Up: Fawful (Mario and Luigi 1 - 3); Heiss (Radiant Historia); Melissan (Baldur's Gate 2)
Fawful's not exactly a particularly deep or threatening villain, but he is pretty amusing often enough, and really, how can you not be impressed by a hateful little bespectacled bean that delivers such hurtful taunts as, "Your lives that I spit on are now but a caricature of a cartoon drawn by a kid who is stupid!" That there is hardcore. Melissan has a back story that's a bit of a twist, and otherwise fits the bill of villain pretty well, I guess. Heiss is actually really pretty neat as a villain--he's got a history as creative and interesting as would befit any major player in the events of Radiant Historia, and he successfully keeps a lot of the unsettling mystery about his motives and machinations for most of the game, which is honestly very unusual for an RPG villain. I mean, yes, there are a LOT of RPG villains who keep you in the dark as to the aim of their game for a long, long time, but in almost all cases of this, it just gets annoying after a while to be left in the dark for so long about why and how the shadowy super-powerful evil guy is partaking in villainy. With Heiss, I never felt exasperated by how much was withheld about him, even though you don't find most of it out until the last parts of the game. I guess this is probably more due to the strength of the writing for Radiant Historia than to Heiss's character in particular, since the game's events were enthralling enough that I didn't feel the NEED to know more about Heiss before he was ready to tell, but either way, he's a very cool and layered villain.
Best Character of 2011:
Winner: Neku (The World Ends with You)
Neku's transformation from Hipster Squall to Person Who Is Not A Total Douchebag is done well, I think, and his emotions, desperation, frustration, and growing respect and need for others are convincing and effectively conveyed. Honestly, I don't have much to really say about him, aside from the fact that he's a solidly good character with strong development.
Runners-Up: Beat (The World Ends with You); Shiki (The World Ends with You); Viconia (Baldur's Gate 2)
Uh...yeah. So, of the few games I played this year that were notably good, not a lot were actually driven so much by their characters as by their plot's overall themes and events. Of the games I played this year, only The World Ends with You has a powerful personal touch to it where the characters are its driving force, and, unsurprisingly, its cast outshines that of the rest of the RPGs I saw in 2011. Beat's surprisingly deep and interesting, considering his character type, but that's part of the point, I suppose. Even though it was done with comparatively quickly, I was pretty impressed with Shiki's character development; she's both interesting, and has issues of self worth to work through whose circumstances and twist are pretty unique, at least for what you see in RPGs. As for Viconia, she's quite an interesting character for her depth--everything she was brought up to be is evil and convinced that kindness and selflessness are weak and foolish, yet there's a spark in her, her true nature it seems, that just can't quite be fully eliminated, that spark that brought her to love her brother even when she knew not what "love" was, and that led her to renounce her people and their evil goddess and flee to the surface. As her romance with BG2's protagonist develops, so does Viconia, as she discovers facets of humanity (or elf-ity, whatever) that her people acknowledge only as weakness, yet inevitably draw her in, until she is finally ready to truly cast aside what she was made to be and embrace what she wishes to be. Good stuff.
Best Game of 2011:
Winner: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
It's not perfect. It's got too many holes or too much conjecture (whichever you perceive it as) in its plot. But I can't deny that it's the most impressive game I've played this year, and that it is a real classic of both RPGs, and storytelling through video games in general. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is exceptionally artistic, seeming often to be closer to an anime movie on par with some of Japan's greatest studios than to a video game. It has remarkable atmosphere, its theme and story are gripping, the characters strong and memorable...if you've got a Wii, get it. It's great, and it's art.
Runners-Up: Baldur's Gate 2; Radiant Historia; The World Ends with You
As I said earlier, I didn't have that many RPGs this year that were particularly noteworthy. For 60% of 2011, I thought I would be putting Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch up here (not that MLRotB is bad or anything, it's funny as heck, but it ain't exactly a deep and involved story). But in the end, I did get a little handful of really great titles. BG2 is a good, solid Western RPG, with decent plot elements and a solid cast. BG1 did not impress me all that much, but BG2 really goes above and beyond its predecessor and delivers a satisfying experience. Radiant Historia is just the kind of creative, thoughtful game I've come to hopefully expect from Atlus, with a good plot, a solid cast, and a really creative premise that is executed well. RH is probably the best RPG to significantly employ time travel that I've seen since Chrono Trigger, and I certainly recommend it to any owner of a DS or 3DS. Lastly, The World Ends with You...well, as a SquareEnix game, it automatically gets a crapload of attention even when other worthy titles don't, but this one is a rarity--a modern SquareEnix title that DESERVES the attention and praise it receives. It's interesting, it's emotionally-charged, it's different, and owners of a DS or 3DS should check it out just as much as Radiant Historia.
List Changes of 2011:
Greatest RPGs: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Replaced Baroque as Honorable Mention for artistic virtue).
So! That's it for 2011. Thanks again for a year of hearing me babble about RPGs. Hopefully 2012 will be a more interesting year for RPGs--in fact, I have little fear that this will be true, for Mass Effect 3 comes out this year. But we'll all see a year hence. Enjoy the holidays, and I'll see you in the new year.
* Basically, each character in DA2 can either feel friendly to you, or rivalry with you, depending on how your actions measure up to the character's general beliefs and interests. Similar to how Dragon Age 1 did it, not to mention several other western RPGs, but the difference here is that a high rivalry counts as just as strong a connection with the character as an equally high friendship would. So every romance in DA2 actually has 2 versions--1 for a romance between Friends, people who get along and agree and all, and 1 for a romance between Rivals, people who just don't see eye to eye--but nonetheless have built a sort of trust and connection through this clashing of ideals.
Isabela's philosophies are generally "Don't help anyone unless you're paid," "Don't ever have an opinion on any major issue," and "I want to do everything in my power to make sure I have no idea whose bed I wake up in tomorrow, and if I can also be lying in my own filth as that happens, then that will be lovely." With my style of game play, which is to try to have a protagonist who is not a total worthless slob, I found it much easier to maintain a Rivalry with her than a Friendship.
** 60% of the things Gemini says, does, and thinks in SW5 are already so stupid that Sarah Palin seems almost well-spoken by comparison, but the romantic parts with Gemini multiply that stupidity several times over. Watching Shin and Gemini's date could permanently disfigure you, as the human face was not designed to twist so far as yours will out of reflexive revulsion.
So. 2010 was a good year for me, RPG-wise, so I figured I'd pay the piper this year and have a whole slew of crappy ones. Well, I was half right...there really weren't many RPGs I played this year that I can even call decent, let alone good. But at the same time...nearly none of them were really all that bad, either. 2011 was just a year of very...lackluster games. Run-of-the-mill RPGs that left no particular impression everywhere I turned. I had a good mix of older and newer games, tried to cover several different genres and styles of RPGs, but in the end, there just weren't very many that provoked a strong response, positive or negative.
Anyway, the games I played this year were, in alphabetical rather than chronological order:
Alundra 1
Alundra 2
Avalon Code
Baldur's Gate 1
Baldur's Gate 2
Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled
Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
Children of Mana
Dragon Age 2
Fallout Tactics
Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings
Fire Emblem 7
Fire Emblem 9
Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
Glory of Heracles 5
Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics
Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals (Not actually counted as a new RPG played by me, as it's a remake of Lufia 2)
Mario and Luigi 1
Mario and Luigi 2
Mario and Luigi 3
Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch
Pokemon Generation 5 (AKA Black and White)
Radiant Historia
Sakura Wars 5
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
The World Ends with You
A fair sight more than the last couple years. I have the Nintendo DS to thank for that; nothing like getting some RPG-playing in during down-time at work or while waiting for appointments and such. I didn't even really lessen how much time I spent on other stuff--still got the 2 jobs, still watched a bunch of stuff (rewatched Batman Beyond, Doctor Who's first 4 seasons, and Torchwood's first 3 seasons, as well as watching for the first time the entire run of Star Trek: The Next Generation (which took some time, lemme tell you), all of Spectacular Spiderman, IT Crowd and A Bit of Fry and Laurie in their entirety, Doctor Who's 5th season and Seasons 1 and 2 of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and of course watching several times every episode to date of my newest obsession, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), still played a couple non-RPG games (ICO and Shadow of the Colossus), still played previous games' add-ons (Fallout: New Vegas), and still showed my sister some RPG stuff (the ever-amazing Planescape: Torment). Plus I kept pretty consistent on 3 blog rants a month, read several books (I love Isaac Asimov and Agatha Christie), and even wrote a couple of Pony-related fanfics on the side. Goodness I kept busy.
The year didn't start out terribly boring. The first RPGs I finished were Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch and Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, which basically meant I started 2011 with something funny and engaging (MLRotB), and something so horrible that there should be an entire special ops division created just to prevent anything like it from happening ever again (LCotS). And yet, for the first half of the year, that was basically it for games that invoked any strong response--Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, Avalon Code, the Mario and Luigi series...I didn't have any games for several months that were particularly noteworthy, until I got around to playing Dragon Age 2, and even then, that was an odd mix of some good ideas with disappointing lack of narrative skill and a terrible ending (see previous rant on this). Thankfully, the end of summer saw me playing Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, Radiant Historia, and The World Ends with You, all of which are really good. But from there, I again had a slew of dull titles that were okay at best, until finally I ended with Baldur's Gate 2, which was pretty good. I mean, it's not that a lot of the games didn't have some decent things about them...Glory of Heracles 5 had clever dialogue, Alundra 1 had some genuinely emotional elements, and Alundra 2 was amusing at times, for example...and it's not that some games didn't have negative aspects (Final Fantasy 12: Revenant of the Wings is even more boring and pointless than the original FF12 was, if it can be believed), but as a whole, just not a lot that was really noteworthy, good or bad, came to my attentions this year.
But anyway, let's see what interested me this year, and the best and worst aspects of this motley assortment of RPGs.
RPG Moments of Interest in 2011
1. This year was the first time I experienced an RPG entirely through a Let's Play. In keeping with my intent not to in any way support SquareEnix until they radically adjust their business plan to place even a little value on artistic integrity with their products and more importantly stop outright abusing their audience with their game content, public statements, and project decisions, I was not going to buy Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals new. And in keeping with my intent not to pay multiple times to play the same game, I wasn't thrilled with the concept of even buying it used, since it's essentially a (poor) remake of the classic game Lufia 2. So I watched the game via a Youtube Let's Play, figuring that if it turned out to be significantly new and well-made, I would buy a copy to properly show support for something decent. As it turns out, it's a good thing I chose this course of action, because I would hold a grudge against myself to my dying day if I had spent a single penny on that piece of shit. Worst remake of anything, ever, and probably one of the top 10 worst things Squaresoft/SquareEnix has ever been responsible for--and there's a LOT of contenders for a spot on that list. But yeah, first time doing a Let's Play for experiencing an RPG; may try it again (probably for another SquareEnix venture).
2. This year was also the first time I've tried an Independent RPG, in the form of Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch. The game mechanics are a bit glitchy and at times don't work as well as they should, and I can't say I liked all the jokes, but overall, that game's a riot, and it was a very good experience.
3. Played the oft-acclaimed RPG The World Ends With You this year. While it actually really is very good...the look of the game, the characters and their issues, the themes it addresses, its portrayal of afterlife junk, just makes me want to pat SquareEnix on the head in a patronizing manner and say, "No SquareEnix, it's TOTALLY not painfully obvious that you're out to clone the Shin Megami Tensei games."
4. Played a couple of Fire Emblem games. It's an RPG series with 10 or so installments. I played 1 of them, FE4, something like 8 years ago, and never touched the series again. No good reason for that, since I liked FE4. Really no idea why it took me this long to pick it up again, but at least I finally have.
5. Along with Fire Emblem, Alundra, and Mario and Luigi, another famous RPG series I tried this year that I'd had little to no experience with previously was Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. It was actually kind of interesting to see this very early RPG of Bioware's as a fan of their recent games, because there's all sorts of little references in Dragon Age and Mass Effect to elements of Baldur's Gate that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Learning the origins of Commander Shepard's space hamster was quite amusing. It was also interesting because Baldur's Gate 1 isn't just an RPG that takes place within the Dungeons and Dragons universe--it kind of feels like an actual D+D campaign in itself, a video game version of a regular tabletop session. You've got a ton of sidequests and exploration of towns and forests and so on, a very light over-arching plot tying everything together, and the companions you can find range from those that actually take the game seriously (this amounts to characters like Jaheira and Kivan) to that one guy in every D+D group who is a complete and total nutcase and just plays an apeshit crazy person who is almost more trouble than they're worth (this amounts to characters like Tiax and Minsc...who I fucking love). Interesting experience.
6. I decided to start trying to support Nintendo as much as I can with buying decisions, after hearing that the company's CEO cut his own paycheck as well as the other highest-paid board members to cover low sales of the 3DS, and make it available at lower prices to consumers. I intend to do some decent research into the whole thing and make a proper rant out of it, but in a world where careless companies like Marvel Comics, SquareEnix, Netflix, and so many others insult, abuse, and treat with hostile disdain their customers, and other corporations so often try to cover costs by cutting salaries of their lower-paid employees or just outright firing them, it's amazingly refreshing to me to see a company trim the fat of those who can actually afford it, and admit to the problem being with their own decisions, not with the market. What OTHER company would do that? Most corporations would just send a chunk of innocent workers a pink slip rather than let their executives miss out on a bonus, and blame it all on the consumer end rather than admit to doing any wrong. Go Nintendo for being a class act.
Best Prequel/Sequel of 2011:
Actually, I really don't have enough for this category this year. There were really only a couple of RPGs I played that were particularly relevant to previous ones in their series, and of them, Baldur's Gate 2 is the only one that really ties in all that strongly to its predecessor. The others either weren't very good (Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings), were okay but only somewhat built off of an established canon (Mario and Luigi 2, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence), or just plain had nothing to do with the previous game(s) (Alundra 2).
Biggest Disappointment of 2011:
Loser: Dragon Age 2
It's...it's not that Dragon Age 2 is BAD, persay. I mean...there's a lot of good qualities to the game. I might even go so far as to say that it is, as a whole, a decent RPG. But Dragon Age 1 was just a really, really good game, and it seems like most of the really memorable areas of DA1 are so much less interesting in DA2. The story's not as grand, for one, and although I understand it's meant to be a more personal tale of a single hero, city, and culture rather than the exploits of a group of heroes saving a country and world, it just doesn't do this kind of story as well as DA1 did the world-saving brand. The cast of DA2's not bad, but the characters most deep and interesting of DA2 (Sebastian and Anders, I guess) really just can't compare to the depth and personality of nearly all of DA1's major characters. The villain of DA1 was of far greater quality than either of the major DA2 ones. Some of DA2's romantic subplots are decent enough, but again, they really just pale before most of DA1's. And the ending of DA2 is just absolute trash, an embarrassing failure of writing, while DA1's was, while admittedly fairly generic, cool and engaging. I try not to get my hopes up about games just because they come from a good series (I learned my lesson with Grandia 3 and Shadow Hearts 3, thank you), but it just seems like most everything that made DA1 so good is barely more than passable in DA2. And having a rotten ending to a game is by itself a huge factor for disappointment, so, there you go.
Almost as Bad: Children of Mana; Fallout: Tactics; Pokemon: Generation 5
I didn't think much of Seiken Densetsu 3, and honestly, looking back at Secret of Mana, it doesn't seem all that great without nostalgia goggles on, so I didn't expect much of Children of Mana (haven't played any other Mana game besides those 2). But even so, this game is so incredibly generic and boring! It's like they went out of their way to avoid putting anything worthy of note in this title. SquareEnix might as well have just called it Filler Fantasy: Repetitive Dungeon Game We Made Between More Important Titles. I'd heard Fallout: Tactics wasn't all that interesting, so it wasn't too much of a disappointment when I found out that it definitely wasn't, but it still should be here since Fallout RPGs are traditionally engaging, amusing, knee-deep in symbolism and cultural references and analysis, and epic, and this one is just...bland. There are a couple amusing joke encounters and such, but the plot as a whole isn't interesting in the slightest, there's no characters to speak of, and there's certainly no deeper significance or food for thought about America that I can find. As for Pokemon: Generation 5...well, despite Generation 4 having some actual plot, a couple fairly okay characters, and a villain that was actually pretty good, I didn't go into Black/White with high expectations, given that the first 3 generations of Pokemon were a bunch of dull, punctuated by brief bouts of silliness. But Generation 5 actually seemed like it would be interesting early on, with the question of morality in Pokemon training, but it just let its potential sit in a corner for the whole game, alone and unloved, until it died from neglect. I'd go into specifics, but I'm planning for that to be a rant in itself.
Best Ending of 2011:
Winner: Radiant Historia (Best Ending)
As a whole, Radiant Historia's finale's pretty good, but the ending, provided you properly completed all the side quests that affect it, was really very nice. It satisfactorily tied everything up, big and small, engaged me emotionally, made the adventure as a whole seem satisfying and epic, and even threw in an unexpected twist that made it better still. Can't ask for much better than that.
Runners-Up: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon; The World Ends with You
First year for this category; let's see if it holds up (assuming I can manage to drag rants out of me for another year hence). The World Ends with You has a positive ending that satisfies and leaves you feeling good. Not much more I can say about it. And while Fragile Dreams's ending has some aspects that are really kind of a bummer, it's handled with the same artistic grace and emotional intensity as the rest of the game, and leaves you feeling as impressed with the little RPG gem as you should be. In fact, if I didn't feel that the downer in the ending wasn't unwarranted and even arguably against the game's theme, it probably would have been the winner this year. But it's still good.
Worst RPG of 2011:
Loser: Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals
Yeah, so, I did a very long and involved rant at the beginning of the year explaining why this title is a piece of dog shit that poisons any DS it touches. Refer to that for details. Suffice to say here that this is the worst remake ever created for anything, that it is monstrously horrible both compared to the original Lufia 2 and just on its own, and that you probably couldn't harm your mind more with a self-performed Egyptian brain-removal ritual than by playing this game.
Almost as Bad: Children of Mana; Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings; Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics
Thankfully, this category was easy to determine, because these games weren't just the worst of the year, they were also the only ones that I can really say were outright bad. Anyways! The word of the day is: BOREDOM. Oh my GOD are these 3 titles ever boring. Just...Jesus Christ. On the one hand, you have Children of Mana, a game whose plot and cast were probably penned by 1 writer over the course of 10 minutes who was tired and just wanted to go home for the day. You can practically SMELL the crap that SquareEnix didn't give about this game. On the other hand, you have Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics, which ISN'T generic but is just as boring and meandering and totally forgettable as Children of Mana. HSLT's instruction booklet is more interesting than the game itself. And as for FF12: Revenant Wings...by God, guys. I wouldn't have believed it possible, but this title actually makes the original Final Fantasy 12 look GOOD by comparison. I mean, at least in FF12, Fran had a moment that was good with Eruyt village, and the character of Balthier was done well. The trite, bland little foray into pointless boredom that FF12RW is doesn't even have that much; Balthier is just as boring as all the rest of the cast. Well...maybe that isn't fair. Yes, Balthier is boring, but most of the rest of the cast is actively annoying, so I guess he's still one of the least bad aspects, sort of. And there's certainly no part that stands out as having any compelling emotion this time around; you're lucky to find a time in the plot where everything makes a proper amount of sense and isn't weighed down by an overabundance of magical plot doohickeys and painful contrivances. Tie up that bag of suck with the fact that Vaan somehow seems just as superfluous (not to mention annoying) as he did in FF12, even though this story's plot actually does focus on him. I don't know how you manage to suck enjoyability and excitement out of a game that had none to begin with, but SquareEnix managed it somehow with FF12's sequel.
Most Improved of its Series of 2011:
Winner: Baldur's Gate 2
BG1 is a fairly decent RPG, I suppose, but its plot is ultimately kind of light and not terribly exciting, and though its cast is pretty varied and interesting, not a whole lot is done to develop them, and the villain's just plain one-dimensional. BG2 fixes just about every shortcoming of BG1--the plot is far more present and if not amazing, then at least a bit more interesting. The cast is as varied as ever, but now almost every party member has at least one mission in which they receive some decent exploration and character development, they have more lines to say during general plot events, and a few of them can be pursued romantically, the events and dialogue of which are sometimes quite good. Finally, the villains...well, actually, the villain of the main game, Shadows of Amn, is just as one-dimensional as BG1's villain was, and the villain of the Throne of Bhaal expansion is only so-so, so I guess that's a wash, BUT the former villain of BG1 does return, and NOW he gets some decent character development! So it sort of counts as better villainy. So yeah, overall, BG2 improves just about all the important areas of BG1 that could have been better, turning an okay game into a solidly good one.
Runner-Up: Mario and Luigi 3
Well, honestly, Mario and Luigi 3 isn't all that great, but it's more creative than the previous MaL games, and the plot's slightly interesting sometimes, which is an improvement on MaL2 at the very least. And I'd rather have the Mario Brothers work with Bowser than with baby versions of themselves, as the latter idea is really just pretty damn stupid. So I'd say it's an improvement.
Most Creative of 2011:
Winner: Radiant Historia
I'm pleasantly surprised that there's some real competition this year, but ultimately, I think Radiant Historia's schtick is the most creative, having its protagonist, Stocke, work his way through points in his own time line where he makes/made decisions that greatly altered the future, hopping from one alternate course of history to the other over and over to try to find the one set of countless courses of action that can lead to the salvation of his world. And that's just the premise--there's lots of neat, creative stuff in the game's twists, setting, and characters, too. Very cool!
Runners-Up: Avalon Code; Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon; The World Ends with You
Really, The World Ends with You might have had a shot at placing on top if I weren't fairly convinced that it was conceived as a way of competing with Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei series as an "edgy" modern culture RPG. Nonetheless, its premise, plot, and twists are all very unique and cool. Avalon Code doesn't do much with its creative ideas that really catches my eye, but I have to give it credit--the idea of having a game where you carry a book that can absorb the spiritual blueprints of all of creation, which allows you to craft tools of great power by mixing these spiritual components into basic blueprints of weapons and items, and to alter the strengths and weaknesses of all enemies you face by messing with their spirit bios, is pretty innovative. As for Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon...well, it's basically an interactive anime movie of great artistic quality that feels like a Japanese version of Fallout, that explores spiritual emotion rather than American culture. It's very different, in a great way.
Stupidest Weapon of 2011:
Loser: Filo's Hoverboard (Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings)
Blatantly stolen from Back to the Future 2, the Hoverboard in FF12RW defies one's imagination when one attempts to envision exactly how this little pink floating skateboard is capable, while being ridden by a child whose age has only barely hit double digits, of inflicting any significant harm on half of the large, sturdy, and dangerous creatures in the Final Fantasy bestiary. One's defeated imagination might turn to the question of why someone would think sending a preteen into combat against unnatural killing machines while armed only with a floating plank is good, or sensible, or even just acceptable...only to find one's mind inadequate for that task, as well.
Almost as Bad: Butterfly Net (Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon); Dual Blade (Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals); Gemini's Mech's Gunblade (Sakura Wars 5)
Gunblades are incredibly stupid, as I've detailed in that stupid weapons list rant from a while back. The Lufia 2 remake's Dual Blade is nothing short of a joke--it looks absolutely absurd, and for all appearances its balance, shape, and handling requirements make it completely impossible to wield effectively in combat. And finally...a butterfly net? Really, Namco?
Best Romance of 2011:
Winner: Good Protagonist and Viconia (Baldur's Gate 2)
BG2 goes to great lengths to develop the 4 potential romances it offers, doing so over the course of dozens of conversations during the main quest of BG2, then further exploring the relationship in the Throne of Bhaal expansion. Assuming you know what dialogue choices to make to prevent the romance from ending prematurely, that is, which can be tricky, but we'll assume here that you do and that we're looking at the completed relationship. Normally, this extra would make the game's 4 romances shoe-ins for all the slots on this list, but unfortunately, I just didn't feel like the love stories for Aerie and Anomen were all that compelling, so in those cases it wound up just being a lot of extra development for romances that didn't seem particularly noteworthy anyway.
Viconia, however...now here's a touching love story, which fits in very well with her general character development. As a creature of Evil who unwillingly fights against her inherent nature, Viconia is a perfect candidate for a touching story of the redeeming power of love. It's interesting and touching to watch Viconia struggle with an emotional connection she cannot help but make with the main character as they travel together and become sexual partners, at first shrinking back in fear and revulsion from her growing feelings, trying to force them and the protagonist away from her with her typical venom and finding that she can't destroy her emotions so easily...it's good stuff, and when the romance picks up again during the Throne of Bhaal campaign, it only gets better. With acceptance of her love for the protagonist comes the opportunity for Viconia to better explore her own conflicting inner nature, all culminating in the protagonist helping Viconia to change herself for the better, to change her philosophy of life from Evil to Neutral, a massive achievement for her and, if my limited knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons is correct, a significant achievement by the rules of that world. It's all very touching and quite impressive to me.
Runners-Up: Neku and Shiki (The World Ends with You); Protagonist and Jaheira (Baldur's Gate 2); Ratchet and Shin (Sakura Wars 5)
Not a terribly inspiring year for RPG love stories for me. The winner wasn't hard to pick; everything else was mildly nice at best. I would've had Dragon Age 2's Isabela and Hawke Rivalry romance in here, as I really think that the later parts of that are very good and convincing, but honestly, pursuing a Rivalry with Isabela instead of a Friendship* gives you all the really good scenes toward the end whether or not you're factoring in the love angle--all the emotional strength of the scenes occurs whether they be platonic or romantic, so I don't really think I can count that.
Anyway! Neku and Shiki's romance is quiet, more implied than really outright stated, but it's convincingly done, showing them coming together to be stronger in emotional union than they were separately, with Shiki becoming a more self-confident and whole person with Neku's companionship, and Neku finding an emotional anchor to connect him to his social humanity and give him a reason to keep going. Admittedly, a lot of this one is simply seeing how dedicated Neku is to Shiki once she's absent and her future is in his care, rather than seeing developed feelings through a lot of interactions between them, but it's still pretty good. The romance between Jaheira and BG2's protagonist is decent, covering several bases, such as Jaheira moving on from her late husband Khalid, Jaheira questioning how far the protagonist can be trusted, Jaheira choosing to fight her fears and trust her instincts and the person she cares for even to the point of renouncing her way of life when it conflicts with her loyalty to the protagonist, and then...about 500 more discussions wherein she wonders if the protagonist truly can be trusted with so much power. Her never-ending lack of certainty that the person she loves isn't going to just up and decide to start randomly smothering babies with puppy pelts DOES kind of get repetitive a bit, but other than that, the romance is a decent one. Lastly, there's Ratchet and Shin in Sakura Wars 5. It's possible that its quality as a tale of love is exaggerated through comparison to how bad most of the other romantic options are in that game.** Nonetheless, I feel that the connection between Ratchet and Shin seems simple but genuine, and I like it. The added scenes during the finale that come from this romance sell it well. A shame the idiot developers only made it accessible in New Game+...
Best Voice Acting of 2011:
Winner: Dragon Age 2
It's got some flaws (Male Hawke never seems to sound right, and Female Hawke has trouble being convincingly mean for some dialogues), and only a couple voice actors really give a particularly ear-catching performance, but DA2 is overall a good, solid game for voice acting from start to finish--and considering how much dialogue is in this game, ALL of which is spoken, that's laudable. Particularly good are the voice actress for Merrill and the voice actor for the Arishok, and the voice actors for Varric and Fenris really help to define the characters.
Runners-Up: Baldur's Gate 1; Baldur's Gate 2; Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
Though limited, the voice acting in BG1 and BG2 is decent, with a couple voice actors doing a notably fine job, such as the actress who plays Viconia, and Jim Cummings, who plays, in addition to like 50 minor NPCs and enemies, the unforgettably awesome and batshit crazy Minsc. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon does an adequate job. On the one hand, I wouldn't say any part of its voice work really stuck with me, but at the same time, everyone seemed to fit their roles, and the voice acting kept up with the atmosphere and emotion of the story well, which might be harder than it sounds, given the high bar FDFRotM sets in that department.
Best Villain of 2011:
Winner: The Arishok (Dragon Age 2)
Way outshining the true villains of DA2's story, the Arishok is a leader whose orders and religious doctrine (which are basically one and the same) force him into an incredibly frustrating position for years, years in which he is surrounded by a culture that he finds revolting, cut off from his homeland until he completes a mission he cannot, and feared and hated by ignorant racists and religious zealots that he does nothing to provoke. After 4 years of such misery, it's no damn wonder he eventually loses his temper and gives the fanatics the fight they've been baiting him into for years. The Arishok is a neat villain for how he raises sympathy in the player for his plight, for his insight into the Qunari culture in Dragon Age, and for the fact that his virtues almost overpower his vices.
Runners-Up: Fawful (Mario and Luigi 1 - 3); Heiss (Radiant Historia); Melissan (Baldur's Gate 2)
Fawful's not exactly a particularly deep or threatening villain, but he is pretty amusing often enough, and really, how can you not be impressed by a hateful little bespectacled bean that delivers such hurtful taunts as, "Your lives that I spit on are now but a caricature of a cartoon drawn by a kid who is stupid!" That there is hardcore. Melissan has a back story that's a bit of a twist, and otherwise fits the bill of villain pretty well, I guess. Heiss is actually really pretty neat as a villain--he's got a history as creative and interesting as would befit any major player in the events of Radiant Historia, and he successfully keeps a lot of the unsettling mystery about his motives and machinations for most of the game, which is honestly very unusual for an RPG villain. I mean, yes, there are a LOT of RPG villains who keep you in the dark as to the aim of their game for a long, long time, but in almost all cases of this, it just gets annoying after a while to be left in the dark for so long about why and how the shadowy super-powerful evil guy is partaking in villainy. With Heiss, I never felt exasperated by how much was withheld about him, even though you don't find most of it out until the last parts of the game. I guess this is probably more due to the strength of the writing for Radiant Historia than to Heiss's character in particular, since the game's events were enthralling enough that I didn't feel the NEED to know more about Heiss before he was ready to tell, but either way, he's a very cool and layered villain.
Best Character of 2011:
Winner: Neku (The World Ends with You)
Neku's transformation from Hipster Squall to Person Who Is Not A Total Douchebag is done well, I think, and his emotions, desperation, frustration, and growing respect and need for others are convincing and effectively conveyed. Honestly, I don't have much to really say about him, aside from the fact that he's a solidly good character with strong development.
Runners-Up: Beat (The World Ends with You); Shiki (The World Ends with You); Viconia (Baldur's Gate 2)
Uh...yeah. So, of the few games I played this year that were notably good, not a lot were actually driven so much by their characters as by their plot's overall themes and events. Of the games I played this year, only The World Ends with You has a powerful personal touch to it where the characters are its driving force, and, unsurprisingly, its cast outshines that of the rest of the RPGs I saw in 2011. Beat's surprisingly deep and interesting, considering his character type, but that's part of the point, I suppose. Even though it was done with comparatively quickly, I was pretty impressed with Shiki's character development; she's both interesting, and has issues of self worth to work through whose circumstances and twist are pretty unique, at least for what you see in RPGs. As for Viconia, she's quite an interesting character for her depth--everything she was brought up to be is evil and convinced that kindness and selflessness are weak and foolish, yet there's a spark in her, her true nature it seems, that just can't quite be fully eliminated, that spark that brought her to love her brother even when she knew not what "love" was, and that led her to renounce her people and their evil goddess and flee to the surface. As her romance with BG2's protagonist develops, so does Viconia, as she discovers facets of humanity (or elf-ity, whatever) that her people acknowledge only as weakness, yet inevitably draw her in, until she is finally ready to truly cast aside what she was made to be and embrace what she wishes to be. Good stuff.
Best Game of 2011:
Winner: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
It's not perfect. It's got too many holes or too much conjecture (whichever you perceive it as) in its plot. But I can't deny that it's the most impressive game I've played this year, and that it is a real classic of both RPGs, and storytelling through video games in general. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is exceptionally artistic, seeming often to be closer to an anime movie on par with some of Japan's greatest studios than to a video game. It has remarkable atmosphere, its theme and story are gripping, the characters strong and memorable...if you've got a Wii, get it. It's great, and it's art.
Runners-Up: Baldur's Gate 2; Radiant Historia; The World Ends with You
As I said earlier, I didn't have that many RPGs this year that were particularly noteworthy. For 60% of 2011, I thought I would be putting Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch up here (not that MLRotB is bad or anything, it's funny as heck, but it ain't exactly a deep and involved story). But in the end, I did get a little handful of really great titles. BG2 is a good, solid Western RPG, with decent plot elements and a solid cast. BG1 did not impress me all that much, but BG2 really goes above and beyond its predecessor and delivers a satisfying experience. Radiant Historia is just the kind of creative, thoughtful game I've come to hopefully expect from Atlus, with a good plot, a solid cast, and a really creative premise that is executed well. RH is probably the best RPG to significantly employ time travel that I've seen since Chrono Trigger, and I certainly recommend it to any owner of a DS or 3DS. Lastly, The World Ends with You...well, as a SquareEnix game, it automatically gets a crapload of attention even when other worthy titles don't, but this one is a rarity--a modern SquareEnix title that DESERVES the attention and praise it receives. It's interesting, it's emotionally-charged, it's different, and owners of a DS or 3DS should check it out just as much as Radiant Historia.
List Changes of 2011:
Greatest RPGs: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Replaced Baroque as Honorable Mention for artistic virtue).
So! That's it for 2011. Thanks again for a year of hearing me babble about RPGs. Hopefully 2012 will be a more interesting year for RPGs--in fact, I have little fear that this will be true, for Mass Effect 3 comes out this year. But we'll all see a year hence. Enjoy the holidays, and I'll see you in the new year.
* Basically, each character in DA2 can either feel friendly to you, or rivalry with you, depending on how your actions measure up to the character's general beliefs and interests. Similar to how Dragon Age 1 did it, not to mention several other western RPGs, but the difference here is that a high rivalry counts as just as strong a connection with the character as an equally high friendship would. So every romance in DA2 actually has 2 versions--1 for a romance between Friends, people who get along and agree and all, and 1 for a romance between Rivals, people who just don't see eye to eye--but nonetheless have built a sort of trust and connection through this clashing of ideals.
Isabela's philosophies are generally "Don't help anyone unless you're paid," "Don't ever have an opinion on any major issue," and "I want to do everything in my power to make sure I have no idea whose bed I wake up in tomorrow, and if I can also be lying in my own filth as that happens, then that will be lovely." With my style of game play, which is to try to have a protagonist who is not a total worthless slob, I found it much easier to maintain a Rivalry with her than a Friendship.
** 60% of the things Gemini says, does, and thinks in SW5 are already so stupid that Sarah Palin seems almost well-spoken by comparison, but the romantic parts with Gemini multiply that stupidity several times over. Watching Shin and Gemini's date could permanently disfigure you, as the human face was not designed to twist so far as yours will out of reflexive revulsion.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics's Characters
I'd be put in a difficult spot if I had to determine whether it was Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics's plot, characters, setting, music, or battle system that was the least engaging aspect of the extremely ignorable title. But today, for now, let us look at the characters--the ones who aren't random NPCs but actually are recruited through the plot, at least.
Ernesto: Ernesto is our "hot-blooded" hero. I put the quotation marks in there because the game tries, in a halfhearted sort of way, to convince us of how rash and impulsive Ernesto is, more at home fighting than employing strategy (the developers choosing to make him the protagonist of a Strategy RPG seems a slightly stupid decision, now that I think about it). And yeah, I guess he goes through the motions of this, saying that it's the way he is and challenging whoever is in his way to battle and whatnot, but...have you ever seen The Room? Famously bad movie; check out the Nostalgia Critic's review of it if you're not already familiar with it, because it's funny. There's a scene near the end where its main character is having a fit of rage at his cheating girlfriend having left him, and, as the Nostalgia Critic says in that review, it's appropriately over-the-top, yet strangely nonchalant. He's knocking stuff over and asking "why" a bunch, going through all the motions to convince you of his helpless anger, but his tone and expression and listless way of moving just make the whole thing look laughably relaxed. That's kind of what it's like here. Yeah, the game goes through the motions to convince you of Ernesto's one defining trait of recklessness, but it's all so bland and monotone that he just comes off as dull.
Diana: Diana's character confuses me. It SEEMS like she was originally meant to have several interesting points of development in the game, but they all kind of just drop off into nothingness and leave her an utterly generic personality. I mean, there's one point in the game where Ernesto decides that she should adopt a false name so they can better travel incognito, since she's a well-known princess--like Dagger did in Final Fantasy 9. They decide on the name of "Anna" (brilliant cover, guys, make her secret name be part of her actual name). They call her by it for a while, except for occasions where they just don't, and then eventually the need for cover is dropped, and she goes back to being Diana. Nothing really comes of it whatsoever. I admit that Dagger in FF9 didn't have too much of a deal made about her pseudo-name after choosing it, but the idea that it allowed her to move freely through places and meet people she would have been unable to get to as a princess is at least maintained by the game's events and her actions. The monicker Anna changes nothing in the story's events for Diana, does nothing to develop her or those around her...it just fizzles out after accomplishing nothing.
The other thing about Diana that went nowhere was her relationship with Ernesto. Diana's engaged to Ernesto's brother Claudio, but she travels with Ernesto for most of the game away from Claudio. There are a few bits of dialogue at the beginning and middle of this journey that seemed to imply that the game was angling for a love triangle to develop. You know the drill, the 2 of them journeying together through danger, relying on each other, etc. You can even work in the whole thing with the Anna cover name as perhaps being meant to encourage one or both of them to consider "Anna" as a different person from Diana, one free to pursue a relationship with Ernesto...but once Claudio rejoins the party, there's nothing. The idea, if you can call it even that much, just disappears. He asks what the deal is with the Anna name, they say not to worry about it, and Diana goes back to being a dutiful fiancee. Just fizzles out. That's all Diana is, really--a character that you get the feeling was meant for actual development, but just got dropped absentmindedly by the writers.
Claudio: Claudio is the gifted strategist of the game whose clever mind devises the brilliant strategy of sending the 2 people he cares most for in the world as far away from their homes and allies as possible to take on a continent-spanning military empire's armies virtually by themselves. Thankfully for him, the plot basically seems to be making up political situations and geographical scenarios as it goes along that accommodate Claudio's under-normal-circumstances-probably-pretty-stupid plan.
Pablo: Pablo is the faithful servant Claudio sends to help Ernesto and Diana, presumably because he's annoying enough that Claudio just wants him out of his hair. Pablo is about as worthwhile and well-developed a royal servant character as Sancho from Dragon Quest 5. What's that, you say? You don't remember anything about Sancho?
Yeah.
Clefi and Uracca: Based on your choice partway through the game, either Clefi or Uracca will join the party. Do not feel any pressure about which one to choose. Neither will do or say anything important or interesting, ever. Unless you count Pablo's creepy, unrelenting attempts to hit on Uracca, who in addition to making it clear she isn't interested is also, if memory serves, only 15 years old, as being interesting. Then I guess there's some distinguishing characteristic of note...you freak.
Valerie: Valerie is an unassuming girl whose connection to her plot-important father winds up not really being very important overall, leaving the most noteworthy thing about her the fact that she doesn't ever take her armor off. Not exactly prize-winning character depth, but compared to the rest of the game's cast, Valerie's decision not to change her clothes might very well be the most interesting thing this game has to offer.
Ernesto: Ernesto is our "hot-blooded" hero. I put the quotation marks in there because the game tries, in a halfhearted sort of way, to convince us of how rash and impulsive Ernesto is, more at home fighting than employing strategy (the developers choosing to make him the protagonist of a Strategy RPG seems a slightly stupid decision, now that I think about it). And yeah, I guess he goes through the motions of this, saying that it's the way he is and challenging whoever is in his way to battle and whatnot, but...have you ever seen The Room? Famously bad movie; check out the Nostalgia Critic's review of it if you're not already familiar with it, because it's funny. There's a scene near the end where its main character is having a fit of rage at his cheating girlfriend having left him, and, as the Nostalgia Critic says in that review, it's appropriately over-the-top, yet strangely nonchalant. He's knocking stuff over and asking "why" a bunch, going through all the motions to convince you of his helpless anger, but his tone and expression and listless way of moving just make the whole thing look laughably relaxed. That's kind of what it's like here. Yeah, the game goes through the motions to convince you of Ernesto's one defining trait of recklessness, but it's all so bland and monotone that he just comes off as dull.
Diana: Diana's character confuses me. It SEEMS like she was originally meant to have several interesting points of development in the game, but they all kind of just drop off into nothingness and leave her an utterly generic personality. I mean, there's one point in the game where Ernesto decides that she should adopt a false name so they can better travel incognito, since she's a well-known princess--like Dagger did in Final Fantasy 9. They decide on the name of "Anna" (brilliant cover, guys, make her secret name be part of her actual name). They call her by it for a while, except for occasions where they just don't, and then eventually the need for cover is dropped, and she goes back to being Diana. Nothing really comes of it whatsoever. I admit that Dagger in FF9 didn't have too much of a deal made about her pseudo-name after choosing it, but the idea that it allowed her to move freely through places and meet people she would have been unable to get to as a princess is at least maintained by the game's events and her actions. The monicker Anna changes nothing in the story's events for Diana, does nothing to develop her or those around her...it just fizzles out after accomplishing nothing.
The other thing about Diana that went nowhere was her relationship with Ernesto. Diana's engaged to Ernesto's brother Claudio, but she travels with Ernesto for most of the game away from Claudio. There are a few bits of dialogue at the beginning and middle of this journey that seemed to imply that the game was angling for a love triangle to develop. You know the drill, the 2 of them journeying together through danger, relying on each other, etc. You can even work in the whole thing with the Anna cover name as perhaps being meant to encourage one or both of them to consider "Anna" as a different person from Diana, one free to pursue a relationship with Ernesto...but once Claudio rejoins the party, there's nothing. The idea, if you can call it even that much, just disappears. He asks what the deal is with the Anna name, they say not to worry about it, and Diana goes back to being a dutiful fiancee. Just fizzles out. That's all Diana is, really--a character that you get the feeling was meant for actual development, but just got dropped absentmindedly by the writers.
Claudio: Claudio is the gifted strategist of the game whose clever mind devises the brilliant strategy of sending the 2 people he cares most for in the world as far away from their homes and allies as possible to take on a continent-spanning military empire's armies virtually by themselves. Thankfully for him, the plot basically seems to be making up political situations and geographical scenarios as it goes along that accommodate Claudio's under-normal-circumstances-probably-pretty-stupid plan.
Pablo: Pablo is the faithful servant Claudio sends to help Ernesto and Diana, presumably because he's annoying enough that Claudio just wants him out of his hair. Pablo is about as worthwhile and well-developed a royal servant character as Sancho from Dragon Quest 5. What's that, you say? You don't remember anything about Sancho?
Yeah.
Clefi and Uracca: Based on your choice partway through the game, either Clefi or Uracca will join the party. Do not feel any pressure about which one to choose. Neither will do or say anything important or interesting, ever. Unless you count Pablo's creepy, unrelenting attempts to hit on Uracca, who in addition to making it clear she isn't interested is also, if memory serves, only 15 years old, as being interesting. Then I guess there's some distinguishing characteristic of note...you freak.
Valerie: Valerie is an unassuming girl whose connection to her plot-important father winds up not really being very important overall, leaving the most noteworthy thing about her the fact that she doesn't ever take her armor off. Not exactly prize-winning character depth, but compared to the rest of the game's cast, Valerie's decision not to change her clothes might very well be the most interesting thing this game has to offer.
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