Undertale Helped Me Understand CEOs

There’s been a certain human behavior that I’ve never really been able to understand, or even visualize, for a lot of my life: that of a great many corporate CEOs (and various associated executive leaders they surround themselves with).  Well, I suppose it's more just the ultra-rich as a whole, but it's the heads of corporations who most notably engage in this behavior, so for the sake of ease, we'll just refer to them all as CEOs in this rant.  Anyway, 1 of their behaviors has always confused me.  Specifically, the all-consuming greed that drives them to harm or even destroy the lives of others.

Oh, now, come on, don’t look at me like that.  I’m not naive.  The concept of greed isn’t some ghastly unknown to me.  I’m as familiar with, and able to grasp the concept of, avarice as the next average person.  The desire to accumulate more of something (typically money) is a thought pretty much each and every one of us is familiar with, and I’m no exception to that.  Hell, I’m not sure you can exist in a capitalistic society without a functional understanding of greed, as it’s the fundamental fuel and backbone of the entire damnable system.  And before you go labeling me a Socialist or a Communist, let me point out that I don’t believe greed is any less prevalent in those systems--it (and the desire for power) is just the wrench that inevitably gets stuck in their works and destroys them, rather than the oil that greases their gears.  Greed is an inherent part of our nature as human beings.  One that we absolutely should try to overcome and rise above, mind you, but to act like it’s not naturally there is silly, and to not understand it pretty well is nearly impossible.

But there’s greed, and then there’s what CEOs feel.  Like...okay, regular greed, the kind that we all know and are familiar with?  There’s a purpose to it.  Usually not a good one, but a purpose nonetheless.  You desire more of something (typically money) because of its potential use for you.  Maybe you’re begging for bucks because you’re destitute and in need of what money can buy you--that’s a purpose (and 1 of the few morally acceptable ones).  Maybe you’re craving more capital because it might mean some more luxuries in your life--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you're avaricious for acquisition because it might mean being able to show off your wealth to others, gain their admiration or jealousy--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you’re covetous for cash because you want the ease and power it brings, the favors you can buy with it, putting you above the laws that restrain normal people--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you desire more dough because you want the security of knowing that if hard times hit, you’ll have something to fall back on--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you lust for lucre because you want to create a legacy to pass on to your inheritors, and make sure they’re comfortable, secure, or even affluent--that’s a purpose.

But there can come a point where further greed no longer serves any purpose.  Let’s take Activision-Blizzard’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, as an example, here.*  Mr. Kotick, as of the moment I type this, has a net worth of $600,000,000.  His annual income, in 2019 (the most recent "normal" financial year, I reckon), was $30,000,000.

Think, for a moment, about anything and everything you can conceive needing, wanting, setting aside for financial safety, and leaving to your family.  Consider how much money it would take for you to impress anyone and everyone you’ve ever known with passing familiarity.  Contemplate every luxury that you could own and make enough use out of to actually enjoy.**  If we for a moment buy into the idea that possessions, comfort, adulation, and wealth can buy happiness, try to conceive everything it would take to bring you as much enjoyment as you could ever want, for the rest of your life, with enough extra to provide very well for your family after your passing.

All done with the thought exercise?  Well, you’ve racked up quite a charge on your mental American Express, but I can almost guarantee you that you have not gone over budget for Bobby Kotick’s salary for a single year, and it’s all but certain that you haven’t broken what he makes in 2.

Okay, but so what?  So the guy makes a truly exorbitant amount of money.  He’s earned it, right?  Well, I mean, not really, in fact not at all, actually, he’s just the one telling the company what to do while the employees do 100% of the actual work involved in making that money, but hey, that’s the system.  The point is, what’s so mind-boggling here?  He’s made it to the absolute top, he won the game of life.  There is nothing left in the game of capitalism for him to strive for, because he’s already able to do and acquire absolutely anything he wants and can effectively enjoy or benefit from.  The fact that he’s in a position where the money keeps accumulating even beyond his ability to find ways to enjoy it is sickening, but irrelevant; it’s just a passive fact.

Well, what defied my comprehension for so long is the fact that Bobby-boy wants more.

Yeah.  Having already accumulated more money than could ever be entirely spent on things that he could take enjoyment from for the rest of his life, with the guarantee of dozens of lifetimes’ worth of money coming to him every year, Mr. Kotick continues to make bids for more.  In the last year alone, he demanded--and was given--a bonus of $155,000,000.  Yes--while already possessing more money than he could meaningfully spend on anything, Bobby Kotick petitioned to be handed over 1/5th of his entire net worth, out of the blue.

And this money didn’t come from nowhere.  It didn’t just happen to be lying around, waiting to be claimed.  In the past few years, Kotick’s company has laid off over a thousand employees, hundreds of which were canned just this same year as Bobby’s bonus.  Not to mention that a significant number of Activision-Blizzard’s rank-and-file employees are paid so little that they can’t afford the lunches sold at their own cafeteria.  The money used to foot Bobby’s bonus came at the expense of thousands of other people’s comfort, health, and livelihoods.  Bobby isn’t just greedy beyond comprehension in a vacuum--he’s actively and knowingly worsening the lives of others to satisfy his avarice.

And THAT’S what I could never really, truly grasp until recently.  It’s always just been too beyond my imagination to really understand.  How can a human being at a CEO’s level still reach covetously for more?  Once you have so much wealth that the wealth becomes meaningless, because you’ve already passed the point of being able to buy anything you could ever, ever need or personally enjoy, then what motivation can there possibly be to desperately seek more of it?  And especially confusing--why go out of your way to harm others in that pursuit?  To a man for whom all doors are already forever open, a key can exist as no more than a faintly understood, intangible concept, so why would that man go out of his way to grab other people’s house keys right out of their pockets?

It’s always confused me, because even by the low standards of human behavior, it’s completely illogical.  Bobby Kotick and his like are exerting themselves in pursuit of acquiring something that, relative to them, has no value.  And while I wouldn’t be so naive as to believe that Kotick or any of his peers have even the slightest capacity to feel empathy--in our world, you don’t often get to the top of an economic or political venture while burdened by a functional human psyche--it equally confused me that they could care so much about accumulating what is functionally nothing to them that they’d go to the trouble of harming others for it.  I didn’t get it.  I acknowledged the reality of the behavior, but I didn’t understand how it was possible.

Until, about a year ago, I suddenly remembered Undertale’s Chara.

Undertale is 1 of the more masterful works of art in the modern age, and its beneath-the-surface antagonist Chara represents a lot of things.  Amongst them, Chara symbolizes the player him/herself--or, more accurately, an archetype of a gamer that the player has, in order to meet Chara, undertaken.  Chara is a psychopath, incapable of caring for those around him/her, whose only observable joys come from destruction...and from the increasing of his/her stats.  In fact, we don’t really even see evidence that Chara actually enjoys the murder and suffering he/she is responsible for, only that he/she is utterly determined to cause it.  The only thing we truly know for sure that Chara enjoys is the act of gaining power--and even that’s not about the power, but the fact that the number denoting the power has increased.  To quote Chara him/herself:

“Power.
Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong.
HP.  ATK.  DEF.  GOLD.  EXP.  LV.
Every time a number increases, that feeling...
That’s me.”

It’s a chilling, and yet very accurate, indictment of a certain mentality that some gamers have toward their pastime.  I’ve seen, and I’m sure at some point you have as well, players who approach games with a narrow mentality of solely caring about what tangibly benefits their protagonist.  They make their decisions based entirely on what most benefits them, regardless of what it means for the story and the characters within it--if the game’s story presents a choice between letting an innocent child live and having no tangible reward from it, or brutally killing that child and acquiring an extra point of Strength or a slightly better weapon from the act, this particular type of player will commit infanticide every time, because that’s what’s better for them.  The fact that the benefit from this terrible act might be so small that it will never produce a noticeable effect on the rest of the playthrough is unimportant--all that matters to this kind of gamer is that a number or inventory slot informs them that they have benefited.

And sure, it’s all just a game, so it doesn’t really matter, but at the same time...if gaming is a major hobby or passion of yours, and yet you don’t care enough about it to even feel any remorse over what may happen to the people (imaginary though they may be) within the game from your actions, then isn’t that still troubling?  It unnerves me a bit, at least.

At any rate, that’s Chara, by his/her own words--the unrelenting, uncaring drive to see numbers increase.  It doesn’t matter whether those increases are needed, or important, or even something you’ll ever benefit from--you can beat Undertale without needing to kill everything in the game to accumulate as high a level and stats as you can get; you can beat just about any RPG comfortably without maxing out your stats.  All that matters for Chara, for the kind of player that Chara represents, is that tiny little shot of dopamine at seeing a stat increase, at having a little numeral tell you that you’re greater now than you were prior...even if your increase has no practical value because no obstacle could have stopped you before it.  As Chara him/herself said in the past, according to an unreleased (but by all appearances canon) piece of dialogue found here, what matters when filling a glass of water is doing so most efficiently, completely to the top and even beyond that, regardless of how thirsty you are.

And that’s how I now can understand Bobby Kotick, and all his kind.  They’re Chara.  And Chara isn’t something made up--he/she is a representation of people, a lot of people, who demonstrably only play the game to achieve the maximum and nothing less.  People who level-grind past the point that they can kill a game’s final boss in a single turn aren’t addicted to the application of that power, they’re just addicted to the pleasure of seeing the numbers representing that power rise.  But in real life, the only universal stat of any significance is your wealth--and Bobby Kotick and his peers, these real-life Charas, just like seeing that number jump up.  Regardless of whether it has any function for them.  Regardless of what other people--no more than NPCs to them--are damaged in the process.














* Please understand, though, that while Bobby makes a great, well-rounded example of what I’m talking about, he is by no means unique to those in his position and class of wealth.  If we looked at the CEO of Ubisoft, or CD Projekt Red, or EA, or Disney, or Epic Games, or Apple, or Kimberly-Clark, or Amazon, or General Motors, or almost any other given major corporation, all that would change are the figures and dates, not the actual content of their behavior.


** I think it’s important to make this distinction, here.  A lot of people like to talk about how much money a person “needs,” but Cr1t1kal once made a compelling point about why this is a bad mentality and turn of phrase to adopt.  It’s not unreasonable to want more than what you strictly need--wanting to have enough to be able to enjoy life is beyond what one strictly needs, after all, and yet it’s only right and natural that we pursue pleasures, satisfactions, and lasting fulfillment within our lives.  Only ants don’t care about anything but strict necessity.

BUT, it is also equally important to make the distinction between what you can own, and what you can own and effectively enjoy.  Owning 7 different homes, for example, is meaningless because you can only realistically enjoy the luxury of owning 2 or 3, 4 at most--any more is either a possession that will mean nothing to you because you won’t use it, or a burden because your instinct to make use of it will negatively affect your living habits as you keep jetting from 1 to the next all year round.  Cr1t1kal’s point of viewing matters beyond just “need” is reasonable, but we must also recognize that its own parameters are not limitless.

General RPG Minigames 13: Suikoden 2's Cooking Contest

It’s true that most of the times when I have spoken about minigames in RPGs, it hasn’t been especially positive, and the rants I’ve specifically done on them have by and large been highly negative.  I cannot deny this fact.  I think, however, that if you will for a moment recall the objective fact that minigames are by and large an agonizing cancer that act as a pestilence constantly debilitating the entire genre’s immersion and enjoyability, you’ll find that my attitude toward them is forgivable.

Nonetheless, no matter how vile something may be as a rule, there are always bound to be exceptions.  I mean, in general, the prospect of consuming vomit is not very appealing, but we’re happy enough to make an exception for bee barf, and hell, we’ll wear whale puke.  And much like honey, and ambergris, and that flavoring agent that we harvest from beavers’ butts, there exist a few RPG minigames which are not just bearable, not even just okay, but actually good.  And among them, Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest deserves special recognition.

Why is the Cooking Contest so laudable?  For a number of reasons, really.  First and most importantly, it’s actually a decent storytelling entity in and of itself.  This sustained series of culinary battles contains its own side-story of loss, intrigue, and heroics, independent of and unbeholden to the story of Suikoden 2 itself.  This is a full-on sidequest complete with its own story as Hai Yo attempts to thwart the aims of a shadowy underground organization by stealing their prized weapon and keeping it safe from their attempts to reclaim it.  The Suikoden 2 team took time and put effort into writing a story of Hai Yo facing off against the evil organization that killed his lover and proving to the world that his and their craft is at its most powerful when used for the good and joy of others, rather than one’s own ambitions.

Most RPGs with long-term minigames make the mistake of thinking that the minigame itself is capable of maintaining the player’s engagement.  You play Chocobo Hot and Cold a lot over the course of Final Fantasy 9, for example, but there’s not really any plot associated with it, nor for that most heinous and reviled of evils, Dark Cloud 2’s Spheda, in spite of it being a constant companion through the game’s full course.  The most you can usually hope for is a very, very minor little bit on the side with a minigame as with Final Fantasy 8’s Triple Triad, which can involve a small pseudo-sidequest of finding and challenging the game’s top players to prove that Squall’s the true king of the game.  But just as a character defined solely by a desire to be better than everyone else at 1 single solitary skill/game is a flat and boring entity, so is a minigame story that’s just about being the best at that minigame bland and unappealing.  Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest, though?  There’s an actual running plot, and while competition over who’s the true master of the game is a factor, it’s not an end in and of itself, but a vehicle for the true purpose of a story of heartbreak, courage, and conviction.

...A story of heartbreak, courage, and conviction, all told in relation to culinary competitions.  Yeah, that’s the next fun thing about the Cooking Contest: it’s greatly amusing tongue-in-cheek stuff.  You know how 1 of the reasons I love Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden is for the fact that it hilariously keeps a straight face about its story of despair, redemption, parental love, cyberpunk stuff, sacrifice, and all this other serious jazz even while being an utterly ridiculous sequel to Space Jam where basketball is some kind of dangerous super-power?  While not as gloriously sober-absurd as BSUaJG, Suikoden 2 still pulls off an admirable and very amusing blend of the severe with the ridiculous as it tells Hai Yo’s story of a man fleeing and then fighting to stop a corrupt, powerful clan...of chefs who want to use the ultimate recipe to rule the world, somehow.  I mean, the minigame side story’s protagonist says it all himself, really--Hai Yo is a man carrying the loss of his beloved, the burden of turning against his comrades, the struggle of being the only man who will champion the just and responsible use of his art as a source of joy rather than ambition...and this is what the guy looks like.  Tell me that’s not funny.

Smart, too.  In a game whose plot possesses such weight and emotional power as Suikoden 2, having such a different, amusing aesthetic to its side story makes the Cooking Contest’s tale manage to stand out, rather than getting stuck in the main story’s shadow.

Aside from the fact that this minigame has an actual story, and that said story is filled with a deftly constructed dissonance of SERIOUS BUSINESS and over-the-top theatrics based in absurdity, this minigame is also beneficial for another narrative reason--it provides a little smidgeon of character development for the majority of the cast.  It’s certainly nothing much, of course, but having over 60 members of the cast able to sit in as judges, each with their own food preferences and introduction (as well as a few of them even having a line of dialogue to say for said intro), fleshes out the large cast of Suikoden just a little bit more and adds to their personalities.  Suikoden 2 has a lot of small touches of character rounding to its grand cast, and while individually they don’t amount to much, the sheer number of little quirks and details that are gleaned about each of the 108 Stars of Destiny from side content like the Cooking Contest is a great alternative method for making a cast that feels real and personal, without having to dedicate entire side stories and character arcs to them all.  Additionally, a major draw of the early Suikodens is their ability to create a sense of community and camaraderie through the army that the protagonist raises, looking at and portraying large-scale conflicts as social entities as they do so, and having half the residents of the castle get involved in this side story, even just in a small and silly role as cooking judges, helps build that communal aesthetic for the cast.

While those are the qualities that make me particularly fond of Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest, it’s also worth applauding just how much effort went into this minigame.  True, from 1 perspective, this minigame is exceptionally simplistic mechanically--all the player does is choose which courses to serve, and then mash the X button to make them.  You can make the argument that this is as mindless a task as drinking soup with Ayla in Chrono Trigger, arm wrestling in Final Fantasy 7, charging a Guardian Force in Final Fantasy 8 or your next attack in Saturday Morning RPG, or any of hundreds, probably thousands of other minigames and minor combat mechanics that incorrectly equate rapid button-tapping with entertainment.

However, even if it’s technically facile in 1 regard, it’s impressively coded in another.  Consider this: there are over 60 different characters from whom the game randomly selects judges, each of whom has relatively individualized tastes* and so has been programmed to respond with different levels of favor to every possible dish, of which there are, when you account for seasoning combinations, a total of 240.  Even if my suspicions that most judges fall into an archetype instead of being totally unique (I theorize, for example, that 1 lover of sweets will give the same scores as another lover of sweets), that is an absolutely insane commitment of time and effort to make for programming a completely optional minigame--or even a mandatory one.  And keep in mind that the scoring system isn’t just a Yes-No situation for whether a character did or didn’t like the food--they judge on a scale of 1 to 5, so those 60+ characters have been programmed to respond with 5 levels of preference regarding those 240 dishes.

Meanwhile on the other side you’ve got Xenogears acting like it’s hot shit because it figured out how to code Rock-Paper-Scissors, and Breath of Fire 3 acting all proud that it can throw some NPCs into a couple corners of the map and call it Hide and Seek.  Yeah, Wild Arms 1, I’m sure the programmers who coded the thousands of potential scoring outcomes to Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest are really impressed by the fact that you simulated Whack-A-Mole.

Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge that beyond the ways in which the Cooking Contest is an unexpectedly fun experience for a minigame, it also avoids some of the pitfalls that minigames frequently suffer from.  It doesn’t really require any specialized and frustrating outside skills that have nothing to do with the rest of the game, as minigames so frequently do, for 1 thing--yeah, I guess button-mashing could be called an outside skill, but I feel like that’s simplistic enough that it shouldn’t count, and even then, the required competence at it for success in this minigame is pretty minimal.  And secondly, while it’s not content that you would want to miss, it’s always, always, always a good thing NOT to make your minigame mandatory to continuing the main game, so I can appreciate that the Cooking Contest is entirely optional.

Now, in the end, what does this all amount to?  Not much more than a cute, enjoyable, but mostly negligible little extra quirk to the game.  Suikoden 2 would certainly not feel less complete, nor, really, any lesser as a whole, were it to have never included the Cooking Contest minigame and its little story arc.  Still, though, ANY minigame that exists as anything more than a stupid, frustrating burden upon the game it inhabits is a happy exception, and the fact that this one is actually an outright positive experience, not to mention made with actual care and work, makes it deserving of some recognition, I think.











* Although admittedly those tastes are not always consistent.  When Icy Brian played through this sidequest, he discovered that just because a judge is said to like Japanese dishes,** that doesn’t mean they actually WILL give them a good score.  Hell, 1 character outright requested a specific dish in his intro, and then gave it a 2 when his wish was granted.  The preferences stated for the judges are usually reliable, but there are a few gaffs here and there.


** How the hell do people in the Suikoden world know what cuisine is Japanese, anyway?  Or French, or Chinese, for that matter?

Pokemon Generation 8's Leon is a Jackass

Not every Pokemon Champion is all that impressive.  Lord knows that Lance and Alder never impressed me in the slightest, for example, and I actually just had to look up who the Champion of Generation 3 was to remind myself.  Which didn’t even work; I know what he looks like and what his name is, but I still don’t remember a thing about him.  So yeah, they can’t all be Cynthia.  But that’s no excuse for Leon.

Leon is a putz.  A schmuck.  An incompetent, braindead doofus whose existence has actively worsened his entire nation.  The guy is an embarrassing, tiresome excuse for a Champion, and represents a painfully obvious case of Trying Too Hard on Nintendo’s part.

Let’s just get it out of the way first: I was never gonna like the guy, because he’s the most notable entity forcing the protagonist to stay out of the plot of their own game.  If the slightest possibility of actually taking part in the game’s story arises and Leon’s around, you can bet your last dollar that Leon’s gonna be the one to enthusiastically shoo the player off, insisting the protagonist concentrate solely on their little sports challenges.  Leon and I weren’t going to get along, ever, because he is dedicated to keeping me away from the entire reason I’m playing the game.

Still, it can’t just be me, right?  I mean, the guy is a rank amateur!  As a Pokemon trainer, Leon reminds me of Eleanor Silverburg from Suikoden 4: overrated, and constantly lauded by all around him for possessing nothing more than basic competency.  You’d have a difficult time arguing that he’s anywhere but the absolute bottom of the Champions in terms of basic in-combat ability, and his dialogue certainly seems to back that up.  “Super effective hits are a surefire path to victory!” he’ll proudly inform you, as you battle him for the title of greatest trainer in the region.  Cynthia set and manipulated battle conditions to give herself advantages half a dozen turns in advance--meanwhile, Leon over here knows how to follow the advice of a tutorial NPC.  So impressive.

I also like the part during the final battle where, if he scores a critical hit, he’ll reassure the protagonist not to focus on it, and keep going ahead.  It’s like...yeah, okay, thanks again for the tutorial during the final battle, dick.  Yup, Gloria/Victor has trounced every Gym Leader in the region, beaten all of her/his rival trainers, fought alongside beasts of legend to save the world, and taken down a godlike Pokemon that whupped your sorry ass, Leon--but no, you’re right, she/he’s in serious danger of giving in to despair over your lame-balls Charizard getting a lucky shot.  She/He’ll just fall all to pieces without your generous condescension.

Speaking of the Charizard, gee, Nintendo, could you pander a little harder to the nostalgia of your adult audience?  “Look, look, 30-to-40 demographic!  Leon uses a CHARIZARD!  Just like YOU did 25 years ago!  Remember that?  Huh?  Remember the good old days with Charizard?  Is this not DA BOMB, my fellow used-to-be kids?  I’d buy that for a dollar, amirite?  ...No, really, please, buy this for dollars, please please oh my Arceus we want your money so bad.”  Never mind that Leon’s constantly spouting platitudes about how much regional pride he has while making his signature Pokemon one that comes from an entirely different region.  I mean, I’ll be the first to agree that the new Pokemon you’ve rolled out for the Galar region are the most uninspired lot you’ve come up with yet--seriously, I never thought I’d  reach a day when I’d view something like Flapple would be 1 of the better new Pokemon for a generation--but maybe at least showcase a Pokemon you can find in your own country if you’re gonna keep spewing patriotic sweet-nothings all the time?

And while we’re on the subject of stuff that Leon says all the damn time...DUDE.  We get it.  YOU’RE THE CHAMPION.  Could ya...could ya maybe stop calling attention to it every 4 minutes?  I mean the word champion is even Leon’s favorite adjective.

Not that he’s too terribly attached to the job, mind you.  Leon’s perfectly willing to give up the position to any of the sponsored trainers who can complete their journey and defeat him, as is only right.  Indeed, Leon is perfectly content to give the chance to replace him to any talented, worthy trainer...or, of course, to his own family member.  Yes, nepotism is alive and well in the Galar region with Leon, who makes it a point to endorse Hop, his own brother, to take on the challenge to become the next Champion.  Yeah, because Hop being admitted into a competition based on talent for leadership and tactical intelligence isn’t a dead give-away of preferential treatment at all.  Who else was on Leon’s list of potential candidates for sponsorship that Hop was deemed more qualified than, I wonder?  Team Skull grunts?  Magikarp?  A half-eaten sandwich?*

And on the subject of the transition of leadership from 1 Champion to the next, can we talk about what a scummy, responsibility-dodging ass Leon is?  The first thing he does, the FIRST THING, when Gloria/Victor becomes the new Champion of Galar, is immediately start talking about how it’s time to start looking ahead and planning for the future, passing the goddamn buck to Gloria/Victor as he says it’s up to her/him “to create the bright future we all hope to see.”  GEE, kinda interesting how the SECOND he’s no longer Champion himself, suddenly all the fun and games are over and it’s time for the Champion to start doing some real goddamn work, huh?

What convenient fucking timing that we’re going to start taking the responsibility for Galar’s future seriously NOW, huh?  Not for the last few years, during which the Champion’s been known for absolutely goddamn nothing but public showboating and sporting matches to show off his might as a trainer.  Not for the past couple weeks, which was when Rose was trying to get Leon to commit to some action regarding the potential energy crisis in the region’s future.  Not last night, when another sporting event was deemed more important than Rose’s having a mental breakdown out of worry for the region’s future.  No, no, not any of THOSE times, only NOW, when some other Champion can be the one working for the good of Galar.

So, hey, Leon, quick question there, buddy.  If it’s up to the Champion to bring about the new future and guide their region’s path, as you are so conveniently quick to point out now that you’ve been replaced...does that mean it’s your fucking fault that Galar is a nation of sports-obsessed morons who are too busy filling stadiums in worship of you to pay any attention to their looming energy crisis?  That everyone in the region’s so fixated on seeing giant Pokemon battles that even the most basic history and lore of your country’s been almost completely lost?  That all socio-economic ventures have become so inherently tied to the narrow, specialized Pokemon battling involving Dynamaxing, that any town not lucky enough to be built on a Power Spot runs the risk of sagging into poverty and obscurity, like Spikemuth?

Is the current careless, teetering bread-and-circus society of Galar the path and destination you consciously envisioned, Leon, or did it just happen to get that way on your watch because your mental acuity, ability to prioritize, and personal values are all identical to those of a poorly-raised 5-year-old?  Has your country been getting destroyed by your vision, or your carelessness?  Hitler or Nero, Leon, which one are you?

You know, if I had even the slightest faith in the writers of Pokemon Generation 8, I might have thought that it was all intentional.  I might have thought that Leon, and the sorry, vapid, 1-dimensional society of the Galar region were an intentional critique of the Pokemon world’s tendency to elect its most lauded celebrities and (from all appearances) government leaders based simply on how good they are at a specific sport.  You could look at Leon’s total disinterest in anything of actual importance to the region, at the way the region’s so busy being distracted by stadium matches that it can’t face its actual problems (present or future), and see a subtle but scathing commentary on the social structures that have been established in previous games as being the norm of the Pokemon world.  A message to the tune of, “Choose your leaders based on their ability to win Pokemon battles, and of course you’re going to get a dumb-as-rocks, clueless jock like Leon as your leader,” or something to that effect.  This could be a clever, insightful indictment of the series, much in the way that Generation 7 quietly criticized the way that Pokemon are treated in this world...

But it’s not.  Generation 7?  Well-written, involved, emotionally powerful story with depth and nuance.  Generation 8?  Game Freak actively barred you from the plot so they wouldn’t have to actually write it.  The writers of Sword and Shield likely do not possess the talent, and absolutely do not possess the work ethic, to have intended anything more of Leon as a character than the surface level.  Besides, the game makes it too strong and uniform a point to portray Leon as some great guy you’re supposed to idolize--he’s celebrated too earnestly for you to be intended to do anything else.  Sadly, though, the substance isn’t there to back that desire up, and in the end, Leon is simply a tiresome dipshit.

I miss Cynthia.














* Yes, he did sponsor Gloria/Victor, too, but let’s not pretend that said sponsorship didn’t feel a hell of a lot like an unexpected afterthought.

Pokemon Generation 8's Laziness

Man, even by Pokemon’s low standards, Game Freak really, really phoned it in on Generation 8.

Look, I knew, deep in my heart, that Generation 7 was going to be a singular, happy outlier.  A 1-time miracle.  I know I did that rant in which I expressed hopeful optimism that the themes and quality of Sun and Moon’s writing represented the first step to the series evolving into something compelling, and I did hold that hope in my heart, but realistically, I never did expect to be vindicated.  Sometimes a Lufia 2 happens.  You just have to be happy when a Wild Arms 3 drops out of the sky, because you won’t see it again.  Every now and then, a game comes along whose high quality makes it a bizarre outlier in the rest of its series, and you just have to enjoy these Dragon Quest 8s when they come along and accept their passing.  I get that, and I did not expect Pokemon Generation 8 to continue 7’s remarkable, out of character quality.  I fully expected that, when Sword and Shield came, we’d see a return to the usual bland, shallow, careless writing that has typified the Pokemon experience since Red and Blue.

What I really didn’t expect was that Game Freak would manage to be even lazier than that.

When you play a typical Pokemon game, there’s a plot.  I mean, sort of.  There’s a general stab in the dark at a plot, at least.  It’s not always good, but it’s there.  Maybe there’s a team of bad guys out there stealing Pokemon for the sake of crime.  Perhaps there’s a group of exceptionally stupid morons fighting each other to completely needlessly rearrange the planet’s continental feng shui.  Could be that there’s a bunch of pretend animal rights activists who are actually basically just Team Rocket with a better PR department.  Possibly there’s some guy trying to undo the universe, become God, and then remake all of creation as he sees fit.*  But whether it’s barely written, badly written, poorly written, or unexpectedly sort of halfway decently written, there IS a story going on in the Pokemon titles prior to 7.  There’s a narrative in which the protagonist of the game DOES become involved, throughout the game’s course, and plays a sustained role in resolving.

Generation 8 decides to take a different direction with things, and actively tell you to mind your own goddamn business whenever the subject of the plot is brought up.

Seriously!  During the course of Sword and Shield, there are some events** going on in the background, which you will occasionally...well, the term “cross paths with” implies way too close a facsimile of involvement.  Let’s say instead that there will occasionally be times during Generation 8 in which you can see from a distance that something is actually happening in the region.  But without fail, every time this happens, you’re told by a nearby NPC not to worry about it, and just concentrate on your stupid, generic badge-collecting journey.  It’s like every single person in the region is a cop parroting the cliched “Move along, nothing to see here,” line, throughout the whole game.

Think about that for a second!  Just, like, really take in the fact that Pokemon Generation 8 is a game that makes an active effort to excommunicate the protagonist from the plot.  Because with the exception of a few moments of learning some vague, generic snippets of lore for the region with Sonia, whose archeological and investigative skills are more on par with those of a bored tourist than a professor’s assistant, that is the entirety of the Sword and Shield experience right up to the final 2 hours or so.  It’s a game that excludes the player from its story.

Imagine if the first 70 minutes of Star Wars was just watching Luke walking to Tosche Station for those power converters.  Occasionally he’ll see some distant indication that there’s an intergalactic war going on, but every time he notices it, Uncle Owen (Leon) pops up out of nowhere and says “Don’t you worry none about all that hoo-hah, boy, you just mind your own (Com)beeswax and keep gettin’ on over to Tosche Station. Power converters are ALL that should matter to ye, ya blue milk-swillin’ chump!”  Interspersed by a rare visit from Obi-Wan (Sonia), who’s just there to sprinkle a couple historical factoids about lightsabers and the Force around.  Oh yeah, and for some reason Jar Jar Binks (Hop) is always around.

And then, finally, in the last 11 minutes, Luke gets to fly an X-Wing and blow up the Death Star, but only after Uncle Owen had had a go at it first and widened the exhaust port, and only with Jar Jar jammed in the cockpit with Luke to help pull the trigger, thus significantly lessening the scope of Luke’s accomplishment.  Because Arceus forbid Generation 8 gives us a break from Hop or stops Lickitunging Leon’s ass for a full 2 minutes.

At the very least, I guess it’s a unique approach to treat the interaction between plot and player like that of popular girls excluding some kid they disapprove of in elementary school.  Not quite what I meant when I said I wanted more creativity in the writing for this series, though.  Just...imagine being so incredibly lazy and incompetent that the effort of writing a story as mundane and careless as Pokemon Generation 1’s plot is STILL more work than you’re willing to do while on the clock for the better part of 2 years.  Imagine looking at the bare outline you’ve made for a story, and deciding that it is also the final draft.

This isn’t the only stupid, annoying flaw of Pokemon Generation 8, of course.  Hop is an uninteresting, boring, pointless waste of space.  A mechanic of having random-encounters try to chase the player down is annoying; the whole point of tall grass in Pokemon is that the player has some agency in deciding whether he/she feels like catching more Pokemon at that moment.***  Bede is basically the antagonist version of a fart--unpleasant to experience for a couple seconds, and yet, in spite of how unlikable he was, utterly and completely forgotten a few moments later.  Even considering that the player is basically shoved violently away from him at every opportunity, Rose is still surprisingly empty and boring, and Eternatus may be the least remarkable Legendary Pokemon to date.  The new Pokemon themselves, for that matter, are the saddest bunch of blah since Generation 2.  The post-game content is tiresome, stupid trash--I sincerely don’t give a shit about Hop’s self-esteem, the villains are shallow, dithering morons who put Dr. Wiley to shame when it comes to immediate and insincere defeated groveling, and is it just me or does Sonia get disproportionately bent out of shape about the betrayal by her intern when the intern is brand new, has a generic character model, and doesn’t even have a name?****

Plus, of course, there’s Leon, who is a happy-go-lucky dipshit well worth a rant all on his own.  Expect that one in the very near future.

Nonetheless, even if Generation 8 is otherwise a meaningless, unappealing mess as a whole, what truly stands out about it and makes it the worst entry of the series is this baffling, lazy, utterly counter-productive exclusion of the protagonist from their own adventure.  Some players complain when an RPG railroads them from 1 plot point to the next; Sword and Shield, by contrast, railroads the player into the middle of nowhere, away from their destination.  Generation 3 might have been dumb as hell, Generation 1 might have been stale and threadbare, Generation 5 might have been a cowardly betrayal of its own premise...but in none of them did the Champion of the region essentially hide the story behind his back, hold the protagonist away by the head, and sneer “Stop thinking about nerdy shit and go play some more sports, dork!” for the whole game.  Pokemon Sword and Shield is a true testament to sloth, a waste of time defined by its writers’ uniquely assertive take on avoiding the labor they’re paid to perform.





















* Is it just me, or did the stakes with Cyrus seem wildly higher than they were for any other conflict in the series?  It’s like a real RPG villain had to make ends meet and took a side gig with Nintendo in his free time.  Seriously, the guy just basically is Hikawa from SMT3!


** Although I would like to take the opportunity to mention that these events are NOT especially big or interesting.  It’s basically a business guy, Rose, freaking out about the fact that there might be an energy crisis 1000 years in the future, and the region’s star athlete, Leon, telling him to chill the fuck out about it.  Not so much because Leon believes that there’s enough time in the coming millennium to find a solution to the problem, as would be reasonable, but more because Leon doesn’t want to delay Sports! for even a moment to deal with the issue.  You can bet your butt(erfree) that Leon would give not a tenth of a shit more about this issue if the lights were gonna go out in the region the next day.


*** Credit where it’s due, though: it IS a good thing that we finally see the random encounter Pokemon on the main screen.  In a series that’s all about catching the Pokemon you want and avoiding the ones you don’t like (or avoiding duplicates if you’re out for a half-of-Noah’s-Ark approach), that’s a pretty great quality-of-life feature.

...Of course, you wouldn’t think it’d have taken 25 years to figure out how to give the player this small, obvious piece of autonomy, but hey, cut Game Freak a break, we can’t all be as technologically advanced as Chrono Trigger was in 1995.


**** Although I suppose I have to at least acknowledge that the post-game adventure represents the first time in this game where you’re actually allowed to be a part of the plot.  Yeah, apparently it took until the game was over for Nintendo’s writers to feel like opening a word processor.

Pokemon Generation 8's Downloadable Content

I can’t even fathom how boring this is going to be.  DLC is already the part of a game least likely to be interesting or worthwhile, in my experience, and Nintendo especially has a bad track record with it.  And that’s DLC for games that are otherwise good to some degree.  What will a less engaging piece of Pokemon Generation 8 even look like?  After the main game, my expectations are low enough that I might count it as a win if The Isle of Armor isn’t entirely a minigame about laundering your underwear and The Crown Tundra isn’t a snow shoveling simulator.

Then again, who knows?  Maybe Game Freak hunkered down, got serious, and actually gave an honest effort to making these DLCs, to make up for the blahpocalypse they’d foisted on us with the main game.  We live in a world where shrimp can make implosions as hot as the sun with their punches and Alex Kurtzman hasn’t been literally torn apart by a mob, so clearly anything is possible.



The Isle of Armor: I’m sorry, Nintendo, you want me to find how many Diglets?  I thought you just said 150.  It sure looked like 150.  But I know that’s impossible, because if you were asking me to find fucking 100 fucking 50 fucking Diglets, you’d trigger a Gold Skulltula episode in me and I’d have to charter an international journey to your offices to murder every last 1 of you.

For real, though, here’s the deal: this DLC is boring.  Shocker, isn’t it?  Something related to Pokemon: Generation 8 isn’t especially compelling?  Truly a surprise.  Basically, the entire plot of this add-on is that you travel to a little island, join a dojo, become a master at said dojo, and raise a martial arts bear Pokemon.  And if you’re thinking to yourself that most of that premise sounds like it’d have trouble filling the expected time and content of most games’ tertiary sidequests, then congratulations, you’re too smart to work at Game Freak!

Not that a small premise can’t be entertaining, of course.  With the right cast and the right content, anything can be a compelling story; hell, Non Non Biyori made a gripping sports anime scene out of a recess game of knocking rulers off a desk.  Unfortunately, however, the content of your rise to the top ranks of the dojo is mostly uninspired time-padding sidequest errands, given by and connected to by-the-numbers NPC characters and a mildly annoying antagonist whose personal story is facile and forgettable.  All so that you can be the top dog at some mom-and-pop dojo that they keep touting as a place Leon trained at.  Yeah, because that’s a ringing endorsement.

And then later, Hop shows up.  Yaaaayyyyy.

I will give The Isle of Armor a bit of credit on the point of Kubfu, or at least for the concept behind it.  Eventually you’re given a little martial arts bear Pokemon called Kubfu, and tasked with completing sidequests that are designed to build a friendship with him/her.  This is actually a really good idea!  It’s a totally different avenue to acquiring Pokemon, wherein the process is you going to the trouble to do things to build a real, creditably positive relationship with the creature that you’re going to expect to fight for your benefit.  The idea of approaching Pokemon collection as something that’s at least somewhat a 2-way street, of earning their trust and friendship rather than just magicking them into a tiny ball without consent and moving on, is a great direction to take.  One which you’d THINK the series would have started implementing decades ago to try to prove its bullshit about trainer-Pokemon relations not being inherently immoral!  The idea that you’d actually have to earn Kubfu as a companion, create an emotional basis for his/her willingness to fight for you, is definitely a step in the right direction.

Sadly, the actual process of this is uninvolved and insubstantial.  And, as the stupid Let’s Player I watched* demonstrated, there is absolutely nothing stopping the player, once Kubfu’s personal journey is over with, from just sticking him/her in the PC and forgetting about him/her forever, which really does undercut the lasting impact of the journey of friendship you both went on together.**  Obviously that’s a matter of what the player decides, but seeing it happen before my eyes did kinda lessen what slight hold the story of Kubfu and Gloria’s blossoming friendship had upon me.

Still, as I said, the idea behind the Kubfu part of this DLC is a good one.  If Game Freak had actually given it the slightest effort, it might even have been good!  But they didn’t, nor did they appear to try at any other part of The Isle of Armor’s story, and so this DLC is as bland and purposeless as the rest of Generation 8.  Don’t waste your money on it.


The Crown Tundra: This one is kind of funny.  Not intentionally, mind you; writing jokes takes effort and effort is a foreign fucking concept to Game Freak.  But it’s funny in the sense that the whole thing feels kind of like an exasperated, frustrated parental meltdown.  It’s like Nintendo's just so fucking tired of hearing the players whine about being dissatisfied with this subpar game, and this whole DLC is the company’s response of, “Fine!  FINE!  You win!  What do you want?  You want Legendaries?  GO AHEAD!  Take them, take them all, just take every goddamn one, I don’t even care any more!” as they grab Rayquazas and Mewtwos out of a sack and hurl them at the players’ faces.

The possibility that the Legendary Pokemon pandering overload in this DLC is an actual temper tantrum notwithstanding, I guess I would say that The Crown Tundra is the best thing about Pokemon Sword and Shield.  Not because it’s good, because it unequivocally is not, but because this is the first time that something in Pokemon Generation 8 has had a real, honest-to-Arceus plot in which you’re an actual participant.  It’s not exactly much of a story, basically boiling down to “help a has-been Pokemon trick a horse into letting him sit on it, and then track down some more Legendaries because some helicopter dad’s daughter ditched him on their family vacation and he’s lonely.”  But hey, even that crap still at least involves the protagonist being a legitimately important figure in the DLC’s events, so it’s a step up from having Leon tell you “Stop thinking about stuff and just go play sports, nerd,” every time you so much as think about trying to get involved in the main game’s plot.

Not helping matters is the fact that the major figures of this add-on are generic and boring as all hell.  Like, even Honey, Mustard, and the antagonists of The Isle of Armor had more personality and nuance than Peony, Peonia,*** and Calyrex.  Appropriate to Game Freak’s lack of interest in their work, Peony seems to be written under the assumption that cramming artificial enthusiasm into a person, and nothing else, is all you need to create a character--it feels kind of like someone who thinks the only thing you need to do to make an argument more convincing is to talk louder was the one to write Peony.  Peonia, meanwhile, is just basically the exaggeratedly weary sigh of a teenager made into a human being of its own, and Calyrex is little more than an exposition machine for himself.

I guess I can at least respect The Crown Tundra for the fact that the largest part of its story involves a quest to help Calyrex, a Pokemon, regain status as the famous forest king of local myth.  This involves directly interacting with Calyrex, including having him outright speak to you, and ends with Calyrex voluntarily becoming your Pokemon as a show of gratitude for your assistance in restoring him to his former glory.  Having a Pokemon consciously be the central figure in a plot arc, and having it regularly speak to the protagonist, is a hell of a huge step in humanizing Pokemon as a whole, and the idea of a Pokemon’s joining you by its choice instead of just because you decided to beat it within an inch of its life and trap it in a ball, is something that this series could really benefit from further exploring.  The fact that we’ve had both Calyrex and Kubfu, in a row, treat the act of becoming a kept Pokemon as voluntary, something that’s earned rather than demanded, could be a promising sign for this stupid series actually getting ready to develop into new directions with its storytelling.  Or it would be, if Nintendo hadn’t already disappointed similar optimism previously.  Still, it’s at least a decently respectable approach in the here and now.

Oh, right, there’s 1 other thing this DLC adds, that being the Galarian Star Tournament.  Basically, it’s an elimination tournament of team Pokemon battles with all the Gym Leaders and some other notable figures from the game and its add-ons.  The cool thing is that you can pick any partner you want!  Oh, but not her.  No, no, not her, either.  Um, and not him, obviously.  What’s the matter with you?  By “any,” Game Freak clearly meant “either Marnie or Hop, no one else.”  Duh.  What, you thought it might be mildly diverting to fight together with someone other than the most obvious characters you’ve already been teaming up with all game long?  Well too fucking bad; you can only do that after you’ve beaten the tournament once already and have absolutely no remaining reward- or story-related reason to go through it again.

Why?  Because Game Freak low-key hates you in a very passive-aggressive way, that’s fucking why.

Anyway, yeah, The Crown Tundra is boring and you shouldn’t bother spending your money on it.



Well, as expected, the verdict on Pokemon Generation 8’s add-ons is not a positive one.  I do think it’s safe to say that they’re probably some of the best content that the game has to offer, but much like the statement that My Hero Academia is 1 of the greatest shonen animes to date, this is less of a compliment to the 1 thing as it is an indictment against everything it’s compared to, to somehow be less than what is clearly garbage.  Nintendo keeps up its unbroken DLC losing streak with Pokemon Sword and Shield.















* You didn’t actually think I was going to PAY for these things, right?  I may not learn my lessons fast enough, but I do still learn them.  I’m not paying for another Nintendo DLC until I can verify ahead of time that the solitary character trait of 1 of its main actors isn’t just the way she sighs.


** It’s actually kinda sick, really.  The majority of becoming besties with Kubfu involves bringing him/her to various different scenic spots, seeing the world together.  So you can be both the person who opened Kubfu’s eyes to the joys and wonders of the world all around him/her, and the person that forever takes that away from Kubfu as you incarcerate him/her in a corner of a PC box.


*** At first it struck me as kinda weird and laughably vain that Peony basically named his daughter after himself, but then I remembered that people do this all the time in real life.  But then I remembered that I also think it’s weird and laughably vain when the real life people do that, too.

Final Fantasy 6's Shadow's Fear of Commitment

You know, looking back on it, I’m not sure that Shadow was quite as cool as we thought he was.

By all outward indications, of course, Shadow is really cool.  The guy’s covered head to toe in black, with that cool bandana thing; I can’t think of a single character that so succinctly, effectively pulls off the “ninja” aesthetic as Shadow does.*  He’s got a mysterious and dramatic past, which we only get glimpses into.  He’s an assassin-for-hire.  He’s got a trained killer dog that’s at all times about 2 seconds away from ripping someone’s throat out.  The guy appears for all the world to be a total badass.

But appearances deceive, and beneath that cold attitude and the ninja outfit, you will find a man with a raging, out-of-control phobia for commitment.

Seriously, Shadow is the most unreliable flake ever.  You know that bit in Scrubs, where JD keeps ditching Kim in order to get out of having to have a serious talk with her about their baby?  That’s basically Shadow the moment anyone possesses any expectation whatsoever of him.  The guy flees commitment like a frightened animal.

Oh, oh, okay.  I see the expression on your face.  I mean, I don’t, but I totally see the expression on the face that I’m imagining you have (you handsome devil, you).  You don’t believe me.  “You’re exaggerating again, Arpy,” is what the quirk of those gorgeous lips nestled beneath that debonair mustache tells me.  You think I’m making mountains of mooglehills again, huh?  Alright, then.  Let’s take a look at Shadow, all he does, and, more importantly, all that he leaves undone.

Our first major encounter with Shadow is during Sabin’s little story after the main party gets split up on the raft.  Seeing that Sabin is alone and lost, Shadow takes pity, for some reason, on the creatine colossus that can literally hold up an entire fucking house all by himself, and offers to help the guy make his way through this inhospitable area on his quest to reunite with brother and pals.  And full credit to Shadow, this is very nice of him...also completely at odds with the only thing we’ve heard about him previously, that being that, according to Locke, he’d slit his mama’s throat for a nickel.  But hey, I’m not gonna look a gift party member in the mouth, and not just out of respect for social distancing.

The thing is, though, at any given time, Shadow may decide, at the end of a battle, that he’s done playing tour guide, and run off.  This can occur (and has, to me) as early as the very first random encounter you have!  Even if Shadow doesn’t just up and run off at random, he’ll still ditch the party once Sabin and his new pal Cyan reach Baren Falls, far early of Sabin’s actually achieving his stated goal of catching up with his friends.

Now, I don’t, in fact, hold this initial Shadow outing against the guy.  This whole venture is a freebie that Shadow’s throwing Sabin out of the goodness of his heart, and, barring an unexpectedly early exit, Shadow’s helping Sabin with an all-out frontal assault on an entire military base, and escaping a moving train full of ghosts.  Hell, Shadow will join Sabin in fighting a goddamn phantom train while running in front of it!  That’s a heck of a job to perform gratis for a total stranger--if my own family asked me to help them fight an oncoming train in hand-to-wheel combat, I’d sure as hell charge them for the service, and that’s just a regular train, let alone a phantasmal locomotive ferrying the departed to the afterlife.  That shit takes balls of steel; Winston was a goddamn Ghostbuster and he still froze like a him in headlights in the same situation!  I think that, with all the shit that Shadow has put up with for Sabin by that point, the refusal to follow him in diving headfirst off the cliffs above a waterfall is entirely reasonable.

But let’s look at Shadow’s next appearance in the game, and the point at which his inconstance becomes a problematic and defining character trait.

After the battle for Narshe, the party heads to the west, and stops by a small town, where Shadow is hanging out.  If the party has at least 1 open slot, you’re given the option to hire Shadow on as a companion, for a sizable but generally affordable 3000 Gil.  Reunited with the badass merc and his killer pup once more, hurrah!

Until this ninja bitch randomly decides he’s earned his keep and decides to fuck off.

Yes, once again, Shadow’s fickle loyalty can display itself at any time at the end of battle.  The guy can leave the very first time you run into a random encounter, I’ve seen it happen!  And unlike the first time around, he’s not here out of the goodness of his heart; you paid for his services!

I’m sorry, Shadow, did the act of fighting exactly 4 bees with the help of a mage knight, a master samurai, and the most powerful sorceress in the entire Final Fantasy series really take you to your limit?  Was the random encounter with a pair of wolves just not worth multiple thousands of gil?  “Oh shit, I know I said I was the best of the best, but I didn’t realize you guys were gonna be going up against a couple of vultures!”

And if anything, it might actually be a good thing for him to run away sooner than later, because at this point in the game, changing the party at all requires you to go all the way back to Narshe.  If you get halfway through Zozo when Shadow suddenly remembers that he left the oven on, you find yourself with a choice: You can press onward, which is going to be difficult as Zozo is fairly challenging even to a full party, or you can go all the way back to Zozo’s exit, and then make a trek over half a continent to pick up Shadow’s replacement.

I dunno about you guys, but I haven’t personally worked many jobs in which it’s an understood and acceptable thing that its workers can, at any time, just decide to go on home and still expect the full day’s wages.

But hey, okay, we all knew Shadow was randomly unreliable in these early stages of the game.  From this point on, however, his presence in the party will be plot-mandated, so that means an end to his lack of commitment, right?

Not really.  If anything, I think it only gets worse from here!

Shadow’s next role in the game comes when the Returners and the Empire have teamed up to search for the Espers that had fled after rampaging through Vector.  The Empire hires Shadow to accompany them all and assist in the search efforts.  Here’s how that goes:

A: Shadow dodges answering Terra’s questions about love on the boat ride over, unable to commit even to a conversation.
B: While the party’s staying at the inn, Strago comes asking for help in the middle of the night because his granddaughter is trapped in a house on fire.  Shadow declines, remembering an article he read somewhere about the importance of getting a full 8 hours of sleep each night.
C: Realizing that his dog is less of a chickenshit than his owner and has left to help with the whole child-burning-to-death situation, Shadow begrudgingly goes off to save the day after all...on his own, that is, not with the party as a whole, because even when he’s working with the team, he’ll be damned if he works with the team.
D: Upon the party finally figuring out where the Espers are hiding, Shadow separates from them, saying that he’ll keep searching for the Espers in his own way.

Let’s just review that last one, shall we?  Shadow has been paid by the Empire to do 1 single thing: find the Espers.  That is the entire purpose of this mission.  It is the reason he has been hired.  So what’s he do the moment there’s a legitimate, likely lead?  He bails.  The very second a successful end to the job he’s been paid for is in sight, the man backs away from it faster than SquareEnix retreats from a good idea.  It’s like he has a mortal terror of satisfied employers.***  It’s kind of hard to blame the Empire for roughing him up off-screen afterwards, considering that he basically took their money and then actively avoided accomplishing the assignment he’d agreed to.

Which I’m not even fully convinced actually happened, at this point.  Terra and Locke see that Interceptor got hurt, and just assume that it means Shadow was attacked by the Empire.  But we really only have Shadow’s own word for that, when the party catches up with him on the Floating Continent.  But let me ask you this: if the Empire really had stabbed him in the back and left him for dead or whatever, would he be in a condition to join the party at full HP when they find him shortly afterward?  If he’d been badly wounded on the Floating Continent, by far the most dangerous and difficult area of the game up to this point (one could make the argument that it’s the most difficult dungeon of the game, period), would he really be able to just lie there on the ground for an hour or 2, completely left alone by the ferocious local fauna, until Celes and company happen by?  Something doesn’t add up about all that.

You want my theory?  I think Shadow dumped some tomato sauce on Interceptor, told him to go find the rest of the party knowing that they’d be so hopped up on Empire-hate that they’d just assume the worst (and probably thinking that this was also a great opportunity to ditch the commitment of pet ownership), then proceeded to kick back to finally enjoy some alone time with no one whining about stuff like “saving the world,” and “my granddaughter is burning to death,” and “contractual obligations.”

Conspiracy theory aside, however, what can’t be denied is that the Floating Continent once again displays Shadow’s inability to commit.  Sure, he’ll join the party for the ride, but when the heat’s on, he up and runs off again--when the group’s about to confront Gestahl and Kefka at the end, Shadow steps aside, spouts some melodramatic drivel about not deserving to fight alongside them because he’d sold his assistance to the Empire before, and runs off.

Okay, buddy, first of all?  That is a fucking stupid reason in and of itself, because if they had any objection to your prior allegiances, they’d probably have voiced it in the last 2 hours you guys have been running around this place.  It’s also all the dumber because, while the player can have whoever they want in the party, the plot of the game at this moment has a heavy preference for Celes being present, so Shadow is basically telling a former general of the Empire that his having taken a single, no-strings job to afford Interceptor’s preferred Killer Kibble brand makes him too dishonored to work together.  Furthermore, that assignment he took was the same one that Locke, Terra, and Celes were taking part in, except they didn’t even have the distancing factor of getting paid for it!

And lastly...Shadow?  Pal?  Amigo?  Compadre?  We’ve just established that you never even attempted to do the job the Empire hired you for, so technically, your slate’s still clean.  Get your ass back in the party you weasel.

But no, the party just wordlessly lets him run off.****

I wouldn’t be half surprised if, at the end of the Floating Continent sequence, while the whole place is coming apart, Shadow actually just happened to be strolling along contentedly, feeling pleased with himself that he had finally managed to ditch the Returners for good because surely they had already taken off, and then he comes up over a hill, and his heart drops as he sees them patiently waiting at the end of the fucking world for him and realizes that he’ll never be rid of these jerks.

Even Shadow’s mysterious past is all about him flaking out!  His old partner, suffering from terrible wounds, asks Shadow to finish him off?  Shadow runs off.  He shacks up with some lady who saved his life and puts a baby in her?  Shadow runs off without a word of explanation.  Oh, I’m sorry, no, he delivers his excuse to the woman’s dog about how his daughter'll be soooo much better without him.*****  As bullshit as his rationalization for skipping out on the party at the Floating Continent is, at least he told THEM about it, not their pet.  Then the dog decides to follow Shadow and become Interceptor, rather than stay with his proper owner, because apparently Shadow’s fear of commitment is so pronounced that it’s actually contagious.

The meme about Dad saying he’s going out to buy some cigarettes and using it as an opportunity to ditch his family?  Shadow manages somehow to be worse.  Than the meme.

Finally, once Kefka’s been defeated and the ending’s rolling, Shadow finishes his part in this tale true to form: he runs off from everyone else, tells Interceptor to take a hike, and finds himself a nice little corner in which to die, determined to enact Operation: Give Me NPC Status Or Give Me Death, which he didn’t get a chance to follow through on back at the Floating Continent.  Perhaps, as the game implies, this is the fitting and contented end to a man troubled by his past who has finally found a way to do something powerfully good to atone for his mistakes and is ready now to die as he should have years ago.

Me?  I think Shadow’s just so appalled at the fact that he actually accomplished a task expected of him, to the employer’s satisfaction, that he can’t bear to live with it.

Now obviously, this rant has just mostly been for laughs.  It’s basically an extension of a running joke that I had fun participating in during an old friend’s stream and wanted to perpetuate a little here.  This isn’t like my early rant on Locke, which was (and still is) entirely in earnest--I do actually like Shadow and think he’s a decent enough character.  Still, there is a bit of a pattern of commitment-avoidance there, and his excuses for running off all the time legitimately are illogical and dumb.  Also, it's hard to strongly deny that he's a kinda shitty person in regards to Relm and her mother.  So...yeah, mostly tongue-in-cheek today, but maybe also a decent bit of earnest criticism, here, too.
















* And this is a finer line to walk than you’d think.  With the bloated social preoccupation with ninjas that sank its teeth into the world at large 50 years ago and never, ever let go, the whole ninja thing is so overplayed that it’s actually really tough to design one that’s not so distinct that it looks like a generic anime character more than an actual ninja (Strider Hiryu, Izuna, and don’t even get me started on the entire Naruto series), or so simple and standard that it just comes off as a disposable henchman from a bad (read: any) 70s made-for-TV movie.  It’s kind of laudable** that Shadow manages to actually look like a ninja, but doesn’t just look like Ninja Brian, or Snake Eyes, or John Peter McAllister, or any given extra from the crappy season of Daredevil.


** Even more so when you consider Amano’s usual difficulty in drawing any character other than Anemic Shirley Temple In Her “Unfinished Goth Sketch” Phase.  Although, as always with Amano, the majority of the credit for the character’s true look should go to the saint(s) who translated his “I’ll put an excessive and confusing amount of detail into everything BUT the very character I’m being paid to create” doodles into actually functional sprites and in-game facial profiles.


*** Yeah, I know from the development perspective, Shadow needs to clear out so there’ll be room for Relm to join the party in the next dungeon.  But there are other, far more rational reasons why he could be leaving the party; it didn’t HAVE to be “now that we know where our targets will be, I’m going to deliberately go somewhere else, yet still pretend that I’m earnestly searching!”  The immediate reason that comes to mind, like the off-the-top-of-your-head-really-freaking-obvious-and-rational reason, would be that Shadow’s going to go find the other search team and report that they’ve got a lead.  Wouldn’t that make some basic, simple sense?  It’s a rational decision to coordinate both teams in such a way, he’d be the perfect guy for the job since he’s got a dog that can track down the other team, and it even provides a passive explanation for how everyone reunites in Thamasa once the Espers are found--that didn’t NEED explanation because it’s so minor a detail and you can easily just extrapolate Locke and Terra fetching the other team in the time between scenes, but still, having Shadow leave to report to General Leo and company would have been a natural lead-in to a scene that was gonna happen soon anyway.  But no, instead we get him basically just lying to us.


**** Again, I feel the need to point out that I do understand that Shadow’s not being here does NEED to occur.  The party needs a space open, after all, for Celes to suddenly fill if she’s not already there (not sure why they didn’t just make her a required character for this area instead, though, would’ve been sensible enough that she’d insist on being present to confront her former boss, and forcing some level-gaining for the character who was going to be the required protagonist for the following 5-ish hours would’ve been a good thing), and Shadow’s story role needs to be him showing up at the last moment to hold Kefka back.  But, again, this could have been easily accomplished by just having Shadow give a different stated reason for leaving.  The party just got done with a boss battle against Atma Weapon--why not have Shadow suddenly collapse, the battle having reopened the wounds that the Empire had (allegedly) inflicted on him earlier?  Or point out that he’s best utilized for sneak attacks what with the whole ninja thing, and run off to find a different path to launch an attack from so he can help the party more tactically?

I mean, in fairness, I’d probably still make fun of him in this rant and say these were just excuses.  But at least it’d seem like he was putting some sincere effort into flaking on them, instead of telling a group 25% populated by individuals who have previously collaborated in some form or another with the Empire that his own half-hearted cooperation stains his honor too much to help them.  The guy can’t even commit to finding a good excuse.


***** Big thanks to Ecclesiastes for informing me that, in the GBA remake of FF6, Shadow specifically states that it's his daughter that he's heroically walking out on.  Until this moment, I had just assumed that "the girl" referred to in the original SNES version was the woman who found him, and that he potentially had been unaware that his trumped up pretense of nobility was half-orphaning a child.  But as it turns out, even after I had already decided to write a rant about Mr. Abandon (Relation)Ship, Shadow is still more irresponsible than I'd believed.

Horizon 0 Dawn's Nora Tribe's Legends

You know what’s kinda neat?  The fact that the simplistic perspective of the Nora tribe’s legends actually makes sense for once.

See, there’s this thing that kind of annoys me in RPGs.  And a lot of other media, really, but RPGs are definitely 1 of the more frequent offenders in this regard.  There’s a common storytelling trope in which some legend, or fairy tale, or foundational religious text, or whatever, will describe the events of long ago in a way that is essentially accurate, but dumbed-down, non-specific, needlessly mystical, and/or filled with unnecessary metaphors.  Like, say you’re playing an RPG that takes place on the planet Gaia,* a world which had some thriving, technologically advanced civilization in the distant past which, 1000 years ago, was mostly wiped out by some kind of alien invaders, who in turn were only stopped by some surviving communications technician having figured out how to, I dunno, simulate a “Get the fuck back here and take out the garbage before you start going around conquering worlds; you have responsibilities dammit” signal from the invaders’ home planet, causing the invaders to go back home so their mom will get off their case.

Almost invariably, the story of these events of 1000 years ago will, in present times, be relayed something like this: the Ancient Ones (the advanced human civilization) were been great and powerful wizards, and yet were helpless when some terrible demon (the aliens) descended from the skies to smite them, until 1 hero (the comm tech) stood atop a holy ziggurat (the radio tower, which he never actually stood on) to banish the demon with some great holy light (that little red light at the top of the radio tower blinked a couple times during the broadcast), after which the hero mysteriously vanished, never to be seen by those he had saved again (decided rebuilding civilization would be a pain in the ass and opted to just hang out in his little communications bunker with his porn collection instead).  It’s always some grand, overblown affair that’s metaphorically correct enough, but simplistic and vague and mystical.

And 4 times out of 5, it doesn’t make goddamn sense.  Why are these misleading, simplistic religious analogies always the only historical perspectives to be found in RPG cultures?  Were the only living observers of past cataclysms all 5 years old?  The RPG civilizations themselves might have been knocked back technologically, but why would their survivors also be knocked back mentally, to some previous cultural standard of cave paintings and fireside stories?  What, no one who survived the cataclysm in the past was capable of leaving any kind of more extensive, thorough record than some misleading analogies printed in runes along a simplistic wall-scroll?  Not a single individual involved with the rekindling of civilization knew how to write a full 3 pages of basic records in a book?  There wasn’t a soul alive who could artistically depict the great calamity with greater accuracy than some blurry, mean-looking eye up in the air with dark scribbles coming out of it?

And hell, even when the civilizations of the past weren’t especially advanced, they also were pretty much never, like, at a tribal stage of development, either.**  At most, they were at a quasi-medieval fantasy world development stage comparable to the world’s current state.  They still had enough advancements in communication and the arts, not to mention presumably basic historical record-keeping, that they should’ve been able to do better than a kindergartner’s 3-minute summary.

Yeah, okay, you can explain SOME of this away to a degree as a process of facts becoming myths over time, stories being tweaked by the tellers to be more interesting, less advanced cultures not having enough understanding of the specifics to really get it, and, of course, good old-fashioned falsifying records for the benefit of those in power, but come ON  The degree and the frequency to which these history-to-magical-myth scenarios occur in RPGs is way, way too great to be reasonable.

Horizon 0 Dawn, however, actually does this in a way that makes sense!  At least, in the case of the Nora tribe.  The Nora’s legends of the All-Mother, the Metal Devil, and the Old Ones are your standard RPG fare in that they’re more or less accurate to the actual history of the world, but in a very symbolic and simplified way.  Here’s the thing, though: the originators of these stories were people whose mental advancement, in terms of culture, was held back at a preschool level.

The people creating the Nora tribe’s legends were the new generation of humans that GAIA had created, according to the plan of Zero Dawn to return humanity to the world after the Faro Plague.  Originally planned to be raised by a couple of simple, nurturing robots/holograms until of an age to be educated by the APOLLO program on their heritage of culture and history, this new generation of human beings were denied the legacy of their species thanks to that mewling fucktard Ted Faro, and so the new generation of humanity just lived its whole childhood being raised by caretakers who were only designed to engage with charges at the mental level of 4 - 6 years old or so.  The parental programs clearly did tell the children they raised some simple version of the fall of humanity, as evidenced by the wall-paintings found in the Cradle facility within which they were raised--but of course, the version of this history that was told to the new human race was simplified, and incomplete.  After all, that’s what you do when you explain a very complicated and difficult concept to a child: you simplify it, keep the essence of the matter but leave the harder stuff for a later time when the kid’s developed to a point of being able to understand it, or just use easier analogies for certain details.  It’s a process that results in an essentially identical type of narrative editing that you encounter with all these dumbed-down, mystified RPG legends and histories.

So no wonder that’s how the Nora’s legends came to exist in the form they do--because they originated as stories intended for small children.  Not only that, but the people hearing these stories did so first at an appropriately young age, so their take-aways of this already simplified history would also be that much more limited.  Granted, these people were kept in their virtual playpen well into young adulthood, but they’d still be approaching this story with minds stunted by a lack of any more mature or critical an approach to culture than what they themselves could invent, and no second perspective.  So yeah, it’s completely reasonable that the religious beliefs of the Nora tribe which intersect with the truth of the world’s history would take on this classic RPG legend form; you can actually see the bedrock of these legends, and the reason for a lack of anything more accurate and straightforward.

Even the parts that deviate from or add to what we can reasonably assume the caretaker programs’ story to have been are sensible!  Raised as they were by a perpetually nurturing female program and a forever disciplinary male program, it’s clear which parent-figure the humans of the Cradle would better love, and fixate upon after being exiled out into the world on their own.  That solitary figure of nurturing guidance and the loss of her, when combined with any simplified story of the fall and rebirth of humanity (which would have to include either GAIA or Elizabet Sobeck, both females, as its central figure), would quite naturally lead to the Nora tribe’s concept of the All-Mother goddess.

The creators of Horizon 0 Dawn actually designed a way for this whole simplistic, mystical legend-as-history situation to make sense, and I really think that’s a neat bit of effort worth recognition.  This trope is such a knee-jerk plot tool that no one, author or audience, seems to even question whether it seems realistic that practically every damn RPG’s got some fundamentally accurate but vague and metaphorical legend describing the world’s actual history.  But H0D’s creators didn’t just employ the cliche and call it a day, they actually carefully crafted a scenario in which the elementary nature of the Nora tribe’s legends was a reasonable result.  It’s a small piece of the great narrative craftsmanship of Horizon 0 Dawn, but the many major ways in which the game is excellent are well-observed and appropriately lauded, so I thought it would be nice to point out a detail that I haven’t seen appreciated previously.  Kudos to Guerrilla Games for their care and dedication to even small details like this one!












* Hey, if RPG writers don’t feel the need to take the 0.75 seconds necessary to think of an original name for their fantasy planets, why the hell should I?  Gaia and Terra are like the RPG planetary name equivalents to Aiden and -aiden variants in the last decade.


** Which still wouldn’t be much of an excuse, really.  Even our real-world examples of very early records/stories often have pretty specific information to share.  The Old Testament, for example, is so enthusiastic about constantly and meticulously mapping out the genealogies of its characters that one could be forgiven for wondering whether the whole thing was just an elaborate advertisement for 23andMe.  If the Bible can fixate on who begat who like it was some fanboy explaining the lore of his Fire Emblem/Game of Thrones crossover headcanon, then surely a little more basic, informative content is not so unreasonable an expectation to have of these countless RPG actually-historical legends.

General RPG Populaces Are Dumb as Hell

A fairly common component of the RPG genre is the puzzle.  While not as ubiquitous as battles, you’re nonetheless almost guaranteed, at some point, to encounter some mild brainteaser to solve while traversing a dungeon.  There are crates to push into the correct spots, switches to pull, passwords to infer from clues, gaps to (somehow) cross with whips and monkey arms, tiles to move into place, ice to slide on, connected floor panels to turn the correct color, golden rings to rotate while tearing your hair out of your skull at how unintuitively designed they are, card sequences to memorize, items to combine into the right tool, walls to lay bombs in front of, riddles to solve, enemies to kill or spare in designated order, piano keys to play in a specific order, mazes to navigate, and so, so much more.  Hell, even combat in an RPG often has a puzzle element, as you’re expected to ascertain bosses’ weaknesses and conceive strategies to deal with new circumstances and scenarios.  Yes, puzzles of all forms are everywhere to be found in RPGs, and if there is 1 thing that can be gleaned from their existence, it is this:

Everyone who lives in an RPG world is a frickin’ moron.

I mean, take a moment and LOOK at the level of difficulty for most RPG puzzles.  These are not exactly stumpers, more often than not.  The majority of switch-flipping puzzles’ solution just involves backtracking until you find a door that’s opened now.  Most mazes are single-tiered and half the relative size of the ones made for childrens’ activity books.  Quite often, if you have a grasp on which colors mix together to form other colors, you know the answer to at least 1 puzzle you’re gonna encounter in the game.  Half the time the solution to crate-pushing puzzles is just being able to understand the concept of height--they’re less complicated than the tests we administer to monkeys to see if they can figure out how to stack stuff high enough to reach a banana, and the monkeys ace those things.

Can you distinguish shapes?  If you can, a good 10% of RPG puzzles are going to be utterly defenseless against your mental might.

And yet these fundamentally facile puzzles are considered, by countless ancient temple-building civilizations in RPG worlds, not to mention quite a few organizations in the present, to be adequate defenses for all their most important places and stuff.  And keep in mind, the extinct cultures that build dungeons in RPGs are usually the smartest ones, known for all their lost knowledge and wisdom.  The lauded Ancients who had mastered science and magic are also the ones that designed a door and key both clearly marked with the same symbol, and then considered the door secure enough if its key sat prominently on a glowing pedestal 2 rooms away.

And the ancient temple-builders were actually right. That’s the thing! These temples with their Fisher-Price puzzles are left safely undisturbed for centuries at a time by any intruder!  Until some adventurer who’s uncommonly clever (by comparison, that is) comes along, these dungeons and towers and so on are just largely left alone, because not a single visitor ever thought to move a statue a few paces to the right so that the room is symmetrical.  I mean, you’d think by mere chance someone with OCD would happen along at some point or other and open the dungeon entrance just by accident, but nope.

There’s a sealed temple in Pokemon Generation 8 whose clue for entrance, written on the outside, directs the reader to “walk together with a living crystal of snow.”  Basically, if you approach with a Cryogonal following you, it’ll let you in.  Even assuming a reader somehow didn’t know what a Cryogonal was and couldn’t on his/her own infer, while living in the Pokemon world, that a living crystal of snow might be some kind of Pokemon, Cryogonal are indigenous to the area surrounding the temple! Anyone looking to get into the temple has already SEEN the damn Cryogonal merely during the act of arriving there!  And yet somehow, by the time the game’s protagonist gets there, who knows how many years after the temple’s creation, the place is still locked up tighter than Bobby Kotick's ass clenches at the word "ethical."  How is this possible?  The only explanation has to be that the people of the Pokemon world--or at least the Galar Region--are basically all knuckle-dragging dipshits.  Considering that this is the land that idolizes Leon, it’s not exactly at odds with the canon.

And make no mistake, it’s not just low-energy yawn-fests like Pokemon Generation 8 that have these infantile puzzles.  Genuinely great RPGs are filled to the brim with’em, too.  A bunch of the locked doors you find in Horizon 0 Dawn, for example, have pass codes that are invisible to the naked eye...but brightly displayed in neon holograms to anyone looking at them with a Focus device.  For context, at the time these holo-locks were created, that’d basically be like writing your password down in invisible ink that reveals itself if you hold your cell-phone up to it, or really just anywhere in the same room.  Great security system if you’re trying to keep a pathetic Luddite like myself out of your secret base!  Maybe not so great if your intent is to bar access to any of the remaining 95% of the planet’s population, though.

Okay, look, every now and then, yes, you will get an RPG that has a few genuinely difficult puzzles that bar passage, which take a goodly amount of thought and intelligence to pass through.*  Maybe not so much that it seems likely that no one in over 100 years has managed to solve it, but still more legitimate a security measure than a rotating panel puzzle that anyone could brute-force their way through because it has less than 100 total possible combinations.  However, worlds like that of Alundra 1, with these actually challenging brainteasers, are relatively few in number.

And I do get why, from a developer perspective.  The focal story elements of RPGs may invite an older audience, but gameplay-wise, the genre is a pretty all-ages one, in no small part due to just how many of its combat obstacles can just be overwhelmed by the simple process of level-grinding.  So to have all other elements of the playing process be simplistic baby-stuff, and then suddenly some fiendishly difficult puzzle is gatekeeping the next area of the game from anyone who isn’t thinking about applying to Mensa, would be problematic.  Hell, I’d probably be annoyed if I had to hit Ecosia 5 times per dungeon in every game I played.

Still, there probably is a happy medium between needlessly frustrating stumpers and the ones where the big secret is to put an object on a button so it stays pressed when you move away.  Because as things stand, the IQ of the average NPC in an RPG is probably about the same as their shoe size--or even lower, if Nomura was doing the character designs.













* Ones which aren’t just outright unfairly cryptic, that is.  “Palm trees and 8” can go to hell.

General RPG Music Lists 3: Chime Really Feeling It!

We've covered battle themes and environmental songs thus far, which means our next step on this little journey through the best of RPG music will be emotion music.  This category is kind of an "all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares" sort of thing--or, to keep it RPG-related, an "all of Pete Hines's statements are lies, but not all lies are Pete Hines's statements" situation.  Because when you get down to it, all battle and environmental music is trying to create and tap into a certain emotional mindset--hell, that's basically ALL the music in RPGs, and just about every other genre and form of media in which music is used as background.  It's basically the fundamental reason to have songs in your work at all: to provoke an emotional response that assists in telling the story and keeping your audience in the right frame of mind.  Battle and environmental music just happen to be subsets with easily recognizable situational qualifiers.

Today's categorization covers the broad bases that battles and settings don't: sequences, scenarios, and situations.  Basically, this is the music that plays when a mood is called for in an RPG that has nothing (or at least very little) to do with the surrounding area, and is instead defined by what's going on, what's being discussed or remembered, what's being felt.  When a protagonist finds out that his long-lost brother is a villain out to destroy the world, you don't want the same calm, cool, tranquil music of the forest setting to play, even if that happens to be where this revelation takes place.  When a hero and his best friend have a sincere heart-to-heart that energizes each with determination thanks to the reassurance that he'll always have a buddy in his corner, you want the music for the scene to be determined by the content of their conversation, not the fact that they happen to be bandying feel-good sentiments in the midst of a bizarre alternate reality where the trees are purple pigs' feet and the water is lemon marmalade that flows up waterfalls instead of down.  The narrative demands special music for such occasions, to underscore the emotion of such scenes.

So anyway, here's all the mood music of RPGs that I love most!

Note: I do not in any way care about what the actual name of any of these tracks is. I organize the songs I listen to by their function, essentially what I'll remember them for. So if you really love the Fables of Zestfullycleansia song, "Genuflect Before God's Radiance (Meatball Sub with Buttercream Frosting Instrumental)", which played during scenes of awe and mysticism, then just assume that I call it Fables of Zestfullycleansia Mystic, as that's the game of origin and its actual function.

Also Note: As with last time, if a category doesn't have an A+ song within it, I'll just do a little opinion piece on my favorite of the ones it does have.



SPIRITUAL

Spiritual music covers moods of reverence and awe, of a religious or otherwise mythological nature.  Some magical plot girl communing with deities, a protagonist's totem spirit relaying advice and direction to him, the soul of a warrior being initiated into the afterlife, the heroes being told the legend of a holy maiden, these are the sorts of scenarios in which Spiritual music sets the mood.  Creating an atmosphere of wonder, which underscores the divine, the unknowable, and/or the realms and entities beyond mortal grasp is the name of the game for Spiritual songs, and they tend as a matter of course to be heavy, but in a peaceful and epic way.

It's kinda like if Place of Worship setting music wasn't so high off the fumes of its own divine farts.

B+
- Breath of Fire 2 Legend
- Fire Emblem 15 Mila

A-
- Disco Elysium The Phasmid
- Hololive CouncilRys RPG Mystic
- La Pucelle Tactics Maiden of Light
- Stella Glow Legend
- Suikoden 2 Legend
- Tales of Symphonia Martel
- Valkyrie Profile 1 Birth of Einherjar
- Whisper of a Rose Mystic

A
- Bahamut Lagoon Dragon Hymn
This is a great mix of humbling mysticism, the grandeur of dragons, and just that barest undertone of melancholy that seems inherent to all Yoyo says and does.  Really cool and beautiful piece!

- Shadowrun SNES Spirit
- Wild Arms 3 Legend

A+



HAPPY

This rant is easier than the previous ones, because most of the categories pretty much explain themselves.  Happy music, for example, is pretty much just that--it's the music that plays during scenarios that are generally positive, cheerful, and intent on putting you in a good mood.

...Which is actually kind of rare, weirdly.  I guess stories do thrive on conflict, but I still was kind of surprised, when I looked over my collection of RPG music, to realize just how much more attention is given in RPGs to music related to conflict and unhappiness than to songs indicative of a good time.  And the quality clearly skews to the former, too--you can see below that there's not much in the way of really great Happy music.  Plenty of good Happy music out there, I suppose, but nothing that earns a B+ or higher.  Maybe it's just hard for composers to figure out a way to give earnestly blithe tunes some compelling depth?  I dunno.  It is possible, though.

B+

A-

A

A+



LOVE

Love music is a subset of the Happy category, because, I mean, presumably love should be a fairly pleasant feeling, right?  Obviously it doesn't always work out that way in RPGs, but in theory it's 1 of the greatest emotions a person can feel.  Love themes tend to be slow, tender, and sometimes sweet, and piano tends to figure heavily into this song type.  Although the general feeling is (and should be) uplifting, there can be a lot of depth and variations to this kind of music, too, to imply the hardship that the love overcomes, the longing that comes with it, the overwhelming power of the emotion, etc.

B+
Final Fantasy 7 Gondola

A-
- Mass Effect 3 Love
I like the poignantly sweet but perhaps slightly desperate tone to this.  The song skillfully imparts the beauty and deep fulfillment that comes from loving and being loved, and does so with this kind of...I dunno, mortal tone?  Like it's aware of just how short-lived the love between Shepard and Tali (or Shepard and 1 of the other love interests if you're some kind of heathen) could be during a brutal war.  It's not just trying for the beauty of love, but for the beauty of what could be preciously finite, too.  And it really works well for a love story that's continued from previous installments (Tali), too, capturing a weight that coincides well with a romance that's had history, has seen and survived much already.  Very nice stuff.

A

A+



COMEDY

Comedy is the other sub-category for Happy music.  When wacky happenings and whimsical hi-jinks are the order of the moment, Comedy music is there to confirm that, yes, it is time for you to laugh.

Which is very convenient, because sometimes the audience could use some direction on this matter.  If it weren't for these songs hitting you over the head with a toy mallet and screaming "IT'S FUNNY STUPID, WHY AREN'T YOU LAUGHING" into your face, I daresay you sure as hell wouldn't even recognize the crass, out of character sexual harassment at the hot springs, or a female character do the unthinkable and not be absolutely perfect at cooking, as something meant to be jovial.  Comedy music has a hell of a tough job, because not only is a little song-and-dance routine theme not likely to be the kind of memorable and moving tune you want to listen to again, but it's saddled with the nearly impossible task, at least 30% of the time, of convincing you that decades-stale anime gags are still funny--or ever were to begin with.

B+

A-

A

A+



SAD

When protagonists are exiled from their village, when family and friends realize that they must take opposite sides in a conflict, when Magical Plot Girls are taken captive by villains and look to be beyond rescue...when everything's bad and hopeless, Sad music is there to sell you on the mood.  I daresay that of all the genre's mood music, Sad is probably the 1 found most universally.  Sooner or later some unpleasant shit is going to go down in a story, and while you can get away with just regular setting tunes for a lot of other story scenes, you really can't avoid underscoring a sad scenario with appropriate music.

It's also probably the most consistently high-quality form of emotional music, too.  Maybe composers try harder for these pieces because they're the lynch pins in most RPGs' plots, or maybe we just naturally have a greater compulsion to value and seek out dramatically weighty feelings over most other mental sensations, but 1 way or another, Sad music has a good, strong chance of being the standout hit of the soundtrack's Mood themes.

B+
- Arc the Lad 2 Sad
- Breath of Fire 2 Sad
- Crystareino Sad
- Glory of Heracles 5 Sad
- Phantom Brave Sad
- Suikoden 5 Sad

A-
- A Dragon's ReQuest Sad
- Ara Fell Sad
- Barkley, Shut Up and Jam Gaiden Sad
- Dark Cloud 1 Regret
- Final Fantasy Tactics Sad
- Live-A-Live Sad
- Neverwinter Nights 1 Wyvern Crown of Cormyr Sad
- Octopath Traveler 1 Discord
- Radiant Historia 1 Sad
- Trials of Mana Sad
- Tales of Phantasia Sad

A
- Disgaea 1 Sad
- I Am Setsuna Sad
- Pier Solar and the Great Architects Illness
- Rakuen Yami's Pain
- Suikoden 2 Sad
- Terranigma Sad
- Tales of Berseria Velvet's Anguish
- Tales of Zestiria Sad

A+
- Eternal Senia Finding Magaleta
I can't deny that some of this song's placement has to do with the overwhelming emotional power of the scene it plays over, rather than being strictly about its quality alone.  But A, an inescapable association with the game's greater scenes is an indication of success in a song, and B, it's still an undeniably heavy, heart-wrenching, and lovely tune, regardless.  Jeez, Eternal Senia is a hell of a sentimental punch to the gut, I tell you.



DEATH

While standard Sad music is often tasked with covering all unhappy events, many RPGs opt to have a separate mournful song in their arsenal to play when characters in their drama die (or, sometimes, when a specific character kicks the bucket).  Which seems fair to me; there's enough difference in emotional magnitude between a scene of some bounty hunters sadly admitting that their current job is beyond their capabilities and a scene where the protagonist's father figure dies after telling the hero that he's proud of him to warrant some musical distinction.  Additionally, though it doesn't happen often, a death scene doesn't always have to strictly be sad--sometimes death is a release, or a contented moving on once one's work is fully done, so it's good to give the act a category that allows for that variation more than just throwing it all under Sad would.  Sorrowful or otherwise, though, Death music is almost always designed to evoke a powerful emotional response, possibly the strongest of all these mood tunes, and composers tend to bring their A game to this category.

Oh, and by the way, since the titles of the songs give it away here, be aware that this category has Spoilers for:
Mass Effect 3
Rakuen
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
Xenosaga 3

B+
- Xenogears Death

A-
- Breath of Fire 2 Death
- Valkyria Chronicles 1 Death

A
- Chrono Trigger Sad
- Mass Effect 3 Anderson's Death
- Rakuen Fukushima 50
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Minato's Death
- Suikoden 1 Death
- Xenosaga 3 Pellegri's Death

A+
- Rakuen Leaving for Rakuen
Yeah so I still cry sometimes when I listen to this.



REFLECTION/REMEMBRANCE

Reflection/Remembrance music is kind of interesting.  It's any melody which is meant to accompany or create a sense of introspection, of mulling over things.  This tends to involve a review or a recollection of events which have happened before now, whether in-game or prior to the story's opening.  At the same time, though, music associated with memories, in RPGs at least, is very frequently painful and/or regretful, which means that this category has a lot of overlap with Sad music.  There's enough specifically memory-oriented music that it feels at times like it should be separated from introspective themes, and yet every time I try to do it, there's too much content that clearly is both a song of reflection and remembrance to really distinguish them.  So, messy though it may be, it remains a single category, which stretches over scenes of meditating over one's beliefs and next action, remembering the good old days of valor with comrades, recalling mournfully the days spent with one's best friend before an evil wizard took his life, and more.

B+

A-
- Final Fantasy 5 Memories
- Final Fantasy Tactics Ovelia's Worries
- Kingdom Hearts 2 Memories
- Sakura Wars 5 Reflection
- Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Sad Memories

A
- A Dragon's ReQuest Emotional Difficulty
- Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure Kururu's Memories
- Skies of Arcadia Reflection

A+
- Suikoden 2 Memories
Suikoden 2 was already clearly going to be a great game, from the get-go, but I think it was when I heard this song, and watched Riou and Nanami waiting at the gates of Muse with hope and dread in their hearts for Jowy to return to them, that I realized that this game was going to be the kind of masterpiece that would stay with me forever.  There's no scene that involves this theme which isn't excellent, and part of that is just due to the quality of the song itself.  You listen to this, and you yourself feel the morose yearning for the happy days of family and childhood, lost forever to war and destiny, that the game's characters experience.

- Xenosaga 1 Bitter Memories
This is 1 of those songs that just blows me away.  Those strings, that mournful, leaden lilt...if I ever hear a song better and more beautifully, hauntingly representing the concept of raw, painful recollections, I'll be pretty damn surprised.



FEAR

When your mad, jilted ex-girlfriend has you strapped down on a table and intends to take out her frustrations on you with a scalpel, Fear music is there to help the terror burrow all the deeper into your heart.*  When the overrated villain needs a pulse-stopping, chilling sound to make up for what he lacks in genuine screen presence, Fear music is there to pick up Sephiroth's slack.  When an equally annoying villain's terrorizing some poor kid by ripping his own head off and waxing moronic about sinful peaches and peachy sins, Fear music is there to make Albedo seem more spooky-creepy than call-Chris-Hanson-creepy.  This category of emotional music is there to immerse the audience in how unnerving and/or outright terrifying a situation is, less about actively destructive and dangerous events (that's the next category) than it is about the threat of such things.  This tune tends to be heavy, slow, and penetrating, reverberating within you but doing so at its own pace, which just increases its ability to create tension.

Unfortunately, while Fear music does often represent quite skillful enterprises by composers, it's kinda hard to make an effective Fear piece that's also something you would want to hear on your own time.  It's not usually especially catchy, nor does it inspire a sensation that most people want to experience casually.  In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that the better a frightening tension song is, the less likely it'll be something you'll like to listen to.  So, sadly, this category is currently empty for me, and is like as not to remain so.  Unlike most other empty groups in these rants, though, that's really through no failing of the composers; if anything, that could be a healthy sign for Fear music.

B+

A-

A

A+



EMERGENCY

Catastrophes, disasters, and so on, Emergency music covers situations of eventful, action-filled panic.  If regular Fear music describes a scenario of personal horror which you cannot overcome or escape, Emergency music is more along the lines of calamities that call for action (even if it's most typically escape), or at least, large enough cataclysms that everyone's in the same boat and it's less of an intensely fearful effect on you yourself.  This type of song tends to be fast, sometimes even frantic, and forceful, made as it is to accompany such things as races against a ticking clock, fires raging out of control, and, most often, villains wreaking havoc on structures and towns.  Interestingly, this is often fairly catchy, and/or gives the listener a pleasant shot of adrenal energy, so there's a lot more opportunities for ditties you'd actually want to listen to on your own time with this category than its Fear parent.

B+
- Breath of Fire 3 Weretiger
- Final Fantasy 9 Ambush Attack

A-
- Barkley, Shut Up and Jam Gaiden Emergency
- Chrono Cross Emergency
- Mother 3 Forest Fire
- Suikoden 5 Nether Gate Attack

A
- Wild Arms 3 Emergency
- Xenogears Emergency
The rushing intensity to this piece is great.  You can hear the frantic footfalls of heroes running for all they're worth, rubble and rocks falling all around, vehicles speeding out of control as their operators grasp desperately at the wheel, militants exchanging fire in a desperate battle of urban combat, and all manner of other adrenaline-soaked conflicts and disasters you can imagine; it all goes great with this tune.

A+



DETERMINATION

Encouragement, confidence, heroism with a can-do attitude, the Determination tune is basically the opponent of Emergency music.**  While there's once again an urgent sense of action and important events unfolding, this time they're in the favor of the forces of good.  Determination music is plans being set in motion, armies marching, and a mildly stupid teenager who has somehow found himself leading them both making speeches about the power of friendship.  This kind of song is pumped, boisterous, hopeful, and ready to take on the world with a confidence that comes from favorable fortunes--or the will to make one's own opportunities.  It can make for some pretty cool pieces that energize you and buoy your spirits...when it's not being a little too heavy-handed with the ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST TO DO YOUR BEST thing.

B+
- Final Fantasy 5 Warriors of Dawn
- Quantum Entanglement Determination (From what I can understand, this is an original composition made freely available to anyone who wants it, which was used by Quantum Entanglement, and possibly other games. Since QE is what I know it from, I just categorize it as such)
- Romancing Saga 3 Castle Assault
- Sailor Moon: Another Story Determination
- Terranigma Royd

A-
- Ara Fell Determination
- Arc the Lad 3 Alec
- Eternal Senia Determination
- Lufia 2 Last Chance
- Suikoden 1 Army
- Suikoden 5 Army
- Tales of Legendia Chasing Shirley

A
- Cosmic Star Heroine Secret Agent at Work
This is a really fun piece.  It captures a feeling of rushing activity, but also a heroic, action-y confidence.  Like, there's intrigue and danger, but also an assurance that the heroine's got this.  Very cool.

- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Determination

A+



FAREWELL

Everything in this world has a beginning, and a point at which it ends, even intangibles like human relationships.  While most partings between people in RPGs given any narrative significance tend to involve the death of 1 or both parties, sometimes characters will luck out and have an important, emotionally significant goodbye that doesn't involve anyone croaking.  Such moments may necessitate their own unique music to fully reach their potential for moving the player, and so Farewell music comes into play.

Farewell songs most often seem to follow the old saying that parting is sweet sorrow.  By and large they'll be sad, to some degree, but at the same time, there's usually an element of hope, happiness, satisfaction, or closure, as well.  You're generally meant to be sorry to see the character or community go, but it's not an outright, pure downer the way that its sister Death music usually is.

B+
- Darkblood Chronicles Saying Goodbye

A-
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Fi's Farewell
Okay, so maybe not too many of us were too terribly sad to no longer have to deal with Slow Text Robo-Navi, but it's still a really pretty, poignant song of adieu.

A

A+



NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Apparently Youtube is extremely unreliable.  If you notice that any of these links are dead, I'd be much obliged if you left a comment to let me know which one(s), and I'll address it as best I can.














* Used in the game Quantum Entanglement, since the page itself doesn't mention.

** Although they don't really HAVE to be separate entities; you can occasionally find a really awesome tune that's sort of both Emergency AND Determination.