General RPGs' AMVs 20

You know what I realized last year, when I was making the music list rant about the remixes and original fan songs and whatnot?  A lot of composers of original fan songs actually go to the trouble of making an accompanying music video to go with their tunes.  So, like, why wouldn’t I also count those as RPG AMVs?  That being the case, expect to see a bunch of these original RPG AMVs in the next couple of these rants.  There’ll still be plenty of “normal” AMVs, too, though, no worries.*



FALLOUT

Fallout 4: Some Things Never Change, by Miracle of Sound
The music used is Some Things Never Change, by Miracle of Sound.  The perfect video to accompany Miracle of Sound’s beautiful, haunting, weary love song to Fallout 4, this AMV displays the singular beauty and tragedy of the Fallout setting with sweeping, unhurried treks through the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth, perfectly in tune with the music.  Tributes to a game’s setting are difficult to make a great AMV for, particularly for landscapes that emphasize quiet and emptiness, but when they work, they work damn well, and this is a great example of that.


FINAL FANTASY

Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Warriors, by RivAyshil
The music used is a cover of Warriors, by Imagine Dragons.  The cover itself is done by 2WEI.  This AMV is strong overall, a good match of song to game in terms of atmosphere and gravity, but it’s especially notable, I think, for the great timing of the game footage to the music.  The powerful and pervasive percussion of Warriors is matched at every point by the movement and actions of the visuals to create a single, flowing entity of sound and sight here.  I especially love the part right before the minute mark where the audio’s far-off marching is matched to characters’ steps in the game--it’s a small detail, but it shows off the skill and effort that went into this AMV as a whole very well.  Great stuff.


FIRE EMBLEM

Fire Emblem 16: The Storm, by Ramona BadwolfTM
The music used is The Storm, by TheFatRat.  This is a pretty neat AMV--the creator has picked an interesting song that, when paired to the game’s footage with such precise and artful timing, demonstrates Fire Emblem 16’s characters and conflicts, their relationships and their pain in a way that’s refreshing and compelling.  Let’s face it, after a certain point, there are some games whose AMVs tend to start to blur together, and Fire Emblem titles definitely seem to be examples of this phenomenon--but this music video manages to make the story and its cast feel new again, somehow.  It’s an interesting case of the AMV being genuinely fun to watch, even if it’s got enough gravity and sincerity that I wouldn’t call it a “fun” AMV, if that makes any sense.


NIER: AUTOMATA

Nier: Automata: Mercy Mirror, by Rail
The music used is Mercy Mirror, by Within Temptation.  You know, I hadn’t really thought about it before, but between A1 and 2B, Devola and Popola, the splintering of N2’s consciousness, the duality of the machines and the androids as a whole, and just a whole lot of moments from the game’s narrative, there really are a lot of examples of mirrors in Nier: Automata, huh?  An interesting realization I wouldn’t have had without this high quality AMV calling attention to it with its smart choice of scenes to coordinate with the song’s lyrics and tune, and interesting exploration into the theme of mirrors within the game.  This is a solid work with a neat thematic focus!


THE OUTER WORLDS

The Outer Worlds: The Fine Print, by The Stupendium
The music used is The Fine Print, by The Stupendium.  I love this one--the song’s a strikingly perfect and ingeniously written representation of The Outer Worlds’s setting, theme, and lore, and the video that goes along with it is excellently tailored to emphasize and enhance the music, giving us a great set of visuals from The Outer Worlds to pay it proper tribute, while staying contained and sparse enough that the video never distracts from the song and its message.  The Stupendium’s own role is played perfectly as he sings, and his background, visual effects, costume design, and overall presentation and progression are all excellent, engaging, and in complete sync with the source material.  I legitimately don’t think that a better tribute to and representation of The Outer Worlds could be made than The Fine Print--hell, I might even go as far as to say that this AMV is superior to the game itself, even on the game's own terms!


SUIKODEN

Suikoden 1 - 3: SuikoPath, by Squall583.
The music used is Path, by Apocalyptica.  There’s very little to say on this one--it’s a blast from the past, possibly older than some of you reading this, and a prime example of a classic, good, basic AMV that gets the job done and is enjoyable to watch.  It’s also a bit noteworthy for managing to maintain a cohesive, strong music video from start to finish, in spite of having very little to work with (given how few cinematics the initial trilogy of Suikoden possessed)--granted, some scenes are reused in this, but the way they fit so well into the chorus effectively disguises this as an artistic choice rather than a limitation.  Good stuff!


TALES OF

Tales of Berseria: A Demon’s Fate, by Ard1n LC
The music used is A Demon’s Fate, by Within Temptation.  This one’s a solid, well-constructed AMV that skillfully brings the visuals and lyrics together in a song that works well with the source material; there’s not much to say about it beyond that it’s a good work all around.

Interestingly, this video also continues with a second AMV for Tales of Zestiria, done to a different song.  It’s a fine enough music video, but not great in and of itself.  It is, however, kind of a neat thing that the author did this, as ToZ takes place in the far future of ToB’s world--it makes it so that the AMVs sort of set up their own narrative.  Nice touch.


UNDERTALE

Undertale: Way Deeper Down, by The Stupendium
The music used is Way Deeper Down, by The Stupendium.  It’s a pretty simple video, obviously more about the music than the visual component (which is fair, since this is meant to be the release of The Stupendium’s new song first and foremost), but Way Deeper Down is nonetheless a fun and serviceable AMV.  Even if the clever and fun lyrics of this song about Undertale’s iconic undead are clearly the star of the work, the appealing, simple art nonetheless help bring them to life.  The Stupendium is a darned fun creator as a whole, and this AMV is certainly on-brand for him.









* Yes, I know no one was actually worried about this.

Neverwinter Nights 1's Add-Ons

Huh!  So it looks like Neverwinter Nights 1, with its re-release in 2018, subsequently had a couple of new add-ons made for it in 2020.  So while it may have seemed like I was over 10 years late to the party when I originally wrote this rant, the reality is that I was actually a cool 5 years early.  How's them apples, punk?

But because I'm a lazy fuck, I'm just gonna leave the original intro as it was.  If you're looking for the new content in this revised rant, check out the last 2 entries here (Tyrants of the Moonsea and Dark Dreams of Furiae), and the concluding thoughts.



Is it pointless to look at the add-ons of a game that came out over 10 years ago and is nowadays sold with its add-ons automatically included in the purchase, removing any influence this rant could have on the reader’s purchase decisions? Yup. Has the subject being pointless ever stopped me from making a rant before? Nope. So let’s take a look at the expansions and premium modules of the original Neverwinter Nights.



Shadows of Undrentide: Meh. A cookie-cutter plot wrapped in generic Dungeons and Dragons events. People complain that the second half of this expansion is rushed in its storytelling, and they’re totally right, but I can’t find that upsetting in the least because this expansion is frankly just not interesting enough that I’d want it drawn out at all. Frankly, I had more than my liking of drawn out, tedious plot cliche from the game proper, thank you. The first 2 party members aren’t bad, I guess, but they’re not good, either. They kind of feel like unfinished prototypes of Bioware characters rather than the real thing. I’ll admit that Deekin, and the kobolds in general, do tickle my fancy, so Shadows of Undrentide isn’t a total bore. Still, one amusing henchman does not a boring plot excuse. I don’t know how much this expansion originally sold for, but I know it wasn’t worth it, because even in its role nowadays as a free addition to the game, Shadows of Undrentide still isn’t worth the time it takes to play it.


Hordes of the Underdark: Like Shadows of Undrentide and the main story of Neverwinter Nights 1, the first 2 chapters of Hordes of the Underdark is plodding, largely mindless dungeon-crawling busywork, particularly the first chapter. The first chapter is just schlepping through a big dungeon, as if that were something novel for Neverwinter Nights by this point, and while Chapter 2 does finally see fit to grace us with a plot, it’s pretty generic stuff. The return of Deekin as a companion is welcomed, the return of 4 of the main game’s henchmen is not. The latter bunch clearly had their character development explored to its limit the first time around, and add nothing to the experience here, while Deekin (though he gets only a little more development) is amusing and appealing by nature, so he helps add a chuckle here and there. The new companion Nathyrra is okay, I guess...she’s sort of like an extremely watered down version of Viconia from Baldur’s Gate 1 and particularly 2. Like, if Viconia’s character depth and personality were filet mignon, Nathyrra would be a Slim Jim. Still pleasant, but not even in the same league as what it could be. I did like the part of Chapter 2 involving the mirror-cursed town of flying elves, too, but yeah...overall the first couple chapters of Hordes of the Underdark are no better than Shadows of Undrentide was.

...But then Chapter 3 starts, and suddenly the game pulls a complete 180 on you. No longer are you just going back and forth for one minor sidequest after another, waiting for something real to happen. Now you’re traveling alongside the soul of Aribeth, a paladin blackguard seeking to regain her faith even as she walks through the frozen hell of Cania itself, as you retrace the steps of an ancient, slumbering angel who gave up paradise for the sake of love in order to find a primal being who knows every person’s True Name--the name the gods bless each person with that holds ultimate power over him or her--all while the eternal Blood War rages on closer and closer, all so you can gain control of an interdimensional reaper and confront a hell lord before he can turn your home plane into his new domain to rule over. Filled with philosophy and beauty, the draw and power of the ancient and epic, and finally a companion with some real depth, Hordes of the Underdark’s third chapter finally delivers on the promise of a grand and meaningful Dungeons and Dragons story.

Is it worth it? Well, again, I don’t know how much HotU sold for originally. But the answer would almost surely be yes either way. Despite the majority of Hordes of the Underdark being generic filler, the third chapter makes up for that lost time in a big way and gives you something substantial and epic to enjoy. My policy is that if the payoff is great, I’ll happily suffer tedium to reach it (I really don’t know how I would play most RPGs otherwise, they’re so boring gameplay-wise), so Hordes of the Underdark gets a thumbs-up from me.


Kingmaker: Kingmaker is a Premium Module for Neverwinter Nights 1, which as far as I can tell is just what people called Downloadable Content before there was any widely recognized name for the concept. It’s, uh...odd. On the one hand, it’s just too simple to be interesting--the premise is just doing some quests for people to get their vote on making you the new lord/lady of a city (and oddly, it’s a position always listed as lord/lady, never king or queen, so I don’t know where the title of this DLC comes from), and then a short romp through some bad guys set on conquering that city for bad guy reasons. Boring. And yet, it’s also too complex to be enjoyable--the truth of the protagonist’s lineage, and the identity, nature, and purpose of the individual who sets this whole conflict up, are only half explained, even though they’re the major underlying factors that drive the entire story. Too simplistic on the surface, with inadequately explored complexity as its backbone: it’s a tough line to walk, but Kingmaker manages to do so and fail you twice over. To Kingmaker’s credit, some of the party members are actually pretty decent (particularly Kaidala and Jaboli, though Trip and Calibast are fairly unique, too), and there’s a decent effort put into developing the party members both in their own right and in their connections to one another, which I certainly appreciate. And even if it’s not compelling, Kingmaker is at least short and direct. After a full game, a full expansion, and 2/3rds of another expansion that are mostly just long, drawn out generic boredom, it’s hard not to appreciate a boring story that at least doesn’t dawdle and delay on and on.

From what I can tell, Kingmaker sold for $8 originally. Oddly high price for the time, and definitely not worth it. But as it is nowadays, a bonus that comes free with the game, I would say...well, I wouldn’t recommend it, like I recommend Hordes of the Underdark, but I wouldn’t recommend against it like I do with Shadows of Undrentide, either. It’s a bit of a time waste, but not a huge one.


Witch’s Wake: Alright, finally! It took a while, but Neverwinter Nights 1 at last delivers a consistently engaging story that’s written well, has compelling atmosphere, interesting ideas, a good narrative, and some decent NPCs. Wooo!

Too bad it’s the first part of a planned series of DLC packages that was never continued.

Yes, after only the first leg of a mysterious and potentially awesome quest to remember one’s purpose and self, and to deliver a cryptic message to a king once known but now forgotten, this DLC ends, and you are left with no satisfaction whatsoever. Apparently Bioware planned to make this into a multi-part story, but the Premium Module program was shut down before Witch’s Wake could ever get past its first chapter. A damn shame.

Although I would like to express a serious level of disgust with this plan, had it come to fruition. I mean, consider this fact--back when it was released, you paid $5 for Witch’s Wake (and Shadowguard; they came in the same package), and what you were doing was paying for an unfinished story. If all had gone according to Bioware’s original plan, you would then have been paying more money for each subsequent chapter of the story! A common complaint with Downloadable Content is that if it’s handled dishonestly (and it so, so often is), it’s basically a case of consumer extortion, where you pay for a game but then have to pay an extra fee to actually play ALL of the game you ALREADY PAID FOR. Well, that’s pretty much what we would have had here, if Witch’s Wake had ever been continued. You’d have to keep paying over and over again to fully experience the product that you had already purchased! I tend to think of Bioware as having slowly descended further and further into greedy, amoral corruption over time, but finding something like this makes me wonder if perhaps the company was just always rotten, and we all just didn’t notice it as much back in the day.


Shadowguard: Oh for Phosphora’s sake! It’s Witch’s Wake all over again! While not nearly as intriguing or narratively strong as Witch’s Wake, Shadowguard nonetheless presents an interesting, engaging story with some actual personality for its protagonist...and then drops off into nothingness. Yes, as with Witch’s Wake, Shadowguard is meant to be the first part of a multi-chapter story which was never continued. As with Witch’s Wake, Shadowguard is something that’s enjoyable while it lasts and which you’d actually have some interest in seeing continued, unlike most of Neverwinter Nights 1’s content that we’ve seen so far. And as with Witch’s Wake, the intended concept of paying several times for the privilege of actually playing Shadowguard, the product you’ve purchased, to its conclusion is utterly repulsive, shameless extortion on Bioware’s part. What a load of bullshit.


Pirates of the Sword Coast: How much you get from Pirates of the Sword Coast is going to greatly vary depending on how much you like pirates and the whole swashbuckling adventure genre in general. Myself, I am pretty ambivalent towards pirates. By themselves, they are not interesting, and most stories involving them and the whole idea of seeking fortune on the high seas don’t pan out to be all that compelling. Nonetheless, there’s enough opportunity to the whole pirate thing that you can certainly get some decent plots and characters out of it if you’re a decent storyteller. So I don’t care one way or another about the pop culture pirate genre.

That said, I was surprised to find myself enjoying this DLC pretty well as it went along. Pirates of the Sword Coast isn’t kidding about being pirate-y. A jabbery, smartass parrot, recruiting a pirate crew, undead curses, being marooned on islands with (sort of) cannibal tribes, treasure map hunts, krakens, pirate-filled island towns...this side-story has pretty close to every pirate trope out there, and it plays all of them pretty well. It never feels like any of these common pirate story devices are forced, though, and the overall method of the DLC is pretty good. It’s only sparsely narrated, but what it has works, and overall the story is average, but the characters and NPCs, and the item descriptions and environmental text, are all lighthearted and even a bit clever. It’s kinda like a combination of the fun of Pirates of the Caribbean 1 (and only the first movie; none of that crummy drek that followed) and Muppet Treasure Island. So I did end up liking this one well enough, and I expect people who are more into the high seas genre of books and movies and whatnot would find it all the better.

Pirates of the Sword Coast was a bit costly for its time, selling at $10 (from what I can tell, at least; it’s been long enough since it was sold that my sources are only old forum posts about it). Nonetheless, it’s fun enough that I wouldn’t necessarily call that a waste of money, depending, again, on how much of a pirate fan you are. Maybe not worth that much to me, but I could understand why someone else would think it worth that. Moot point nowadays, of course; Bioware long ago stopped selling it and if you can find an installer for this module (or any of the ones below), it’ll authenticate itself and let you play it even though you haven’t purchased it (at least, mine did). But anyway, yeah. Decent DLC, this.


Wyvern Crown of Cormyr: Meh. Nothing especially bad (besides the damn jousting minigame; expect that bit of annoyance to get its own rant at some point), but likewise nothing interesting, either. Not worth the time to play it, certainly not worth the $10 that Bioware originally charged for this module.


The Dark Ranger’s Treasure: This DLC is among the 3 tiny little modules that Bioware made and released for free. On the one hand, it’s hard to find fault with something a company provides completely for free. On the other hand, this brief little venture could barely even be called a boring sidequest. I’d pass on it, but if you try it and don’t like it, at least it won’t waste much of your time.


To Heir is Human: See what I just wrote for The Dark Ranger’s Treasure? It applies to this one, too.


The Winds of Eremor: Ditto.


Infinite Dungeons: If, after a full game, 2 expansions, and over half a dozen DLCs of various sizes, you are, somehow, still in the mood for running around killing things in a dungeon for hours on end, then this is definitely your module. If, however, you are someone who plays an RPG to experience storytelling in the video game medium, who has become sick to death of the repetitive gameplay mechanics after experiencing them for 100 hours and frankly was not particularly interested in them to begin with, then this DLC is a thoroughly unappealing prospect.


Darkness Over Daggerford: Bioware designed this final DLC with the intent to sell it, but apparently someone pulled the plug on the idea of continuing to produce Neverwinter Nights 1 content before it was finished. So, from what I gather, one of the employees of Bioware decided to finish DOD after he left to form his own company. Thus, Darkness Over Daggerford is legally considered to be user-created content instead of official, but since it was mostly developed by Bioware, I’m still counting it here.

Darkness Over Daggerford is...eh, decent, I suppose. Nothing special, but a little better than the par for Neverwinter Nights 1; I at least didn’t feel outright bored at any point. The party members are alright, and the plot is generic but acceptable. Being unofficial content, this was released for free, so I guess the price was right, at least.


Tyrants of the Moonsea: This is quite a large adventure, easily enough so that I think it’s safe to call it an expansion more than just a DLC.  In this expansion, the player takes a hero through the Moonsea on an evolving quest to save the region’s people from a powerful wizard’s misguided attempt to overthrow the evil organization that effectively runs the place.  Because of course the wizard sold his soul to a demon and allied himself with violent, conquering tribes of orcs and whatnot to accomplish this goal.  If it was good enough for Chrono Trigger’s Magus, it’s good enough for every overly powerful antihero sorcerer, right?

Anyway, this thing’s alright.  Its best elements are easily the significant NPCs and party members, several of whom have engaging personalities and interesting shticks--Elf and Lyressa are standouts, but there’s a good handful of characters that give this tale some personality, and few important individuals who aren’t interesting or noteworthy in some regard.  I’m especially fond of Beirmoura--she’s fun, clever, and would probably get along very well with Suikoden’s Star Dragon Sword.  As much as I’ve enjoyed Finnean over at Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, there’s no question who’s the best sapient talking weapon I’ve used in an RPG this year.

There’s also quite a few smaller qualities of this add-on which are notably pleasant, too.  I appreciated, for example, that the book items within Tyrants of the Moonsea actually feel relevant to the setting and story of the game, which is a weirdly uncommon thing for the random tomes you can read in a lot of isometric Dungeons and Dragons games.  And speaking of setting and lore, there’s quite a few references and inclusions of significant actors and concepts from the regular D+D canon that make an appearance here which will please more hardcore players and fans quite a bit, I think, like that Drizzt guy I always hear about--but they’re not involved or spotlighted enough that a filthy casual like myself feels excluded in any way.  Similarly, it’s a nice touch that there are moments in the game in which NPC conversations can allow you to establish that your protagonist is the same hero as was involved in some of NN1’s other adventures, or even those of entirely different DnD titles--but you can also opt to deny this and have the hero of Tyrants of the Moonsea be their own entity, too.  There’s additionally a good bit of moral choices in the expansion that have more substantial results than those of the preceding add-ons, too, which is pleasant.

The only weak point of Tyrants of the Moonsea is probably its overall story, which, honestly, just didn’t feel all that compelling to me.  But it’s not bad, at least, and when supported by its other virtues, that shakes out to Tyrants of the Moonsea being a pretty decent adventure as a whole, and given that you’ll likely be romping around in the module for over 10 hours, I’d say it’s worth its $10 price point.


Dark Dreams of Furiae: I’m...not sure what I make of this, really.  On the one hand, this adventure set in the midst of a city’s philosophical crisis as its citizens and rulers struggle to change or maintain the community’s views and actions between Law and Chaos in order to secure Furiae’s place in the planes is very pleasantly reminiscent of Planescape: Torment--and the fact that the mod lightly references Sigil and certain concepts examined in PT makes it apparent that this in part an homage to that magnificent game.  And I, of course, love that, because it’s been way too long since I’ve taken a journey through the outer planes and witnessed the war of belief that forms the heart of the Dungeons and Dragons universe.

The premise around which the adventure is centered, that being a quest to discover the origins and determine the fate of Worldwine, a potent narcotic notable for being poison to the otherworldly devils that seek to subjugate Furiae and its people, is also interesting, resulting in a choice by the adventure’s end that did give me pause.  Small flourishes like an amply alliterative newspaper being periodically published for your perusal, well-written and engaging NPC interactions that immerse you, and some dream sequence moments that skillfully unnerve you and softly develop the silent protagonist in much the way that Fallout 3’s Point Lookout drug trip did, make it clear that there’s a lot of creativity and a good bit of narrative talent at work here.

With that said, I have to admit, a lot of my appreciation for Dark Dreams of Furiae feels objective more than personal.  I’m appreciating it from a distance, more than really getting swept up in actually enjoying it.  There’s something about its atmosphere, its approach, that keeps it feeling understated enough that it never gripped me.  I’m not sure why that is, but there’s just something in its quiet gloom that lacks the personal touch to bridge the gap between an interesting specimen, and something that I’m actually invested in.  I can’t really explain it; I just know that the positives I get front his add-on feel more like something I respectfully admire than actively enjoy.  Also, the ending to this adventure feels kinda rushed and a bit underwhelming.  Not bad, mind you, but not as good as one might reasonably hope for.

Still, the overall experience of Dark Dreams of Furiae was a positive one.  It’s a well-crafted add-on that, at $5, easily justifies and excels its price point in terms of content and quality.  Recommended!



And that’s the last of’em. There are plenty more modules for Neverwinter Nights 1, of course, but those are ones made by fans, not official sources (or at least released and sold by official sources). So how’s it all stack up?

Well, when I originally wrote this rant, my take-away from NN1's mod scene was a negative one.  I gave the add-ons credit for the fact that the original game itself being generic, uninteresting, and terribly paced meant that having any decent stories to be found in its add-ons could be seen as something of a victory, but overall, I called it a lousy showing.  And with justifiable cause.  The best moments of Neverwinter Nights's add-ons (hell, the game's best moments period) are Witch's Wake, which is incomplete and would have been economically unethical had its original roadmap been followed, and Hordes of the Underdark, which is only good in its last third and requires you to just slog through a bunch of average dungeon-crawling nonsense to get to the good.  And honestly, even now, the majority of these add-ons still range from boring to bad.

Still, I think the addition of Tyrants of the Moonsea and Dark Dreams of Furiae may have tipped the scales enough to warrant a new verdict on the matter.  They're both positive enough additions to the game's whole to offset a decent handful of the less compelling add-ons that preceded them.  Would I say that this makes Neverwinter Nights 1's add-ons a positive experience overall?  Well, no, there's still just too many boring and generic components to this whole, and it's still really, really frustrating that we only ever got a taste of Witch's Wake (and Shadowguard; it too was promising).  But even if NN1 still doesn't secure a win and join the exceptionally small club of RPGs whose add-ons were more good than bad, it's at least much more neutral now than it once was.  With Tyrants of the Moonsea, the final third of Hordes of the Underdark, Pirates of the Sword Coat, and Dark Dreams of Furiae, along with what enjoyment Witch's Wake and Shadowguard can provide, Neverwinter Nights 1's add-on scene is fairly well balanced, providing only a bit more of the negative than the positive.  You can even forgive it a little further by virtue of the fact that downloadable add-ons were still a pretty new idea at the time that most of the ones above were created, so some of this can be attributed to growing pains and feeling the concept out.*

So final verdict on Neverwinter Nights 1's add-ons: not good, but really only barely bad.  Certainly more than you can say for the main game itself, for whatever that's worth.  See you guys here again in another 15 years when the next DLC comes out for it.

















* Not that we're any better in the modern age at creating decent DLCs that are anywhere near worth their asking price.  In fact, I think things may be worse than ever.

General RPG Valentines 6

As ever, great thanks must be given to my sister and Ecclesiastes, whose input and suggestions for these idiotic Valentines rants goes way above the call of duty, even in consideration of the fact that just being my sounding boards for normal rants is already going way above the call of duty of family and friendship.  If any of the silly things below seem amusing or clever to you, there's a better chance than not that this quality is exclusively thanks to the influence of Ecc or my sister.



Chocolate, candy, special dinners, gestures and displays and professions of love...Valentine's Day is already pretty close to the total package when it comes to the holiday experience.  In spite of this, however, there has always been 1 notable failing of the holiday, the glaring and inescapable shame of Valentine's Day for centuries: not enough RPG content.  But that ends now!  Or...7 years ago, when I first started doing these.  Whatever.  The important thing is, Valentine's Day is now the perfect holiday because I'm a freaking hero.  You're welcome.

But just as I giveth, so can I also taketh the hell awayeth.  My gift of RPG Valentines may have elevated the holiday to perfection, but even an angel of Heaven can fall to the darkest depths of the abyss.  Because I have lived long enough to see myself become the villain, here are a few RPG Anti-Valentines sure to cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth in their recipients!

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Lack of Storytelling

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I have a great deal of respect for the Shin Megami Tensei series.  Yes, the series has moments when creative decisions are made that I don’t agree with, and there are opportunities that it fails to take advantage of.  There are moments when the games can’t effectively accomplish their aim, some stuff that’s just plain bad, and there’s even been an SMT that’s a poor game in its own right.  And let’s not forget the fact that Atlus can’t make DLCs for shit.  Still, for all I’ve criticized this franchise, I think my enthusiasm and respect for SMT as a whole has been pretty clear for some time now.  From its SNES conception,* Shin Megami Tensei has been characterized by thoughtful, analytical creativity in its stories about the tenets and fundamentals of human systems of faith and belief, and the forms that they take.  Even if they don’t always hit the mark, because they always put in a demonstrable effort to be meaningful, I generally don’t hesitate to buy a Shin Megami Tensei title.

Well, I’m gonna start hesitating going forward.

I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not fair to compare Shin Megami Tensei 5 to Pokemon Generation 8.  Because it’s not!  Pokemon Sword and Shield is a game that actively refuses to tell you its story, repeatedly directing you away from the plot occurring in its background so you can focus solely on a paint-by-numbers Pokemon journey right until the game’s very end. But it’s not like Pokemon Generation 8 would have been a good RPG had its writers bothered to be writers, because the story it jealously guards from the player’s eyes is trite and silly, with incredibly artificially inflated stakes.  It’s a tale about 1 guy who’s neurotically, completely unreasonably fixated on a problem that’s incredibly far off in the distant future, and another guy carelessly, even more unreasonably determined not to take even a tiny, inching first step towards preparing to address that future problem.  It’s basically Linkara’s depiction of the Monitors, except 1 side is somehow engaging even less.

But Shin Megami Tensei 5, I have reminded myself more than once, is not like that.  SMT5 has some sincerely interesting concepts with a lot of potential!  Setting the game in a version of the mainline SMT series where Lucifer actually won the original conflict of Law vs. Chaos is a very interesting scenario that provides all kinds of possibilities to explore--so far we’ve generally only seen the series delve into scenarios where the war was diverted or extended in some outside way (SMT1, 3, and 4), and all of those stem from a starting point of God having the upper hand and Lucifer’s bunch being the underdogs rising up against Him.  To see how a scenario plays out where the original SMT conflict of Heaven vs. Hell naturally, without outside factors, ended with Lucifer victorious is an interesting idea.  Using this new setting as a springboard to explore a new angle on Law vs. Chaos,** since the icon of the former is gone and the forces of the latter are already in charge (so to change the world for Chaos’s sake would have to mean finding a new take on what it constitutes), is also an appealing concept.

And the incorporation of Garden of Eden mythology into the lore of Shin Megami Tensei in this game is really, really cool.  It’s a very clever, even brilliant stroke, of explaining why so many of the multicultural gods we encounter in these games are not exactly as incomprehensibly powerful and all-encompassing as they theoretically should be, by saying that the Christian God cast them down (which also neatly ties into His history of doing that with uppity angels) and stole their true divinity from them, their Knowledge, and put it into the tree whose fruit Adam and Eve then ate.  Just...SUCH a cool idea that perfectly connects on so many different levels to the story of Eden.

And what about the implications of the fact that Lucifer desires to be unmade, once he has acquired the Knowledge of God?  What a fascinating idea to explore from the angle of pondering why God created Lucifer to begin with.  Even more fun when considered in conjunction with the idea, shown by Abdiel’s corruption toward the end of the game, that a fallen angel can still be a servant of the spirit of God even while defying His word.  So many interesting concepts in this game!

So yeah, a comparison with Pokemon Generation 8 is, I remind myself frequently, unfair.  SMT5 has got some really strong, interesting ideas at its core, some of the best and most creative uses of both Christian mythology and the series’s own utility of world religions that we’ve seen since the series originated on the SNES!  The potential for intellectual exploration and analysis of Christianity and faith as a whole is, in Shin Megami Tensei 5, the highest that the franchise has seen in over 20 years.  To compare it to Pokemon Generation 8’s halfhearted take on Dad moaning about the electric bill as Junior leaves the lights on in rooms he’s not in is absurd.

And yet, unfortunately, that is the analogy that my mind keeps returning to.  Because while the potential of their ideas could not be more different, both Pokemon Generation 8 and Shin Megami Tensei 5 share the same utterly, wholly self-defeating flaw.  They each adamantly and uniformly will not tell their story.

SMT5 does not have any single infuriating plot gatekeeper like Pokemon’s Leon to repeatedly wave the player on over the game’s course, telling him/her “nothing to see here, move along.”  But SMT5 ultimately comes across as similarly lazy, because it just utterly refuses, from almost its start to almost its finish, to take the time to expound on its ideas, pace out its story beats (or even, really, possess an adequate number of plot points to begin with), develop the major actors in its cast, or delve in any meaningful way into the philosophies of Law, Chaos, and Neutrality that it presents to the player at its end.  Shin Megami Tensei 5 is narratively empty.

From top to bottom, there’s almost no aspect of storytelling in this game that feels complete, or even close to it.  It’s like the literary equivalent of an abandoned construction project.  The huge majority of the time you spend in the game is just empty gameplay, wandering through a handful of, frankly, largely uninteresting post-apocalyptic sets fighting enemies and perpetually pursuing moving quest markers.  Only occasionally is there any interruption of dialogue or exposition during these treks, most of the time with entities who are only stopping by to give a status update or not even present at all, with the lion’s share of storytelling taking place between major dungeon areas--but that lion’s share is short and rushed, cramming barebones plot beats into about 5 to 10 minutes so it can quickly ship you out to the next empty void of enemy encounters and ongoing games of Gold Skulltulla-esque hide-and-seek.

This means, first of all, that the cast members are generally stunted even by the minimal standards of the franchise--and let’s face it, character development is already the weakest point of the mainline Shin Megami Tenseis.  Aogami, for example, is the robot-demon-thing that fuses with the protagonist to become the Nahobino, and is thus a present entity in something like 95% of the game’s course.  And yet this abundance of time for him to develop is thoroughly squandered.  The substantial majority of his interactions with the main character are simply acting as a convenient signpost to direct you to the next quest marker.  On the rare occasions when he actually engages with the protagonist, it’s usually to offer a short, terse reaction or assessment of something which has happened.  Occasionally he’ll ask the protagonist a question, but since SMT5 has followed the series tradition of needlessly handicapping itself with a silent protagonist, these answers are 1-line, non-emotive responses that say virtually nothing and could not by any stretch of the imagination qualify as a shared communication experience.  The 1 and only character trait Aogami is given is a complete devotion to the protagonist, as he constantly, from the second chapter onward, states and restates his intention to protect the protagonist, support his decisions, empower him to achieve his goals, check under his bed for scary monsters each night, and so on.  Season 8 John Snow mumbles “MUH KWEEN” less ubiquitously than Aogami reassures the protagonist that he’s his wingman.

And where does this overwhelming, unreasoning devotion to the protagonist come from?  No idea.  There’s not a single scene in this game, not a hint of a personal conversation between them, that would even remotely explain why Aogami is willing to follow this kid to hell and back, willing to defy both his superiors and his own family for this dude, willing even to ultimately erase himself from existence because this androgynous adolescent thinks it’ll be a good idea.  Shin Megami Tensei 5 has the entire game in which to build some form of chemistry that can explain why Aogami is willing and able to defy his code, his familial instincts, and/or even his self-preservation for this kid he happened by chance to fall face-first into, and it just doesn’t do it.

And if the game won’t do it for the character who’s with you for its effective entirety, it should come as no surprise how faultily undeveloped the rest of the cast is, too.  Atsuta, for example, winds up being the Chaos Hero of the game, but there’s absolutely no development of him towards this destination--he starts as an austere defender of Tokyo, and since he’s told that the best way to protect Tokyo is to embrace Prime Minister Koshimizu’s path of Chaos, that’s the way he stays as he unquestioningly follows.  This guy is the human entity meant to be the face of 1 of the 3 major factions of the game, and there’s no development of his character, there’s no scene in which his convictions about protecting Tokyo are tested or even particularly explained, no conversation or monologue which establishes his coming to the conclusion that the best way of protecting Tokyo is a return to the days of the many old gods, nothing!  He just smiles and nods (minus the smile because Atsuta’s competing with the protagonist for the Least Capable of Human Emotion Award), and doesn’t put Koshimizu’s theory through the 20 seconds of scrutiny it would take to realize it’s absurd.  Shin Megami Tensei 4’s Walter does the Chaos Hero role proud compared to this empty schmuck, and Walter sucked.

For that matter, Koshimizu himself hasn’t got the narrative attention he needs.  He confidently states that Tokyo will be better protected by a world in which the multiple gods of Japan can oversee it, but he doesn’t go into any detail beyond that.  We’re given no indication of how the guy came to this conclusion (which is in contrast to his own damned experience as the sole director of the city for the last 20 years), and he doesn’t deign to explain his position or debate its opposition.  By contrast, SMT3’s Hikawa could actually reason for his Reason, and we could see the experiences that would clearly lead Chiaki and Isamu to their own paths (even if the latter was an idiot).  This isn’t just the half-baked posturing of some generic RPG antagonist, this is 1 of the major, fundamental paths of the game, and SMT5 doesn’t give either of its champions the time of day!  You can make the argument that the main SMTs have (excluding SMT4-2) always been focused on the intellectual, conceptual side of storytelling rather than the personal, emotional one, but characters like Atsuta and Koshimizu are still the mouthpieces of 1 of the game’s main philosophical angles--not developing them hurts the story’s bottom line, period!

The death of Tao should be a major, formative moment in shaping how the protagonist will desire to shape the world, and yet throughout the chapter in which she’s walking beside you, there’s almost no interaction whatsoever with her, and what little is there is focused entirely on moving the main quest forward.  Aogami can talk about how terrible the world is when “a dear friend’s death is a single drop in a sea of loss,” which is very poetic, but dude, the protagonist just met Tao like 3 days ago and they barely talked at all.  I have a better-established and more meaningful relationship with the guy who makes pizza at a local bar than the Nahobino had with Tao!  And in addition to badly undercutting the weight of what’s intended to be the most emotional scene in the game, the fact that Tao and the protagonist’s friendship has been so rushed and undeveloped makes her later resurrection completely underwhelming.  SMT5 was trying to pull the same thing that SMT1 did with the Heroine and SMT4-2 did with Asahi, but Asahi was an established character who’d interacted substantially with Nanashi, and even the Heroine felt like she had a better bond with her protagonist.  And this narrative negligence hurts Tao’s return twice further, because Tao as the goddess of creation is pledging to support the protagonist’s choice of what the world will be out of some confidence in his personal character that she supposedly witnessed during her time with him in the second chapter.  Where is this confidence coming from?  She didn’t know him, he didn’t know her, there is no basis for these elements of friendship and support that the game insists exist between them!

And oh, even after she returns, Tao still is given basically no character development whatsoever as the game rushes at breakneck pace toward its finale.  This character is in your party for nearly half the game, is meant to be a fundamental part of the story’s emotional component, and she’s no one to you!

She’s also apparently no one to anyone else, because after Tao is resurrected, she’s completely ignored by Dazai, Abdiel, Atsuta, and Koshimizu whenever you encounter them.  Yeah, no one comment on the fact that this chick is back from the dead and floating around as a creation goddess, or anything.  Not like Tao was a part of Atsuta’s friend group, or the Saint of Bethel, or the fundamental martyr whose death spurred the final stage of the war, or anything.  No, no one react in any way to her being back from the dead, that’d take like 2 minutes of dialogue and we can’t delay our headlong charge toward the ending for anything!

The writers’ disinterest with writing is just present everywhere!  The secondary players of Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, and Khonsu are only introduced minutes before the chapter begins in which they’re to be destroyed, even though they’re each major players in the game’s lore/history.  Atsuta’s sister Miyazu is introduced as though she’s supposed to be as major a character in the game as the Law, Chaos, and Neutral Heroes, yet the most she amounts to is being the plot device of the Khonsu sidequest--a sidequest based around how devoted Khonsu is to her, which means nothing to us since we see very little of Miyazu, and what little we see amounts to nothing more extraordinary than an NPC.  Amanozako is easily the best-characterized individual in the cast, and even her story is largely rushed through, an optional sidequest treated more as an afterthought than anything significant once it’s finally started.  Yakumo and Nuwa are the representatives of the Neutral path, the one that the SMT series actually wants you to choose, and yet they somehow are given even less screen time to make their case and show their character than the Law and Chaos representatives.  The monk guy is such a non-character that he makes Star Ocean 2’s Noel look like someone whose name I didn’t have to just look up by comparison..

The story goes from the first skirmish you see between Bethel and the demons, to the final battle!  This war that’s been going on for 20 years is settled the second you get involved in it, during a large-scale battle that you mostly don’t see!  The major villains of this grand conflict are introduced to you right before you kill them!

You know, the city of Tokyo is at the heart of both the Law and Chaos route’s motivation.  Both Dazai and Atsuta want to protect Tokyo specifically--the future of the world is to be decided by which path you choose, but the rest of the world’s fate is only tangential; the entities embodying Law and Chaos are acting specifically with the desire of protecting Tokyo, and to some degree the same is implied of the protagonist.  But Tokyo (the populated one you want to protect, that is, not the destroyed “real” one) is the setting in the game that you spend the absolute least amount of time in!  How can you base the primary, motivating conflict of the story on a love for a city, and then have the characters spend virtually no time in that city?  We’re expected to potentially identify with and respect Atsuta’s and Dazai’s devotion to Tokyo, yet we’ve spent no time in the city, seen none of its features or landmarks or culture or populace!  Previous mainline SMTs, and even several of the series’s spin-offs, have made Tokyo in its various forms their world map, shown its people and places over time--they gave it enough time and relevance to their events that you actually gave a damn about it, or at the very least, could believe that the characters would.  But the Tokyo that so much fuss is made of in this game is little more than a theoretical to the audience.

Characters are empty set pieces, events are paced terribly, important lore elements and plot devices are only established seconds before their activation in the story’s events, no philosophy is elaborated on, and there are even times when the game itself seems to have forgotten that it didn’t bother to show scenes it needed.  An example of the latter?  There’s a point at which Dazai talks about how Koshimizu is always checking with them and other subordinates to see how they feel about decisions that are made (as a counterpoint to Dazai, who prefers a stronger, more authoritative leader), except he never actually does this, at least not that I can see!  Need another example?  In the scene where all the remaining major players have gathered at the portal to the Empyrean, Yakumo comes up to them like the dramatically self-important loser he is and declares that it “sounds like you forgot about us.”  Uh, no, they didn’t forget about you, they didn’t even know you were in the running to begin with!  The game is acting like Yakumo has previously established himself to them all as a competitor for the throne, yet this is the first time he’s ever been on screen at the same time as Koshimizu, Abdiel, Atsuta, or Dazai.  Half of those assembled probably don’t even know who this guy is!  Yakumo, no one in this room could even be bothered to bat an eye at the fact that their dead classmate and/or saint Tao is floating in front of them, resurrected as a goddess; you think they’re gonna remember you?

Shin Megami Tensei 5’s pace reminds me of the old army saying, “hurry up and wait.”  It’s perpetually in a rush to blurt out the bare minimum amount of story elements that it can get away with so it can hurry you along to the next long, boring expanse of nothingness to repetitively, mindlessly fight enemies within as you wait for the next crumb of plot to be thrown hastily at you.  It’s a wonder they even bothered with the pretense of telling a story to begin with--it sure as hell seems like what Atlus really wanted was to follow in the footsteps of Fallout 76!

Now, it’s been pointed out to me that the mainline Shin Megami Tensei titles have always had, shall we say, a light touch, narratively speaking.  Their casts are almost always underdeveloped and unmemorable, and they don’t exactly do a lot of hand-holding when it comes to explaining their ideas and story progression.  That’s certainly true enough.  If an average RPG’s storytelling procedure could be likened to walking down a path, then mainline Shin Megami Tenseis could be seen as a set of large stones breaking the surface of a pond, a path on which you must carefully leap from 1 stepping stone to the next.  But if that’s what previous mainline SMTs can be seen as, then the narrative progression from story point to story point in Shin Megami Tensei 5 is a sadistic Mario Maker stage of giant pit after giant pit that are only barely technically traversable.  There is a world of difference between a light narrative touch, and an absent one, and SMT5 consistently goes with the latter.

I’m sorry that this rant has been 1 of my more unfocused ones.  There’s just so many different examples of Shin Megami Tensei 5’s failure to adequately tell its story, and its failure frustrates me so much each time, that I kinda just have to holler it all out in a jumble.  And make no mistake, it’s not just the lacking quantity of its writing--there are some serious issues with the writing’s quality, too, which we’ll be discussing more over the course of this year.  But by far the greatest obstacle that prevents Shin Megami Tensei 5 from being a good game, which it absolutely could have been with its core ideas, is the same great failing of Pokemon Generation 8: it’s just not interested in taking the time to tell its own story.














* Yes, I know Megaten has existed in some capacity or other since before the 16-bit era, but the series clearly came into its own as an intellectual property and pursuit as Shin Megami Tensei, and I’m content to simply labor under the idea that SMT1 was where it all really started.


** Well...sorta new.  SMT5’s take on Law is the idea of following the spirit and ideal of God even in defiance of His own will, which is a fascinating concept and gives us a new perspective on fallen angels, but...well, Shin Megami Tensei 2’s Law route did already basically do that.  Still, SMT5 at least finds an angle where defying the letter of God’s law in order to preserve its spirit doesn’t require one to punch God in the Face, so there’s a little difference, at least.

Chrono Trigger's Cutscene Comparison

For most RPGs with Full Motion Video, the events contained within the cutscene are an active part of the game’s sequence of events.  If you take out the anime cutscene in Tales of Berseria of Seres offering herself to Velvet as sacrifice, you’re going to miss the scene of her death and the revelation within her last words to Velvet.  If you remove the pre-rendered conversation between Adam and Eliza in her office from Deus Ex 3, you’ll be left without crucial information about the story of the game and its characters.  If you excise the boat scene in Lunar 1, you won’t have any idea, going forward, of just how incredibly boring it is when Luna sings.

Chrono Trigger, on the other hand, originates from the Super Nintendo, a full console generation before FMV cinematics became a reality for gaming.  As such, its anime cutscenes, added to the game when it was later re-released on the Playstation 1, represent an interesting situation: they show several major events in the course of Chrono Trigger’s plot, but they’re a duplication of events already playing out in the game, rather than the sole depiction of said events.  When you reach 1 of the correlating moments in the story, you’ll see the event transpire both within the game itself, as CT was originally designed, and also in its anime rendition.

Which naturally leads us to today’s question: Which version of Chrono Trigger’s narrative is better at these points, the original in-game scenario, or the anime cutscene version?  Well, rest assured, everyone, I am here today to answer this question so pressing and interesting that it never occurred to anyone in the past 20 years to bother asking it!



OPENING

We start with a pretty close call.  Both opening sequences to Chrono Trigger create an exciting montage that make great use of the game’s appealing diversity in settings, characters, and events, and while each opening is displaying a different set of scenes in a different order from one another, they’re pretty much equally intriguing and accurate representations of what the game offers.

Each opening has a couple potential flaws, but they’re totally negligible.  The fact that the original opening’s battles are staged is clear to anyone familiar with the game, but that’s insignificant since the point of the opening is to introduce you to a game you AREN’T familiar with.*  Each does technically show spoilers for the game (even such major ones, in the original, as the Kingdom of Zeal and Lavos’s emergence!), but most of what you witness in the cinematic will be forgotten by the time the player actually encounters the event, particularly with the scenes the anime version portrays (since they’re not a direct display of how it will play out in the game).

As far as which is better...I like the way that the original synchronizes the race with Johnny to the change in the music, and it has a slight advantage over its anime counterpart in terms of its ending--while the Epoch blasts off into another time at the end of each opening, it’s the original sequence that perfectly times it to the final few notes of the song, the exact right thrilling conclusion to the dramatic build-up that the opening has created.  Nonetheless, one really can’t deny that the pace and animation quality of the anime opening has an advantage in catching and holding the audience’s attention.  I also like the fact that the anime starts softly, reaping the benefit of slowly and gently intriguing the audience before it jumps into the flashy, exciting stuff.  And while we’re talking about the quiet beginning of the anime version, having us look fondly through Crono’s eyes at a picture of him and his friends is a great way of invoking a pleasing nostalgia, somehow more so than the actual original opening can!  Lastly, I like the fact that the anime makes a point of briefly showcasing each of the game’s main characters, lightly introducing them in a way that gives the audience a taste of them, yet doesn’t give anything away.  While the original certainly does show all the members of the party doing stuff (besides Magus, obviously), it’s the anime version that calls attention to them as characters rather than simply parts of the plot’s larger whole.

Thus, although each version is a great specimen of what a game’s opening should be, when one takes everything into consideration, it’s the anime introduction to Chrono Trigger that’s the better version, I feel.

In-Game: 0
Anime: 1


FINDING ROBO

Now this one’s much easier to award the win to the anime version.  In the original Chrono Trigger, discovering the deactivated and abandoned Robo is...well, it’s pretty much just a case of walking up to him and hitting the A button.  After all, the anime version is only covering the actual approach and initial discovery, not the dialogue and events that follow of Lucca deciding to fix him, Marle’s finding an insight about Lucca’s character, and Robo’s subsequent activation.  So this is basically just a case of whether it was better to have the player walk up to something and investigate it, or display the approach and discovery in anime format--no competition.

I will say that the cutscene has its flaws, though.  It begins strangely comically, with a rat’s goofy eyes blinking to a silly sound effect before we see the scene proper.  It doesn’t really feel right to this moment in the game, to me.  I mean, you’re still in the midst of the exceptionally portrayed apocalyptic world of 2300 AD, and this is the first major location that Crono and company have come to since only recently witnessing, to their horror, a visual record of the day the world was destroyed.  This dome seems completely empty and abandoned, a worse state even than the previous domes of residence we’ve encountered.  Put all that together, and...should this moment really start with something vaguely lighthearted?  Still and all, that weird start is done with very quickly, and the rest of the scene is adequate.

...Well...sort of.  I mean...if you’re gonna use a cutscene to introduce Robo, is showing him sitting in a scrap heap really the best way to do it?  Couldn’t they instead have had the cinematic portray the moment of his activation, with the energy sparks and spinning and whatnot?  Would’ve been way more dynamic.

Still, it’s a fine enough cutscene, doing well with showing just how alone and wrecked Robo is when he’s first discovered, and neatly displaying Lucca’s enthusiastic science-first questions-later attitude.  And like I said, there really isn’t any notable competition for it here.

In-Game: 0
Anime: 2


MEETING AYLA

Ayla’s introduction is awesome either way you slice it.  In its original format, she comes leaping on screen for a jump kick against 1 of the reptites that have mobbed Crono’s party, then proceeds to kick the ass of several more, before running another off the screen.  The previous fight has established to the player that these things are resistant to physical attacks, and yet here this out-of-nowhere cavewoman is wrecking each of them with a single hit.  Badass!

Being a bit divorced from the game’s visuals, the anime version doesn’t carry the same inherent gameplay-created implication to the player that Ayla must be incredibly strong to be so devastating with clearly physical attacks.  Also, I gotta say that it’s annoying that this cutscene (like Ayla’s official art) prominently displays her using a club, when she never actually does in the game, or is even implied to ever do so.  Weapons are for sissies; when Ayla wants something immediately and violently reduced to its component parts, it’s a hands-on approach or nada! 

But despite that, and although the in-game version gets the job done very well, I have to hand the victory once again to the anime iteration.  It’s fast, it’s exciting, it’s animated really well (this might be the best damn animation the whole game has, even!), it gives us an opportunity to see what reptites look like up close, it adds to Ayla’s combat prestige by showing her beating the crap out of even more of them, and it even makes her exit from the scene better--she’s actively leading a bunch of the enemies away from Crono and company to help them further, not just deciding to single 1 out to particularly work over off-screen.  I even dig Crono’s dumbfounded “I gotta tap me some ooga-booga ass ASAP” stare at the end of it.  Ayla kicks fucking ass, and this cutscene escalates on the original in showing that.  A well-earned point to the anime.

In-Game: 0
Anime: 3


FROG WIELDS THE MASAMUNE

Possibly the most cool and epic moment of Crono Trigger is that in which Frog accepts the mantle of Destiny, even if it had been meant to be worn by Cyrus, takes the Masamune in hand, calls his heroic pledge to the heavens, and cuts a freaking mountain in twain.  And this time?  The point goes to the original version.

Don’t get me wrong, the cutscene is a worthy contender!  Frog moves and acts with awesome purpose, the moment is appropriately epic, the skybeam is appropriately shiny, the mountain’s splitting is clean.  And the anime has an advantage in the windstorm that converges on Frog as he brandishes the Masamune--that’s a cool touch.

But honestly, the in-game version is just better.  First of all, it’s way, way more meaningful that Frog is not already carrying the Masamune, but instead asks that Crono give it to him, finally ready, having confronted his memories of Cyrus 1 final time, to become the world’s hero.  As awesome as the scene is for its own merits, it’s also meant to show an emotional culmination of Frog’s will, and his accepting, demanding the Masamune is a necessary part of it.  And of course, it’s also cool (if admittedly inexplicable) that Crono does not simply hand him the sword, but plunges it into the ground so that Frog can claim it for his own--very reminiscent to King Arthur drawing the sword in the stone.  Which in turn allows for Frog to gaze on it for a moment, and then make a vow to the world and to fate that he shall use the blade to slay his foe and restore honor.  Honestly, that moment of monologue by itself elevates this version above its anime counterpart; you really just can’t have the scene without it.  Finally, I actually think that the skyward explosion of power from Frog’s drawing the sword is in fact a lot cooler in-game, even with the SNES’s limited graphics.  While the anime version is neat, seeing an exploding dome of pure power radiate outward from him as he draws it, so massive that it’s seen from the world map as it expands, then converges into a beam blasting to the sky and higher, really just sells the epic nature of the moment and the Masamune’s incredible power so much better.  The mountainside being blasted in 2 with a fanfare of explosions and debris is cooler, and the whole scene having Frog’s theme playing louder than in the cutscene is also beneficial.

The anime version does it well!  But it’s completely out of its league on this one.  Point goes hard to the original!

In-Game: 1
Anime: 3


APPROACHING MAGUS

This one is a really tight race.  The anime version does not do much to mess with perfection--the blue flame path lights as Frog gradually approaches Magus, then leaps forward and forms a circle around the summoning chamber in which Magus stands, and the big man himself appears, seen ominously from the back.  It’s pretty much an exact interpretation of the original scene--although I do like that Frog hesitates at the first flames, waiting to see whether this is a danger before proceeding.  A nice detail.

Nonetheless, I’m calling this for the in-game version.  Although virtually identical in theory, the reality of the matter is that the main purpose of this scene is to culminate the unnerving atmosphere of Magus’s castle into a final, overwhelmingly tense approach to the sorcerer, and the simple fact is...it works better when the player has to be a participant in it.  It’s an unusual statement coming from a guy who usually sees the gameplay of an RPG as little more than a hindrance to its narrative, I know.  But it can’t be denied: forcing the player him/herself to be the one taking the steps forward along the sorcery-lighted path in a room of otherwise complete darkness raises the tension better than watching Frog do it in a cinematic, so the original iteration’s gotta take the win here.  I also think that its sound effects and the chanting background, in spite of being cruder, are more effective here, and the exact timing and reverse-fading dark silhouette of Magus coming into focus is also superior.  Those are tiny details--but when atmosphere is the highest priority, it’s the tiny details that count the most.  In-game wins the round.

In-Game: 2
Anime: 3


MOUNTING THE DACTYLS

Like finding Robo, this is essentially a default win for the anime version.  In the original game, upon finding Ayla at the dactyl nest about to embark on a solo mission to save her village and stop the reptites once and for all, Crono and company pledge to help her, she gratefully accepts, some dactyls are called down for them to join her, and the scene fades to black, resuming on the world map with the party flying on the dinosaurs’ backs.  This cutscene is basically showing the actual process of Ayla and company getting on the dactyls and flying off, so I guess its gameplay equivalent is the aforementioned black that was faded to?  Not very hard to determine which is the better contender.  I mean, honestly, it’s really only an okay cutscene (I do like the last moment in which it focuses on the ominous red star, though), and I have to wonder why this particular moment was selected for animation over so many other, more significant moments in the game, but...eh, it’s fine enough, and it’d have to be pretty bad not to be better than its competition of nothing at all.  Point to the anime.

In-Game: 2
Anime: 4


THE EPOCH TAKES OFF

This one’s surprisingly easy for me.  The Epoch isn’t able to fly at this point in the game (remember, it only gains flight because Dalton was an avid watcher of Pimp My Ride), so seeing it hover in the air and take off annoys me.  That may be nitpicky, but it’s not like there’s all that much in the anime cutscene that I’m unfairly disregarding.  Crono eagerly gets into the pilot seat, flips some switches (I guess it must be the exact same design as the car he races against Johnny, because otherwise I don’t know how exactly a kid from the 1000 AD suburbs knows this much about driving a time machine), and takes off.  Functional, but unremarkable, so the lore inconsistency is enough to put me off.  Also, with the anime version, the scene’s music and movement are clearly intended to get you excited for this moment, which...I mean, it’s not a bad thing, because the Epoch is very cool, but at the same time, having you already be hyped up is going to make the impact of the next moment in-game, seeing the inferno of the time-scape as the Epoch crosses through it, less impressive.  The quieter, almost reverent atmosphere of boarding the Epoch in-game creates a greater contrast to what’s to come, allowing the latter to be all the more impressive for it.  Point to the original.

In-Game: 3
Anime: 4


CRONO’s DEATH

Original version wins.  Not even a question.  Look, the anime cutscene is fine enough, but it completely lacks the power of seeing Crono’s death play out in-game.  There’s too many distractions, first of all--as great as it is to get to see something of Magus besides his back, doing a close-up of him watching Crono standing against Lavos is dumb, interrupting our view of the kid’s last stand.  Toriyama has a terrible habit of being utterly incapable of showing any important scene of conflict without constantly interrupting it to check in with the spectators...I should probably just be thankful that it didn’t go full Dragon Ball and have Magus and Vegeta start up a 10-minute play-by-play conversation to explain why what we’re ostensibly watching is so amazing.  The sudden flashback to Janus’s prediction that 1 of the party would perish is likewise an unnecessary distraction, and too damn heavy-handed to boot.  We don’t need to be reminded of it, guys, we’re watching it happen.

Maybe most importantly, though, the timing and act of Crono’s undoing is just far, far more moving and impactful in the original.  The anime only has a close-up of his face just kinda bwoosh outward, suddenly and with sound.  The original version, though...okay, the whole thing of Crono raising his arms up to the heavens might be more than was needed, but you see him disintegrate.  The screen is white and void of all but him and those he’s dying to protect, and after the keening windup sound effect of Lavos’s beam, the game goes utterly silent, allowing nothing, nothing, to distract us from the fact that we are watching him reduced to ash, a particle silhouette of Crono that dissolves before our eyes with cruel simplicity.  The silence, the intensity, the weight...this is a moment that is Chrono Trigger’s and Chrono Trigger’s alone, singular and uniquely powerful.  By contrast, the cutscene just shows an anime guy dying in an anime way.  Easy victory for the original version here.

In-Game: 4
Anime: 4


ENDING

So, this is a bit tricky to judge, because much like the opening, this isn’t so much 2 versions of the same scene as 2 different things accomplishing the same purpose.  Also, tough to really say what we should count as the in-game version.  I think it’s fairest that for the purposes of our comparison, the in-game version will be the ending starting with the fireworks being set off by Taban, since that’s the point at which the final sequence is fully out of the player’s hands.  Also, we are absolutely not gonna count the stupid bullshit crappy thing in the anime cutscenes where Guardia falls because even that far back Square was conducting experiments on how to cheapen and destroy the things their audience love.  It’s not part of the ending, it’s not a thing in Chrono Trigger, it doesn’t exist in the narrative or timeline, I will not be accepting questions at this time.

Alright, so, first of all, let’s talk about the anime cutscene.  We start with Crono and Marle’s marriage, which is...I mean, it’s nice, but while I am and always have been a Crono x Marle shipper, and the game itself certainly does imply that Marle romantically likes Crono, it seems a bit weird to just jump to showing them outright getting married.  Implications or not, CT simply doesn’t contain a love story for Crono and Marle, so this really would’ve been a lot better as, I dunno, them on a picnic date, or doing a holding-hands-and-looking-affectionately-at-each-other thing while they hung out with Lucca, or something.

Better than that is the next scene of Ayla and her tribe having a feast, in which Ayla casually shows what a fucking queen she is by out of nowhere jamming a ring on Kino’s finger, then tossing him a second ring (a substantially better one, I can’t help but notice, but then, it should be), and expectantly holding her hand to him with the disaffected expectance of a mob boss who’s also royalty.  Kino gets the idea and secures his status as Number 1 Bottom in Ayla’s inevitable harem as he slips the ring on, and everyone cheers.  

Following this, we get a scene of Glenn, curse-free, getting knighted by the King of Guardia, who looks...really, really old.  Is he supposed to be that old in the game?  I thought this guy had yet to father Leene’s daughter; the whole thing about Marle disappearing was that Leene dying at that time would erase her bloodline because a successor hadn’t been born yet.  Then again, let’s face it, there’s...pretty good odds that Glenn is Marle’s ancestor, not this guy.  Anyway, it’s a nice celebration of Frog’s chivalrous honor as he exits to a salute by the kingdom’s knights.  Then we’re back at Crono and Marle’s wedding in time to see King Kai Melchior, for...some reason, and they finish the aisle walk, and there’s balloons and a thrown bouquet, and it’s all nice and happy.

And then Lucca has to walk up with Mini Proto-Robo and find baby Kid and ruin everything by reminding us that Square erroneously believes that Chrono Cross is canon.

Yeah, uh, look, this is overall nice and all, and Ayla and Frog’s parts are really good, but...it’s not an impressive ending.  First of all, it doesn’t show Robo at all, and while there was a concern during their final goodbyes of whether Robo would still exist in the future, the game’s original ending (see below) confirms this to be the case, so I really don’t know why the anime ending stiffs him.  Second, Magus is likewise completely absent--yes, he COULD be dead in this ending if the player decided to off him in 1200 BC, but surely it wouldn’t be impossible to have a separate ending cutscene bit for Magus that could play or not play determined by that decision?

Third, even if you discount the sin of forcing Chrono Cross lore upon this defenseless game, Lucca’s part of the ending is kinda just bad--the scene clearly just isn’t meant to be about her, Lucca the character.  The damn baby she finds is the star of the scene, Lucca merely a vehicle for its introduction.  More is said about Lucca’s future life by the stumbling little proto-Robo than anything she herself is doing.  And fourth, I’m sorry, but even if you inexplicably DO like Chrono Cross, there’s still no reason to clumsily scotch-tape it onto Chrono Trigger like this.  The original game never contained any such hints of its (shitty, shouldn’t-be-considered-canon) sequel, and that sequel unfortunately tied itself to CT without any such help.  If you’re gonna end this game, end THIS game, let it stand as a testament to itself; don’t just exploit it as an advertisement for the later product.  And if you’re gonna make a “where are they now” ending about the characters, actually DO it for ALL the characters in the main cast!

The anime ending is serviceable to be sure, but it’s definitely and substantially flawed nonetheless.  The original, on the other hand...well, it’s basically perfection.  Whether it’s Crono and friends in the Epoch or Crono and Marle floating along with a bunch of balloons, you see the heroes carried across the world they’ve saved, the night-darkened ground illuminated by the lights of people’s homes, to a gentle, joyful tune.  In the case of the Epoch, eventually you get to see a simple scene for each of the rest of the party--Robo and Atropos sitting peacefully on the side of a notably non-ruined mountain in the future (happily confirming that Robo does, indeed, live in the saved future), Ayla and Kino riding dactyls through the sky, Frog leading a royal procession along Zenan Bridge with the king and queen behind him, and Magus, well, doing his grumpy solo act.**  In the case of the balloons, we transition to watching Crono and Marle from below as they climb higher into the heavens.  In each version, we finally begin to zoom out, to view this precious planet that we’ve put so much work into preserving, as a beautiful whole.  The credits finish rolling, and a shooting star tells us that all is done.  The Epoch version of this is quite simply the greatest RPG ending I’ve seen, and the balloon version is not significantly lesser.  Even discounting the shortcomings of the anime version, it’s hard to conceive how it could compete with this.  The tiebreaker goes to the original.

In-Game: 5
Anime: 4



Huh!  I wasn’t expecting it to be such a close score, but it looks like the final tally has the original, in-game scenes edging out the later anime additions 5 to 4.  While there’s a lot of merits to the cinematics and plenty of times that they’re a valuable addition to Chrono Trigger, the game in its pure, untouched form is still the better experience more often than not.  Neat.  I have no idea what that proves or why I felt the need to make the comparison to begin with, but I had fun and it’s always a joy to talk about Chrono Trigger.  Hopefully you enjoyed it to some degree, too.  Until next time!


















* Weirdly, the fight against Zombor is shown in both openings, and each time it’s portrayed incorrectly, with the original misrepresenting the beginning of the fight with him, and the anime implying that Frog can be involved in the battle.  Why Zombor was so important as to warrant representation in both openings, yet not important enough to show him correctly either time, is a mystery to me.


** Admittedly, you aren’t seeing the “ending” for Crono, Marle, and Lucca, so you COULD say that this is incomplete as the anime version is, in terms of displaying the game’s characters.  But I would argue that this ending is more definitively about the game and adventure as a whole, whereas the cinematic was clearly focused specifically on the cast, and also, Crono and Marle and Lucca’s ending IS that they’re out there, seeing the times they’ve saved and the people they’ve befriended, on a new quest.