Dragon Age 1's Blood Motif

Thanks to my sister and Ecclesiastes for their assistance with proofreading, and for the term “Tarentino imagery” and a reminder of the dark ritual’s relevance to this rant, respectively.



I’m still not sure I’d call Dragon Age 2 an actually bad game, but there’s no denying that at its very best it’s mediocre, and that it is completely inferior to its predecessor, Dragon Age: Origins (which I refer to as Dragon Age 1 because I like the simplicity of numerical classification when possible). The reasons for this are varied and many--characters of lesser quality, a narrative that stumbles over itself trying to establish which of its two major parts are the more important, an ending that’s just complete trash, and a plot whose ultimate crucial point is a choice between competing moral ambiguities, not to mention, for those who care about such things, quite a few problems with the actual gameplay (most prominently the dungeons just being recycled over and over again).

One thing I think is overlooked when assessing how DA2 fails where DA1 succeeded, though, is that DA1 has a recurring theme that runs throughout its story that provides both a literal and a metaphorical backdrop to more or less the entire story: the motif of Blood. Dragon Age 2, on the other hand, doesn’t have anything of the sort--the closest you get are the questions of spirit that the Qunari raise, which are squashed to irrelevance with the abrupt and somewhat meaningless conflict with the Arishok at the end of Act 2, and questions of controlling a few potentially dangerous individuals unfairly for the good of society that the Templars vs. Mages conflict raises, a conflict which raises so few positive points and so many negative points on each side that it becomes, as I said above, a choice between moral ambiguities. Honestly, I feel like after the credits of DA2 there should be that clip from Mystery Science Theater 3000 of Crow saying, “We hope you’ve enjoyed No Moral Theatre!”

But while these DA2 ideas are present for most of the game in one form or another, they’re handled rather clumsily overall, and don’t have the symbolic presence that Blood does in DA1, anyway. So, why don’t people add that to the standard laundry list of problems DA2 had compared to DA1? Well, I imagine it’s probably because most people, while able to recognize and appreciate the narrative benefits of the Blood motif over the course of DA1’s story, don’t really realize that it’s there to begin with. Thankfully, though, The RPGenius is here to inform! Because I’m just that kind of nice guy. Also, I’m bored and I like talking.

So! Blood. Blood is a big thing in Dragon Age 1. This is obvious at the very most basic, surface level, of course--it’s all over the place. When people die in DA1, there’s blood. Lots of it! When your characters kill enemies, they get splattered with the stuff. Head to toe. When a Blood Mage cuts himself to power up, it’s like a blood-filled water balloon just exploded. Hell, the very moment you start the game, the game developer logo intro has a dragon made of blood flying around!

But funnily enough, it’s this excessive amount of actual blood shown in the game that clued me in at first that there was something more to it. Because believe it or not...it doesn’t actually seem gratuitously violent or gory! I know it sounds crazy, but seriously, hear me out on this. The blood in DA1 isn’t like the blood you see in movies and games and such that are clearly just trying to be gory for the shock value. With those, it’s just an ichor, a load of red liquid, sometimes more like red glop, that streams and gushes and spurts from the wounded and dead, there to create a reaction in the audience rather than to serve a necessary storytelling function. It’s what I like to call Tarantino imagery--all shock value, no substance. But the blood in Dragon Age 1 isn’t just bodily ichor, it’s a force. It’s not bright and attention-getting, it’s deep-hued and accessory to the act that has called it forth. It doesn’t flow, it roils. And it’s never, to my recollection, joined by body parts and internal organs and such, as is often the case in situations of gore for gore’s sake--the blood is the only reactive evidence of injury or death because the blood is what’s important.

And why does the blood seem less like an escaped fluid and more like a liquid force? Because Blood is a force--it is the single most recognizable physical symbol in human culture of a living thing’s life force. And this meaning of Blood, that of its being the symbol of one’s own life, one’s own being, is probably the most common and important use that Dragon Age 1 has for it. The most literal use of this is, of course, the fact that when a creature dies in the game, they bleed, while their killer will then have that blood cling to him or her. The game even has a moment early on, in the City Elf origin story, where a villain tells his guards not to needlessly provoke the protagonist, the to-be Grey Warden, because she* is covered in blood--the blood is the visible residue of lives that have fallen before this individual, a warning that this is an individual not to be trifled with. And yes, this IS still a fairly pedestrian use of blood that any particularly gory movie/game/whatever could use to do the same thing, but still, the difference is all in how it’s presented. The excessive gore of a horror movie villain being covered in his victims’ blood is not the same to me; the horror movie uses it as a way to shock and frighten, a way to provoke an emotional response, wearing an excess of it for its origins, while DA1 uses it as a visual confirmation that lives, many of them, have been ended before this warrior. It’s a symbol of conflict overcome, that makes the wearer formidable, not gratuitous.

More importantly, though, DA1 equates Blood as a life force symbol by way of Blood Magic, and the Grey Wardens’ taint. Blood Magic is interesting when you view it through this more metaphorical lens. The idea of Blood Magic is that the mage is using his/her own life force to fuel and enhance his/her spells, shedding blood and calling upon its power as it flows. As it figuratively does in our world, Blood has literal power in the world of Ferelden--in fact, Blood Magic is seen as the most dangerous of all magics! It’s interesting to think about what interpretation is meant to be taken from this, if any--perhaps that one who is willing to give up anything, including his own life, to achieve his own goals has a power that no other has, and is the most dangerous of all ambitious individuals? But I’m not interested today in exploring too deeply the Blood motif, merely in recognizing it and pointing it out. Blood Magic is also notable in that its most famous ability is to allow its practitioner to gain control of others. Again, we see the link between blood and one’s very essence--if Blood Magic is the use of blood to manipulate blood, then the implication in being able to use it to control others is that one’s actions, one’s decisions, one’s personal being is dependent on and linked to it. Twice over does Blood Magic use Blood as a symbol of life force.

Similarly we see the induction ritual of the Grey Wardens use blood as a life force--and more than that, a representative life force. What separates the Grey Wardens from regular humans is that they have consumed the tainted blood of the Darkspawn (and lived through the process), after which they gain heightened awareness of Darkspawn (in other words, the ability to sense where they are), as well as the ability to permanently kill the Darkspawn horde’s leader by fatally taking the leader’s essence into themselves. Again, we see Blood as synonymous with one’s life force and personal power, as it is through consuming the Darkspawn’s blood, taking it within themselves, that the Grey Wardens gain their essential abilities. This, of course, harkens back to the ancient and gross idea that by consuming the symbolic parts of another person, you can add that person’s qualities to your own (as Futurama’s Professor Farnsworth puts it, “And if you kill anyone, don’t forget to eat their heart to gain their courage. Their rich, tasty courage.”). Just what effects the Darkspawn blood has for the Grey Wardens is also telling. The abilities gained, as well as the process’s detrimental effects, are, after all, not so much power as awareness, and even identity. The ability to sense other Darkspawn, the ability to take their leader’s soul into oneself, the eventual loss of oneself to the Darkspawn’s call, the connection through dreams to a Darkspawn group consciousness of sorts...becoming a Grey Warden, drinking the Darkspawn blood, is to actually become part Darkspawn. Again, the Blood is seen as the container of one’s very essence, and to take another’s Blood into oneself is to combine it with one’s own essence, to have one’s own identity become a mixture of the two.

The motif of Blood is also used in DA1 in a couple of different ways, as well, beyond that of being symbolic of life essence. Blood is also, for example, used as a corruptive force at times. Often in literature and other forms of cultural expression, Blood is equated with a loss of innocence, a destruction of something pure, a vessel for corruption. I’ve always found this a little bit interesting in that this symbolic use of blood actually has, in addition to its spiritual basis, medical precedence--there are some particularly nasty maladies which can be transmitted through contact with another’s blood, most famously HIV/AIDS. DA1 shows us this idea of Blood as corruption a few times, such as during the quest to obtain Andraste’s Ashes. During this quest, you are given the option to, if you are a titanic asshole, pour a dragon’s blood into the ashes and ruin them utterly. It’s pretty straightforward--it’s the use of the Blood of this most savage and grand of beasts to corrupt and destroy the pure, divine remnants of Dragon Age’s equivalent to Jesus.

The most plot-relevant and recurring example of Blood as a corruptive power, of course, is the Darkspawn taint, the illness from being exposed to the Darkspawn too long that sickens one and eventually turns one into the Darkspawn. The people of DA1 say that this taint is carried within the blood, and this statement is verified by both the Grey Warden induction ceremony (since the Darkspawn essence they take into themselves will, eventually, drive them to the darkness themselves) and by the quest in the game to recruit the Dog character. During this quest, the Grey Warden protagonist encounters a dog who has become sick because he ingested some Darkspawn blood from a prior battle. The Darkspawn taint has been carried into the Dog by that blood, and will kill him if the Grey Warden doesn’t find some medicinal herbs to help him.** Symbolic of the Darkspawn’s life force, Blood becomes the carrier of their taint, and a force of corruption.

The last major way that Blood is used as a motif in DA1 is as it’s related to heritage. A classic way of describing one’s family history, nationality, and breeding is to indicate that they’re found in one’s blood. Those descended from royalty are often said to have royal blood. A dog whose predecessors were all notable hunting dogs might be said to have hunting in his blood. Regardless of the country of one’s birth and residence, one might be said to have, say, the blood of an Irishman, if one’s family origins can be traced back to Ireland. And so on and so forth. For us, Blood is used as a metaphorical indicator of heritage and legacy.

Interestingly and ironically enough, this theme of Blood which is entirely symbolic and non-corporeal in real life has the most actual, practical influence on the events and world of Dragon Age 1. Heritage and lineage are huge parts of the Dragon Age setting and the game’s plot. Many parts of the societies of Thedas revolve around lineage--the human nobility functions as largely through birthright as our own real-world nobility does, and family history determines very nearly every major part of the dwarven society. In addition, the events of the plot very often incorporate lineage (and thus Blood) as being very important. Most of the origin stories for the Grey Warden, for example, relate to the Warden’s family history in one way or another. The werewolves in the quest for the elves’ allegiance are forced to carry a curse for the actions of their ancestors, a punishment inflicted upon them for their Blood rather than their own actions. A DLC sidequest adventure sees the descendant of Sophia Dryden, a Grey Warden of the past, attempting to learn the truth of his ancestor and reclaim her fortress--in other words, a quest to know and reclaim the heritage of his Blood. One of the major crisis points in the character development of Alistair revolves around his expectations of the connection he has to his half-sister, a connection forged solely on a shared lineage.

Perhaps most prominently, a major plot event of DA1 revolves around whether Anora or Alistair should become ruler of Fereldan--Anora is queen by marriage to the late King Cailan, and has both a ruler’s intellect and experience (as she basically was ruling the kingdom for the fun and good-natured but clearly not politically gifted Cailan) but Alistair is Cailan’s bastard half-brother, meaning that he has actual claim to the throne through his Blood. The big lynchpin in the Warden’s plan, midgame, is to put forth Alistair as the rightful king and oust Anora (and by doing so oust the villain Loghain, who is using his daughter Anora as his royal puppet).

And let us not forget the last but potentially most important plot event of the game, Morrigan’s dark ritual, which is an act of creating a spiritual legacy of the old gods and material legacy of either the protagonist or Alistair in the form of a child, which is heavily implied will be a major part of the future of the Dragon Age series. This is an instance of Blood as heritage whose importance will no doubt only grow; Bioware was certainly very hyped about playing its importance to the future up, even making DA1’s last DLC entirely about pursuing Morrigan, promising to answer our many questions about the child and the ritual and to tie up loose ends.***

It’s unclear to me what, if anything, Dragon Age 1 means to say about the lineage of Blood--one could say that Bioware paints it in a negative light, as the werewolves suffering for their ancestors’ mistakes is clearly unjust and the dwarven society is clearly declining badly because of its crippling traditions of heritage, but one could just as easily argue that there are parts of DA1 that verify the idea of Blood’s lineage as legitimate, such as the fact that Duncan’s decision to recruit the City Elf Grey Warden (assuming that’s the origin you pick for your protagonist) because her mother was an impressive warrior was obviously the right idea, what with her going on to save the country and all. At other times the issue’s not so simple, such as with Anora and Alistair--Anora’s the better ruler for her intellect and abilities, which is a point against Blood, but Alistair is a better person for his compassion and bravery and other moral values (which is also important in a king), which could be said to be a point for Blood. But like I said before, I’m more here just to recognize and display the Blood motif, not to analyze it too deeply, so I’ll leave that up to you to think over. Regardless of what conclusions can be drawn on the subject, though, it’s clear that Blood as a symbol of heritage is a tremendously important part of Dragon Age 1.

And that’s about all I’ve got for you today. It’s completely possible that there are more ways in which the motif of Blood is tied to DA1, ways both subtle and even obvious that I’ve missed completely--in fact, I’d be very surprised if I hadn’t missed at least a couple. I’m a far ways away from perfect. Nonetheless, I think you can see from even my limited observations that DA1 has worked Blood into its essence in several very important ways. And I think that it really makes a positive mark on the game, gives the story some symbolic backbone, helps to subtly but strongly tie its many elements together into one cohesive work. It’s the touch of art upon the game’s storytelling, perhaps the last touch of art Bioware was ever destined to give, and it’s one of the many elements of Dragon Age 1 that elevates it to the ranks of great RPGs.












* You can choose the gender of your protagonist in DA1, but some of the origin stories are clearly meant to have one gender over the other. In the City Elf origin’s case, you’re clearly meant to be playing a female.

** With said herbs, however, the Dog survives and joins the party, which has always made me wonder if the Dog doesn’t also count as a Grey Warden. I mean, he basically did the exact same thing that the Wardens do to make them Wardens--drank Darkspawn blood and didn’t die from it.

*** Note: Answers, clarification, and an actual attempt to resolve anything whatsoever not included.

Xenosaga 3 Mini Rants 1

Say, is it...why, yes, it is! It’s time for another discussion of the utter chaos that is Xenosaga 3’s story and characters! Oh, BOY!

Hey, let’s do something different today. Instead of just naming off 4 or 5 of the flaws to be found in Xenosaga 3 before I make a proper rant out of the last one, this time around why don’t I have some fun and give a proper little paragraph to a bunch of them? It’ll be a blast, I’m sure. So without further ado, here’s another compilation of the many storytelling mistakes, big and small, of Xenosaga.


Scott and The Professor: The new role given to The Professor and Scott in Xenosaga 3 is rather strange, even jarring. In the previous games, these 2 have consistently been comic relief characters whose only significance was in relation to tongue-in-cheek sidequests that were almost entirely discordant to the actual plot. Yet now, in Xenosaga 3, these previously optional, out of synch background characters are not only fully validated parts of the plot--they’re actually some of the most important NPCs of all! They hang out in the main characters’ ship and take on most plot-relevant science tasks, such as explaining some of the plot’s events and repairing and upgrading KOS-MOS. It’s like...okay, in Fallout Tactics, you could get into a random encounter where you’d witness Phil the Nuka-Cola dude on his bicycle, riding across the wasteland to deliver Nuka-Cola refills to the various vending machines scattered across the country. The encounter and character are very, very obviously there solely for a quirky laugh, and the circumstances of that laugh are almost certainly not meant to be taken as a serious, official part of the series canon. It wouldn’t fit in correctly with the Fallout series for a variety of lore/atmosphere/logistic reasons. Well, putting Scott and The Professor onto the Elsa and giving them a legitimate role in Xenosaga 3’s plot is basically like if you were to make a Fallout game where Phil the Nuka-Cola dude was an actual, story-significant party member. It’s weird, it’s wrong for the characters, and it gives too much officiality to their previous roles, roles that didn’t mesh especially well with the actual, legit Xenosaga lore.

MOMO’s Abilities: You know what’s kind of dumb? Making all of MOMO’s regular attacks and special abilities too rinky-dink or variable to translate effectively into your FMV cutscenes. I mean, you watch the video footage of the Xenosaga series, and you see Jr. firing his pistols, Ziggy throwing his cyborg weight around, KOS-MOS doing all her crazy super-fighting, Jin slicing things up on occasion with his sword, and even Shion has a couple moments when she actually does stuff. chaos has powers that could easily and effectively be used in the various battles we see the team engaged in during cutscenes, even if for some reason he never does use them. But MOMO? Throughout the series she’s used a lame little staff and a bow* for attacks, and performed special attacks that even Sailor Chibi-Moon would turn up her nose at for being too cutesy. And hey, okay, I guess that’s okay for a little girl character in RPG battles, which are generally kind of weird anyway. But Xenosaga’s a series where you literally watch hours and hours and hours of cutscenes. Cutscenes are the main vehicle of the game’s storytelling. And while no one questions her being able to shoot little star arrows at giant mechanized monsters of destruction and cause damage inside the game’s battle system, where everything is reduced to how many white numbers you can make appear over your enemies’ heads, that shit is not gonna cut it in a cutscene where things are supposed to appear relatively believable. Hell, Jr. packs a pair of pistols and even those seem ridiculously inadequate whenever we see him firing them in the game’s cinemas, so what the hell is MOMO supposed to do with the ability to make a Lite Brite picture of her head to hit someone with? And as a result, every time anyone’s gotta fight in an FMV sequence during the Xenosaga series, MOMO’s just stuck sitting it out. I mean, sure, there are times in the FMVs where she can serve a legitimate support role, such as the awesome car chase early in Xenosaga 2, when she takes the wheel of the car so that Jr. and chaos can concentrate on stopping their pursuit, but generally speaking, if you were just watching the FMV sequences of the series and had no contact with the battle system, you’d have no idea what MOMO is with the group for. Is MOMO a capable member of the team or is she just some NPC the group’s dragging around, Namco? Your games don’t seem to have a sure answer.

For Aslan’s sake, Allen is seen fighting enemies in cutscenes more often than MOMO is. Fucking Allen.

Number of Villains: There are too many villains competing for top billing in this series. Margulis and his UTIC organization, Albedo, Yuriev, and Wilhelm are all given enough screentime, seeming plot importance, and grandiose plans and speeches that it seems like there are half a dozen different galaxy-shaking villain schemes all crammed together, each trying to claw its way to the top of the plot. It’d be one thing if they were each confined to their own game, like the villain of the between-games episode seemed to be, but no--you’ve got Margulis and his organization being sinister and super important from the first game on, Albedo jumping around in the villain spotlight for the first 2 games and then misdirecting us for much of the third (since we don’t know until the moment it happens that he’s not actually being evil, the overall effect is that of another villain running about through the third game), Yuriev shows up in Xenosaga 2 but relates very strongly to the U-DO and URTV subplot that’s given such large focus in all the games including the first, and Wilhelm’s been a point of villain interest since the first game’s end and is ultimately the true villain of the series. It also doesn’t help that they all end in quick succession, either. If 1 or 2 of them had been taken out earlier in Xenosaga 3, there’d be less confusing competition for the player’s attention, but no, each one is only concluded at the end of the game. Yuriev is taken down at the end of the second to last dungeon, and Albedo with him. Then you finish up with Margulis and his forces about a third of the way through the last dungeon. And then, of course, you handle the final villain Wilhelm soon after. They’re all vying for attention right up to the very end. A couple competing villainies at the same time is manageable; 4 that span the entire series and all only conclude at its very end like dominoes is distracting and confuses the player as to what the true thematic conflict of the series is meant to be.

KOS-MOS’s Third Body: Out of place, completely unnecessary sexual fanservice continues to cheapen everything it touches. Or maybe there’s some combat advantage to having your battle ‘bot brazenly bare her barely-bound boob valley when she’s fighting space ghost-angels that I just don’t get?

6 Games? Really?: I’ve mentioned before that the Xenosaga series was meant to be 6 episodes long (with each game being an episode), and that a HUGE amount of the problems with the plot, storytelling, and characters can be traced back to the writers simply not having the time they’d anticipated and needed for all their ideas to be properly shown and worked through. Another case of the corporate part of a company ruining the integrity of the product. Bad Namco! No biscuit!

But here’s the other side of the matter. Who the bloody fuck writes a story with the serious intent on taking 6 game installments to tell it!? It’s usually pretty ambitious to write a story with the intention of telling it in even 2 parts! I mean, think about it: how many RPGs are there out there that were designed from Day 1 to be incomplete without the next game to follow it? The Golden Sun series, Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch, and Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head that were clearly intended from the get-go to have incomplete stories to be concluded in a later game, and those are all just 2-parters! Obviously any writers are going to hope that their game does well enough to warrant sequels, and will have ideas for what can be done, but they’re usually reasonable enough to take these things 1 or 2 games at a time, because you never know how players will receive your product, and what the corporate atmosphere will be with your company in the future. Mass Effect is a series that spanned 3.5 games, but Bioware wasn’t brazen enough to just assume from the moment they began work on ME1 that they’d get the opportunity to make a trilogy out of it, and they planned accordingly. ME1 concludes with the promise of more to come, but it clearly would be able to stand alone as its own game if need be. 6 games to tell one overall story! 6 games, each with hours and hours of FMV! Do you have any idea of the resources it takes to make 6 games happen? How many game series do you know that even keep the same SETTING for 6 installments, let alone the same continuing story? Ultima, The Legend of Zelda (which almost doesn’t count given how tenuous the connections are between most of its games), Kingdom Hearts, and sort of Nippon Ichi’s titles are the only ones that come to mind, and you can bet none of them started out by saying, “This thing is ONLY going to work if we’ve got 6 games to devote to this series.” Because that would be fucking insanity. So yeah, forcing a 6-part story to be crammed into 3 games is obviously a bad idea and will ruin the damn thing, but what the hell were they doing with an inflexible planned length of 6 parts to start with?

Shion x KOS-MOS: I know I mentioned this in passing during my rant on how stupid Allen x Shion is, but I’d like to say again how utterly bizarre it is to witness the interactions of KOS-MOS and Shion throughout the series and scenes like the one where Nephilim tells Shion that she’s “the only one who can open KOS-MOS’s heart,” or where Juli voices her belief that it’s Shion’s wish for KOS-MOS to have a heart, and then not only not see them get together at any point, but also not even have the games acknowledge the possibility of a romantic love between them. I mean, maybe it really is just me here, but I would swear the entire damn series consistently has them say and do things, and have things said about them, that in any other RPG or anime would be considered, would be MEANT, to be evidence of romantic attachment. It’s like watching interactions between Bastila and a female Revan in Knights of the Old Republic 1--you’re seeing 2 characters who are written with the express intention of falling in love, engage in dialogue written with the express intention of causing them to fall in love, having been put into a situation that was created with the express intention of allowing them the circumstances necessary to fall in love, only for no apparent reason, they don’t fall in love. It’s weird and it’s inconsistent with the characters and their relationship to one another.

Sellers: Where the hell did Sellers go? I mean, seriously, what happened to him? The guy’s introduced as a sinster-ish lesser villain scientist guy working for Yuriev, we see him several times as Xenosaga 3 progresses, enough to be quite convinced that he’s reasonably important, he’s got back history and overall plot relevance, and eventually the characters come face to face with him, at which point he gives some exposition and they have to leave to stop Yuriev. And then...Sellers is gone. Just completely gone, forgotten by the plot entirely. We don’t see him again, we don’t hear of him again, there’s no mention of him doing anything further in the codex, nothing. The writers just drop him and forget he ever existed. Every other villain, no matter how minor, is wrapped up by the game’s conclusion--they even include those 2 obscure Richard and Hermann pilot guys, whose roles in the series are so negligible that I just spent about 10 minutes of searching through the Xenosaga Wiki trying to find out what their names were. But Sellers just stops existing in the plot altogether after that first and final meeting, like Rowd in Suikoden 2 or that armored nitwit in Grandia 3.

Vague, Ambiguous Dialogue: This is a pet peeve of mine for RPGs in general, but Xenosaga 3’s got more than its fair share of awkwardly vague, unspecific dialogue exchanged between sinister groups of villains. I think this is best illustrated with an example, so go here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80uG40b3fl4 and watch from 4:38 to 6:01. Now, did you follow ANY of that? I’ve played the damn game from start to finish and even I don’t follow half of it! How does Blue Testament know things are going smoothly just because Red Testament happens to be staring down at the coffin thing? What about the coffin and Red Testament staring at it implies that he’s “pulling out the big guns?” Why won’t he refer to specific objects and people by their designation/name even once, instead ONLY using elusive terms like “this thing” and “she” and so on? What is the nature of the errors you must correct, Red Testament? What does “So you knew all along, huh?” mean--was Red Testament not supposed to know about these errors we know nothing about all along, or is it something related to this situation and/or the errors that they didn’t think he knew about, and if so, what the hell is it, exactly, that he knew all along? Why does having this totally undefined knowledge make him a scary guy? The look on whose face when she knows everything about what, and what does it have to do with Red Testament? Is the “she” they’re referring to meant to be the vaguely described “princess” they then indicate is in the coffin, or is this someone else now? What does she have to do with anything? What the hell is Blue Testament doing sniffing at whatever’s in the coffin and why does no one find this act a little unsettling? And why are the White and Black Testaments present if they’re not even going to say a single goddamn line of dialogue?

Only some of these questions are actually answerable if you’ve played the game, incidentally. I could not, for example, hazard a guess about why the Red Testament’s knowing about the situation would prompt the Blue Testament to proclaim that he’s one scary guy.

Anyway, do you see what I mean here? Thanks to the excessively vague and ambiguous dialogue here, the player gleans almost no information whatsoever from this scene. About the only pieces of info related to the game’s plot that an audience can safely gather from this is that there is a “princess” of some sort inside the coffin, it/she has something to do with the Testaments’ plot, and, most memorably, the Testaments are sinister dudes planning things secretly (which was already established previously in the Xenosaga series, so there’s no need to establish that anyway). This scene will be almost entirely forgotten by the time the player reaches the point of the game where its relevance can be shown, largely because there’s so little about it that we can grasp onto and understand, and when the plot’s ready to do so, the situation this scene is relevant to will be described much more comprehensibly, meaning that this scene is meaningless and redundant anyway. So it’s as useless as it is poorly communicated on the level of actually conveying plot meaning, which is its primary purpose, and as far as just watchability, it stinks. I mean, look at that dialogue. Who the fuck talks like that, even IF they’re trying to reference secret things without actually saying what they are? It’s like whichever writer put this scene together was using this little gem of translation as a cipher! This is why I hate it when RPGs do this shit, include these scenes of evil guys sinisterly talking in ambiguous terms about plot points that the player isn’t supposed to know yet, because to pull it off, you have to forcefully twist the dialogue into something so completely awkward and bizarre that even when you DO know the plot points they’re vaguely referring to, it still reads like a fucking space alien wrote it!

Scrapping KOS-MOS: So...a subcommittee voted that rather than try to fix the ridiculously advanced combat robot that has proven monumentally effective at combating Gnosis in the past couple years or so after she was damaged protecting a bunch of people from being vaporized by a stray laser during a military demo gone wrong (more on that scene in another rant), they’re gonna scrap her instead? I mean, yeah, I understand that the idea is that the new T-elos model is more advanced and effective and thus will replace the KOS-MOS project, but who the fuck were the morons on that subcommittee? This has to be a committee so short-sighted, brainless, tasteless, and lacking in basic human comprehension that I wouldn’t be half surprised to find out it was also the committee that handed out the Oscars in 2012. When you have a galaxy-wide threat of space monster angel things, you don’t just scrap one well-proven-to-be-effective weapon against them as soon as the next one comes along! The entirety of your galactic civilization is a lot of distance for 1 humanoid robot to protect, don’t you think? Why the rippin’ flippin’ hell wouldn’t they keep KOS-MOS so they could have 2 effective combat robots dealing with the Gnosis threat instead? I mean, for fuck’s sake, T-elos is still only in development when the subcommittee votes to melt KOS-MOS down; they’re getting rid of her before her replacement is even ready to assume duty! It’s not even like it would be difficult to repair her after her loss during the military demo, because when the heroes find her on the scrap heap later on (and by the way, why the hell is she in with all the garbage? You can’t tell me that this kind of super technological hardware wouldn’t be dismantled and disposed of through different means from the rest of the trash), she’s (strangely enough) virtually undamaged and can be booted up with no trouble.

I realize that the real reason for the existence of KOS-MOS and T-elos is, of course, the secret overly complex and weird hoopla about the resurrection of Mary Magdalene and rebooting the universe and so on, not the surface story about them being anti-Gnosis weapons, but it’s pretty safe to assume that since the only ones privy to all of that are the main bad guy Wilhelm, his Testament henchmen, and chaos, the idiots on the subcommittee knew none of that stuff and thought the anti-Gnosis weapon stuff was all on the level. It’s like if you were walking along and happened to see a $20 bill on the ground, and after picking it up, you threw out the $10 bill already in your wallet simply because the 20 is better. KEEP THEM BOTH, MORON.


And I think that’s enough for today. I keep thinking that I’m going to stop being able to think of/remember problems with this game and series, and I keep being proven wrong. I’m already halfway done with the next Xenosaga 3 rant as I finish this sentence, so expect to see more soon.










* Yeah, I know I’ve said repeatedly that bows are badass weapons and I’ll stick by that, but that’s in the context of a more traditional RPG setting. In a futuristic setting with lasers and androids and guns and all kinds of other crazy shit, a bow isn’t gonna do shit.

General RPGs' AMVs 8

It’s that time again!


As always, if you find any of these videos pleasing, be decent enough to hit the Thumbs Up button, and/or even better yet, leave a positive comment. The world has more than enough terrible, clumsy, careless AMVs, and we must cherishingly encourage and gently cradle those few, precious fans capable of creating something worthwhile.


FINAL FANTASY

Final Fantasy 8: I Just Wanna Run, by YuniX2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1GYJosKZjM
The music used is I Just Wanna Run, by The Downtown Fiction. This one’s kind of odd, really. YuniX2 crams this AMV full of visual effects (it’s obvious she’s experimenting), and a lot of the time these effects make the video rather neat where it wouldn’t actually be particularly engaging. At the same time, though, like most AMVs containing an overabundance of cinematography and editing tricks, they get to be a little much at times, being distracting or even a bit annoying. And yet, she’s skillful enough at following the music’s beats and flow and matching them to the visual element of the AMV that most of this problem is largely reduced. Ultimately, I think the end product is pretty good, and does deserve some praise.

Final Fantasy 9: I Still Remember You, by SirMichaelValentine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXyrnj2dMPo
The music used is I Still Remember, by Blackmore’s Night. Although it starts to weaken toward the end, this AMV uses the song quite well, letting its soulful tune and singing meld well with the ever-powerful visuals of the game. Nothing to really say beyond that; this is just a generally good video.

Final Fantasy 9: Viva La Vida, by YuniX2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLahbRSo_L4
The music used is Viva La Vida, by Coldplay. More good stuff from YuniX2, this video has her characteristic ability to match scene actions and scene changes very well to the song’s lyrics and tune, used to great effect to make the character of Kuja into an avatar of the singer. This time around it’s basically a video using FF9’s footage to tell the story of the song, and it all works surprisingly well to this effect--Kuja’s actions and expressions and so on work very well with the words and emotions of the deposed ruler whom the song is about, sometimes predictably because Kuja’s generally a good fit since he’s haughty, arrogant, and regal in a self-styled fashion, and sometimes surprisingly because the scenes weren’t really meant to imply what the song does but still work for it nonetheless. While I feel that the latter half of this AMV doesn’t have quite the strength and relevance in its scene selection as the video’s first half, this is a neat, interesting, and of course well-made AMV through and through.


KINGDOM HEARTS

Kingdom Hearts Series: Song of Storms, by Maddy Jayde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO2vt_FRdys
The music used is a cover of Song of Storms, from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The cover is performed by LilyPichu, found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKHsN1Nr97E. You may notice I don’t really ever put up any KH AMVs in these little rants. The reason for that is that I generally don’t watch them. Not because they’re never good (although that’s very close to true), but more because of the sheer number of the things--there’s probably twice as many KH AMVs in existence as there are for every other RPG I’ve played put together. But this one happened to show up during my reviewing The Legend of Zelda AMVs (because of the song used), and I find it pretty impressive. It elegantly uses the song to go with its visuals, and the words that Maddy Jayde puts to this tune are very elegant, even beautiful, and they enhance the use of the song with the visuals. This is an AMV that’s actually very good to watch twice--once to take read the lyrics along to the music, and then to watch the video for itself with those lyrics known.


MASS EFFECT

Mass Effect Series: N7, by FatalFrameStudio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN2W7AGuF98
The music used is Event Horizon, by I am Waiting for You Last Summer. Simple, quite, elegant, powerful, and epic--the song matches Mass Effect very well, and FatalFrameStudio makes the scenes match the song just as well. This is a tribute AMV that captures the events and heart of the Mass Effect series very well, and is a real pleasure to experience.

Mass Effect Series: The Call, by Tales2TellU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDekS9XtuWo
The music used is The Call, by Regina Spektor. While I can’t say I feel particularly strongly one way or another about the pairing of Female Shepard and Kaiden, this video is a pretty decent one. It’s a little slow and over-emotional, but then so is the song, and overall it does what it intends to, which is to showcase the (potential) love between Kaiden and Shepard, fitting them to the song and fitting the song to them.


VALKYRIE PROFILE

Valkyrie Profile 1: Jar of Hearts, by SarcasmYAY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvmXduUHePg
The song used is Jar of Hearts, by Christina Perri. This is a very small one, but I think it accomplishes the feeling and ideas that it sets out to, and it cuts from the song well, so it doesn’t leave you feeling like it’s supposed to continue. The creator works well with the slow, heavy tone of the song, knowing how to effectively let the game’s video run its course, but also employing good scene selection when necessary, and there’s no denying that the lyrics fit well with the characters shown and backstory of Valkyrie Profile 1. It’s very rare to find such a brief AMV that doesn’t feel like it’s missing something, AND has some skill and meaning to it, but SarcasmYAY’s given us a great example of the term “short but sweet” with this one.


THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU

The World Ends with You: Fooled by Your Emptiness, by Yodizzle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iifyQqI3RCE
The music used is a remix of Room for Happiness, by Kaskade. The remix is also done by Kaskade. While I am reluctant to give credit to any individual who willingly calls him- or herself “Yodizzle,” this is a definite winner. The song coordinates with the visuals well, lending and combining its meaning and emotion with that of the game itself, and the scene editing helps to emphasize this connection. Yodizzle adds to the theme with dialogue taken from the game, emphasizing the meanings of the song, the game, and the amalgamation that is this AMV, and does so expertly, inserting the dialogue in when it can have great impact, while at the same time carefully avoiding letting it distract from or drown out the song. Good, good stuff, and it’s a nice change of pace to have a quality AMV whose song is slow and gently takes its time.

General RPGs' Clear Data Bonuses

I am generally a big fan of Clear Data Bonuses.

The skinny on Clear Data Bonuses, for those who don’t already know: Sometimes, when a sequel is made to a game, that sequel will provide a bonus to the player if the player has a saved file from the game’s predecessor. Baldur’s Gate 2, for example, can be played using a saved game from Baldur’s Gate 1, which will allow you to use the same character (or characters) in BG2 as you played in BG1, and start the game with higher levels and the opportunity to pick up a few of the items you had in BG1 again (in fact, one of BG2’s best pieces of equipment can only be created by using items carried over in this way). A few of the player’s decisions in BG1 will be reflected over the course of BG2’s plot, as well, if I recall correctly, although only in minor ways. In this way, players who put the time and effort into playing the first Baldur’s Gate to its finish are rewarded with bonuses that reflect their efforts (more experienced characters and their previous actions reflected). A surprising number of games have Clear Data Bonuses in one way or another, too. Arc the Lad, Xenosaga, Suikoden, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate, and many more series utilize this idea. I think Suikoden 2 was the first to come up with it, but I can’t honestly say I know that for sure.

It’s a great idea, really, one that generally benefits both the game’s players AND its creators. The positives for the players are obvious--a gratifying bonus to their new game experience that rewards them for playing previously, vindicating the dozens of hours they invested in the previous game. Not only are the bonuses typically enjoyable, but it makes the gamers feel like their patronage and dedication* mattered, and were appreciated by the game’s makers. And on the other side, it benefits the developers because it fosters a bit of good will between them and their audience,** and more immediately relevant to a company’s interests, it provides that little extra incentive that might just encourage some newcomers to the series to pick up the previous title. It’s also beneficial often to the product itself. Many RPGs have a least a couple moments which are non-linear, where a player’s actions and/or skills cause a deviation in potential plots, and having these potentialities be addressed according to what actually happened instead of simply an assumption*** of what was done improves the product as a whole. Doesn’t it make more sense that the characters of Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 would start off more powerful if they were super beefed-up in the first game? Doesn’t it make sense that Humphrey wouldn’t just throw away the ultimate armor he’s equipped with in Suikoden 1 by the time Suikoden 2 starts? It doesn’t have to be too much (in fact, it really shouldn’t be--more on that in a moment), so it shouldn’t be much work for the developers to set up, and so I think there’s always reason to make use of Clear Data Bonus options.

That said, there ARE a few guidelines to Clear Data Bonuses that I think should reasonably be followed. The first is that they have to come in moderation, to keep things fair. I don’t think it’s right to give a previous game’s Clear Data too huge a bonus, particularly regarding the current game’s story and characters. What I mean here is that if a gamer’s choices in the previous game are going to make an impact on what happens in the new game, that impact has to be mildly limited. Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 and Dragon Age 2 are good examples of this, I think. In addition to giving the player a few special accessories for each optional boss beaten in SMTDDS1 and some stat bonuses and such according to the strength of the characters in the SMTDDS1’s Clear Data save file, SMTDDS2 reflects the dialogue choices of SMTDDS1 by having, at the end of the game, the character of Roland replaced with Heat instead, if the player chose certain statements during the course of both games.**** Dragon Age 2 uses DA1’s save files in much bigger ways, often referencing the events of DA1 in its main plot and using many of the player’s choices in DA1 to unlock/alter several sidequests. These changes and additions are significant enough to be enjoyable and worthwhile to the game’s story, but they ultimately don’t have any real bearing on DA2’s main story--its core plot proceeds basically as it would without that save file. So what you have with Dragon Age 2 and Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 is a great balance--the storytelling aspects of the games are beneficially added to for the player who gets a Clear Data Bonus, but not to the point where a new player who doesn’t have that bonus is unfairly stuck with an incomplete experience.

The next guideline I’d recommend for Clear Data Bonuses is on the other side of the equation--just as it’s not a great idea to have too MUCH of a bonus, one should also be careful not to have too trivial a bonus, as well. Xenosaga 2 and 3’s Clear Data Bonus, for example, is such a complete joke that I originally planned to make a rant specifically about it. You know what your reward in Xenosaga 2 is for having a cleared Xenosaga 1 save game? You get the option to have KOS-MOS and Ziggy wear swimsuits. That’s it. That’s ALL. If the only reward you’re going to give a player for busting their hump for 40+ hours in your last game is some stupid, completely pointless, incredibly lame semi-fanservice, don’t fucking bother! To make it known that you think THIS is what your audience wants and will appreciate...it’s not just disappointing, it’s insulting! And yeah, I realize there probably WERE some people who liked it, but just because a FEW fans are hormonally-driven morons who apparently don’t know that they could find ACTUAL porn of KOS-MOS very readily available to them with a single Google search, that doesn’t mean that ALL of your audience are easily-amused, slack-jawed drooling fucktards! And then there’s the Clear Data Bonus in Xenosaga 3. While it’s not as insulting to its audience in its nature, it is, believe it or not, even LESS than Xenosaga 2’s. For playing Xenosaga 2 from start to finish, for inflicting on yourself such viciously boring torment as to actually sit through the nonsensical, insane gibberish that comprises its entire plot, you know what your reward in Xenosaga 3 will be? The option to have Shion wear her costume from Xenosaga 1. And that’s it. I mean, that’s IT. There is NOTHING else that is given or changed in Xenosaga 3 other than that one utterly insignificant detail. Again, why did they even BOTHER?*****

Hell, it doesn’t even really make sense. Shouldn’t Xenosaga 2’s Clear Data give an item to change Shion’s clothes to the ones she wore in that game, not its predecessor? Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather see her in the first game’s outfit, as it’s slightly less dumb, but given that Xenosaga 3 has several other appearance-altering clothing, they could’ve just stuck the first game’s clothing item into the game later, or something, and have Xenosaga 2’s save file unlock that game’s awful outfit instead, have it be more appropriate. I know it doesn’t matter much, but it still doesn’t make that much sense.

Hey, you know what might have been a much better Clear Data Bonus for Xenosaga 3? Clothing for Shion that DIDN’T look stupid.

One last guideline I’d give to any company looking to inject a Clear Data Bonus into their sequel: Actually make it work right. Really, basic functionality should be an obvious necessity for ANY aspect of a game, but stupid programming mistakes do sometimes happen regardless. On this guideline, my angry gaze descends, as it has so often in the last year, once more on Bioware. In Mass Effect 2, one of the many sidequests that were unlocked by a saved game from ME1 was glitched. In ME1, Commander Shepard may come across an NPC named Conrad Verner, who is an amusing, yet also annoying, fanboy of Shepard. Shepard has the option to either gently encourage Verner away from getting himself killed by trying to emulate Shepard, or to shove a gun in his face and insult him. Mass Effect 2 is glitched in that it won’t read the save data right, and always concludes that Shepard went with the latter option. Thus, no matter what happened in ME1, Conrad will always mention in ME2 that Shepard shoved a gun in his face and made him feel pathetic, even if that wasn’t the case. It kinda invalidates the entire idea of having a previous game’s save data make a difference if a programming error keeps the save data from making a difference, wouldn’t you say?

Does that example seem small and unimportant? It is! Which is why I have another one. And whaddaya know, it’s another error by Bioware. Apparently lacking the basic human trait of being intelligent enough to learn from past mistakes, Bioware accidentally programmed Dragon Age 2 in such a way that if the main character of DA1 romanced Leliana, DA2 would never recognize it and instead proceed under the assumption that Leliana and the Grey Warden never hooked up. In fact, the game wouldn’t recognize the romance flags for any of the DA1 love interests! This is definitely more than some NPC sidequest, here. The romantic subplots of DA1 were pretty major aspects of character interactions, and let’s face it, most Dragon Age players really enjoy and get invested in the love stories that they have their main character pursue. You certainly may recall that I thought the romances involving Zevran and Alistair in DA1 were worthwhile, and that I really enjoyed the one for Leliana. In fact, the romance between the Grey Warden and Leliana is, at the time of writing this, on my Top 10 RPG Romances list! So because of a careless glitch, the entire romance of DA1, so personally important to so many players, is erased from existence in DA2. It’s especially bad for Leliana, at least to me, which is why I mention her specifically. She just shows up in DA2, with no explanation of why she’s fooling around as a church spy ninja instead of being with the DA1 protagonist, as the end of the game SAID was the case. And what makes it worse for her than for the others is because unlike other returning DA1 characters in DA2, Leliana’s also a part of Dragon Age 2’s (horrible) ending, which means that on top of all the other lousy crap the player’s had to go through during DA2’s finale, said player also then gets a quick reminder that he or she still has no earthly idea what Leliana’s doing here.

Anyway, that’s about it for the guidelines for Clear Data Bonuses I’d give. Don’t give so much as to be unfair to new players, don’t make the bonus so small as to be trivial, and for Arek the Absolute’s sake, make sure it actually works. Despite the few bad apples I’ve mentioned here, though, the majority of cases where an RPG includes Clear Data Bonuses that I’ve encountered have been very positive, and I give a big round of kudos to the RPG genre and its many developers for coming up with and almost always properly executing this very cool idea.












* Yes, dedication. Yeah, it’s only a video game, but we’re still talking (in the case of RPGs, at least) literal days’ worth of time put into it. We’re not talking about some platformer you can power through in 6 or fewer hours.

** And make no mistake, good will IS important--you foster enough of it early on one way or another, and you’ll have a customer for life. There is a significant number of people on the Bioware forums, for example, that are as angry about Bioware’s failures with The Old Republic, Dragon Age 2, and Mass Effect 3’s ending as anyone else, yet STILL say they’re sticking with the company and pre-ordering its next title (Dragon Age 3) because they have faith that Bioware’ll turn it all around and stop being arrogant, incompetent nitwits. A lot of these optimistic fools are the hardcore, entrenched fans that Bioware earned in its distant-to-middling past, when the development of products like the Baldur’s Gate games, Knights of the Old Republic 1, and Mass Effect 1, among others, showed that the company actually gave a shit about its art and its audience. Every indication of the past few years suggests that these days of Bioware’s humble dignity are gone forever, but these fans’re still there, weathering the shitstorm. That is the power of good will.

*** Example: Game A has a secret, optional character. Without Clear Data Bonus use, Game B, a sequel to Game A, will likely just assume that the secret character was recruited, and tell its story under that assumption. But if Game B uses Clear Data from Game A, Game B may be able to set up 2 separate paths of storytelling, showing what differences, if any, it makes to the plot for Game A’s secret character to have been recruited. Game B then becomes a more complete storytelling experience, accounting for a continuation of Game A’s story in ALL aspects.

**** Why you would WANT this, of course, is beyond me. While I have a certain sympathy for Heat’s character given the origin of his flaws, he’s still a huge jerk.

***** Okay, actually, according to Television Tropes, there IS one extra benefit of a previous save file for Xenosaga 2 and 3. Apparently, it can give the characters in the new game a few extra levels, but it’s barely anything. I never even noticed it myself, in either game, and if Television Tropes is reliable (and I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be; I don’t think that many people care enough to give misinformation about something this unimportant), it appears that you only got like 4 or 5 extra levels in Xenosaga 2 and 3 for maxed levels in the previous game. Frankly, a ratio of 1 extra level to every 20 or so in the previous game is so small that I’m still gonna stand by my statement that it’s nothing.

Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle

Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is a good RPG.

That’s a hard sentence for me to type; at least, it’s hard to type when I know I’m doing so as a matter of public record. I’d much rather I could say that Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is mindless crap. Nothing more than a load of base, degrading fanservice. Man would I like to be able to say that. Things would be much simpler. But what can ya do.

Alright, so, let’s just get this out in the open. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle--and I imagine that’s probably most/all of you, as it’s not, to my understanding, all that widely-known--it’s an RPG created using RPG Maker 2003, available for free download via that mysterious device known as “Teh Internetz.” I’m a bit leery of counting a legally unofficial and unrecognized work as an official entry in my list of completed RPGs, but EoWC is a sizable, self-contained, complete product, so I reckon it more or less qualifies as being “real” enough for my standards--after all, I count Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden as a “real” RPG for my list of conquests, and that one, if anything, is even less legally stable. So Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is a free, downloadable Independant RPG. And it is...well, frankly, it’s pretty heavy on the lesbian fanservice porn. If that’s not just outright the basis of the game, it’s at least a very major part of it.

If you have any familiarity with these rants, then my reticence to acknowledge EoWC in a positive light probably comes as no surprise to you. I hate bath scenes, I get extremely angry about inexplicably skimpy outfits and the over-sexualization of female characters, and I even take issue with the fact that homosexual characters and relationships in RPGs are so much more often gay women than men (since I suspect this makes it more about the titillation of the assumed male-dominant audience than about any intent of equal representation). Well, don’t misunderstand me here--the explicit content of Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle by and large does still annoy me. It’s usually excessive and unnecessary, and the weakest parts of the game (such as the Scheherazade and Hurraine arcs, along with the stupid Duchess-can’t-keep-her-dress-intact-for-5-minutes-straight running joke) are invariably the ones that rely almost entirely on the fanservice and sexual content. Even in cases where I actually feel like it’s not unwarranted, it’s still more explicit than it needs to be.

But if I may shock myself for a moment, I’d actually like to defend it to a small extent, at least by comparison to sexualized fanservice found in other games. Needless and overbearing as the sexual nature of this game is at times, I have to give Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle enough credit to point out that it’s not pretending to be something greater. What I mean is, you take a game like, say, Mass Effect 3, and you’re taking a product which makes the claim in its method and matter of being dignified, having value as art. Mass Effect 3 is clearly a story that the audience is meant to take seriously, is clearly something we are meant to believe its creators took seriously, and as such it wants to be seen as having some intellectual weight. This is the case for most RPGs--their creators want their product, their story, their intellectual creation, to be taken seriously, and we players expect to do so unless given reason early on to do otherwise. So when Mass Effect 3 changes the appearance of the character Ashley to suddenly look 300% more like an underwear model and has EDI sporting a camel toe so prominent it looks like an arcane portal to the otherrealms, not to mention also tosses us the big-titted, easily-bedded Diana Allers, who dresses and looks like a reject from Jersey Shore, it stands out as a break from the character of the game, an oily film of sleaze coating what’s supposed to be something better.

This sort of thing is, of course, by no means restricted to ME3; that’s just an example. But there’s the classic bath scene idiocy of anime-styled RPGs, if we want to look at RPGs from the other side of the Pacific. When a band of heroes start acting like hormonal lower primates at a hot spring in an RPG that until that point has held itself with some basic composure, it stands out as a lowering of its characters to a state they normally are too dignified to stoop to. And don’t even get me started on the fucktarded swimsuit competition in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. And so on; I imagine you’re getting my meaning.

Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle really makes no such pretenses. At the start of the game it spells out to you pretty clearly what content the game’s gonna have in it. Additionally, its main character, the Duchess Catherine...I wouldn’t exactly call her promiscuous, per say, but she’s not reserved by nature, and it’s clear early on that she’s pretty open, both emotionally AND physically. And maybe this isn’t entirely fair of me, but it somehow feels different to have fanservice in a game that’s 100% free and has no aims of making money whatsoever. I guess it makes it seem less disingenuous to know that the needlessly sexual content isn’t some crass, insulting marketing scheme to sell to the lowest common denominator--it’s there because it’s meant to be, not because some chortling, greedy scumbag assumes the worst of his audience in order to encourage better sales. Does that actually make it a little better, or is it all in my head? Can’t say for sure, but my head’s the one coming up with all these words that keep appearing on the screen, so I gotta go with it. Lastly, while you can’t turn off the tiny little naked sprites and the sometimes explicit dialogue, the game DOES provide you with an item which will prevent the explicit cutscene art from being shown, so if adult visuals genuinely bother you, the game’s at least taking a step to be accommodating.

So what does that all add up to? Well, I’m still not thrilled about the amount of sexual material in Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, and I still see it as almost entirely unnecessary to have it to the extent the game does, but...it’s really not as bad as it could be, all things considered, and it doesn’t really feel particularly degrading, either. It’s not so hard to look past it all to recognize EoWC’s good qualities. And really, even if it was, I’d be a hypocrite twice over if I didn’t do so anyway--I’ve always advocated judging an RPG for its storytelling content rather than its bare surface qualities, its window-dressings per say, after all, and in all honesty, I’ve written a few explicit fanfics in my time that I think, if I may say so myself, are nonetheless fairly decent stories.

So, that said, and said in probably way more paragraphs than were really necessary, what are Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle’s good qualities? Well, the first one I encountered is that it’s really quite amusing. Right from the get-go, Duchess Catherine’s comments and dialogue as she examines various objects in the background and interacts with other characters are very funny. Sometimes they’re funny on their own, often they’re funny commentary about RPGs in general (both video games and the tabletop variety). If you’re familiar with Dungeons and Dragons and video game RPGs in general, you’re probably going to find several moments of this game quite amusing. While EoWC has no small number of serious, touching, and dark moments to it, the pervading feel of the game is a lighthearted one, and the fact that it got a chuckle out of me so quickly was a lot of what drew my interest at first, gave me the inclination not to just dismiss it outright.*

Of course, the amusement factor is just the icing on the cake, the preliminary fun factor to butter you up and get your attention. More important than that is the quality of the game’s protagonist. Catherine at first seems very simplistic, very damsel-in-distress-esque, very...princess-y, but as you progress through the game, you can begin to recognize some strong depth to her, along with some subtle but solid character development. Her exceptionally dark, tormented back history, her craftiness and more than adept skill at political maneuvering and diplomacy, her enthusiasm and wish to form a positive connection with all those around her, the interesting ambiguity about whether she is, in the end, a good or evil character, her insecurities about her future and related subconscious resentment against princesses, her fleeing from the title of being Greyghast’s heir and whether or not there might be some truth to it...there’s a lot of angles to Catherine’s character, a lot of fronts that she grows as a person on, and nigh all of them are pretty interesting. The only criticism that I might have about it is that a lot of this character development is understated, left somewhat to the audience to contemplate and recognize...but I don’t really make that complaint, because I feel that this is one of those rare times in an RPG where this light touch is done skillfully and adequately. This isn’t the common case of a writer mistaking insufficient explanation and exploration as subtle writing; Catherine’s multifaceted character and her development actually ARE subtle.

The rest of the cast is not as interesting to me, I must say. To be sure, the characters by and large are adequate. But while several of them have at least a little something of interest to their characters, such as Louni and Carmina, no one in the game is as deep or well-written a character as Catherine by far. That said, though...well, they don’t really need to be. Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is pretty much completely a personal story, not a wide-reaching one. Catherine’s not the main character caught up in a story, as is typically the case with RPGs. Rather, this is a story about her; she’s the central figure of all its events, and it’s told entirely from her perspective. This is a story which in its entirety revolves around her, not the events she happens to become involved in, a fact that is even more emphasized and logical once one has seen the True Ending and knows the truth of the game’s events. To that end, the worth of the cast is not necessarily so much dependant on the characters’ worth in their own right, but rather their worth as contributors and foils to Catherine’s character through their interactions and relationships with her.

When viewed in that light, the cast is pretty solidly good. Through the Duchess’s conversations, adventures, and often courtships with Alice, Louni, Carmina, Grettel, the Good Dwarf, and most of the other characters both major and minor, we get an understanding of Catherine’s character, and come to know the world she lives in and her relationship to its workings. Even characters who have little to no significance and/or interesting qualities can be worthwhile at times for the perspectives they give us of Catherine, such as with Rain--despite her being onscreen for only about 5 minutes, Rain’s history with Catherine and the way the two of them discuss it is well-done and feels very emotionally realistic. Another example is found with Scheherazade--her story arc is kind of meandering and ultimately kind of negative, but even it has a little redeeming value for the decent scene it has wherein Catherine talks to Alice about the pain of being dumped for the first time, and Alice reveals that Catherine’s innocent polyamory** can be similarly hurtful to the ones who love her. It’s a nice scene.***

Speaking of the way the cast interacts with Catherine, that brings us to my next point as to why this RPG is good: the romances. Admittedly, Catherine’s explorations of love with the people around her are not always great. Gwearst gets way too little quality time with the Duchess for the love on either side to seem convincing, and some of the others are just not particularly interesting. But there are also some really great romantic moments in this game. Catherine’s connection with Alice winds up being pretty touching, even though a lot of it is sort of unsaid, and the similarly subtle love she shares with Louni has some very nice moments, and is even, at times, kind of intriguing. The Nereid seems silly and pointless at first, but I actually found myself very moved later at the strength of the devotion and affection she and Catherine hold for each other, one which cries out across and pulls them together from opposite ends of time and even dimensions.

And Carmina...the love story of Catherine and Carmina’s got it all. They share their histories and personalities with one another, they share a touching chemistry, they’re each willing to give absolutely everything up for the other (Catherine’s willing to make herself the enemy of the most powerful adventuring group in the world for Carmina and to use every resource she has to protect her, and/or go with her to the lands of the Dark Elves (the Drow, essentially, which any Dungeons and Dragons player knows is not a pleasant prospect for a human), Carmina’s willing to restrain her natural inclinations of evil for Catherine’s sake and give up on returning to her home in order to be with Catherine, etc), there’s a very touching aspect of Catherine’s taking a leap of faith in trusting her love to Carmina, and generally I’d just have to say that everything about Carmina’s and Catherine’s romance is emotional, moving, authentic, and natural. This is honestly the best love story I’ve seen for quite a while, actually and easily beating out most of the romances of other, “real” games I’ve seen in the past few years, including those of The Last Story’s, most of those of Mass Effect 3’s, and those of Sakura Wars 5, a game designed specifically around love interests. Seriously, I may very well find myself at the end of this year changing my Greatest Romances List to include this one.

And as a final note about the cast, what about the villains in this game? Well...Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is very, very unconventional, because the three major villains of the game, whose actions actually have the most impact on either the game’s heroine or the world around them, are virtually non-entities. Vecnatrix the lich lord is the world’s major villain, but he only actually shows up in the game a couple times, and then only for a moment or two--not to mention that it’s called into question at one point just how truly dangerous he actually is. The main villain of the game is unknown until you meet them at the very, very end, and while their hand is in all things until that point, they also, at the same time, have not really manipulated much of anything. And then there’s Bad King Greyghast the Terrible, who, at the opening of the game, has been dead for many years. Aside from these three, the most you see for villains are incidental vehicles for plot/character development.

Yet unconventional does not mean bad, at least not in this case. As I said, this RPG is a personal story, not a far-reaching one, and as far as I’m concerned it needs no more villainous presence than it has. Vecnatrix serves an adequate purpose simply by existing in the capacity that he does. The final villain is not just your standard last-minute superboss thrown in for no reason, like Final Fantasy 9’s Necron or every single goddamn numbered Suikoden’s last boss--this one is properly tied to the secretive and layered plot, and more interaction with the events of the game before the final confrontation would have jeopardized the integrity of that plot. That said, I feel like Greyghast really pulls his weight the most as a villain, even though it’s all after the fact. The legacy of torment he inflicted upon his family, Duchess Catherine in particular, is shown very effectively through flashback, nightmare, and unhappy remembrance at various times in the game. Greyghast’s evil is shown only very subtly, only through small windows and through the scars it left upon Catherine, but you know something, that’s enough to make him one of the darkest, sickest evildoers I’ve seen in RPGs, and the dark legacy he leaves in the scars upon Catherine's psyche has more of a hand in her personal journey postmortem than the other, still living villains have.****

So the game’s fun and funny, the protagonist is really good, the rest of the cast is adequate, the villains’re good enough, and there’re some very good romantic parts. Sounds spiffy so far. So how’s Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle for plot? Turns out it’s quite good, at least by my reckoning. Like many other aspects of the game, it’s pretty unconventional. The setting has a lot more thought and background put into it than seems needed--there’s a lot of background to Aresland that has barely any relevance to the actual game events and characters, yet knowing that the game’s maker has put unnecessary thought into his setting pleases me, because that’s the sign of someone who genuinely cares about the story he’s telling and has enough plans for it to give it depth. A lot of the game is kind of non-linear, in that you can determine a lot of what order you do things in, and whether you do some things at all. The nonlinearity is fairly easy to pull off, since there doesn’t seem to actually BE much of a story for most of the game--you basically are just watching Catherine go about her daily task of building relationships with those around her as she waits for Embric to return. That said, the game does gain some direction after a time, with a certain number of these nonlinear events coming to a head in an attack by 1000 Anti-Paladins, after which, if you’re clever enough and have been thorough in your playing, you can set yourself on the track to the True Ending. Getting to that point (and past the false trail the game throws at you) allows you to see and understand the true nature of the game’s events (though it’s a little hard to suss out at first). It winds up being a small story, really, but emotionally powerful and layered enough that it packs a hell of a punch.

THIS PARAGRAPH IS SPOILERS. GO STRAIGHT TO NEXT PARAGRAPH. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT $200. I have to also note here that this is probably the only time where I’ve really liked an “It was all a dream” ending. I’ve seen some before that were okay and appropriate, but we all know that this kind of ending is infamous for being lame and cheesy.***** But when you add the fact that Catherine’s gift of prophecy makes that dream a set of events yet to come, examples of what could be, you get a case where anything and everything can be as real as she wants it to be, where she can use her foresight to manipulate events later (such as with Gizmod) to (presumably) create a better kingdom, and still arrive at Wulfhammer’s Castle to experience the joys and meet the people she’ll love during the events that she has (and we have) seen during the game’s span. In other words, you get every positive of the all-a-dream scenario does, and none of the downsides (after all, you can’t feel that the time in the dream was wasted or get upset over the fact that it all wasn’t real, because it prepared Catherine for what was to come and let her know that her life would have some happiness (an important thing given her state as her uncle’s captive) and it all WILL be real in as much capacity as she wills it). And I like the fact that she must struggle to return to reality, and keep her wonderful memories of things to come. I also like that there ARE some subtle hints to the nature of the game being a dream and Catherine’s foresight in the game, small enough that they don’t tip you off as anything unusual at the time but connected enough that they suddenly make sense in whole new ways once you know the truth. Good stuff.

So yeah. That’s Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle. It really, honestly is a very good RPG. Maybe not for anyone who’s not comfortable with explicit adult content (or anyone who, for unfathomable reasons, really enjoys RPG battle systems--there’s fewer than 10 battles in the whole game; it’s almost entirely story-driven), but if you can stick with it long enough to give it an honest chance, you may find yourself really into it. Saint Bomber (the guy who created the game) said in an email conversation with me that he “set out to write a naughty story with some heart, and ended up writing a hearty story with some naughtiness,” and that’s exactly what this is--and I love a hearty story. And hey, it’s free. I’ve paid to play many, many worse RPGs than this one, and chances are good that you have, too. So if you’re interested, why not give it a shot?

You can download it at https://largebattleshipstudios.itch.io/embric.  You may also want to check out the closest thing this game has to a guide, found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x3_9cWCMpCgdyiIiVNx4iIvOCfJMbKgfYOIz4zmSZVw/edit?hl=en&pli=1#heading=h.oot0j9xbixac if you’re interested--I actually do advocate using this guide (although it’s a bit confusing to follow), because you can easily miss quite a few endings and other things if you don’t know what you’re doing (including how to get the True Ending).

Goodness, I’ve been having a wonderful time with Indie RPGs. Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, Bastion, Geneforge 1, and Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch have all been enjoyable. Maybe these hipsters are on to something...













* It also got MAJOR brownie points for the fact that one of the peasants at the castle, who all initially just parrot one-line NPC catchphrases, says “Times are tough.” As a general rule, game developers, if you want to get on my good side, a humorous reference to the old, discontinued, but pretty awesome webcomic RPG World is very effective. The only thing that could possibly beat it out is a reference to the equally old, completed, and even more awesome Adventurers! webcomic.

** It’s a strange concept but I really think that it’s a fairly accurate way to describe the way the Duchess romantically connects with multiple people.

*** Sadly, what Catherine takes from this conversation is “have sex with all your love interests at the same time to avoid jealousy.” But aside from that, it’s a good scene.

**** Side Note Because Not Everyone Cares About Ponies: I’m actually reminded a bit with Greyghast of King Sombra from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Though I wouldn’t say Sombra is a particularly great villain, I would argue that he was perhaps the very nastiest of the ones we’ve seen as of the end of Season 3, for the same reason that I find Greyghast so effective: the subtle way the villainy he enacted is shown. We don’t really see much of what Sombra did as tyrant of the Crystal Empire, nor do we see much of note in his actual presence in the show, but the way the crystal ponies act is a huge indicator of just how horrible he truly was--they’re dulled, introverted, joyless, and even just remembering how things were before they were liberated from him is a frightening prospect. Same deal with Greyghast--it’s the torment in Catherine’s recollections that give us a picture of just how bad he really was. It’s a more subtle way of telling the audience how evil a villain was, but if you’re smart enough to really pick up on it, consider it, then it speaks volumes.

***** Which made it all the more amusing that a HUGE amount of Mass Effect 3 players sincerely believed that Mass Effect 3’s ending was secretly going to be revealed to be an “all a dream” scenario--and that they would have preferred that to the ending Bioware actually did create. What does it say about writers when the most absurd cop-out of all time is actually preferable to the ending they created?

Xenosaga 3's Scientia

Oh, dear, I think it’s that time again. Yes, you know the one. It’s time to talk about the frenzied insanity that is Xenosaga 3’s narrative.

What to talk about today, I wonder? Perhaps the way that the series’s subplot questioning what human rights Realians deserve just fizzles out after a while? Or I could mention the meaningless, canned symbolism of having the Elsa sprout wings in Xenosaga 3’s ending, which doesn’t even make sense since wings shouldn’t really increase one’s speed in outer space. Maybe how distracting it is for the U-TIC Organization’s battleships to look like huge barbed penises? And then there’s the absolute jaw-dropping absurdity of resurrecting Albedo, the main and iconic villain of both Xenosaga 1 and 2, and then having only one single scene in the entirety of Xenosaga 3 in which he is at all relevant--and having that scene be his redemption through (sort of) death, which comes, from the perspective of his total screen time over the course of all the games, about 10 minutes after his death as a disturbed and evil villain.

Wait, I know! I’ll rant about Scientia! That’ll do nicely.

Ah, Scientia. Where would Xenosaga 3 be without Scientia, I wonder? Actually, I don’t wonder that at all. I know where Xenosaga 3 would be without Scientia. It would be more or less at the exact same place.

Seriously, why is the Scientia organization even included in Xenosaga 3? The biggest contributions to the plot that Scientia makes is that its leader, Doctus, helps Shion and Miyuki to hack Vector during Xenosaga 3’s opening, later on Scientia analyzes some of the information Shion helped to extract (which turns out to be information relating to overly complex and largely unnecessary plot threads, just like every other goddamn thing in this game), and also Doctus has a hard time remembering Canaan’s name because it is super important to establish that she is too cool for school. Or maybe that her brain is so incredibly hard up for processing power that it could crash just from trying to remember those 6 letters in order. Hard to say, really.

But yeah, that’s pretty much it for Scientia. Doctus and her group (a group we never actually see much evidence of other than Doctus, incidentally, lessening even further its ability to make an impact) do almost nothing overall, and spend the majority of the game completely forgotten by the main plot. Yeah, okay, the group’s goal is discovering the truth about, warning people away from, and seeking the destruction of the U.M.N., the cosmic network that all human culture is dependant upon in the future, yet even after being detailed and explained over the course of 3 separate games still is incredibly vague and puzzling in nature (the best way of going about understanding it, really, is to think of the U.M.N. as a magic psychic internet). And a (sort of) major plot point of Xenosaga 3 is discovering the problems and darker parts of the history of the U.M.N., so you could, I guess, say that Scientia has some relevance by introducing you to the idea that this inexplicable interweb could have drawbacks early on...but that’s a real stretch. In reality, Scientia is a mere shard of plot that slips through the fingers of a game trying to hold way, way too much stuff at one time.

Additionally, one has to wonder just how much need there was for Doctus and her organization even in the extremely small role they serve. I mean, does Doctus really have to be there in the game’s opening to start with? Since Xenosaga 3 already is jarringly putting forth the idea that Shion is secretly working against Vector now anyway, it would be as believable to have Shion and Miyuki doing their raid on Vector without Doctus’s help--Shion’s intelligent enough that it would be entirely feasible for her to be the one fronting the technological and intellectual resources necessary for the operation herself. There are other, better-established avenues and characters for going over the data she obtains in this event, so it’s not like Scientia’s organization is particularly necessary for that, either (hell, a simple time-consuming plot-convenient automated program would have worked just as well). And since the idea that the U.M.N. is something more than just Magical Space Internet is only truly being introduced and explored in this installment anyway, it’s a conclusion we could just as easily believe Shion or some other pre-established character coming up with themselves, rather than inventing an entire organization for it if that organization is going to lose relevance in the next 5 minutes.

The real problem here has its origins in the between-games story of the Xenosaga series. As you probably know already, the Xenosaga series was originally meant to be 6 games long, instead of 3, which explains a lot of the major flaws in Xenosaga 2’s mashing so much plot nonsense together and monologuing a full month forward at its halfway point, and more importantly explains why Xenosaga 3’s codex includes within it the details of an entire game’s worth of plot that happened between the second and third game that we’ll never actually see. Rather than doing the sane thing and trying to adjust the original 6-game-long story of the series so it would properly suit a trilogy by dropping its extraneous material (and there’s a LOT of that), the Xenosaga team tried to jampack every part of it they possibly could into half the games. I mean, obviously it would have been best if the series had had its full 6 games to develop over, but if they’d at least just tried to cut down on some of the peripheral plot arcs and ideas instead of smush everything together, the trilogy might have at least been comprehensible.

Anyway, this between-games story arc (let’s call it Xenosaga 2.5) is, according to the codex in Xenosaga 3 that summarizes it, where Doctus and Scientia originate in the series, and where they had a major role in Xenosaga’s events. Under normal circumstances (as in, Xenosaga 2.5 having been its own game), Scientia’s small role in Xenosaga 3 would actually be fairly sensible. I mean, the plot of Xenosaga 3 doesn’t require them in any real capacity, but if they were an established sect and Doctus an established character, as would be the case if Xenosaga 2.5 had been its own game, then the writers wouldn’t want to just drop Scientia altogether, because players would wonder why this group that was so important the last time was suddenly gone and forgotten. Abrupt absences like that actually tend to irritate returning audiences. So to have Scientia at least acknowledged, even if they aren’t important, and then have them relegated to non-screentime importance would have been a good way to get on with things without having the players wondering in mild annoyance where the group went.

But that’s IF Xenosaga 2.5 had been an actual game as was the original intent, IF it had been an actual product that the players had experienced to its fullest. And that isn’t how it wound up happening. So what would have been a minor but appropriate return of a previously well-established important group and character turns into an inexplicably important-seeming introduction of a character and group that has very little to do anything, and even what minor relevance they have seems forced.

So that’s the problem with Scientia. Like so many of the unnecessary and confusing variables of the Xenosaga series, Scientia is, in the end, basically unimportant and should have been removed altogether for the sake of a clearer and more sensible narrative. Given Scientia’s origin in Xenosaga 2.5, you can say the fault lies in Namco for refusing to give the series the time adequate to tell its story. But you can also say that the writers of Xenosaga are at fault for being unwilling to give up the extraneous details that had been planned, trim the fat of the plot so to speak, and/or for having no rational understanding of what plot devices are necessary and effective for a well-told story, and which devices just distract from and convolute it. Either way, it’s just another of the countless storytelling bungles to be found in Xenosaga 3.

Mass Effect Series AMV: Go Back to Sleep

Wow, I found another RPG AMV so good that it deserves its own rant, and it hasn’t even been a full year since the last one! Truly we live in wondrous times. Today we look at the first Mass Effect video to get its own spotlight here, Go Back to Sleep, by Xeriana11.


Mass Effect Series: Go Back to Sleep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpuwTZca_rg


Look. Look With Your Special Eyes: Top-notch visual quality on this one. Everything looks as good in this AMV as it does in the actual games, and anyone familiar with Mass Effect knows just how good that is. Along with being well-suited for the AMV’s story and the song’s lyrics and tune (more on that later), Xeriana11’s selected a set of clips of footage from the Mass Effect series that has a decidedly darker tint to it, even when it’s bright, which definitely accentuates the darkness of the music and the video’s intent. I don’t know how much credit to give her for this, since ME2 and 3 (from which most footage is pulled) have a generally darker visual tone anyway, but it works great for the AMV’s purposes, so kudos all the same.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I’m very partial to AMVs who employ visual bells and whistles with moderation, keeping them simple but effective (not that more grandiose visuals in an AMV are necessarily bad, but they usually wind up just getting in the way, distracting the viewer from the video’s actual content). So it should come as no surprise to you that this AMV that I like so much is another case of a video with a moderate number of basic visual effects, used effectively to increase the effect of the AMV without going overboard. Some of the best instances of this come when the video starts out, with some quick blurs, discolorations, and jerky visual transitions, which effectively convey the subconscious mood set for both the song and video in those few first notes, finally getting into the song and video proper with a quick focusing upon the Illusive Man’s face, which brings to mind how the world looks when you first open your eyes after awakening--a simple but absolutely great effect to use to portray Shepard’s just having awoken and to visually set up the idea of The Illusive Man wanting Shepard to “go back to sleep.” The blurred zoom-in* that follows that scene at 0:34 is another example of a comparatively basic effect that coordinates really well with the AMV as a whole, this time mirroring the abrupt and violent change in the music to abruptly and violently bring us into the scene of Shepard’s death in ME2.

Those are the best examples of Xeriana11’s touch, visually, but the visual effects stay solid throughout. Lots of faded overlay transitions link one scene to the next in a more connected way than a simple switch would when the scenes should be associated together, some color-burny effects at times to coordinate with the song’s harsher notes, that sort of thing. It’s all well-placed and effective.

Your Music’s Bad and You Should Feel Bad!: This AMV employs the song Pet, by A Perfect Circle. This is the first I’ve ever heard this song, and I have to admit that while I don’t actually like it personally, it IS impressive to me--dark, creepy, powerful, even disturbing. This is one of those rare occasions I can look at a song and actually see it as an example of art.

There’s no denying that the music is the dominant force in this AMV, driving the visual component of the music video and its message. The AMV endeavors to follow along to the song on several different levels, and succeeds admirably on all counts. On its most basic level, the AMV follows the music’s tone and changes admirably with its visuals. The quiet and creepy parts are reflected by appropriate scenes, most often involving The Illusive Man, which fit perfectly with his bright and yet dark surroundings. As the music turns to a harsher, more hostile tone, we see the visuals reflect it, violently transitioning to scenes of destruction and the nightmarish situations and foes that Shepard faces off against. On the next level, the video also follows along and excellently compliments the lyrics of the song, as well. Practically every moment in the AMV during which there are spoken words is an example of this, but I’ll throw out a few exemplary moments anyway. Moments like 1:16 through 1:19, where “truth” and “choice” are represented by unpleasant moments of ME2 and 3 where Shepard learns that The Illusive Man knowingly allowed Shepard to walk into a trap because he wanted the potential prizes of information from the situation (the truth that The Illusive Man is only interested in what Shepard can do for him, rather than what Shepard can do for everyone), and where Shepard must choose whether or not to shoot a misguided old friend in order to save the council’s, and by extension countless others’, lives. Or like 2:56, where we see The Illusive Man’s dream of Control from the (horrendously awful) ending to the lyrics talking of a new world order, 3:12, which show Shepard’s visions of the Reapers to the lyrics “the boogiemen are coming,” and 4:01, showing Shepard’s loyal and good friends as the “other” and “evil” ones to The Illusive Man. It’s all good stuff.

There’s one last, overall level of the music that I feel the video meshes with excellently, too. As the song continues, there’s a point near its middle that seems...well, if I had to play musical interpreter, I’d say that it’s the point at which the singer’s manipulations seem to be failing. Eventually the singer’s vocals become louder, more insistent--he’s no longer soft and wheedling as in the song’s beginning, he’s now frustratedly shouting his manipulations, as the music itself starts to sound more energized and epic, and thus, hopeful--as though the one the singer is trying to control is breaking through the manipulations. This, of course, could be entirely a misinterpretation by someone who prefers the optimistic and positive conclusions to the dark and unhappy ones, but even if that’s definitely not what the song means to portray, the AMV uses the song in this way, going from primarily using ME2’s visuals halfway through the song to primarily using ME3’s scenes--in other words, going from the visuals of a game where Shepard was working for The Illusive Man to the game where Shepard is his enemy, using the scene at ME2’s end where Shepard has destroyed the Collector Base against The Illusive Man’s wishes and walks out on him as a transition between these two halves of the AMV. As the music becomes more powerful (again, like the manipulator is fully losing his control over the song’s subject) at around 3:23, we see scenes from the assault on The Illusive Man’s base, and scenes from the game’s finale where Shepard finally has the opportunity to break through his control and shoot him dead, as the singer gives one last whispered plea of manipulation. Again, maybe this more hopeful message of the manipulator’s illusions failing isn’t what the song intended, but that’s the direction the AMV’s interpretation of the song goes in, and it does work.

Guy, You Explain: The purpose of this AMV is to portray, and perhaps even explore, the relationship The Illusive Man has with Shepard in the light of the song. As the representative of Control for Mass Effect, The Illusive Man and his manipulations of Shepard, both successful and failed, are a great match to the creepy control the singer of Pet seeks, through threats and reassurances, to exert over the song’s subject. It’s interesting, even intriguing, to see The Illusive Man’s perspective of Shepard in this way, and casts him in a decidedly sinister light, one which fits him well. Xeriana11 also states that her intended purpose with this AMV was to show Shepard’s struggle to figure out whether or not to believe The Illusive Man, to show how his skillful manipulations of Shepard that would create doubts in Shepard’s mind, and that’s definitely achieved here, too, partially through use of scenes where the embodiment of Shepard’s connection to the Alliance, Kaidan (or Ashley; whomever survived Virmire--in this case, Kaidan is the one used), is cutting his ties with Shepard in ME2 and standing against Shepard in ME3, and partially just from the overall effect of having The Illusive Man be the narrative force of the video.

Now granted, this isn’t a perfect AMV in some respects. It’s an interpretation of The Illusive Man and Shepard that takes a certain amount of liberties in their interactions, liberties that perhaps separate it from being a perfect, literal match to the actual game’s characters. And I have to say it confuses me a little why a Male Shepard is not used in this video rather than the Female version of Shepard, because one of the opening visuals of the AMV has The Illusive Man looking, for a brief moment, at a dossier of Male Shepard, and one of the last lines of the song refers to the song’s subject (who is Shepard for the purposes of this AMV) as “son.” It wouldn’t be a problem for me if the AMV were forced to use a character who had no male version available, but there IS a male version of Shepard, so why not use him instead and simply avoid that incongruity?

Still, the gender thing is so small an issue that it barely even warrants mention anyway, so it’s not really a problem at all in the end. And regardless of how accurate you consider this video, it’s more than close enough that it works well as an AMV to the Pet song and provides an entertaining, and maybe even thought-provoking perspective on Shepard and The Illusive Man, whose connection is interesting to consider and explore. Ultimately, Go Back to Sleep is a very well made, interesting, and creepily powerful AMV, just great overall, and I think it deserves real recognition.











* Once again: I totally do not know anything about cinematography terms. I guess some day I should really attempt to learn them rather than have to keep making these apologies, but for the moment, you’ll just have to bear with my ignorant descriptions of visual effects.