General RPG Music Lists 1: Them's Fightin' Chords

So, I've had a couple of readers suggest to me that I make a list rant of some sort for the specific RPG tunes that I particularly love, since I've lauded the genre for its consistent good quality in the musical field, and often mentioned that even bad games can have some really awesome background themes.  Now, of course, a couple of people isn't very many in the objective sense, but for this blog, 2 readers constitutes, like, at least a quarter of my entire readership at any given time (hell, it's probably a fair percentage of the entire user base of Blogger itself), so I figured I'd better put my mind to giving the fans what they were, relative to the microcosm of Thinking Inside the Box, practically battering down my door for.

The trick, of course, is that I know fuck-all about music, would have to keep updating a list of my favorite RPG tunes constantly (which is too much trouble and time for me to want to do), and have a very difficult time ranking individual songs of similar quality over one another even in my own head, let alone in any official sense. But I think I've got a system figured out! I'll just sort them all according to a broad quality spectrum, and not sweat which one is better than which others inside that range. As such, these listings of my favorite RPG songs will sort the songs I love by whether they get a B+, an A-, an A, or a coveted A+. Anything lower than a B+ isn't something I keep for my personal listening, because if you think I'm picky about the games I play then you should see what I'm like about the music I listen to, I don't have to apply any particular knowledge about music to justify my decisions (at least, not as much as I might if I were more specifically ranking), and updating the rant as I play new games and acquire new songs will be very simple.

So, for what I want to be an ongoing series of rants this year, let's kick these things off with a listing of all the kickass Battle music of RPGs! Who doesn't love a good tune to get your blood pumping in such an excited fashion that you'd almost forget that all you're actually doing is selecting options from a stupid menu? The fighting music of RPGs is perhaps the type that's saddled with the most unfair responsibility in the soundtrack, because these things are supposed to make a gameplay process that's almost indistinguishable from the act of looking through folders in a file cabinet seem intense and suspenseful. Say what you will about the responsibilities of sad music to create melancholy out of scenes rendered in 16-bit graphics, or town music to make the monotony of equipment shopping and uncontested breaking-and-entering just to have a 1-sided chat about the local cave system seem pleasant in some way, but I think that RPGs' battle music's expectation of making the least active and engaging gameplay system short of a visual novel give the illusion of being exciting is by far the toughest job handed out to a game's compositions. So let's take a look at the very best the genre has to offer! Here's all the battle music of RPGs that I particularly love.

Note: I do not in any way care about what the actual name of any of these tracks is. I organize the songs I listen to by their function, essentially what I'll remember them for. So if you really love the Legends of Storied Tales's song, "Rushing Breach of Valkyric Splendor (Pull Up Yo Pants And Throw Hands Symphony)", which played during boss fights, then just assume that I call it Legends of Storied Tales Boss Battle, as that's the game of origin and its actual function.

Additional Note: This list will be updated constantly as I play new games and acquire new music. I don't think I'll track the updates; sorry, it's just gonna be too much hassle to do so.



BASIC BATTLE

Among RPG fighting music, the Basic Battle theme has the absolute hardest job of all. Forget boss fights, forget final confrontations, forget climactic event battles: the basic battle theme is expected to get you in the mood for a clash of blades and a struggle of heroism every single time you encounter a normal enemy. These are songs that you will hear, without exaggeration, hundreds of times during a game's course, and they will accompany any non-notable battle no matter how great or small. Generic slimes? Under-powered zombies in an area you're returning to after you've gained 20 levels? Actual, innocent bunny rabbits? It's this song's job to make you feel like this is an intense and/or epic encounter in the heroes' tale each and every time. No wonder so few battle themes make the cut to be here.

Qualification Notes: Must be a generic battle theme. Battle themes specific to certain continents/worlds/whatevers in a game are allowed, as long as they're the generic theme for that area, and that area is a substantial part of the game (Breath of Fire 4 is divided into 2 continents and each has its own basic battle theme, Tales of Symphonia is divided into 2 worlds and each has its own basic battle theme, etc). Similarly, if the music only plays in battles involving a certain character, but that constitutes (or can constitute) a substantial portion of the game's battles, then it counts for this (like Golden Sun 2's Jenna's battle theme). If it's a battle theme only found in 1 of several chapters of the game, though (such as the battle theme for Hollow Bastion in Kingdom Hearts, or certain types of battlefields in Final Fantasy Tactics), or a battle theme for a character that doesn't get played all that much, it doesn't count.

B+
- Breath of Fire 4 Empire Battle
- Golden Sun 2 Jenna Battle
- Lufia 1 Battle
- Omori Pyrefly Forest Battle
- Tales of Symphonia Tethe'alla Battle
- Valkyria Chronicles 1 Battle

A-
- Baten Kaitos 2 Battle
- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Battle

A
- Final Fantasy 8 Laguna Battle
- Wild Arms 1 Battle

A+
- Xenosaga 1 Battle
This particular song did extra heavy lifting, as, to my recollection, it was the ONLY battle theme in Xenosaga 1 until the very final confrontation, meaning that both regular AND boss battles used this. And yet over the course of hundreds and hundreds of times hearing it, I never once got sick of it. It just has such an elegantly urgent, truly epic power to it, that brought you into the moment of a new, amazing science fiction saga unfolding before your eyes. This is the battle theme that proudly cries that you've taken a first step of combat into a grand tale to come.*


EVENT BATTLE

The Event Battle song is an interesting beast, in that it covers a wide, wide range of possible needs for an RPG, but each tune must itself be extremely specific to the time in which it plays. While every piece of music has at least some intended purpose in a game, the Event Battle song plays only for a particular moment, or small handful of moments, so it can be much more fine-tuned to coordinate to the idea and emotion of that scene. At the same time, its composer has to be particularly careful to make it work just right, because the events this tune plays for are almost always more important than just normal battles, or at least more nuanced.

As such, there's not much of a broad expectation for these tunes: rather, their success and eligibility for my collection is based on whether they're really enjoyable to listen to, and whether they accurately depict and significantly enhance the setting and circumstances they play for.

Note that this is not the same as the Event Boss, which we'll get into further down.

B+
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Tutorial Battle
- Deus Ex 1 DuClare Chateau Battle
- Final Fantasy Tactics Snow Battle
- Final Fantasy Tactics Urgent Battle
- Fire Emblem 16 Battle of the Eagle and Lion
- Mass Effect 3 Earth Battle
- Neverwinter Nights 2 Memory Battle
- Pokemon Generation 5 Team Plasma Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei 5 Fionn Battle
- Stella Glow Amatsu Battle

A-
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Spring Meadows Battle
- Final Fantasy 9 Hunt Festival
- Makai Kingdom Battle
- Kingdom Hearts Series Hollow Bastion Battle
- Kingdom Hearts Series Twilight Town Battle
- La Pucelle Tactics Angel Gate
- Legend of Heroes 6-1 Arena Battle
- Suikoden 2 Prologue Attack
- Tales of Berseria Rangetsu Style

A
- Disgaea 1 Celestia Battle
- Legend of Heroes 6-1 Intelligence Division Battle

A+
- Skies of Arcadia Ship Battle
I will be very, very much surprised if I ever, over the course of my life, hear a more perfect, courageous, hearty song of grand battle between ships sailing the high seas (or, in this case, the high breeze). I love Skies of Arcadia's Delphinus as the greatest battleship of all time, and I love this as the greatest theme of battleships engaged in combat of all time.


BOSS BATTLE

Alright, here we go. The Boss Battle is the meat of the musical meal, the entree of fighting themes. Basic Battles can aspire to be exciting, but by simple reasoning the Boss Battle's gotta be a substantial step up; this is the piece that tells the player that shit is being thrown down hard. Yeah, Final Battles and some Event Battles will go harder, but I'd argue that the standard Boss Battle's the more important overall, because more singular tracks should have the helping power of the narrative backing them up and adding power to their scenarios, while the standard Boss Battle tune's often gotta handle the creation of extra tension all by itself--yeah, sometimes a boss battle's against someone important to the story or has a lot of current plot events riding on it, but sometimes it's just a skeleton that's bigger than the rest blocking the party's way, or a tough bounty that the player has engaged with at the time of their own choosing. A Boss Battle song's gotta slap, has to get you leaning forward and breathing heavily as it tells you that this ain't like those other battles you fought on the way here: this is the real deal and shit is going down.

B+
- A Dragon's ReQuest Boss Battle
- Bonds of the Skies Boss Battle
- Breath of Fire 3 Boss Battle
- Dragon Fantasy 2 Boss Battle
- Final Fantasy 7 Boss Battle
- Final Fantasy 8 Boss Battle
- Magic Knight Rayearth RPG Boss Battle
- Pokemon Generation 8 Gym Leader Battle (Could only find extended version of the first part, which is the only part I like)
- Shin Megami Tensei 1 Boss Battle
- Steven Universe: Attack the Light Boss Battle
- Whisper of a Rose Boss Battle
- Ys 1 Boss Battle

A-
- Atelier Iris 1 Boss Battle
- Breath of Fire 4 Boss Battle
- Children of Mana Boss Battle
- Grandia 2 Boss Battle
- Super Lesbian Animal RPG Boss Battle
- Treasure of the Rudras Riza Boss Battle
- Treasure of the Rudras Scion Boss Battle

A
- Fire Emblem 14 Heir of Fates Boss Battle (Could only find extended version)
- Justice Chronicles Boss Battle
- La Pucelle Tactics Boss Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha 2 Boss Battle

A+
- Live-A-Live Boss Battle
This is just hardcore awesome. You hear this, and you know that the hero's in a no-holds-barred, fight to the finish against a foe so formidable that you've gotta give everything you've got to even stand a chance. Just love the intensity of this piece.

- Pier Solar and the Great Architects Boss Battle
Dude, this may be the greatest possible fusion of Sega Genesis sound style, Phantasy Star musical aesthetic, and pure, undiluted fucking rockin' out.


EVENT BOSS BATTLE

The Basic and Boss Battles might be the workhorses of the soundtrack, and power to them, but there's no denying that the Event Boss Battle music is where the greatest examples of a composer's talents are most vividly shown. These are tunes played for boss battles of greater importance than the rest, fights that are unique and stirring events worthy of their own accordingly grand and compelling music. Like the Event Battle, this is judged by how well it fits to the circumstances in which it plays, be it a climactic showdown that changes a world's fate or a confrontation with a significant character, and like the Boss Battle, this is judged by just how powerful and pumped, how immersed and excited it can get you, how great a fight it describes to you.

Note: Sometimes this will call the song a character's battle, other times it'll just refer to the character alone. The difference is whether the song only plays when fighting the character (such as Breath of Fire 2's Barubary), or whether it's the character's song as a whole, which includes the fight against them (such as Chrono Trigger's Magus).

B+
- Breath of Fire 2 Barubary Battle
- Breath of Fire 4 Epic Battle
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Francois
- Final Fantasy 7 Jenova Absolute Battle
- Final Fantasy Series Gilgamesh
- Hololive CouncilrRys RPG Cursed Fauna Battle
- I Am Setsuna Time Judge Battle
- Mother 3 Mecha-Drago Battle
- Omori Pluto Battle
- Phantasy Star 4 Dark Force Battle
- Pokemon Generation 4 Cyrus Battle
- Pokemon Generation 8 Final Mustard Battle
- Pokemon Generation 9 Kieran and Terapagos Battle
- Star Ocean 2 Wise Man Battle
- Suikoden 2 Neclord Battle
- Wild Arms 1 Zed Battle
- Wild Arms 2 Liz and Ard Battle

A-
- Celestian Tales 1 Severin Battle
- Children of Mana Big Boss Battle
- Chrono Trigger Epic Battle
- Final Fantasy 4 Fiend Battle
- Final Fantasy 6 Atma Weapon Battle
- Final Fantasy 7 Jenova Battle
- Golden Sun 1 Saturos Battle
- Hololive CouncilRys RPG Cursed BaeRys Battle
- Hololive CouncilRys RPG Cursed Mumei Battle
- Okage: Shadow King Vampire King Battle
- Omori Space Ex-Boyfriend Battle
- Pokemon Generation 8 Battle Tower Boss Battle
- Pokemon Generation 8 Marnie Battle (If anyone knows a version of this that's exactly the same but without the stupid cheers, I'd be very obliged if you'd share it)
- Pokemon Series Cynthia Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q2 Velvet Room Battle
- Suikoden 2 Luca Blight Battle
- Suikoden 3 Destiny Battle
- Suikoden Tierkreis Fredegund Battle
- Tales of the Abyss God General Battle
- Threads of Fate Doll Master Battle
- Treasure of the Rudras Big Boss Battle
- Undertale Asgore Battle
- Undertale Muffet Battle
- Whisper of a Rose Iron Angel Battle
- Wild Arms 1 Boomerang Flash Battle
- Wild Arms 4 Brionac Battle
- Wild Arms 5 Ice Queen Battle (Link avoids unnecessary intro)
- Wild Arms 5 Persephone Battle

A
- Baten Kaitos 1 Big Boss Battle
- Breath of Fire 5 Big Boss Battle
- Chrono Trigger Magus
- Dark Cloud 1 Dran Battle
- Final Fantasy 10 Final Seymour Battle
- Kingdom Hearts 2 Epic Battle
- Mana Khemia 1 Isolde Battle
- Millennium 5 Gisele Battle (I really liked most parts of this song, but couldn't stand 1 part, so I fiddled around with it to make a version I liked. I don't know whether this really counts, but what the hell, I'm putting it here anyway)
- Pokemon Generation 7 Legendary Pokemon Battle
- Pokemon Generation 7 Red and Blue Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q1 Best Friend Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q1 Zeus Battle
- Tales of Phantasia Big Boss Battle
- Undertale Sans Battle
- Undertale Toriel Battle
- Wild Arms 3 Schroedinger Battle

A+
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Epic Battle
I don't know if I have ever bopped harder to a battle song than this one.  Every time, and I mean every time, I sway and bob to the dance club rhythm, and the grand lead-up to it is awesome, too.  This song just perfectly represents the thrilling sensation of a daunting, seemingly impossible battle against a truly titanic adversary, that you nonetheless stand against with the confidence that you've got this.  So awesome and rousing!

- Etrian Odyssey 1 M.I.K.E. Battle
A raw, rockin' remake of a battle theme that was already insanely great, the methodical intensity and pressure behind this piece, mixed with just a hint of an industrial aesthetic, combines perfectly with the desperate, brutal clash against the AI M.I.K.E. where every turn that passes counts down that much closer to the deaths of millions. Damn awesome.

- Romancing Saga 1 Big Boss Battle
Dude, RS1's music fucking kicks.

- Romancing Saga 1 Epic Boss Battle
I mean, it seriously does.

- Shin Megami Tensei 4 Series Parting Ways Battle
This battle theme really captures in perfection the battles in which it plays, in which the protagonist is parting ways violently from trusted friends whose consciences cannot let him go any further. You really can hear the emotional, the bittersweet desperation of Nanashi's friends in SMT4-2 as they try to keep him from making a terrible mistake, the pain as they're struck down and resign themselves to their fate...by heavens, this song is so good that it even made me care about Isabeau for a few minutes. There are plastic milk jugs that possess more and greater personality than Isabeau, and this music still managed in SMT4-1 to put regret deep in my heart as I put sword deep in hers. That's not to say that strong writing and narrative placement don't factor in heavily to the power of these battles, but at least half the work is done by the music, and when a scene is so distressing that you might actually feel physically ill afterward, even being just half responsible for that is a wonder. This is a triumph of emotional combat themes, it really is.

- Undertale Undyne the Undying Battle
Yeah, I know, it's heresy to put this at the top even above Sans's fight theme. But screw it, I'm standing by it: this is the greatest battle theme of Undertale, full stop. Soulful, frenzied, heroic, unyielding, intense, this tune does proud the idea of the hero who's been empowered by the entire world's hope and faith.

- Wild Arms 3 Asgard and Janus Battle: I honestly have no idea why I am absolutely in love with this battle theme. I mean, it's very unique, has a good, active pace, and gets the idea across that it's a big battle quite well; it's certainly a good battle song 1 way or another. But up at the very top? I have no explanation. I just know that I sincerely love this tune.


VICTORY

Technically speaking, the actual music played during battle aren't the only fighting songs an RPG typically has.  Victory music is that which follows a successful encounter, typically accompanied by victory poses, confident quips, and sweet, sweet Experience Points being doled out.  Victory music's job is simple--congratulate the player on a job well done, close out the encounter, and typically just be upbeat and confident.

Unfortunately, this traditionally can be done well enough with just a quick little ditty of a few basic, "We did it!" kind of notes as in introduction, and then a loop of similarly celebratory music that fills like 20 - 40 seconds in total.  Which means that while Victory music is functional, it rarely has the opportunity, cause, or motivation to reach the kind of musical heights where you'd actually want to hear it for its own sake.  So there's not much here.  Well, not every nook and cranny of an RPG soundtrack can dazzle.

B+
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Boss Battle Victory
Well, since this is the only 1 here, I guess I'll comment on it.  I like how calming and reassuring this tune is--rather than go for the usual, aggressive fanfare, TLoZTP uses its Victory music over bosses to gently calm you back down after the intensity and adrenaline of the boss battle.  It's like a soothing rub-down to release the tension after you've finished a tough task.  Nice and quite effective at what it's going for!

A-

A

A+


FINAL BOSS BATTLE

Being able to maintain interest in normal battles, enhance the mood and significance of major plot events, and create a regular feeling of excitement and tension may make the previous categories more important to an RPG as a whole than the Final Boss Battle's music does...but make no mistake, this last category of fighting music is still a darned important one. Final Boss Battle songs have a major advantage in their corner in that, if anything in a game's narrative is already set up to be epic and engaging, it's most likely gonna be the ultimate clash between the heroes and the antagonist, so really, a Final Boss Battle's job is almost more about just keeping up and not dropping the ball than it is about forwarding the title's aims on its own. Still, the importance of just seeing a game to its proper conclusion shouldn't be understated--falling completely flat at the finish line and/or trying to switch thematic narrative horses right at the finale is how you get baffling, ruinous endings like those to Witch Hunt and Mass Effect 3.

A great Final Boss Battle can be as fierce and high-octane as regular Boss and Event Boss Battle music, but it doesn't have to be. What really makes or breaks the music that accompanies the last fight of a game is whether it feels like a satisfying and emotionally/thematically consistent finale to the adventure. If this is a battle on which the fate of the world rests (as is most often the case in RPGs), then it needs to feel epic as hell. If this is a battle that settles the emotional journey of the protagonist, be that journey 1 of self-discovery, revenge, rediscovery of hope, etc., the music should capture feelings appropriate to that mindset. And so on and so forth--the Final Boss Battle music should be great fighting music, but it should also sound right for the game that's led to it. Which is, honestly, the best advice for anything related to a game's ending, really.

And also, as always, the Final Boss Battle music has to be hella good. So let's see which ones are.

B+
- Ara Fell Final Boss Battle
- Baldur's Gate 3 Final Boss Battle
- Dark Cloud 1 Final Boss Battle
- Evoland 1 Final Boss Battle
- Final Fantasy 5 Final Boss Battle
- Final Fantasy 7 Final Boss Battle 1
- Final Fantasy 8 Final Boss Battle 1
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 1 Final Boss Battle 1
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Final Boss Battle
- Steven Universe Save the Light Final Boss Battle
- Super Mario RPG Final Boss Battle 1
- Wild Arms 1 Final Boss Battle

A-
- Chrono Trigger Final Boss Battle 1
- Crimson Shroud Final Boss Battle
- Grandia 2 Final Boss Battle
- Lunar 1 Final Boss Battle
- Shadow Hearts 1 Final Boss Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 1 Final Boss Battle (I really liked most parts of this song, but couldn't stand 1 part, so I fiddled around with it to make a version I liked. I don't know whether this really counts, but what the hell, I'm putting it here anyway)
- Symphony of Eternity Final Boss Battle
- Tales of the Abyss Final Boss Battle
- Trials of Mana Final Boss Battle
- Wild Arms 2 Final Boss Battle
- Ys 1 Final Boss Battle

A
- Lunar 2 Final Boss Battle (Link avoids unnecessary intro)
- Mario and Luigi 3 Final Boss Battle
- Radiant Historia Final Boss Battle
- Secret of Mana Final Boss Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei 4-2 Final Boss Battle
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q1 Final Boss Battle
- Undertale Final Boss Battle
- Whisper of a Rose Final Boss Battle (From what I can understand, this is an original composition made freely available to anyone who wants it, which was used by Whisper of a Rose, and several other games. Since WoaR is what I know it from, I just categorize it as such)

A+
- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Final Boss Battle
I'm pretty sure that this is my favorite battle theme. Not just favorite Final Boss Battle song, I mean favorite of all of them. It's either this, or that Pier Solar and the Great Architects boss theme further up. I don't even think I need to explain this one's score; if you can listen to this thing and not get fucking amped about a climactic, high-paced desperate showdown between good and evil for the fate of everything, then I just don't know what to do with you. This song managed to make the end boss of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest epic. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest!

- The Princess' Heart + Sweet Lily Dreams Final Boss Battle
Similar to Whisper of a Rose's Final Boss Battle, this is an original creation that's freely available for others to use, and Sweet Lily Dreams and The Princess' Heart were 2 RPGs that did so (well, mostly; they took its best part and just looped that (0:56 - 2:46)). Whether you like the whole thing or just the middle section that Roseportal Games uses, there's no denying that this song kicks some serious ass.



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





* This was before said saga released its second game and it became apparent that Xenosaga had committed to a screaming nose-dive straight into a burning trash can.

General RPGs' AMVs 18

It’s that time of year again!  Yes, that annual moment that no one but me really likes all that much: AMV Rant Day.  Well, tough lentils; it’s my blog so nyeh on you.  Besides, AMVs represent an important phenomenon in internet history--Cr1t1kal himself has made a compelling case for why Youtube owes its existence to them.  Least we can do is honor a few good ones annually, in my opinion.



DEUS EX

Deus Ex 3: Augmented Icarus, by Nostromo
The music used is RoadGame, by Kavinsky, and a remix of RoadGame, by F.O.O.L.  This is a slick, smooth, exciting AMV that plays to the visual and spiritual strengths of DE3 very well, both through its choice of visuals (including a refreshing and effective use of gameplay footage to complement the standard cutscenes and trailer material) and its use of music, creating a really cool homage to the game and its protagonist.  A great way to start off today’s AMV rant, no doubt about it!

Deus Ex 3 + 4: I Am Machine, by Brigi Bodnar
The music used is I Am Machine, by Three Days Grace.  I daresay this song might be 1 of the most perfectly suited pieces of music in existence to be matched to these games, but Brigi Bodnar didn’t just let the song do all the work--the video moves with the song, meshing with the hard tune and its lyrics.  The creator of the video coordinated the power of both game and song, rather than letting the natural connection do all the work, and the result is pretty rad.


FIRE EMBLEM

Fire Emblem 14: Broken Crown, by PastelClark
The music used is Broken Crown, by Mumford & Sons.  The versatility of FE14’s story and cutscenes is on display once more with this simple, well-made AMV, which uses adept scene selection to lean into the emotional weight of the song’s tune and use it portray Corrin’s personal turmoil in her/his quest.  It’s not something we haven’t seen before in these AMV rants, but it’s still darned good, well worth another go.

Fire Emblem 16: Lean On, by LaTeddyNecto
The music used is a slowed version of Lean On, by Major Lazer.  I'm not currently aware of who made the slowed version.  The sad fact of the matter is that the visuals of FE16's cutscenes hold nowhere near the compelling quality that FE14's seemed to so effortlessly possess, but that hasn't stopped hundreds of AMV creators from doing their best to work with it.  Finally, 1 such individual has made a breakthrough with this video.  First of all, the timing of the visuals to the lyrics and beats of this song are so captivating in their synchronization to the song that you could almost swear that FE16's cutscenes were designed to go with the song.  Adding to that is an honestly surprising marriage of the heavier soul of this song's remixed version to the events and cast of FE16 so well-suited that it's hard to know whether the song becomes more significant because of the conflict and story that FE16 lets it depict, or whether the game becomes meaningful with the weight of the song to frame it.  This is an AMV with great foundations in the hands of a creator who can fully realize that potential...and this isn't even LaTeddyNecto's best FE16 AMV!  We'll see that one in next year's AMV rant.  (Although if you can't wait, leave a comment asking, and I'll happily link you to it).


LUNAR

Lunar 1: The World of Alex and Luna, by Honou Productions
The music used is Two Worlds, by Phil Collins.  This is a pleasant treat--a blast from the past using an RPG not commonly utilized for AMVs, at least not for quite some time.  I’ll be honest: while Lunar 1 had an impressive quantity of anime FMVs for its day, there is not, realistically, a whole lot of material for an AMV creator to work with, a problem not improved by the fact that what’s there is sometimes pretty basic and/or slow (how much animation budget was wasted on Luna’s boring little boat song?).  So the fact that Honou Productions manages to relevantly tie this AMV’s visuals so tightly to the song’s lyrics to create not only a functional and enjoyable representation of the song’s story, but also a very authentic tribute to Lunar 1 as well, is quite impressive.  Not every AMV holds up after 20 years--but this one definitely does.


NIER

Nier: Automata: [E]nd of a World, by Moenochrome
The music used is Goodbye to a World, by Porter Robinson.  This is a truly spectacular AMV, as good as such a video can get without quite qualifying for a rant all of its own.  Moenochrome has made a perfect marriage between game and song that epitomizes each in style and idea, but not sat on his/her laurels after doing so--this AMV is full of visual effects that serve to recall Nier: Automata’s own use of meta visual effects to sell its AI protagonists’ perspective, as well as many that enhance the song’s rhythm, notes, and mood.  This is a truly magnificent tribute to Nier: Automata that captures the beauty and sorrow of its emotional side, whose construction, right down to its very title, clearly shows Moenochrome’s deep love and passion for the game.  Superlative stuff.

Nier: Automata: Skydweller, by Miss Gard
The song used is Skydweller by Rave the Reqviem.  You know what?  I get too wordy with these descriptions sometimes, and this is a great opportunity for me to avoid that for once.  Watch this AMV because it’s made well and it’s really damn cool.



TALES OF

Tales of Berseria: Poseidon, by SongBird431
The music used is Poseidon, by Whitesand.  This is 1 of those AMVs where the music is mostly relegated to background, as the video takes center stage to explore and pay tribute to a game or character (in this case, the story of Velvet’s creation, hatred, and vengeance), and it’s effective at what it does, giving us a neat, tidy, and strong view of what led to the fall and demonization of Velvet Crowe.  It’s good stuff!



...Holy crap, that’s 3 AMV rants in a row in which I haven’t had to put a 30 Seconds to Mars video up.  Could the long nightmare finally be over?

Fire Emblem 16's Dorothea Should have Sung More

Is it just me, or does Fire Emblem 16 fail to take full advantage of the perfection of Dorothea’s voice actress?  I mean, Dorothea’s a wonderful character as a whole, and Allegra Clark, the woman who plays her in the English translation, is actually capable of imbuing her performance as Dorothea with both the warm, engaging friendliness and the gripping, heartfelt sorrow that most define the character.  I honestly find her work here amazing: to be able to keep up with a character as personally nuanced as Dorothea is impressive enough, but Clark has talent enough to go beyond simply being equal to the task, and puts forth a performance that quickly becomes so signature to who Dorothea is that it’s hard to think of any other voice for her.

And she’s got a lovely singing voice!  Now yeah, I admittedly know dick-all about anything musical, but I think I can at least tell this much: Allegra Clark’s got some sweetly sonorous pipes.  And you’d think that’d be a perfect quality for this character, given that Dorothea’s famous across all of Fodlan for being the greatest diva of her time.  Right?

But as it turns out, Clark’s lovely talent for song is barely even touched upon in Fire Emblem 16!  Yeah, you’ve got a character defined in no small part by her status as a nationally renowned star of the opera, and a voice actress that can actually make you believe that, and yet Dorothea sings, what, twice in the entire game!?*

Ferdinand!  Fucking FERDINAND gets to belt out a tune as often as the character who’s an operatic superstar!  And don’t even get me started on Annette.  Annette gets to do some sing-song nonsense 4 times!  I have to sit through Annette’s painfully dumb little songs about her eating dinner or cleaning a room like she’s some Dreamworks princess reject twice as often as I get the pleasure of hearing Dorothea sing?**

Yeah, I know that the translation team probably can’t change Dorothea’s support conversations or main game dialogue just because this side of the ocean really lucked out with its casting call, but honestly, I still feel it’s not entirely unwarranted to complain.  Because really, regardless of the actors for the parts, does it make any sense that of all the characters who are given opportunities to sing in the game, the ones who do so the least often are the opera stars?  It's an error in logic no matter how you look at it.

It just seems like a real wasted opportunity to take advantage of the full range of an actress’s talent, especially when to do so would have been so easy and natural for the character.

















* And 1 of those times is for and about Edelgard, of all schmucks!  Jeez, Nintendo, you couldn’t at least have had Dorothea sing about a subject more worthy of her talents?  Manuela, Dorothea’s other friends, the goddess, the war currently raging across the land, a particularly good salad, pocket lint, almost anything I can think of would be more deserving of the praise of Dorothea/Allegra Clark’s musical talent than that gullible moron!


** Yes, yes, yes, I know Annette’s voice actress, Abby Trott, is the woman who sang the Super Smash Brothers Ultimate main theme and thus clearly also has substantial musical talent.  But that was Smash and this is Fire Emblem, and that talent is not on display with Annette.  I frankly think that the tortured groans of Draco as the Super Nintendo’s soundcard desperately threw its every limited faculty into imitating the voice of a human being (or possibly a troll-bulldog-washing-machine hybrid) in Final Fantasy 6’s opera made for a more melodious musical experience than Annette’s little ditties.

General RPG Valentines 4

Big thanks to my sister and to Ecclesiastes, both of whom provide so much help to me in making these stupid things, throughout the whole year, that I wonder sometimes whether these V-Day rants should count as Guest Rants.  Seriously, I'm pretty sure that of the 3 of us, I'm the one who puts in the least work on these things.  Thanks to you both for all your support, both in terms of the rants in general, and especially in regards to this ridiculous little holiday tradition I've imposed upon us!



Ahhh, Valentine's Day.  Silly, fun, and sweet.  Tiresome, stressful, and unhealthy.  Noble in spirit, corrupted by greed and vanity in practice.  It's a day of contradictions (which may in fact make it all the more suitably connected to the concept of Love), to be sure...but not around these parts!  Here at Thinking Inside the Box, we only love the day of love!  And as our tribute to it, below are 20 more RPG-themed Valentines to help you express your feelings to the object of your affections in the least effective manner possible.  Enjoy your special someone's eye-roll today!

NOTE: With Blogger's incredibly obtuse, ineffective, stupid new format that no one asked for, wanted, or preferred, the spacing between images is all wonky, so this looks much less neat and orderly than it should.  I can't figure out how to fix this because Blogger is fucking terrible now.  Sorry.

 

...Oh, wait, I was wrong.  Valentine's Day is a day of contradictions here at Thinking Inside the Box, after all, because along with all the proclamations of love and affection, we also like to throw in a few proclamations of feelings of a...different sort, as well.  And while I generally try not to indulge in sentiments about the general state of the world on this blog, I think now would be the perfect time to recognize just what a complete shit-show the past 365 days have been with a double dose of Anti-Valentines.  For all you Bitter Bettys out there, this is your year!

Witch Hunt's Ending is Horrible

You know, I’ve been playing video games, predominantly RPGs, for a good, long time.  Like, almost the entirety of my life.  In the years and years since that fateful day that I hamfistedly shoved a Crystalis cartridge into my NES and turned it on, I have seen the good and the bad of almost 400 different RPGs, and become intimately familiar with the genre’s ins and outs.  I have seen the good of RPGs, and I have seen the bad of RPGs, and though the nuances of each may change from game to game, it’s difficult, these days, for a game to truly just take me aback, completely boggle my mind.

But it does still happen occasionally.

Let me paint you a picture.  Let’s say you’re playing an RPG.  It’s a game whose premise is that a young woman, both a princess and a talented witch, has suffered the unfortunate indignity of having her boyfriend transformed, via another, more evil witch’s magical curse, into a chicken.  This princess, Cybel, thereby embarks upon a quest to lift the spell from her boytoy, renaming him Double 0 for her own amusement and bringing him along for the ride, assisted in her quest by her best friend and a small assortment of allies met along the way.  The plot is pretty straightforward, but enjoyable enough for what it is, as they travel through various settings on their way to confront the evil witch who’s been terrorizing the kingdom.  Fairly average, but pleasantly lighthearted overall, with a slight Halloween-ish vibe with its zombies and graveyards and creepy mansions and skeletons and whatnot.  Appropriate for a game about witches.  It’s even got a between-areas transition map that pulls up as you go from 1 part of the game to the next, very much like the transitions between stages in the Ghosts ’n Goblins, and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts series.  Neat!

Anyway.  The adventure proceeds well enough to its conclusion, with its adventurers determined and in good spirits throughout (well, most of them; 1 guy’s kind of the Shaggy of the party, but an appealing coward is good for levity, anyway).  The heroes confront the evil witch, clean her clock (somewhat literally; part of her deal is throwing a bunch of animated furniture and other household items at her foes), and the big twist is revealed of who she really is (another Scooby Doo-esque element, now that I think about it).  After her defeat and the reveal, the party as a whole gathers in a hallway, and the protagonist goes into the evil witch’s study to demand some answers, and a less avian look for her beau.  Some dialogue is exchanged that better explains why the evil witch was doing her evil thang, and then, at long last, the spell is lifted from Double 0.

And it turns out that it’s the wrong goddamn chicken.

Amusingly enough, seems that somewhere along the way, the party inadvertently switched their own cursed brother-in-wings with another similarly cursed guy.  The evil witch had a fondness for polymorphed KFC menu items, you see, and there was a whole monastery a little ways back filled with literal dumb clucks that the party had passed through, at which point the exchange was unwittingly made.  This ain’t Spirited Away; 1 Chick-Fil-A victim looks about the same as the next to Cybel.  They even have the same profile picture.

Anyway, the blacksmith who has now been uncursed runs around the room, amusingly swearing violent revenge upon the evil witch and, for that matter, all witches everywhere, which I found rather unfair given that 2/3 of the witches he’s encountered in the last few days have been trying to save him from his curse (if admittedly by accident).  The evil witch and Cybel shout at each other a bit about the mix-up and who’s to blame for it, and then...

Oh, wait.  There is no “and then.”  That’s it.  Fade to black, with a vague message questioning whether Cybel would ever see her boyfriend again, the end.  Over.  Done.

I thought I’d done something wrong.  Honest to Irori, I figured this was a feature.  I mean, the game’s treatment of legs of the journey like stages from Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts had me convinced that there was more to this.  See, in SGnG, when you beat the game the first time, the princess tells you, essentially, “Yeah, thanks for stopping by, Arthur, it’s all great about the saving-me-quest and everything--but I can’t help but notice that you’ve come here without my bracelet on your person, and I am not going back to my castle looking anything less than a perfect 10.  Get your ass back out there and bring me my bling; the next time you show up here, you better be putting a bangle on it.”  And then you have to replay the entire game from the start, beating it with the inferior weapon that is Little Miss High-and-Mighty’s enchanted slap-bracelet, before you can see the real ending.

So when I beat Witch Hunt, and saw that ending, my first impression was that Aldorlea Games must’ve taken a page out of Capcom’s book.  No doubt I just had to play through the game a second time, perhaps at a higher difficulty or using the New Game+ carry-over items to enter a secret area inaccessible the first time around, or something like that, and then I could see the real ending to the game.  The idea that this could be the 1 and only ending to this game was so unreal a possibility to me that I had actually booted the game up again to go through it all a second time before I decided, just to play it needlessly safe, that I should probably post on the developer’s forums and get a confirmation that what I knew must be the case was, in fact, true.

It was not.

Indinera Falls himself (who, from what I can tell, basically IS Aldorlea Games all on his own) responded, and was good enough to save me another 10-ish hours on the game by letting me know that this is, indeed, the 1 and only ending.

Witch Hunt is a game which is, start to finish, about saving one’s boyfriend from being cursed to be a chicken.  Saving the kingdom from the evil witch that did the deed is an admirable side benefit, but ultimately, the entire purpose of the game is an NES-era-esque video game quest to save a dude and live happily ever after with him.  And then, after 10+ hours of pursuing that goal, that doesn’t happen.  Witch Hunt is about taking on a classic quest, and then completely failing it.

Except that even saying that isn’t accurate.  Witch Hunt is not “about” that failure.  There’s nothing about the game that prepares one for, that narratively or aesthetically lines up with the idea of, a game where the good guys don’t win.  Witch Hunt doesn’t carry itself like something with a message, or a point to prove, about the unfortunate realities of life, and how one lives with them.  It ain’t Rakuen.  Witch Hunt doesn’t comport itself with the gravity of a game to which a happy ending is questionable, or even unlikely.  It ain’t Shadow Hearts 2.  Sure, it’s got plenty of spooky stuff in it like undead-overrun graveyards and evil hell baby demon things and whatnot, but I can’t emphasize enough how much closer it is to the all-in-good-fun Halloween kind of spooky than it is to something actually frightening or disturbing.  Witch Hunt doesn’t conduct itself like, A, some study of humanity being gray rather than black-and-white, or B, some treatise about the possibility that one can’t change fate, or C, some argument that there are such things as lost causes which we have to accept.  It ain’t, A, Fallout: New Vegas, or B, Fallout 4, or C, someone extensively playing Fallout 76 in an attempt to induce a strong enough case of Stockholm Syndrome that he no longer regrets his purchase.  Witch Hunt just acts like a basic, straightforward RPG about a quest to cure a magically cursed chicken, throughout its entire course.  I won’t go so far as to say that the ending is as self-contradicting as Mass Effect 3’s was (because what possibly could be?), but there is absolutely no part of Witch Hunt with which this abrupt, You Failed ending has even the slightest shred of narrative symmetry.

THIS is the only ending to Witch Hunt.  This.  An ending which gives the player absolutely no closure whatsoever regarding the entire core quest around which the game is built.  An ending which leaves its protagonist’s happiness completely ambiguous.  An ending which won’t commit to whether some poor, innocent kid will or won’t live out the rest of his substantially shortened days watching over his shoulder for Popeyes workers.  An ending which leaves the entire rest of the party, all the other important actors to this play, just sitting patiently in a fucking hallway.  After an entire quest’s worth of trials together, interactions, and cooperation, these major characters are just stuffed into a hallway and written out of the story!

Here’s a freebie to any aspiring writers out there: if you’re not a pretentious foreign film director with ambitions of premiering in the basement of a family-owned antique shop to an audience of 3½, then the process of sitting in your dentist’s office as you wait to get called in for a root canal shouldn’t be an indistinguishable experience from the final moments for 90% of your cast!

Imagine if you went through all the trouble of fighting off an alien invasion in Startropics 1, only to find out that Mike’s uncle was actually kidnapped by an entirely different bunch of aliens and he’d missed his chance to save him.  Imagine if, instead of making a long ending montage of each party member summarizing who they were and as major components to the game’s story, Final Fantasy 6 did that only for Terra and everyone else just hung out in the airship’s lounge offscreen, unacknowledged, forgotten.   Imagine if you got to the end of Chrono Trigger, and beat Lavos, but it turned out that a giant meteor hit the planet 5 minutes later and the future was destroyed anyways, and before Marle, Lucca, Robo, Frog, Ayla, or Magus could even say anything about it, a big ol’ “BUT THE FUTURE REFUSED TO CHANGE” got slapped up on the screen and the credits began to roll.

Imagine if Toad said “But our princess is in another castle!” and it was actually just the end of the game.

Now, in the interest of giving the full story, I should note that Indinera Falls has explained his motivations for this ending as being rooted in an enjoyment of open-ended conclusions, a greater appreciation for unhappy endings than the alternative, and a wish to emulate the kinds of endings one may find within a horror movie.  I have...many thoughts on that, most of them strong, and very few of them complimentary.  But I try to go a little easier on Indie creators, and I already said my piece to him directly on his forums anyway, so I’ll just point out a few brief rebuttals:


A: As mentioned before, Witch Hunt is a far cry away from having the kind of dark, twisted style and sensibilities that could make a horror movie’s kind of ending work for it.  It’s a damn game about saving a guy from being a chicken with generally positive and determined, even plucky, party members, a good-natured and well-intentioned protagonist, a comical profile portrait of the chicken in question, a mildly Shaggy-esque complaining coward character, and so on.  Not a cynical, twisted tale by any means.*  I mean for heaven’s sake, the cause of this unfortunate ending is that someone grabbed the wrong chicken at some point--that’s the kind of setup you see for a gimmick in a sitcom.

B: Different media have different narrative conventions that do and don’t work for them.  Different media have different avenues of telling their stories, different levels of engagement in an audience.  What works well in 1 format doesn’t necessarily work well in another--just look at Cats’s transition from Broadway to film.  An empty, meaningless conclusion of doubt, despair, and loose ends may very well work for a horror movie, but a movie occupies its audience’s attention for roughly 2 hours and has to be, as a result, focused very strongly on the events that move it forward, in most cases.  Witch Hunt is a game that took me over 10 hours to beat, with lots of interactions between party members who established themselves and their personalities well, and a strong focus on its (many times) stated goal of saving a guy from being the prop to a Game of Thrones meme.  Completely abandoning these characters and this cause to deliver an “open interpretation” unhappy ending like this is a completely different thing for an audience who’s only given 2 hours to simply watching a bunch of events transpire around some lightly-defined characters than it is for an audience who’s invested over 10 hours into actively assisting a party of personalities that they’ve gotten to know with some relative intimacy!  Even if Witch Hunt HAD been a game akin to a horror movie in its tone, it’d still feel insultingly careless and stingy for its reward of its player’s hours of efforts and for its payoff for its developed, familiar cast’s involvement to be so ambiguous, empty, and curt!

C: Making something open-ended is not the same as just suddenly dropping it altogether.  Witch Hunt’s conclusion feels like a discourse that ends because your phone died, not because you intentionally ended a conversation to keep it short.

D: Unhappy endings can be truly great ways to conclude a work, to bring forth its message.  The sadness of Rakuen’s ending gives us inspiration in seeing that it’s possible to weather such tragedy and be all the greater for the memory of that which has been lost, and that a short existence can still be one that had great meaning.  The tragedy of Shadow Hearts 2’s ending is a testament to the character of Yuri, to the love between him and Alice, and to the idea of being able to die as oneself rather than lose what makes one the person one is.  Severed, Eternal Senia 1, Grimm’s Hollow, Children of Zodiarcs, each has an ending with at least a hearty dose of unhappiness to it, and each unhappy ending fulfills a powerful purpose of emotion and/or philosophy.  But Witch Hunt has an unhappy ending that’s only there for its own sake; there’s nothing it does, no narrative quality or idea put forth, nor emotional poignancy created.  An unhappy ending doesn’t have value just because it happens to be less common than the alternative; it still needs to do something useful to the work as a whole, like any other part of a story.


You may recall that while I found the overall finale to Millennium 5 to be pretty good, the ending itself was surprisingly, even shockingly, brief and meager, leaving the player starved for details of the outcome to a quest they’d invested 5 separate games’ worth of effort and time into.  I’ve always just assumed that this was an isolated case of tripping at the finish line...but now, after my second foray into the creations of Master Indinera Falls has found a similarly but more even more harshly flawed ending, I worry that this may be a signature flaw to the developer.  I’ll give the Aldorlea Games catalogue a few more tries, of course--heaven knows I’ve extended many more chances to less deserving developers in the past, so it’s only fair--and hopefully I’ll be proven wrong and bad endings aren’t a trend with Aldorlea Games.  But even if that does, hopefully, come to pass, the ending to Witch Hunt will remain a noticeably black mark on this developer’s record.














* And I think it’s probably worth pointing out here that Aldorlea Games DOES know how to create an RPG that’s got a level of darkness to it.  I’m almost done playing Laxius Force 1 as I write this rant, and although it is mostly of a fairly average fantasy atmosphere, there are a good number of moments in this game where some serious, shockingly gruesome shit goes down.  That’s not to say that an ending as awful as Witch Hunt’s would work at all as the ending of Laxius Force (and here’s hoping it won’t be), but at the very least it would have a more understandable thematic connection to a game that at 1 point has a surprise gunman start blowing heroes’ heads into gory chunks than to Witch Hunt, a game whose darkest characteristic is that its set design looks like something inspired by the shelves of a Spirit Halloween store.  Had Indinera Falls wanted to design a game whose story and approach could adequately accommodate his preoccupation with lazy horror movie endings, it seems reasonable to believe that he could have, making the disparity between Witch Hunt and its conclusion all the more baffling and inept.

Deus Ex 4's Downloadable Content

Well, I beat an RPG with DLC again recently, so y’all know what comes next: The RPGenius talks about years-old add-ons as though what he says could possibly influence your buying decisions or really anything else, ever.  Because damn it all, DLCs make for easy rants to write when I’ve got nothing better to offer, and after over 10 years of running this blog, my general lack of ideas has happily transitioned from a character flaw to an understandable result of having done this for so long.*  So let’s take a look at the 3 DLC packs for Deus Ex 4.  I found DE3’s single add-on to be quite good, if you recall...let’s see if the next title in the franchise managed to equal its predecessor.



Desperate Measures: Desperate Measures was, from what I can gather, 1 of those sneaky little free DLCs that companies will sometimes use to soften you up to the idea of acquiring the ones that come later, which will cost money.  It’s not a terribly honest business practice, but I guess I can’t fault it too strongly when so much else connected to microtransactions is so much worse.

Anyway, Desperate Measures is kinda blah.  There’s nothing especially wrong with it, or anything, but it just feels totally unimportant, and you don’t get anything from it.  The premise of this side-story seems to be based on answering the question of who the train station bomber was...which would be quite significant, of course, if not for the fact that the main game already provides you the opportunity to discover the bomber’s identity on a computer during Adam’s visit to Golem City.  And Desperate Measures really just doesn’t go much further than said computer’s emails did in rounding out the bomber’s character and answering players’ questions about him, either; what you learn about him is more peripheral (some light information about his family) than relevant.

So the stated purpose of this DLC is totally superfluous.  The biggest service it provides narratively, in that case, is that Desperate Measures explains why the police’s recording of the bombing incident (which Adam has to retrieve and have his coworkers analyze early in the game) was corrupted.  Which is, honestly, such a tiny lore detail that it didn’t even occur to me to ask or care during the main game’s course why that might be the case.  I dare to presume that most other players paid it as little mind as I did.  Beyond that, there’s really nothing story-wise...there are a few tiny ambient stories going on in emails and texts you can find, I suppose, but the DLC’s specific central character is pretty basic, Chang is no more than a plot device, and after delivering just enough decent lines to make for good trailer material, Adam is just there to get the quasi-plot done and move on with his life.

Bottom line, Desperate Measures is a fine enough extra level to sneak or run-and-gun through, I suppose, but only really worth the time if you’re very fond of Deus Ex’s gameplay.  Which I am, I guess, but still, I would’ve hoped for a lot better.  Still, it’s free, so I guess I can’t judge it too harshly.


System Rift: This add-on has some decent little perks to it.  It’s good to see Deus Ex 3’s Francis again, and the grudgingly respectful antagonism that he and Adam mutually share for one another is fun enough to see in action once more.  As someone who enjoyed the little side game Deus Ex: Breach more than he probably should have, I also thought it was neat to involve ShadowChild; I wasn’t expecting DEB to get a tie-in to the main series, and I liked the surprise.  And it’s neat that Stanton Dowd makes an appearance (well, a line of dialogue, anyway) here; concrete ties to the overall series lore is appreciated when one finds them.

With that said, this DLC is almost as pointless as the first.  It’s really not so much a side-story as it is a side-transition (which does, I suppose, make it fairly authentic to DE4 as a whole, as this game ultimately feels more like a transition between the series’s really important events than it does a story in its own right).  The premise of System Rift is that Adam’s old “friend” Francis wants to have him investigate Santeau, so Adam has to break into the infamous Palisade information bank to grab any of Santeau’s dirty little secrets off the servers.  But you get basically no payoff to that premise!  We’re given no substantive peek at the data Adam gets ahold of, and even secondary aspects of interest inevitably fizzle up similarly--Stanton Dowd really is nothing but a tiny cameo and we’re left with no understanding of what he’s up to with Palisade, and Adam and Frances are all too happy to refer to the mysterious period of Adam’s life between Deus Ex 3 and 4, without going into any actual goddamn detail about it.  It’s almost as bad as the cliched vague villain meetings you get in JRPGs where everyone talks in the most stiff, ridiculously inefficient manner possible about “that guy” performing “these actions” to accomplish “those goals” and so on.  Hell, the game even seems to know what a frustrating tease it is on this matter and revels in it, having Adam actually fucking hang up on Francis at the DLC’s end just as the latter was about to mention a single specific detail that the audience would find interesting about Adam’s recent past.

There’s really only 1 thing that System Rift tells us that’s of any consequence whatsoever, in that it is, unexpectedly, basically the story of how Deus Ex: Breach exists.  Yeah, thanks to System Rift, now we know the story of where the titular breach in Palisade’s network came from, which is, “1 time Adam Jenson did some stuff.”  I guess it’s nice to know that detail, but it’s also thoroughly unnecessary.  I guarantee you that no one, no matter how huge a fan of Deus Ex, was asking to know the Breach’s origins.  In fact, much like Desperate Measures revealing to us why the police evidence was corrupted, I don’t think it ever would have even occurred to me to wonder about something that small.

But unlike Desperate Measures, you have to actually pay for System Rift.  In fact, you have to pay a fucking lot for it; this add-on is sold at a whopping $12!  Considering that there isn’t anywhere even close to 12 hours of content to this thing, that would be a hell of a steep price even for a really good DLC, and this sure as hell ain’t that.  I would struggle mightily to call System Rift even minimally adequate, frankly.  I, thank Palutena, bought Deus Ex 4 a few years ago during some kind of Steam ultra-sale on SquareEnix products, paying only $4.50 for its DLC Season Pass (so essentially, $2.25 for System Rift and A Criminal Past each), or I’d really be kicking myself right now.  But even a measly 2 bucks is still overpaying for System Rift, a story that doesn’t want to actually tell you its story.


A Criminal Past: At this point, SquareEnix stopped even pretending that it had the slightest interest in using Deus Ex’s add-ons for anything relevant to Deus Ex.  I mean, Desperate Measures may have had very little to say about nothing, but at least it was connected to DE4’s plot and made the pretense of having some significance to it.  System Rift may have performed no greater storytelling task than to give the origin story of a goddamn mobile tie-in game, but at least it pretended to have substance to the series by leading you on with promises of extracting corporate secrets and finding new, interesting information about major players in DE4’s story.

A Criminal Past?  This is just a DLC that uses the backdrop of Deus Ex to tell a surface-level cop-goes-undercover-in-prison story that has nothing, and doesn’t even pretend to have anything, to do with the events, themes, values, or characters of the DE franchise.

Don’t get me wrong, if this had been, say, a movie belonging to some other franchise, or its own venture altogether, A Criminal Past would be okay, I guess.  Not good, mind you--not enough exploration into Mejia’s character and motivations, too much left open-ended about Fixer’s significance, and lacking a personal connection to the protagonist.  But it would be okay.  I guess.

But A Criminal Past isn’t it’s own thing, it’s a side story in the Deus Ex franchise.  A side story that has nothing to do with conspiracy theory fundamentals, examining the movements of human beings within their society, the question of where the line is between being a human being and being something more, or the grievously flawed foundations of a world in which the greedy and selfish few are overlords to the incalculably many.  A side story in Deus Ex that has none of that.

It’s not like it couldn’t have been an adequate representation of the series.  The undercover-in-a-prison schtick isn’t an especially on-brand move, but A Criminal Past could have used its setting as a way to show a hard, inside look at the prison system’s workings when used by corrupt social overlords as a tool for getting rich off of what effectively amounts to slave labor.  That ain’t even conspiracy theory; that’s just the current, factual corporate-run prison system of the USA right there.  But it can also tie very neatly into the theories of methods by which humankind is suppressed by its elite ringmasters, so with some decent talent and really not even all that much effort, A Criminal Past could have been a compelling part of its series.  But nope, rather than any of that thinky-thinky stuff, the bad guys in this DLC are the tired old cop-story mainstays of organized crime and officers going bad in favor of said organized crime.

At the absolute most, you can read significance into the final little summary scene with Adam and Delara, in which it is maybe implied that Adam is beginning to suspect that Delara is untrustworthy.**  But an entire DLC adventure is a hell of a lot of rigamarole to go through for such a tiny snippet of overall series plot advancement, and other DLC stories could have accomplished the same, such as ones perhaps crafted to in any goddamn way have an actual involvement of or connection to Delara.

A Criminal Past is highly pointless, plain and simple, and I’m honestly baffled by its existence.  How did such a completely irrelevant, tone-deaf thing come to be?  The best I can figure is that someone in SquareEnix had it in their head that it’s the basic, surface-level work that Adam does for TF-29 that fans of DE are interested in, and nothing more.  Of course, that would require SquareEnix to have misunderstood their franchise to a similar bungling extreme as Bethesda misunderstood (or intentionally ignored) the point of Fallout when they made Fallout 76, which seems impossible--surely no one is as stupid as Fallout 76-era Bethesda?  But then, SquareEnix is the company that gave a major narrative spotlight to Organization 13, refused to let Bravely Default bear the Final Fantasy name, and made Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals.  So I guess no level of incompetence is truly beyond them.

With some work, A Criminal Past could have been great.  Because Deus Ex 3’s DLC, The Missing Link, was great, and that, too, was a side story in which Adam was stripped of all his augmentation advantages, imprisoned in a detention facility, and forced to bear witness to gross violations of ethics as human beings were viewed as hardware to be used and destroyed.  But A Criminal Past can’t duplicate the significance or quality of the DLC it’s plagiarizing, not even remotely, so it’s not worth the asking price of $12.  It’s not worth the effective price I paid for it of $2.25.  In fact, it’s not even worth the time it takes to play it, not unless you’re just a huge fan of the undercover-agent-in-prison schtick and don’t especially give a damn about whether it’s Deus Ex or not.  If that’s your thing, then by all means, go for A Criminal Past if you can somehow possibly get it for free, but for everyone else, I’d advise not even wasting your time on it.



And that’s it!  So how does Deus Ex 4’s add-ons compare to its predecessor?  Well, if you’ve read this far, you probably have gleaned this already, but for the heck of it, let’s go ahead and just say it for posterity: it’s crap.  None of these 3 stories are particularly exciting, interesting, or otherwise gripping, they don’t offer a proper ratio of content-per-dollar-spent, and all 3 of them weirdly share the unfortunate trait of being UTTERLY POINTLESS.  We already got about the same level of insight into the identity of the bomber and we never thought twice about the corruption of the footage.  We didn’t get to learn anything from the data we busted our hump to steal and we never felt the slightest need to know where the breach in Palisade’s firewall came from.  And we got exactly what significance to the series out of Adam’s little stint as a clank in the clink we were offered: none.  If Deus Ex 3’s downloadable content was a refreshing sample of high-caliber work sadly uncommon to the DLC landscape, then Deus Ex 4’s add-ons are a souring specimen of bilge, equally uncommon for how inconsequential they are.












* Hey, cut me some credit.  My content’s still fresher after 10+ years than the Simpsons and Family Guy were by Season 10, right?  For that matter, it’s better than Family Guy was by Season 1.


** This is inexplicably linked to his experiences with Mejia, somehow, as Adam wonders what else (besides the fact that the supposed terror attacks used as a story element in this DLC were bogus) Mejia might have been right about.  What the hell else did Mejia even really talk about that he could be right about?  At least, in connection to Delara, or the nature of Interpol, or whatever?

General RPGs' Puzzling Use of the Term "Goddess"

Thanks to Ecclesiastes for letting me bounce the banter that became the backbone of this bunch of blathering off him.  As always, you’re a damned fine (and patient) fellow, Ecc.



You know what’s weird about certain RPG worlds?  The word “Goddess.”

Now, the existence of the word “goddess” makes sense, in our own world.  The fundamental, earliest hierarchies of our historically and developmentally dominant societies, here on Earth, were largely male-centric to varying degrees, as were the systems of faith they by and large believed in, and the evolution of language depicts that.  Most of the religions of the human race’s foundational societies have either been A, centered around a single deity who is male, or B, had a pantheon of deities of both genders, but the most important and/or foundational deity or deities in that pantheon were male.

It follows that the default gender of the term “god” is regarded as male.  “God” is the root term for this concept of a deity, and generally speaking, the first, primary gender of deities in our species’ religious history, particularly the religions which have had the greatest influence on our society as a whole, is male.  So it makes sense that if you want to, in this world, refer to a specifically female deity, the term “goddess” is employed, because when you want to denote something as the gender opposite of what the thing is typically seen as, you either make a new word altogether, or add an addendum to the word to differentiate it from its original, base concept.  If the base state is male, then a suffix like -ess or -ette is common to tack on to denote that it’s a female version you’re talking about (a female “baron” becomes “baroness,” while a female Mario series NPC goes from “Toad” to “Toadette”), while (less commonly) if the base state is female, then a suffix like -er is added to denote that it’s a male version (such as a male “widow” being a “widower”).  Obviously some terms encompass both genders without need for differentiation (a “dancer” can be male or female, as can a “doctor”), but if you do have multiple versions of the same word, the simple, baseline word also inevitably corresponds with the gender most traditionally, originally associated with it.  As a result, the term “goddess” has been created to distinctly denote a female version of a god, because the history and nature of our society and our religions have by and large focused on male deities first and foremost.

But that means that it’s really weird that the people of Hyrule, for example, use the term “goddess” at all.

Because female deities are the only kind that Hyrule has.  To my knowledge of The Legend of Zelda series, all the deities of the land’s tales of creation and forms of worship are female.  Din, Farore, and Nayru are the 3 deities who created Hyrule and the Triforce, and then there was also Hylia at some point, who made the land’s people, if I recall.  And she was (and is) also a chick.  While there are male sages, and male spirits of the land, and stuff like that, the entirety of Hyrule’s religious pantheon has always been strictly female.  So by basic rules of thumb, the nomenclature in Hyrule should refer to Hylia, Din, Farore, and Nayru as “gods”, and the term “goddess” shouldn’t even exist.  Either they should only have the single term, or, at most, they should have the term “god,” to denote female deities, and a term such as “godder” to denote the theory of a male deity.

You see this sort of thing fairly frequently, and it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.  The titular land of Ys was created by 2 female deities and, to my knowledge (I’ve so far only played the first game), had no male equivalent of them running around anywhere, so they should refer to that pair as “gods,” not “goddesses.”  Fodlan of Fire Emblem 16, meanwhile, is a land with a single, all-powerful organized religion devoted to Sothis, a female deity.  Granted, other lands in the world of FE16 have different belief systems (Brigid, for example, believes in multiple divine beings), so the concept of male and female deities isn’t as unknown as it would be for Ys and Hyrule, but given Fodlan’s near xenophobia and aggressive belief in Sothis as the only true deity, you’d think that the only acknowledgement of the outside world’s beliefs in their language would be to invent a term like “godder” for foreign male gods, rather than adjust how they refer to their own single, female deity from the base “god” to “goddess.”  

Now, I can occasionally see an exception to what the rule should be.  The Lunar series, for example, has only a single deity within it, Althena, but I actually think that the term “goddess” makes sense for her.  Because, see, Lunar takes place in the far, far distant future of our world, at a time when humanity has fled to the moon, and forgotten its Earthly heritage.  So ultimately, you can make the logical argument that the conventions of language used in Lunar are directly related to the history of our own language conventions.  Just because the people of Lunar don’t actually have the slightest recollection or record of the time in the distant, distant past when the default term “god” was created in association with the, at that time, more standard idea that deities were male, that doesn’t mean that the term “goddess” wouldn’t have survived far past the point at which its denotation of gender has any value.  So in some rare cases, the strictly-female-deity society using the term “goddess” can still make some sense.

But in most cases, it’s something like Hyrule/Ys, where the default term of “god” would undeniably have implied a female, and/or Fodlan, where keeping that default term’s gender association would have been a matter of pride.  And yet, there’s a ton of RPGs out there with exclusively female, or at least clearly predominantly female, deities and pantheons, and they all throw the term “goddess” around willy-nilly.  Doesn’t make sense.