The Shadowrun Series's PC Titles' Running

Just as a warning, today's rant has not had the benefit of having been proofread by my sister.  She was quite ill recently, and I didn't want to worsen her condition by exposing her to my ramblings while she was in a weakened state.



Picture this: you’re playing an isometric RPG where more or less every action and interaction is handled by selecting stuff with the mouse.  You want to choose your response from a list of dialogue options whilst having a conversation with a random bystander?  Select it with the mouse.  You want to bring the pain to some security goon so pathetically stricken with Stockholm Syndrome for his corporate overlords that the last thing he was doing before this fight broke out was defending Diablo Immortal on Twitter?  Make with the clicky-clicky on the bullet icon in the menu, then another clickety-clicker on the Kotick apologist.  You want to get from 1 side of the map to the other?  Scroll on over and plant that pointer right where you aim to be.

So you’re doing this.  Playing the point-and-click game, and doing it like a pro, or an amateur, because let’s face it, putting a cursor over something and hitting a button has a very low ceiling for mastery so there’s little discernible difference between an expert and a first timer.  In the first scenario, your character delivers a witty 1-liner to the NPC, and the conversation moves along.  The second, you fire a round into the corporate stan, and now Wyatt Cheng’s back to ineptly fighting his own battles. And in the last, you start making your way to your destination, sprinting so fast that an observer might think they’re witnessing a SquareEnix executive fleeing in terror from a good idea.

All’s well, right?  Expected results all around.  Great.  But oh, hey, here’s a fun idea.  Having efficiently run from 1 side of the map to the other as speedily as I move toward most things that involve ground beef, let’s now set our sights on a destination just about, say, half a screen away.  Considering the brisk pace at which we traversed the full scope of this entire area, it’ll surely be the work of a moment to cross a distance equivalent to the average driveway, right?

Wrong.  Because for some reason, any time you want to get somewhere that’s actually close by, this game reduces your pace down to about as fast as I move toward most things that don’t involve ground beef.

The game?  Shadowrun Returns.  And Shadowrun: Dragonfall.  Also Shadowrun: Hong Kong.  Basically, every PC-based Shadowrun.  They all run on the same engine, and thus all regulate your party’s sprinting based on how far away the destination is from them.

It’s 1 of those gameplay ideas that looks deceptively alright on paper, like the Tales of series’s cooking feature, or Pokemon’s HM system.  I mean, it sounds completely reasonable in theory: make the characters in the game move the fastest when they’ve got more ground to cover, and a “normal” pace over short distances.  That’ll make the travel time relatively equal each time you want to move somewhere, and equality is a good thing, right?

Unfortunately, in practice, it’s just frustrating and makes the process of moving through these games seem plodding for no reason.  First of all, the majority of your non-combat movements in the PC Shadowrun trilogy are generally going to be over more moderate distances--while crossing the entirety of the map is certainly not uncommon to be doing at any given time, most of the time you’re gonna be moving towards spots that are much closer, so the majority of your experience with your characters’ running speed is gonna be of the slow variety, so the balance of paces for which the developers seemed to be aiming is skewed noticeably, and not to the player’s benefit.  

Secondly, the glaring divide between the paces of the fastest run, and the “normal” speed, does not help matters.  Even if the majority of your commute wasn’t spent on crossing small distances and thus going at the slower jog, it’d still be at least a little annoying to see the sprinting that the game CAN provide, and yet have it frequently deny that pace to you for basically no reason.  I’M the one playing the damn game, so why am I not the one deciding how much hustle to apply to any given situation?  You’ve shown me that you CAN move my characters faster, so why am I not allowed to?

Third, I gotta say, even outside of the perception of slowness created by the first 2 issues, the basic pace of Shadowrun characters is objectively too damn slow.  I feel like the game industry moves toward ethical standards of conduct faster than a Shadowrun protagonist crosses the street.  These damn games take place in major urban centers, in the gritty, fast-paced setting of cyberpunk corporate dystopia; where the fuck is the hurried, frenzied lifestyle that this setting implies?  For the love of Kofusachi, I’ve seen characters in slice-of-life animes glorifying the relaxed, peaceful existence of rural Japan comport themselves with greater overall speed than these constantly endangered urbanite mercenaries do in Shadowrun!

And fourth, beyond these errors in execution, the whole idea is honestly just flawed from the start.  I don’t want equity in travel times in my game.  The time it takes to get from downtown to the city limits shouldn’t be comparable to the time required to cover a city block.  Players crossing larger distances in a game expect and accept that it’s going to take a longer time because that’s how distance works.  Lowering that travel time via use of a running feature is certainly encouraged and should absolutely be mandatory, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of making other traveling longer!

There are ways to work around this whilst playing, I admit.  When playing Shadowrun titles and mods for them, I’ll generally just quickly scroll over to whatever side of the map is in the general direction that I want to go in, and let the game think I’m telling the protagonist to emulate Forrest Gump’s cross-country trek, then just have the characters cease their Usain Bolt-ing when they get to the spot I actually want them at.  But am I really supposed to be less annoyed by this situation because there’s a work-around?  Now I’m spending the entire game dragging my pointer to every corner of the map and back like I’m trying to reenact 1 of those stupid Family Circus strips following Billy’s path while also being drunk.  The fact that I can counteract 1 inconvenience by engaging in a less severe inconvenience isn’t an excuse.

Like a lot things I rant about, this doesn’t really matter, of course.  The important things about Shadowrun’s PC trilogy are their stories, characters, purposes, themes, explorations of their setting, and so on.  And on those terms, the trilogy is decent, great, and pretty good, in that order.  Still, it IS annoying, and also, just honestly really weird.  It’s not some oversight; it requires conscious effort from the developers to code a system like this, and more of that effort, for that matter, than it would have been just to create a damn run button, or a single sprinting pace.  They chose to do this, and I don’t get why, because it couldn’t have taken very long into the testing phase for it to become clear that this wasn’t a very functional system.

Shadowrun?  More like Shadowstroll.  Shadowmeander.  Shadowtoddle.

The Suikoden Series's Night Before the Final Battle

The Suikoden series has several positive, stand-out signatures.  They can be larger, broad-reaching narrative qualities, such as its ability, for example, to effectively walk the line between a very personal adventure of the individual, and a grand story of the conflict and community of entire cultural groups.  And they can also be smaller, endearing quirks, such as the feature and dynamics of the Castle HQ and its community.  It’s 1 of the latter traits that I want to laud today: Suikoden’s signature night before the final battle.

Basically, it goes like this.  Eventually there comes a time in each Suikoden title, at which the final major conflict of the game is clearly set to take place the next day.  This means the final boss battle, of course, but that battle is also inevitably preceded by the last major military battle between the protagonist’s army and that of the enemy’s.  This essentially means that everyone in the heroes’ castle (or mansion, or stupid crappy slow ugly ship) is preparing for the next day’s warfare, and their own role in it, not just the main party combatants.  And at this point, during this evening before the final conflict, wherein every character and NPC is engaged in preparation both practical and mental, the game allows the player to make rounds about the castle (or manor or dumb clunky unwieldy awkward boat) to speak to each and every 1 of those characters, and several non-named NPCs representing the whole of the army.

I love this moment in the game.  I love it each and every time.  Yes, even for Suikoden 4.  This is such a good narrative device, and Suikoden just does it so well!  In this moment, every character in the game gets a chance to weigh in 1 last time upon this grand venture that they’ve been a part of, assert their personality and character development arc 1 last time, and remind you through their preparatory work of their value and contribution to the army and story.  It’s an opportunity to have the characters you love best in the cast say their final farewells to the player, and an opportunity for the player to feel that he or she has paid the same respect back.  It’s a great illustration of the scope and community of the war effort, an additional characterization of the nation as a unified entity of individuals, which is a major part of Suikoden’s storytelling approach.  And it’s a great example of a poignant, heavy moment in the narrative that reiterates the weight of the events that have transpired, and those about to come, drawing the player in with its gravity while (thanks to the late hour and the great staple musical piece that always plays over it) instilling a calm, hopeful tranquility.

Don’t get me wrong: this is not fully unique to Suikoden.  A lot of RPGs contain a similar moment of significance before the final battle is engaged, in which the protagonist has a chance to speak to her/his companions who have been along all the way for this adventure, and are ready to stand with her/him to the very end of this last fight.  Sometimes it’s in a similar night-before scenario, as with Marine’s final conversation with Jeanne on the night before the tournament in Millennium 5, while at other times, it’s a last-minute heart-to-heart that occurs directly before heading into the fated combat, such as Shepard’s final rallying speech within the Collectors’ base in Mass Effect 2, or your conversation with your teammates in Dragon Age 1 as you launch your counterattack on the Darkspawn who have invaded Denerim.  Either way, it’s almost always a good moment in the game, so long as your audience has any emotional investment in your cast and/or the adventure as a whole.

Hell, even when a game is completely inept at providing this final party pow-wow, it still usually winds up being a pretty decent moment.  Dragon Age 2, always a shining beacon of clumsy writing, pulls 1 of these final parting words things that doesn’t actually make any logical sense, in-game.  Because, yeah, from the player’s perspective, the story is about to conclude as Hawke and her/his friends prepare to face the final battle, but the nature of DA2’s story is such that, from the characters’ own perspectives, this isn’t the conclusion of some long conflict or grand quest.  It’s a major battle they’re facing, and to some degree a culmination of many past events, but by and large DA2’s last battle isn’t, to the game’s heroes, some pivotal and long-awaited moment of destiny and resolution. So I dunno why everyone’s suddenly caught up in a shared urge to spill their emotional guts to Hawke as if it is.  And yet, in spite of this--and in spite of how awful a pile of dogshit Dragon Age 2’s finale is as a whole--it still manages to be a positive moment of touching closure.  So yeah, this is just a generally effective narrative tool to employ as a whole.

But Suikoden’s night before the final battle is a real cut above.  First of all, the atmosphere in general is just perfectly suited for this kind of moment.  As much as I like these last-moment character heart-to-hearts in general, the fact that they usually take place right outside the final dungeon, or just minutes before the final battle is engaged, etc., is a slight detriment.  The impact of a scene of loyal, heartfelt comrades saluting one another and finalizing their place in the story and your heart is one of sentimental, unhurried connection, and so it meshes better with a scenario like Suikoden’s, where these exchanges occur during the dead of night, when the final conflict is still many hours away, than they do just moments before the last fight, which is usually an instance in which time is running out, or at least quite precious.  There’s no rush, just the natural expression of the characters’ hearts and thoughts.  So Suikoden’s at the top of the game because it’s framing these final conversations correctly--and the mood is only set all the better by the quiet, emotive signature music for this moment.

Also, I think it’s cool with Suikoden’s night before that the protagonist generally isn’t the focus of the attention.  In most other titles, these final conversation moments are very clearly, directly protagonist-focused--the rest of the cast are deliberately, transparently making the effort to speak their final piece to the game’s main character (and no one else, regardless of how close they may also be to their other companions).  Hell, in Dragon Age 1, it felt like these folks were just lining up at Senpai’s Grey Warden Con table for free glomps.  And don’t get me wrong, again, there’s nothing wrong with this approach--but even if it doesn’t hurt the moment, it feels put on just enough not to really help it, either.

Suikoden, on the other hand, doesn’t make the protagonist’s presence the central factor of the night before’s cast interactions and preparations.  When Riou, Chris, Freyjadour, or whatever other protagonist you’re controlling wanders around the headquarters and meets with allies, he or she is, sensibly enough, the outsider approaching a character who’s occupied.  Some individuals are getting in a little last-minute training, others are finalizing the gear and supplies the army will be taking with it, still others are found mentally preparing themselves for the life-and-death combat they will engage in the next day.  Doctors prepare their clinics, tavern owners serve soldiers what may be the last spirits they ever imbibe, strategists and generals review battle plans 1 final time, cooks work through the night to prepare the provisions whose energy might be the difference between life and death for some of tomorrow’s warriors.  And of course, a myriad number of these allies and comrades are engaged in these preparations with each other, or simply spending time in friendship together through the night, reflecting appropriately their personal lives and relationships.  The protagonist is always met and received as an important presence, but it’s clear that the characters of the cast all have their own duties, interests, and preoccupations on this fateful night, as an army and a force of friends, and there’s a refreshing realism to that.  Speaking their final, lasting thoughts to the game’s protagonist is important to them, but it’s not the end-all be-all of their night.*  And that feels authentic, helps to further individualize the men and women of the army as their own personalities, and deepens the realism of the whole night before scenario.

A couple final merits to Suikoden’s handling of this narrative tool?  Point 1: it’s laudable that the writers and developers are dedicated enough to do this at all in the first place.  They’re not just plotting out the placement and dialogue of a standard 5 - 8 member RPG party.  Suikoden’s night before the final battle allows you to do a final check-in with the entire cast of 108-or-more individuals!  And there’s usually a few NPCs thrown in there, too.  While this is a level of commitment that the games demonstrate throughout their course, that doesn’t make it less of a feat of effort and persistence on their part.  And second, the night before scene is beneficial to the game in that it encourages the player to explore the entirety of the army’s HQ 1 final time if he/she wants to engage with every possible character.  This final stroll through the castle isn’t just a great way to capture the feeling of belonging and affection for the cast--it also creates and utilizes these same feelings for the setting itself.  The Suikoden castle (even when it’s a mansion or a sluggish horrible lousy boring canoe) is a major, sentimental feature of the series, and itself represents and embodies the culture of cooperation and unity that the Suikoden army inevitably is built upon.  As much like saying a fond farewell to your family as Suikoden’s night before the final battle is, it’s also like saying a fond farewell to your home, too.

A relic of the days when Konami knew how and cared to make a video game,**** the Suikoden series has a narrative sack full of notable virtues and beloved signature elements, and its night before the final battle tradition is definitely 1 of the shinier ones.  The final dialogue exchange with allies is a great trope, and RPGs rightly make regular use of it--but the golden standard to which they should all aspire is definitely Suikoden.

















* In fairness, I think I should mention that Suikoden isn’t the ONLY RPG with this deft touch.  Mass Effect 3, for example, strikes an adequate and realistic balance during the battle for Earth when Shepard and company are making preparations for the final push through Reaper territory.  Shepard’s allies are each engaged in their own last-minute activities (Wrex, for example, can be found rallying the krogan troops, while Liara is occupied with caring for some wounded, and EDI takes part in Anderson’s strategizing), which makes sense given the situation.**  They’re still extra eager to give Shepard more than a moment of their time for some conversation, but given that this IS Mass Effect, to some degree that’s just a given.


** Although admittedly a bunch of Shepard’s past allies, like Zaeed and Grunt, can just be magically contacted immediately on the holo-phone, even though they’re also fighting on and beyond the front lines.  I’ve let my own family wait longer for me to pick up than Shepard’s buddies take to answer,*** and I’m pretty sure that the biggest crisis I’ve faced in those situations is “really didn’t want to be hurried through my enjoyment of a burrito,” which I strongly suspect ranks a few tiers lower in urgency than fighting in the midst of an apocalyptic future-war.

Not complaining, though.  The last chats with Samara, Jacob, and the rest were great, and it wouldn’t have felt right not to involve them.


*** This is 1 of the rare parts of my rants that will NOT be given to my sister to proofread.


**** Besides Suikoden 4.  And Suikoden 5.  And Suikoden Tactics was only kinda okay, if we’re being honest.  Look, Suikoden games are like Star Wars movies: it's 1 of those series where it’s just kind of a given that when a positive discussion about it breaks out, you’re really only talking about the first 3 installments.  And maybe Tierkreis and Rogue 1.

Tales of Berseria's Innominat's Betrayal

Huge big grand special thanks to my buddies Ecclesiastes and Angel Adonis for stepping up to be my sounding boards and proofreaders on this rant.  Very much appreciated, guys!



Today’s gonna be 1 of those more rambling, meandering rants I sometimes do where I just don’t really know where I’m going with it and there may or may not be a point.  But hey, people seem to like Love, Death, and Robots pretty well, and something like half of its episodes are totally pointless, too, so surely it can’t be that bad when I do the same, right?

This is gonna have highest-tier spoilers for Tales of Berseria.  If you have not played the game, to completion, then back up, and walk away.  And...then walk back to your PC, tablet, or phone, and, like, go to a different site.  Look, just don’t be spoiled by this rant, is what I’m saying.  Tales of Berseria is awesome and to lessen the eventual experience of it is to do yourself wrong.

Alright, so, we’re all ToB veterans here, right?  Great, cuz I am not writing “Innominat” out 31 more times.  The title of this rant’s mostly just for the sake of avoiding spoiling anything for potential players.  We’re calling the boy by his real name, Laphicet, for the rest of today.  Admittedly not much of a difference in length, but it’s at least easier for me to keep track of its correct spelling.

And speaking of names, to avoid confusion, I use the names Arthur and Artorius to help better distinguish the man before and after his fall into despair turned him into a villain.

So!  Betrayal.  Betrayal is the great sin perpetrated against Velvet Crowe that destroys her life, and transforms her, in body and far more importantly in spirit, from a simple, caring, and optimistic young woman into a murderous, driven demon of vengeance obsessed with destroying he who betrayed her.  The betrayal of her brother-in-law Arthur is the defining tragedy that propels Velvet forward, both haunting and motivating her every act and sin as she brings chaos to an ordered world and leaves pandemonium in her wake.  Artorius betrayed her trust, murdered her brother, and destroyed her life, and nothing can heal her from the pain and fury of that transgression.

Velvet’s is a powerful story of revenge, and it works in large part because it hinges itself on a rock-solid basis: the sin of betrayal.  We as a species have a perspective on betrayal that is, perhaps, not entirely logical--we take wrongs committed against us way more personally when they’re also acts of betrayal.  For some reason, we hold much less contempt for a known enemy doing us harm than for a supposed ally doing so, even if the hurt inflicted is exactly the same.  Hell, we’ll often hold less of a grudge over a foe doing greater harm to us than we will regarding a friend’s betrayal.  It’s a universal sentiment to humanity, as far as I can tell, across any number of major cultures: traitors are the very worst kind of villain.  Violence, murder, mental abuse, rape, theft, arson, manipulation, there’s no evil we can contemplate that doesn’t become substantially worse in our minds when it is an act of betrayal.  We don’t even like people who betray others for our benefit--the infamous Benedict Arnold had great difficulties finding much love or respect from English government or society after switching sides, for example.*

And hey, in fairness, there IS some basis to this deep hatred our collective consciousness has for traitors.  Beyond countless pieces of media from every point of cultural history telling us that they suck, betrayal is, theoretically, the hardest attack to defend against.  Walls keep enemies out, not friends; it’s always harder to save ourselves from harm that comes from a source we don’t expect.  Having natural distaste for those who turn against those who trusted them, and then enhancing that distaste by drilling it further into our head with stories both fictional and historical on the matter, is a psychological safeguard that helps keep us all just a little more honest as a whole, as valuable to our advanced society today as it was to our tribal beginnings, and even perhaps to our social primate ancestors.  Maybe it’s still a little objectively silly that we would classically see an infamous traitor as a worse person than a genocidal tyrant, but there IS a cause for this deep-rooted inconsistency.

At any rate, getting back to what might generously be called my point, Velvet’s relentless hatred and thirst for vengeance has a solid basis in Artorius’s betrayal.  This isn’t like Grandia 3’s Emelius going evil-crazy because he has to share his worldly importance with his sister, or Shin Megami Tensei 3’s Isamu wanting to remake the world because he got stood up 1 time, or The Legend of Zelda’s Gannondorf falling prey to sunk cost fallacy as regards his efforts to conquer Hyrule.  Velvet is not Wild Arms 5’s Volsung, or Xenogears’s Id, or Xenosaga’s Kevin, or Final Fantasy 7’s Sephiroth, or Danganronpa’s Junko.**  Velvet very clearly has an actual reason to be what she is, and that motivating event is extreme enough that it never stops seeming to the audience a completely believable cause for her quest.  Artorius took advantage of the trust that his family had in him, and the damage that did to Velvet is a penetrating, persisting one that easily supports all that follows.

But what’s really cool, to me, is that Tales of Berseria’s writers managed to top it with the revelation that the true betrayal was Laphicet’s.

Arguably the greatest twist of Tales of Berseria is the revelation that it was not Arthur’s idea to sacrifice Laphicet to save the world--it was Laphicet’s own.  Knowing that he had at best a few years left to him thanks to his illness, Laphicet sought to make his brief existence worth something, and convinced Arthur to kill him, to use that death to call upon the power of the god Innominat to save the world.  No longer able to believe in humanity’s ability to save itself from the threat of daemonblight,*** Artorius agreed, and cast aside his humanity for the purpose, so of course he isn’t blameless, and his discipline of detached, cold logic means that he is still accountable for the atrocities that follow, including those inflicted upon Velvet herself.  But the heart of the matter, the core of Velvet’s suffering, is a betrayal by Laphicet, not Artorius.

It’s a masterful move by the writers, and arguably the only scenario that could have deepened and worsened the treachery committed against Velvet, if you look at the concept of traitors classically.  Dante’s Inferno makes the argument that the greatest of all sins, the evil act that will send you to the very bottom ring of Hell, is betrayal--but even then, there are 4 different tiers of this ultimate sin, describing which forms of it are worse than others.  As Velvet originally understood it, the treason committed against her by Artorius can be described as both Type 1 and Type 3, in Dante’s system.  

The first type is the betrayal of family, which of course Arthur has committed--he’s murdered his brother-in-law.  Hell, even considering that Laphicet actually asked him to do this, Artorius is still guilty of betraying his family, because regardless of what Laphicet’s will on the matter was, killing him still destroys Velvet’s life.  And let's be clear: it would have ruined her life even if Velvet hadn’t become a demon in the process--she’s devoted everything to keeping her little brother alive, and as healthy and happy as possible.  It doesn’t matter if Laphicet didn’t have much longer left anyway; Arthur has still brought everything for which Velvet has lived for and devoted herself to a premature end.

While any betrayal is, in Dante’s estimation, deserving of the deepest level of Hell, treachery against family is actually the least heinous version of the sin.  Worse than that is treason against one’s nation, but that’s the only kind of betrayal that Laphicet’s death does not commit.  The night Arthur destroys Velvet’s life, however, does also qualify as a betrayal of the third tier of Dante’s Inferno: the treachery of a host against a guest.  While that doesn’t seem like a literal description of Arthur’s actions, one must keep in mind that the spirit behind Dante’s description of this kind of treachery is the concept of betraying those who have, in trust and good faith, placed their well-being in your care.  A guest who enters a host’s home is a person who goes into unfamiliar territory that they have less or no control over, with the understanding that the host is now responsible for their welfare.  It’s synonymous with the trust that one places in one’s protector and/or caretaker, and to knowingly double-cross those who you have agreed to defend and provide for is the second greatest betrayal there is.  Velvet placed her faith in Arthur, with his great skills and unique powers, to protect his family: both herself and, far more importantly, their brother.  To witness the man she had held complete, unquestioning faith in as their protector violently take her brother’s life, coldly use his death as a means to an end...even beyond the harm that Artorius did directly to her that same night, such a life-shattering tragedy is easily great enough to sustain any quest for vengeance from start to finish.

And yet, there is 1 final, higher still level of treachery that can exist, if we follow the Dante’s Inferno metric.  The very worst form of the most heinous sin of all: the betrayal of one’s benefactor.  And this is why I find the twist that Laphicet’s sacrifice was his own idea and request such an impressive and clever piece of escalation from the writers of Tales of Berseria.  Because it takes the already life-destroying betrayal that Velvet thinks she has suffered, and manages to actually worsen it.  Because Laphicet is Velvet’s Brutus.  Her Judas.

I mean, think about it for a moment.  Velvet made Laphicet’s health and well-being the center of her universe, the reason for her being.  Her every effort was devoted to fighting his illness, keeping him alive and as happy as he could be.  Although Arthur kept them physically safe in the village, it was Velvet who was Laphicet’s caretaker, the one who got him medicine, cooked for him, engaged in their home’s upkeep, hunted for their food, and provided him with love, attention, and, inasmuch as she could with their limited resources, things he enjoyed.  Though Laphicet’s determination to live, whether for his own sake or hers, was surely a great factor in how well he persisted, it’s only reasonable to conclude, from what evidence the game provides us, that Laphicet Crowe’s having survived as long as he has by ToB’s opening is primarily thanks to the tireless efforts and relentless, loving devotion of his sister Velvet.

Now, arguments can be made as to what level of gratitude, if any, Laphicet is morally obligated to feel toward Velvet on this matter.  Other arguments can be made as to whether or not it was morally acceptable for him to take the life that Velvet had safeguarded for him and give it away for a greater purpose--it’s a strong point that, regardless of her contribution, it IS still HIS life, and his autonomy to devote it to a cause is inviolable, regardless of how Velvet would feel about it.  And, of course, there’s always the practical argument to be had that his time was running out, regardless of how hard Velvet worked against that fact, so even had he not sacrificed himself, she would only have had a short time longer with him.  Yes, there’s a lot you can argue about the right and wrong and practicality of Laphicet’s decision to give his limited remaining time in service of the world.  

But right, wrong, some impossibly tangled quality between them, 1 thing you cannot really deny is that his voluntary sacrifice IS a betrayal.  Velvet is Laphicet’s benefactor, she has, in effect, given him his life, and he has thrown it away.  She has done everything for him that she possibly can, practically given up the idea of living her own life in order to provide for his, all to the simple, sole intent of trying to keep Laphicet alive and happy.  Maybe it was his right to and maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was morally good to attempt to better the world by using his life to safeguard all others’, but these are irrelevant concerns to Velvet.  For Velvet, Laphicet’s existence WAS hers, his life a treasure that she bought with years of her own. 

Velvet Crowe was Laphicet’s benefactor.  And she didn’t let her love for him consume her time and energy at every turn because she wanted him to make some grand gesture to the world.  What she wanted was for her brother to live, for as long as he possibly could.  And he took what she had given him, and used it to do the opposite.  Laphicet gave up, and in doing so he robbed Velvet of that for which she gave everything.  Right, wrong, practical or pointless, all irrelevant to the story of Velvet’s suffering: what matters is that Laphicet betrayed his benefactor.

As I said, it’s a stroke of brilliance from the writers, in my eyes.  I mean, it’s unexpected, it’s a shocking revelation, it makes a huge amount of sense in the plot and ties a lot of details together, it’s a tremendous turning point for the characters of both Velvet and the new Laphicet, it’s thematically excellent and ties that tragic moment all the more to the concept of despair in having Arthur’s loss of faith in humanity be manipulated by Laphicet’s own choice to give up in the face of his illness’s likely victory,*** it creates opportunity to deepen the characters of the game’s villains (and Selica’s, as well)....it’s already a fantastic plot twist.  But it’s all the greater for the fact that it manages to surpass the power of Artorius’s betrayal of Velvet and expand the tragedy of the night her life was destroyed by increasing the sheer magnitude of treachery to frankly Biblical proportions.

And it even manages to redefine the possibility and potential of the very concept of benefactor betrayal--Laphicet doesn’t stab Velvet, he doesn’t sell her out to her enemies, he doesn’t even wish her harm; he volunteered to give his life to save the world out of love for her.  And it is only the most powerful form of treason because of her love for him!  Had he not loved Velvet so dearly that he burned with the need to do something to ensure her future, Laphicet might very well not have stolen his remaining time with her away from Velvet.  Had she not loved Laphicet so dearly that she valued his own existence and happiness more than her own, Velvet would not have been so utterly destroyed by having Laphicet taken from her before his time.****  There is no malice, no greed, no disappointment, no ambition, nor anything like that--Tales of Berseria’s writers created a scenario of the greatest form of betrayal which is born and carried through solely out of love.  More than just brilliant, Laphicet’s betrayal is poetic.

This is a winding, rambling rant and I barely managed to make a point in it, let alone have any idea how to end it.  I guess I’ll just say, not for the first time, that Tales of Berseria is an inspiringly well-crafted story of a remarkable caliber, and I have nothing but respect for it because of such shining moments in its narrative as the plot twist of Laphicet’s betrayal.




















* In fairness, some of this was, as I understand it, more practical than personal (sort of), in that he was so reviled by American revolutionaries and later officials that he would be a disruptive military target in the field and a liability in the court.  Still, a lot of it was emotional bias of society against traitors; the East India company once basically told him to fuck off because no one likes a backstabber, even those who he acted in favor of.


** If Danganronpa was an RPG, there would 100% be a new queen loser at the top spot of my Lamest Villains rant.  Junko is the kind of pathetic, tiresome dipshit that makes Sephiroth look legitimate.


*** Oh, hey, by the way, Spike Chunsoft: this is how you write a character defined by despair.  Maybe take some fucking notes, hm?  Or at the very least look up what the damn word means; it’s clear you guys haven’t got the slightest idea about what despair actually is.


**** Yes, she still would, presumably, have been done the great injury of having been turned into a Therion demon.  But while she clearly, in the story’s course, resents Artorius for this personal harm and the terrible treatment she endures because of it, it’s also just as clearly not the root of her tormented quest for vengeance.

General RPGs Need a Run Button

This is not the most controversial opinion I have possessed.  As hot takes go, this one’s temperature is clocking in somewhere between Cocytus, and fans’ reception to Suikoden 4.  It’s basically common sense.  Nonetheless, it’s worth being said: RPGs should pretty much always give players the option to run.

And most of them do!  This isn’t usually a problem; the run feature was figured out and widely adopted back in the 16-bit era, and by the time the 32-bit era rolled around, it was basically standard.  And thank goodness for that; can you imagine the mundane frustration of navigating a Playstation 1 Final Fantasy from start to finish at walking speed?  Squall walks to a destination like he’s read ahead in the script and knows exactly how stupid the next thing that’s gonna happen to him is.

But there are still a few RPGs even nowadays that don’t program a feature to allow players to run, and that really just shouldn’t be the case.  And weirdly, they seem to be RPGs that are actually really good.  Like, the first ones that come to mind for me are Undertale and Rakuen.  Undertale is a cornerstone of the genre which has influenced what RPGs are and can be going forward, and Rakuen is an emotional titan whose story and message still sometimes make me cry a little just to remember.  Each is virtually flawless...except for the fact that actually playing through them is kind of annoying, because the plodding pace of the protagonist can’t be increased in any way.*

I mean, it’s not that big a deal for most of Undertale, since you’re frequently stopping to check details of your environs as you move forward, but there’s plenty of moments in the game where you’ll want to backtrack, particularly if you love the characters as much as you’re meant to (and Toby Fox is good at his job, so you will) and want to see all their dialogue changes as the game progresses.  And Rakuen really, really needs a running feature, because unlike Undertale, a large portion of progressing from beginning to end involves going through areas multiple times as new paths and possibilities open up, so the start-and-stop novelty of exploring new surroundings that Undertale benefits from isn’t something that Rakuen can likewise rely upon.

And sure, you can make a defense of Rakuen based on the fact that its protagonist is a kid who’s sick in the hospital.  It’s thus quite plot-consistent that he wouldn’t be sprinting through the halls faster than Elon Musk toward a way to embarrass himself.  Still, I gotta tell you: shortly after I started playing Rakuen, I downloaded a mod for it that added a run button, and I don’t think that saving myself a cumulative couple hours of my life on the commute from 1 plot event to another ever lessened my immersion in the game or made the main character’s situation any less meaningful to me.  I certainly don’t think my tear ducts’ output was lessened whatsoever at the appropriately moving parts of the game for the fact that I’d had a more convenient time in arriving at them.

Also, this should probably go without saying, but in addition to having a running feature, RPGs should also always be made in a way that this feature is, well, functional.  The whole point is player convenience, after all, so having this feature be in itself inconvenient doesn’t really work.  We luckily don’t have to deal much with situations like Secret of Mana or Wild Arms 1 any more, where the ability to move faster meant being forced to go in a line so narrow and forbidding of detours that it could be considered practice for playing Final Fantasy 13.  But sprint meters and their kin are still a very real and annoying thing, and then there’s the thing where mouse-based RPGs force you to double-click your destination if you want the character to run there, because just a single click will mean them slowly walking instead.  Disco Elysium is 1 of the greatest games ever created, a work of such skill and brilliance that it feels humbling just to experience its majesty, but it sure makes you fucking work for the privilege of experiencing its excellence if you’re on the PC, because EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to go somewhere, you’ve gotta double-click that spot, person, thing, whatever.  The pace at which Harry moves toward a single-click implies that he’s drunk, exhausted, depressed, out of shape, and has been shot in both his legs--and only most of that can be true at any given time.  I can’t for the life of me conceive why ZA/UM decided to use Windows 95 as their inspiration for this particular part of their gameplay design, instead of just having running be the default movement speed and walking the one that’s selected with the less natural double-click.

And don’t even get me started on the PC Shadowrun titles’ approach to the run function.  That one probably just deserves its own admittedly short, but highly vitriolic rant.

It’s not even like giving the players a functional option for running really has to impact your work’s gameplay pace.  I mean, in total frankness, a lot of a run button’s convenience is entirely mental.  Like, take the examples I gave before of the Playstation 1 Final Fantasy titles.  As I mentioned, the regular walking function in them is stupidly slow, to be the point of being outright unfeasible.  The overall size of screens in Final Fantasy 9, for example, are, I think, basically designed with the assumption that the player is going to be running through them, not walking.  I’m relatively sure that if you compared the general size of most Final Fantasy 7 environments and the speed at which you can proceed through them while running, it’d probably be, functionally-speaking, very close to that of Undertale’s unchangeable walking pace.  So in effect, the run buttons in these Final Fantasies aren’t really any faster than the walking speed of a walking-only RPG that’s been fairly well-designed.  You can still design your game to be traversed at the pace you prefer either way--but having a run button is a lot more psychologically pleasing to the player, even if the result winds up being the exact same.  And unlike just about everything else related to human psychology being employed in the gaming industry these days, this placebo of travel autonomy is harmless.

Also, in cases where the lack of a run button is felt most annoyingly during backtracking, as it is with Undertale, you can always use an alternative method like Tales of Berseria’s geoboard.  The geoboard in ToB is basically just a hoverboard that goes a little faster than the normal running pace of the protagonist, which of course makes it very convenient (as does its ability to just smash through enemies that are a level lower enough than your own, something which you all know I like a lot).  But even once you gain the geoboard during the course of ToB’s story, it’s not something that you can automatically use--each area of the game has a spot at which you can activate the feature, and only after reaching this spot can you use the geoboard in that dungeon.  In practice, this usually means that you’ll only be making use of the geoboard’s extra speed once you’re near or at the end of any given dungeon.  But while that’s an unfortunate downside in Tales of Berseria, whose regular run speed does leave something to be desired,** a similar system of awarding run functionality for backtracking purposes would’ve been a hell of a useful feature in Undertale, while still allowing for the existing controlled pace of only being able to walk through new territory.

Like I said before, this isn’t a problem for 90% of the RPGs coming out these days.  Run functions are a standard feature built into the game for most developers at this point.  Still, there are some indie RPGs that, for whatever reason, don’t include it, and not every game that does have one utilizes it in a way that actually makes it convenient.  And while I adhere strictly to my policy that gameplay considerations do not affect an RPG’s quality and worth, even I have to admit that it’s hard not to resent a game that makes me feel like I’m wasting my time getting from Point A to Point B.  RPGs need run buttons.














* Well Rakuen also does have the flaw that it doesn’t have a non-vocal version of its main theme and I totally want one.  But that’s admittedly more a subjective thing.


** Yes Angel I heard your complaints the WHOLE time and am hereby publicly acknowledging their legitimacy; are you happy now?

The Breath of Fire Series's Dragon Transformations

Show of hands: how many readers expected me to come back after a whole month's absence with something thoughtful and significant?  Let's see, I count...0 hands in the air. Good!  I've clearly trained your expectations well.



Inconsistency to one’s series is a problem that can affect just about any form of media, and RPGs are no exception.  When, for example, Bethesda created Fallout 76, a game with effectively no story, no cast, and no point, they showed that they haven’t got the first goddamn idea of what a Fallout title is supposed to be.  Meanwhile, after over a decade of laughably inept fumbling, SquareEnix had gotten to the point that outsider Silicon Studios had to teach them what a Final Fantasy game is with Bravely Default--and as FF15 and Chocobo GP demonstrate, that lesson did not stick.  And then there was Konami's decision to break with the Suikoden series tradition of being enjoyable to even the slightest degree while they were making Suikoden 4.

Worse still, though, are the series which just as a whole don’t know how the hell to accomplish their own intent.  Wild Arms is a franchise that touts itself clearly and proudly as having a Wild West theme...and yet it took until the third title in the series for this to come to pass, and it quickly returned to its characteristic out-of-character ways immediately following WA3.  While I haven’t played the fourth or beyond, the first 2 installments of Star Ocean are embarrassing demonstrations of a Science Fiction series that can’t Science Fiction--and doesn’t really even try to.  And even SO3 only managed to have half of its narrative escape the rinky-dink backwater fantasy world setting that the series seems inescapably mired in.  Because hey, why have your story take place out in the stars with your STAR OCEAN game, right?

What I’ve only recently realized, though, is that Breath of Fire is kind of in this same embarrassing camp as Wild Arms and Star Ocean.  Because Breath of Fire is a series about dragon-people that, more often than not, doesn’t really deliver on this premise.

Things started out well enough, of course.  Breath of Fire 1 was a straightforward delivery of the goods.  You want a story about people who can transform into dragons?  You fucking got it.  There may be a lot of things that Ryu 1 doesn’t have--an intact home, or the capacity for vocal articulation, for example--but 1 thing he unequivocally does have is the totally bitchin’ power to transform into a dragon.  Magic?  Not needed.  Skills?  No thanks.  Any kind of fighting technique whatsoever beyond doggedly repeating the same rudimentary sword swing literal actual hundred of times?  Keep it.  When it’s Ass Kick O’Clock PM (Eastern Standard Time), our boy Ryu 1 raises his arm to the sky, calls forth a bolt of lightning, and becomes a scaled, fire-breathing reptilian murder machine so menacing that the day God was passing these things out, Reality hid in a corner, shivering in terror, and let Fiction grab the whole bunch of’em.  For the rest of the battle, Ryu fights as a dragon, bringing the full power of the Dragon Clan to bear on his unfortunate foes for your enjoyment.

It was, to the best of my knowledge, the first time an RPG had a transformation power-up battle mechanic, and it was a really satisfying one.  Always felt like an ace up your sleeve to pull out for the tough monsters, and with the ability to become powerful dragons like these (especially Agni; holy CRAP was that thing overpowered and awesome!), you could definitely see why the Brood was considered the most powerful clan in the world.

There you go.  There’s your kickass dragon-transforming badass for your Breath of Fire game.  The title made its promise, and it delivered.  This is a game, a series, about a bunch of guys and gals who can flip the fuck out and turn into dragons and wreck some shit any time they want, and so we get a protagonist who can do that (as well as an antagonist, and a major plot-relevant NPC).  Perhaps that’s not ALL that Breath of Fire is about, but it’s pretty safe to say it’s supposed to be the signature element of the series.  I mean, it’s basically in the goddamn name.

But having the stated theme of your game be the title itself wasn’t enough to save star-faring in Star Ocean, nor the wild west in Wild Arms, and it isn’t enough for Breath of Fire.  Because what the hell happened in Breath of Fire 2?

Ryu 2’s abilities in the second game are such a huge step down!  First and foremost, using dragon abilities isn’t a power-up transformation any more, it’s just a single damn attack!  In BoF1, if you used the thunder dragon ability, you turned into a damn thunder dragon, and then for the rest of the battle your attacks would be the dragon’s electric breath.  It was a sustained state of enhanced combat ability, as one expects of a transformation.  In BoF2, however, selecting the thunder dragon ability just means that Ryu 2 will launch a single breath attack on his foes, and that’s it--he transforms, barfs lightning, and is back to human form by the end of the turn.  Reducing a sustained empowering transformation into a dragon to just a single, momentary, fleeting attack?  LAME.

Hell, are we sure he even transforms to begin with?  I mean, in BoF2, the process for a dragon ability being used is that Ryu 2 and the rest of the party disappear for a moment, a dragon rolls on up, burps some violent mischief upon whoever’s unfortunate enough to be on the left side of the screen, makes its exit, and then the rest of the party reappears.  This process is in every single possible way indistinguishable from using a Summon in Final Fantasy 6; what assurance do we have that this dragon was even Ryu at all?  There is no evidence whatsoever that he didn’t just speed-dial his unemployed cousin to do a drive-by while Ryu steps out for a quick smoke.

What was the point of robbing the player of the fun of a sustained transformation?  Breath of Fire is a series about people who turn into dragons!*  So why give us a protagonist who can be a dragon if he’s not ever gonna be a dragon?  Why are the only members of the Dragon Clan in Breath of Fire 2 who are definitively shown to take the form of a dragon for more than 15 seconds all NPCs?  To my recollection, you don’t even get to see Ryu 2 turn into a dragon during any of the game’s scenes outside of battle, either!  Yeah, that’s what I want from my game about a guy who’s part of a clan of people that turn into dragons--I want to see him not do that.  I want to see a story in which the capability to become a titanic, fire-spewing death machine is completely and totally irrelevant.

Oh no, wait, I forgot--if you get the Sad End, Ryu turns himself into a dragon, for the first time on screen, and then goes to sleep to seal in the demons and everyone has to say goodbye to him and it’s sad.  “Don’t worry, bro,” Capcom reassures you with an evil glint in their eye.  “We know how much you were looking forward to having the hero turn into a dragon again, after we established that as a major part of this series’s lore and signature.  And we hear you.  We’ve got you, dog.  Here’s your dragon transformation, my man--super-glued to an ending that makes you feel bad.  You are so welcome.”

The greatest Brood ability in Breath of Fire 2 isn’t even dragon-related.  Anfini’s just this feel-good friendship thing that brings Ryu 2’s party back to life during the final battle.  Which, I mean, great, good, Power of Friendship and all that.  But you know how Breath of Fire 1 handles the Power of Friendship in its ultimate ability, Agni?  It fuses the entire party together and transforms them into a golden roaring raging kaiju centaur that takes up a quarter of the entire screen and automatically does an unblockable, max damage cap 999 with every strike.  Strikes that are raging lightning storms so extreme that they are immediately followed by a freakin’ earthquake!  Compared to that, the ability to miss your dog hard enough that he decides to start existing again seems...a bit less flashy, to say the least.

And as if the downgrade from Battle Transformation to Single Attack wasn’t bad enough, the dragon abilities even kind of suck in BoF2.  I mean, yeah, they hit for a good, solid chunk of damage--the G. Dragon’s lethal halitosis actually hits for an unblockable 999 damage, in fact!  But the kicker is that you’re generally only gonna use’em once per battle, and at that, only during bosses.  Because using a dragon ability uses up ALL of Ryu’s MP.  Regardless of how much he has!  Use any dragon ability, and Ryu’s gonna end that turn possessing as many Magic Points as Randy Pitchford possesses moral scruples.  And don’t think that you could just restore Ryu’s MP a little bit and use it again, because the strength of these attacks is directly proportional to how much of Ryu’s total MP has been put towards them.  So if his max MP is, say, 200, and you have him cast this spell while only having 20 MP, then it’s only gonna be 10% as powerful as it’s supposed to be, defeating the purpose.  Worsening the situation is the fact that there’s no item that restores all your MP in BoF2 (100 is the most you can do in a single go), and MP restoration items are crazily rare if you don’t specifically know how to farm them from item creation and hunting.  Bottom Line: these already disappointing 1-shot dragon “transformations” really only happen once a battle, or hell, once per period between inn stays.

Really doesn’t help make Ryu 2’s other magic, those being minor support spells Cure 1 and Cure 2, particularly viable, since you’ll naturally want to conserve his magic use as much as you can to keep his single useful ability in the next boss battle as powerful as possible.

Basically Ryu 2’s entire existence is defined by being the dragon version of a 1-pump chump.

Thankfully, after Breath of Fire 2, Capcom seemed like it’d gotten its head back in the game, and Breath of Fire 3 brought things back to the way they were supposed to be.  Not only could Ryu 3 properly, demonstrably transform into a dragon, and maintain that form over multiple combat turns, but there were now a ton of new dragon forms to take on!  BoF3 really went all out in providing different types and strengths of dragon for the player to experiment with and have fun turning into.  There were the whelps and the standard adult dragons (which looked cool and vicious and savage; BoF3 knew to make even the basic forms badass), as the previous games had established.  But all kinds of other interesting dragons could be unlocked with the right combination of Brood genes, like giant behemoth dragons that looked like what would happen if a warthog and an ankylosaurus had violent hate-sex and it somehow became your problem, cute little baby dragon-slugs that look like just the most precious things you’ll ever get eviscerated for hugging, those snake-y eastern-style dragons except that BoF3 actually somehow manages to make it look cool...there are even fusion dragons!  Like, dragon forms Ryu can take that are basically a fusion of a dragon and 1 of his companions.  The tiger dragon based on Rei and the bird dragon made from Nina 3’s influence are both insanely cool.

This was the golden age of the dragon transformation in the Breath of Fire series.  These dragon forms looked awesome, they stayed around (while not being unlimited as they were in BoF1; they were well-balanced in that they cost MP each round to maintain), they pleasingly increased Ryu’s power appropriately, they had more than just a single signature ability to draw upon, the actual transformation process looked awesome (lightning strikes, a circular explosion of black energy envelops the party, and then clears with Ryu standing in his new form), you could use them more than just once between rests, the special abilities were no longer just set amounts of damage but rather were dependent on Ryu’s own power...BoF3 basically took every single quality of what felt awesome about the first game’s transformations, improved it, and corrected every possible flaw either of its predecessors had.

The 1 complaint I had was that the ultimate form, Kaiser, was just Ryu doing a yellow palette-swap rather than actually transforming, instead having an ability that would, for a single turn, ostensibly have him turn into the same G. Dragon that Ryu 2 could in the previous game, deliver a single attack, then fly off-screen.  So basically, it was a single instance of a return to BoF2’s lame one-and-done dragon transformation attacks that were indistinguishable from a basic summon.  It’s a far cry from BoF1’s Agni, but still, I guess going Super KaiSayan is still cooler than BoF2’s Anfini complaining about having to solo a boss loud enough that the party decides to resurrect just to shut you up.

Unfortunately, the good times were not to last.  Breath of Fire 3 is the second installment in this 5-part series to utilize real, proper dragon transformations, and it is also the last.  And worse still, as fun of a ride as it was, it was BoF3 itself which planted the seed for the disappointing direction 4 and 5 would take Brood abilities.

See, 1 of the transformations of Breath of Fire 3 was the Warrior form, which wasn’t a dragon so much as it was someone’s fursona.  Scalesona.  Whatever.  The Warrior form is basically just a dude with dragon wings, a tail, claws, and horns.  It’s not an actual dragon, it’s just a D+D half-dragon.  You want to see what the Warrior dragon form is, go to Fur Affinity, type “dragon” into the search bar, look at the first 5 results, and swear eternal vengeance on me.  It’s that simple!  Hell, most people’s dragon scalies are demonstrably more dragonlike than BoF3’s Warrior is.  The Warrior isn’t a dragon, it’s just a guy who is dragon-ish.

And unfortunately, Capcom decided that its future endeavors with Breath of Fire would be based entirely on this immigrant from Inkbunny.

In Breath of Fire 4, all dragon transformations end the same way: with Ryu 4 in a Warrior form, floating in battle awaiting your commands.  And, I mean, it’s kind of cool, for a while.  The main attack animation is him doing an elbow strike into the enemy, which is kinda badass, and as much as I’ve been razzing on it, the Warrior form does actually look pretty cool overall.  But there’s no variety!  It’s not a real dragon to begin with, and it’s the ONLY form he’ll take for any amount of time in combat.  It gets old!  In Breath of Fire 3, when I wanted Ryu to power up and start breaking skulls, I had a colorful, badass buffet to select from!  Everything from hybrid mecha-knight dragons to the tried-and-true western style with laser-beam breath was open to me.  Here, it’s just the 1 single form, throwing elbows like it’s going out of style.  Guy better hope he never feels the urge to take up tennis.

Granted, there ARE actual dragon transformations in BoF4 in a certain sense.  And that sense is...the 1-and-done variety.  Again.  Yeah, while you’re in the base Warrior form, floating above the ground like you’re afraid of getting your toes dirty, you can opt to spend your turn transforming into the actual dragon that whatever Brood variant you selected is named for, at which point Ryu 4 actually deigns to transform into a proper dragon, launches his attack, and then returns to Mr. Every Hour On The Hour ELBOWS ELBOWS ELBOWS again.

I mean, don’t get me wrong: this is a hell of a lot better than BoF2’s situation was.  You actually SEE Ryu 4 transform into the dragon for this hit-it-and-quit-it attack, for starters; this isn’t like Ryu 2 potentially just swapping out for his stunt double every time.  And it can at least be done more than 1 time per battle/inn rest thanks to it not completely draining all your MP in a single go.  Ultimately, I guess that the difference between just being the dragon in battle and what BoF4 does could be seen as pretty minimal.  Still, it feels like there’s a big difference between the back-and-forth transformation situation of Breath of Fire 4, and just being a dragon in Breath of Fire 3.  The momentary transformations of BoF4 just aren’t fun like the sustained ones of its predecessor.

And unfortunately, Breath of Fire 5 finishes us out** with more of the same.  Or should I say less of the same?  Because the only sustained transformation in BoF5 is, once again, Half Man, Half Dragon, All Deviantart, but this time, there are no 1-turn transformation attacks to go with it.  Ryu 5’s OC form is all we get!  Granted, he’s no longer courting sponsorship by G-Form and thus now uses other, more versatile parts of his anatomy to attack his enemies than just his elbows, but still!  There’s no dragons to transform into.  In a Breath of Fire game.  Not even the desperate implication of it that BoF2 had.  Nothing.

Capcom, I know BoF5’s development was a bit rushed, but you left the dragons out of your dragon game.  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 suffered from a rushed release schedule, too, but Obsidian still remembered to put in the damn lightsabers!

Oh, wait, THAT'S right, there IS a moment in Breath of Fire 5 when Ryu can transform into a dragon!  It slipped my mind, but faithful reader and possessor of a better memory Adam E. has gently reminded me.  Thanks, Adam!  Yeah, Ryu 5 can totally transform into a dragon.  If the D Counter hits 100%.  Which is to say, in Breath of Fire 5, turning into a dragon is a game over.  Yeah, that's...that's fucking great, Capcom.  You made AVOIDING turning into a dragon into the entire point of your Breath of Fire game.  Truly stellar stuff guys.

So let’s do the math, shall we?  In Breath of Fire, the series about humans who can turn into awesome ultra-powerful dragons, 2 out of its 5 games contain a real, legitimate ability to actually become a dragon.  Less than half.  The rest either make dragon transformation effectively (and sometimes entirely) indistinguishable from a summon ability, or forgo them altogether in favor of a single fursona.

It may not be Wild Arms only bothering to make good on the Wild West theme they sold themselves on once in a 5-game franchise.  It may not be nearly as bad as Star Ocean spending its first 2 games ignoring its science fiction premise for 95% of the game, and then only committing to it halfway through the third title.  And hell, it may not even actually matter in the slightest.  But it’s still startling, in retrospect, to look at the Breath of Fire series and realize that Capcom only ever really seemed to understand 1 of the core ideas of the series for less than half of its iterations.  It’s nothing compared to how tone-deaf SquareEnix tends to be about Final Fantasy (and really just any of its IPs, for that matter), but it’s still weird.











* Or dragons who spend most of their time futzing around as people.  I don’t think I’ve ever been 100% clear on which way it is with the Brood.


** Haven’t played BoF6 yet.  Probably never will, by both choice and circumstance.

Boyfriend Dungeon Doesn't Go Far Enough

ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm taking June off.  May is always a pretty brutal month for me at my job, but this one's put me through a tougher time than usual, and honestly, I've still been trying to rebuild a rant backlog buffer since the year-long employment crucible that was my 2021.  So...I could just really use a little break to build the reserve back up and ease myself out of customer service fight-or-flight mode.  Thus, the next rant'll be published in July, at which point we'll resume our regular schedule.  Thanks for understanding, and I'll see you then.

And now, the rant proper:



Boyfriend Dungeon is another of the Kickstarter RPGs that I’ve backed.  I don’t generally go for dungeon-crawlers, as they usually don’t have as strong a reliance on storytelling, but the premise of the game piqued my interest--it’s basically a hybrid RPG and dating sim where you’re dating (or just being good buddies with) the very weapons you’re using in the dungeon, within this peculiar world in which some people can magically transform themselves into weapons.  The idea sounds fun enough, and I can’t deny that, as a game where the majority of love interests are men (with a masculine non-binary as well) and which clearly has a very modern, progressive outlook on gender identity and sexuality and all that jazz, Boyfriend Dungeon gave me a bit of hope that I might finally find some quality gay male romances in my preferred game genre.  RPGs have always been and still are unrealistically dominated by heterosexual romances, and what few same-sex couples exist in this genre are much more often female ones.*  And frankly, regardless of what genders are involved, it’s harder-than-average to find a love story in an RPG that’s particularly noteworthy, anyway.  So yeah, I had some hopes for Boyfriend Dungeon, particularly when I realized it was being made by the same developer that did Moon Hunters, another RPG I had kickstarted and quite enjoyed.

And make no mistake, it’s a pleasant game.  The gameplay of Boyfriend Dungeon is, interestingly enough, less like Moon Hunters than it is a Supergiant Games title; there were a lot of moments as I was crawling through the dungeons that I was struck by a recollection of Bastion.  Meanwhile, the content of the dating sim stories reminded me in some ways of Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4’s Social Links--and the fact that the dungeons were meant to display and act as analogies for the protagonist’s personal fears and hang-ups increases that sense of SMTP4 similarity.  The game tells a small but recognizable and paced story with a noticeable beginning, middle stage, and conclusion, and having this clearly structured a narrative is certainly more than a lot of dungeon-focused RPGs can seem to manage.  Additionally, BD maintains a very prominently open and modern mindset and theme of respecting personal identity, pronouns, lifestyles, dietary beliefs, all that politically correct jazz--it’s very inclusive, is what I’m saying, so players caught up within or just looking for a game with a strong and positive theme of current sensibilities will probably like Boyfriend Dungeon quite a bit.  And that stuff’s not just the window-dressing to the game, either; the main story of the game is rooted within such concepts.  The protagonist and antagonist serve as mirrors for how to approach a desire for intimacy with others, with 1 doing so in a healthy manner, the other becoming mired in toxic mindsets.  It’s a decent game, Boyfriend Dungeon, is my main message here.

At the same time...Boyfriend Dungeon disappoints me, because it never really seems to take any part of itself as far as it needs to.

Let’s take the dungeon-crawling aspect of it, since that’s where I first noticed this problem.  The dungeons in Boyfriend Dungeon are adequate enough, as dungeons go.  I mean, I didn’t enjoy going through them myself, but I don’t like stomping through any dungeons; the actual act of playing an RPG is boring to me.  I at least think that people who DO like the gameplay of this genre will have a decent time in Boyfriend Dungeon’s...2 dungeons.

Yeah.  2.

Now it ain’t a problem for me personally, the fewer dungeons the better I say, but even I have to admit that I find it odd that a game called Boyfriend Dungeon has only 2 examples of its namesake within its entire course.  Didn’t this game advertise itself as a dungeon-crawler on its Kickstarter?  And Steam page?  And Xbox page?  How do you make a dungeon-crawler, advertise it as such, include the word “dungeon” in its name, and then only put 2 dungeons into it?

I mean, I guess I’ve played some dungeon-crawler RPGs in which there was only, technically, a single dungeon to traverse through (such as some Etrian Odysseys, for example), but even those generally had enough significant differences between floor groups that the effect was that of multiple dungeons.  And their supposedly single dungeon had more (and larger) floors within it than Boyfriend Dungeon has in its 2.  It just feels like the dungeon element of Boyfriend Dungeon was an afterthought more than the selling point they made it out to be.  Again, not a problem from MY perspective, but I would definitely understand someone more gameplay-oriented being put out by it.

There IS a problem with this lack of dungeon-ing that I do myself take issue with, though.  The dungeons are, as I mentioned before, meant to represent personal fears of the protagonist.  I think the idea is for him/her/them to conquer these personal issues and become a more complete and actualized person, as well as a better romantic partner.  But with only 2 dungeons in the game, this storytelling mechanic is pretty damn limited, unable to explore the hero’s mind and personality any further than a mere 2 characteristics.  So even if you care as little about the gameplay elements of RPGs as I do, there is still a flaw within just how limited the dungeon count of Boyfriend Dungeon is.

Although, really, I doubt that more dungeons would actually have done much for the protagonist’s character.  While a good personal story of growth would have needed more than 2 opportunities to tell itself, the fact of the matter is that the 2 opportunities it did have were squandered.  Neither of the fears that the dungeons of the games represent are actually explored at all in their relation to the protagonist, and are barely even acknowledged by the characters in dialogue.  These 2 fears are obviously meant to describe the shy and socially hesitant state that the protagonist is in when he/she/they first arrive at Verona Beach at the game’s beginning, but that’s as far as that goes.  How did Protagonist gain these fears?  What thoughts do Protagonist’s love interests have about these fears in relation to him/her/them?  How is the protagonist confronting these personal issues and moving past them, in the emotional sense?  Why does the protagonist never have any thoughts to share on these fears when their nature is finally uncovered at the dungeon’s conclusion?  How does the protagonist feel about the process of conquering them?  What about the protagonist’s experiences thus far has allowed him/her/them to overcome it?

There’s just so little substance to this concept of the dungeons as the things holding the protagonist’s heart back.  It’s like if you were going through a Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 dungeon, but the character at the end of the dungeon never says anything the whole time, never interacts with their shadow, never expresses any perspective on the process of embracing and overcoming their weaknesses before, during, or after the whole ordeal.  You’d still be able to get something from the metaphors of the dungeon’s enemies, and from the dungeon’s own decor, but the huge majority of the message wouldn’t be there.  It’s not as bad as Princess Aerin’s complete failure in The Princess’ Heart to engage with the personal sins that the 4 demons she fights represent, but Boyfriend Dungeon’s failure to capitalize on their idea of using the dungeons to develop the protagonist is not far off from that, either.

So the dungeon aspect of Boyfriend Dungeon isn’t taken far enough, and its attempt to tell a story of growth for its protagonist isn’t, either.  What about the other major theme of the game and half of its title?  What about the Boyfriends?  And girlfriend.  And...themfriends?  Whatever the non-binary equivalent is.

Well, honestly, the game just doesn’t quite manage to do enough on that front, either, in my opinion.

First of all, the concept itself of dating weapons just...isn’t really explored well enough.  The fact that each of these characters you’re dating can turn into a sword, a scythe, a dagger, and so on, to be held and wielded by you in combat against monsters representing your fears, is a surprisingly minor detail to everyone involved.  I mean, Boyfriend Dungeon doesn’t ignore it or anything like that--Sawyer will sometimes mention the fact that they’re a glaive, Isaac will reference being a rapier often (and this fact is the initial reason for you hanging out with him, to have him train you on how to more effectively use him), and so on.  But the fact that Seven can turn himself into a goddamn laser sword** is somehow never a major, relevant point to his personal story and character development.  Apparently, being a second-banana member of a KPop band is deemed as a more interesting angle of Seven’s character to base his personal story around than the fact that he can turn into the lovechild of a taser and a lightsaber.  Isaac is a fencer who can turn into a rapier, Sunder’s ability to inflict the bleed status relates to his physical condition, and there are some aesthetic connections between the characters’ human and weapon forms, but beyond that, the fact that these boyfriends, themfriends, and girlfriend can transform themselves into weapons isn’t really important, to them or to the story as a whole.  Boyfriend Dungeon’s attention-getting gimmick is that it’s about being able to date your weapon, and yet the character stories for every single 1 of these romantic interests would be unchanged in all significant ways if they were just regular human beings! 

Correct me if I'm wrong, because I've yet to play it, but I think even Xenoblade Chronicles 2 managed to give this duality of weapon and human more relevance with its stupid waifus, yes?  Not the kind of title that it looks great to fall short of, from my initial impressions of it.

Also, I hate to say this, but not a lot of these characters’ stories are all that interesting.  I mean...Sawyer’s generally likable enough, but all that really happens in their Social Link is a bit of worrying about their future prospects in life which, though reasonable and certainly a believable concern for anyone in Sawyer’s age group nowadays, never goes anywhere or has any resolution, and some mildly amusing lessons on how to cook basic low-income meals.  It is not a compelling story of love blossoming.  It’s not a compelling story of friendship forming.  It’s kind of shaky as a tale of becoming acquaintances, really.  And while the rest of the cast at least felt a little more like they were forming a bond of interest and companionship with the protagonist, and/or had a demonstrable attraction to him/her/them, they still don’t really feel all that romantic or interesting.  I’d call Valeria’s the most romantic, but it barely breaks into the territory of average as love stories go, and I’d call Sunder’s the most interesting character study, but it ends on a weak, gimmicky note.

In fact, when I consider it, I think there’s a subconscious reason I’ve equated Boyfriend Dungeon’s romances with the Social links of SMT Persona 4 specifically--because as a general rule, they, much like all but 1 of SMTP4’s love interest Social Links, are more like friendship stories upon which an ill-matched romance was clumsily stapled.

Also, connecting the problems with the protagonist’s personal development with the current subject, I feel like Protagonist isn’t even a particularly deciding or dynamic factor in some of the character journeys of Boyfriend Dungeon’s love interests.  At least as often as I felt like the protagonist was an invested participant in these vignettes, I felt like things were just coasting along, with the protagonist along for the ride of his/her/their boo’s personal journey.  Not always, or anything, but still, I think the protagonist is too often not a strong entity within a love story that he/she/they are supposed to be half of.  And hey, don't get me wrong, this is a common problem with both RPGs and Visual Novels (the latter format is what Boyfriend Dungeon's character interactions mostly mimic), not some failing exclusive to BD.  But signature or common, it IS still a flaw.

Look, I don’t like to go off on Indie RPGs.  And I also want to reiterate that Boyfriend Dungeon is a fine enough title: I don’t regret playing it, nor do I regret backing it.  I have backed worse and I have played worse Indies in my time.  And to be sure, while I appreciate a strongly inclusive RPG and wish we had more of them, anyone who really thirsts for a game that steeps itself in modern mindsets and perspectives on love and identity will get a lot more out of this title than I could.  But at the same time, Indie RPG or not, decent game or not, Boyfriend Dungeon’s got a persistent, recurring flaw: it just doesn’t take any of its major components far enough.  It doesn’t have enough dungeon content for a dungeon crawler,*** it doesn’t take an active enough hand in telling the protagonist’s story of growth into a healthy friend and/or romantic partner, it doesn’t incorporate and explore its idea of people who are both humans and weapons far enough, it doesn’t tell strong and involving love stories,*** and the player doesn’t feel like a dynamic part of how some of these romances progress.  Each part of Boyfriend Dungeon feels enjoyable, but lacking.  There was more that this game could have been.


















* Not that I’m complaining.  As I’ve said before, I still want a lot more of these than there are.  It’d just be nice and refreshing to have an equal number of bros-before-heteros romances, too.


** For that matter, it’s weird that the rest of the cast are normal, tangible, traditional weapons like brass knuckles and talwars, and then there’s just this 1 guy who’s a lightning beam with a handle stuck on it.  What’s up with that?


*** There IS a DLC coming that's going to add a third dungeon and 2 more weapon people to romance, but if it's not a free update (which it might be?  I'd have to look back on all these backer updates I get to know for sure, but I think it'll just be easier to find out when it releases), then these can't really be counted in the main game's favor.  And even if they were, a dungeon count of 3 still seems noticeably low for a dungeon crawler.  Furthermore, even if the 2 new romances turned out to be really good--which there's not much reason to expect if we go by precedent--that's still 2 out of 8, which is not a great showing.

Pillars of Eternity 1's Downloadable Content

I have to confess something.  Something terrible and degrading, a secret which has festered within me for 7 years now, like a lingering, decayed fragment of me at odds with the rest of my soul.  But I’m tired of it--tired of keeping up the facade of a discerning, cultured critic, tired of trying to maintain this farce that I’m respectable, that I’m worthy of your time and consideration.  Because the shocking, dismaying truth is...

Pillars of Eternity 1 just didn’t really do anything for me.

Woedica knows I wanted it to.  PoE1 was 1 of the first RPGs I ever helped crowdfund!  I was enamored by its theme and concepts, and by the idea of the writers behind it being able to make what they wanted without the pressures and expectations of ignorant larger publishers restricting them.  And I DID like it, and appreciate it, make no mistake.  I recognize how interesting and thoughtful its setting and lore are, I recognize that it has a good story, I recognize that much of its cast is terrifically written and unique!  There is a ton about Pillars of Eternity 1 that is great and even brilliant, and I see this and acknowledge it and respect it...objectively.

It just somehow never really managed to get past that point of appreciation from afar, for me.  A few parts of it managed to penetrate deeper, like the Grieving Mother--such a great character!--but not enough that the game ever spoke to me the way I thought it was going to, the way that I think it did most other people.  I don’t know why that is.  I’ll openly admit that Pathfinder: Kingmaker, though most certainly a great RPG, doesn’t have the same weight, intellectual power, or significance that Pillars of Eternity 1 possesses...but I love Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and I only dispassionately appreciate Pillars of Eternity 1.  I don’t know why that is, but I can’t pretend otherwise.

So basically what I’m saying is that you should probably disregard everything I’m about to say in today’s rant and just come back next time, when maybe I’ll have a subject that I actually know something about.



The White March, Part 1: This add-on’s got some definite charms.  You gotta appreciate the polish, for starters--it’s not the only game to do this, but any time a development team pays such attention to detail that characters breathe vapor in cold environments, you’ve got a work that you know the creators truly wanted to do everything in their power to get right.  That and the fact that NPCs trying to put out a burning house are pathed to run back and forth to the nearby water (to fetch it and throw it on the fire) and even exchange dialogue while filling their buckets were examples of the DLC’s high level of polish that struck me right from the get-go.

Beyond the polish, I also laud the extent that the soul-reading was incorporated into the quest to open Durgan’s Battery--it’s as interesting an experience as it was in the main game, and a lot of effort is put into some of the memory/previous life recollections, even when they aren’t relevant to the quest itself.  The mayor’s memory, for example, is not the one you’re looking for in that quest, but it’s an engaging snapshot of her history (as well as that of the town) that’s well-written and spared no effort.  There’s some decent sidequests--I rather liked the one involving the head of the foundry, and the ongoing and evolving history of the quest where you’re collecting relics and soul-reading them is nicely done--and both Zahua and the Devil of Caroc are decently written characters.

With all that said, I gotta say...The White March kinda feels like Obsidian’s team mostly was trying to recapture the glory days of Icewind Dale.*  As a result, a lot of this DLC--most of it, really--feels very Dungeons-and-Dragons-generic to me.  Like most of it could have been taken from any base pre-written adventure outline that a DM might use for a placeholder session between main campaigns.  Durgan’s Battery, for example, doesn’t really feel like it has any actual personality of its own--it just comes off to me like a timid mash-up of a Dragon Age 1 dwarven stronghold and Durlag’s Tower from Baldur’s Gate 1, while not as compelling as either.  The abandoned dwarven fortress trope that Tolkien started is wearing thin these days, and little of Durgan’s Battery stands out enough to refresh the cliche.

Also, what’s even the point of the side story with Concelhaut?  It’s pointless and dull.  If the majority of The White March, Part 1 feels like an experienced DM just buying himself time with a generic premade outline while he works on the next part of his real campaign, then the little sidequest of infiltrating Concelhaut’s pad feels like a first time DM reading lines from a tabletop starter pack.

Lastly, while Zahua’s a good character, he absolutely should have been in the main game, not an add-on character.  Zahua’s quirk of reveling in suffering and discomfort as a way of Keeping It Real Bro is the kind of personality basis that best cements itself over time and quantity of examples.  If he’d been with me for the entire PoE1 adventure, then he’d be a much more singular, stand-out personality to me, because his character would have had the time to fully impress itself upon me.  Like...imagine if instead of being a major character in the show, Ed from Cowboy Bebop was only present in its movie.  She’d still be fun and engaging, but she wouldn’t be memorable, wouldn’t be iconic, as the personality and character she is, not for any lack of skill on the writers’ part, but simply for lack of time to really capitalize on who and what she is.  That’s how Zahua feels to me--a couple DLCs just don’t cut it for a singularly quirky character.

So yeah, in the end, The White March, Part 1 is not a bad add-on, but nothing about it rises high enough that I’d call it a good one, either.  And at an unreasonable $15 (I don’t see most players getting 15 hours out of it), “neither bad nor good” does not cut it.


The White March, Part 2: I guess I’d say this is a step up from the first add-on.  The main story of Part 2 has some significance and actually goes somewhere, for starters, even though that substance only shows up toward the end of the DLC’s overall quest.  Likewise, the side bit about who legally owns Caed Nua is a hell of a lot more interesting than competing with some mercenaries for the right to indulge in some breaking and entering of Concelhaut’s stupid tower.

With that said, it still doesn’t really seem like the whole thing amounts to all that much, as an adventure.  While the choice that the new enemies wind up posing regarding the restoration of the god Abydon, and how one views the past, is compelling material, it takes a while to get there, and until that point, this whole venture just feels like some more generic RPG mush with contrived enemies.  Meanwhile, the new character, Maneha, has 1 of the most thematically appropriate personal quests in the game, in theory, but in practice, it feels rushed and impersonal...and frankly, while she’s pleasant, affable, and outgoing, Maneha herself never really quite feels like she’s engaging with her companions as 1 of the party.  Something about her personality just feels like she took a wrong turn and wound up in a different game than she’d intended.

Ultimately?  While it feels like there’s more purpose and art tying this DLC to Pillars of Eternity 1 as a whole, it still seems, to me, not really worth the trouble to play through The White March, Part 2.  Particularly not when you’re expected to pay a whopping $15 for this one, too--you’re almost definitely not getting that many hours out of it!



And the verdict on PoE1’s DLC scene is: a big, fat, dreary Meh.  Your results may vary, of course.  As I said going into this, for whatever reason, the game as a whole didn’t resonate with me the way it should have, so there’s every chance I just lack the ability to properly appreciate The White March, through no fault of the add-ons themselves.

Still...still, I do think I stand by my feeling that they’re not worth it, at least to a degree.  Maybe I never did feel Pillars of Eternity 1 the way I should have, but I’ve never had a problem seeing why it’s lauded and in recognizing the merits of its story, cast, setting, and lore.  Yet I haven’t been struck by this professional respect for the game at any point through my White March experience...hell, there’ve been more than a few occasions during the course of these DLCs when I just sort of wanted it to be done with, already.  The White March may not be outright stupid, negative, or damaging the way most RPGs’ add-on collections seem to be, and certainly it’s a step up from the last DLC I experienced (that being Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s)...but it’s still just not good, at least not to me.  If Pillars of Eternity 1 is a gourmet meal that my palette just can’t quite adapt itself to, then The White March is the microwaved TV dinner of Fantasy: serviceable, but not much more than that.  It’d be hard to recommend even at a rational price point, but the fact that it comes to a total of $30--which is as much as the game itself is being sold for at this time--I advise putting this on the ever-growing list of add-ons to steer clear of.












** Glory days which didn’t even exist to start with; Icewind Dale 1 and 2 were boring and meandering and can only thrive in an environment of pure rose-tinted nostalgia.

General RPGs' Late Add-On Characters

Add-ons are, by now, a fact of life for RPGs, and video games as a whole.  Love’em or hate’em--and I know where I’ve come to stand on the matter--there’s a good chance these days that any major RPG release, and quite a few minor ones, will eventually (or immediately) be saddled with an extra adventure that you can pay to experience.  It may be a full-on extra story, or just a minor sidequest, but either way, this additional content almost inevitably comes with various new items, equipment, abilities, and/or game features to collect and earn.  It may even come with a new character who will join your party!

Hey, here’s an idea, developers?  Maybe you could, I dunno, just stop doing this?  Like, for real.  Stop.  Doing.  This.  

Stop.

Look, sometimes this isn’t a serious detriment to the RPG.  A character like Shale in Dragon Age 1, or Zaeed in Mass Effect 2, the DLCs they’re found within were available on Day 1.  Which isn’t a GOOD thing, obviously, because if an add-on is done at the time of the game’s release, then why the hell isn’t it just a part of the damn game to begin with?  But, at the very least, if you want the full experience of Zaeed or Shale as a party member who interacts with the adventure as it unfolds, it’s there to be had from the moment you acquire the game and start playing.

But generally, DLCs come out for a game after a good chunk of time has passed from its release date.  For example, the Far Harbor add-on for Fallout 4, which introduced the party member Longfellow, was finished 6 months after the game’s release.  By that time, just about any player who had started playing Fallout 4 shortly after its release date would be long since finished with its main plot and side content, so the only content that the player could utilize Longfellow in would be that of Far Harbor itself, and the later DLC package Nuka-World (which introduced its own crappy party member Gaige, who thus got even LESS time than Longfellow).  In a game where the party members to some degree react to and engage with the happenings of the story, and the introduction of new locations, that’s really frustrating.

Admittedly, this isn’t often a problem for me, personally, because I usually don’t play RPGs immediately after their launch.  Hell, it’s a miracle when I get to a game within 5 years of its publication.  So it didn’t cause any irritation for me when I played Pathfinder: Kingmaker a year after its launch, and thus had the DLC characters of Kalikke and Kanerah available to me from the start of the game to engage with and be a part of the plot.  But anyone who started playing the game on the day it released in September would almost surely have finished it, or at least been in its last stages, when the Wildcards DLC dropped in December.  If that player wanted to get the most out of the content he or she had just purchased, he or she would have to play the game through all over again to have the time and opportunity to fully experience all that the tiefling sisters offered as characters.  And hell, I was already planning to play Mass Effect 2 over again when the DLC that introduced Kasumi released--but not everyone was, so suddenly acquiring a character too late to have the chance to involve her in all the plot interactions which she was capable of, having Kasumi wind up as nothing more than an afterthought unless a whole other playthrough was initiated, had to be rather irritating to some.

And hey, I don’t always avoid the brunt of this annoyance.  I don’t actually know anything about the character Oom from Torment: Tides of Numenera, because I started playing that game the hour it came out, and finished well before Oom was completed and released.  And as it turns out, great though Tides of Numenera and its 1000-page-long script is, I don’t have 50 hours I can just conjure out of nowhere to drop on the game all over again to get to know the newbie.  

I do cut TToN a little slack on this matter, though, since Oom wasn’t something that was being sold as an extra so much as it was just a late addition of content that had been intended to be a part of the game but was unfinished as of the game’s release, and they added Oom to the game for free.

I do not extend that same generosity to Fire Emblem 16.

Hey, Nintendo!  The next time you feel like tacking a DLC onto your game that adds a whopping 4 separate characters to the cast, do you think that maybe, JUST FUCKING MAYBE, you could try releasing it just a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit earlier?  Say, perhaps, while I’m still playing the fucking game?  It ain’t like I rushed through it, either.  I only started playing 3 Houses a month after its release, and it’s not a short adventure.  Especially when you’re insane enough to go through it 4 separate times to see every path of the game, since no one warned you that you can skip the Blue Lions route and miss absolutely nothing.  Nintendo, you really couldn’t have released the damn Dickensian Sewer Rats DLC at some point before the start of my FOURTH playthrough?

No, of course not, I forgot.  You had to get the DLCs for those lounge wear cosmetics and the game mechanic of cramming rotten fish down stray cats’ throats out into the world, first.  Obviously that’s the REAL priority, here.

Thankfully, Youtube Let’s Plays exist, and I didn’t have to waste my time and money buying a frankly subpar quartet of party members I would have to play the game a fifth time to fully experience.  May the 8 Scribes have mercy on the players who began another round of FE16 in earnest solely for the sake of the Ashen Wolves characters, though.

Just...if you’re gonna add characters to the game, characters who are meant to be a legitimate part of the cast and a part of the game’s story, do it at an appropriate time.  If you HAVE to lock them behind a DLC, which you shouldn’t, because that’s fucking garbage, but if you HAVE to, release that DLC soon enough that they can be an actual part of the damn story without forcing your player to commit to a 40-hour rerun.  Because honestly, at that point, Zahua and Kasumi and the Ashen Wolves and the Devil of Caroc and Longfellow and Kalikke and Kanerah and Maneha and Mintberry Crunch and Gaige and all the rest of these tardy-to-the-party members are almost more trouble than they’re worth.