Tales of Berseria's Rokurou Defies His Archetype by Actually Not Sucking

I find Tales of Berseria to be quite awesome, as I’m sure you’ve all picked up on by now.  It’s excellently written, its characters are unique, have depth, and form great dynamics with one another, it has a refreshing and thoughtful take on an extremely common RPG story trope, the villain’s solid, it’s emotional as hell...it’s just a great title, all around.  But while I most greatly appreciate ToB’s ability to buck and even reverse its genre’s trend toward fixating on positive and negative emotional energy and drawing a line in the sand between them, that’s not the only common RPG narrative practice that ToB turns on its head over its course.  And 1 of these unexpected upsets that I think really deserves some appreciation is Namco’s decision to, unexpectedly, make the character of Rokurou something other than a one-dimensional, colossal fucking tool.

See, Rokurou belongs to a certain character archetype, known to a small degree globally but wildly frequent and inexplicably popular in Japan: the dude whose greatest priority and obsession in life is to fight other people and be the absolute best at doing so.  This style of character almost inevitably comes in 1 of 2 flavors, each of which is iconically characterized by a Dragon Ball Z character:


A: The numbnuts braindead dumbfuck whose mind is so stunted and worthless that he’s completely unable to find any joy, purpose, or distraction in life beyond simply finding harder and harder things to sink his fist into.  His single- and simple-minded prioritizing of this desire constantly endangers those around him, sometimes even as a result of said numbnuts braindead dumbfuck deliberately creating more dangerous situations out of a desire to test himself.  Goku is the most perfect example of this kind of man-infant,* although Leon and Nemona from Pokemon Generations 8 and 9 are worthy contenders for Dumbest Punch-Toddler, too.


B: Far more common, the belligerent, antisocial asswipe whose unwavering obsession with being the best at propelling hands and/or sharp objects into stuff is not the result of a mind so stunted that it’s simply incapable of finding joy in anything else, but rather of something even more pathetic: a raging, out-of-control engorged egotism.  He, too, is perfectly willing to put anyone and anything at risk in the impossible pursuit of a fight whose victory will finally make him secure in his manhood, except that unlike Type A, this jackass has enough brain cells to rub together that he actually is capable of knowing better, which makes him an even worse human being.  Also, he’s always such a complete, uncompromising buttmunch to everyone around him for no goddamn reason.  Vegeta is certainly not the most perfect example of this micro-dicked shithead (that illustrious distinction goes to My Hero Academia’s Bakugo nowadays), but he’s still a solid representation for the majority of DBZ’s course, so he's my go-to example nonetheless.


Worth noting, I suppose, is that this archetype CAN be about things other than combat--there’s nothing preventing a character of Type B from being an antagonistic rival character in an anime about playing children’s card games, for example.  And this archetype CAN, as I noted, be seen in media that doesn’t come out of Japan--you’ve got a decent chance of encountering some Type A nitwit with a mind so devolved that he can’t find anything in the entire scope of the human experience to quite compare with the existential delight of making a round object go from his hand to another place in more than a few movies about sports, for example.  The more strain it puts on that person’s home life, the better!  Especially if the solution to that issue is “Wife and/or Children compromise by just having to deal with being less important to this guy than hand-delivering a ball to a particular side of a painted line, and Guy compromises by not having to compromise.”

Anyway, as you can clearly tell, I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of respect or affection for this type of character, as a general rule.  Frankly, any character who has only a single notable and guiding personality trait is usually neither memorable nor especially likable, and a demonstrable example of the limitations of the writer(s) behind him, but this archetype is especially bad, because it creates individuals who are basically doldrums of character development.  With most 1-dimensional personalities in a cast, well, they don’t really contribute all that much to the whole or experience, but the extent of their failure as a writer’s creation only extends as far as themselves.  Quina Quen from Final Fantasy 9, for example, is a throwaway joke character whose only notable trait is wanting to eat a bunch of stuff.  In as great an RPG as FF9, this kind of dead weight cast member is quite surprising, but Quina’s wanting personality and depth only really lessen itself.  When other characters interact with Quina, the process can still be enjoyable and/or interesting, because Quina is good-natured enough (if not terribly bright) to converse with its companions, and get involved in whatever they’re up to even in occasions where that doesn’t have anything to do with something edible.

The Fighting’s My Life archetype, however, is, as I mentioned, a doldrum of personality and character development.  If it’s not about fighting and killing, he’s not fucking interested when his companions want to talk to him or do something with him.  And since the Type B version is the most prevalent, this usually involves him being a snide, self-absorbed asswipe to the others trying for some inexplicable reason to actually be his friend.  Someone wants to talk to Keita in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 about anything not related to putting his fist through something, and he’s not interested.  Strike up a conversation with Jeritza in Fire Emblem 16, and he’s gonna do everything in his power to direct it toward scheduling a death match between you and him, because Sothis forbid people try to get to know each other on any level without attempted murder being involved  And don’t even get me started on that turd-guzzling fuckwad Albel from Star Ocean 3.  Not only is this character utterly stagnant and going fucking nowhere, but everyone they come in contact with loses all character-growth momentum the moment they open their mouth and invoke the sullen glare.  Hence my use of the term doldrums to describe these characters.

And honestly, the Type A version’s no better in any real regard, when it does surface--Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3’s Akihiko isn’t a hostile butthead like the Type Bs, but his ability to engage with others in any way on a subject unrelated to fighting and bulking up is, generously put, limited, and his single-minded focus can and does derail the interactions of characters whose personalities require more than a single sentence to adequately describe.

I may not be happy about Quina Quen contributing basically nothing to the story and cast of Final Fantasy 9, but at least it has the courtesy not to slow down everyone around it, and at least it’s decent enough not to be a complete fucking tool the whole time.

But getting back to Rokurou, that’s what’s amazing about the guy: he’s a combat-obsessed character, a guy who’s dedicated his life to his own strength and the thrill of fighting, with as much devotion as Keita, Jeritza, Albel, Akihiko, or any other character of this type...but he’s also actually intelligent, and what’s more, not a complete fucking asshole.

HOLY SHIT IT’S ACTUALLY FUCKING POSSIBLE.

Is everything of any weight or significance about Rokurou limited entirely to his obsession with battle?  Oh, absolutely.  Rokurou’s history and his story over the course of Tales of Berseria is devoted in its entirety to his burning desire to be the greatest warrior, which in this case means defeating his brother (who IS the greatest warrior) in combat, he became a demon specifically because of his lust for violence, and we see multiple instances in ToB where it’s made clear that he derives a hedonistic thrill from a good fight.  One can hardly try to make the argument that Rokurou has any less the fixation of combat than other examples of his archetype; I’d even say that his character arc of this game has enough substance to make his obsession stronger than many of his peers’.

But Rokurou actually has a personality.  Not only is he not a braindead punch-toddler constantly asking “Is my fist there yet?” (the "there" in question being someone’s face...okay, look, not every joke is a winner, alright?), he’s also not a sulky, vainglorious jerk to everyone around him.  Rokurou is, in fact, actually pretty damn personable.  When his teammates engage him in conversation--which is quite often; Tales of Berseria has a ton of those skits I like so much--he talks to them, answers them, pays attention to the topics they’re intent on discussing even if that topic isn’t a list of things that can and can’t be stabbed.  He’s willing to engage in, hell, even initiate lighthearted banter, speculation about the group’s current and ultimate objectives, and theorizing on deeper matters and personal philosophies.  Rokurou isn’t just a tired, color-by-numbers archetype, he’s a character.

And it’s honestly only to the game’s and his own benefit.  Not only is it a good thing to have a character with nuance and depth, not to mention one whose role also enhances the overall dynamics of the cast’s interaction and chemistry, but making Rokurou a sincere, actual person instead of a combat automaton actually betters his ability to fulfill his role, too.  Because when the times come that Rokurou’s bloodlust and obsession with proving his combat greatness are seen, the contrast of the generally affable and decent guy he is under most circumstances to the driven, dangerous demon he becomes makes a far more powerful impression on the audience of his obsession with strength and skill at fighting.  You see a character who just outright cannot show the slightest enthusiasm for anything besides fighting get all pumped up about a chance to prove his mettle in a battle, and it’s like, okay, sure, whatever, big deal, he’s just doing the only thing he ever goddamn talks about doing.  You see Rokurou get so aggressive that he’s a moment away from attacking even his comrades if they get in the way of his battle, and it makes a jarring impression on you, because you’re not used to seeing Rokurou like this, and you’re reminded violently that regardless of his generally outgoing demeanor, this guy is a demon of violence.  Because there’s something substantial to contrast it against, the obsession with the thrill of fighting is, with Rokurou, far more a memorable and genuine trait than it is for his idiot RPG peers who have nothing but that to offer.

Also, credit to the game as a whole for having the sense and decency to show that there are actual costs to a mindset like this (Rokurou’s obsession has led to exile, and to his losing his humanity).  More than that, for once an RPG actually identifies this as a negative emotion and mindset, which is a real breath of fresh, logical air.  Every other time you encounter this character archetype, the game seems to regard this selfish, antisocial, dead-end obsession with fighting and physical strength as a good thing, even a life philosophy to be encouraged!  And sure, Tales of Berseria is all about acknowledging and validating the worth, or at least the importance, of the negative aspects of the human spirit...but just the fact that it can even identify this infantile/egomaniacal violent psychosis as a trait not to be unquestioningly lauded and idealized is incredible in a JRPG!

So yeah, great kudos to Tales of Berseria’s writers for how they handled the cliched Fighting-Obsessed Guy character.  I respect the fact that they didn’t pretend it’s a positive or respectable mentality, and I greatly appreciate the fact that they didn’t just lazily make that the 1 and only thing going on with Rokurou, the way every other game’s writers do.  Well done, Namco.












* Even children are capable of diversifying themselves as thinking, self-aware creatures past a single interest, so “manchild” just didn’t feel accurate enough.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask AMV: It's Me

Many thanks to Ecclesiastes for looking over this rant and making sure it doesn't suck!  At least, not any worse than usual.  You're the best, sir!



How long’s it been since an AMV impressed me so much that I felt compelled to make an entire rant all about it and it alone?  Over 3 years?  Sounds about right; quality of such degree doesn’t come around often.  And hey, bonus, this time it’s not about Final Fantasy 8!  So let’s take a look at the treat that its creator, who prefers to go by Eldritchdraaks, has to share with us.


The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask: It’s Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIqnrE-zcOw


Look.  Look with Your Special Eyes: This AMV is a damn treat to see.  The basic graphical quality is high, the visuals having been taken from the 3DS HD version of the game, and although TLoZMM is a dated game technologically, it nonetheless has an iconic aesthetic that puts its polygons to work in a way that piques the player’s interest as much in the present as it did in the past.

The use of visual effects here is excellent, in my opinion.  For the most part, Eldritchdraaks is quite content to let the energy and strength of Majora’s Mask speak for itself, doing little to alter or distract from the strength of its creepy and often striking imagery, and that’s a smart move--it’s usually better as a rule of thumb to be reserved about interfering with the game’s part in an AMV, and that’s especially true when the game’s look plays a huge role in its identity and the identity of the AMV as a whole.  But that doesn’t mean that Eldritchdraaks’s limited himself just to smooth and artfully logical scene selections and transitions: he has, in fact, found a way to increase the power of Majora’s Mask’s screen presence in this video by editing in text boxes, styled after the game’s own, to display the song’s lyrics.  It’s a good idea that has a great payoff for the video, as with the game itself seeming to be the one singing the song’s lyrics, it’s all the more immersive an experience.  The text even changes in color and loses its box at times when the game scene it’s supposedly playing over would normally have had an accordingly different style--now that’s dedication to detail!

Similarly, Eldritchdraaks’s ability to insert the series-signature musical score text boxes at moments when the character on-screen is playing an instrument is a clever and very cool trick, particularly the way that he has the button-press notes appear in perfect sync with the music’s beats--it flawlessly looks like it’s real footage of a gamer managing to play along to the AMV’s song.  In fact, I at first didn’t even realize it wasn’t authentic, until I realized that these score boxes show up even when characters other than Link are playing music.  Very neat!

Eldritchdraaks really threw his all into the visual presentation of this AMV, and it shows, even in ways you don’t necessarily pick up on consciously.  There is, for example, a substantive effect at 2:39 in which the screen keeps reducing in size to the beat of the music.  To me, it simply represented a special effect that emphasized the increasing tension in the music and scene (and it’s very effective in this capacity), but the creator has told me that that’s actually 1 of his favorite moments of editing, because beyond just its great harmony with the music and cutscene, it also references the way, in TLoZMM, the screen shrinks at the end of each day, when the clock tower rings.  I’m not too proud to admit that this allusion went right over my head, but it’s a great example of the level of dedication and subtlety Eldritchdraaks put into this work to not only make it really cool to watch, but a great representation of the source material in even the most subtle ways.  These are the hallmarks of a real artist, and It’s Me is filled with’em.


If Music be the Food of Love, Play On: The song used in this AMV is It’s Me, an original fan creation by TryHardNinja for the 5 Nights at Freddy’s series.  I can’t say that it’s my kind of music at all, any more than 5 Nights at Freddy’s is my kind of game, but I can at least recognize that the song, for what kind of music it is, seems really good.  Far too good for the franchise it was inspired by, really.

Which actually is fitting, because it’s kinda hard for me to imagine that this song could possibly fit better to the game it was actually created for than it does to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.  At least, that’s how I feel after seeing this AMV, which so perfectly matches, from start to finish, this unsettling and spooky song to both the blatant and the out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye sense of disturbing wrongness that TLoZMM revels in.  Additionally, lyrics that (I assume) have literal meaning when applied to 5NaF take on an even more sinister and fitting feeling as Eldritchdraaks pairs them as metaphors and symbols to the visuals of Majora’s Mask, while maintaining at least if not more surface-level relevance, as a song about a creepy and hostile setting, masks, and the cycle of night to day.

Of course, finding the music that matches the game so well is only a quarter of the battle, and the rest is managing to match it all together to create a product that’s both fitting and entertaining.  Eldritchdraaks is up the task.  I love the individual scenes that fit into the lyrics like a glove, such as 0:34, in which the song declares that the subject is in the dark but not all alone, and we see Link falling in the dark, but surrounded by the many masks which will assist him on the journey (thus he’s not alone, albeit in a much more positive sense than the music originally intended).  And I love 1:56, talking of making the listener “one of them” and showing the scene of Link as a wooden creepy-as-hell figure*

I love the way the scenes used for the chorus not only match the lyrics, but follow a theme, with the first one at 0:37 connecting the chorus’s subject of masks with the main 3 transformation masks that Link wears in TLoZMM and their origins, and then the second chorus at 2:07 continuing that theme by now focusing on other characters wearing less-central masks that also transformed them, or at least hid the truth of who they were.  I love the similar thematic way that the second part of the chorus each time is used to highlight the evil infesting Termina, the first time emphasizing the major story bosses, the second time focusing on the background villainy, all perfectly building up to the proclamation of the titular evil “It’s Me.”  Damn elegantly done, too, with each embodiment of the expressed evil being slotted into a single repetition of the lyrics.  And I love that the last part of the chorus, having no lyrics to coordinate with, seamlessly blends together with the song’s overpowering tune, giving us a montage both times of scenes that synchronize with each beat that once again follows a theme (music the first time, settings in sequential order of game completion the second time).  And I love that the end of the song coincides with the Dawn of a New Day.

This is pretty much as good as it gets in terms of joining the right visuals and the right game to a song.  I wasn’t kidding before; I earnestly couldn’t imagine how you could make this song better suit 5 Nights at Freddy’s, that which it was specifically created for, than this AMV makes it fit to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.  This is just masterful music video craftsmanship, plain and simple.


Lucy, You Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do: The purpose of this AMV is that of most game music videos: to pay tribute to its subject and tell its story.  And it does it darned well.  As noted, the music is a great match to the discomforting atmosphere and imagery of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and the visuals capitalize on that nicely.  Additionally, Eldritchdraaks represents a wide range of both the most narratively important and the more memorable scenes, characters, and props of the game, furthering the effectiveness of the video as a tribute to the style, and mentality of Majora’s Mask.

It’s also cool, though, in that it not only emotionally tells the story of the game, but also does so more literally, too.  The AMV opens with early content from the game that sets the overall plot up, ends with the game’s own finality, and between these moments contains the majority of the signature, vital parts of the game--the scene selection of this AMV manages to represent Majora’s Mask’s most important plot devices and concepts (the masks, the musical component, the moon, the time repetition, etc), its most important characters, its antagonists, and its settings.  But it goes a step further than just laying out all the pieces of the game: in the last part of the second chorus, we get to see a quick sequence that represents the course of the game itself, showing us each major dungeon to overcome in its beginning state and then the results of Link’s actions, in the order they’re visited in the game, finishing with the climactic showdown in Clocktown and the destruction of the moon.  It’s essentially like a tiny snapshot of the game’s own course...and by having previously showed us all the characters and plot devices and whatnot, the AMV has, in a sense, told us the whole story of the game.  It showed us all the actors and props in the play, and then the events in the order they transpire--a stylized little way of telling TLoZMM’s story without doing a conventional play-by-play.  Very neat!

It’s Me is a really great AMV.  It tells the story and sells the feeling and style of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask extremely well, it’s technically excellent, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch, and its every part seems to have been made with care.  You’re lucky if you can find a single decent RPG AMV for every 20 you come across, but quality outweighs quantity to me, and it’s AMVs of quality like this that keep me an avid watcher of this fan art-form.












* I’m not alone in this; this is also Eldritchdraaks’s favorite part of the video.  To quote the man himself, “My absolute favorite part of the video is 1:53-2:22. With the way the lyrics talk about "making you one of us" and showing the creepy link statue as if to imply Majora wished for Link to fall and become yet another of those to leave behind nothing but a mask. And it's followed up with talking about "doing it all again" because HEY! that's the whole point of the game! the constant resets, falling through the void of clocks to land right back where you started at 6am. Time to do it all again.”

General RPGs' Last Minute Party Members

 It’s been a grueling, emotionally charged journey.  You began it a courageous and naive hero who struck out to save the world, against all the odds...it seems so long ago, like another lifetime.  The hardships of your quest have changed you forever, both the suffering and the joy of perseverance making their indelible mark upon who you are and what you can accomplish...but though you started this thing alone, you didn’t remain so, and you could not have made it if not for the commitment, the heroism, and the support of the unlikely fellowship of allies around you now.  Strangers once, the months of traveling together and relying upon one another, and the burdens upon each of you being shared unconditionally with one another have forged a brotherhood of strength between you all beyond the capacity of language to define.  Months of standing together against cataclysm and villainy, of supporting one another through world-shaking events, have made these companions your comrades, friends, family, and so much more beyond that.

And now, you all stand before the doors of your final antagonist’s personal chambers.  The weight of the world is on each and every one of you, but you know these people around you, and you know that they can carry that responsibility to a one.  You reach forth to push open the doors of destiny...

Then suddenly Steve shows up and he’s all like “HEY guys, got an empty slot in the party for one more!?  AWWWW YYYYYEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH LET’S DO THIS BROSEFS!”

I’m sure we’ve all been there at least once, as regular RPG players.  We go through nearly the entire game, picking up story-relevant characters throughout the first half who relate in some meaningful way to the game’s events, getting to know them and forming our perceptions of the cast and game as a whole through their interactions and roles.  Except then, way later, nearly at the end of the game, a last party member shows up, so tardy that his or her presence feels at best like an afterthought, at worst like an intrusion.  Frequently it’s an individual who has been, until this point, an adversary of sorts, so the fact that they’re joining the party seems meant to be a “oh, cool surprise” sort of thing, like Magus in Chrono Trigger.  But not always; sometimes someone just joins the party right near the end of the game and they’re not really any different from any other given character, like Chester in Tales of Phantasia.

It’s not always quite as extreme as the scenario I described, admittedly.  The dog in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, for example, is added to your party so late in the game that it’s puzzling, but you do have a few more missions in which to use him; he’s not made available only before the final battle.  The Banner Saga trilogy’s Alfrun, Eirik, and Valgard join the party in Chapter 17 of a story that totals 22 chapters as a whole, with less than a quarter of the whole adventure (and half of that last quarter follows a different group, so they’re actually only involved in essentially a latter eighth of the trilogy) to go, but it does mean that they’ll be around for a couple chapters as combatants and personalities to interact with the rest.  Peppita and Mirage in Star Ocean 3 are even worse; they’re finally made available in, what, the last 15% of the game?  But still not the last-boss exaggeration of mine, I guess.

Valkyrie Profile 2 only awards you Lenneth as a party member for the final dungeon, which is awful (though not nearly as awful as what it’s gonna do at the end of that dungeon), but even as incredibly late to the party as this member is, the last dungeon is still not just the final battle.  Likewise, Sonya Shulen might only have avoided going down in Suikoden history books as a villain by the narrowest margin, but she’s still recruitable for a final dungeon rather than just the final boss.  While Magus only joins you once all the compulsory narrative of Chrono Trigger is finished, there’s still enough major story sidequests before the final battle that you could say he’s there for the last quarter of the game, or so.  Adri may be such a late addition to the party in Cris Tales that she joins you on the welcome mat in front of the final boss's door, but at least opening that door is still a matter of going through 4 separate mini-dungeons, and there's also an extra bonus dungeon thrown in there for the hell of it.  Even though that slacker Hanzou only joins the first Shining Force in the last chapter of the game, that still leaves him with a whole 5 battles in which to offer you his assistance.  Wooooo yay.  And going back to The Banner Saga, the character Bastion can take part in even fewer encounters than that!  But still technically more than 1, I suppose.

But even if it’s not always as bad as the scenario I described, there are a few RPGs for which I wasn’t exaggerating.  I Am Setsuna’s Fides, who inspired this rant, quite literally does only join you exactly before the final boss of the game.*  

Yeah, thanks for the timely assist, asshole, I don’t know how we would’ve made it without you.

I really don’t understand what the reasoning is behind this trope 90% of the time.  First of all, it’s a dumb move for a genre so primarily built around character interactions, development, and dynamics as a vehicle of storytelling.  Yes, sure, Magus has had a major part in the game’s events thus far, so he’s been around as a character to the extent that he can be.  But for most cases, the game doesn’t have enough time to tie these last-minute characters emotionally to its whole in any memorable way.  Alfrun, for example, has a lot of exposition and dialogue with other characters during her brief time in The Banner Saga’s main events, and she certainly has her own personality and history of note, but without having been involved in any previous chapter of this epic’s many trials and tribulations, she feels, at the end of the day, like a helpful, likable, but ultimately disconnected outsider to the game’s actors.  Useful and important, sure, a part of the team, no.  Chester basically has just enough time in ToP’s waning story to establish a weird love-hate, very unconvincing romance thing with Arche, and very little else.  And it’s a huge shame for a character like Sonya, because the dynamic of her having been in love with protagonist Tir's father (whom Tir  killed during Suikoden 1’s story) and resenting Tir for it, yet being willing to join his side of the war for the good of the nation, could have provided a lot of really great material to work with had she been recruited early enough to capitalize on its potential.

Second, these last-minute characters are a dumb move for a medium built around devising and fine-tuning one’s method of playing.  Why does Lemon (what a dumb name for an antagonist-turned-hero, or, really, just about anyone) in Shining Force 2 join you just a few battles before the game’s over?  You’ve had almost the entire game to get a feel for the units at your command by then, you’ve built them up and equipped them with what agency you’re able; you know the fighting force’s strengths, abilities, and limitations, and understand how to work with and around them.  And then, right at the end of the game, you’re thrown 1 more potential tool, and you suddenly have to decide whether you want to ignore him in favor of the full team you’re familiar with, or utilize him for his unique and useful qualities, but consequently have to determine which of the characters you know and crafted within your team must be left on the sidelines as a result.

In a game where party selection substantially affects your gameplay strategies thanks to the variety of cooperative techniques party members have with each other, and where there’s a decently significant element of customization when it comes to battle skills, what is the damn point of I Am Setsuna’s Fides?  Yeah, I spent the entire game becoming familiar with and fine-tuning the other 6 party members to work as a unit exactly to the play style I want, but why not throw all that out of the window and take this new guy out for a test run right as the game’s ending?  Because that makes lots of sense.

I’m not asking for an RPG’s entire cast to be assembled and rarin’ to go by the time the game’s opening is finished.  In fact, that can even be a little boring--Wild Arms 1’s cast was pretty lackluster to start with, and not having any hope of seeing more party members come and liven things up later on didn’t help.  Being able to look forward to the personalities who will join a quest, and the circumstances around their recruitment, is a fun part of RPGs.  But I think it’s probably a good rule of thumb that by right around the halfway mark of your game, the whole party should be formed, because past that point, characters’ stories should be heading toward resolution, not just starting, and their relationships to one another and the plot should be well on their way to the final, cemented overall dynamic.  And past that point, it stops being a novelty and starts being an annoyance to start tweaking your gameplay strategies and dynamics around all over again to test out and potentially incorporate this new dimension.  RPGs should start operating on university rules here: you show up late for class, you don’t get in.


















* Okay, okay, so you CAN, after getting Fides, exit the final dungeon, and there are a few very short story sidequests to engage in before the final battle, similar to Chrono Trigger, which is almost certainly intentional, given the influence CT clearly had on IAS.  Unlike CT, though, you’re never given any narrative nudge or even hint that there’s anything more left to the game than the last battle...and most of the endgame sidequests are just talking to someone, beating a special enemy, and calling it a day., so no matter how generously you want to view the situation, it’s really not very different than how I described it.

The Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q Series's Characters' Loss of Memory

I guess it’s silly to warn for spoilers in a game that is, by now, as old as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q1 is.  I certainly don’t always extend the same courtesy to other RPGs of the same age that I rant about, or even newer ones.  But all the same, SMTPQ1’s plot twists and purpose are very dear to my heart, and I’d hate to think of them having any less impact on a player who expected them thanks to my big mouth, so, just once more, I warn you not to read this rant if you have not yet finished SMTPQ1.

Also, as a separate warning, this is definitely 1 of those rants where I’m gonna talk a lot about something as though it matters a lot when, in fact, it totally does not.  Nothing new, of course, but this time it’s even more than usual.  You’ve been warned.



I think it’s kind of crappy that none of SEES, the Investigation Team, or their associated Velvet Room attendants have any memory of the events of the first Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q game in SMTPQ2.

I ended up really loving SMTPQ1, in spite of how late into the game it was that its story really began taking off.  But I can’t deny that the fact that the casts of Persona 3 and 4 are forced, by Q1’s end, to forget the game’s events is a major stumbling block for the impact and power of the game’s message.  I mean, no matter how beautiful and emotionally, spiritually inspiring Q1’s story of finding worth in one’s life simply for having lived it, it’s still disheartening to know that the Persona characters won’t be able to take joy or comfort from that knowledge, and it’s undeniably tragic that even if they may keep her unconsciously within their hearts, Rei will be forgotten by the only friends she ever was able to make, all the people who knew her best.

Bitter a pill though it is, however, we do swallow it in SMTPQ1, because it’s an unavoidable eventuality.  It’s made clear in the game that each Persona team has been taken from the middle of their games’ courses of events; you couldn’t get the entire SEES team together otherwise, after all.  So for practicality’s sake, the characters of Persona 3 and 4 have to forget about their shared adventure by Q1’s end.  After all, it would make no sense for them to have had this huge, life-altering experience in the middle of their separate adventures, and then make no reference whatsoever to it for the rest of Persona 3 and 4’s events.  Nor would the events of Persona 3 surrounding Shinji and Ken have gone the way they did, had they remembered their time in Q1.  And were the Persona 3 cast to remember their friends in the Investigation Team (who come from a time a few years after Persona 3), it’s almost certain that they would, out of friendship, come to Inaba to help the Persona 4 cast once Persona 4’s events are in swing.

So yes, the player can accept the necessity, at the end of Q1, that the characters involved would return to their own devices with only a subconscious impression of its events, and no tangible recollection.  But why in the world did Atlus choose to extend that amnesia into the events of Persona Q2?

It accomplishes nothing for the Persona 3 and 4 casts not to have their memories of Q1’s events returned to them in Q2.  There’s no conflict of canon--like the first, SMTPQ2 occurs at a midway point of the adventures of Personas 3. 4, and 5, and at its end, all the characters return to their respective games’ stories with no conscious memories of their time in Hikari’s cinema labyrinth, so having Minato and Yu’s groups recall their former interactions together would be fine, since they’ll forget once again by the time Q2 is over.

On the contrary, forcing SEES and the Investigation Team to continue forgetting about their experiences with Rei and Zen in Q1 only hurts Q2.  It provides an obstacle for Q2’s writers, for example, who have to find ways to have characters “meet for the first time” that aren’t just retreading the way they already met for the first time in Q1.  And it creates an unpleasant feeling at the back of the player’s mind during Persona Q2’s events.  After all, it’s easy enough to guess, with familiarity of Q1, that Q2’s ending will once again have the characters all be forced to forget all they felt and learned on this adventure, once again out of logistical necessity.  With that knowledge ever present in the player’s mind, their ability to appreciate and find significance in the events of Q2 diminishes, as they know the whole time that it shall all be forgotten forever in the end.  Yet if the memory of Q1’s events was returned to Persona 3 and 4’s casts at the beginning of Q2, then this wouldn’t be the case--the player would be comforted that Q2’s events would at least have the potential to live on in the hearts of Persona 3, 4, and 5’s casts when next they met in a crossover event like this, since there would be the precedent of that happening for Q1.

Most of all, it feels disappointing, even a little painful, to have Rei and Zen forgotten in this way.  Simple practicality forces one to accept that they’ll be forgotten by their friends in the mainstream Persona games, and that’s unfortunate, but to continue to have them be forgotten even when there’s no need for it?  It retroactively lessens the moving significance of Persona Q1 to know that Atlus ignores it not just out of necessity, but also voluntarily.

It would, in fact, have benefited Q2 if Atlus had seen fit for the characters to remember Q1’s events as Q2 plays out.  It would have, for example, given the casts of Persona 3 and 4 opportunities to connect with each other over that shared experience, build their relationships further rather than have to start from scratch and retread old ground.  And how nice would it have been to have a few scenes in Q2 of characters fondly remembering their friends Rei and Zen, from the first time they united this way?  Plus, the situation could have been useful for the character arc of Persona 3’s female protagonist, Minako, as an outsider in Q2 even to her own friends, since she wasn’t given the opportunity to participate in Q1.

I think it’s likely that there will someday be a Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q3--I certainly am crossing my fingers for it, at least.  And when that day comes, I really hope that the game will allow SEES, the Investigation Team, and the Phantom Thieves to remember their adventures together with Rei, Zen, and Hikari.  It’s going to be a noticeably titanic impediment to the writers to have to come up with new ways for all these characters to meet for the first time for the third time, for starters, and it would be more compelling to see them building off of the interactions and relationships they’ve already created previously and going forward, rather than having to keep seeing connections born of “new” friendships the whole game long.  And more importantly, it’s only fair to the characters who have defined this sub-sub-series so far.  To have them continue to be forgotten about even when there’s no need for it will be doing Rei, Zen, and Hikari dirty.

Fire Emblem 16's Downloadable Content

The DLC landscape in general is not a good one, with the majority of RPGs’ add-ons being unworthy of one’s time and money, ethically dubious, and sometimes even harmful to the integrity of the game they’re attaching themselves to, more like a burdensome leech than a helpful asset.  For every RPG that possesses a DLC suite that enhances one’s experiences with the title, at least 3 others offer the player little more than disappointment.  For every Witcher 3, there’s a Borderlands 1, a Dragon Age 2, and a Shin Megami Tensei: 4-1.  For every Fallout: New Vegas, there’s a Radiant Historia, a Tales of Zestiria, and a Dragon Age 1.  And the situation only seems to be getting worse as time goes on, not better.

So with that in mind, as well as remembering how awful Nintendo’s showing was with Fire Emblem 14’s collection of add-ons, I can’t pretend that I hold high hopes for what I’ll find as I delve into the Downloadable Contents offered by the recent Fire Emblem: Three Houses.  Add-ons have a bad track record, JRPG DLCs have a worse one, Fire Emblem DLC has a bad track record, and Nintendo’s already goofed up a DLC related to this game already by having the worst protagonist in Fire Emblem history become FE16’s representation in Super Smash Brothers.*  Frankly, if this entire thing isn’t a complete disaster, I’ll be shocked.

But I’m a fair guy, so fair that I typed all of this up before any of the DLCs’ releases just so that if Nintendo did defy my expectations, I’d have to give them their full due and eat crow below.  So, low expectations or no, let’s take a look at these DLC packages and give’em their fair shake.



Jeritza: As a free update to the game, the character of Jeritza was added to FE16, becoming available to players as a party member on the Black Eagles path.  On the 1 hand, this is good, because Jeritza is Edelgard’s little murder-monkey anyway so it’s sensible that he’d be on the front lines with her, and who doesn’t like free stuff?  On the other hand, this means that for you to actually experience what Jeritza brings to the table, you have to throw your lot in with that self-important, gullible, tiresome automaton Edelgard.

If you’re reluctant to follow the banner of someone who fancies herself a revolutionary and warrior for the truth yet never once thought to question anything she’s been told by the evil, deception-based shadow-society of villains that controls her family and ruined her life, though, then I’ve got good news: you won’t miss much by skipping this one.  Yeah, it turns out that the 1-dimensional murder-lust of the Death Knight doesn’t make for a much more interesting conversationalist than it makes for an opponent.  I really don’t know what Japan’s obsession with this Vegeta/Bakugo character archetype is, the one where literally the only thing some guy thinks about is being stronger than everyone else, but it is not even close to being as compelling as anime and video game writers think it is.  It’s generally a bad idea to make unrelenting obsession over a hobby the 1 and only character trait of your character to begin with--that’s how you get Hisame from FE14, whose sole memorable trait is an unquenchable need to make and consume pickles--but when that hobby is “Am I better at killing this guy than he is at killing me?” it makes for an especially empty, repellent character.

Okay, I guess, to be fair, Jeritza has a couple decent moments in his Support conversations with Mercedes and, unexpectedly, Bernadetta.  And at least his stupid unwavering interest in the act of killing isn’t entirely his choice, but more a result of the terrible experiments performed on him by Those Who Slither in the Dark (or as I like to call them, Those Who Edelgard Knows are Evil Liars But is Still Gonna Take Entirely at Their Word When it Comes to Rhea).  He’s at least not, say, that small-minded buttmunch Keita from Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2, or any other given examples of the Bakugo-Vegeta archetype who actually choose to have lives so devoid of meaning or value that all they care about is whether they can throw a punch a little better than anyone else.  And actually, I guess that Jeritza’s interactions with Mercedes are a decent little boon for her character.

So...I guess, since he’s free, Jeritza isn’t a bad addition, just not really a good one, either.  If you haven’t already gone through Edelgard’s route, then yeah, Jeritza’s an unobjectionable, if also uncompelling, addition to the cast.  But he’s sure as hell not worth going through the Black Eagle route if you weren’t already planning to do so.


Wave 3: Waves 1 and 2 were all unimportant cosmetics, stat items, and battle maps, so I’m not going to waste time talking about them here; y’all know already whether or not those kinds of window-dressing knicknacks are something you have interest in.  Wave 3 also has some stuff in it that doesn’t matter, like giving you the option to feed animals around the monastery and adding 1 of the most mundane, joyless minigames I’ve seen in years, but there is 1 part of Wave 3 that qualifies as story content: you get a new quest, through which you can recruit Anna!

Wheeeeee.

I’ll never be a true Fire Emblem fan, I think, because I sincerely do not understand the appeal of this perpetually under-developed, shallow merchant-NPC-inexplicably-turned-series-mascot.  Her role in this game certainly hasn’t enlightened me at all on this point--even the woefully unexplored Anna in FE14 had a single Support conversation chain with Corrin, whereas FE16’s Anna has none at all.  The quest to actually recruit her ain’t exactly a shining beacon of effort by the writers, either: you go up to her, have her say a couple lines foreshadowing the final DLC, and then she asks to be in your party.  Truly moving stuff.

Anna does have a Paralogue chapter, which she shares with Jeritza...but it’s trite and meaningless.  All that happens is that Anna brings the party along as muscle for an economic venture, her fellow merchant tries to screw her out of her share, and Anna and company fight back and beat the enemy merchant’s forces.  And then Jeritza wanders off to murder the guy.  Not exactly a stirring narrative in its right, and all it does is reinforce the facts that Anna likes money and Jeritza likes killing people, both of which were quite clear already.

On second thought, looking at Anna, I think the ability to wordlessly cram rotten fish down a stray cat’s throat might actually be the narrative highlight of this DLC package.

This DLC, like Waves 1, 2, and 4, is not sold on its own, but rather is a part of purchasing Fire Emblem 16’s Expansion Pass.  Basically, you either buy all the DLC packs for FE16, or none; there’s no picking and choosing.  Ah, yes, taking the ability to choose away from your customer...truly the hallmark of a vendor with confidence in his products’ quality, eh, Nintendo?  Well, Wave 4 had better be able to justify that $24.99 price tag all on its own, because Wave 3’s Anna is worth nothing.


Cindered Shadows: This is such a dumb idea.  Look, whether Cindered Shadows ends up being good or bad overall, I contend that the idea of there being some group of medieval Dickensian misfits living in the monastery’s basement who somehow can go through an entire over-5-year-long war centered around said monastery without once having a single interaction with the conflict is STUPID.  It’d be like if JK Rowling suddenly told us that there had been a secret fifth house at Hogwarts all along, hiding in a corner of the pantry, and that Blurgledrumbershnufft House just happened to somehow never once come into contact with any other character in the entire school and wasn’t once affected by the yearly catastrophes of dark magic and war that pervaded Hogwarts through the entire book series.

...Oh dear, now that I say it, that totally does sound like something she would spontaneously retcon in a tweet, doesn’t it?  Everyone, for the love of Tophia, don’t tell JK Rowling about Fire Emblem.

But enough grousing about the absurdity of the situation.  Is this DLC good or bad or what?  The answer may shock you.

But it probably won’t, because it’s bad, and that’s what’s consistent to the series, in terms of add-ons.

The main plot for Cindered Shadows is okay as a concept (I mean, besides the whole “hey just FYI there’s been a nest of ragamuffin freaks living in our basement all this time” thing).  At least, I guess.  It’s thematically appropriate to FE16 as a whole, being about the machinations of a villain who can’t accept the death of the woman they loved most in the world and is willing to go to unethical lengths to revive her--the villain is basically a significantly more extreme version of Rhea.  It expands on some of the lore of the FE16 world in new directions, and provides an opportunity for Byleth’s mother to have some slight postmortem importance and presence in the game.  And it...um...

...Actually, I think that may be it for the main story’s positives.  Can’t say all that much for the general flow of events for it; as an adventure, it’s mostly just there.

Unfortunately, the story is extremely rushed once it actually gets going, which really hurts Cindered Shadows on a number of fronts.  There isn’t enough time for the game to capitalize on the villain’s thematic similarity to Rhea (nor point out their differences, so Cindered Shadows manages to simultaneously fail to draw this line of comparison adequately, and incorrectly make Rhea look more like a bad guy if the player does pick up on the comparison).  And on that note, the villain has virtually no time to develop as a character, and certainly not enough of a presence that his big reveal/twist makes any impact on the player whatsoever; the game tries halfheartedly to tell us through other characters’ dialogue why this guy’s villainy is something to care about, but this isn’t the first time that Fire Emblem 16’s approach of Tell, Don’t Show has been utterly inadequate.

Other pacing problems: while you get an alright feel for the personalities of the 4 new party members, the climax of Cindered Shadows hinges on the overall set of relationships and trust they have with one another, and the length just isn’t such that the strength of their bonds really comes across to you.  The finale to this DLC overall is dissatisfying, with the bad guy just transforming into a corrupted dragon thing offscreen, because the Artificial Drama in RPGs for Incompetent Slobs Guidebook says he has to, and there’s no lasting result or message that affects any of the characters.

And can we talk about Byleth’s mother?  The story also goes fast enough that it completely misses the huge opportunity to develop Byleth as a character through the fact that the story is centered around her/his mother’s life and death.  Nintendo already bungled the 60+ hours of game time you spend with Byleth in terms of character development; Byleth is, as I’ve noted before, a colossal failure as a silent protagonist, and silent protagonists are generally already failures as characters.  Cindered Shadows having Byleth’s previously-almost-entirely-unmentioned mother as the centerpiece of the plot’s table was Nintendo’s last chance to actually fucking do something with Byleth, develop her/him in any goddamn meaningful way.  But like every other table centerpiece I’ve ever seen, this opportunity is a complete waste of space, decorative rather than at all valuable.  Byleth has no fucking reaction whatsoever, as always, doesn’t advance in any way as a character, doesn’t give the slightest indication that the involvement of her mother in this story has any draw or drama for her at all.  Not that it’s easy to blame her/him, of course, given that basically the only thing this DLC really tells us about Byleth’s mom was that she loved Jeralt, which was already known to us, but still!  This entire side story gives the impression of having been created for the sake of wringing some drama out of Byleth’s family and origins, and yet Nintendo did nothing with it!

But of course, why waste those precious 8 hours or so of the DLC’s main campaign on any of that thinky-thinky stuff?  What the players really want is for 5 of those 8 hours to be dealing with unceasing waves of enemy reinforcements!

But the main story of Cindered Shadows isn’t the only thing about it, of course.  Yuri, Balthus, Constance, and Hapi, the 4 new party members it adds, are the other half of its content.  So how do they shake out?

Ehhh.

They’re not bad characters, and Nintendo did take steps to fully integrate them into the game proper--they have lines of dialogue throughout the game as any other party member does while you’re going around Garreg Mach and talking to people, they chat with one another and certain other characters during meals, there are a few situations during the major battles of the game proper in which they’ll bandy words with their foes, and so on.  As pieces in FE16’s character collection, the party members of Cindered Shadows don’t feel like outsiders.  And credit where it’s due, a couple of them even manage to expand on other characters through their presence--Constance provides another desperately-needed Support conversation to flesh out Jeritza (it’s not much, but he’s so lacking in general that even just a little character development is invaluable for him).  And Yuri provides a completely unexpected plot twist to Bernadetta’s backstory that took me totally by surprise, which is neat.

...And, of course, anything that gives more screentime and dialogue in general to Bernie-Bear is a solid positive in my eyes.  Between her and FE14’s Mitama, I’ve arrived at a far greater understanding of the siren call of the Waifu than I had prior to modern Fire Emblems.  So thanks for that, Nintendo.

Back to business: at the same time, though, all 4 of the Cindered Shadows party additions are easily among the lesser characters of Three Houses as a whole.  They’ve got personalities, and backstories that inform them, but not a lot really stands out about them on either point.  Yuri’s got a decent history, but a boring personality, Balthus is basically just Hobo Raphael, Constance is another individual whose motivations revolve entirely around her status (or lack thereof) as a noble,** and Hapi is a pill whose history sounds like it has potential, but isn’t explored much.  They’ve got Support conversations with some of the game’s characters beyond just one another, but it feels like they’re missing some Supports they ought to have.  For example, with the way that Yuri feels about the nobility as a whole, you’d think he’d have some conversation chains with at least Edelgard and Claude, not to mention perhaps Ferdinand and Lorenz.  Given that her existence revolves around being a noble who's lost her social status, shouldn't Constance have a Support chain with Catherine?  And what was the point of Ashe recognizing Yuri at the beginning of the DLC if he wasn’t going to be 1 of Yuri’s Supports?

Also, half the Cindered Shadows characters seem to have been built primarily around some quirk personality traits that are weird, silly, and stupid, even by Fire Emblem standards.  Hapi’s only notable contribution and involvement in Cindered Shadows’s main story is the fact that when she sighs, it summons monsters.  What the hell kind of defining quirk-trait is that?  Forget Final Fantasy 8’s Zell and his hot dogs, forget Asdivine 4’s Olivia and her glaring at stuff, even forget Tales of Eternia’s Max and his utterance of the word “Yeah.”  Hapi’s foundational quirky trait is so dumb that it might rival Millennium’s James, a man defined by the enjoyment of wearing a hat.

And then there’s Constance, who might somehow be worse, as she suffers from possibly the most made-up mental illness of all time: when she’s in the shade or indoors, Constance is a brash, aggressive, haughty go-getter, but if she’s in sunlight, suddenly she becomes quiet, humble, and self-deprecating to a tiresome fault.***  Yes, at any given time, Constance is a single passing cloud away from going from Marianne to genderswap-Lorenz and back again.  Really, Nintendo?  This is the best you could come up with?  A character who makes Dragon Ball’s Launch look serious by comparison?

So unfortunately, this DLC is, as a whole, kinda bad.  It’s sloppy because its storytelling is rushed, and the characters it adds bring a few positive elements to the table, but are ultimately lacking, and half are highlighted by such absurdly dumb gimmick traits that I have to wonder whether Nintendo assigned whoever came up with the keychain Pokemon to develop them.  If Cindered Shadows were, like, $5, then I’d say it was an alright purchase.  Maybe even worth as much as $10, if you’re a huge fan of Fire Emblem, as the main campaign and characters’ Support conversations shake out to about 10 hours or so altogether.  But as I mentioned earlier, FE16’s add-ons are an all-or-nothing venture; you either buy them all for $25, or you don’t get any.  And since none of the previous DLCs to Wave 4 were worth anything at all, Cindered Shadows is essentially saddled with justifying that 25 bucks all on its own, which it just can’t do.  In no reasonable terms can one view the cost of the Expansion Pass as anything less than 2.5x more expensive than what Cindered Shadows is worth, and even that’s a generous estimation.



So, the final verdict for Fire Emblem 16’s Downloadable Content?  Awful.  Unsurprisingly, given what I said before: A, Nintendo’s history with Fire Emblem add-ons, B, JRPGs’ history in general with add-ons, and C, just the history of add-ons overall.  I guess I’ll credit Nintendo in that last time, with FE14, they only put even the slightest narrative effort into 1/3 of their DLCs,  while this time, it was 2/3 of them, so, I guess that’s a step up?  But with the exception of a few positive blips here and there, the quality of this new content is still low across the board, under-performing and grossly overpriced.  I’m at least happy that I learned my lesson well enough from last time to experience these through Let’s Play videos rather than waste my money on them, but frankly, I still feel cheated just for the time I invested in this crap.











* Don’t get me wrong, I’m not 1 of those slobbering morons who were shocked by the fact that Nintendo stupidly decided to shove another Fire Emblem character into the roster.  I think that for that to surprise you at all, you basically have to never have played a Smash title since the original N64 version; any idiot looking at the Smash roster’s growth from 1 game to the next could see that Three Houses’ inclusion was regrettably destined.  But couldn’t Nintendo have at least given us a better character than Byleth?  I can’t think of a less worthwhile representation for the game than the static, less-personality-than-a-tree-stump Byleth.  Even Dimitri, Hubert, or Edelgard would have been better selections--and they’re a dipshit, an asshole, and a dipshit AND an asshole, respectively!


** I do admit to quite enjoying Constance ripping Ferdinand a new asshole in their initial Support conversation.  That, however, is fairly subjective, as I generally just don’t like Ferdinand.  Guy’s a dingus.


*** I find it amusingly ironic that, when this aspect of Constance is first introduced, Dimitri observes that he’s never seen anything like this before.  Because if anyone in this game should be able to identify with an unwell mind instantaneously going from 1 extreme to another, it’s the guy who goes from 0 to CRAWWWLING IN MY SKIIINNNNN in 60 seconds.

Beautiful Desolation

Ah, Indie RPGs.  As the mainstream developers like Activision/Blizzard and especially Bethesda continue to make their priority the separation of consumers from the money they’ve earned by any scummy means necessary, in place of the quality of their work, the Indie development community has fast become the more reliable industry for providing actual, honest-to-Erastil salable video games as its wares, rather than unabashed monetization schemes tacked onto lazy, unfinished faux-games like Fallout 76.  There are plenty of exceptions on both sides, of course, with a few ethically upstanding mainstream companies like CD Projekt Red (most of the time, anyway; can't say I'm pleased by their recent decision to abuse their employees with crunch after promising they wouldn't--that's some Pete-Hines-level lying right there) and a few shamelessly avaricious, soul-hollow Indie companies like Glumberland, but generally speaking?  If you want to be treated like a human being purchasing a product, you’re better off buying an Indie video game, these days.  Of course, if what you actually want is to be treated like a dairy cow whose only purpose in life is to be milked with efficient, factory-like apathy until you run dry, then by all means, Bethesda, Ubisoft, EA, and their peers will be pleased to make that happen for you.

Yes, the landscape of the gaming industry is indeed a desolate one, RPGs included.  So that’s part of why I’m always eager to laud those little Indie gaming patches of beauty within it when I find them, and that’s why we’re here today...even though, if I’m to be honest, this recommendation will be a bit of a challenge for me to make, for reasons I’ll get into below.

Beautiful Desolation is a new (at the time of writing this, April, which will probably be several months before it’s posted) game of the isometric style of RPGs,* famous for such lasting classics as Planescape: Torment and the original Fallouts, and such newer works of excellence as Torment: Tides of Numenera and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  Of the 2 ends of the chronological spectrum of this particular genre of RPGs, however, BD is clearly far closer to the latter than the former--in fact, that’s perhaps its greatest selling point.

You see, unlike so damn many other RPGs, Beautiful Desolation’s title is absolutely dead-on.  This is a game for which the striking aesthetic of the far, far future’s post-apocalypse is Job 1.  And that may not seem like all that big a deal, on paper, because let’s face it, that setting has been explored many times, thoroughly and with great visual and audible power.  It’s been many years since the mutant-filled ruins of Chrono Trigger wowed me as a child.  The unsettling contrasts between harsh wasteland and twisted remains of civilization that were explored long ago in the first couple Fallouts, and the harsh conflicts of civilization trying to restart itself among rubble and rebar in the later Fallouts, have likewise become well-known to us.  We’ve seen a world of beautiful melancholy in Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, glimpses of a world of stasis in Suikoden 3, the harsh frozen wastes of ICY: Frostbite Edition, the poisoned earth of Baten Kaitos, a vision of a world of lifeless sand in Radiant Historia...whether a brief snapshot of an end to be avoided or a panorama of a reality to be survived, the whole post apocalypse thing has had plenty of opportunities to be seen and felt in a myriad of ways within RPGs.  So a game for which a significant portion of purpose and appeal is simply “show off the world after the fall of human civilization” doesn’t seem like it could be anything to write home about.

However, the thing about Beautiful Desolation is that it draws its inspiration from the isometric RPGs of the past most in terms of visual style...and when you’re setting your artistic bar at Planescape: Torment and the original Fallouts, you’re reaching for the sky.  But its developers, The Brotherhood, must have some damn long arms, because they meet that standard and even exceed it.  The setting of the varied savagery of Africa’s physical environment is an unexpectedly perfect partner for the singular disturbing beauty of the aesthetic quality and style of the early Fallouts, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Planescape: Torment, and Beautiful Desolation’s ability to join the setting and aesthetic together is generally flawless.  In many ways, it’s impossible to separate what in the wastes and wilds of Beautiful Desolation is the result of a post apocalyptic world from the natural harsh reality of Africa, and the result is a game of striking atmospheric presence with both a new, fascinatingly twisted and creative portrayal of the far aftermath of major civilization’s end, and a gorgeous rendition of the landscape, themes, and historic cultural dynamics of Africa.**

Its aesthetic is definitely the greatest part of Beautiful Desolation, and I’m sure that was the intention of its developers (given the game’s title, and all).  But it has virtues worth noting beyond that, too.  The use of future-tech is creative, inevitably dark and unsettling, and frequently intriguing in how it both intersects with and diverges from the basic foundations of life and reality--sometimes the objective of your latest quest involves finding a lost piece of incredible technology, and at other times, it’s as rudimentary and fundamental as finding a good place to grow a plant.  Just as it’s hard to know where the post apocalypse ends and Africa’s natural state begins, so too is it hard at times to separate the natural, the technological, and the mystic from the characters, events, and devices of Beautiful Desolation.  And that’s pretty neat.

The game also does well with presenting some decent choices to the player of who to help and what to do, some of which are tough to make and have no real right answer.  And sometimes, the consequences aren’t as you’d expect, either...I’d advise a healthy habit of saving with several different file slots, just in case.  Although there are a few times when even that may not help, given the length of time it may take to see the results of an action you didn’t even know was significant.***  Also, I like the twist and presentation of its ending.  That stuff’s not where Beautiful Desolation really stands out as its own unique entity, of course, but they’re virtues, nonetheless, and worth noting.

Now, here’s the thing that makes this rant a little challenging for me: I think Beautiful Desolation is an artistic, laudable game, I’m very pleased to have helped to Kickstart it, and I do recommend it on the terms stated above.  But oddly enough, I actually don’t really like it very much myself.

The weakness of Beautiful Desolation is the glue holding its narrative together.  The game has a core story, and that story is okay (but no better) as a whole: help Mark, his brother, and a robo-dog get back to their own time after they’re accidentally taken into the very distant future by a big ol’ techno-divine sitting-in-the-sky thingy.  But that driving motivation never feels like a very powerful force in the game, a goal you’re meandering in a roundabout way towards instead of actively seeking.  I don’t know exactly why that is, to be honest, because most of the time when Mark interacts with major NPCs, his goals toward getting back home are involved at some point or another in the conversation, and most of the substantial locations you can find are related in some way toward the game’s ultimate goal.  And yet, I nonetheless never felt strongly connected to Mark’s quest in Beautiful Desolation, never felt the presence of a story strong enough that it seemed actually involved in the experience of playing the game.

Maybe the problem is that BD is fairly open-ended in how and when you approach the goals of the main story?  But that’s really no excuse; the search for the water chip and subsequent need to stop the Master were always with me in Fallout 1, the stages of Mass Effect 1’s compelling story were never far from my mind as I made unreasonable demands of the Mako while exploring irrelevant alien worlds...Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, ICY: Frostbite Edition, The Witcher 3,  all managed to allow for great exploration and some level of player choice in when and how to approach story goals, yet all possessed stories with a strong enough presence that at no point did they feel faint or disconnected from the experience.  Beautiful Desolation, on the other hand, has an overall plot that’s just kind of limply hanging onto the rest of it.

The other thing that turned me off of getting into Beautiful Desolation is that a lot about the main characters aren’t executed very well.  Pooch I have no problem with; she’s written well enough and I can mostly believe and appreciate her character arc.  But Mark and Don...they just don’t grab the player’s interest the way they should.  There’s great potential there, with Don’s troubled history and what that history has indirectly cost Mark.  But I never once really felt it from either of them, you know?  The way Don is written feels like someone going through the motions of being a man with deep emotional troubles, not someone who’s actually experienced and still grapples with them.  Meanwhile, Mark’s dialogue with Don is much the same--whether you choose to have Mark lash out in pain and anger at Don or rebuild their brotherly love, it never feels like a cohesive emotional story, and either way it feels insincere.

And I’m sorry to say that the voice actors (the English ones, at least; perhaps the performances of what seems to be the default (South African) are better) exacerbate this problem several times over.  Silent, the dialogue between Mark and Don feels somewhat artificial, but delivered by the voice actors for them, it feels bizarrely nonchalant.  Whether the subject is the abuse Don suffered in his childhood, Mark’s pain at losing his wife, a traumatic event during Don’s stint as a soldier, Mark telling Don he’s a piece of shit, or Mark warmly forgiving his brother and making his love for Don known, it all sounds like 2 buddies casually shooting the shit while they’re fly-fishing on a lake.  The overall writing for Mark and Don is unconvincing for who they’re supposed to be, but what chance their characters might have had to draw me into their individual and shared growth in spite of that is snuffed out by the voice acting.

The voice acting for the rest of the cast is kind of back-and-forth in quality, too.  Some characters’ vocals are done well, like Pooch, and a couple are even really good--the actress for the scientist in the hidden frosty region sells her character very well, I think.  At other times, the cadence of NPCs’ dialogue being spoken feels as uninvested as Mark’s tends to be.

Also, as a protagonist interacting with the world around him, Mark can be a bit puzzling.  When the player directs Mark toward neutral or good guy dialogue options, Mark’s fine, if a little underwhelming sometimes, but you often have the option to have Mark act like a big tough guy and throw his weight around.  It’s rather jarring to watch and listen to for a variety of reasons.  For starters, this game has no combat system (beyond a very isolated arena minigame), so most of the time, the player knows damn well that Mark’s not going to be making good on any of his threats.  Also, at least half of the entities that Mark can pull this bully crap with in this game are any combination of bigger, more combat-trained, better armed and/or armored, and in greater numbers than he is, and that’s if they’re not just an outright terrifying embodiment of monstrous death and violence.  So he’s either coming across like a completely needless bully, or more often, like an idiot with no sense.  And lastly, the genial tone that Mark’s voice actor seems perpetually stuck in doesn’t exactly help the situation.

And since I mention it, I’m not entirely sure where I stand with this game’s lack of a combat system.  Now, that may seem hypocritical of me, as I’ve many times said--with pride, even--that the measure of an RPG is, to me, entirely separate from technical details such as the quality of its gameplay, so long as it IS playable.  Even more hypocritical since it wasn’t all that long ago that I made a case for why Rakuen is a fine RPG in spite of having no combat whatsoever.  But hear me out.  Beautiful Desolation isn’t Rakuen.  Rakuen doesn’t have combat because it doesn’t need combat, because fighting isn’t what Rakuen’s about.  The obstacles and problems within Rakuen are personal ones that could be a part of my life or yours, and the purpose of the game isn’t about stopping someone or preventing something from happening.  The story, aims, guiding purpose, and interpersonal conflicts in Rakuen aren’t ones that involve battle any more than those you would find in, I dunno, a romantic comedy, or a soap opera, or an inspirational movie about family ties, or something.

Beautiful Desolation, by contrast, is a story about survival in the post-apocalyptic wildernesses of Africa, involving interactions with tribes who are at war, militarized robot societies, and a technological theme of revivifying the remains of the dead with various sciences.  You will chat with as many, if not more, individuals in Beautiful Desolation whose “face” is a skull in some form of decay and who are animated through technological means alone, as you will with anyone who you can say for certain checks “Living” rather than “Deceased” on his tax forms.  The concept of violent struggle with others is an inseparable component of the game’s setting and several of its themes.  So the idea that Mark, Don, and Pooch are never once forced to fight for their lives--especially if you have Mark going up to towering warriors carrying giant automatic rifles and telling them they better do what he says or he’ll kick their ass--is very strange to me.  It might even be part of what disassociates me from the game.  Even in as low-stakes a genre as RPGs and even to a player like myself who likes lower difficulties, doesn’t go near Shin Megami Tensei Persona Q’s Risky mode, and spams the Reset button shamelessly to avoid companion perma-death in old Fire Emblems and Romancing Saga 3 and whatnot, Beautiful Desolation has very little weight to its conflict.

On the other hand, even though the setting and several themes of the story essentially demand it, I can’t deny that a battle system has no real relevance to what Beautiful Desolation is ultimately here to accomplish, nor to its primary virtues.  Sure, Beautiful Desolation wants to tell you the story of Mark and company traveling through and surviving post-apocalyptic Africa...but more than that, it just wants you to experience that world.  Mark’s quest is not the purpose, but an excuse for The Brotherhood to convey to you the heart and soul of an Africa of the distant, creative future, which is more than ever the Africa of our distant, formative past.  And accomplishing that doesn’t require little guys with guns and swords taking turns making white numbers appear over each other’s heads.  It just needs you to lean in with interest to try to figure out where the twisted biological origins end and the animating technology begins in the bartender you’re talking to, to take a moment to admire the way in which nature’s flora has reclaimed an aircraft hangar for its own, and to feel the withering, silent heat of a settlement situated in a barren plain

And that’s what my conflicted recommendation for Beautiful Desolation comes down to, I suppose.  The game has problems with its storytelling, big ones.  They’re not aggravating problems like the nonstop anti-adult chatter of Jude in Wild Arms 4, or the convoluted, absurd idiocy with which Nomura explores the full range of emotional nuances of the human condition (as long as part of that human’s condition is NOT having yet graduated from middle school) in Kingdom Hearts.  That is to say, BD’s flaws aren’t actively working against it to make the experience as a whole negative.  They’re just problems of being lacking; Beautiful Desolation is wanting when it comes to cohesive, present, and convincing elements of storytelling.  And that’s the stuff that really matters to me when it comes to RPGs, the stuff upon which I will almost always judge an RPG as good or bad.  So if you’re at all like me, well, I can’t really recommend Beautiful Desolation.

But I do respect its artistic virtue, and I recognize that it’s on that virtue that it almost entirely stakes itself.  Beautiful Desolation’s purpose for being is its art of ambiance and creativity, rather than its art of story and characters.  And on that regard, it certainly succeeds, as a vehicle for a post apocalyptic world and (as far as I can tell) as a tribute to much of Africa’s physical personality and its cultural heritage.  There’s certainly an audience that enjoys immersing themselves into a new, striking setting and becoming enchanted by its nuance and craft, enough that they don’t need, as I do, a narrative purpose present at all times to shepherd them along.  And to those of you who may fit into that group, I say, by all means, consider giving Beautiful Desolation a try.  I expect you’ll greatly enjoy it.












* Although, inspiration notwithstanding, I expect not many people will agree with my classifying Beautiful Desolation as an RPG (in fact, it’s not even listed as such on GOG, and GOG tends to play at least as fast and loose with that label as I do).  But it’s my blog and my readership is low enough that you all can’t possibly outnumber me too greatly, so nyeh on you!


** I mean, I think.  I’ve got no personal experience with the continent, and to say I have even a layman’s impression of the cultural history of any of its nations and peoples would probably be an exceptionally generous estimation.  But from what I’ve read of others’ impressions of the game, I seem to be generally correct in my impression that Beautiful Desolation accomplishes its intent of capturing the heart and soul of Africa.


*** I think I may have accidentally doomed the world in my first playthrough just by using a certain item on a certain machine without realizing it would do anything, with the immediate result not giving any indication of what was to come and the final result only being revealed like 4 hours of gameplay later.  Which irritates me, honestly; I can’t help but feel a little resentful toward The Brotherhood that an innocuous bit of curious “try every item on everything” (which is a fairly standard rule of behavior in point-and-click games of this variety) could have such consequences.  Word to the wise: don’t go sticking nanite technology in stuff willy-nilly.

Deus Ex 1 and 3's Use of News Media

The Deus Ex series is not always subtle about its messages.

It is, in fact, at times almost amusingly blunt and inelegant. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love Deus Ex 1, 2, and 3, and so far I’m also quite enjoying Deus Ex 4 (this rant is being published in the midst of my playthrough of DE4). I love what they want to say, and I even love how they say it. But to pretend that Deus Ex is always graceful about its wish to awaken the sheeple is to be delusional. Most of the time, Deus Ex delivers its messages about the quiet subjugation of humankind by the secret elites in such a forthright, nakedly earnest fashion with its exposition and dialogue that it can actually be kind of funny. I mean, I think DE1 and its protagonist JC Denton are actually by now most recognized for their memes!

Nonetheless, the Deus Ex series has its subtle moments, too. Blunt, this-is-how-the-conspiracy-works dialogue may be their favored method of communication, but the games also frequently employ more skillful methods in informing their audience of the ways in which society is coralled and controlled. You may remember, for example, that I really liked how Deus Ex 2 showed the way those in control can manufacture and use artificial rivalries as a way to distract and manipulate the common man through the Queequeg and Pequod coffee chains (even if the pace of DE2’s events completely sabotaged that revelation’s power). And 1 of these subtler methods that I think Deus Ex executes very well is the way in which DE1 and 3 show that modern news media can be used to cover up all manner of clandestine malicious activities in the world.

Now, Deus Ex makes the point that major journalism corporations shouldn’t be trusted implicitly in a few different ways, and some of these strategies are straightforward and blunt, as one might expect. With 1 method, there are multiple scenes and pieces of dialogue which have society’s shadowy masters outright speaking of how they’ll direct media outlets to report on an event or situation with the express intention to deceive the public and incite them to act (or decline to act) in a specific desired way. Another way: there are also times through the series in which you can interact with various NPC members of the public, and their dialogue will reflect natural reactions to and thought upon the content of the recent news programs. While perhaps not as hamfistedly forward as the traditional anime-tastic “mysterious dark villain council sit and discuss their sinister plans in as awkwardly vague a manner possible” approach, this is still also a pretty forthright, almost crude method of making Deus Ex’s point about news media as a tool of conspirators. Deus Ex 3’s approach of letting you read various communications in a major media corporation’s offices about what can and can’t be reported on, and their stated goals on what paths of thought they want the populace to be treading, is somewhere between Method 1 and 2 in terms of clumsy forthrightness. And in Deus Ex 4, they have sidequest content just start actively screaming in your face that corporate media can’t be trusted; 90s anti-drug PSAs have more subtlety than DE4 on this matter.

These are all fine storytelling approaches, honestly, but at the same time, they’re also as surface-level, hit-you-over-the-head-with-it as...well, as your typical vocal conspiracy theorist. The problem with that is, we’ve reached an age when for every 1 actual, earnest truther sincerely trying to keep the public safe and informed, there’s at least 10 charlatans all parroting each other’s fabricated and/or misleading “evidence” so they can prey on the gullible for profit or political gain. And these countless snake-oil salesmen of information all mimic the style of the few authentic conspiracy theorists, so they, too, are gracelessly forward with their never-ending “this is how they do it, people, this is how they control the narrative!” statements. So...when I hear and read these blunt attacks that the Deus Ex series makes on mainstream journalism, my reaction is mostly a disinterested, “Yeah, gotcha, heard it before, can’t trust the news, move on. What else have you got?”

But Deus Ex 1 and especially 3 do have another way of communicating to the player their message of major news media’s agenda and deception, and this last method is really effective and great. They use the game’s flow of events itself to make their point, and let the player do the math him/herself. There are several points in the course of DE1 and especially 3 between major story arcs at which JC and Adam have the opportunity to traverse the city streets, spending some time exploring, talking to the random citizenry, engaging in sidequests, and so on. And 1 of the things you can have Adam and JC do during this time is to listen in on or read breaking news bulletins.

And very frequently, at least 1 recent news story will be about an incident that JC or Adam was just involved in during his last mission. Only, the article will inevitably report the incident incorrectly, whether it be downplaying whatever disruptions and destruction Adam/JC caused, attributing the events to someone else’s doing (usually whatever illegal or terrorist group is the most useful scapegoat), claiming that something completely different occurred, or outright denying that anything of interest happened whatsoever. It’s a really great way of calling the audience’s attention to Deus Ex’s message about media cover-up, not just because this shows it in action without having to holler a dissertation about it into your ear as DE usually does otherwise, but also because this has the immediate attraction of being something the player him/herself was actually involved in. Since Deus Ex makes sure in every mission to give the player a lot of agency about how to approach JC and Adam’s goals, making the execution of that mission far more personally involving, the fact that the headlines are misrepresenting the events of DE1 and 3’s stories becomes more noteworthy to the player. The natural response will be for him or her to think something along the lines of, “Wait, I was just there, I did all that. That’s not how it happened at all!” They’re not just misrepresenting the game’s lore and events, they’re misrepresenting the player’s own work, and that calls a natural attention that the normal “this is what’s happening and it’s bad” approach doesn’t command so easily.

Additionally, while neither Deus Ex 1 nor 3 leaves the purposes and dangers of journalism cover-ups ambiguous in their narratives, these moments of the player’s hearing about how his or her own actions are being hidden tend to come at the player’s own pace of exploration. Rather than a part of the game’s flow with a set, specific time of revelation, these reports are generally something the player naturally discovers him/herself while playing, which makes the process of Deus Ex communicating this idea of news media distrust feel more like the player having put it together him/herself, which is a more enjoyable and compelling way to receive the lesson than just having Deus Ex 3’s Alex Jones equivalent* hollering the message directly at you whenever you pass by a radio. Yes, you find them quite easily and at the times that the game’s narrative would like you to, so there’s perhaps not that much difference in the long run, but it at least feels appealingly like a reward for the player’s exploration and puzzle-solving diligence to find, recognize, and realize the falsehood of these headlines, and that makes the message more compelling.

It all comes back to the power of showing over telling, really. Now, I’m a proponent of doing both effectively, and Deus Ex as a whole is thankfully smart enough to both show and tell its messages in a variety of ways. But there’s no denying that showing almost always has the upper hand as a narrative device than just telling, and the way that Deus Ex handles its theme of news media manipulation is a fine example of this: the many instances of the games’ characters and communiques telling you about it are perfectly functional, but what really drives the point home is the headlines and broadcasts that show you the process in action. Deus Ex 1 and particularly 3 do a damn fine job with this, so I say kudos to their writers for their work.















* There’s an endorsement that didn’t age well. Although DE3’s only got itself to blame for backing that horse; it wasn’t really much more difficult to suss out that Jones was a profiteering blowhard joke back in 2011 than it is today.

Fallout 4's Fourville Mod is Pretty Darned Great

Generally, when I make a rant listing the best mods for a game, I follow 3 main guidelines for what does and doesn’t get mentioned: A, it’s a mod that enhances the storytelling, lore, or overall core aesthetic experience of the game, (enhancing the post-apocalyptic exploration and ambient storytelling of Fallout, restoring planned content that didn’t have a chance to get implemented due to deadlines in a game like Knights of the Old Republic 2, correcting a glitch that prevented a quest from starting in a game like Planescape: Torment, etc); B, it’s very good (duh), and C, it’s authentic to the body and soul of the game. This last prerequisite is why I don’t mention many quest-based and campaign mods, because generally, there’s something about them that tends to make them stand out from the game proper. Sometimes it’s a contradiction to the actual canon of the game or series, sometimes there are elements in them that conflict with the setting or aesthetic of the source material, and sometimes the style and/or quality of writing for the mod is noticeably distant from that of the actual game. You can see this when looking at my list of Fallout 3’s best mods--though I give great praise to user content that captures the game’s post apocalyptic aesthetic by adding more elements of exploration, or restores some of the intended radio material and adds appropriate Fallout-based content to it, I don’t recommend a single story-based mod in that rant, in spite of there being dozens and dozens of such fan adventures available for the game. The simple fact is, as a general rule, such mods come across, at most, as fanfiction, rather than as true aspects of the game’s experience.

But there is the occasional exception.*

Fourville, a Fallout 4 mod created by one Seddo4494, is an exception of such quality that I can’t just quietly edit my original Fallout 4 mod rant to include it, as I have for a couple other mods that were released after that rant had been published. No, this one needs the full due of its own rant. Because Fourville is awesome. This mod, created by a single person, is a better, more genuine, and more substantial slice of the Fallout experience than anything the hundreds of employees of Bethesda have labored upon during the last 4 years.** It’s honestly more like a new, real DLC for Fallout 4 than it is just a mod.

First of all, Fourville is written really well. The dialogue is smooth, natural, and at the same level as the “real” game, as is the text of the holotapes, notes, and logs to be found. Which is very unusual, to be frank; user-created adventures can be decent, but there’s almost always a disconnect between the writing of a fan and the writing of the game proper. In most cases, the former is noticeably worse overall--and that’s not a mark of shame, or anything like that. A labor by 1 person for no certain reward beyond a love of the game is a different animal from the product of a team of professionals paid to do their job competently. And even if a mod’s writing is around the same level of quality as Fallout 4 as a whole, it still usually stands out for just aesthetic reasons. We all have our own narrative voice, after all, and the manner in which a mod’s author communicates, from phrases to choice in vocabulary to sentence structure, will typically differ enough from the writers of Fallout 4 that it does feel different.

But the narrative voice in Fourville manages to be so close in both quality and style to that of Fallout 4’s that it felt indistinguishable to me. Even the way dialogue and monologue is put together, such as the tone and pauses in some of the holotapes, feels authentic to the game.

And while still on the subject of the writing, the overall story and characters of Fourville are solid, too. The plot of this mod is simple, but enjoyable. Between its sequence of main and side quests, it flows naturally, and the story and settings are composed cleverly enough that even as you’re immersed in the mod’s surface-level adventures, there are bits and pieces here and there, such as certain dualities in the cast and the state of Mr. Quinn’s room, that subtly maintain a feeling of unease in you, as something is clearly out of place, and keeps you guessing about what may or may not be going on at a deeper level. It’s quite elegantly done, really, and the ultimate twist at the end of the mod is layered, interesting, and creative enough that even if you’ve guessed part of it, there’ll still be aspects of it that will pleasingly interest you and give you retrospective appreciation for the mod’s course.

Beyond the main quest, the rest of the adventure’s components are crafted well, too. While plenty of its quests are pretty basic bread-and-butter bits of “fetch this,” “kill these guys,” “go back and forth between these people” scenarios, there’s also a lot of mini-stories in Fourville that are dynamic and engaging, and work well with the characters and Fallout setting to keep your interest--I found the sidequests involving the Wattz factory and the doctor’s brother fun and even a little suspenseful at times. The mod has a purpose to communicate, and food for thought, and I really like that. As a matter of course, there are also some relatively difficult moral choices to be made in Fourville, too, as any good Fallout venture should have, and while I do tend to care perhaps a little too much about my actions in video games, I enjoy the fact that a couple of the choices I had to make in Fourville are ones that my conscience is still grappling a little with. In fact, I actually restarted the mod and played it a second time just because earlier into it, I backed a character who I came to believe is mistaken. If I care enough about the potential consequences of a decision that I go back and redo the whole adventure as a result, that’s a point in favor of that mod’s writing quality.

The characters are also pretty decent. Most are stock, meat-and-potatoes personalities that get the job done and nothing more, I suppose, but that’s true of a Fallout game as a whole, so it’s hard to see that as a flaw, and there are some individuals whose personalities, character history, and/or depth stand out for their high quality, such as old Mr. McNally, Roscoe, and Betty. Additionally, some of the after-the-fact characters whose stories are told through holotapes are really great--the story of the Armstrong family is quite compelling, the FEV scientist is a skillfully-created detestable asshole, and to be frank, I think the series of records left by a student and his teacher is among the best holotape stories that the entire Fallout series has to offer! And I should point out that some of my favorite moments of Fallout, period, have been journals left behind by characters in Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4.

So in terms of writing quality, Fourville is top-notch from front to back. But I think it’s also important to recognize that it’s exactly as well-constructed on the material level, too. Fourville adds a decent handful of locations to the game, all involved in its quests, and they’re constructed very well--more than functional, they’re interesting to navigate, providing new playgrounds within the Fallout setting to explore and appreciate. Plenty of locations are straightforward and basic, but settings like the vertically-dominated apartment building, the dynamic flooded Wattz factory, and the cave of Mr. Abominable have more singular personality to better draw you into your ventures through them. The locations of Fourville are competently coded and organized, with few mesh conflicts, and with clutter items and containers arranged in quantity and placement that feels rewarding to careful exploration, but true to the standard that Fallout normally sets.

Another technical detail where Fourville shines: the voice acting. I have to emphatically applaud the actors who voiced Fourville’s large cast. It’s rare for a quest mod to actually have voice work for its characters, and on the occasions that you do find a fan adventure that has spoken lines, they’re pretty much always...well, it’s clear that the lines are being read by amateurs at the craft. And I don’t fault them that, because it’s a lot of work to add voiced dialogue, and the fans making these mods (and what talents they can reasonably gather for their projects) aren’t trained, paid professionals in quality recording booths. Still, there’s no denying that the quality or lack of spoken dialogue in quest mods is 1 of the biggest ways in which immersion is broken.

But Fourville’s voice acting? Clean, exact, varied, competent, and well-directed. The voice actors are on-point, they know how to use emphasis, emotion, and accent to build their characters, and they’re coming through loud and clear. If anything gives away Fourville’s status as a mod rather than a legitimate part of Fallout 4, it sure as hell ain’t the vocal work. I’m seriously impressed on this point.

And related to that, I also have to give special kudos to Fourville for its use of Nora/Nate’s dialogue, too. Another typical issue with quest mods is that Nora/Nate’s lines are silent, since obviously Courtenay Taylor and Brian T. Delaney are gonna be difficult to get hold of to record new lines for a fan project. Fourville gets around this, however, by having the Sole Survivor’s responses to dialogue and quest choices always use lines recorded for the main game, so as a result, Nora/Nate still seems to be an active part of Fourville’s events and community as she/he interacts vocally with others. Now, in fairness, this isn’t the only mod out there that’s done this, but Fourville has certainly incorporated Nora/Nate’s lines into its exchanges more naturally and intuitively than anything I’ve seen prior.

One more point of technical prowess in Fourville’s favor: this is not a small adventure. The size of this mod, with its quests, locations, characters, and alterations to existing locales, is that of an outright Fallout DLC--perhaps not as big as, say, Far Harbor or Point Lookout, but easily an adventure of greater size than Lonesome Roads or Operation: Anchorage. And definitely bigger than the majority of DLCs that Fallout 4 ended up with. To maintain the level of professional quality that Fourville has for a creation of such scope is very impressive.

Fourville’s also considerate with how it’s been set up. There’s a little content within it that will connect with the Far Harbor and Vault 88 DLCs, but you can still play this mod even if you haven’t purchased those add-ons. The quest related to Far Harbor is a very small and quick side mission which won’t even come up if Far Harbor isn’t installed, and the quest involving Vault 88 (in which you go on a pilgrimage of sorts to the Vaults of the Commonwealth) has been designed so that you can complete it with only the vanilla game’s available Vaults.

Beyond the strength of the writing and the careful architecture of its components, Fourville is, perhaps most importantly, a genuine Fallout experience on every major and minor level. The adoration its creator has for the series as a whole is proudly evident. Its main story is tied inseparably to the series’s major points of lore and approach to storytelling. It also incorporates elements and references to each of the previous major Fallout titles in a pleasant fanservice capacity, but not so strongly as to seem heavy-handed. It even references Fallout 76 with a joke at 1 point about holotapes being all the rage down in West Virginia--light enough to stay classy by not expressly criticizing Fallout 76 (although you know I’d have no problem with going all-in on the Bethesda-hate), but still scathing in its light touch through the effective implication that there’s no substance to the game to make use of beyond a quick wisecrack.

Beyond the tangible, Fourville shows a love for Fallout in its narrative methods and the little details. Fourville’s locations have solid ambient storytelling with their skeleton and object placement, which has been a detail of style for the Fallout series from its earliest days that works into its charm, morbidity, humor, and postmortem storytelling. Likewise, the number of and attention paid to the holotapes is a big plus. The creator of Fourville also clearly understands how big of a part exploration and hunting for objects of interest is to a post apocalyptic setting, because Fourville adds a new set of Bobbleheads to be found through its course that each confer little bonuses like (but not the same as) the original Bobbleheads in the game, giving you incentive to search every nook and cranny of each place you visit--and at least 1 of them is hidden quite cleverly, in a spot difficult to return to (I’ll give you a hint: sewer system), so they’re rewarding to find beyond just the, well, reward. The names of quests are often good references to bits of American culture, which is another fun little Fallout signature.

Fourville also takes great pride in connecting itself to Fallout 4, standing as a representation of the game it’s attached to in ways both great and small, some of which really brought a smile to my face, as someone who sincerely loved Fallout 4. While Fourville primarily uses its own locations for the majority of its quests, it nonetheless makes sure to incorporate many of the original locales of the Commonwealth into its course, and even some of Fallout 4’s own characters, which is a nice touch, because that cements one’s feelings of Fourville as a part of Fallout 4, not just a separate entity artificially grafted onto it.*** As you’d expect, synths and the conflict of the Institute are involved to a degree (although not in a major way--which is good for Fourville, as it’s allowed to focus on its own story and ideas).

As much as the bigger stuff, though, it’s also through the tiny details that Fourville connects itself to Fallout 4. Though Fourville doesn’t incorporate much of the settlement building system into its content, it does involve it a little in 1 quest, and it provides a separate Bobbhead stand for the Vault 4 Bobbleheads it adds, so you can display them just as you can for the main game’s set. Another quest actually incorporates the tokens you get for turning in Overdue Books, which is a gameplay quirk that Fallout 4 made surprisingly little use of, considering the trouble it must have been to set up, so it’s neat that Fourville remembered it, almost like fixing a slight oversight of the main game. As mentioned before, some of the game’s DLCs come into play, just enough to again build the feeling of Fourville’s being a part of Fallout 4’s whole, without (as mentioned above) closing the door on any player who hasn’t bought them. And Fourville even gives an opportunity during 1 quest to use some Silver Shroud lines! Who doesn’t love Silver Shroud content?

Finally, Fourville even extends the life of Fallout 4 beyond its own boundaries. 1 of its features is to add a big storage building in Boston, in which are dozens of locked safes filled with the property of the residents of the area’s Vaults. You can’t lockpick these safes, but passwords for these safes will, on rare occasions, be found on the corpses of feral ghoul enemies you’ve defeated. The contents of each safe are often interesting and fun, rewarding the player with item collections that tell you a little about their original owner, and even some rare or unique items, such as a variant of Maxim’s coat or 1 of the Fourville Bobbleheads. It’s fun to bring a password to this storage building and see what prize you’ve found, and since the drop rate of said passwords is way too low for you to get even half of them during the course of your Fourville experience, the mod has now given you a fun extra to look forward to when you play through other mods or revisit Fallout 4’s locations with feral ghouls in them. It’s a way more effective playing incentive than the usual find-and-return quest items like Viable Blood Samples and Technical Documents, because whereas those are just turned in for some caps that haven’t been relevant to you for the last 200 hours of your gameplay, the mystery of what you’re getting keeps you invested in turning the passwords in.**** Not to mention, playing an ethical character in Fallout 4 inevitably means cutting off the ability to turn in certain bounty items (the 2 types I listed a moment ago certainly do me no good), while the Vault resident passwords are something to look forward to finding regardless of past decisions, since they can always be turned in.

Now, of course, nothing is perfect, and Fourville does have a few problems. For starters, the NPCs that Fourville adds all seem to be at Level 1, instead of scaling at all to the player, or even being as capable as most NPCs in the regular game, which...I dunno, it’s not important, I guess, but it’s weird when so many of the individuals you may have to dispose of in the course of the mod’s events just fall apart immediately.

More significantly, there are a few spots in which Fourville can experience a bug or 2, and I can say from experience that at least 1 of them can make progressing a certain sidequest impossible without console commands. That’s always an irritation, no doubt about it. Still, I have to go easy on Fourville here, because for a mod as big and possessing as many moving parts as this, the fact that it works just fine 95% of the time is pretty impressive. I mean, it’s not like Fallout 3, 4, and New Vegas are technically perfect, either; even post-launch patches left all of them in a buggier state than Fourville’s in. Although far less immediately apparent, you could even say the same for Fallout 2; Killap’s Fallout 2 Restoration Project fixed over 1,000 bugs left in the game’s final version. So Fourville's slight technical imperfection really isn't that big a deal, in my opinion.

I also think that the companion that Fourville adds, Logan, falls a little flat. He’s fine enough, as a personality, and the mod puts in the effort to give him a character arc and quest, like the rest of the game’s companions get, and good on Seddo4494 for that. And I greatly respect the work that went into giving Logan a ton of lines that react to the environment, immediate circumstances, and even the game’s story events--from what I understand, Logan will have things to say about many of the main game’s quests and sidequests, which must have required a tremendous amount of work to make happen. As much as I respect that, though, as a character, Logan just doesn’t feel all that interesting to me...I didn’t get invested in his story even as much as I did for some of the regular characters of Fourville, and one’s instinct is to expect more from a party member than an NPC. He’s not bad by any means, but I’d wander the wastelands with most of the vanilla party members of Fallout 4 before I did Logan.

Lastly, the Fourville quest involving the video game doesn’t really sit well with me. I don’t dislike it, exactly, but part of its course is to make a light critique on the current state of the gaming industry. A critique I wholeheartedly agree with, make no mistake! But at the same time, the simple, barely-born state of video games in the Fallout universe doesn’t really accommodate the commentary that Fourville’s making about them. It feels like the kind of lore conflict you see with most other quest mods, where the user’s pulling the Fallout setting a little too far to make it do what they want. And this would normally be a bit of a dealbreaker for me; in most cases, breaking immersion even once like this is what keeps me from actively promoting a mod on this blog. However, considering how great everything else about Fourville is...well, I can let 1 thing like this go, I reckon. Even a petty, nitpicky hardass like me can be reasonable when the payoff overall is so superb.

Fourville by Seddo4494 is a truly excellent mod, a work of high quality in both writing and construction. And it’s a terrific, immersive Fallout experience that appeals to the deepest of fan love for the series. Already a valuable commodity under normal circumstances, the chance to enjoy a rich, authentic Fallout experience is especially priceless in current times, when those who hold the franchise’s license have completely lost their fucking minds (or at least their understanding of basic ethics). I’m adding it to my list of the best Fallout 4 mods, but I really wanted to take the time to give it a full rant of its own, because it’s more than worthy of such. If you love Fallout, check out Fourville!












* Shocking excellence aside, the Calfree Trilogy perfectly captures the Shadowrun experience that Harebrained Schemes created with their campaigns, and uses the series’s own official lore as the foundation to its stories. If anything, the Calfree Trilogy stays even more faithfully adherent to Shadowrun canon than the official games themselves do.

Meanwhile, the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod may not be perfect (although it IS very, very good), but it certainly represents a far more intelligent, consistent representation of the heart and soul of Mass Effect than the toxic, idiotic ending with which Bioware sullied Mass Effect 3. Rather than a deviation from authentic core of the series, MEHEM is the only recourse for anyone who cares to end the Mass Effect trilogy in a fashion true to itself.


** Not that this says a whole lot. The act of consuming an entire can of seasoned breadcrumbs while listening to a bardcore remix of Pokemon music in the bathtub is a more authentic Fallout experience than Fallout 76. In fact, I’d wager that the only thing that could possibly be less Fallout than the current state of Fallout 76 is whatever alteration or addition Bethesda happens to next make to it.


*** In fact, in that regard, I’d actually say Fourville feels more authentically intertwined with Fallout 4 than some of the game’s actual downloadable content. Automatron, Vault 88, and Nuka-World could’ve been added to any Fallout game, really.


**** If this were an EA game (not that Bethesda is any better than them, these days), I’m sure there’d be a joke here about this being what actual surprise mechanics look like.