Navel of Lake

Consider perhaps the most memed card ever. Pot of Greed.

In the older series, Pot of Greed fulfills the same role as any current archetype-restricted searcher or extender. It allows the characters to get at the next card they need for their play.

Yugi for example, consider if he drew Pot of Greed, and immediately used it to draw two Watapon for tribute into Dark Magician. Yugi with a modern deck would instead draw and activate Magician's Souls for the special summon of Dark Magician. Functionally the same, since the difference between normal and special summon isn't relevant in most circumstances.

I know I'm not the first person to point it out, but for sake of additional examples, most extra deck monster types follow the same basic formula as fusion monsters.

Fusion = two or more monsters + spell card (usually)

Synchro = one or more monsters + tuner monster

Xyz = two or more monsters of the same level

Link = one or more monsters of various criteria (link has the most varied criteria)

Just about any archetype of one of these can be translated into another with very little difficulty. Also notably, link isn't even the first that can use tokens - synchro can too, just not as easily.

This narrows down where the power creep really is in the current game, which is in the power scale of individual effects, whether monster, spell, or trap. And the complicated part is where effects interact with each other and where to try to interrupt an opponent. Which can get so absurdly complicated that even officials can get confused.

To elaborate further, the setting is set up with unspoken promises to its characters. For one thing, any card a character can dream of implicitly exists, and a character will be able to make their own unique deck theme with those cards.

From that arrives archetypes that hold true in the real life adaptation of the game. Except with a key difference - the archetypes don't come from the real players, rather, they're copied from existing characters. Naturally, it's because they want to keep selling more cards first and foremost, but even beyond that, establishing a make-your-own-archetype deck formula is not easy, or that viable due to various constraints.

Therein lies the broken promise that keeps me from being particularly invested in anything new from yugioh. If I make a deck, it has to be with cards they provide, and even if I like an archetype, using it feels unfulfilling for me because it's like being given a solved puzzle - the archetype works by virtue of their design, not mine. If I were to copy a meta competitive deck, it's using a solution already arrived at by someone else. And knowing that there's a solution already found is particularly grating on the motivation to try something else.

But because these problems are only in the real world implementation of the idea, the original fantasy doesn't lose its appeal. A power fantasy wherein anyone can 'make it' as a duelist, with a strategy and deck, and perhaps occasionally magic all their own.

The bad (Story wise, the mechanics have serious issues as well but the story side is the primary problem here):

1. The Protagonist

Okay, almost right out of the gates we’re introduced to this black garbed, edgey, shortsighted and hotheaded guy that is clearly more invested in blind revenge than his love interest. I say almost because in the tutorial he’s supposedly before he becomes that way. Now, there is a hypothetically good parallel here with Haseo's spoken intention being very similar to Kite’s, wanting to help someone close to them. However, the execution is poor because instead of trying to investigate and do something meaningful to help, Haseo just has to nurse his grudge against PKs (which is ironic given the fact that he is Sora, even if he has convenient amnesia to forget the events of .hack//SIGN... which also undoes any character growth that Sora might have had in .hack//SIGN, as little as it might have been, so good job with that) with the absolutely ludicrous notion that killing enough PKs will let him track down the mysterious ‘Tri Edge’. It is really hard to relate to, let alone be invested in a character whose only notion of how to proceed is attacking until a way forward reveals itself, or someone (Ovan) throws him a bone. Half the time when I was playing, I wasn't even wanting Haseo to win. I just was hoping that the story would make up for such a poor choice of protagonist. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

2. Who is the Antagonist?

As much as I have problems with Haseo, .hack//GU suffers from a lack of focus. You have Sakaki, resident abusive megalomaniac (no, really, it’s not said outright but might as well be) jerk who is one of the only characters I was annoyed that Haseo didn’t get to finish off. You have Ovan, manipulative jerk who maybe you can forgive for his motivation, but in the end, with all the resources available to him, you’d think he’d have been able to come up with a better plan than just hoping that an extremely risky ploy of resetting/restarting the entire internet would work. Seriously, given what was established in .hack//SIGN, .hack//Conglomerate, and even in .hack//GU with the AIDA server, Ovan got absurdly lucky that he didn’t put however many million players into a coma with that farfetched scheme of his. Speaking of AIDA, you have those digital aliens, which end up being little more than a convenient plot device to make characters crazy or crazier. And finally, you have Cubia, literal eldritch abomination that shows up out of nowhere (existence is only hinted at in the Terminal Disc which wasn't included in the English release) and is the only reason why the revenge plot turns into a save the world plot.

3. AIDA

Okay, so you need a catalyst to cause problems. That’s to be expected, but using a hive mind that is contaminated by a single, aggressive instance among countless is sketchy, at best. In addition, it’s already been established that Vagrant AI can be made as a result of the black box program in the World, so why AIDA and why now? None of these questions are truly answered. There’s the mention that it’s a consequence of Aura’s disappearance, but that is an unsatisfactory explanation at best. The treatment of AIDA is also terrible. Perhaps it’s supposed to be an ‘aggression begets aggression’ scenario, but systematic extermination of AIDA as they appear is an extreme response. I’d have expected better from Yata/Wiseman, especially if he’s employed by CC Corp now. Sure, he has his hypothetically omniscient looking glass, but he does’'t appear to do any real investigation, primarily using it to pinpoint a next target. This is a consistent flaw in the story of .hack//GU, all action and no understanding.

4. Endrance and Mia

If there’s one thing that games in particular should never do, it’s undo the accomplishments of the player. Killing Mia offscreen and before the beginning of the game is a serious blow to everyone who completed Ω Hidden Darkside Holy Ground in .hack//Quarantine, which was the bonus dungeon to revive Mia. But besides that, the characterization of Endrance felt wrong. How people grieve is different per person, and that is understandable, but Endrance had very little self confidence, and was apathetic at best for half of .hack//GU. This is an extreme contrast from what was last shown with Elk and Mia, and a subversion of what growth Elk had in .hack//Quarantine. Based on emails in .hack//Quarantine after Mia is revived, Elk spends much of his time with her, and they adventure throughout the World. Elk supports Mia even though Mia's memory was lacking, and I would like to assume that Mia also supported Elk. Yes, the loss of that support will have hit Elk hard, but I would like to believe that Mia at least tried to promote Elk's individuality as well, to enable him to have confidence and fun on his own or with others as he chose. Endrance's personality does not seem to reflect that, which paints Mia in a poor light. Having Haseo fill Mia's role for Endrance later on in the series is even worse.

But the one detail that I absolutely cannot stand is that Endrance never realized that Mia was always with him (except after one optional event in .hack//Redemption, but it really should not have required that). Avatar Macha is Mia in as literal a way as that can be said, and it’s established in .hack//GU that the Avatars retain some consciousness of the Phases. Even if Endrance was so dependent on Mia that he couldn't socially function without her, this single fact alone should have enabled him to be one of the more stable characters in the game. Instead, he’s basically rendered as the awkward, token gay character (which I'm sure has been made fun of many times), and that’s a massive disservice. At the very least, he does have one of the most heartfelt lines in the series in my opinion, so that’s a positive.

5. The Phase Avatars

Unfortunately, the treatment of the Phases in .hack//GU are a massive disservice in general, compared to their role in .hack//Conglomerate. Infection through Quarantine, they’re the milestone bosses that Kite defeats, and each one has significant impact in the sense that their destruction likewise causes damage to the World as a whole. In .hack//GU, they’re demoted to be little more than tools to be wielded by a select eight people. It’s quite the fanservice to be able to wield Skeith directly, but the execution was poor. There’s the brief sense of awe of ‘this is Skeith’, a terror to many people’s playthroughs of Infection... which diminishes because, in order for the conflicts to be challenging, Skeith has to be at less strength than the other Phases, as well as the sense that ‘oh, it’s a weapon for me to wield’.

In addition, despite the establishment that the Avatars have some consciousness, there is only one scene where Skeith takes control. Now, on the one hand, that’s because taking things out of the control of the player is something that should be exhibited rarely. However, on the other hand this single scene is insufficient to properly demonstrate Haseo actually learning some level of self restraint, and from then on is continually referred to as the token ‘okay, I learned it here’. After all, why should he care about the consequences, when he’s repeatedly established pre- and post- scene that he firmly believes that his means will justify his goal? It wasn’t as though he didn’t warn Kuhn or Pi that he was going to use it. Actually, that brings me to the next point.

6. Forced Failure

The first disc, .hack//Rebirth, is filled with these. So while the series as whole is relatively good about not really taking things out of control of the player, it commits some poor cases where it does worse: forcing the scene where an enemy wins or is going to win despite gameplay indicating otherwise. The arena matches against Bordeau, Alkaid, Kuhn and Pi are all basically forced failures, and all for the same purpose: to give Haseo reason to use Skeith unethically. It’s an extreme disconnect when the player knows that they had the means and capability to win, but a failure was forced in order to make the scene happen. I’m okay with unwinnable battles (example: the very first battle against Sataros and Menardi in Golden Sun at a time when the protagonists are two kids), but when gameplay indicates that there’s no reason for the battle to be lost, that is again, undoing a player's achievement.

7. Aina and the Epitaph of Twilight

Throughout the series, one of the most important aspects to the plot is the Epitaph of Twilight. It’s established repeatedly that there is no complete copy of it. It’s established in the .hack//Conglomerate that Morgana destroyed some of the fragments of it that are in the World. Helba, one of the strongest characters in the series with regards to computers, doesn’t have a copy, given the fact that she comments to Kite and Blackrose that “You’ve reached [the conclusion that we should know more about it] as well, I see.” And yet, in the World:R2, after a catastrophic loss of data for the World:R1, Ovan and Aina happen to get a complete copy.

Setting aside how improbable ‘happening across the Epitaph of Twilight’ is, they keep it for themselves. This important, lost story essentially becomes Aina’s bedtime story. Another aspect of the story is that it's established that it's not a light read (see: any of the fragments that are given in the first series); it’s a story about the end of a world. So for it to become light reading for a character that can’t be older than 10, and to show her giggling as it’s being told, as well as being ‘her favourite book’ is inconsistent at best. Now, it’s not implausible for people to want to keep it for themselves, but if the plot is even remotely attempting to paint Ovan and Aina in a sympathetic light, something like this does not help. Aina immediately embracing the possibility of Cubia destroying the World because Ovan is now in a coma also doesn't help.

8. Pinnacle of Conflict and Aftermath (or rather, the lack of)

If you’re going for a ‘by our powers combined and strength of will’ resolution, it really shouldn’t be done by one guy screaming until Cubia’s core takes critical damage. I’m aware that’s a (slight) over simplification of that particular scene, but for all intents and purposes, it focuses on and therefore highlights Haseo as the hero of the hour. Compare that to the battle against Corbenik - Kite does yell at Corbenik too, but his is not the only attack against the Phase. Aura arrives, bringing with her reinforcements. There’s Orca, Kazu, Sieg, even Sora and the rest of the coma victims which strike first, cracking the shield. Then Blackrose and Balmung strike, making the shield spark even more. Then Kite delivers the flourishing finisher. It is a clear team effort. There’s no such visual indication in .hack//Redemption. It’s a very lazy execution, with Haseo simply absorbing the other seven Avatars and being the hero.

Okay, so regardless, we’ve saved the world from a new network crisis. What now?

Not much apparently.

No real mention of cover up by CC Corp administration that I saw, no epilogue, nothing of note (unless it was in the ‘online jack’ thing that I never watched because the host for that was even more obnoxious than Haseo). Oh, except the opening of the bonus dungeon of the game. Yay?

With the lack of focus, the climax of the story arrives with no true build up, seems to come out of nowhere (which was evidently what they were going for given Cubia seems to have been intended to be a surprise) and then there's no resolution, people return to playing the World:R2 as though nothing happened.

That’s not to say that .hack//Quarantine did too much better, but with the onset of dawn in the game, the battle was won, and the characters know that things won't be the same. Lios’s email afterwards also provides a bit of closure. Even with the knowledge that CC Corp will clean up all traces of fault, the fact that Kite was able to revive the coma victims is satisfying, and returning to ∆ Bursting Passed Over Aqua Field with Orca is a nice bookend to that series. Clearing Ω Hidden Darkside Holy Ground to give Mia a second chance is the cherry on top.

How to Make It Better:

1. Different Protagonist, Different Story

Because of the story’s lack of focus, not a whole lot can be salvaged from it to make something satisfying. Whatever good messages are in .hack//GU are mostly lost in the confusing mess that is Haseo learning to two time with a lookalike to his love interest. So toss Haseo out the window, because that was a primarily flat character at best, and let'’ look at another possibility.

It might seem surprising to go from one hothead to another kind-of-hothead, but consider Alkaid. Having lost to Endrance, her first goal is to reclaim her title in the Arena, and because she knows Endrance cheated, she wants to investigate what he did and how to counter it. She has a clear goal, a clear reason to investigate things that others wouldn’t, and as a bonus, would be a female main character, which are still not all that common. (Yes, there’s other representations that are also lacking, but I'm working with what is already here)

Now, if they want to have the ‘character starts at level 1’, there’s a few ways to make this happen. One option would be for Alkaid to remake her character, which in addition to starting at level 1 would enable the player to choose their class type and provide them with some character customization. The motivation behind this could be as simple as wanting to try something new, not unlike when people make new accounts on MMOs to try other classes. But if we want Alkaid to completely stay Alkaid, there’s another way, which also provides a good inciting incident beyond Endrance’s win - if her investigation into an area resulted in being Data Drained to level 1.

Both ways provide easy tutorials to fit into the game as well. In the first path, the battles against arena challengers work as a tutorial for not only battle, but arena specific battles, ending with the unwinnable battle against Endrance (note this is different from a forced failure, because it is explicitly not possible to defeat Endrance). In the second path, investigating the area can invoke a tutorial on area investigation and battle up until the Data Drain. One option if involving the Data Drain route is the question of if Alkaid is able to log out afterwards; if not, then you not only have a character who is motivated to win, but motivated to survive, as the World becomes a real danger to her.

In any of these cases, this results in a character with motivation that can be sympathized with, as well as someone who you want to succeed.

2. All Things Pointing To A Single Antagonist

It’s alright for things to be in-obvious, or for things to have to be pieced together afterwards, but everything should point towards one thing as the source. It makes the story much more cohesive. Sakaki can still be a jerk and be the red herring/side boss that has to be dealt with, the Avatars can still be involved in the plot, but if Cubia is the primary thing that everyone should be worried about, there has to be indication that Cubia is involved at an early stage rather than a ‘guess who?’ halfway through the final volume.

The Doppelganger monsters are a good basis for this. Rather than have them be an established quirk of the game, they should be utilized as an enemy more often. Alkaid has friends as part of her team in the arena, and perhaps friends that are also interested in investigating the anomalies of the World; if they were to encounter Doppelgangers, the Flash Mail aspect of the game could be utilized as a call for help, giving a clear progression on where to go to advance the story. Sakaki could also take advantage of this, nominating members of Moon Tree that are problematic to him to investigate Doppelganger controlled areas.

The battle between PKs and PKKs/regular players could also be kept in the setting as further chaos in the World. If Haseo were to be kept as a secondary character, he could very well be one of the known individuals that use a ‘cheat’ very similar to Endrance, which would be another avenue of investigation for Alkaid.

A particular aspect of Cubia however is that it always grows. Once Gomorra start making an appearance in areas, that's the indicator that it's more than an errant game mechanic at play here.

3. No AIDA - Vagrant AI already exist

As much as the concept of AIDA are intriguing, being an unknown entity in the digital expanse, they don't contribute too much to the story. Although they could be appealed to and used as another force against Cubia, it’s better for problems in the World to likewise affect residents of the World and give them incentive to help. In this case, that means finding the Vagrant AIs.

Now, as Alkaid investigates and finds that things are more complicated than a single cheater, she can find that she needs help beyond what her contacts can provide - someone or something that are more in tune with the World than any player or even administrator. A Vagrant AI.

Optionally, this could result in a player choice as well - in the case where Alkaid is now in the game entirely, does she embrace it and use the knowledge that Vagrant AI can provide to become a Vagrant herself, or does she stay on the path to reconnect with the physical world?

4. Endrance and Mia handled better

Now, I’ve said that I don’t like how Endrance and Mia are handled, but I’ve included Endrance already in Alkaid's motivation, and with Avatar Macha. So what gives?

Quite simply, rather than being destroyed, have Mia use the opportunity to fragment herself, as Aura and Lycoris did before her, in order to hide and avoid the project that tried to harvest the Phases. Then, when Endrance returns to the World in R2, he is recognized and contacted by her with a plea to make her whole again. In succeeding, he’s reunited with Mia, who stays with him as Avatar Macha. Together, they have fun as they did in R1, and Endrance is both more confident, and happy.

Consequently, their cheating in the arena is just them having fun; they have different views of the World than others, and this opens the possibility for reconciliation between Alkaid and Endrance, once Alkaid is made aware of Macha.

5. The Phase Avatars handled better

Now, if accepting that the Phase project went ahead and that situation happened, with the difference that Mia survived and escaped, that means the Phase Avatars also are around. However, I would propose one critical difference - after the data calamity and their escape, they generally don’t attach to PCs unless the PC finds them first and gives them reason to. Endrance and Mia are one such joining, and there’s very obvious reason for that to be accepted by both sides. Perhaps a detail like this is something that Sakaki happens to become aware of through certain rumours, and attempts to harness their power through others. Perhaps it’s these areas that are more heavily protected by Doppelgangers, because Cubia recognizes that they are a threat to it.

As this story moves further away from what was presented in GU, it becomes more difficult to piece it together from things only in GU. While I might not have a complete story to provide, I do want to propose that Alkaid's purpose in these arcs are to reconcile and redeem the Phases with people that they are well matched with. The Phases are sought out because their power are required to defeat the swarms of Gomorra that are beginning to overtake the World. With the Phases out of his control, Sakaki is unable to fulfill his scheme, leaving room for everyone to focus on the true threat - Cubia.

However, one Phase will be absent in this. There will be no trace of Corbenik.

6. Battles and things outside of battle

One of the main problems of the games, both GU and prior, are their over-reliance on battle. A story with investigation should include more things than battle in it. Perhaps as Alkaid becomes aware that things are outside of her area of knowledge, she becomes more open to things like third party programs, especially when it becomes exceedingly obvious that CC Corp continues to cover up and not resolve issues. Even without things supplied by hackers, there’s the investigation of areas and things that might be hiding in those areas. A Vagrant AI as a party companion might be able to find weak points in the walls of an area, for example, enabling investigation into the in between spaces, and provide glimpses at Cubia growing in the darkness.

7. The Epitaph of Twilight

Cubia is the Hidden One in the Epitaph. It was never clear what this meant, or if it meant anything at all. Regardless, as the Epitaph was involved in the first series, it should also be involved in this one beyond the name drop and relatively insignificant cameo it had in GU. Kite defeated Cubia by destroying the Bracelet. This time around, destroying the World that Cubia is the shadow to is out of the question. So then the few Epitaph fragments remaining are keys to better understand who and what Cubia is, as well as a way to set things right. To write a new ending to the story.

8. After the Wave, only a dark void remains

Here, at the pinnacle of the conflict, we have Cubia, its army of Gomorra and Doppelgangers, and on the other side Alkaid, the Phases and their Epitaph Users, the Vagrant AI, and all the other players that want to keep the World alive. Battle wages across the World, a similar scene to what they attempted to do in .hack//Redemption. But instead of all of it resting on Alkaid as the primary offense, she helps to coordinate the efforts, parallel to what Kite did in organizing the attacking parties. She does this in spite of lacking an Avatar, because it’s the right thing to do.

Yet, despite her good tactics, things don't fare so well.

Areas both online and off go dark as rolling power outages mark the beginning of an international network crash. Contact is lost with many of the Epitaph Users, the key attackers in this operation. They were all to converge towards the place they had identified as the most likely spot for Cubia's Core. Alkaid continues regardless.

In the darkness she’s attacked by Gomorra, but manages to drive them off.

It goes well until she meets her own Doppelganger, and as per the mechanisms of the World, the Doppelganger is a higher level than her.

She is struck down, but is revived and hears a message, “Let us walk together.”

No matter how many times the Doppelganger strikes her down, she fights back until she wins. In recognizing that with her is Corbenik, the last of the Phases, she activates its Rebirth ability to bring the World back online, enabling everyone to join her to defeat the Core.

“We are more than the sum of our data, the sum of our stats, the sum of our levels. We are people, whether we are ones who live in this world, or ones who visit. We are all residents here, and we won't allow this world to be destroyed.”

So they rewrite the ending of the Epitaph, no longer a search for the Twilight Dragon, but the reconciliation of the forces of creation and destruction, as well as order and chaos, enabling the world to be ever changing, but living on.

In the aftermath, CC Corp relinquishes control of the World, recognizing that it is outside of their control. The World is now incorporated within every system connected across the physical world, and cannot be shut down or controlled. And that is okay, because it's become something more, a real world of its own.