#backlog resolution

So, maybe this bit of information is reading into the story a bit more than intended, but I have to bring something up. I finished my playthrough of this game in November, just less than a week after the annual Trans Day of Rememberance and after actually going to a TDOR event for the first time in over a decade. It's a disgusting travesty that we still have so many names to add to the list of trans people who have died or been killed as a result of a bigoted world, and while I understand that my skin color makes me far less likely to be targeted than many other women, the mortal danger I could face is still something that lives in my head. However, while the USA has dozens of reported cases of trans deaths each year, there is one country that has always had more names on the list than us: Brazil. The two programmers of Unsighted (and the upcoming Abyss X Zero) are trans women living in Brazil. That feels particularly important when considering that Unsighted is a game that, at its core, is about mortality and the idea of how the humanity of those who are not considered "natural" is often denied by those in power.

The humans in Unsighted are being guided by a sense of greed and want, as well as their belief in their inherent superiority over the automatons that have gained sentience. Ultimately, the greed is what both dooms the scientists working with Anima, and awakens the automatons to the emotions that humans naturally have. Despite how, on the surface, that may read as simply a "humans suck" story, it's made clear that it's not that simple. There are multiple examples of human beings acting in kindness and with understanding, even fighting against other humans who wish to continue exploiting the automatons. Raquel, the main character Alma's girlfriend, carries many memories of wonderful human qualities within her despite being at war with those humans who seek to enslave the freed automatons. Additionally, the main characters and other automatons suffer from human flaws as well, with the Unsighted being automatons who have lost access to Anima and become feral with a hunger that causes them to attack those who still have it. The ending involves the main couple traveling to another city to awaken more automatons with Anima so that they can have the ability to be free of human enslavement, even if the only way for that to happen involves fighting. This is far from a "cozy" story about liberation, but instead acknowledges that systems built to suppress and destroy us must be faced with force if necessary. This extends beyond queer liberation to women's liberation, black liberation, Palestinian liberation, and every other movement that fights to demand the recognition of the humanity of people seen as obstacles and monsters by the Powers That Be.

From a gameplay perspective, the mechanics are creative and open-ended enough that I literally had to do some stages out of order because I couldn't figure out how to do them the right way. Due to the ability to build traversal tools with the Workbench, you can start the game off with nearly every necessary item for traversal except the High Jump Boots, which are found very early in the game. This open ended potential lends itself to replayability, as you don't find this information until you reach specific points on your first playthrough. Double Hookshots and ranged Ice weapons open up so much of the world, and the Spinner doubles as a faster movement tool that can ride on some electric rails. Interestingly, the game waits until pretty late in the standard gameplay route to explain that you can wall jump like in Mario 64 or Ninja Gaiden, but you have the ability to do it as soon as you get the boots. Due to these elements, Unsighted is closer to an Immersive Sim than most Metroidvanias tend to be, and the level of creativity available to traveling the world and solving puzzles is very impressive. The only place this kinda falters is with the HAILEE walking mech in the Factory, as it's environment specific and required for progression due to certain doors that can only be opened with its weight and boxes that can only be pushed by it. There are also doors that can only be opened with its missiles until you get the Meteor Sword/Axe later in the game, but thankfully they did include that work around since the HAILEE gets destroyed at the end of the Factory.

Oh, I forgot to mention the time limit. Remember that thing I said about living as a trans person and at least sometimes feeling your mortality a bit more acutely as a result? Well, Unsighted gives every friendly character in the game (including you) a time limit, and only one item can extend the limit. The Meteor Dust used for that purpose is a rare consumable that, while not truly limited, is very hard to come by outside of the fixed locations in the game where you normally find it. This means each lump, which gives a character an extra 24 minutes of game time before going hollow/Unsighted, is a precious resource. It's also consumed to make your permanent Estus Flasks/healing syringes, although you can have up to three disposable syringes that are actually pretty cheap to make, and you can also make cheap Defensive Cogs to give you 3 hits of complete immunity to damage before breaking. Heck, you can boost that to 5 hits at the cost of two chip slots by giving the nice old lady Teresa 3 Meteor Dust, which is a pretty good deal considering she has the least time left of anyone in the starting village. Everyone gives you something if you give them 3 lumps to Dust, and some of these items can break the game, like the Portable Anvil to craft mid combat, or the Elemental Sword that has all three debuffs randomly triggering when you smack enemies with it. Also, if the time limit is too much for you and you want to explore at your leisure, you can turn it off and on anytime you want, but I recommend against it on your first playthrough. It kinda feels like the main narrative conceit of the game in regards to everything I've said about the liberation message and the intentions of the Human scientists in the story, and turning it off is something that feels very much like an element of either convenience or accessibility for people who know they aren't going to be able to finish the game at a reasonable speed. Things get harder as you lose allies, after all.

Unsighted is unapologetically queer, and belongs side by side with Celeste as an incredible action game that is unafraid to be painful in its storytelling. Both games are ultimately uplifing, and can easily connect beyond a queer audience, although Unsighted is very overtly gay. It's also got a lot of body positivity aspects to the design with all the different physical robot bodies that exist. Even automatons with visible disabilities exist in a positive light. Unsighted has things to say about how we understand our bodies, how we understand our humanity and our flaws, and how we understand our inevitable death, but most of all it says one thing louder than anything else:

If you go out of your way to spend hours doing equipment searches, completing the large scale minigames for each character, and/or farming Mr. Shakedown for a crapload of money, then the game's normal difficulty setting becomes nearly baby easy mode. The decision to accentuate the 1988 timeframe of the game by making money the sole growth currency in the entire game means that every single activity contributes to your collective item and experience pool. It's very similar to how many Soulsbourne games have fused money and experience together. Thing is, Yakuza isn't really trying to be some kind of absurd challenge for the average player. This game is a melodrama focused on the struggles of men involved in a toxic hierarchy and how the politics of crime can emulate the worst aspects of the general politics of government and society.

The power fantasy of Yakuza is to be strong enough to live by your own rules. It's a really enticing idea, and for the people in Japanese society often left in situations crappy enough that they would turn to crime to survive, the yakuza are potentially even more appealing. Structured like families and operating on systems that can allow even those tossed aside by the system to live and thrive, there is an immediate appeal to the idea of choosing to live outside the system that seems rigged against you. The truth of how interconnected the systems of government and crime are, however, isn't lost on the creators of the game. The Yakuza games are not some massively triumphant trip into the underworld, but an often emotionally devastating journey of self-actualization for the characters involved. The reason Kiryu and Majima aren't shown killing their enemies is because neither of those characters would ever wish to be a murderer. Now, some suspension of disbelief is necessary regarding that element, but I did point out that the games were melodrama, so that's not unrealistic for the style of storytelling used here.

The best characters in this game are the ones who go through their own hell and come out the other side closer to the person they aspire to be. Kiryu, Nishikiyama, Majima, Makoto, and Kuze all make this journey in their own way, motivated by different experiences and struggles. Majima and Makoto know what its like to feel trapped, and struggle to find a way to free themselves from the cages they feel stuck in. Kiryu is set on his path of helping Kazama out of a sense of respect, and Nishiki feels pulled between oaths to his different families as things get worse. They're both forced to decide their own path regardless of those bonds as the story reaches its climax. And Kuze... wow. I wasn't expecting much of him when the story began, but he really gets plenty of focus as you face off with him 5 seperate times in the main story. His path begins with him gunning for a promotion, but very soon after that he begins to realize that he doesn't really care about the rank or status. Slowly but surely, he starts to regain some of the better aspects of himself as the story moves on, setting him as Kiryu's living judge of character by the final chapter. Of all the game's antagonists, he's the only one that actually earned my respect, no matter how hard the writers tried with some other folks like Awano or Sagawa.

The point I am trying to get to is that Yakuza 0 has an amazing story and also a pretty fun open world game with lots of neat activities, but I'm not the biggest fan of how those things are meshed together. It's messy, and honestly I'd kind of prefer a more carefully crafted difficulty curve through the main narrative experience. However, I also wouldn't want to sacrifice Kamurocho or Sotenbori for that. The "Like A Dragon" series needs its living, breathing world to really feel right in the end. One thing I know for sure is that I'm definitely gonna need to keep an eye out for a good sale on "Yakuza Like A Dragon" and "Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth," because an unambiguous RPG is exactly the right tool for blending these stories and these worlds without losing what makes the whole mix special.

Earlier this year, I played through Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator again after over 20 years. Much like Clair Obscur, it was a passion project made by game developers and artists who created their own studio and spent years making a game that they wanted to make. Time, technology, and the fundimental differences in how the business side of things played out contributed to Clair Obscur being what Septerra Core tried to be over a quarter century ago. I can't speak specifically to differences in what one might call raw talent, but everything Septerra Core struggled with, Clair Obscur landed perfectly. The soundtrack is a masterpiece that so many others have explained better than I ever could. The gameplay mechanics are intense and rewarding both to reactive precision players and planners to love breaking systems over their knees. The world-building and overall storytelling give the audience enough to understand all the most important elements for the main narrative, but also work to flesh out the world and the timeline leading up to the launch of the titular Expedition, and there are details and lore goodies all throughout the optional areas of the game. The characters are fantastically written and acted throughout, with clear motivations and impressive chemistry. In short, the game makes me love nearly everything about it.

Which is a big reason why I hate Verso.

Verso is a mysterious stranger that joins the team to, mechanically, fill the hole left when another party member is brutally murdered by one of The Paintress's creations. Verso is trying to help the Expedition defeat the Paintress, and despite being immortal, he can't do it himself for a number of reasons. Verso's entire goal is to die. He has become tired of existence and seeks to end his life, but he can't do that unless The Paintress is defeated. Of course, the reason why he needs to defeat her isn't revealed until she's gone, but it's clear that Verso is shady from the get go.

Turns out the reason he comes across as untrustworthy is that he's trying to genocide the entire world just so he can die. Which makes some sense, what with the fact that the gods of the Canvas world that the story takes place in are kind of having a lot of family issues due to the death of Verso, the human being outside the Canvas who playable Verso is an immortal copy of. I guess when your goal is to die, everything else you do doesn't really have much long term moral weight. At least Renoir, as obsessed with control as he is while trying to erase the Canvas, seems to actually fully understand what he is doing and wishes there was another way to free his wife from her own inability to properly grieve.

I think one of the things I find most interesting about Maelle's ending is that it results in Verso doing all the terrible things he does in regards to betraying the team and literally getting two of them killed (they get better), and he doesn't get the one thing he wants. There's a sort of dark poetic sense of justice to the idea that he's now trapped by a new Paintress who won't let him go because he tried too hard to make her trust him. It's one of the reasons that the Maelle ending is such an effective downer ending to the game: everyone is doomed, but Verso has to wait even longer to be freed from his torment because his lying and backstabbing accomplished nothing. The Verso ending isn't actually any less dark in the long run, as Clea is still distant and focused on her conflict, Aline rejected Renoir's image of her in the final battle and now they have to figure out how to move forward, and Maelle is still trapped with a mother that blames her for the death of her brother, a father who is obsessively controlling, a sister who belittles her constantly, and disabilities and injuries that will just drive her to use her Paintress powers to create a world to escape to, possibly starting the cycle all over again.

The point of all of this is that I think this is all extremely well written and very effectively crafted. Hating a character doesn't mean the character is badly written, it just means I have a specific reaction to his choices. Having a strong emotional reaction to fiction is often a good sign of its quality. I just wish there was a little more focus in the story on the fundimental morality issue of the Painters being able to create entire worlds of sentient life forms and then just erasing them from existence, as if the genocide is not so bad as long as "God" is doing it. I think the story undercuts that element by having the ending where you save everyone be implied to be just as bad for Maelle as the ending where they all die. I do love that Lune never forgives Verso for his bullshit in the Verso ending, though. No walking into the death area to give a little bit of comfort to the man about to kill everyone she's ever known. As an aside, Lune is my favorite character in the game, followed by Monoco. My favorite antagonist was Painted Renoir. Straight up tells the real Renoir that his plan sucks to his face. Perfect.

Quick comment on mechanics: The new powers are nice to use, and the ability to freeze the very wiggly enemies of a modern Resident Evil game in place is very satisfying. There's just enough combat here, but maybe a tad bit too much stealth. The section that basically feels like "oh, people like those Weeping Angel things from Doctor Who, let's do that" felt more annoying than scary or tense to me. The final boss is satisfying and does leave me wondering what a full Resident Evil game with those kind of powers would actually feel like, but it's probably best to keep it contained. I can definitely see a future where RE9 turns into the next RE6 for the franchise, and I'm sure Capcom wants to avoid that outcome.

Resident Evil 7 centered on the horror associated with a tragedy involving a family and an abused child. The worst events of the story were sparked by the mistreatment of Eveline and the deception of Mia, leading to a tragic outcome for the Baker Family. The irony of the situation is that Eveline could have actually had a family who loved her, but because she wanted Mia specifically as her family, she destroyed the Bakers and, with them, any real chance at happiness for herself.

In RE 8, we learn how Eveline was created originally as a vessel for Miranda's dead child Eva. When it turns out Eveline isn't good enough for her, Miranda seeks to steal away Rose for the same purpose. The tragedy is expanded through the Lords, who Miranda treats as her "children," from the sycophantic Moreau, to the lonely Bienviento, to the rebellious Heisenburg. Even Dimitrescu is essentially following in the footsteps of her "Mother Miranda," kidnapping people to create new children for herself. I am left to wonder sometimes if Eveline isn't actually the remains of Eva, fully aware of the monster her mother truly was and desperately seeking a family far better than her own. That idea drifts pretty far into MatPat territory, so I doubt it.

Ethan exists in stark contrast to Miranda, even though his goal is the same as hers in the most basic sense. He's eager to be present in Rose's life, but he doesn't want to control it. His sacrifice is an acceptance of something Miranda could never understand: our children are not our property. They are people, and we have a responsibility to them. Eva was treated as an end goal, something Miranda sought to possess. Eveline was literally made into a weapon, her humanity and childhood only seen as a shield by her abusers.

Rose was seen and treated as a human being by her family. Her mom, her dad, and her godfather of sorts Chris all did the best they could for her, but the world mistreated her for being different. She suffered mistreatment and abuse, one of the dollhouse scenes clearly evoking the struggles of "Carrie" from the classic Stephen King story. However, despite her fears to the contrary, Rose had people who loved her and who anchored her. Her power was potentially just as terrifying as Carrie's, but she had people who truly cared. She didn't need to burn down the village to feel the warmth. That didn't negate the pain she felt, but it gave her the chance to eventually examine her potential, and choose her own path.