~dreamcastaway~

The goal of most Marathon sessions is to choose your specific “runner,” a cybernetic body with specific abilities (Triage can throw healing robots, Thief can use a drone to scout areas and rob loot off players) and set off to complete different objectives for factions, grabbing gear as you go. This is an extraction shooter. If you die, you lose everything including whatever gear you entered the match with. The stakes are therefore pretty high. Victory can be huge, defeat can be devastating.

What do you do when running low on supplies? One option is to use a “sponsor kit” a free, minimal gearset loaned out by a faction. Another option is to play as a Rook. These shell bodies are the same as the automated robots used by the UESC, the Unified Earth Council. They are the authoritarian government of the setting. So if you want, you leap in as a Rook and you’re granted a free gun. You enter a match with other “normal” players in this pseudo-enemy body for a chance to scavenge.

In Escape From Tarkov, the big extraction shooter before Marathon, these kinds of units (generic mooks with simple gear) were literally called SCAVs. Rooks are vulture, picking at what players left behind, aiming for a chance to kill someone with a backpack full of loot before escaping.

But there can be multiple Rooks on a map, multiple poverty players, scurrying about. This is a kind of prisoner’s dilemma. If they cooperate, they stand to benefit entirely. But that kind of cooperation is rare. More often than not, even if you try to signal peaceful intent, things end in blood and scrap.

Here’s how my Rook runs when this morning:

First run. I spawn in to the Dire Marsh region of Tau Ceti. I am close to the “Complex,” a sprawling hanger-like space full of cargo and loot. As I approach, am I alone and begin to gather what leftovers I can find. Guns, medical supplies. I enter a laboratory and another Rook enters from the door on the other side. We pause and he fires. I fire back. We knock each other down.We crawl towards each other, bleeding deep blue cyber-blood.

He calls out over his mic: “Well, uh… see you around.” I say nothing but I think “You could have walked away.” We die and get nothing.

Second run. I’m back in the marsh and headed to the AI uplink facility. Decent leftovers, I find an assault rifle. Automated UESC bots spot me and I make a defensive stand. One of the robots moves differently; it’s a Rook. He fires. I fire back.

We hit the ground together, bleed out, and die side by side.

Third run. It’s mostly peaceful. I get a good haul and make my way to an exfiltration point. It’s guarded by UESC bots but I can manage that. I turn around and spot another Rook. I attempt to shake my head to say “no, no.” The exit is right there, you fool.

He fires and knocks me down.“Sorry, buddy.”

His voice is full of such remorse but as he kills me, the UESC bots gather around him. His chance of exfiltration is low. We could have done this together; it would have been no more than 20 seconds of cooperation but he couldn’t manage it. He couldn’t control himself.

Fourth run. I’m not playing around anymore. If blood is what they want, blood is what they’re gonna get. I’m on the perimeter section of Tau Ceti, approaching the Northern Relay. A hear a noise below me and leap over the edge of the catwalk. I fire immediately, kill him, take his gear and run. Maybe I could have said something to him.

This was easier, this was a win. Sucks to be you, buddy.

Fifth run. I’m still at the Northern Relay point and I hear footsteps above me. This time, I’m the Rook scurrying underfoot. The Rook above me jumps down and heads to a nearby storm drain. I sneak up behind him and jab a knife into his neck. “Buddy, buddy, I have frie-“ I don’t care to listen. I execute him here and there.

He was trying to tell me that he’s teamed up with a few other Rooks. They swarm me and kill me. My corpse falls next to the other Rook.

This is what they do to you. You try and try to find the common ground—if we all cooperate, we could walk out of here with a lot of good scavenge—but most players don’t bother to listen. And over time, that makes you less inclined to listen. No recourse but teeth.

I’m not your fucking “buddy.”

In many places on Tau Ceti, pustulating nests birth an endless stream of ticks who rush towards the nearest player to gnash away at their health. Is this different than most gamers and their instincts?

Rooks are ravenous, they chase you down desperately. They might hold a shred of remorse but when they spot you, they usually give tireless pursuit. Rooks are just like ticks. They are bloodthirsty. When I talked to my friend about this, many of whom are designers, many disagreed.

(if you’re one of these folks know that I love you and I love talking to you about games. Know that I’m performing the dubious “service” of games “criticism” here, exploring an idea and poking at the edges of the map. Either way! Let’s press onward…)

There’s a belief in these conversations, or there seems to be, which say that players are complex and varied; they cannot be quantified or their behaviors generalized. I wonder if we are speaking about the same thing; I’m not really talking about players.

I’m talking about gamers and I believe there is a difference between a player and a “gamer” and I think the world of Marathon has more gamers. I do not think gamers have a resilience in them and I do not think they function on a level as deep as a player does.

At least 9 times out of 10 ape kills ape, y’know? Without thought.

This is obviously a very mean position to take and I accept that to phrase things like this (which I have done mostly for the sake of rhetorically expressing my sentiments) makes me sound like an unkind person. But I think there’s a kernel of truth in that rhetoricizing, one which does point to an interesting dilemma. As I discussed this with folks, it was stressed that there’s one main verb in Marathon: kill. Therefore, to expect someone not to kill in Marathon is like expecting a human not to breathe. We do the things we are able to do.

If there were more complex options available, options to emote a wave or flash a green light signaling friendship, the decision to kill becomes more deliberate and perhaps more condemnable.

But we can’t do those things so…

Are players really bloodthirsty? Are they really ticks?

Can you “blame” them?

I’ve thought about this a lot in the last few days and I think the limitation of mechanical verbiage does allow blame even if, you know, this is a game and there’s not really anything morally wrong about shooting someone in a video game.

Let’s make note of that if only to pre-empt disagreement. I don’t think shooting a digital gun at an avatar is a “real” moral decision.

But for the purpose of this conversation, let’s talk evocatively!

If killing is the default, if that is one of the only things you can do, I don’t think, conceptually, you’re absolved of the choice to kill when you make it. Maybe you’re manipulated by the designers, sure, and that reduces your culpability but you still made the call.

You pulled the trigger.

If you have two choices (kill or don’t kill) and one is the only “active” choice, I believe the decision to not perform that act takes on a kind of worth. If all you can do is kill, the choice not to kill is “important “ even if the game does not give you many other choices. It’s not nothing!

I also don’t know if I fully believe gamers think strategically about something like a wider game economy when deciding to kill. So I don’t trust that their decisions are based on much more than a gut reflex. There is an enemy over there; point and click.

To kill a Rook is (on a high level) to deny funding, to deny weaponry that a foe could use later in a “real” run but I don’t think that when the trigger is pulled there’s a thought further ahead than the moment. The thrill of the execution here and now. The blood calls.

This is, again, not a very charitable position. The game itself does guide people towards some level of strategic thinking about money and funds but that’s a broader context draped over a simpler give and take. Players might optimize how to navigate this system but the breadth of their concern for the economics of Tau Ceti is individualistic. They are optimizing individual runs; they’re not balancing a wider player economy. There’s not a big picture mindset. Or so I choose to believe.

In our conversation, someone brought up an interesting counterpoint and it’s one that’s floated around in my head as well in all this.

ARC Raiders is also an extraction shooter with, in theory, a similar core loop and ideology to Marathon but game fostered a much more active kind of player cooperation. A kind of subculture emerged where some players sought communication over conflict.

It got to the point that at least one outlet asked if the game should have a PvE only mode. This is something, I think, that if you suggested for Marathon, many people would balk. So what’s different here?

I’ve not really played ARC Raiders (it uses too much AI tech for me to find that palatable) and so I don’t have a rebuttal here. Which is fine by me; a part of any conversation like this is admitting blindspots or accepting when someone’s point strongly counters your own.

I’m not a player psychologist, I’m not a designer, I’m not an academic. I’m an art critic and my approach to writing is one firmly planted in a radical emotionality. I believe in sentiment, I believe in feelings.

When a Rook kills another Rook, I fully accept there’s a limitation of available actions pushing them in that direction but there’s there’s a culture thing play, a kind of learned behavior which many people have turned into instinct over years of game playing. It's a feeling.

One need only think of Call of Duty and the way the gameplay structures ripple out into the real world, priming people not only for military recruitment and the acceptance of war but also the way it ingrained domination and yearning into the multiplayer language.

Marathon uses this kind of power play to paint a portrait of a dark future, a speculative corpo-space partially reflecting our own world, where killing becomes an unending gig economy job. It’s a game packed with smart design, clearly thinking about what killing means.

But it does all those other things too. Just like how an anti-war movie can't entirely be anti-war, a shooter can't be only a treatise on capital consumption and "senseless" violence. To depict the thing is to normalize the thing. When you build a game system about acquisition and the comfortable feeling of *power* you reinforce at least some sense that this kind of life, this kind of pursuit is inherently appealing. you can toss the aesthetic cloak over it but the lizard truth underneath is still there. if you're a designing a game like this, you're counting on that! it keeps people playing and buying your seasonal battlepass.

When Rook kills Rook, it is a kind of “failure” in the utilitarian sense. Jeremy Bentham or whoever would hate it. It’s selfish, needy, maybe even thoughtless in most cases. This is fine! But as I have spent many years in video games, I’m nervous about the idea that there’s a spark in them which is different than other mediums and I’m also very cautious about romanticizing what players “do” in games. or maybe even who they are as people. There’s no moral weight to killing a Rook but there is a choice made and I find the lead up to that choice interesting.

I cannot fully diagnose the thing happening and for many people, I think their answer is very simple. This is what the game expect, this is what is rewards. There’s no worth to the decision; there’s no grounds to call anyone bloodthirsty. But I can’t make that leap. I don’t think games are special but I think the choices we make in all contexts are important and say something.

I detest things done for their own sake, I bristle at suggestions which I think flatten the prickly bits of things.There’s nothing superior about not pulling the trigger on another Rook but it is a gamble which is as interesting, or perhaps more interesting, than forcing the fight and gambling on your aim and twitch reactions.

It’s a different card and placing it on the table is at least in theory the route to the most equitable spread of rewards. The limitations of our language in Marathon: you can at best speak to someone with proximity chat if you can even get close, make the gamble exciting.

But it’s also a gamble which this playerbase broadly (though not always) rejects in favor of blood and there’s a point where you might decided “well, okay.” There’s a point where the only answer to dealing with the tick swarm is to squash them before they can bite.

Talking about JRPGs can be weird because people like to over-complicate what the genre's "deal" is. Because there was a time, particularly after the death of adventure games, where JRPGs rose up to almost solely occupy a space as "the games that tell stories" there's a kind of romanticism that comes up when some people talk about the genre. That's understandable but it perhaps overplays the depth of the stories that are told in JRPGs and really in video games generally. Most games stories are pulp and hardly revolutionary. It's okay to admit this. Good, even, to understand that you could have gone to the movies at many points this year and probably watched something with a bit more meat to the bone than whatever video game you were playing at home. it doesn't make games less beautiful. Still, a lot of people in games (players or developers) struggle when confronting this matter. the difference rests in the audience, their anxieties and the craving that many people have for games to somehow be the *most* special or *most* beautiful medium when I don't think art works that way. if that bothers you, I don't know what to say. I just don't agree. We all *do* agree that games are art but when some of us confront the fact that very often there's often better art found on our bookshelves, it can lead to a paralyzing fear. it's fine though! and life just gets easier once you acknowledge this is often the case and embrace that games cannot simply be a medium that exists by themselves and only judged by their own rules. they exist next to all other works and it's totally okay for us to talk about them in relation to other art. that's a pretty normal thing do. i think there's a drive from many people who love games to try to insist that they are somehow more important than other art but I do think many of gaming's most popular stories would fit in snugly on the shelf of an airport bookstore. for me that's beautiful but I think for many readers my saying that will ignite a bit of ire in their heart. and throughout the 2000s, video games have grappled with this fear, experimenting with all kinds of ways to invite praise and seeking a certain kind of respectability. this usually means intimating films many years after they've done something. AAA games in particular often chase after other mediums instead of trying to sharpen *games* themselves. they try to be less like a game. games do this thing where they kind arrive at things a decade late, most often in terms of emulating the movies. Children of Men pioneers some new long camera shots and twelve years later, God of War boats about never taking the camera of Kratos. So it goes on and on in ways I'm not gonna really catalogue. indeed, the Sony prestige model is the perfect touchstone for the kind of anxiety I'm talking about. the ongoing quest for "playable cinema" that fails to understand that how oxymoronic of a term that is. and yet we seek it insatiably. This is the snag with Expedition 33 which colors so much of the conversation about the game. For all the craftsmanship and all the ways I see, in the artists who made it, kindred spirits... I cannot help but also see a game gripped by this yearning.

You might think that unfair of me to say but remember that I'm not really talking about Expedition 33 the video game. so if you wanna talk to me about how the story changed you life, I think that's great! I can totally see how that could happen with this cast of characters in a way that maybe it didn't for another RPG. this is a well made piece of work and if it affected you, swept you off your feet, or whatever you are not wrong to have felt that way. though I might caution you to avoid saying something like "there's never been a story like this!" what I am really talking about is Expedition 33 the Rhetorical Object and what i see first and foremost is a game of certain luxuriousness and richness. people have grasped that quality and made it a kind of rallying cry. see? see? even with less budget we can still make One Of These and have it feel suitably AAA. It can hit That Threshold. we can be Like Them. That last part is where I stumble. Yes, this is an "indie" game insofar as it wasn't backed by a major publisher but its sensibilities, the kind of production it is trying to emulate and embody is distinctly that of a high budget, mass market AAA product. and much of the conversation about the game has not really been about the story itself (which is often compelling but also has a back third and conclusions that I think I actually not particularly good) but how a "small indie team" managed to create what was nominally a AAA game. because that's what Expedition 33 is.

i don't think the artists sat down and said "okay, how can we make this look respectable?" but I think it clearly has thoughts about what leads to mass appeal and they just happen to align with the kinds of tenets and discussions I've heard in conference rooms. if you don't think people talk about games in terms of awards, sorry but yes they sometimes do! and remember: games can "do" many thing things at once and art very often does things that the artists and creators may not intend! and players or other public figures (marketing men, YouTube culture warrior types) can absolutely turn games into symbols that the creators did not intend for them to be. games are often two things: a text and a conversation. that's just how this works. so even if the developers of E33 didn't intend for any of this, that doesn't stop it from happening. sorry that just how art works. it does stuff! because Expedition 33 is a game of suitably lush stylisms... though not too lush that we can't also have a bit of photoreal alpha-graphics here and there... whose story is backed up by the performances of many skilled actors, a few of them Hollywood figures, all underscored by a highly *produced* orchestral score. many people (not all of course but in a sane work I wouldn't need to make that disclaimer because of course not all! maybe not you even!) were drawn to this game not because it was an RPG but because it looked so much not like what their mental image of an RPG was. this was "respectable." "I could tell folks about it and they could look up a picture and I wouldn't feel embarrassed." is a kind of sentence that pops up around the game sometimes. because if gamers are one thing, they are often extremely embarrassed by the games they play. a lot of these folks will say things like "most jRPGs tell bad stories" or some such nonsense and if you're a reactionary reader might think "Harper, didn't you.. not that long ago.. say that games stories aren't great" and kinda? but the sentiment is different. when folks say "man this game is great FOR A JRPG" or "that game surprised me! it's so exceptionally more mature than other games" it's a starting position born of genuine disdain. one which *is* embarrassed it's a position marked with many issues (among them racism) that I can't agree with. i think games are often silly but I don't think*less* of them. good criticism starts from a position of respect. don't approach works like some fandom fanatic blind to their flaws and shortcomings but also on the other hand definitely don't start from a mindset assuming they're garbage not worth your time. meet them where they are and extend a hand. you'll find that even the most pop art, the most trope-y things, can grab your heart. and even if they don't do something that deep and life-changing, this is just a more fun and healthy starting point to take with any game.

I have been playing Trails of Cold Steel in my spare time during this holiday season and in general I don't think this game, which is far from the best Trails game even, is doing anything much worse or better than Expedition 33. at least not in a sense that makes it inherently less worthy of my time. it's probably gonna piss people off but I think often they are doing similar things. they employ similarly journeyman writing approaches. they operate on a same kind of broadness even if they are telling different stories. and in this, I actually commend Expedition 33. for all the anxiety I see in the game's production design, the tone and feel does match other RPGs. but that's the snag isn't it? when you boil it down, Expedition 33 is just another RPG. (something I say with love!) it's not really any more respectable a story than any other in the genre. it's equally broad as anything else within the space and contained in that broadness I think there's a very real kind of humanity to be found but you can find that same humanity here in Cold Steel or Lost Odyssey or many other places. I found great reserves of it within Octopath Traveler 0 recently! RPGs kick ass. it's just a good format and in embracing the genre, Expedition 33 can be inspiring. hell, I think a 7/10 RPG will put any prestige games to shame. the form is just that potent which is to say that Expedition 33 is... a video game! lean in close and you will find it is a similar shape to most other games of this type. compelling, sure! revolutionary? industry changing? I'm not sure. but Trails of Cold Steel looks and feels "of the genre" and engages more blatantly in some tropes whereas Expedition 33 does not always. and even when that games does The RPG Stuff it looks like the Big Boys, carries itself like the Big Boys. and so I cannot help but read, to some extent, the conversation around that game and the resulting awards adulation through anything other than a respectability politics lens. a lot of people turn their noses on JRPGs! I outlined a recently example of this in my Horses blog mentioning how Ian Bogost, a kind of model games academic, often colors his criticisms of video game story telling with Orientalism. Japanese RPGs and their stories, when he mentions them, are inherently less worthy of being considered "serious games." this is blatantly false but I think many people feel this way. there's a kind of embarrassment with RPGs (particularly Japanese works) for their broadness and brighter aesthetics, for their tropes and forms. so many... though not all... people coming to Expedition 33, I think, are folks who felt chagrined by RPGs but by virtue of the game's AAA qualities. it felt safe to them. take that with all the implications you can. what made it felt safe? well, it was like a movie. it was more obvious western even though it was working in the same emotional space as the rest of the genre, etc etc..

If you look a certain way, embody certain aesthetic markers of "quality".. people fundamentally treat you differently. this is true not just in life but with art. Last night, as Larian revealed their new Divinity game's trailer (which... hell yeah brother let's go!) I watched a scene of highly detailed gore. Flesh teared, snapped, burned. Lusciously, gorgeously and on the main stage there was a moment where folks at the Game Awards simply watched animated torture. meanwhile, visual novel makers or art game developers have their games banned from storefronts. what gives? I guess they just don't look quite so good anyway y'know? This is the same thing that catches me with Expedition 33. looking a certain way, meeting a certain kind of quality, made it an easy choice for awards but it is also a game that Keighley could not ignore sucking into the machinery of his prestige celebration. it was easy to! the game made it easy by seeking those AAA markers and signifiers. it's undeniably a good game but it also looked the part. and because it looked the part, it's not just an RPG anymore but *the* RPG that's redeeming a genre which is not particularly in need a redemption.

In Horses, players control Anselmo. He is a young man working on a farm for two weeks who discovers early on that the horses on the farm are actually person who have been captured and forced to wear horse masks. They are, according to the farmer, mostly people caught having sex in the woods of his property and throughout the game Anselmo (and therefore the player) will not only tend to regular farm tasks but also the discipline of these horses. This involves a variety of situations. In some cases, the farmer flogs the horses and asks you to clean their wounds. After one horses is found fornicating with another, in what's perhaps the game's mode defining scene of violence, Anselmo must hold the offending horse's legs open while the farmer castrates him. Afterwards, the player must quickly stitch the wound. Later, this horse refuses to work in the field and while you can try offering carrots to help them move, you are eventually forced to strike them with a club. this is not every day. some days you wake up, set wood on a stump and chop some logs for the fire. maybe you prepare some food for the dog. functionally, which is to say in the act of play, Horses is a sort of first-person adventure game mixed with a farm sim. click item, click on thing to use itself with. sometimes this is normal, in other moments this mundane user experience is used to enact violence on the horses. Beyond these acts that the player participates in, there's a variety of sexual violences that are implied. A sick female horse is tended to by a doctor who eventually takes her into a shed where he seems to rape her to death. this is not a kind game but the violence is at lest deployed with some kind of purpose. as players gain familiarity with the routine on the farm, learning the layout and how to do tasks, they similarly acclimate to the presence of extreme violence. some critics, like megan farokhmanesh at Wired, have questioned if this violence (particularly the gendered sexual violence) is worth having. others have adopted a different approach; this is a game that invites comparison to a work like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and so the comparison goes "Well, there was worse in that movie" or perhaps even "there's worse stuff in many films" and so this violence, while not glossed over, is placed into a wider art context. many mediums have works more gratuitous that Horses! and the presentation of the violence, while gross, is not as explicit. where you fall on the spectrum here is a personal decision. farokhmanesh is correct to say that much of Horses violence is deployed casually and perhaps without care. on the other hand, that casual nature is arguably the point. this is a story about slavery and sex and denigration. it is about the ways in which powerful people turn their enemies into something other than human beings. does it all work? I'm unsure. the violence is neither explicit enough to truly shock and the content so broadly metaphorical that Horses message about authoritarian powers and how they cow us into accepting their grosses decisions is perhaps so wide reaching that it lacks a certain bite. regardless, this is a game which has been banned from many store fronts that contain games which often render up scenes of violence that are more detailed, more graphically raw than anything that exists in Horses. is it good? bad? that might not matter considering what else you can find on Steam with a cursory glance. and yet, the conversation about the game is revealing. many people who are not of the right wing have found ways to decide that yes this game is somehow EXCEPTIONAL to all the other violent stories our medium has and contrived many ways to justify aligning with storefronts in their decision making. and this, I think is maybe more interesting that Horses itself as the game is a rather flat work.

One scene at the center of the discussion is one that Santa Ragione themselves calls attention to in explaining why they think Steam initially turned down the game. A few days into the story, after we've had time to be around the horses and understand the situation, a businessman and his daughter arrive at the farm. the horses are stood before the pair, auction-like, and the daugther chooses one to ride. the player guides the horse (holding it by the reins) around a corral as the daughter rides upon its back. in the original version of the game, the daughter was supposedly a child. this has been changed in the final release where she is an adult. but (i think correctly) Santa Ragione identified this scene as one that drew the ire of Valve. even now, as a scene that doesn't exist it seems to be used by some folks to justify Horses removal from the store. through a game of telephone, the story has spread that this is a game of pornography and perhaps even one with an underage character in a scene. this is not the truth but it has led some folks, even some who previously rallied to defend "problematic" games during their struggles with payment processors like Visa, which led to a decision at the time to delist NSFW content. in that case, itchio was out of line but here? well, maybe Valve's in the right! Or so the thinking goes. and yet, I think this scene is perhaps the most important in the entire game insofar as what is happening in the text. The daughter terlls Anselmo that she KNOWS these horses are people. this is not merely some avant-garde absurdist twist; it is textual that the horses are human beings. they are slaves. she knows this. her father knows it. the priest that visits the farm knows. but it's okay. you see, these people are degenerates! and maybe even if they don't don't deserve this treatment, they have dangerous ideas. we're never told why those ideas are but it doesn't matter. they are different, they are "others" and because of that... because of the implied deviancy... it is okay for them to be mistreated. likewise, although games are art... because Horses has become to some folks an example of some kind of degenerate art... we shouldn't worry about the storefront bans. "I hope you get to live your entire live as a human being!" the daughter says. It is chilling, a threat without even meaning it to be one. For the moment, Anselmo is a "human being" in the eyes of the farmer but there is a suggestion that this could change. For whatever reason, he could become something else. Not a human being. And therefore subject to the same violence as all the other horses. for many of us, this is threat we live with. to be trans in america is to constantly skirt the line between "human being" and something else, for instance. many people in my life still see my humanity but there's always the threat that could stop. that the propaganda will take hold and I will not get to live my life as a human being. so it goes to people of color, people with mental health issues. and more. you are not always assured of your status as a human being. and in a less drastic example of this arbitrariness... you are not always assured that the thing you create, the art you make will be seen as art. for many people, Horses is not art. and the discussions about its worthiness have, in some ways, the same tone as the discussions about the worthiness of someone's status as "human being." and it is in this that I think Horses has proved interesting. more so than anything that happens inside the game.

A curious blip in this conversation was the re-emergence of a voice whose weight in game's related discussions had certainly waned over the last decade: Ian Bogost. Known best for making Cow Clicker and embodying the kind of presence one might expect from someone wrapped in the warm cloak of academia, Bogost popped his head up first to debate market factors surrounding Horses ban before falling back to one of his tried and true lines of inquiry. that the game was, unlike games he made and he liked, not a serious work. "Q-Up and Candy Crush, say, are more serious works of game than Horses (which seems fine and even innocuous!) or whatever embarrassing anime RPG trash is on Steam or Nintendo EShop," he said, referencing the clever competitive coin-flipping game Many of us rolled our eyes but I am going to talk about it briefly because in relation to Horses I do think Bogost's bait is worth taking for what it reveals about the situation surrounding the game. First, I'm gonna do a very briefly history lesson. In the 2010s, there was a growing emergence of alt games and particularly queer games that heralded the growth of alternate critics.

I was one of them so I feel qualified to talk about this but we're talking writers like Lana Polanksy, Stephen Beirne, and in more mainstreams spaces this is where someone like Austin Walker emerges as well. It was a varied coalition of writers who had a holistic and emotionally-driven approach to their criticism. games as experiences synthesized by players living in a context similarly made by people living in their own circumstances. In response to this, Bogost and some other tenured sorts start to write op-ed pieces extolling the power of games systems. Games, to people like Bogost and New York University Game Center's Frank Lantz, are only valuable for the systems they contain and the results of those systems. They embark in their writings to dismiss "childish make-believe, imaginary dragons, badly written dialogue." They stress games as *processes* and the only valuable narratives that emerge come from the collision of these processes. you don't need characters, you need mechanisms. note that in the context of the 2010s what Bogost was doing and to some extent Lantz was doing was slipping briefly out of comfortable tenured spaces to essentially deride games made by marginalized creators and criticism made by women, blacks, and queers. we pushed back because why the hell wouldn't we? This leads to what some people call "The Debate That Never Took Place" wherein many of those young alt-writers formulate writing in opposition to what's being written ultimately by comfortable white men with good jobs. Not all this writing exists but it is where terms like "ludocentrism" and "ludofundamentalism" are coined. Ways of describing a mode of thinking, born primarily from academia, which the opposition bloc finds too narrow to describe what games are doing and, importantly, why audiences enjoy them. All this fades away as a gaming is eaten by things like Roblox completely rebuilds the landscape but Bogost seems to have held onto that position and I think it's interesting to consider and talk about re: Horses because something we failed to grapple with at the time of The Debate That Never Happened" was how ludocentrism is a chiefly neoliberal idea. one which easily aligns with censorship. It's not a big leap to go from "games are only systems" to "markets will fix all of society's problems." We all understood this maybe but didn't quite attack for the foolishness it is. Because this urge, this impulse ironically aligns Bogost (a neoliberal professor) with forces of censorship and to some extent fascism. funny how that works. Time and time again over the years when formalists talk about their derision towards games stories, this comes hand in hand with what is frankly a kind of racism. this is particularly true with Bogost, who often slips into orientalist jabs.

Bogost cannot help, for instance, tossing a jab at JRPGs often and I think it's important to identify that for what it is. Bogost doesn't simply believe that only certain kinds of games are games; he also believes that only certain kinds of developers can make those games. there are people and there are fuckin' horses, y 'know? developers are people like him or Lantz. They are men, they are white, and they are American. This makes them better designers, smart people, and therefore The Only Real Designers. Atlantic writers and such. (the difference here BTW is that Lantz at least makes good games.) understanding his opposition to Horses becomes an easier task viewed in this light. He's not still simply opposed to story in games; he fundamentally believes on some innate level that the artists at Santa Ragione are not worth the default kind of respect that he gives to certain peers and implicitly deserved to have their game banned.

They made the wrong kind of game! is it even a game? This emotional garbage? Couldn't this have been a spreadsheet? Perhaps it could have but I think that playing Horses also reveals the ways in which that could have hobbled the story. You could totally make a suitable fascistic exercise in Excel but this does remove you from certain pressures that make Horses effective. proximity to the violence being done, proximity to potential danger that the farmer might enact on Anselmo. sound, music, movement. the theater of it all, that mix of sickening shock and comedy. breath in your ears. the undeniable complicity of holding someone down as they are tortured. holding the button, waiting for your accomplice to bring the sheers close. close enough to cut it's coming soon just hold the button don't let him squirm at least make it clean. that's not easily turned into an abstract system. to hold a button in order to hold a prisoner down creates a more active and unambiguous participation in Horses' violence which serves the text. and so in discounting these things —for instance, our multi-day bonding time with Linda the Horse (a character in a story!) shifting as we are forced to assist in violence against her—Bogost's neoliberalism sees him easily align with storefronts over artists. he aligns himself with capital over labor. and he deploys formalist language to the same end as he always has: to police creatives who are not "like him." he doesn't resent the market forces that led to Horses lack of support because he mostly agrees with it. This is a key factor to discuss with Horses because there's a lot of people out there who are not devilishly right wing that are nevertheless finding ways to contort themselves into positions that defend this game's banning from storefronts. the people who railed against itchio's payment processors missteps a while back seem fine with Valve axing Horses because it at one point contained something they maybe thought was icky which doesn't even exist in the text anymore. a former games writer defends to the death the decision simply because stores have the right (they're not doing anything illegal maaaan!) to remove whatever they want from shelves. a university professor aligns because this is happening not to people like him but people he doesn't respect. these are not villainous or "bad" people but they all reached the same bad conclusion and suddenly, this game about fascism and complicity is interesting not for the violence or sexual content but because it provided a case study for how a range of people—nominally online young progressives, academics, others—will find ways to say "oh, well it's okay this time." when it comes to censorship.

Persons of Lordly Caliber 

When we started Radiant Dawn, our perspective was set in Daien. Players expecting to leap into the shoes of Ike and his mercenaries had to wait and spend time in the desperate cities of the nation they warred against in Path of Radiance. The chapter ended with princes and generals and knights but it started with the common people. Micaiah was a beloved prophet but neither she nor anyone in the initial Dawn Brigade roster held any position of rank or status. We carried out acts of populist insurrection until aligning with the larger army who wanted to restore the monarchy by placing Ashnard’s bastard son on the throne. 

It is a similar story to the rise of Queen (then princess) Elincia in Path of Radiance. A hidden child of Crimea’s Ring Ramon, she first hired Ike and his comrades simply to protect her as she fled the Daien army towards friendly nations but eventually Ike led her army as it marched on Daien to end the war and restore the sovereignty of Crimea. Where Pelleas has Micaiah, the street prophet, Elincia has Ike and his ragged group of mercenaries. Her story was one of growing into her role and learning to lead on the battlefield, and when she restored Crimea there was a decision to make: what becomes of the enemy? how should the victors treat the defeated?

Elinica decides that her nation, too small and too scattered, cannot hold Daien and so turns stewardship of the county to her allies in the theocratic nation of Begnion. We’ve seen how this kicks off the conflict in Micaiah’s story. But what happens when a queen turns down shut power? What about those around her who were eager to see the nation expand and take all it could? What about those who want retribution?

Can what seems like a noble deed actually lead to nothing but more trouble and conflict? Nothing ever ends and Radiant Dawn’s deeply concerned with both the victors and losers of the last game. But there is a difference in these chapters which really colors the proceedings: this is a story far more concerned with royalty, retainers, adventurous knights, and the valor of combat than the Dawn Brigade’s tale was.

In some sense, this chapter feels like a return to familiar Fire Emblem staples. A shining kingdom on a hill, nobles scheming in the shadows, vows of fealty and worries about how heavy the crown is. Micaiah’s story had familiar beats and echoes with Path of Radiance’s story but here in Crimea you could swap out Elinicia for one of the series’ previous royals like Marth or Eirika and they’d fit pretty cleanly into the picture here.

The entire affair here in Crimea is heightened beyond what we saw in Daein. Elincia is our hero but at her side are her most loyal companions: the devoted swordsman Lucia, her gallant knight brother Geoffrey, and the verbose tactician diplomat Bastian. While Bastian is absent on what we are told is diplomatic business, many of our chapters treat Lucia and Geoffrey as our lead characters. There’s only one chapter, a side excursion in a small pastoral village, where we are not either playing with Elinicia as the head of our army or her most loyal retainers. The perspective is fairly patrician. Not only does this provide a contrast with the gritty tone of what we experiences in Micaiah’s chapters, this also fundamentally changes what the game is interested in attempting with map design and mechanics. Whereas our time with the Dawn Brigade was very interested in using battle scenarios (especially the initial maps where our units were most fragile) to make us feel how desperate the rebellions early stages were and see certain character bonds acted out in the interplay of unit dynamics, this chapter uses the more obviously high fantasy tone to deliver spectacle.

There’s not many scenarios here but they have much more specific constraints in order to capture a specific image or kind of moment. Whereas some Fire Emblem games try to achieve this with scale (think Genealogy of the Holy War’s massive maps) and others have opts for branching paths or decision points to add stakes to situations, the name of the game here is imagery. These maps should be thought of more like the scenes of a film than the puzzle-box tactical fields of old.

As a result, you are really limited on who is in your party at any given time or even what strategies are open to you. The obvious downside of this is that our adventures in Crimea are not particularly taxing or challenging as exercises of strategic thinking. Instead, they are tailored to really put us into a specific role and have us inhabit it with a bit more specificity than usual.

We can see this trend throughout the chapter. These are characters that players presumably know from the prior game and so Radiant Dawn isn’t really concerned with using mechanics to teach us how they relate to each other. Instead we are really sitting down with them and watching them work within their element. The result is that while maps are small, they’re memorable.

Take for instance our first map. Elinicia and the pegasus knight Marcia are soaring together when they see the laguz princess Leanne under attack by Begnion dracoknights. They ride to her aid and the result is a battle set entirely in the sky. You don’t have many characters (the fan-favorite wyvern. rider Haar can be recruited to help you here and that’s it) and there’s not any traditional terrain here.  The map is an open plane dotted with clouds and the fight is a feast of spectacle. Battle animations have been tailored to this scene so when Marcia faces a Begnion rider, there’s a lot of pseudo-dog fighting movement as mounts dip and dive into range to strike each other. Elincia herself opts to hide her identity and instead fight in the battle so there’s a bit of risk and excitement here; this is a chance to show she’s not just a figurehead.

And those clouds? Well, you slip into them in order to gain evasion bonuses. You see the sky as a new type of tactical battlefield *because* you are playing as characters who live and breathe that reality.  I can’t think of any other level in the series that narrows the scope like this and the result is quite immersive for a grid-based battle.

How about another map nearer the end of these chapters. After much backroom plotting, the leader at the head of a noble conspiracy to depose Elinicia has been brought to light. Geoffrey rids deep into his territory with his cavalry and drives the enemy forces to a small outpost. What follows is a relatively straight forward map. The enemy is entrenched and our team is composed mostly of different kind of horseback riders and a few spear fighters. To complete the map, you need to seize the capture point with Geoffrey. So the stage is set and the terms are clear. 

There’s a certain kind of Fire Emblem player I can only call a “sicko.” They are the people who say a unit is unusable if they have one bad level up without getting the right stat increases and who otherwise see these games mostly as a chance to prove how clever they are. I have to imagine this map annoy them because there’s no real way to “trick” the game. The design forces you to inhabit Geoffrey’s role as lead of the mounted knights and approach the situation as he would. You charge forward, breaking open pathways and holding off your flank with the spearmen. 

You know, kinda like how this would play out in a romantic history story or something. Fancy that! Where Path of Radiance encouraged roleplaying by rewarding bonus experience for completing specific objectives, Radiant Dawn constricts the map size and the possibility of options in order to push the player towards a solution that isn’t just mechanically sound but make sense for the characters. It probably not what most people *want* from Fire Emblem but I think these chapters achieve their goal well.

Hell, the bonus EXP thing continues. Geoffrey wants to avoid killing too many of his countrymen and you’ll get a truly astounding amount of experience points for keeping enemies *alive* on this map.

This continued push toward roleplaying both in scenario design and bonus EXP addresses the “retainer problem” that some games have in a unique way. Many games have royals join your party with a massive cadre of retainers and depending on the game this mostly amount to a large influx of units who don’t do much and don’t have a lot of personality besides a ~WILD~ devotion to their lord. I’m looking at you Fates. Here? That’s way less of a problem.

Lucia and the others aren’t simply characters that exist in Elincia’s orbit. Radiant Dawn’s willingness to shuffle your teams and tailor bespoke scenarios means that we get a chance to see how these people act to serve their queen. Be it through Lucia’s sneaky subterfuge-themed maps or Geoffrey’s grand heroic charges into enemy forts. It doesn’t always lead to the most difficult or engaging tactics but it does help these characters feel like people with skills and talents that exist outside support conversations.

All this noted it is in the character writing itself, embodied in one key choice Elincia makes, that this part of the game finds its message. Because damn it’s hard to be the queen…

Royalty Is A Fine Burial Shroud

Elincia never wanted this but they say that the best rulers are the reluctant ones. Path of Radiance already documented her rise from a scare young maiden into the speech-giving queen who rides her pegasus onto the battlefield. But outside of the war setting, outside of that function as the symbol for Crimeans to rally behind on their march, is she actually able to lead? That’s Radiant Dawn’s question.

While we cannot fault her intentions, Elincia does make a few decisions that while genuinely well-meaning set the stage for revolt. By passing on Daien’s stewardship to Begnion, she bears some fault for the pains and troubles we saw during our time with the Dawn Brigade. Free from the watchful eyes of their own empress, Begnion’s soldiers place the boot to Daien’s throat quite harshly. What was meant as a gesture of graciousness—Crimea is too small a nation to maintain a post-war Daien—nevertheless becomes a vessel for conflict abroad and at home.

In Crimea, many see this choice as weak-willed and indecisive. Poised with the chance to expand Crimea’s fortune, Elincia blinked. What restitution that might have come from claiming portions of Daien are lost and her act is seen as overly conciliatory to a country which had, to be clear, attacked and annexed her people without any obvious cause. It is a bold gesture of peace for her but to many people within her own nation, they cannot forget the pain of the Mad King’s War.

Within this chaos, a charismatic noble named Ludveck argues that Elincia is not prepared or able to lead. He has the backing of aristocrats but his movement is oddly populist as well. Throughout the country, many people have let the war ignite a poisonous nationalism in their heart. His ranks are full of young men and young who cling to stories from the war. Especially important is the story of Ike, the commoner who rose from nothing to become the glorious leader of the army. Could they too find such greatness? Ludveck certainly promises it. C’mon now, all it will take is a bit of regicide. You could be a hero too! You could be cool like Ike!

The sheer weight that this places on Elincia is very clear and I think she really holds this chapter together. We’ve already seen Micaiah endure the pains of her position and in Elincia there’s an important echo. She cannot be herself. She can be many things to many people ranging from the glorious icon of Crimea’s beauty to the foolish girl piloting the nation to ruin but she can’t really ever be “Elincia” to anyone. Perhaps maybe to Lucia, her closest retainer whom she has something of a romantically-tinged relationship, but even there she is the queen first and not her own person.

As a result, many of Einicia scenes are smaller in scale. When the laguz princess Leanne meets with her, Elincia breaks down in tears and falls to her knees. She didn’t want to be queen, she never asked for this and she never wanted to invite this trouble upon anyone. We see her cry and see her retreat into fields for moments of calm and silence. Her story is a romantic one on paper. Who doesn’t love it when the deposed princess returns to the throne, flanked by her loyal general and his shining blade? And yet...

The fable only tells the story up until the princess takes her throne but the politics never end and although these scenes humanize Elincia, they also are meant to plant doubts in our mind? Whenever the key moment against Ludveck comes, will she have the strength to stand firm in her convictions?

It’s an interesting way to look at the Fire Emblem formula. There've been sequel games before but Radiant Dawn’s not simply continuing the story of a setting so much as it wants to ask questions about the franchise and the medium. Cool, you did the thing and bested the Mad King and his dragons. Now what? Does that mean you’re actually good at this royalty shit?

Because Elinicia has at the very least learned the war of war well. Coming off Path of Radiance, she makes an impression on the battlefield. Resplendent armor, flying steed. She’s not your most powerful unit (that’s probably the expatriate Daien wyvern rider Haar) but she’s still fairly useful. Armed with Amiti, a Crimean royal blade that allows her to always attack twice, she does much better mechanically than you might think. With the added benefit of high mobility, this means that she can soar around the battlefield with an ease that particular suits her to finishing off weakened foes.

This is particularly clear in the chapter’s final map, a massive defensive stall against Ludveck’s forces where pretty much all of your soldiers gather to form a huge wall between the enemy and Elincia’s position. The goal is simply to protect that portion of the map, which means that Elincia is free (if you want to risk it) to fly from behind her soldiers to strike stray enemies or even, if you dare for the most dramatic version of events, attack Ludveck himself. No one doubts her bravery, the question here is whether or not she will fold when the pressure reaches a fever pitch. The moment comes swiftly.

Although Ludveck is captured in the final battle, the rebels have similarly taken Lucia hostage and threaten to kill her. Ludveck sees this as his moment. There’s no way that Elicina will hold firm, no way that she’ll let someone so close to her suffer. In fact, he’s sure that they could all come to an arrangement if only Elinicia makes some concessions. And for a moment, we think of those moments where she’s broken down from the burden of it all and ask: “will she fold?”

She doesn’t. Elincia leaves Ludveck in prison; there’s no way that she can let him go without completely validating all of her detractors’ judgements and she knows this. So she stands tall on the castle walls and denies the rebels any chance for negotiation. Kill Lucia if you must but you have taken up arms against me and therefore taken up arms against Crimea itself. Go fuck yourselves.

Lucia laughs aloud at the decision. The rebels miscalculated and although her fate is sealed, the unmistakable pride she bears towards her queen has become one of my favorite moments in the franchise. The bond they share is too deep to be wounded by something as silly as imminent death. If that’s what the queen wants, if Lucia must die for her country, she will do it with a smile. Great stuff!

Elinicia really comes into her own here. Yeah, it sucks to be the queen and you’re gonna need to make decisions with painful repercussions but someone has to. Be it through bad luck or royal blood or anything else, someone wears the crown. If you’re lucky they’re someone with goddamn convictions. 

Those convictions are rewarded as Ike and the rest of the Greil Mercenaries arrive to rescue Lucia and scatter the rebels. It’s been maybe ten to twelve hours of playtime and we’ve not seen them at all. That frustration ends here in a big heroic swoop down from above. The third of Elincia’s advisors, Bastian, has been working in secret to find Ike and the others. The queen has triumphed mostly on her own already but as Path of Radiance’s unlikely hero leaps into the fray, the day is won.

It’s an interesting contrast to how we knew them all in the last game. Players have seen Ike and his friends rise from frontier mercenaries to larger than life figures. He arrives with all the ferocity of a general from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A radiant hero with the swirl of history around him.

And there is a tension that now he’s here. Okay, what’s next? What will history toss a *this* tough motherfucker?

Ludveck’s rebellion is over quickly. There’s only five maps to this chapter but plenty to chew on. It’s unclear how this ties into larger events. It’s clear that someone is stoking conflict in Daien but the trouble in Crimea is more self contained. Instead, the scenario holds a mirror to our experiences with the Dawn Brigade. There is a way in which history rhymes. Elincia and Ike, Pelleas and Micaiah. A hidden royal and their radiant general. Shattered kingdoms reforged anew.

This is sometimes called a “filler” arc for the game but contrast matters for what’s to come.

It’s like we said: things never end. There’s always something after the fable, after the flashpoint. So here stand two nations tied together by trials past, both led by reluctant leaders. We understand both of these places well, have a sense of their leadership and their convictions. We’ve guided rebels in their quest for self-determination. We led royal knights on heroic charges brimming with national pride. The stage is set now for these sides to crash into each other. We just need the right spark.

From Riches To Rags

Here’s the landscape: after Ike lead the joint forces of Crimea and their allies from the theocratic empire of Bengion in Path of Radiance to a victory over Daien and the Mad King Ashnard, Crimea’s princess Elincia cedes her nations right to occupy the county. Instead, forces from Bengion take stewardship of the empire’s holdings and almost immediately enact hard “justice” against the citizenry which includes sending most able-bodied men to labor camps. It’s a pretty harsh turn. Didn't these folks help us win?

Our view of Bengion in Path of Radiance is that of an imperfect nation colored by racism against the beast races of the “laguz” and corruption in the Senate but it’s not quite so obviously villainous as here. Bengion’s work in Daein is happening largely without the knowledge of their leader Sanaki, who is pretty damn young and unable to hold the empire together. The result is that Daein, a country we knew in the first game pretty much only as the homeland of a fairly typical evil empire is now suffering under a kind of reciprocal oppression. For some players, this might seem a harsh turn but I think it’s a pretty effective twist; after a war is concluded, it’s not like violence stops and everyone is happy.

To top off the twist, players control a group of rebels called the Dawn Brigade. This gaggle of soldiers is composed mostly of under-trained characters most of whom feel more like Shadows of Valentia’s meager villagers or perhaps some of the “trainee” units of games like Blazing Blade or Sacred Stones. You have a young swordsman and archer, neither of whom are strong. You pick up a moderately trained priestess later but like any early game healer she’s very fragile. And even your “lord” here is pretty weak. Her name is Micaiah and she is most valuable as the group’s figurehead, a silver-haired maiden standing up for oppressed Daeins. Picture Robin Hood with some Jeanne D’arc basically. It's cool!

I’m gonna break down Micaiah as a unit and “lord” later but I have to imagine this change of perspective probably shocked players expecting a return to Ike and his band of capable mercenaries. There’s very few “capable” units to field when you start this chapter. You have Nolan, the senior member and founder of the Brigade (who has since de facto ceded that position to the younger and more inspiring Micaiach) and Michaiah’s companion Sothe. Players might remember him as the young recruit-able thief from Path of Radiance. He’s a handful of years older and much more capable here.

Sothe isn’t immediately available for your use and even when he is, there’s no way for him to cover all threats on the map. This means that while many of your units are incredibly fragile, you have to use them. Your main swordsman is Edward, a young teen in the Myrmidon-class. Lacking initial training, Edward can deal out decent damage but is very frail. A bad dice roll of a dodge could kill him.

Similarly, your archer Leonardo is valuable for his ability to strike at a distance in early maps but he’s also very squishy.  Place him wrong and he’s gonna be turned into paste quickly as trained Bengion soldiers cut him down. Likewise for Micaiah herself; she has the same basic advantage of being able to attack from a distance but she is not very likely to survive any direct combat encounter she stumbles into. This all sounds frustrating but I think it creates some really great initial maps that feel right for the situation while teaching the player to use every advantage they can find in the game’s systems. 

In order to succeed, you often need to gang up on enemies. Which means you develop an understanding of attack distances and weapon advantage/disadvantages. Whenever you send Edward forward you’re rolling the dice on his ability to dodge attacks but this is often your best option: you need someone to fight the enemy at “range one” (aka face to face) because many of your units simply can’t and this young boy might be the only soldier on hand. So you’ll send him forward and have Leonardo follow behind to finish off anyone that Edward doesn’t mange to kill in one round of combat with a lucky critical hit. Operating within the limitations of the character’s weaknesses drives players intuitively toward good tactics while telling the story of these characters. Edward and Leonardo form a natural pair on the battlefield which matches their relationship in cutscenes.

Another example: Nolan is the original founder of the Dawn Brigade, brash and older and a bit more combat-ready. He’s able to hold down the font lines very well if you send him against enemies that his axe is not at a disadvantage with. Micaiah has powerful magic but very low health; she is *the* figurehead of the Dawn Brigade and losing her in combat is an instant game over. Nolan leverages his revolutionary passion as a unit that can cut a path through fodder enemies until Micaiah, the shining star of the revolution, can get in position to dispose of heavily armored bosses and end the encounter. He set the stage for Micaiah’s ascendancy by handing the Brigade to her and often on maps he similarly “sets up” her ability to strike at crucial objectives. The older generation of revolutionaries paves way for the others to strike the final blow. And you can see it play out in combat!

These relationships will eventually shift as the game brings in newer characters towards the end of this chapter. Many recurring faces from Path of Radiance return such as the wyvern-riding Jill or the skilled anti-racist swordsman Zihark, who I’ve pictured above about to kill a dracoknight with an ease that Edward simply cannot match. Their sheer usefulness is probably going to outshine the initial Dawn Brigade members unless you’re training up the rookies intensely and that comes with a shift in map design that moves away from escape maps and surviving enemy waves to proper missions. 

Because for a while, you’re not exactly doing the normal Fire Emblem stuff here. Radiant Dawn's first few maps are small and the goals are similarly modest. Move through these back streets to evade capture, infiltrate this warehouse to steal some medicine, pull off a hostage rescue. You eventually have expert swordsmen and generals at your command but the starting point for the Dawn Brigade resembles direct-action activism before it builds into castle sieges.

And at the center of this gaggle of revolutionaries, we have two young heroes who play with our expectations of what an early game Fire Emblem unit should do…

The Maiden And Her Knight

Fire Emblem diehards often talk about what makes a unit “valuable” and as a result, they have pretty exacting standards for determining a quality character. Some of this depends on what your goals are.  For instance, the goal of a low turn completion playthrough is to speed through maps as fast as possible and this means units that can achieve key objectives quickly are valued. Meanwhile, an ironman run that doesn’t reset and accepts character deaths no matter what will value a unit which is reliable and whose survival is not dependent on luck. “Value” is relative to your play goals.

Still! you’re at the very least probably evaluating the unit on how it compares to other units of that type. Because Fire Emblem is a series full of archetypes, you can engage in some pretty intense comparison work that spans the decades. Today we’re talking about the “Lord” and the “Jegan” as embodied by Micaiah and Sothe. Because Radiant Dawn is having fun and playing with fan expectations here.

Pretty much all Fire Emblem games star a “Lord” of some kind. That can be the gallant prince Marth or the stoic mercenary Ike because what we mostly mean is “a leader unit whose death is an instant game over condition.” As such, judging the quality of a lord from a gameplay perspective can be interesting. Some of the most obviously best lords, such as Geneology of the Holy War’s Sigurd or Three House's Edelgard, are incredibly reliable combat units who you don’t really need to babysit.

This contrasts with characters like Blazing Blade’s Eliwood. He’s not useless but he’s lacking an ability to contribute a lot in combat without training and his game story-locked class promotion doesn’t even grant him many benefits. This is the model set by Marth, who still becomes a bit more “useful” than Eliwood by virtue of the fact that he’s able to open chests. To some folks, this added utility makes him a better unit than Eliwood because he has extra utility that still contributes to your war effort. Micaiah stands somewhere next to these characters: useful but vulnerable. She's not a soldier.

I think Micaiah's design as A Character You Use is pretty important. As outlined above, her fragility means that she often needs to be protected and this means our charismatic leader usually is flanked by another unit on the field. And yet, as outlined earlier, she does not lack for the ability to strike decisive blows. Many early game bosses are armored knights weak to her light magick spells (particularly a tome you can find chapter two) which means that while she’s not good in direct combat if anyone rushes into range and attacks her, she is a boss-killer if you can get her into the right position.

Which is to say that even in combat alone, Micaiah is a “useful” unit for this point of the game.

But there’s a hitch to all this as well: Micaiah can function as an ad-hoc healer using her “Sacrifice” spell. This allows her to give some of her HP to a friendly unit. So she’s working well as a unit on two fronts thematically. She’s the shining gem of the army who can win the day when others rally to support her and conversely she makes that possible by giving up a part of herself to sustain others.

Radiant Dawn is, among other things, a story about leadership and the raw burden that history places on select people. Micaiah tears off pieces of herself to her soldiers and peers, in turn giving them the strength to fight on the front until she can shine brilliantly in one grand, boss-killing interaction.

And while that can make her fragile and hard to use, it fits the story perfectly. Really smart unit design here!

Every maiden needs her knight and Radiant Dawn plays once again with series tropes by providing a very unique portrayal of a loyal “retainer.” One of the common kinds of characters in Fire Emblem is the “Jegan,” named after Marth’s aged advisor from Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. A “Jegan” in a powerful early game unit (usually already promoted to their second tier job) that helps carry players at first but who is eventually outpaced by passion project characters. Often, even as recently as Fire Emblem Engage, these are old cavaliers with solid stats and higher tier weaponry.

That’s not what we get here. We get Sothe, who appeared in Path of Radiance a young thief searching for someone. In that game, there’s very little reason to use hm because you have access to Volke, a legendary assassin. Here, Sothe is your main problem-solver for the initial Dawn Brigade maps. Your only immediately combat-capable soldier is Nolan and there is a stretch of time where Sothe is your skeleton key for escaping any and all combat problems. He’s higher level than everyone else, highly evasive and able to dodge hits and hold down entire sections of a map. He is, as they say, a "reliable" unit.

But! There’s a bit more happening here than “lol the gallant knight is actually a sneak-thief” because it’s that very utility that elevates Sothe’s worth here. He can move more distance than everyone else, he can unlock chest (remember how that added value to Marth even?) and steal from opponents. If needed, he’s strong enough to “rescue” a character like Micaiah and carry her to safety faster than she might be able to sprint there. So even as you start to get combat-capable soldiers as the Dawn Brigade is pulled into the proper Daein Liberation Army, Sothe retains a lot of practical gameplay value.

Sothe works well as Micaiah’s most devoted and therefore more effective soldier but I think it’s important that he’s not a knight of Daein or a learned noble mage. He’s from the streets, he’s of the people. The Dawn Brigade starts to take a backseat on the front-lines as players likely swap in more powerful veteran units but Sothe is always there. And that’s important! Micaiah’s always gonna be there because of her value as a figurehead but the battle can’t be won, even as the cause is popularized and taken up by echoes of the old Daein, without key input from “common” folks. Where the leader goes, so follows the people. And wherever Micaiah is, she will have Sothe at her side.

Bright Light, Shine Through The Darkness

Radiant Dawn splits itself between multiple viewpoints and these shifts don’t exist simply to complicate the preceding game’s narrative. Yes, leaping into a sequel where the first of our goals is to liberate the evil empire of the previous game is a fun complication but this chapter will be followed with a return to Princess Elincia and the recovering nation of Crimea. Two sides of a war, each embroiled in revolutionary struggle. In Daein, the people seek to bring the lost Prince Pelleas to the throne and reclaim their lands. In Crimea, Elincia will fight off a revolt of noblemen who resent that she, last game’s previously unknown lost royal, isn’t upholding old class iniquities. 

But the portion here in Daein isn’t really about Pelleas. He has the right blood and the claim to the throne; his even-handed manner is a far cry from his evil father “Mad” King Ashnard. He’s not unimportant but he’s not the key to the revolution. That’s Micaiah. And so a chief question in this portion of the game and within the Crimea portion isn’t just “What happens after the war?” but “What kind of person is needed to hold a nation together?” Who are the “radiant” people in history? What does it mean to lead? What does it mean to walk the "path of radiance?"

Pelleas has the same fundamental story that Elincia had in Path of Radiance but he doesn’t “have it” in the same way the Micaiah does. He’s not a bad person necessarily but he is not someone possessed of the undefinable swirl of history. Which! I’ve been in the room for quite a few big political speeches (“Yes We Can!” comes to mind) and while there’s tons of material realities that get the person in the room, they still need to stand up and raise their voice. And those people do have *something* about them. A swirl of circumstance and luck and charisma and more which bundles together into a perfect moment. History surrounds them. You can feel it on the air. For good or for ill, the pressure is there.

Radiant Dawn is interested in the circumstances that produce these people and wants to know what the weight of responsibility does to someone. For Micaiah, as discussed, the drain of her position is something we act out in gameplay. She surrenders a part of herself in order for the cause to continue and she does it more profoundly than her peers. This is what makes her a leader and as the story continues and she becomes one of the leading generals of Pelleas’ restoration army, we watch as she loses the ability to be a private person. While she and Sothe share a particular closeness to the point of a romantic connection, Micaiah has to give more and more of herself to the soldiers and the public.

Time and time again, she is targeted by Bengion because even if she is not meant to seize the throne and rule the kingdom, the powerful tale of the silver priestess is simply too powerful. The movement in Daein isn’t really a monarchist one but a populist movement centered on shared suffering. And this really helps soften the “blow,” such as we might consider it, of fighting for the empire. There is a thrumming heart here which is tied to the commonfolk. It might end with a price taking his rightful place but it’s really about a people regaining dignity both from their oppressors and their own history.

This sets it apart from Elinicia’s story, both in PoR and this game; there is a way in which that story is more “traditional” and more truly about the good royal reclaiming power. Here, in Daien, our units are a truly eclectic mix and the question of how to integrate all members of the national struggle into what’s partially a royalist reclamation is complicated and part of the truth here is the the military forces, even as they need Micaiah as a figurehead, start to consume the other half of the movement.

Micaiah loses privacy and individuality as she becomes the “Silver Maiden of the revolution, the nature of the game changes. Our original units are more easily replaced, the small-scale tactics give way to larger maps. And in the end, after the battle is over and Daein won, Micaiah receives her first promotion, her clothing gaining a bit more resplendence. Things change.

Even so: Micaiah is essential. That swirl of history, be it something truly magickal or simply the odd energy of being the right person in the right place, turns her into a star whose gravitational pull cannot be ignored. She is the jewel, shining like the dawn. And as we compare her to Elincia in the next section and later return to her later in the game, Radiant Dawn will continue to ask if it is possible for “radiant” to keep their individuality and morals or if those things must be sacrificed like soldiers on the grid.

From Ink Of Blackest Night

The collision of populist forces with imperial remnants is most clearly felt by the sudden arrival of the Black Knight. In Path of Radiance, he kills Ike’s father and kicks off a long revenge quest that concludes when Ike (assuming optimal play) defeats him in a duel. But this spectre of the old empire, this lap dog of the Mad King arrives without much warning to defend Micaiah at a key moment.  It is by all metrics a heroic deed and yet there is something uncomfortable to be had in watching an icon of imperial power swoop in from the night shadows to stand alert as Micaiah’s guardian.

To be Daein is to be many things and while Micaiah is right to fight for her country’s self-determination and rule, this also calls up the architect and perpetrators of old violences. Nationalism is a complex force, aligning all kinds of people. And for a single map, the Silver Maiden doesn’t have Sothe by her side. She isn’t flanked by a representative of the people but by the nation’s most famous killer.

It’s an interesting map! Vision is obscured by fog of war and you have to protect Micaiah from approaching forces. It’s not necessarily a map that holds up to repeat playthroughs once you know the right moves to make but this is a pretty interesting puzzle on a first run. Even if you’ve leveled up Micaiah considerably, she still can’t handle combat; she’s never been more vulnerable. The Black Knight, meanwhile, is clad in holy armor that repels all but the most sacred weapons.

Again, there’s metaphors here. The fragility of idealism and revolution. The strength of imperialism and fascism. The complicated feelings of what happens when these forces want the same basic thing. etc, etc. but hey! This means you have an invincible unit to play with. Combat is trivial and there’s a very shocking power-fantasy to play out because the Black Knight sticks with Micaiah even into the last few maps of the chapter. There is a grand idea of Daein which is summoned from the ether, an unstoppable inevitability to this moment in history. We will have a nation for all Daiens!

But who does that include? What makes a Daein?

It is ironic then that our Silver Maiden, protected by revolutionary friends and nationalist powerhouses alike, represents something truly different for Daein. Micaiah is one of the Branded, someone with both beorc (human) and laguz (“beastman”) heritage. The matter of racism against the laguz and the Branded was a minor but important background matter in Path of Radiance but it is harder to ignore here. Daein was a supremacist nation; Bengion also held a history of violence against the laguz. The icon of the revolution is a marginalized person, an outcast leading outcasts.

And suddenly, it all makes sense. And suddenly, things get messier. Tellius is hurdling towards an inflection point, a reckoning where all the unaddressed tension between beorc and laguz in the last game cannot be ignored. Daein is free but the fight for freedom is bigger than one nation.  A new, radiant dawn has come for the empire of old but what of the rest of the world? 

Humble Beginnings

Ike is not a lord. He is not a prince or would-be leader of a national alliance. He’s not, at least for now, someone destined to swing a holy blade against the force of darkness. Among Fire Emblem protagonists, this made him something of at outlier until the arrival of Byleth in Three Houses. But beyond being a commoner, Ike is truly a rookie. His father Greil leads a respected mercenary company but Ike’s a trainee and only now joining his peers in the field. This modest background is key to his character but also helps elevate the early game experience in Path of Radiance, which stands now among my favorite early games in the series. 

Fire Emblem tutorials are fairly inconsistent. Of particular note are the tutorial processes of the Game Boy Advanced games which came before Path of Radiance: Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones. Blazing Blade was famously the first Fire Emblem game to be released in the West and as such it features a lengthy (and on first playthrough) mandatory story with Lyn, a young woman from a Steppe tribe who is secretly the daughter of of a noble lord. It’s an okay story with a likable lead character but it holds your hand quite a bit to the point of functionally limiting your available options on certain turns. Sacred Stones isn’t quite as restrictive but it funnels players through a series of very small maps that often contain narrow choke points; these maps come off feeling perfunctory. Now! Some of this is understandable given the worldwide release but also because our protagonists in these games are relatively sheltered people. But they also assume very little of the player and I think that’s a mistake. Path of Radiance tutorializes combat heavily but this feels particularly justified as Greil is obviously training his son to one day assume command of the company. But while you’re often given scenarios with pretty clearly expect solutions, the combat situations open up much sooner. This is helped by the fact that while Ike and some of his fellows are young fighters looking to make a name for themselves, he’s also paired up with a few higher durability units that provide safety from mistakes. Important among these units is Titania, who fulfills a role as the “Jagen” of the game. This unit archetype, named after an aged cavalier in the first Fire Emblem game, is meant to be a high power unit that can carry the early game before statistically falling off. Titania doesn’t fall off! There’s downsides to this; part of the reason these units are meant to fall off is to give incentive to train up “project” units but there are upsides insofar as she can address key threats in a way that allows players to make a few misplays without forcing a hard reset of a map. In this way, she’s a bit like Sacred Stone’s Seth but whereas Seth is so good that a prime strategy of that game is “deploy Seth and rush your objective” for the entirety of the game, Titania’s role isn’t necessarily to complete the game on behalf of the player but rather act as a bulwark against things like sudden enemy reinforcements. This is a game full of strong units and easy ways to level favorites (we’ll talk Bonus EXP later) so you don’t need Titania in quite the same way that you really need Seth in Sacred Stones. She can be replaced or simply remain deployed to serve as a corrective factor against a map’s surprises. There’s a map in the early game which highlights the strong structure. A training patrol in a field is interrupted when Ike and his gang stumble on a woman in need of help. The arrival of troops from the empire of Daein complicated factors; Daien has just declared war on nearby Crimea and the mercenaries are mistaken for enemy soldiers. This map is a mostly open field where the mercenaries are deeply outnumbers but there’s both a thicket of trees that provide protection and the field itself is ideal for Titania since she, as a calvary unit, excels in that terrain. The result is that you’re able to collect your allies into a well-organized unit (Ike at the head, his mage buddy Soren in the rear with a healer companion in tow) while Titania can move easily to rout an enemy pincer attempts. Pretty cool! It’s a serious situation on a map with a lot of free movement space. There’s an “intended” solution which helps players learn the value of terrain advantages as well as crafting makeshift squads. You have the ability to avoid getting swarmed thanks to Titania but still have chances to train Ike and your mages. And it also leads us into the Actual Plot of the game…

Golden Age

The woman which Ike and his comrades have rescued is Princess Elincia, the secret daughter of Crimea’s ruler and now perhaps the only living person with a claim to the nation’s throne. There’s some debate among the mercs (chiefly Soren, their sullen tactician) but they eventually agree to be hired and escort Elincia to the neighboring kingdom of Gallia, where she might safely plan how to retake her country. This marks perhaps my favorite stretch of the game. You have a very limited number of units, are almost always outnumbers and more importantly you lack access to the convoy for a long time. In Fire Emblem, having a convoy is required to have access to merchants, blacksmithing, and other features that allow you to overcome limitations. A low strength unit in certain games where these features are available early can overcome that weakness with a weapon forged at the blacksmith which might bear more strength or critical hit chance. In this portion of Path of Radiance, you’re not really able to do this. 

Additionally, this is a game with item durability. Eventually, you will use your weapons through overuse if you’re not careful. Without being able to repair or restock gear easily, there’s a few great things that happen. The first is that you’re given incentive to diversify your attacking party members so as not to weaken a single unit's weapon but the second is that you’re taking a lot of durability loss regardless and this really helps you feel like a unit on the run from greater forces. Another game famous for this is Thracia 776, which I intend to play down the line. In that game, funds are very limited and because you’re essentially a guerrilla force you have to steal items from enemy units or else capture them and take their gear afterwards. Path of Radiance isn’t this demanding but the early game sprint does often feel desperate. Which fits the story! I’m gonna talk about the story tone later but it’s hard not to play this section of the game and not see the long shadow of Berserk. There’s something of a reverse “Golden Age” arc happening here. In that story, the mercenary Band of the Hawk enjoys great martial fortune and eventually noble patronage before eventually needing to end up on the run. Here, we work in reverse. Ike and his friends start on the run and eventually work towards that ennobling and more traditional war phase. The Greil Mercenaries, comprised both of fresh faces and cynical newcomers, feels very much like that initial cast of misfit warriors from Berserk. Some are even craven enough to leave you after Ike’s father dies! It’s a wonderful mix of overwhelmed idealists and self-serving malcontents and I appreciate that the game allows this group to make mistakes and give some of the pretty real flaws. Future games really strive to pack your team with Very Good People but Path of Radiance understands that it’s both shared ideology but also just stroke of luck material circumstances that bond people. There’s a lot of reasons someone might take up a sword and Radiance allows for varied character motives here. Path of Radiance never feels as good again as it does in this initial arc. There’s a ballooning number of amazingly capable units, more consistent influxes of cash, and more options for answering tactical challenges. Some of this is tied to a very unique system which both helps players immerse themselves in Ike’s shoes but also upends some of the game’s balance…

Here’s Your Bonus!

Path of Radiance has many factors that make it an easy game and among these is the fact that pretty much every unit has sufficient stat growths to outclass the enemies in the game. That by itself isn’t a problem; it actually means that you can invest in pretty much every character and see good returns. This pairs with another system that has a lot of upsides but also some problems: Bonus EXP.

Completing maps expediently or fulfilling special criteria nets you a cache of experience points which you can freely feed to whatever unit you want back at your base between chapters. This is pretty neat and I think there’s a lot of benefits. The first is the most obvious: if you plan your bonus experience spending properly, you are able to use pretty much any character you want. This can range from mostly average characters that you like but can do well when given that EXP (shout outs to my girl Nephenee!) but it can also mean quickly powering up obviously good units right away. Marcia, a pegasus knight, joins you early in the game but likely has some deficiencies compared to some of the mercenaries you’ve trained up because her level is a bit low. This is an immediately solvable problem if you spend Bonus Experience. Fliers and other cavalry units are very strong in Path of Radiance and being able to leap over that stat deficit to make Marcia equal to your other units or even spend extra points to hyper-level her takes very good unit and readily turns her into possibly your best soldier without the need for a training process. This kind of flexibility is something the series adopts much more earnestly in later games where not only can you power level easily but you have a lot of ways to reclass pretty much any unit be it through support bonds in Fates offering access to a partner’s jobs to the open-ended instructional format of Three Houses. All of that starts here with Bonus EXP enabling fast character growth. This makes Path of Radiance a very approachable game where you can play with your blorbos! We all love that! Thankfully there’s no reclassing in Path of Radiance. So each character retains their unique role and so unit identity doesn’t erode even if the play has a lot of freedom in how they might boost a unit’s level to meet the challenge of a specific map.

On the downside, you *do* remove the training process and that can rob certain characters of an “arc” backed up by the game’s mechanics. Take Donnel from Fire Emblem Awakening. He’s your villager unit and starts with bad growth but can turn into a great soldier if you train him. In that game, you need to level him once in his intro chapter or he doesn’t join you. This is takes a bit of tactical work; you need to protect him and set up situations where he can land killing blows but the narrative result of that level up is that he gains confidence. The player is also given a sense of what’s ahead for them if they want to train Donnel further. It won’t be easy but his various skills and big level ups are appealing. In Path of Radiance, you can bypass this work with Bonus EXP. A hypothetical “Donnel” could join your squad and you don’t need to act out the story of fielding him and training him. If you have the bonus points available, you could immediately turn him into a buff dude. So while Path of Radiance gives you flexibility, it does this at the cost of allowing the mechanics to build a story.

However! Bonus EXP does help characterize Ike because more often than not you get the best bonuses for completing a map in a way that aligns with his character. Let’s take this map here. Which is so interesting, I knew I needed to grab a screenshot for this blog.

It’s a later game map some after Ike has become the commander of the Crimean Liberation Army. He’s a bit more seasoned now and the war had dragged on into a pretty bloody affair. An enemy and his squad have fled into a nearby temple and have taken the clergy hostage. The goal here is to defeat the boss but he’s behind tons of clerics that he’s using a meat shields. The player could simply chop through everyone but that’s not really in character for Ike so the game grants bonus experience for everyone you save. What do we do? In Path of Radiance, it’s possible to shove enemies or allies so long as their weight doesn’t outnumber your character’s own value by a certain threshold. The clerics don’t have high weight values so a very simple option here is to attack the armed soldiers but shove the priests out of the way in order to reach the boss with as little bloodshed as possible. Alternatively there is an enemy sage who drops a “Bolting” tome. This magick spellbook can potentially hit enemies up to ten space away from you. If you have a suitable mage, you can grab the tome and give it to them and then attack the boss from far away without necessarily needing to go through the trouble of shoving the clerics. So you have multiple solutions and at least two of them are make sense for Ike in this moment. He’s not the kind of guy to cut down hostages. And if you commit to the character and find a way to avoid that (which is to say if you engage in a bit of roleplaying) then you are rewarded with even better experience gains than if you massacred everyone. This is really great! So! Bonus EXP creates some issues because it removes certain mechanical “arcs” from some characters but it can effectively put you in the main characters shoes and even give you a pretty nice smattering of experience points for doing so. These extra experience points flatten the difficulty somewhat but I think I’m okay with it given that the objectives for gaining the bonuses themselves tend to smash mechanics and narrative together in interesting ways. Because, hey… this game has a really great narrative and tone? 

Love the Subhuman Self

Let’s first make something clear: on the broad strokes there is nothing happening in Path of Radiance that hasn’t been done elsewhere in the series or really anywhere else in fantasy works. You have an evil empire on the march, a princess in hiding, magick spells, fantasy racism, and more. All the hits are here and that can be to the game’s detriment at a glance. It is in the telling that the story shines and that’s both because it takes all of the things seriously but only to a point. Path of Radiance knows we’re dealing with some well-trodden fantasy but it elevates through the quality of the dialogue itself. When you write a fantasy story, there’s often a pull to be very general in how you write characters. They serve more as semiotic than as people. Which can be fine. I also love it when the lost prince raises his sword and reclaims the kingdom. But Path of Radiance avoids (mostly!) these bromides in favor of people who, in spite of grand circumstances, talk to each other like real people might. They bicker and debate their next moves, struggle to adjust their language as they learn certain terms are offensive, and generally react to their situations as you and I might. If we were also wyvern riders or lightning sages, y'know? The secret sauce here is undoubtedly the game’s protagonist whose humble backgrounds and general discomfort at ceremony allows him to cut to the heart of the matter of most scenes. Ike’s arc is mostly about seeking the mysterious Black Knight who killed his father and balancing his urge for revenge with the needs of his army. That’s a good core conflict but the thing that makes Ike really shine as a protagonist is that he doesn’t really have time for the intrigue and backstabbing of nobles. For instance: at one point in the story, Ike and Elincia have travelled from Gallia to the much larger theocratic empire of Begnion in order to ask their aid in marching on Daein. When Elincia is brought before the nation’s young leader and her cohort of senators, they make a show of doubting Elincia’s claim of royalty, forcing her to essentially beg and prostrate herself for their aid and acknowledgement. Very shortly after this, those gathered reveal that they already knew Elinicia was who she claimed. Ike doesn’t stand for this. He stands firm and calls out everyone in the room. “You continued to humiliate her for your own entertainment? For some game of words and wits? …with nowhere to turn, she endures mortal danger and terrible heartbreak to reach your door. And you laugh at her? Where is your decency?” It is a defining moment for Ike and one made possible because the writers really asked “How would a real person respond here?”

This quality of writing, this ability to really have people talk to each other like real folks might, also helps elevate what could have been a problem: this is a game that wants to talk about racism. It’s not quite central to the core plot of Elincia’s campaign to reclaim her homeland but one of the defining features of the setting is that there’s two kind of people: beorc (humans) and laguz (“beast people” of various different types) and there is a great ongoing tension between the two. Fantasy racism is a tricky thing and it doesn’t always land. This is often because the metaphors get stretched. Being a mage in Dragon Age can be shorthand for a great deal of things and while that wide applicability is partly the point, it can make for some awkward comparisons. Path of Radiance keeps things simply in the sense that there’s less attempts at connecting the matter to specific real world realities and while that runs the risk of minimizing the seriousness of the subject matter, it’s again the quality of the character writing that allows it to avoid being juvenile. Take for instance Jill Fizzart, possibly one of the best written characters in the game. Jill is a wyvern rider from Daien who joins Ike’s group first because she gets dragged into one of the game’s many battle scenarios and it’s better for her survival to stand with Ike even if he’s the enemy but she stays around and grows a lot. Daien is particularly bigoted towards the “sub-human” laguz and Jill is a product of the environment. Through exposure to the many laguz characters in our army, we get to see Jill change her mind on the matter. And it’s not something that happens immediately. We see Jill chided for the language she uses and the questions she asks, we watch her talk to other folks and outline what the education in Daien teaches about laguz, and if we go out of the way to connect her to the right characters, we watch her build individual friendships. And interestingly! Jill has the potential to *fail* her journey. One level has the army face her father, a general in Daien’s forces, and if Jill confronts him without certain support thresholds met and connections made, she can DEFECT BACK TO DAIEN! This also doesn’t feel out of character. Jill is a dynamic character who can explode in many directions. Very cool. And though I just mentioned supports (which are optional conversations) Path of Radiance also has ‘base conversations’ before many missions that mostly lack special criteria to see. These often contain hints about the next mission or maybe have you visit a local town to get a special item but some of them are reserved only for character growth. So where later games might hide their most important pieces of characterization in conversations you might never see, Path of Radiance makes a point to sometimes offer a non-essential but easily accessed scene with someone like Jill so that we can see her growth happen no matter what. It’s not conditional to players taking the right steps. The grounded touch that Ike brings allows us to have a protagonist who really gets to the heart of the matter even as he struggles with his own recklessness. Ongoing conversations, which are rendered carefully and not locked behind arbitrary conditions, mean that the story can still focus on the tense relations of beorc and laguz or find time for key relationships to build. The result is a game that really seems concerned with characters be it in the writing or the manifesting of roleplaying opportunities with something like the Bonus EXP system. It’s still a pulp fantasy story at the core but there’s always a character beat happening. Either with Ike in the main story, someone in the camp, or fresh surprises on the battlefield. Some characters admittedly get left behind compared to others but more often than not because Path of Radiance is trying to find time for *someone* at any moment, there’s very few moments that don’t feel important to someone. And thus to the player! The result is a story that always finds a way to hold your attention.

First off: I’m not gonna do a history lesson here. I assume you at least kinda know about Ultima and Richard Garriot. That said, I wouldn’t fault you for not having played Underworld both because of its age and because of its nature as this hazy side-game. And yet if you’re going to look at something, you might as well look at the game which codified the trends. And I think that of any Ultima game, this is the one whose ripple effects are being felt most in today’s games ranging Elder Scrolls or Breath of the World to indie games like Lunacid. Underworld is not the first time that Richard Garriot and his team crafted dungeons—his first (solo!) game, Akalabeth: World of Doom, is essentially nothing but dungeoneering—but Underworld paints the clearest image of what he believes a dungeon adventure should be. There’s 8 floors to the dungeon of Ultima Underworld and while they are small they are dense both of problems and in the potential solutions. Dungeons are places where "situations" happen. Players may roll a variety of classes such as Thief or Paladin and invest skill points into suitable talents like the ability to identify magic items, perceive better deals with merchants, or pick locks but it’s in the actual play that Underworld really expresses itself. Which is to say that while this is a game where numbers are important, it is also one where the primary focus is simulating a space in as much detail as possible. This is from the booklet that comes with Ultima Underworld 2 but I think the following quote says it all: “In designing the Underworld system, one of the thing we attempted was to merge traditional fantasy RPG elements… with a sophisticated three-dimensional simulation of a sensible and believable world. We feel that one of Underworld’s strongest features is its capacity to generate conditions and strategies we did not script, but arose form scenarios we created.” Let me give a quick example from this game: I came across a part of the dungeon surrounded by a river on all sides with only one bridge leading to the “island” within. The entrance to that space was blocked by a portcullis I could not bash down although there was a button on the other side to press. Though I was a Paladin, I didn’t have high enough magic talent to use a telekinesis spell to press the button. What to do? I doubled back to the previous floors until I could find a wooden pole, which I then slipped through the bars to press the button on the other side. This took at least 40 minutes! A "situation" happened!

Remember that this is a DOS game from 1992! Ultima Underworld codifies what we might consider a fairly “western” idea of how to facilitate play: it is not something abstract but real and reactive that you can poke at. Increasing your “missile” skill might increase the damage of a rock loosed from your sling but perhaps more important than the numbers is the possibility for that rock (thanks to some rudimentary physics programming) to smack mid-air into an arrow that an enemy goblin has fired. The dungeon fantasy space but one with “rules” similar to real life. This contrasts with some of the other games we’ll look at later, particularly eastern RPGs, where the dungeon is a collection of numbers that, while teeming with implications, could never create such an unexpected outcome. Because Ultima Underworld is a game chiefly about surprises and for those surprises to be effective, the player needs to have a belief that the world they are exploring is solid and sensible. To that end, even the most mystical act in Ultima Underworld (casting magic) isn’t simply a matter of selecting a spell from a menu and firing away. Instead, the player must collect rune stones around the world and craft combinations of arcane words that might create a magic missile or mend their wounds. Skills are not simply learned through leveling up; instead there is a commitment to the idea that even something like magic is a craft that must be learned. Nothing simply "happens." You can always point back to the source that set off the reaction. It is important to understand that because Ultima Underworld’s chief goal is to drape its dungeon in a blanket of verisimilitude, everything is subject to an degree of “process” whenever Garriot could add the potential for extra interactions. Magic requires not only a high magic pool but the physical possession of specific rune stones, if weapons are given to friendly blacksmiths for mending you must wait upwards of 20 real-life minutes for the work to be done, leveling up requires praying at hard to find shrines and if you want to raise a specific skill it requires a specific chanted mantra which you must learn about in your exploration. many are very hard to find and learn. Players are required to eat and sleep. If you can’t find food scrounging about in your travels, you can tie spider’s thread to a pole and use that as a fishing rod to catch food or else learn the runic incantation for creating food. Y’gotta eat! Figure it out.

In recent years, this kind of design has attracted a descriptor word: friction. That’s been a word used both in good ways and bad ways. Last year, writing about Dragon’s Dogma 2 and the ways in which is sometimes adds degrees of inconvenience to the navigation of its open world, I said: “it’s easy to boil everything I’m saying down to “Dragon’s Dogma is not afraid to be rude to the player” but that doesn’t capture the spirit of the design. It invites players to go on a hike. It makes no attempt to hide that the hike is difficult. But that’s the extent of it.” we can see perhaps the earliest and perhaps even now the purest manifestation of that mindset in Ultima Underworld. That said, as conversations of modern instances of “friction” have developed, I’ve been a little disappointed in the ways that the concept has been flattened. Friction is not simply when something is difficult and it is not simply when an interaction takes extra time to perform. It’s more akin to how an artist might turn to impasto in order to better define the crest of a powerful wave in the sea or highlight the billows of a cloud. It is not difficulty for the sake of difficulty. The name “friction” reveals exactly the purpose. It is a texture which imparts character. If Garriot’s goal is to stress the act of dungeoneering (even in the most fantastical sense) as an arduous process, one of the most obvious ways to make the player feel engrossed and drawn into the situation is to add complexity to their interactions. That complexity isn’t simply something drawbacks either. It’s something that widens the possibility space beyond a few basic verbs. There’s a few ways to deal with a locked door in Ultima Underworld. You could find the key but you could also attempt to bash it down with your weapons although this might damage or even destroy the weapon in turn. Also, that could take many minutes of clicking to achieve. You could attempt to lock pick it but picks are pretty rare but that might not matter if you the runes required for the “open” spell. That’s higher level magic though and maybe you’re low on mana anyway after dealing with some bandits. I suppose you could pull out your bed roll and rest but is this a safe place for that? Hell, maybe you don’t have enough mana but could if you leveled up at this floor’s shrine. But wait… I just got to this floor and I don’t know where that is. Thus the act of “open door” once again gains friction and texture. Underworld's philosophy of level design is what my peer Dr. Cameron Kunzelman might call “Gygaxian.” The dungeon in Underworld, a portion of the grimly named Stygian Abyss, is not simple a box for encounters to happen in. It’s designed to feel like a proper ecosystem. So where one of Gary Gygax’s dungeons might put a monster in a trash heap to explain how waste is dealt with, Ultima Underworld places a large pit in a goblin camp to answer the question of “where do they poop?” And it doesn’t do this simply as a little joke or bit of world-building; if you put together some clues you might realize that leaping into the pit is a valid way to reach the next part of the dungeon: that pit connects to the water system cutting through the next floor. Leaping in spares you from hunting for the actual staircase downward.

This fascination with the dungeon as an ecosystem, which is to say a space of constantly colliding “things”, extends to how Ultima Underworld characterizes the inhabitants of the Stygian Abyss. This isn’t a dungeon only packed with monsters like Akalabeth; the Abyss is home to a now-failed enclave comprises of both human and “monster” races. The project of a utopian monk has now fallen apart and the result are factions that all have different feelings about each other. The first floor of the dungeon is split between vagabond humans and two factions of opposing goblins. The third floor is almost entirely the demesne of friendly (if cautious) lizard-men. So on and so forth. This is a place with inhabitants. Ultima Underworld is not overly concerned with social roleplay (although the sequel will explore that) and contains only so many dialogue trees but nevertheless its dungeon has a social structure. That might be enough in and of itself but it actually sets the stage for the game’s most impressive and involved puzzle.

Those lizardmen on the third floor understand the common tongue but don’t speak it. Their speech is a series of hisses and clicks that you’ll have no idea how to parse at first. However, they also have taken captive a mute mage who will teach you the language. The catch is you’ll never get a simple translation. You might ask via text entry what the difference “yeshor'click” means and the monk will mime out an embrace to indicate the world means “friend” or something close to it. If you want to have conversations with the lizardmen, which is essential to progress, you will need to do this for every word, taking notes as you go along so that you understand at least the sentiment of what a friendly lizardman is saying if not the details. It’s an entire floor where the chief challenge is not really dealing with enemies (there’s a few wandering rats and bandits at most) but tackling language. All this said and with respect to the quality of both the simulation and the more bespoke puzzles, Ultima Underworld isn’t without problems. The game contains a host of skills that you can invest in which don’t really matter. It’s tempting to take the “Repair” ability to keep your gear in good shape—weapon durability is very important in this game—but the game already offers a magic spell that will fully repair an item and the cost for paying blacksmith to do so is very cheap. Lockpicking sounds exciting but most doors can be bashed down with time and, once again, magick can open those doors as well. And while there’s a lot of water hazards in the game, there’s no situation where you need to upgrade your swimming skill to surpass them. Basically, if you wanna play this game and you’re not sure what to do, you should just play it like I have so far. Start as either a Paladin or Druid (since they can fight but also have access to magic) and put points into swords for your combat stuff since they’re the most common thing to find. Once you get access to magic, if you really like it, you can just split off and invest there if you really love it. Underworld’s commitment to a simulated space is admirable but it’s the “first one of these” and even once the devs on this game spin off to create “immersive sim” giants like Deus Ex, they never quite escape the issue where some skills are simply more useful to have than others. Though at least down the line in that genre, lockpicking (or stands ins like hacking) does matter more. That’s the interesting thing here. Ultima Underworld is this huge focal point that tons of different genres spin off from. Ultima Underworld’s design lineage is felt not only in immersive sims like Deus Ex and Thief. This is also the game that gives birth to the King’s Field series (whose first game I want to sit with and write about eventually) as well as dungeon crawling “blobber” tour de forces like Etrian Odyssey. A lot of things start here. Few are truly "like" this game. Because while the simulational elements of Underworld are maybe the most impressive aspects of the games, it also simply grasps the idea of “discovery” in a way that’s very potent and which other designers conceptualized in a few different ways. Chief among them the idea of mapping spaces and building out glossaries of knowledge; in Ultima and many inheritor games this is a very active process that takes up most of your time more than any individual moment of problem-solving. Ultima Underworld is above all else “about” navigation. because that's what all games are about.

You enter a floor and your map is empty. The most basic goal is to find the entrance to the next layer of the dungeon although Underworld does eventually expand scope to a wider, less linear quest to locate 8 sacred relics throughout the entirety of the Stygian Abyss. Your map does fill in automatically; this is one of the major quality of life features that Ultima Underworld permits for exploration. As you travel, the map gains definition. What it doesn’t gain, however, is much more than the most basic of topological details. If you find an enclave of friendly NPCs or a secret door, the task falls on you to mark in the details using a rudimentary ink and quill feature that allows you to leave notes on any point of the map. Which you will need to do. There’s no reasonable way to complete this game as a first-timer without sitting down and taking notes. You have no journal to track objectives, no auto-completed markers on your map, and in-depth puzzles that might necessitate documents all to their own. The Eureka! moments are exciting but they come alongside as constantly rolling process of familiarization. You will be looking at your map very often even after you’ve covered all possible grounds and without detailed notes on your map, fully grasping the labyrinthine twists and turns of the Stygian Abyss is basically impossible. To be a dungeoneer is first and foremost to be a cartographer. You might learn the quickest ways to go up and down a floor but if you’re not also marking healing fonts, wayward NPC locations, and your own makeshift supply caches… then you’re in for a very hard time. And if you’re not taking active notes on major conversations with key characters, who will not always repeat the information they taught you, the means to progress the main story will be hazy at best. This is something all Underworld-inspired games seem to understand: you gotta do some homework. The biggest point of comparison and contrast going forward as I write about these dungeon games is understands what kind of homework it will ask of you. None will ever ask you to engage in the same kinds of emergent problem-solving that Underworld tasks the player with and in exchange they often up make greater puzzles of navigation either by severely limiting the space of their maps or stocking them with more difficult combat “checks” that require a different kind of note-taking focused on things like elemental weaknesses or even patrol patterns. Still, they all agree that every inch gained should feel “meaningful.” They simply have different philosophies as to how to make the progress feel difficult and well-earned.

We’ll move on to Etrian Odyssey next (unless I miraculously sit and do the first part of my Vagrant Story breakdown) and the difference is felt keenly even as the influences are hard to ignore.

We Could Be Heroes

Lunar’s concept is pretty simple. You play as Alex, young dreamer from the nowhere town of Burg. Nearly two decades ago, four great heroes including the great Dragonmaster Dyne went on a quest to end a grand war and do a lot of general good deeds at the behest of the goddess Althena. Dyne disappeared after than but the other heroes became major world leaders. Alex dreams of going on a similar adventure and out of all the “Four Heroes,” he wishes to be most like Dyne.

For the moment, he’s stuck in Burg alongside his childhood sweetheart Luna. She’s an amazing singer and though she doesn’t know it yet, she has a startling connection to Dyne. One day, Alex’s friend convinces him to explore the nearby lair of the White Dragon in order to strike it rich. This kickstarts an adventure. How could it not? Faced with a new “Magic Emperor” who wants to rule the world (and who is kidnapping songstresses including Luna) Alex sets off with a slapdash group of allies to meet with all the dragons in the world, acquire their blessing, become Dragonmaster, and defeat this evil threat. It's a typical magical adventure but I actually think this is Lunar’s greatest strength. Through the time I’ve had readers regardless of the venue, there've been times when I’ve taken a detour to talk about notions of authenticity or earnestness. This has often come hand in hand with discussions of the RPG I’m genuinely industry-famous for loving: Skies of Arcadia. A boon that Lunar shares with that game is a deep earnestness. Which is not to say naivety but rather an understated but very true belief in the story’s stakes.

You might say “Don’t all stories have that kind of belief?” And my answer is no. I don’t think they do. Particularly since the entrance into the 21st century, the habit of genre fiction has been to find ways to outsmart what came before it. This manifests in many different ways. Writers might establish hard rules for their magic both as a way to limit conveniences and to add what they think is a kind of realism to the world. Modern character writing shies away from earnestness via self-reference and quips.

Often, I think this actually weakens works. But why is that? I think it belies a lack of confidence in the world and perhaps even a lack in the storyteller’s ability to draw readers in and make them believe even the most fantastic stories. For video games particularly, this impulse arises from a sense of historical embarrassment. Diehard players wrestle with the idea that games are, to some extent or another, “toys” as much as they are artistic works. The demand for self-reference and intensely solid, defined worlds leaps from this blushing mindset.

Games therefore overcompensate for their creator’s embarrassment with an attempt to shock or trick savvy readers or else assure them that yes we all know these stories of magic dragons and spells and swords are a bit juvenile. Except this one! We promise! Lunar lacks this desperation and I think the confidence with which it proceeds helps make it not simply a fun game but a genuinely good one! You will travel with a team of swordfighters and mages and priestesses, quest to meet some dragons, deal with a few complications along the way, and hear many platitudes about the human spirit. This is nothing new for the genre but because Lunar is unburdened by a desire to impress itself upon the player or else prove it is “serious” in any way, the adventure moves with comfortable ease. I used the word “fable” earlier and I think that’s important. Lunar is a succinct—at most 15 hours—story about the raw power of belief and the purity of love. It uses a framework of magic and sorcery and gods to tell a simple moral: that we do not need gods or kings. We need only love and the acts that arise from that love.

We all know that history is more complicated than that but if we judge Lunar as a fable first I think it’s a solid example of the form. A young person playing might find inspiration in the message and an older player unearths a forgotten truth: that sometimes you need to simply do the right thing because it is the right thing. Sometimes you take up the sword and follow in the footsteps of Dragonmasters because there are monsters out there! And ya gotta fight 'em! You might quibble about the details of how valuable this all might be as a lesson but in some cases it’s fine for things to be that simple. We trick ourselves into thinking stories must be impossible knotted things but then some snot-nose teenager with a magic blade and holy armor cuts through the knot. We should be so lucky in real life! Lunar, at least this first game, lacks complication and has no shame about being a simple fantasy story. It is a sentiment mirrored in the mechanics and structure, where a lack of gimmicks and adherence to formula might frustrate those looking for cleverness but will delight anyone who meets the game on its own terms.

It’s Just A Ride

I don’t think you really play Lunar for the story. Which is to say that while so much of this game is iconic, it’s actually more potent as a case study of the “default” JRPG form more than it is something you really poke at for an example of deft storytelling. It’s a good tale and confidently told but even by the time the Silver Star released on Sega CD, the genre had received what remains perhaps the best example of “how to tell” a story within the form in Final Fantasy IV.

Takashi Tokita cracked how to write compelling characters and how to use a game’s battle spaces as a sort of self-contained theater stage a year before Lunar’s release. And yet in spite of this, the Silver Star and all its variations rank second on my “must play” list for understanding the JRPG form. If you want to know what these things do… which is to say that you want to understand the structure here in the same way you might understand the what makes a sonnet a sonnet… then this is the game to play. There has never been a better game to understand the cadence of traveling to a town, learning about the problem they are facing, and leaping into a dungeon to solve that issue with a big boss fight. There has never been an easier and more approachable game to play if you want to understand the appeal of turn-based magical combat. And that’s because of the simple truth that by RPG standards this is a very lean game with a truly propulsive sense of momentum. When you boot the game up, you’ll be dungeoneering in the White Dragon Cave within perhaps five minutes and every moment after that the cadence will match that drive.

There is no wasted time in Lunar. Even in a town, you’re not too far delayed from your next plot beat or important piece of information. World map travel is easy thanks to an ability to warp around without the need to specialized airships, boats, or other travel gimmicks. Dungeons themselves are fairly brisk, lasting (with exception of the games final two delves) perhaps no more than twenty to thirty minutes. To a modern player, all of this seems fairly quaint. Lunar’s combat and world navigation don’t really have a specialized mechanics or systems. This is part and parcel of being an old RPG. Many games today, for good and ill, add complicated layers onto turn-based combat. Dodges and timed counter attacks are common as are additional resources and while in the best games (Octopath Traveler, Clair Obscur) this can lead to combat where the requirements to truly “master” battle are satisfyingly high, this isn’t always achieved. Lunar’s combat is built on the very basics of normal attacks, character-specific magical spells, and item use.

There’s not much more to it than that. On top of this, items are plentiful and powerful guest characters often join the party for extended portions of the game. Lunar is not a hard game and once you crack the synergies between characters—Mia should probably cast attack potency increasing magics on Alex, Nash should use his area of effect spells to clear dungeon trash quickly, Jessica’s regenerative healing magic can be cast preemptively to ease incoming damage—most fights are very similar. On paper, this is not an inspiring thing to say nor would it be great for me to also admit that with a little bit of early game grinding you can outpace the difficulty curve and have many of your dungeon fights (except the flagship bosses at the end of each) easily dealt with using the game’s automatic combat function. But far from diminishing the experience, Lunar’s ease and simplicity provides a really great entry title for players of all ages and especially those unfamiliar with the genre. That it is also such a bright and colorful tale is icing on the cake

Each Of Our Souls Intertwine When We Do

It helps that this is a pretty fun party of characters to adventure with. I don’t think Silver Star’s cast has the most depth but they make for a very enjoyable group. It’s all very 1990s. Alex is the kind hero, stalwart but with hints of sensitivity. That pairs him well with Luna, his love interest. She’s a typical healer and only with the party for so long but as a pair they feel very complimentary.

This is important because Lunar is first and foremost a story about romance. Alex and Luna are young teenagers and feel suitably inexperienced in all things but they uphold each other very well. Luna is not entirely pure and allowed to get huffy with Alex’s dreamer ways and in turn Alex sees through the image that most people see around Luna (she is the beautiful and somewhat world-known singer) that makes their romance click. That later part is important because we eventually learn that Luna is the reincarnation of the goddess Althena, who assumes a human form 16 years ago after Dyne’s adventure. This makes her easily the most important person in the world and while it’s clear that many people see Luna as someone truly exceptional, Alex always seems on her level. Even after the party learns about Luna’s divinity, Alex is not fighting to save the goddess. He is fighting to save his beloved childhood friend, appealing to the common person underneath everything else.

This isn’t a tale unique to Lunar but the amount of time spent allowing these two to be messy and silly and teasing and even a little mopey with each other in the early portions of the game really sells those final moments potentially dozens of hours later where Alex must reach the person within the goddess. Many games or anime telling this version of the story miss that balance. Love is also the question tugging at the rest of our party although the degree to which that compels you will shift from couple to couple. Nash, an arrogant mage, joins your party early and is the source of a great deal of comedy but pulls double duty as the character whose love causes him to venture astray.

He’s smitten with your party’s other mage, Mia Ausa. She’s the daughter of the Mage Guild’s leader Lemia Ausa and been primed for successor-ship since childhood. As a match for Nash, that’s fine enough. He’s the cocky firebrand and she’s the well-composed rock. It’s a true enough formula but the downside here is that Mia is maybe the least dynamic party member. Killer on the battlefield but less dynamic in a plot sense. Nash drives things here. His desire to protect Mia leads him to betray the party, hoping to keep them from their journey and what he believes is a battle that they will lose. If Lunar is a story about love versus duty, Nash is the party member who stumbles most. That’s fine! But I think because Mia’s something of a flat character we’re not as sympathetic to Nash or understanding of his weakness. Once they admit their feelings to each other, there is a genuine warmth on display but while the destination is cozy, I think our lovely mages are maybe the least interesting in terms of execution even if on paper there’s a lot of juicy drama. Surprisingly to me, the party pairing that I walk away liking more is the offbeat match between priestess Jessica Alkirk and her boorish warrior partner Kyle. It’s very stereotypical 90s stuff and you think I would hate it. Kyle’s a womanizer and drunk, leader of a group of mostly friend warrior bandits who help guard a major trade route. Jessica is the daughter of Mel, one of the Four Heroes. He was a pirate and her mother was a noble woman. She’s pulled between these two worlds; Jessica is both adventurous and boisterous but also a surprisingly capable and devout healer. Let me place a card on the table: one good reason to like Jessica is because she’s a very cute 1990s’ style catgirl and that’s great. But she’s also the character who wears her contradictions most openly on her sleeve.

The push and pull between the demands she feels to be a proper priestess and her desire to live a more adventurous life makes for perhaps the most compelling character in the cast and her grudge with the evil mage who turned her father to stone brings a little bit of welcome venom to the group’s relationship to the villains. It’s a bit more personal and sharp, which brings greater stakes to some of the boss fights.

Kyle should annoy me but it’s clear that so much of what he shows to the world isn’t the real him. It’s a role he is playing in order to keep friends at a distance and enemies unaware. Viewed in that lens, he’s a good match for Jessica. She’s also living a double life, much of the world thinking she’s a soft and sheltered priestess. And while this pairing is most often used for comedy when their bickering leads to shout-fests, I think there’s a bit more going on here than you might expect at a glance. There’s hints of an identity theme at play with these party members alongside the questions of love and duty. Alex is trying to emulate his folks hero without quite understanding what it might demand of him to be “Dragonmaster Alex.” Luna feels a pull between her common life and her role as divinity. Mia feels the burden of leadership and the isolation of being “Lemia Ausa’s daughter” instead of just her own person.

Nash plays as a capable and bold mage while hiding deep fears. Jessica is both a noble lady and pirate-gal. Kyle is a drunken fool and a gallant stranger. It’s not a theme that gets a lot of focus but it’s there and while these characters aren’t the most dynamic is the genre’s history, they’re all ultimately very fun to be around.

And while we’re gonna discuss it later, I do want to end by saying that their archetypal qualities are intentional. Silver Star isn’t a game to talk about in isolation; it’s paired with Eternal Blue. Which is a game far more about subverting the models and character-types established here. 

Magic Emperor Ghaleon

There is one important complication to all this and that’s our villain, Ghaleon. He’s one of the Four Heroes and his inability to understand Dyne’s final decision and Althena’s choice to give up her divinity drives the most complex moments of the game. That’s a “complex” with something of an asterisk because I once again don’t think that Lunar is doing anything too subversive but there is meat to the bone here insofar as how Ghaleon is used within the story to help explore the themes of duty, love, and to play ever so slightly with the RPG form. Ghaleon’s already successfully gone on a JRPG quest. It didn’t end as he imagined but it makes him a particular kind of savvy. For an early part of the game, he’s an ally and guest party member whose power is absurd but the moment he is brought before the White Dragon, he kidnaps both the dragon and Luna and accelerates his plans to take over the world. There’s plenty of muhahahaha-ing and dark magical spells but underneath it, there is a sense that Ghaleon does have a plan. A new Dragonmaster could stop him and so he moves at a fast pace to both seize the dragons power and turn Luna into his pawn. The competency is quite novel! His motives are also at least somewhat understandable. The world was already on a downswing and suddenly its beloved goddess is convinced by his friend Dyne to forgo her powers and live a mortal life. This leaves the world, in Ghaeon’s estimation, without protection. There is a gap of power to fill and which must be filled because humans are too wayward and fickle without some kind of god to guide them.

He clearly wants to understand and accept the outcome of his previous adventure and simply can’t make the leap. But that desire for understanding is genuine and while Ghaleon does ultimately opt for evil shenanigans, there’s varying amounts of nuance that you can ascribe to what he is doing and this will only become even more the case as Eternal Blue comes around. He’s evil but you can’t help but think there’s more to it. So much of this comes back to the voice performance of John Truitt in the Playstation version of the game. There’s a very light and fey affectation in Truitt’s performance, somewhat camp and in the most evil moments delightfully melodramatic. Ghaleon is capable of being brutish while also having a veneer of culture in his public-facing persona. He’s the evil Magic Emperor, enslaving towns and making allies of the mysterious “Vile” tribe in the wasteland but he’as also a lover of music and friend to faeries and loves tending his garden. Truitt’s performance colors our read of Ghaleon to this day and some of that characterization and voice-direction is clearly present even if the Remaster recasts the part with veteran actor Keith Silverstein.

It’s Ghaleon’s presence, which is full of contradictions and contrary desires, that turns our fable into something a little more than a basic story. It adds just enough empty spaces at the edge of the map that help The Silver Star feel a bit less vanilla even as it stays true to many RPG tropes.

Fading Starlight

Something you often encounter in these discussions is an implication (sometimes a direct suggestion) that it is impossible to really engage with Japanese media as a westerner. That there's too many layers of nuance and too many centuries of ingrained tradition for anyone who has not engaged in lengthy study on the topic to penetrate. Often, this is framed as a desire to simply put things in cultural contexts. respect it and give due seriousness! Which is fine. I absolutely think if you wanna talk about something like the portrayal of the Japanese justice system in Judgement, it probably helps to… y'know… know details about the Japanese justice system. If you want to talk about how a game approaches gender, an understanding of certain social mores is important. No one debates this; it's important to understand art as arising from specific material conditions and places.

This is not really the approach people take however. Instead there is an insistence that the cultural difference between Japan and western nations is essentially insurmountable. Which has some bad implications. I think people are well meaning when they're like "hey, you gotta watch this YouTuber talk about Shintoism and JRPG boss fights for over an hour" but it comes at the cost of painting the culture as something of a puzzle to solve. and make no mistake: I'm glad anyone is doing the work but there's a bit of strangeness at play when folks are like "well you're American" and then tell me to watch criticism also made by Americans. especially since I do have a educational background that includes the study of world religions. i've studied plenty of this! and it's not impossible for me to have grasped.

the world is beautiful and nuanced and specific and full of vibrancies. but these things are not so singular that we can't connect with them or come to know them. and those nuances and specifics and vibrances don't create a protective ward around works. if anything, they're invitations to explore something new. if I walk away from Persona with a position that you don't agree with I promise that it's not something that's happened in haste. It used to be my job to think about games. and I've thought about Persona a lot! it's not inaccesible.

When we start to paint a culture as being particularly foreign we inherently exoticize it. We drape a degree of mystery over it which implies there is no universal connections found in art. Of course the concept of "police" is different in Japan to some extent as is the expectations that go into inheriting a family business. yes, the social nuances of a classroom differ. But Japan is not so alien to the western critic that we can't look at popular fiction and spot patterns. I certain don't need a 17 anime consumer to write me an essay on honne and tatemae or whatever in order to understand what's going on in the Midnight Channel. It's an easily observable truth that Persona often identifies issues within Japan society while also (particularly in Persona 5's case) concluding that these problems are not a consequence of specific power structures but rather moral failings of certain bad individuals. That's the text. Even when it wants to suggest otherwise.

Here's a little snippet from Persona 5. On face value, it seems to contradict what I'm saying. "Harper, how can you say that it only cares about individuals when it outright says that society itself needs to be addressed!?" DO YOU EVEN PLAY THESE GAMES YOU BITCH?! The answer is that the game does not have a model or idea of what it means to change society except vaguely to inspire people to more individual action. be nicer. stand up for yourself, speak your truth, do things for your own reasons. which has a radical element to it in the context to be sure but we've spent a huge portion of the game seeing how the abuse of power, particularly power placed in certain positions and social strata

a change of mindset is good but… is that sufficient? I'm not entirely convinced. not if this game want to truly deliver on everything it has explored. (side note, a lot of folks were like "why are you focusing on p5 so much here?" and the answer is that it's recent, representative of the series' values from the last decade or so, and because I'm a tired adult in their 30s who has stuff to do and isn't obligated to make a 300 tweet long thread breaking down multiple scripts. if you want me to do that labor, you better pay me for my time. otherwise I don't care to appease fan who have no plans of truly entertaining what I'd do anyway. no breakdown I do could please them)

but you fight Yaldabaoth Harper! You kill the collective gestalt representative of the status quo!. okay sure but the metaphorical battle falters as the game ultimately imagines many of our heroes (for instance Makoto, who also decides to become a cop even after her sister leaves the profession to become a defense attorney) are content to slide into the power structures as they exist. they've simply become "good apples" in the same basket that held the bad ones What does it matter if you kill the metaphor when you don't carry through elsewhere? It's not simply some vague human desire to be exploited that created the various monstrous villains we face throughout the game. There's real material circumstances, systems and long-held powers that gave them the carte blanche that enabled their abuses! Be they financial, political, or even sexual.

We might layer nuances on top of this of course. Notions of reticence to change or valuing of tradition, attitudes towards elders. But when we do so it's important be careful. When fans imply impenetrabilities in the works by virtue of cultural difference, there's a risk of veering into a kind of Orientalism. One which mystifies the culture and turns it into a kind of "other." Distant, strange. This sometimes comes paired with a kind of infantilization of creators but that's a different though similarly fraught topic that I think is particularly best left in the hands of the creators themselves. I'm not the person to talk about that!

Nevertheless, a frustrating part of the response to my tweet today has been a rush to say "This work functions that makes it necessarily elide your ability to critique it."

I'll be an ass and generalize. It's mostly people with Persona avatars making this suggest. That Persona, as a Japanese work, is imbued with an ineffable quality that magically allows it to side-step what's ultimately a pretty timid conclusion. Many of these folks are younger players, self-identified as such in profiles, who clearly have a deep connection to the series. It means something to them. But I'd rather they simply say "hey, I found this thing particularly moving at an important moment in my life" rather than conjure an impassable ocean between myself (or really anyone) and the work in the event they find flaws.

Otherwise, you just get this:

Stories are not merely about what happens on the journey. The destination does matter. It means something when the king grabs his shining sword and fights off the orc invaders or whatever. A value system is suggested Similarly, it does means something when Chie becomes a cop. (This is just a shorthand example mind you! But you hopefully get the idea!)

I don't think games or any work of art need us to defend them. The trap of fandom is that you often turn to any possible means to justify what you love. For Persona, a series which does have the decency to explore cultural issues, that same cultural specificity is often weaponize by fans (largely western fans even!) to deflect certain problems. This process inadvertently portrays that culture as a mystery, a shrouded thing that we cannot ever criticize. It's one thing to dig into some of those contextual specifics but it's another all-together to imply these specifics provide a mean to abrogate certain analyses. and I think navigating the line between due deference and something deeper and stranger seems to be something many of the fans reacting to me... have not managed. I had a peer talk to me about this situation and their feeling was that the animated members of the fandom that were coming at me, many of whom are self-identified as young and western, were kinda treating Japan like it was a land of elves. which it's not! it is a place on Earth and yes we need to take strides to understand and respect certain specificities... but we can't mystify an entire people. especially if the purpose is to turn those people and their culture into a shield. a means to justify and validate the specialness you see in a franchise.

I call Persona conservative because it cannot imagine a world in any other shape that what we have right now. God dies but nothing actually changes. I don't think it's enough to say "well, they defeated the god! and they needed the collective strength of society to do it! people did change because without that change of heart, the heroes wouldn't have the magical juice to fight the Kabbalah monster!" to toss Makoto's words back at the series: victory against a single god is meaningless if the true enemy is society.

If you can't show me what that grand spiritual change means for society, then I think you've kinda failed. you've certainly failed if the conclusion is that the world after that change is functionally the same and it doesn't really matter to me if "they talk about this in Strikers or whatever" because you can't offload your thematic snarls to side games. if the main stories you tell can't resolve this tension, that's a problem. these are often very beautiful games. they certainly have amazing structure and systems. but I don't think it's controversial to say they often hedge their bets at the end. and there's no impenetrable cultural wall surrounding the games that leaves the criticism off the table.

that's just What Happens. and it's fine for us to acknowledge flaws in even in things that contain beauty or meant something to us

Aerith is dead. Aerith is alive.

I’m not particularly interested in what this moment means to games culture as a whole (though we must unavoidably discuss that a little bit) and I think that while it isn’t incorrect to look at Rebirth and conclude that it was playing to the audience more often than it was telling a self-contained story, I’m more interested in why Nojima and Kitase reached this moment and decided that it was truly sacrosanct after all. It’s somewhat cynical to boil Rebirth down to a game meant only to string along an audience when it is also art wherein key individuals involved with the original enterprise are navigating their way back through their old work. There's more happening here than AAA product.

I mean… there has to be.

Right? This is the story they wanted to tell. I gotta at least grant them that much. and if you're reading this, I'm gonna assume you've played the game because I don't wanna do a beat for beat breakdown of everything in Rebirth that led to this moment. i'll cover some of it but I'm writing on my own damn personal blog. i have the luxury of being messy.

I’m often accused of thinking the best of people too often but the alternative is assuming the worst. While it is not unfair to say that Rebirth ultimately does focus on the allure of mystery and speculation over more wondrous and original options, it ignores the obvious reality that the game culminates in a battle over whether or not you actually can change something and whether or not certain stories do end up crystalized within culture.

“Can I change this thing which defined me?" Rebirth asks.

It is ultimately a disappointment that, in the swirl of magick and ghosts and souls where all things can happen, Nojima and his cohort conclude that they can’t change. Because I don’t think they care about what this moment means to the fans. It means something to them.

They are clinging to this for their own sake. But why?

Before we start, let's outline the raw mechanics of the plot. They're not as complicated as people want to suggest but for the sake of discussion we might as well be clear.

Throughout Remake, in moments where the story threatens to veer from the 1997 original, strange spirits arrive to place things back on course. These are arbiters of "fate" but we later come to understand that they represent, to one extent or another, the will of the planet.

Cloud and co defeat these spirits at the end of Remake. This creates, in theory, a world that does not need to follow the exact plot of the original game. It can be different this time.

Rebirth shows that all possibilities exists side by side in the Lifestream. Fans tend to calls these "timelines" but I think it's better to just think of them as a big swirl of memories and possibility in the heart of the planet. The planet is a nexus. All things exist within its blood.

It is possible to travel between these parallel potentialities or else sometimes brush up against them. This can happen through dreams, it can happen when interacting directly with the Lifestream. In some cases, intervention at the point of your fated death in one world can send you into these different potentialities. This happens to Zack and Biggs.

Sephiroth wants to unite all these worlds and fuck 'em up. Basically: he wants to do what he did in the original game across all possible worlds. Not more complicated than that.

The party doesn't really know any of this added layer really. They just want to stop Sephiroth from dropping Meteor on the world. Who wouldn't?

Much like in the original, Aerith resolves to stop this by praying at the Forgotten Capital with the White Materia so that Holy can be summoned to save the planet.

She vaguely knows this will lead to her death. Nanaki knows something bad is fated to happen to Aerith.

Cloud has a sense of this too kinda.

There's more to it than that. There's new history behind the Black Materia (I've written about why I'm not a fan of that stuff really) and a dimensional shell game where the White Materia is traveling between potentialities. But the ultimate point of that is that it needs to make it here. To this moment. And yeah, that's a lot of moving parts but basically: she wants to summon Holy. Ya gotta summon the Big Good Magic and in saving one world, you can save 'em all. You've done it before. Do it again.

(And before you say it yes the fact that I needed to make a list of mechanical points it a bit of a strike against the plot but it's really not that tricky to follow.)

Regardless: Aerith's gotta die. The planet's set on it. Literally! There's white colored shadow-whispers trying to make this happen. They attempt to ward Cloud off from reaching Aerith at the capital. Because if Cloud reaches, things could be different this time.

He will save her. Will he save her?

Those whispers are funny thing. In writing about Remake after release, I concluded that the Whispers in that game might be seen as the legions of fans swarming the story with their expectations. Make this exactly like I remember or else! We will bend anything and everything to have the version of the story we want. In slaying those ghosts, Cloud and his friends take the story into their own hands. The story doesn't belong to the fans. It belongs to the characters. Which leaves limitless possibilities on the table. New endings, new fates.

I didn't know what to think when white Whispers showed up in Rebirth, seemingly desperate on making sure Aerith died. They were different than the shadowy fan-coded Whispers from before. They were extensions of Aerith herself. Manifestations of the Planet's desires.

They were the guiding hands of Kitase and Nojima pushing Cloud and the player down a different path. And this time, there is no besting fate. Aerith's gotta die.

Cloud reaches that fateful moment in the Forgotten Capital and when Sephiroth descends to stab Aerith, our hero swings his sword. NO! His blade clashes with the villains and the blow never comes. He has performed a miracle. Except…

The miracle reverts. Blood magically reappears on Sephiroth's blade. Aerith opens her eyes. Everything is happening. Nothing has happened. There is a wild swirl of boss battles. First against Jenova. Because Aerith is dead. Our heroes lash out in their sorrow and fight back.

We are in a focal point of possibility. Zack emerges in the swirl to fight side by side with Cloud. Our heroes fight a version of Bizzaro Sephiroth (here called Sephiroth Reborn) across multiple realms of reality. It's a fight lifted from the end of the original game and here it is at what was once the end of disc 1. And when the villain's transformed super-self falls, Cloud is left alone and face to face with his tormentor. He stares Sephiroth down in the void. but he isn't alone. Because Aerith is alive. She emerges from the edges of time and space, thanks Cloud for swinging the sword that saved her, and they fight Sephiroth.

In the end, the singularity fades. The party sits dejectedly. Because Aerith is dead. But Cloud smiles. Because Aerith is alive. He can see his friend walking among the group. he can talk with her. Nanaki doesn't see her but he can sense her. Yuffie cries. Because Aerith is dead. Cloud smiles. Because Aerith is alive….

Cloud performed a miracle. Aerith overwrote it. the original creators overwrote it. Those two realities, where she was saved and where she died, lay atop each other like blankets layered on a bed. The grander game, where Aerith is flatly saved instead of caught in this in-between state, is not what we get. Instead, there's a messier reality. One where Cloud did the deed but where Aerith decided that, no… we can't have that. She needs to die.

Believe it or not I actually think you could do this ending mostly as it was. It's not really bad until Zack shows up and we have two consecutive Sephiroth fights. I think that Jenova fight is rather good and a suitable emotional climax by itself. I know some people disagree with the bombast but there's ways in which that disagreement feels like it arises from a desire for Rebirth to hew entirely too close to the original game in this moment. Which is to say that I'm fine with the cosmic tug-of-war at the moment Aerith's death even. Let Cloud has his momentum success. And then? Let him fail. Not what I think makes for the most interesting story possibility but you can do a lot with it. Have your big Jenova fight. Ditch those final twisty bits and give time for the party to actually grieve? That's a fair enough ending even if you still want Cloud to see Aerith both alive and dead. Not as bold as simply diverting course down a deeply new path but you can shape it into a polemic about the value of action. There is value in our attempts to do good in and of themselves.

Swing your sword. That enough, if the circumstances are so grand, makes you a hero. Cloud accomplishes a miracle at the end of this game. From a writing perspective, we can say that not letting Aerith live is cowardly but we shouldn't ignore what Cloud manages to do. In that moment, in that hellish swirl among ancient ghosts, after years and years of fans wondering if Cloud even had that strength within himself, we get the answer. He does.

There's something very beautiful in that. It's to Rebirth's detriment that it has no interest in examining that shining (if fleeting) victory. It's certainly not interested in the failure. Aerith's superposition between life and death plays into a repeated trend in Rebirth's writing: it never want to slow down. It never wants to take stock of things.

One of the problems with Rebirth is that it often hits key moments of the game without understanding that the fallout matters too. That people are not built, in all instances, to simply press on even if eventually they will. Dyne's death is followed almost immediately by a big battle and chase with Palmer, Nanaki does not get to really spend time taking in his father's sacrifice before Gi Nattak arrives to whisk the party away, Aerith's death has perhaps two minutes of actual follow up. It is a story where grief is incredibly important.

It also does not give our characters time to grieve.

Remake was a game about 1997's Final Fantasy 7 and Rebirth is ultimately a game about the weight of maintaining a franchise. The multiversial mode it takes incorporates characters and plot points from the wider Compilation of Final Fantasy 7 and pours it all into the Lifestream. You don't need these things to tell the story of "Final Fantasy 7 The Game" and the moment they are added, the reach expands. This is where the matter of mystery boxes rear their head and it seems to me that while Rebirth's plot was structured with mystery and potential for speculation, it also got away from Nojima and Kitase.

I do think this is the story they want to tell. It is important to them than the Lifestream, the heart and soul of the world they created, contain all possible things associated with that world. Final Fantasy 7 has grown into a decades long project and you cannot reckon with only one part of that; you need to explore all aspects. Aerith's death is the clarion call that cuts through the accumulated lore and history that's built up over the years and that might be the biggest reason why it still comes to pass. In reckoning with the weight of a franchise, they ultimately conclude that this is a story partly about death. You can't get rid of it.

Zack and Biggs' tumbling travels through potentialities also end tragically. Biggs desperately seeks meaning for his survival but still (at least in the last possible world we view) dies senselessly at the hands of Shinra. Zack once again faces a firing squad of soldiers. He cheats death at their hands again by leaping into the core of the reactor Biggs intended to bomb. But even though he avoided that fate, he is forced to reckon with death again during the final battle. He's moved through time and fate and history to arrive at Cloud's side and help him battle through the singularity of his trauma but although he faces Sephiroth, Zack ends up in a doomed world anyway. Maybe a miracle does happen to you but sometimes the great fate you've been saved for is simply to help someone else achieve their own. You live long enough to say the right thing (thanks Biggs) and that forms a ripple that gives the true hero's sword swing the proper strength in the final battle. So it goes.

Rebirth doesn't explain itself and in some ways it does lose sense of what it wants to say as it adds more and more layers to the mix. In what's probably the game's most defining scene, a leap through countless possible worlds and choices, players are more likely to be focusing on which version of Stamp the Dog is on graffiti'd walls and candy wrappers. Stamp is the way we track what world we're in and in being mysterious and coy, Rebirth suggests that players should be more interested in the raw mechanical stuff rather than the thematic reasons we navigate these worlds. why, through all this noise, we have to reach this point

The story gets lost in these extra layers to the point that players are mostly left to wonder what the end result means in this grander multiversial battle. How does Aerith's death fit into the puzzle? The raw mechanics of the moment become the focus instead of the more significant question of "Why does Aerith feel she needs to die?" It's a very strange case of the writers somehow both understanding the importance of this moment and sidestepping the things that made it powerful to begin with. It's not merely the loss that matters.

It's how we react to the loss.

Perhaps the most important moment during Aerith's death in the original game is the moment where Cloud interrupts Sephiroth's speech after he kills her. Sephiroth begins to pontificate about his plan and the glorious future that awaits once he collects the Lifestream. Don't worry, Cloud. She'll become part of the Lifestream and I'll collect it in my grand singularity. From there, I will begin to-

Shut up. Cloud's text box blots out Sephiroth's.

"The cycle of nature and your stupid plan don't mean a thing. Aeris will no longer laugh, cry, or get angry…. My fingers are tingling, my mouth is dry, my eyes are burning…"

None of the higher level stuff matter. The manipulations of the Lifestream, the ancient war between the Cetra and Jenova. None of it is important when compared to the loss of a friend. There is only the days before the loss and the days after. Who gives a shit about your cosmic motivations and grand designs? Why won't this stop hurting?

Aerith does not get a burial in Rebirth. Cloud emerges from the swirl knowing that while Aerith died, she is also present in the realms that drape over this one. Only he perceives her in full although Nanaki can vaguely sense she is still among the group as well. Within the Lifestream, where worlds can sometimes touch, the Aerith that Cloud did save looks on.

There is something beautiful about that idea and it is one worth exploring but it undercuts whatever Rebirth might want to say about the nature of sacrifice. Aerith dies but there is no true parting. Even in terms of mechanics, the player reunites with her in the game's final battle. I think it's one thing to have her linger in a superposition following Cloud's act perhaps but it's very odd to me that Rebirth decides that Aerith's death is so important without following through on any of the consequeces. We are not parted from her mechanically and our heroes are not shown mourning their friend in any meaningful fashion.

The result within the fandom has been a complete misunderstanding of the moment. Debate rage about if the Aerith that Cloud sees is a coping mechanism. Her presence becomes theory-fodder. Rebirth never dangles those questions. It is pretty clear what is happening. We've had an entire game explaining the mechanics that make her presence possible. But barring the pain of her separation and time given to grief, it feels lacking. Of course it's too clean! Cloud's going crazy! What is EVEN GOING ON MAN?! lmao

let's talk about it in the comments, motherfucker. let's react emote in Twitch chat.

More than anything, that is Rebirth's biggest structural failing. Not that it's "too silly" or "too loud." Those are symptoms signifying the more important issues: Rebirth is disinterested with or perhaps afraid of leaving players in these key moments for too long. When I look at the end of the game, I don't see the cost of too many mystery boxes. Yes, this game is sometimes being playful and coy with audience expectations. But I don't think that's the driving factor behind some of thee decisions rather than some snickering obsession with planting mystery boxes. Something else is happening and it's more honest than I think some people want to accept. There is a mistrust of the modern audience's comfort with the casts' being too vulnerable for too long. I don't know entirely why this is the case when it wasn't so in 1997. That's the frustrating part about writing this. I have no hard answers. Rebirth is frustratingly slippery and it's hard to grasp on to anything solid.

What I do know is that where the original had people weep for Aerith and talk their way through this tragedy, Rebirth speeds the player towards the credits. If this moment is so crucial that it must happen, to the point that Aerith and the writers bend time to ensure it happens in this particular way, I don't understand why we can't explore the immediate emotional consequences. You made me play a tacked-on box smashing game to get gyshal greens in Corel Prison but you don't want to take the time for this? What are you afraid of?

Again, I don't know. I'm not writing because I have an answer that makes all of this easier to swallow. I'm writing because this moment demands a reckoning. it demands exploration

What I can at least lay out is this: Aerith dies largely as a value statement. While Rebirth posits a world of wild difference, it concludes after the benefit of decades of reflection that victory over evil necessarily cannot happen without great loss. Pain is the final ingredient in the magicks that can save the world. This isn't necessarily a novel conclusion but placed into the wider context I do think it's interesting. Even in those nascent days, there was a sort of bargaining period throughout the gaming world when it came to Aerith's death. The school-yard rumors and internet myths gave way to debug menu navigation and GameShark codes that brought her back to life. It's been the dream of players for decades to do exactly what Cloud does here. Block the blade. Save the girl. can't wait to tell folks at recess!

Rebirth's position, which stands frustratingly contrary to the promise of Remake, is that this impulse is a selfish one. It's not one coming from a place of bad faith but the desire to fix this particular pain point, this mythical moment in the cultural consciousness, is arrogant. But Rebirth is never bold enough to point the finger at the player's desire or else give enough time to the cast's pain following Aerith's death. Contrary to Cloud's words in 1997, all we are left to wonder if how this fits into the cycle of nature and Sephiroth's stupid plan.

I think it's fair to look at this and call it cowardly. Aerith's imposition runs counter to the open, free skies promised at the end of Remake. In a game nominally focused on loss and sacrifice, this moment (like almost all wrapped up in those themes) falls short. There's a beauty in the singularity. There is a gorgeous swirl of possibility as Cloud brings his sword to bear. There is something saintly and wonderful about seeing Aerith's spirit in a field of flowers as we speed on to the future. But it's ultimately superficial. Rebirth lacks the strength to imagine a better outcome to this moment but it also fails to argue why this is what needs to happen. In the end, we have taken the long way around to the same point, and what power this moment held before was lost on this second time around.

I've heard some folks say "well, who cares? This is the middle part of a story!" but that's not an excuse for leaving things unsaid. Perhaps the third game pulls everything together. Perhaps we understand the value of the super-positioned lamb, sacrificed and saved, after the cosmic game has been played to its conclusion. But taken as its own thing, Rebirth ultimately ends up confused. It offers everything. It offers nothing.

"This is how it has to be," Rebirth says. It never explains why.

It's easy to feel like Hideaki Itsuno and his team miscalculated the amount of friction that players are willing to endure and while I don't think that's true (he didn't miscalculate moreso stick to his particular vision) it certainly appears that we've reached a point in gaming where players, glutted on convenience, don't really know what to do when robbed of it. I've heard folks complain that they can't sprint everywhere or else balk learning that ferrystones required for fast travel cost 10,000 gold as if these shatter DD2 into pieces. I'm vaguely sympathetic to these concerns but at the same time they seem to spring entirely from a lack of understanding of the game's design goals. Much like how folks demanding a traditionally structured RPG narrative from an Octopath game misunderstand what that team is trying to do, players asking to sprint through the world or teleport with ease fundamentally misunderstand what Dragon's Dogma wants. The world is not a wrapper for a story. It is the story. Dragon's Dogma is a story factory whose various textures create unprecedented triumphs and memorable failure.

It is crucial to the experience to allow both of those to occur and live with whatever follows.

I'm always cautious of talking like this because it can come off as smug or superior but I think ultimately that's the truth of the matter here. This was not a well-played franchise before now and even if it's a AAA title, there's a way in which this game is meant to elide most AAA open world trends. You are expected to traverse. If you want relatively cheap and faster travel, you're meant to find an oxcart and pay the (quite modest) fee to move between trade hubs much like you would pay for a silt strider in Morrowind. Even if you do this, you could be ambushed on the road and in the worst case the ox pulling the cart can be killed. Something being "possible" in a game doesn't always mean it is intentional but Dragon's Dogma continually undercuts the player's ability to avoid long treks. Portcrystals, which act as fast travel destinations, are limited and ferry stones (while not prohibitively expensive compared to weapons and armor) are juuust expensive enough that you need to consider if the expense is worthwhile. Once is happenstance. Multiple times is a pattern. And the pattern in Dragon's Dogma is to disincentivize easy travel. It screams of intent.

Something I could not have imagined playing games growing up is the ways in which even a decade (or two) could lead to radically different attitudes on what games should provide. That's an audience issue to an extent but it's also something games have brought upon themselves. The "language" of an open world game has been solidified through years climbable towers, mini-map marked caves, and options to zip around worlds. When a game deviates from that language, the change is more noticeable than ever.

Hell, even Elden Ring (perhaps the closest modern relative to Dragon's Dogma) allows you to warp between bonfires and gives you a steed to ride. But that's also a much larger game! DD2 is not a large game and the story is not long. Yes, you can spend untold hours wandering about into nooks and crannies but a trek from one end of the world to another is still significantly shorter than bounding through most open worlds and a run through the critical path reveals a speedy game. Not as speedy as the first but brisk by genre standards.

exploration is the glue that binds the combat and progression system in place. Upgrading armor and weapons requires seeking out specific materials and fighting certain monsters. Gathering the funds for big purchases in shops mostly comes from selling your excess monster parts. The entire game hinges on the idea of long expeditions where you accrue materials and supplies on the road and then invest that horde one way or another once you return to town. It's not simply a matter of mood and tone for you to trek throughout the world without ease. The gameplay loop is built around it.

There's another complicating factor that I'm less interested in diving into and it's the presence of certain microtransactions at launch. Principally I'm against MTX in single players games, particularly conveniences of which most of DD2's microtransactions are. But I also think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what many of these are. Among the biggest things I've heard (repeatedly!) is that you can pay real life money for fast travel but that's not true. You can buy a single portcrystal offering you one more potential location to warp to. It's a one-time purchase and the only travel convenience offered. This has transformed, partly because of people's lack of familiarity with Dragon's Dogma's mechanics, into a claim that you can pay over and over to teleport around. I think that assumption reveals more about the general audience than anything else.

I think it is worth entertaining a question: does the existence of this extra port crystal signify a compromising of the game's goals regarding travel? That's not a discussion that folks seem to be interested in having—instead opting for more emotional and reactionary panicking—but it is the most interesting question. On face the answer is yes and that raises the follow up question of whether or not the developers had knowledge this convenience (though one-off) would be offered to players. If so, did that knowledge affect how they designed the game? Even slightly? It seems rather clear to me that these purchases are a publisher decision; there's nothing in the game's design that suggest the dev team wants players to have access to an extra portcrystal. As we've established it's quite the opposite!

They want you to haul your fucking ass around and get jumped by goblins, buddy.

Which is many words to say that as much as I care about microtransactions from a consumer standpoint, the way in which they undermine Dragon's Dogma 2's goals is a fair reminder of the ways in which they hurt developers. Ultimately, I do think that these purchases are ignorable and in that sense (combined with the misinformation surrounding them) I'm a little burned by the consumer-minded discussion. Doubly so because of the way it feels, at least in part, tied into a certain kind of rhetoric that's been on the rise lately. Instead, I find myself drawn to the question of the damage they do the devs and if more onerous plans actually would force their hands into undercutting portions of their own designs. The shift of many series into live-service chasing suggest so but even as I entertain these thoughts I don't get the sense that Itsuno and his team were forced to reshape their game world to encourage these microtransactions. The world is as they want.

If it wasn't, they wouldn't make it so failing to act quickly in a quest to find a missing kid stolen by wolves could end with you being too late. They wouldn't make it so buying goods from an Elven shop without an interpreter was a hassle. It's present in Every Damn Thing!

More interesting to consider is why this particular game became such a lightning rod of passion when I'm going to assume that most people caught up in the discussion have no particular fealty to the series. The answer is a combination of factors but there's something about the genre that ignites the panic we're seeing as much as the culture moment we're in. When people try to explain that these MTX purchases are not needed, it's confused for approval of their inclusion but that's not something we need to grant. I don't think anyone wants these things here and when they say "you don't need them" they are referring to the more complex thought that the game is better played without them. But this is not heard because the idea that you'd want to opt into friction and discomfort is not something that the general audience is likely to understand. They're wired against it. They crave ease.

not everyone, mind you. DD2's enjoyed a lot of excited reactions (there's tons of folks who like this game as it is and are happily playing it) but it has faced plenty of folks railing against "bad" design choices but the fact remains that those "bad" choices were intentional.

I'm writing about this stuff instead of, say, the wild journey I took solving one of the Sphinx's riddles because the immediately interesting thing about Dragon's Dogma 2 has been what it's become as a cultural object. It is a game suffering from success. Never designed for a general audience or modern standards but thrust into their hands due to Capcom's ongoing renaissance. Dragon's Dogma is a fine game whose cult status is well earned but the reason DD2 garnered this attention (and therefore becomes a hot-topic game) has as much to do with Capcom's ongoing success rate as anything else. In some ways, it actually IS a good time to release a game like Dragon's Dogma 2. There's certainly a curiousity in place. Partly borne of goodwill and also from folks' genuine desire to try something new.

and yet, we're in a odd moment in games. consumer rights lanaguge, having been fundamentally misunderstood and reconfigured by gamers as a rhetoric for justifying their purchase habits (I'm paying the money! why can't the game do exactly as I demand!?) has stifled many people's ability to have imaginative interpretations of gameplay mechanics. they don't ask "what is this thing doing as a storytelling device" (which mechanics are!) and rather default to "what is this thing doing to me and my FUN and my TIME". which are not bad questions but they also misunderstand the possibility space games have to offer. While we can attribute some of the objections that has arisen to players' thoughts about genre itself and the way in which Dragon's Dogma positions friction as a key gameplay pillar, the fact of the matter is that we would not be having such spirited discussion about these things in, say, 2017. not that things were great back then, but I think the audience is worse now in many, many ways. sarcastically? I blame Game Design YouTube.

Even if there were no microtransactions, we'd still be having a degree of Discourse thanks to a key game mechanic: Dragonplague. It is a disease that can afflict your Pawn companions which initially causes them to get mouthy and start to disobey orders. If you notice these signs (alongside ominous glowing eyes) then your Pawn has been infected and you're expected to dismiss them back to the Rift where that infection can spread to another player. The game gives a pop up to the player explaining this the first time they encounter the disease. However, some players have ignored that warning and found a dire consequence: an untreated Pawn can, when the player rests at an inn, go on an overnight rampage that kills the majority of NPCs in whatever settlement they are in. This includes plot-important characters. The reaction's been intense. Reddit always sucks but man… just look…

I understand some of the ire. It's a drastic shift from your pawn being a bit ornery to instantly killing an entire city. On the other hand, the game does warn of potentially dire consequences if a Pawn's sickness is ignored. Players have simply underestimated the scale of that consequence. Surely no major RPG would mass murder important characters and break questlines! We're in post Oblivion/Skyrim world. Important NPCs are essential and cannot be killed, right? Well, wrong and this is another way in which Dragon's Dogma chases after the legacy of a game like Morrowind more than than it adapts current open world trends. This is a world where things can break and the developers have decided that they are okay with it breaking in a very drastic way. It's hard to think of anything comparable in a contemporary game. We don't really do this kind of thing anymore.

The result has been panic and a spread of information both helpful and hopelessly speculative. Is your game ruined? Well, maybe. There is an item you can find which allows for mass resurrection but that's gonna require some questing. But some players also say that you can wait a while and the game will eventually reset back to the pre-murder status quo. What's true? Hard to know. Dragon's Dogma doesn't show all of its cards and won't always explain itself. We know entire cities can be killed. We know that individual characters can be revived in the city morgue or else the settlement restored (mostly) with a special item. Dragonplague is detectable and the worst case scenario is, to some extent or another, something that the player can ameliorate. Those are facts but they don't really matter.

That's because players issue (panick? hysteria?) with dragonplague is as much to do with what it represents as what it does. Players are used to the notion of game worlds being spaces where they get to determine every state of affair. They are, as I've suggested before, eager to play the tyrant. Eager to enact whatever violences or charities that might strike their fancy. They do this with the expectation that they will be rewarded for the latter but face no consequences for the former. Dragonplague argues otherwise. No, it says, this world is also one that belongs to the developers and they are more than fine with heaping dire consequences on players. Before the dragonplague's consequences were known, players were running around the world killing NPCs in cities because it would stabilize the framerate. They're fine with mass murder on their own terms. they love it!

This is made more clear when we look at how Dragon's Dogma handles saving the game. While there are autosaves between battles, players are expected to rest at inns to save their game. This costs some gold, which is a hassle, but the bigger "issue" is that they only have one save slot. Which means that save scumming is not entirely feasible though not impossible with a bit of planning. What it does mean, however, is that the game is saved when a dragonplague attack happens. you have to rest at an inn for this to trigger. which saves the game. They cannot roll back the clock. The tragedy becomes a fact. It's not the only time Dragon's Dogma does this. For instance, players can come into possession of a special arrow that can slay anything. When used, the game saves. Much like how players are given a warning about dragonplague, they're warned before using this arrow: don't miss.

If you do? that's a real shame. The depth of this consequence is uncommon in today's gaming landscape. Games are mostly frivolous and save data is the amber from which players suck crystallized potentialities. Don't like what happened? No worries. Slide into your files and find the frozen world which suits your proclivities. You are God. In Dragon's Dogma, you are not god. The threads of prophecy can be severed and you must persist in the doomed world that's been created. The mere suggestion is an affront. The fact that Dragon's Dogma has the stones to commit to the bit in 2024 is essentially a miracle.

It's easy to boil everything I'm saying down to "Dragon's Dogma is not afraid to be rude to the player" but that doesn't capture the spirit of the design. It invites players to go on a hike. It makes no attempt to hide that the hike is difficult. But that's the extent of it. It offers little guidance on the path, doesn't check if you're a skilled enough hiker. Your decision to go on the hike is taken as proof of your acceptance of the fact that you might fall down.

This is not unique to Dragon's Dogma. In fact, this is part of the appeal (philosophically) of a game like Elden Ring. The difference being that even FromSofts much-lauded gamer gauntlets (excepting perhaps Sekiro, conincidentally their best work) offer more ways to adjust and fix the world state to the player's liking. Even the darling of difficulty will offering you a hand when you fall. Dragon's Dogma is not so eager to do so. In a decade where convenience is king for video games, that represents both a keen understanding of its lineages and a shocking affront to accepted norms and expectations.

The core of Dragon's Dogma, the very defining characteristics that earned it cult status, are the same things that have caused these modern tensions. It is both a franchise utterly consistent in its design priorities and entirely out of touch with the modern audience. Dragon's Dogma 2 has come into prominence during a time where imaginative interpretation of mechanics is at an all time low and calls for "consumer" gratification are taken as truisms. It is a game entirely at odds with the YouTube ecosystem and the very things that give it allure are the tools that have turned it into a debated object.

Unicorn Overlord tells the tale of the exiled prince Alain and his quest to retake the kingdom of Cornia (and really the entire conquered world) from the clutches of the evil Emperor Galarius. In some ways, that's all you need to know. You'll travel from nation to nation, each of which wears convenient hats like "the one with the elves" or "the one with the beastmen," and gather a host of lionhearted heroes to lead in battle. You know how it is.

I'll circle back to plot and presentation later because the core of Unicorn Overlord really is the gameplay itself. When you enter a battle and begin deploying troops, it plays like a simplified RTS; you will move units in real time and occasionally make use of war machines (ballista, catapaults, etc) to hinder approaching forces while sometimes building up points to use on more specialized abilities. Mages might place gravity wells that slow down enemies, Eleven troops conjure rain to heal allies over time or douse fires. You'll capture outposts and other defensive positions that confer various bonuses and protections. It's what you'd expect from the genre and the game does a good job offering a mix of map sizes and scenarios on this front. You might play a large defense mission based around placing traps and barricades in the way of an approaching force or face a necromancer type with a knack for hurling waves of troops you way.

This is contrasted with the smaller battles you'll face while liberating towns on the overworld map. You see, there's a pretty sizable map here with lots of secrets to find as well as towns and forts interspersed throughout. To liberate these towns (gaining access to shops and recruitment posts) you'll pay bite-sized battles on much smaller maps. These function a minor combat puzzles. How exactly do you capture a fort with two shaman and their gladiator bodyguards? Figure it out! Whereas story battles tend to throw complications when it comes to moving your troops or dealing with unique victory requires, these liberations missions focus on tactical knowledge and unit building.

Because Unicorn Overlord is an Ogre Battle clone. It's not Fire Emblem or even Tactic Ogre, where the battles involve moving each an every soldier and choosing their actions. Instead, you assemble a mash of soldiers into a unit that then automatically battles the enemy when the time for combat comes. It's about understanding synergies that lead to robust units as much as a matter of understanding "hey, your archers are good at shooting down gyphon knights." It's not quite my preferred tactics gameplay but it's also much more rare to have battles like this in your games these days. I've fond memories of Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber and while I'm sure there were games like this dancing at the margins of the genre, I really do appreciate that it's come back in a higher profile game.

The notion of troops automatically battling might cause certain players to chafe but Unicorn Overlord's not a game of random battles where you hope your digital soldiers perform as you imagined. You actually have a Final Fantasy XII esque Gambit System for determining how each character will act in battle. This is one of many examples of Unicorn Overlord chasing after Yasumi Matsuno's legacy and it's by far the best. You might not need this level of control in the early game but as you unlock advanced classes and face trickier enemies, there is a push to min-max performance. I don't think Unicorn Overlord is a hard game on default difficulty or even the more advanced "Tactical" option but the highest peak does ramp up combat to a point where micro-management is crucial. (As a tangent: the Story difficulty mostly seems to bypass the map navigation phase as it grants more stamina to perform actions without needed to pause troops moments to replenish resource.)

These conditional statements are where most of the depth rests. Unicorn Overlord doesn't have stat growths like Fire Emblem. It has dispositions that affect stat spread. For example, you can have someone who is both a "Hardy" type with high HP and a "Precise" type who enjoys greater accuracy. Recruitable units are not particularly different than your story characters; if you use an item to change a named characters dispositions to the same as a generic soldier, they will have identical states so long as they are the same class. My Alain will be, statistically speaking, the same as your Alain at the endgame presuming neither of us adjust his growth types. Which means that key differences in character performance will come down to what customizations we give our characters in the gambit system and the units we assemble. This might disappoint players looking to manipulate characters into the best of all possible arrangements but the upside is that all you really need to worry about is navigating the gambit system and assembling effective tactics.

Unicorn Overlord works best when you are solving those individual combat puzzles. Even the smallest tweak to your conditional statements can mean the difference between victory of defeat. There's an in game Coliseum with both NPC battles and the choice to fight other players' pre-assembled parties. Not only are the rewards great but it's maybe the best showcase of Unicorn Overlord's combat appeal. Dialed down to one single fight (where the goal is simply to come out numerically on top as opposed to wiping out the enemy entirely) the game shines brightly. There's some limitations here but the overall appeal is undeniable. The gambit system probably should have offered three conditional statements per line and lacks certain nuances such as the ability target a specific character in your party instead of specific classes but those are nitpicks. Gambits kicked ass in 2006 and they continue to kick ass in 2024. For roleplaying and tactics? It hardly gets better than this.

This is a lot of words to say that Unicorn Overlord plays far beyond the batting average of the story beats. This is a game whose yearning to emulate Matsuno is baked into every decision and that includes the plot. Which often tries gestures towards interesting character motivations and politcs without really following through. Some of that's baked into the "Unicorn" part of the title. It refers to Alain's signet ring which we learn (about in the first thirty minutes) has the ability to dispel the magickal brainwashing that allowed Galarius to perform the sudden coup against Queen Ilenia at the start of the game. There's some twists regarding the true nature of this magic but the result is often that many opposing characters are not motivated by important material and personal concerns. They're just evil and brainwashed. This immediately mars the storytelling potential and places it more on par with a game like Fire Emblem Awakening than Tactics Ogre. Which! Awakening is a very good game with a great sense of heroism. I wanna be clear about that. But Unicorn Overlord clearly wants to be in the latter category. It hasn't managed it so far.

I played Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for the first time last year. I've actually been dying to write about it but my ability to write promptly has suffered over the last few years for a variety of reasons. I'll say: Tactics Ogre is the best game I have ever played. Part of that rests in the plot, which tosses all kinds of tough decisions at the protagonist and features a variety of characters from different factions fighting for different reasons. Matsuno is an astounding writer when it comes to understanding how his settings function and the material realities that can push even the best individuals down dark roads. Yes, some characters are irredeemably evil but many shift allegiances in the face of dramatic revelations or simply for selfish reasons. Tactics Ogre's script (and frankly its narrative design) displays a most astounding craftsmanship. I am constantly learning about characters I missed recruiting or paths I chose not to walk. It's an incredibly rich game.

I don't think Unicorn Overlord's quite as rich and that's entirely tied to the way in which is flattens its conflicts. It often talks about a grand history that is far more interesting than the status quo our characters are in. On the one hand, I get it. You want a story that allows the player to bop and weave around the map and readily justifies the sheer volume of combat challenges. On the other hand, while the setting has politic tensions woven into the fabric, they're very thin. This is mostly a game about the good knights fighting the bad knights.

Often is the case that you'll fight a lord hoarding food from his people only to find he was actually preparing for a famine. Yes, you fought that strange guy who was experimenting on people but don't you feel conflict killing him now that you know he was looking for a cure to the plague? Compare this to the agonizing choice players face at the end on Tactic Ogre's first chapter where they need to decide whether to help facilitate the slaughter of an entire town so that it might be presented as a false flag operation in the hope of uniting disparate resistance cells fighting against the apartheid state. That lone choice leads to two entirely different story paths, leaving ripples that affect the protagonist and the world. It poses a question of realpolitik versus nobility. Can you fight this war as an idealist or not? "There is blood on my hands," a title card declares. How long till it lies on my heart?"

Tactics Ogre is full of difficult choices like that and side stories that add richness to the character. Unicorn Overlord doesn't really have this. Or at least what it does have very often feels like a video game trick rather than something meanginful. There's little complication to the story and while there's time given to some character's individual motivations it is not a game concerned with tough questions even if I wants to convince you that it is.

It does, however, have pretty good moment to moment writing. Everything flows well and there's enough heart poured into the mix that while things are pretty superficial once you pull back your gaze, the story still proceeds with a lot of energy. Recently, gamer assholes went on a bender regarding Unicorn Overlord's localization after an amateur on Twitter created an extensive thread of differences between the English and Japanese scripts. There's been a string of anti-localization sentiment among certain gamers and in anime circles from folks who want things to adhere to the original language with strictness.

This, of course, shows a misunderstanding for what localization even is but rather than unpacking all that drama I'll just say: this localization is fine. It's fine! It's trying to emulate the approach of folks like Alex O. Smith and Joe Reeder. Which means there's a certain degree of purple to the prose but it's nothing you can cut through. Most localization flourishes aren't even that archaic; they simply toss in figures of speech.

A metaphor here. A fancy word there. It's well done!

I'm not gonna beat around the bush and maybe some assholes will find this and damn me for it since it's gonna sound haughty but I think you can boil pretty much all of the controversy down to the fact that a lot of gamers kinda suck at reading.

That's a complicated topic to unravel here. Over the last decade or so, there's been changes to how grammar and reading are taught in education systems that have radically inhibited some folks' ability to understand texts. I don't mean "understand the metaphor" or "understand the vocabulary" but rather understand the raw facts of what's happening. Combine this with a lot of culture problems and I don't think it's a surprise that localization has become a sticking point for a certain kind of cretin. And it also doesn't surprise me that this tempest in a teapot came side by side with similarly manufactured controversies.

I sometimes talk about the death of criticism in games spaces but we also just have… worse readers. Not just in terms of their imagination but in their raw comprehension. Unicorn Overlord's localization is not impenetrable and I don't get the sense that it's radically shifting the core action or characterizations at the center of the game. I don't think it particularly matches the games it is chasing after (shockingly many of these are localizations of Matsuno's games) but it's got enough flair that it gives the plot some spice.

That's a good way to sum up Unicorn Overlord. When you look at the ingredients, it's Meat and Potatoes tactics but there's a little bit of spice dusted on top which brings everything together. Be it the Gambit System pulling combat together or turns of phrase bringing the story to life. You're mostly gonna be bounding around the map in a very satisfying loop of battles and town upgrading before some larger tests in the main story. Not the height of the genre but still eminently enjoyable.