Dragon Age: Origins (and a little bit of Mass Effect) - Part 1

Time to do another package deal. I have never written about Mass Effect in this blog even though I have played the first two. I'm pretty sure it happened before starting this blog so I'm not exactly obligated to according to my own rules. Dragon Age on the other hand is a game I have played quite recently, and it has a lot in common with Mass Effect. Might as well throw them all together. I have touched the topic of BioWare games earlier but now it's time to dig a bit deeper into one specific title. As usual I took forever and a half to start this game. I think I first wanted to play it as soon as it was released. I ended up playing it in 2014. Back then I didn't own a very modern PC, and I feared the PS3 version would not give me the same experience. I also had quite recently played a modded version of Baldur's Gate, and figured I might want to mod Dragon Age a bit too. "A bit" turned out to be about 30 individual mods, although most of them were simply graphical or environmental improvements.

1. Can you hear the dice?

For people who didn't like Mass Effect's rather close relatedness to first person shooters, Dragon Age was refreshing news. It promised to return back to the good old times of Baldur's Gate, giving the player control of the entire party from a bird's eye view. Although BG was a bit tedious to play at times, I was still looking forward to this. Although the game draws its inspiration from BG, a lot of things have naturally been modernized. The combat system is also BioWare's own instead of ye good old Dungeons & Dragons (well, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons back in the day). It's not that far removed from, say, the fourth edition of D&D really. Generally it's fair to say that things have been streamlined all over the place. Inspiration has been drawn from my all time favorite source (sarcasm detector says beep!): MMORPGs. Abilities are now cooldown-based with stamina/mana cost added on top.

Back in the day, most abilities, including spells, had limited uses per in-game day. This led to hilarious amounts of resting at times, but as a system it wasn't all that bad. Cooldowns on the other hand are often more spammable, and unfortunately this shows in their design: they are really lackluster. It's nice and all to have a bunch of skills, but you know what's nicer? Skills that have an actual noticeable effect. Sure, most of the higher level skills have noticeable effects, but that still leaves a ton of relatively irrelevant skills to fill the player's action bar. I do like to think there's a reason for this - at least in the source. Having an action bar (or two) full of active abilities gives the player something to do while their character is auto-attacking endless mobs in MMORPGs. Whether pressing buttons in a sequence is interesting or not is another question in itself.

Looking back to Baldur's Gate there actually are not nearly as many active abilities - and most of them have use limits much stricter than cooldowns in modern games. Indeed, most of the combat is about looking at characters auto-attacking mobs. The difference between a modern MMORPG and BG? Well, there's at most six characters for the player to control in BG. The tactical dimension of moving them around more than makes up for the fact that they are mostly just doing basic attacks. So, what happens when we add few handfuls of active abilities with small effects to all characters? Well, mostly it just becomes more tedious to play. When the impact of a single ability is close to zero, activating it feels a lot like an extra hoop to jump through. It's also important to note that impact is not a static property of an ability. Instead, it also depends on the game's enemy and encounter design. More about that a bit later.

As stated, there definitely are abilities in Dragon Age that have a clear impact. Higher level mages can clear mobs with powerful area of effect spells, given suitable conditions. Likewise, higher level rogues have skills that actually increase damage output significantly enough that it can be called burst damage. Yet most abilities are only weak buffs, debuffs or disables etc. They certainly have a statistical effect but its presence is hard to notice in a real-time battle system with 4 party members. The only sensible way to use all these small abilities is to set conditional statements for the AI to use them - at least for the other three party members, but it certainly doesn't hurt to do this for everyone. After these meaningless little skills have been automatized the player can then focus on activating the bigger abilities at opportune moments. However, at this point it's rather questionable to include such meaningless abilities in the game at all.

Basically it comes down to decision-making. If the difference between using a skill off cooldown (i.e. as soon as it comes available) and using it at opportune moments is not significant, then the choice of when to use the skill is not meaningful. There are many ways to deal with this problem: you can turn these skills from active to passive, or proc-based; you could increase their impact and the cost of using them; or you can just remove them. The "how" is ultimately a matter of game balance. The important part is having a suitable amount of meaningful decisions in the game and minimal amount of meaningless decisions. The latter are just noise, and they make the game irritating to play. That's the noise of the dice being rolled way too many times during a simple combat encounter. I guess there is a general phenomenon here at work, somewhere: making it appear like more is happening by dividing all actions into smaller units. Doesn't work. At all.

2. Iconoclastic Hammer of Infernal Devastation (+1 damage)

The rant continues and I'm afraid it won't be done by midnight. I have went on about this topic at least once before but I have the perfect excuse to revisit it. Let's compare equipment in BG and DA! The comparison is slightly unfair as BG enjoys a certain amount of familiarity bias from an old school AD&D nerd like myself. Equipment in DA is very - you guessed it - MMORPG-esque. Well, to be fair, they are a bit more interesting than that. Closer to Diablo 2 I'd say, of all the games I have played and actually remember. There's a lot of numbers. I didn't count exactly, but I wouldn't put 15 different numbers on one item beyond the realm of possibility. Generally speaking, more numbers equals more dimensions along which to compare pieces of equipment. One-dimensional equipment systems are incredibly boring: two pieces are either exactly equal, or one is simply better than the other.

As dimensions increase, player choice increases with them. I might want to wear weaker armor, because it grants other bonuses that I rate higher. However, if multiple dimensions are parallel to each other, meaning diminishes and overt complexity is introduced in its stead. For example, critical hit rate, critical hit chance and percentage-based bonus damage are often different ways to increase average damage per attack. Percentage bonuses are more stable, but over time the net result is the same: a double damage crit with a 15% chance equals 15% bonus damage with enough repetitions (in a simple system at least). Although it might be somewhat up to taste whether you want a higher crit or just more damage, to make an informed decision you'd need to whip out a calculator when two weapons are near enough each other in average damage. Or, you know, just don't give a damn and use the one that looks cooler I guess.

Situational bonuses (e.g. elemental damage, bonus vs enemy type, damage type resistance) are another beast entirely. Strictly speaking, they can be an attractive way to make more items legitimate choices. I mean, if a weapon is better against dragons than any other weapon in the game, it remains situationally useful, does it not? Well... it depends. A lot, actually. In a sense, actually using the item in its situational context is usually not a real choice (after all, it is the best option). However, there may be strategic decisions to make if there is a cost to equip the item - for instance, in Dragon Age the player may have two weapons equipped and swapping them is effortless. In this case the "cost" of equipping any given secondary weapon is that it takes your only secondary slot. So there is a decision: what to equip. Meanwhile, switching between primary and secondary weapons is free from the game mechanics perspective.

The overall cost of messing around with equipment also includes an external cost: effort cost, i.e. how much additional effort the player needs to expend in order to make the switch. For a very simple example, let's say switching to my anti-dragon sword kills a dragon approximately 15 seconds faster. If it takes 20 seconds to actually bring out the damn thing, it's not worth it. Even if it's close, or even slightly faster, it may feel too much of a hassle to be actually bothered with. On the other hand, if the effort cost is zero (e.g. alternative weapons are bound behind different, equally reachable action buttons), it's also a non-decision. Generally speaking, all sorts of effort costs are detrimental to choice, and should not be used as balancing factors in this context. There are other contexts where effort costs are valid balancing factors, especially if they have a skill component.

To summarize: situational equipment only makes sense if  the player has to make meaningful decisions about which to use. Probably the most common approach is to have a limited number of quick access slots coupled with a real cost for reconfiguration (e.g. inventory cannot be opened during combat). In conclusion, situational bonuses are certainly a dimension, but only a secondary factor in deciding a character's main equipment kit. Despite the flood of numbers, most equipment in Dragon Age falls on a neatly tiered scale so ultimately not a whole lot of choice is involved. Although, some armors are so goddamn ugly that I occasionally just had to use a slightly weaker one. Then again, for female characters, that's almost every piece of armor in the game. Which brings us to another important factor that influences equipment choices: player experience.

Let's face it. Despite occasionally having cool names, a collection of numbers doesn't really cut it when it comes to items being cool. So for all their numbers, pieces of equipment in Dragon Age just aren't all that interesting. This is where the AD&D background of BG comes into play - especially in BG2. We can even argue that comparing a sword +1 to a sword +2 is not all that different from comparing two items in DA - the difference is just made more obvious. At the same time, the scale is more visceral. However, the really interesting stuff comes in the form of unique magic items. Named items that clearly differ from anything else in the game. A lot of these items give the player new abilities and truly unique mechanics that are not available anywhere else in the game. The amount of oomph is simply superior to a collection of numbers. While in DA a sword is always used in the same way, in BG a sword might have abilities that create entirely new strategies.

Furthermore, as most of the items come from the well-known AD&D and Forgotten Realms lore, they are already iconic - and their names have meaning. Some of them are also batshit insane, like the Deck of Many Things - an item that's almost a sidequest in itself - or the talking sword (name forgotten). Whether there is more meaningful choice considering equipment in BG is debatable though, as they still mostly fall on a rather tiered scale. However, they are definitely several magnitudes more exciting. They are also much harder and time-consuming to program. It is easy to see why developers these days prefer collections of numbers. Once you have the system down, generating equipment is just a matter of drawing up some numbers - which is something computers are very good at. It's also easy to balance, and effortless to re-balance. Just tweak the numbers.

Sadly, the oomph is gone - equipment has become just another piece in the mathematical character optimization machine. While making choices based on numbers is still meaningful, individual items are not memorable at all, and the excitement of finding new equipment is massively diminished. That's the sad reality as RPGs become games of numbers. In closing, a couple of examples. Borderlands 2 walks the border of numbers and uniqueness quite successfully. While most of its items are indeed just numbers, truly legendary weapons have unique properties that make them behave like no other weapon in the game. Another one is Dark Souls. If you only look at numbers, the equipment system seems really one-dimensional. However, each weapon is truly defined by its attack animations - its player experience - so that choice is first and foremost based on play style preference.


3. There and back again - travel time: eternity and a half


This pretty much continues where I left off with the Tales rant about ridiculous detours in games. Detours are not as much of a prominent problem in Dragon Age. Granted, every faction the player needs to visit to get them pledge their allegiance demands a series of quests before agreeing - so it's basically business as usual. In the very least these are actual subplots with player choices, and in many ways feel much less like hoops to jump through. So what's there to rant about? Well, very briefly: dungeon length. I have touched the topic in the past, but if any game has truly tried my patience with long dungeons, it's Dragon Age. It doesn't even necessarily mean the problem is at its worst here, it just means it feels most aggravating. This is due to several reasons, one of which is the combat system deficiencies outlined before. On its own, even that would be fine though.

The real problem then? The sheer amount of encounters per dungeon. There's a fight in literally every fucking room and corridor in the game. Which, again, in and of itself is not aggravating - just incredibly annoying. I've had my share of these in games before (like Xenogears, omfg). What really makes it toxic is that there are like three different enemies in the game. The variety of encounters is mindbogglingly low, and going through the motions again and again is really tedious - primarily because the game has a fuckton of meaningless abilities and the NPCs tend to have a really hard time staying where you want them to be (or if they do, they don't do anything at all). Although you can make combat more interesting by increasing difficulty, it becomes so time-consuming that it's just not worth it. Most encounters have the same structure anyway: sneak up on soft, deadly targets (mages, archers), then mop up the rest. Rinse and repeat in every room and corridor. Later on in the game you can fortunately use broken AoE combinations to kill enemies before they even reach you.

Mass Effects 1 and 2 suffer largely from the same problem. The amount of fighting really drove me insane - or, well, bored, actually. The problem is the same: there just aren't that many enemy types in the game. I think ME2 did best of the three games in this category. In all games the dungeons are just too long, and too repetitive. In Dragon Age the only real difference you seem to get between most dungeons is new textures in the environment, and new flavor for the same old enemies. I get it, we are supposed to be fighting darkspawn throughout the game because they are everywhere. Just, could there maybe be more than three types of them? No? Ok, I am exaggerating a bit, but three is not *that* far off, unfortunately. It's kind of the same in ME: there's this one race of enemies that forms the major threat in the game, and they have like literally three different types of units. That, and dungeons are effectively just long FPS corridors.

So, here comes the unfair Baldur's Gate comparison again. Admittedly the first Baldur's Gate suffers from many of the same problems (except it's composed of massive amount of outdoor areas and somewhat less dungeons) - largely because the level range 1-7 is in fact quite boring in AD&D in general. BG2 on the other hand is miles ahead. Taking advantage of iconic AD&D monsters, the game offers a far wider variety of challenges in combats. Many of its dungeons are also more interesting with devious traps and puzzles, or optional challenges that yield worthy rewards. Which is another point: if items are not exciting to find, why bother spending any longer in dungeons than is mandatory? Overall, the ratio of meaningful encounters to meaningless ones seems simply much better (or maybe it's the nostalgia talking). The number of enemy types is probably a magnitude or two higher too.

Variety of challenge is the key. In BG2, enemies have abilities that are absolutely bonkers and - as a consequence - very threatening. High level mages have ridiculous protections; vampires drain levels; beholders cast all sorts of crazy shit at you, including instant kills. It's even possible for characters to be entirely erased from the game, permanently. Think about that, and compare it to the watered-down enemies we get in games these days. Since player abilities - especially those of mages - are equally nuts, strategy choices have much higher impact. The games feel so different in comparison. To me, in DA it feels like most of my decisions increase my party's overall effectiveness by like 10%, whereas in BG2 the chance of winning can go from zero to 100% with good strategy. In a way, I could say that in DA everything progresses at a steady pace, whereas BG2 is incredibly explosive in nature - often literally.

All that, and I'm pretty sure BG2 also has shorter dungeons.

Conclusion

So, to summarize this wandering rant, these modern BioWare games - Dragon Age in particular - seems to suffer from everything being watered down. Certainly this makes it a more balanced game than Baldur's Gate 2, but at what cost? Going through the game feels like treading through some gray substance at a steady pace - a really slow pace at that. The game just throws these seemingly endless encounters at the player, each containing a mixture of the same enemies you just killed in the last room. Reaching new levels doesn't feel much like anything as most abilities lack substantial impact. Finding items is reduced to a sense of "wow, better numbers". Quantity over quality, it seems, and it just doesn't work. It never does, not for me. As a game of high fantasy dungeon crawling, DA is just garbage. If there's a mod that removes two thirds of all encounters in the game, I recommend using it - that just might make it work.

In the next part, I'll go through some reasons why I still managed to play through it.

Radiant Historia

This game took me a long time to finish. There's two reasons. First, it's on my least favorite console: Nintendo DS - it's the least favorite because its buttons are small and it's not all that comfortable to hold compared to, say, the Sony PSP. Second, this game takes a while to truly get off. Admittedly this is a rather common problem with JRPGs in general, but these two factors combined resulted in me playing this game very rarely, and ultimately it took me almost a full year to get through 30 something in-game hours. The odd bit is that the game's actually really good. Like a bunch of other good JRPG titles on DS, this one was never available in Europe. Fortunately the platform is region independent. Regardless, while the game was received well, I think it wasn't all that popular.

1. Time travel 

Time travel is a fascinating concept to explore in fiction as it allows all kinds of perplexing plots. Doctor Who is probably the most prominent popular culture go-to these days - and for a reason. The fundamental rules of time travel are incredibly relaxed in the universe of Doctor Who. This lends itself to rather crazy plots. Yet there is a sufficient amount of consistency within those relaxed rules, so that they do seem natural rather than specifically constructed. When it comes to games - at least those of the JRPG variety - the one game above all is Chrono Trigger. I would honestly have to replay the game to remember exactly how it deals with time travel and how much time travel influences its story. What I do recall is you can kill the final boss in multiple stages of the game. More recent examples would include Final Fantasy XIII-2 and of course Radiant Historia. Each of these games follow different rules for time travel, and use it in different ways. Radiant Historia focuses on a scenario with exactly two alternate timelines.

Time travel is a tricky prospect for game designers. So far, time travel stories have been tied to linear narrative - at least to my knowledge. Indeed, as if open-ended narrative games wouldn't be hard enough as they are, introducing the possibility of time travel complicates things even further - again depending on the rules of course. In the simplest scenario time travel can simply be used as a form of postcognition, allowing players to look into the past without messing up the timeline itself. However, if players are allowed to change things around, the web of causality can easily expand beyond what modern AI can handle. Relying on scripted and/or heavily limited scenarios is therefore the sane man's way to success - for now. Another interesting topic from a game design perspective is time travel's role; whether it is merely a narrative concept, or has also been built into gameplay somehow.

Time manipulation on the other hand is employed as a game mechanic every now and then, with the indie platformer Braid being a strong example. Another closely linked concept is that of alternate realities, lately seen in e.g. Bioshock Infinite. Admittedly not much gameplay was built around alternate realities, and the narrative was straight as an arrow. In a way it can be said that Radiant Historia features both time travel and alternate realities (two of them to be exact). As a curious twist, only the protagonist, Stocke, is able to time travel and the available companions are therefore always limited by the point in time you go to. It's also noteworthy that Stocke traverses his own two alternate timelines, always experiencing past events from a first person perspective. In other words he doesn't get to be an outside observer in his own past. Oh and in case you are wondering, he is not allowed to inform his companions about his ability to time travel - which is kind of convenient in keeping the narrative sane.

The rules of time travel in the game are a bit incoherent. The timelines are not exactly independent, but they aren't exactly connected either. This means that certain changes in one timeline can resonate into the other. However, most of the time roadblocks in the narrative are cleared by the player obtaining an item or ability in the other timeline. Which is not all that different from obtaining these things from some faraway dungeon instead - except the developers can recycle the same environments in both timelines. I have to admit this felt a bit cheap and dipping into one timeline to obtain MacGuffin #1745 got a bit tedious at times. It's not necessarily due to the concept itself, but rather its technical implementation. Since there are only limited nodes to travel to, certain dialogue and other sequences need to be played over and over again because often the MacGuffin itself is a bit beyond the travel node.

Time travel in itself is not the core subject matter in RH really. It's mostly used as a way to tell the game's story - the player pieces it together from two different perspectives. It's also the solution to all kinds of troubles encountered by the protagonist. Although the story's premise is for Stocke to discover the true history by repairing the original timeline, most of the game's subject matter deals with political events, Stocke's identity and his nemesis. Which, honestly, is absolutely fine. Politics often results in more interesting plots than the usual world-saving scenarios (something I hope George R. R. Martin also remembers before ruining his series with too much epic bullshit *ahem*). While there is a world-threatening catastrophe looming over everything in RH, it is first and foremost about the people. You could actually remove the time travel and still have a fairly decent - if not as unique - plot.

In comparison, both Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy XIII-2 have time travel as a more significant plot subject. In particular, the timeline itself is being threatened - and especially FFXIII-2 is mostly about fixing it somehow. Furthermore, the reason why the timeline is altered in the first place is an important piece of the full plot of the entire FFXIII trilogy. In RH the origin of Stocke's time travel ability doesn't really matter all that much. It's nice to learn, but bears less significance because it's not a central plot theme in the game. I guess this is as far as I want to delve into time travel and related things for now. Let's talk about something else story-related.

2. The take-off time

I sited slow take-off time as one of the two reasons I took so effing long to complete this game. It's a bit of a pattern really for handheld games and me: start slow, playing an hour here or there until the game really starts going, and then just be glued to the screen for the last half or such. Kind of a similar thing happens with TV series and me. It's really quite obvious, but something that I really thought about only quite recently. In the end I feel like it comes down to how relatable the characters are, or how long it takes for me to start relating to them. This is obviously highly affected by character writing and overall storytelling. For example, the main characters of Gilmore Girls are super-relatable, pretty much from the get-go. Most game characters, well, they are not - the level of writing just ain't there yet. It's also hard to really bring out much about personalities and such if most in-game dialogue is strictly plot-related. Persona 4 gets quite close though.

I basically approach immersion through the game's characters, which is why I only get really engrossed once I feel like I know them - and this may take even up to 20 hours of game time. It's really less about development of the plot for me - unless the plot itself is *really* good (Xenogears, off the top of my head). This also explains why sequels with the same main cast seem to get off much more quickly - even instantly - and also why the first hours of a game feel better when playing it for a second time. Games with a player-created protagonist mix things up a bit, because the immersion goes through one character who is essentially my own avatar. Other people might have different way of immersing themselves into fiction. Still, I think this short piece is relevant if you read my blog - it will help you understand why I have certain opinions about certain games. For instance, does my dislike of Xenoblade's first half really originate from it's slow pace, or the fact that I didn't find the characters all too relatable until much later into the game?

Back to Radiant Historia: this game's cast of characters is not very deep. The main character and one or two companions get interesting later on, but this takes quite a while. Most of the in-game talk is also quite strictly to the point. For some this might be a blessing more than anything, for me it kinda leaves the characters a bit shallow - or actually a lot shallow. There is also a game mechanical dimension to this, particularly in RPGs: early on, characters have very limited number of abilities, which makes them thin from a mechanical perspective on top of being thin from a personality perspective. Generally both improve over time, at least if you're like me and don't really mind cliched characters. I guess you'd have to be to enjoy this genre.

3. Combat of push-arounds

If time travel / alternate realities as plot elements don't sound convincing enough for you, then how about a rather unique turn-based combat system? On the surface the system doesn't look all that revolutionary. It's a very basic turn-based system where enemies are placed on a 3x3 grid. However, the grid is rather important because almost all enemies in the game can be pushed and pulled around using different abilities. They can also be stacked temporarily, which is the primary way of increasing the party's damage output. For instance, you can push an enemy into another (doing damage), and then hit the two stacked enemies, this time damaging both, and then push them into yet another enemy. If you'd then attack the stack once more, the collateral damage has effectively doubled the damage done to one target.

At first the system is a bit simplistic. Just stack enemies, hit the stack, rinse and repeat. You can also create chains longer than three hits by swapping turns around. Characters can always swap their turn with any other combatant, including enemies. By allowing enemies to take their turns first, you can easily have at least two turns for each of your characters without interruptions. However, there is a downside to this (besides allowing enemies to hit you first!): characters who have swapped their turns take bonus damage until they actually take a turn. This is relevant, because some enemies really dish out the hurt. The system gets more complex later on, as abilities that hit multiple tiles become available. One character can also cast traps, which are more powerful than normal spells, but can only be cast on empty tiles.

As usual, it's important that enemies pose enough of a threat. Some of them cause serious grief, but even weaker ones can be a bane. This is caused by the limited availability of recovery items (they are expensive - especially mana recovery items) and the fact that anything beyond basic attacks costs mana - and basic attacks are weak. Running out of resources is a threat when undertaking longer ventures. I thought I had enough supplies for the final dungeon... boy was I wrong. It got rather tense towards the end. Navigational mistakes can also become rather costly as enemies respawn whenever you leave a map. Once again the success of RH's combat system cannot be awarded to just one system, but rather a combination of factors. The combination of manipulating space (enemy positions) and time (turn order) becomes interesting because the player is required to make full use of it.

If I had to complain about something, it would be this: character development in the game is entirely linear, in one dimension. That's a fancy way of saying you gain preset abilities by leveling up. The only way to customize the characters themselves is to change their equipment - which also consists entirely of numeric bonuses. However the game does force the player to frequently change their party configuration. When traveling in time, the point in time dictates who are actually accompanying Stocke at the moment (remember, the party members can't travel in time). Mysteriously enough all companions retain levels and equipment they gained in some future point in time. I think this is a rather necessary amendment and not all that atypical to JRPGs; game mechanics are not involved with the plot in any way (like summoning a space dragon to blast enemies from the orbit doesn't destroy the surrounding city, even though it should).

Conclusion

Despite its slow start, Radiant Historia is a very solid JRPG. Time travel is always a fascinating, even though it really isn't in the main focus this time. Instead, the game's plot is mostly about politics and personal relationships - both of which I generally find more interesting than cosmic plots involving world-eating gods. Most importantly it features a combat system that has enough space for strategical thinking and enemies that require it. Character development is bland though and there could have been a more interesting way of keeping all characters unique.

Tales of Xillia/Graces f

Getting lazy again and doing two games at once! Well, there's that, and the fact these are quite similar in many ways. It's a normal series thing, kind of like Final Fantasy before FFX and later games started messing around with things more. So yes, both of these games have the same fundamental game mechanics and core systems. The biggest differences can be found in character development, combat system details and various subsystems. Tales seems to be one of those series that are kind of reliable, but nothing truly amazing ever seems to come out of it. That's just my impression, and I might be terribly wrong. It does, however, definitely hold true for these two games I have played. One distinctive feature of the series is that you can play battles with up to four players. This makes it ideal for social RPG marathons because there is no need for taking turns holding the controller. Which is why I picked Xillia up initially in fact.

I don't feel like doing a complete analysis. I'll just go off on random tangents instead. Wherever that may lead.

1. Detour gaming

Rant time! This applies especially to Tales of Xillia, as the game is my source of inspiration for writing about this phenomenon. The point is still valid for many games, and even other works of fiction. Xillia is just particularly obnoxious. There's some minor spoilers about the game's structure, but nothing specific really. The game starts with Milla trying to destroy a device. She fails and has to retreat. Then we get to follow how she attempts to get back to the lab, to destroy the device once more. However, there's a but. One does not simply walk into... well, might as well call it Mordor. The next twenty or something hours of the game are basically spent running into yet another obstacle that ruins yet another way of reaching Mordor. When we're finally down to the very last option, the game still manages to throw several hours' worth of hoops for us to jump through.

In other words, the story does not actually proceed anywhere in the first twenty or more hours of the game. There is literally no progress in the plot. There's just an endless ball of side plot threads, all of which are incredibly pointless. They just have to get the player to visit every corner of the world, no matter how lame the excuses to do so are. The first half of Tales of Graces f feels a bit like the same in the sense that it too has the player run across the world map before the plot truly starts moving ahead, but at least it moves. Xillia just kind of spins in place. Ironically, once it actually gets somewhere, Xillia's plot is fairly good. Naturally once it gets to the good bits, it starts to move too quickly. It's kind of the same for Graces f, but at least it is somewhat more balanced with its pacing.

I stopped watching The X-Files because the series just throws bucketloads of fillers at the viewer. Same thing happens in anime a lot. Typically, not only does the main plot stand still for the duration of an entire episode, often interpersonal relations of the main cast do not develop either. Even if the individual filler episodes are great from time to time, it is still really annoying when the fiction does not grow. I love growth. These days I very rarely watch movies at all because they're hardly comparable to the massive arc of growth offered by extended works of fiction. I also expect this growth from such fiction, and get upset when it fails to deliver, choosing to unload filler after filler instead. That said, I haven't really found anyone who actually likes the kind of structure Tales of Xillia offers. So perhaps this is not just a personal quirk of mine at work in this rant.

The incredibly subtle parallel here is that I consider the hoops (subplots) in Xillia as something very similar to filler episodes. I think it's a fair comparison. In both cases, the main characters get diverted from their primary task into doing something less important (although technically it supports their main goal because it's an obstacle). The subplot often carries no weight beyond its own time frame either, which makes it a completely irrelevant event once it is over. It also often involves grinding down a horde of enemies that otherwise would have been left untouched. Yes, I do realize that by playing JRPGs I literally signed up for killing endless legions of enemies, but I'd rather encounter them while getting towards a worthy goal - otherwise it feels like I'm eradicating them just so that marketers can claim another +10 hours of gameplay in the box.

Games don't even need to necessarily have any stupid detours. Taking forever to get anywhere is just as frustrating, but it's a subject for another entry. Overall, I do admit my reaction to detour gaming these days is a lot stronger than it used to be in the past. The key factor here is time, or rather the ever-ironic relationship of time and money. Way back when I had all the time in the world, my ability to actually buy new games was rather limited. Back then a game had to offer a significant amount of gameplay hours to justify paying a full price. This made me a lot more tolerant. These days as I have a stable source of income and money to spend, the very fact of my employment kind of cuts into my gaming time. This has lead me to value my time all the more, and I have started to expect the same respect for my time from games. So, I feel a bit offended when they do not.

Perhaps it's a sign that I should finally ditch my long-lasting love for JRPGs. Or at least stop playing the titles that seem okayish, not great.

2. Real-time battle, almost there

The Tales franchise sports real-time battles, and they have been doing so for quite some time. At some point they switched to 3D battle fields, but to my knowledge the basics have stayed roughly the same throughout the series. As we have discussed in previous entries, real-time battle systems generally need to somehow control the flow of battle so that players cannot just mash buttons and hold enemies in stagger infinitely. In this regard Tales is a bit chaotic. Basic attacks generally don't offer much stagger and the stagger resistance of enemies didn't seem constant, or was dependent on their own state (e.g. they cannot be staggered mid-animation). I am not sure how exactly stagger worked in these two games - the system wasn't really all that transparent.

Of these two games, Graces f felt a bit more fast-paced, with more emphasis on tempo control. Although the games feel very similar on the surface, a number of differences contribute the difference in feel. For instance, Xillia controls ability spam through the equivalent of mana. Graces f does no such thing; instead it has a different point mechanic that controls the length of combos. It's quite similar to the system in Star Ocean 3. The end result is that while it's possible to hold an enemy staggered for the duration of an entire combo, at some point you'll simply run out of steam and have to wait a few seconds to regenerate combo capacity. This is the battle flow control mechanism that puts forces the player to play defense for a bit instead of brainlessly mashing combos in. In Xillia mana kind of acts as a similar mechanism: although repeatedly casting spells can hold enemies in place, you'll eventually run out of mana.

I did play most of Xillia as a caster so I cannot attest how it works for other character types. Overall I felt that the amount of control players can have over enemies is in similar levels; perhaps slightly stronger in Graces f. On the other hand, the amount of control players have over their allies is slightly higher in Xillia. In Graces f all other party members are almost completely autonomous; in Xillia, the player can choose to link their character with another character to have them work as a pair. Since we were playing with two players, we both had a link partner, whereas I'd imagine there would be more switching involved when playing solo because links between different characters provide different benefits and combination attacks. Both games have the option to bind a few abilities of non-controlled characters to buttons, allowing the player to invoke them when needed.

Overall I feel there's a bit of a redundancy problem in both games. They have a lot of depth, but fall short in utilizing it. With 3 AI controlled characters in the battle field, a lot of stuff is simply out of the player's hands. For instance, in Graces f you get quite significant bonus damage if you hit all of an enemy's weaknesses in one combo. There are so many different weaknesses that a single character can rarely do so, which means you have to hope that your allies have the sense to fill in the one's you cannot hit. It also requires a lot of memorization because attacks can have up to four different attributes, and the player has a combo tree of 16 attacks and another 4 attacks on top of that. You can always check the attributes in a pause menu, but it gets tedious. Xillia reduces the amount of available attacks drastically, and it also simplifies the weakness system to a more familiar element based one.

Another difference that may seem small but vastly influences the battle flow is free run. An interesting feature in Tales is that normally characters move in a 2D line in respect to their target (i.e. just near or far). Free run can be activated with a button, and it allows a character to move freely. In Graces f, free running depletes combo capacity, limiting it use heavily while in Xillia it's free. It follows rather naturally that you'll be using it a lot more, because it's the best way to avoid enemy attacks. In fact, since Graces f has a quick step dodge (also costs cc), there is very little use for free running. The end result is that Xillia involves a lot more running around and crossing distances is fairly quick. In Graces f evasions are done in a tighter space, and covering larger distances actually takes quite a bit of time. Xillia also has jumping which Graces f does not, and it seems very useless and mostly annoying. Jumps are slow, which makes accidental jumps quite dangerous.

I slightly preferred Graces f's gameplay, primarily because its controls are more stable. Accidental jumps aside, Xillia also has an annoying habit of characters not facing the right way after free running, which results in a lot of spells cast off-target. Neither of the games get to the same level of enjoyment as my long time favorite Star Ocean 3. Tales combat feels quite entertaining, and most of the time it's fast - a massively important factor in a game with hundreds of battles. Unfortunately enemies do not vary all that much, which makes stuff a bit repetitive. There are some alleviating factors however, and we're about to move on to them.


3. Character design musings

In both games, all characters have their own unique mechanics. I find this commendable, as opposed to games where all characters can be made into carbon copies of each other. These mechanics felt more emphasized in Xillia though, and were not that big of a factor in Graces f. There clearly had to be a reason why I chose to play just one character though, so let's look into this a bit. First of all, one problem I have with both games is that all character upgrades come in very small pieces from a system that has hundreds of nodes to activate (the systems are a bit different, but the rewards are not). A +3% conditional bonus here, a +2 stat bonus there etc. This means it's really hard to actually make any sense of a character's play style and advantages in just a glance, and it takes quite a lot of fights to grasp it in practice too. Arguably this could also been seen as a strength.

There is however something to be said about the actual impacts of different playstyles on characters. If you look at Dota 2, there's 108 different heroes and all of them have a distinct impact on how the game plays out. Meanwhile, in tales, it felt like I could have any party of four characters and the combat experience was no different - unless I would have purposefully avoided taking a healer with me, but that's just stupid. So, while each character may feel a bit different to play, the overall combat flow remains largely unchanged. I acknowledge that I did not particularly explore my options, because I largely had a "whatever works" attitude. The reason for this is the lack of variety in enemy design - the game very rarely forces its player to adapt. In Graces f I also didn't feel like memorizing a new combo tree too often so I stuck with the main character.

I don't often change characters just for variety. I only change when the game throws a curve ball my standard roster cannot handle, or if I feel combats are going too slowly. Sticking with the main character usually works well enough, because they're generally designed to be quite straightforward to play and still effective, and also the most well-rounded. I don't like playing healers or supports that cast buffs in real-time combat systems, because usually the AI is actually better at these roles (healing a low HP character or refreshing an expired buff are both very simple rules) - and it's usually more boring. In a cast of six characters there's typically one healer, one buffer and four others who usually do either physical or magical damage (or very rarely both but they're usually worse than focused characters). This leaves four feasible options to choose from.  

Because I don't trust AI in these games, I generally aim to play the character that is the most crucial for my strategy to work. Admittedly it's a bit unfair to make comparisons to Star Ocean 3 because I sank some three hundred hours into that game and experimented with everything. However, even on my first playthrough I felt more pressured to change my controlled character throughout the game. It would seem that for all their unique mechanics, characters in either of these two Tales games don't really have that different impact - some are just more tedious to play than others. It kinda comes down to the fact that there are just multiple ways of doing the exact same thing. If you compare to something I have hyped less, like Xenoblade, even that game had more pressing selection criteria for characters because they actually did different things.

Might be this is just my impression, and the system actually offers more than I got out of it. I also do commend the effort. It just really feels like - as long as you've got the basic requirements covered - there really isn't much of a difference between party configurations. It's also worthwhile to remember that it's not necessarily a problem with character design; it could just as well be a problem with enemy design. Ultimately it's always the game's challenge that drives players to adapt and make good use of their options. Certainly there are players out there who appreciate options just for the sake of having variety, but for me it feels like waste of interesting character design. In one regard Tales does fine: non-active party members still receive a lion's share of experience, so they at least do not fall behind.

Conclusion

Although there are a lot of individual minisystems in both games that are kind of curious, I will cut this post short here. Overall both games are decent JRPGs, but not really special in any regard. This really hurts them a lot, because mediocre JRPGs seem to be all we're getting these days - especially on home consoles. They're hurt by sloppy storytelling. All of their good ideas also kind of blend into a grey mix where nothing seems to really matter a whole lot. The end result is an experience that is kind of bland until you have put enough hours behind to develop some affection for the characters and their antics. This is actually another commendable thing about the series: it has a lot of (optional) banter between characters. Although it's quite cliched, it's highly entertaining and brings life to the otherwise mediocre characters. Some scenes - particularly in Xillia - are just downright absurd.

Overall, I might have loved this series a lot more had I played it like ten years ago. It was entertaining enough for these two games, but I'm not really dying to get more. Maybe for a full 4 player cooperative experience? Xillia 2 is out there, but it seems like yet another mediocre game, with just one benefit: recurring characters - but that's a topic for another day.

As a final note, maybe I should re-visit Star Ocean 3 and see if it's actually as good as I remember it to be.

Dark Souls 2

It should be no surprise that I really waited for this game. Following the weeks it got out, I played it for quite a respectable amount of hours. In fact I'm still not done with it, but I'm taking a break from it for now. It's summer in Finland and it's bright throughout most of the day, even inside my living room. Shockingly, this game is quite dark (who would've thought) so I can't actually play it because of screen reflections. Even if it is significantly less dark than its predecessor. It's just not really a game where you'd want to miss seeing something. I mean that something might just get you very, very dead. Even though it's probably one of the best - if not the best - games this year, there's not much to say. It's mostly more of the same with slight tweaks. That's enough though right, because it's more of the same best gameplay out there.

1. The tweaks

Because sequels are effectively massive iterations of the original concept, they tend to tweak things in a better direction. The basics have been largely left untouched as there really isn't much of a reason to change them. Some things have clearly been changed as an attempt to improve them; others have been changed more for flavor. Take dual-wielding for instance. It used to be pretty useless, so they've given it a buff. Wielding two weapons of the same type and having high enough stats grants access to power stance. This stance offers new moves featuring both weapons at the same time, which increases damage output quite nicely. The tradeoff, not being able to use a shield, is still significant - although I have to say less so than I'd expected. Don't know whether it's just a matter of enemy design or me having enough confidence in my own abilities, but I have mostly been playing without a shield. I do like that lighter weapons are now more useful in PVE.

One of my biggest gripes with Dark Souls has received some much-needed attention. I'm naturally talking about poise - the stagger resistance mechanic - that used to be just bonkers. This in the sense that with high enough poise there were next to no attacks in the game that could stagger your character. That's particularly stupid in PVP - which is another subject I've touched in quite some detail previously. Well, that's in the past because poise has been heavily nerfed. I think it's fairly balanced now actually. If you choose to go that route, you can still shrug of staggers from most mobs and some attacks from bosses, but not nearly everything. It is pretty useless in PVP. As a bit of a step backwards though, there now seems to exist a rather definite sweet spot for equipment encumbrance. In the past, there was a notable difference for having less than 25% load, and another huge step at 50%. Now it scales more linearly, but load only affects roll distance (almost useless) and stamina recovery speed (somewhat meaningful). The only hard limit is at 70% where normal roll turns into the fat roll.

This means that most builds can wear almost any armor without getting punished because there's very little point in carrying around anything below 69.9%. Sure, the roll distance was useful for my bow only run but that's not really an optimal way to play in any regard. On the other hand, if you're really good at not getting hit, might as well go naked for maximum stamina recovery speed I guess. Still, I feel there's less factors involved in picking armor in this game. There is however some choice involved in rolling, because rolling speed and invulnerability window length are now determined by a derivative stat. This actually caught me be surprise at first a lot because rolling away after making an attack has a longer delay than it used to (even with high stats, but especially at the beginning). I died a lot because of this. Admittedly I still die a lot because of greedy attacking, but at least now it's no longer a surprise when it happens - just the usual facepalm. Then again that's probably the biggest reason I die in a lot of games of this genre in general.

Speaking of stats, there's now more of them. Endurance has been split into two stats: one for stamina and another for equipment load. Then there's adaptability which is a new stat that affects the derivative agility stat I just mentioned, and resistances. Stat-based damage bonuses are now derivative stats, and as a bigger change, there's not just the original four but also three new ones: fire, lightning and dark damage. Well, really just two new ones, because lightning replaces faith-based damage. Yes, elemental weapons do scale now, based on different stats. Dark damage is the most demanding type, because it's defined by whichever of magic or faith is lower. Another curious scaling type is the new mundane scaling, which scales based on how high is the character's lowest stat. Interestingly enough, almost all weapons in the game can be imbued with any scaling even if they already have that damage type built in (in which case that damage type gets more emphasized). Even more importantly, elemental weapons can now be enchanted with spells.

All this means that different scaling types actually make a lot more sense now. Previously even casters often wanted to use a physical damage weapon because it would get a much bigger damage buff from a spell. Now you can cast the buff on any weapon. I think there's simply more viable builds this time. Scaling can also be imbued into shields now to change their damage blocks. Status effects, most notably poison, can also be imbued into melee weapons for some interesting options - especially since most bosses aren't actually immune to poison. Other tweaks include changes to backstab and parrying, both of which are now less dominant (bugs aside). Backstab has less invulnerability; parrying now knocks the attacker on their butt, and to get a riposte you actually have to wait a bit (and can be interrupted by other enemies in the meantime). There's also a new magic category, hexes, based on dark scaling which makes it the most demanding magic type stats wise. Pyromancy is less broken and the flame now requires materials to upgrade so you can't rush it.

Limited respecs are also now available. Matchmaking has changed too. Previously it was based on soul level, which caused an anomaly where players would focus all their souls into upgrading gear, then invade low level games with godlike equipment. It's now based on soul memory, which is a measure of all souls obtained instead, making this method of griefing impossible. The matchmaking has other issues, and pure invasions are actually very rare because the player now needs to belong to a specific covenant in order to do so. Even then it's not really worth it, and as a side effect another covenant is useless. I guess they wanted to protect players a bit more because now the only way to fully avoid invasions is to play offline. There are however certain PVP focus areas in the game where invasions happen a lot so if you really want to fight, it's easily possible. Most importantly, network code is much better now, and I've experienced a lot less lag issues - and no lagstabbing at all.

The biggest issue with this system as far as I've heard is the fact that soul memory caps at 15 million, after which you can face anyone above the threshold. This means you can end up fighting fully maxed out characters once you hit that 15M souls. I don't remember where are my characters' soul memories at so I cannot say how high is the threshold exactly. All in all I feel the tweaks are welcome, and as soon as they fix a few bugs that are getting abused, the game should be more balanced than Dark Souls.

2. Extinction

There's one tweak that's worth its own section. Partly because this is something I forgot to include in my Lightning Returns post. The biggest and perhaps most vocalized change in reviews is the limitation on enemy spawns. Whereas before there would occasionally be enemies that were there only once, in Dark Souls 2 all enemies can be killed only a set amount of times after which they will no longer respawn. This change affects the game in two ways. In one way it makes the game easier because areas can be cleared so that around the fifteenth attempt against the boss the player just runs through empty corridors to get there. In another way it makes the game harder  because everything now comes with limited availability. By everything I mean items and souls dropped by enemies. This only really applies if the player relies on farm. This was also the most discussed and criticized change.

At first it felt a bit like cheating because by now I'm used to repeating sections in Souls games. In the end though by the fifteenth attempt the section is mostly routine anyway, so going through it is neither challenging or interesting. Sometimes you might not even make it to fifteen kills on all enemies if you figure out a way to bypass them. Which is what we used to do in previous games when killing the same enemies for the umphteenth time got a bit too tedious. Now there's a choice to purposefully clear an area before a difficult boss instead of bypassing the enemies and sometimes I did opt for that. Most of the time it's still more convenient to just run past mobs, especially if you don't particularly need their drops. For new players this change can make things tricky if they are not careful with their souls. Let's say you make it to the boss fourteen times and always succeed in reclaiming your souls - except on the fifteenth run you lose them. Now you're facing empty corridors with no souls in sight, and the boss hasn't gotten any easier.

It is true that in offline play you can get screwed by this, theoretically at least. However, infinite souls are still available in the game. There's no limitation to how much you can go out as a white phantom to help out other players, and get your share of their soul rewards. If I remember this right, the reward is half of the normal amount of souls you would get. At the same time, it's a good way to scout out bosses and to avoid nasty surprises. The game also has one other tool to help players with this limited availability of souls. There's a ring that prevents losses at death. It does break when triggered, but can be repaired for about 2,000 souls. Since you always spawn at a bonfire and warping is always available, you can go back to repair it infinitely. Sure it's a bit of work, but it's a great safety net when you have massed a lot of souls. Similar rings existed in Dark Souls, but they could not be repaired.

I guess it's still possible to get screwed, but I don't really see how the mechanic in itself could be that bad. Its biggest impact is on drops if anything. It is now impossible to farm equipment upgrade materials indefinitely. it does put some weight on upgrade decisions early on in the game. Eventually, most materials will still have pretty high availability. It is also worth remembering that highest tier materials and things like demon titanite were also very limited in Dark Souls, so this is not exactly new either. In fact, the limited availability of drops is probably more consequential in Lightning Returns because of the way the ability upgrades work (i.e. you need to fuse together many copies of the same ability). In Dark Souls 2 you can still easily fully upgrade several weapons and a set of armor on one playthrough, which to me is hardly limited availability. All in all I don't know if it was a necessary change, but I am not really feeling the claimed negative impacts. I guess you could say it's against the Souls principle in a way because you are being denied learning possibilities after fifteen attempts. Color me indifferent.

In Dark Souls 2 the extinction of enemies is clearly just a game mechanic with no thematic implications. In Lightning Returns it's thematically more appropriate - at the end of days, even monsters feel it. This is further signified by last ones - special bosses encountered when every other member of a monster species is defeated. In a way it makes killing monsters feel less pointless as you can go on a crusade to truly defeat every last one of them. Of course, being able to slay an entire monster species would also have rather interesting moral implications in a different context. Even in LR you can ask yourself are all of these monsters truly malicious. In the end though, you will still go ahead and kill them for your precious loot and achievements. As a concept extinction has a lot to explore - not just as a meta-commentary, but also as a farm-limiting game mechanic.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Dark Souls 2 is almost the same game as Dark Souls, just in a different environment. For me this is more than enough. Even if the design does seem a bit weaker at times, it's still more awesome than any of its competitors. Changes have been mostly rather cautious and for good reason. I guess I'm just not hardcore enough to see how DkS2 is so obviously inferior to DkS. Even if it was slightly weaker (and I'm not even sure about that), it's still an entirely new game with new challenges and environments. I mean, we used to play sequels made with exactly the same engine in the past (and I guess we still are). Sometimes I feel people are a bit too eager to declare "more of the same" in a negative tone. At times, "more of the same" is exactly what's called for. For me, Dark Souls 2 was a reason to get back to the gameplay system I have learned to love.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

Ok, so I've had this open in my editor for like three months. It might be a bit incoherent.

So, the game I had been waiting for ever since the ending credits of Final Fantasy XIII-2 finally arrived. I have really liked the XIII series despite its flaws (refreshers: XIII, XIII-2), and I have really really liked Lightning. I was a bit skeptical about having only one player-controlled character in the game. However, that one character would be Light, and the series' developers already had a pretty good streak with game mechanics. As for the story, all I could really hope for was not-a-total-catastrophe. Honestly, with the given premises, you just cannot expect anything more. This is bound to become a long post; after all it's about the conclusion of something I have grown kinda attached to. Not a flawless conclusion by a long shot mind you, but a conclusion nonetheless. I'll start with the game itself and then write some closing thoughts about the trilogy.

1. The world is dying... or is it?

From what information we had earlier, I got the impression that it would be Lightning in a practically dead world. Apparently this is not really the case; for a dying world there sure is a lot of civilization going on. Granted, just in a couple of cities and some rural villages but nevertheless, life goes on, business as usual. There's surprisingly little to indicate that the world is dying. Sure, we are told about how the chaos is going to swallow up everything (which I thought happened at the end of FFXIII-2) and that God will awaken in thirteen days to destroy this world and create a new one. The ticking clock in the UI is ultimately almost the sole indicator that we're running out of time. That aside, this could be any standard issue JRPG world. As a quirk, people have stopped aging which makes them at least 500 years old. There's also the matter of new people not being born.

The lack of enthusiasm in the previous paragraph reflects the problem: the promising theme is underplayed to an extent it might as well not exist. The time pressure, although criticized in many reviews, does work fairly well as a game mechanic. I just didn't feel it. There are multiple problems that cause this - and we'll eventually get to them - but in general the end of the world just isn't present in the world. Another thing is that having lived for over 500 years is not really reflected in the people either. The game treats it mostly like a quirk, and makes jokes about it. I would believe living for 500 years while not getting any older ever leaves a strong impression on people, but nope, the folks you meet could be just regular people from any RPG. Apparently they have been doing the exact same thing for greater part the last 500 years. Apparently children also haven't grown up mentally at all.

If we look at the time limit from a more mechanical perspective though, it does create some dynamics. Throughout the game, Light proceeds main and side quests in four different game areas. Things also do change depending on the time of the day: different monsters are encountered at different times, certain events are timed, some areas have time-limited access etc. Time doesn't run in combat, cutscenes, conversations or menus. Light can also use her newly-acquired divine powers to temporarily freeze time provided she has the Eridium Points (EP) to do so. EP can also be used for teleporting between game areas -  the alternative is taking a train, but that option always consumes time. EP is regained by fighting monsters. It's actually not all that hard to practically gain infinite time, especially on normal (EP rewards are halved on hard). Basically the player just uses Chronostasis (the time freezing ability) constantly while stopping to fight monsters frequently enough to regain lost EP.

Once you get Chronostasis abuse down, the time limit almost entirely disappears from the game. Even on my first playthrough I was able to complete almost every quest in the game, with one exception being a quest that required visiting the NPC on four or five separate days. I discovered this quest so late that I no longer had enough days left. On my second playthrough I followed a guide and completed almost every quest within the first four days. For a game that has thirteen days that's a bit... I dunno, disappointing? On the first playthrough though the mechanic was just fine. Taking care of EP economy and completing quests efficiently were to me more interesting than just casually strolling around places. It's not super easy to regen enough EP by the way, because most small monsters give very little. EP is also useful for healing and using Overclock to defeat bosses (that's a combat time freeze).

2. Yet another quest rant

I wanted to devote an entire section to the most gaping flaw in Lightning Returns: the way the game handles its pacing through main and side quests. I think this is where it shows most that the XIII saga just hasn't been a commercial success, and developers were on a really limited budget. The main quest is divided into five independent quest threads. Each area has its own main quest, and then there's one that kind of spans all four areas. As a structure there's nothing wrong with this. However, the threads are insanely short. Like, really, really short. Most players are likely to blow through the main story content in way less than thirteen game days, which leaves them with only side quests to fill the remaining days. Not cool, Square-Enix, not cool at all. You always have to wait until the last day to finish the game, which just leaves an enormous amount of downtime.

This is made worse by the fact that you cannot continue with sidequests after finishing the game. Everything except Light's stats and equipment resets so on a subsequent playthrough, you get to do every quest again (for a diminished reward; it's worth notice at this point that stats are gained only from completing quests). So, if you actually want to do as much as possible (kind of encouraged by the game), you're stuck with doing sidequests for a long time before you can finish the game. Indeed, most of the game's content is made of sidequests. It's the same disease that is currently plaguing RPGs from every corner of the world - a topic I've been writing about on more than one occasion. As an interesting twist, this time there is actually a plausible plot explanation for doing sidequests. That in itself would be a good thing, were it not for the horrible quality of quests.

The in-game explanation is this: Lightning has to find souls worth saving so that they can be reborn into the new world. Which, as a concept, is actually quite impressive - an entire game could easily be built around just that. It's a cool concept, but the game forgets its own explanation after the very first saved soul. After that, we're off to goofville, running pretty run-of-the-mill errands for whoever has an incredibly dumb problem. Some of the quest givers are pretty much the worst people around, which is in a damn direct contradiction with saving worthy souls. This overall goofiness of side quests is also at odds with the game's theme, and is indeed one of the biggest contributing factors why it just doesn't feel like the world is ending. Doing the quests themselves is pretty decent busywork gaming and kept my ludic side entertained.

The best part about these quests is hearing Light and Hope's comments about how stupid some of these tasks or people are. I guess you could find some kind of interesting metacommentary here. Then again, with all the effort put into these quests - giving some resemblance of personality to the quest givers and voice acting every single line in the game - having even the protagonist comment on their stupidity might not be what you'd want. In fact, most of the quests are so out of character for Light that I just cannot see her partaking any of that crap were it not for her savior duty (which writers conveniently put into the game). Of course in most games sidequests feel just as much out of place and out of character. Most games don't even bother with giving a plausible explanation for doing them, and I'm not sure which is worse. For this reason I find it usually best to leave majority of sidequests for the post-game - the post-game is typically something that is entirely separated from the game's fiction anyway.

Well, people did complain when there were no sidequests in FFXIII. Now we have them by the bucket. Most of the quests are truly just busywork; the only one that requires some strategy is the quest to defeat the toughest monster in the game (no pushover that one).

3. Fight in style

Alright, we've now concluded that the game is horrible. So, how come I enjoyed playing it for about 90 hours total? As with its predecessors, the answer is mostly in its mechanical side. Since we only have one character to control, the system has been pretty heavily revamped. I was actually a bit worried about this initially because there was just no way the combat system and other mechanics from XIII/-2 would work with a single character. Fortunately the developers have done the right thing: the feel is there, but the mechanics have been tailored for a single character. The fancy word of the week is Schemata, which is basically the replacement for Paradigm. Where paradigms were role configurations for a party, Schemata is more like a class configuration. I guess you can also see it as an excuse to dress Light up in different outfits. Either way, let's dive into details.

Light can have three active schemata (I guess the singular was schema, not 100% sure but I'll go with that) that she is able to switch freely between in combat. Freely as in even in the middle of being hit by an attack. Each schema is a combination of a bunch of things. For each schema, its chosen garb defines its base characteristics. All garbs have two attributes: max ATB and initial ATB. The first of these tells how much the garb increases Light's max ATB when using the schema. The latter defines which percentage of the ATB is filled at the start of battle. These are two out of three parameters of the schema's ATB economy and we'll get back to them in a bit. On top of these mandatory attributes, a garb usually has a special ability - these can be anything from simple buffs (like +10% HP) to more complex. Finally a garb can have up to four fixed abilities that cannot be unequipped (and they can have sub-abilities). Most garbs have one or two.

Each schema also has to include a weapon and a shield. Both of these can influence the schema quite heavily, and especially the weapon is at least as important in defining the schema's strengths as the garb is. The shield has less impact and is generally chosen to complement the weapon + garb combination. Each schema also has a head accessory that can have quite huge impact, and a wrist accessory that affects every schema but has less impact. Finally, the ability slots left free by the garb can be filled with abilities from four categories: attacks, magic attacks, debuffs and guards. Each ability slot corresponds with a thumb button. Like garb abilities, these can also have sub-abilities. There's also a system called ability synthesis which I'll leave to a separate section. Finally one ornament can be selected for the schema. These are just cosmetic items and their visual design is generally so awful I never used them. I'll talk about visuals a bit more, but first, more important matters.

If we go over the list, one thing worth notice is that at any time the player can have at most 12 abilities equipped and almost always at least two or three of these are fixed because of the garbs. There are roughly three different archetypes for schemata: physical attacker, magic attacker and utility. Creating one of each is a possible approach and there are advantages to doing this. Most importantly, a lot of weapons come with a preference for either strength or magic. Focusing all physical damage on a schema with a high strength weapon would therefore make a lot of sense. There's also the matter of guarding. Usually there's no need to devote a schema for guarding - even in the most extreme case you'd only want maybe 2 guard skills on a single schema. Especially in the early parts of the game it's advantageous to have a guard ability on every schema, and behind the same button, to make guarding easier in hectic situations.

Assuming we put a guard on every schema, there's nine slots left. These should go towards damage and utility. Most utility spells are situational because enemies tend to have status immunities. There's four elements in the game, and covering all of these is advantageous for obvious reasons. It would be best to cover all four with both magic and physical damage, but that would be a bit greedy. There are dual element spells in the game though, and in some situations they can cover two elements with one ability slot - or they can bite you in the ass. Optimal ability setups are generally contextual. For each of the game's four areas, usually one element can be omitted. For some elements in some areas it's good to have two abilities, on different schemata - one magic, one physical - largely because some enemies can have huge reduction to either magic or physical damage.

My opinion on this is a bit divided. I like the fact that you need to consider ability builds and in general build your schemata so that they complement each other. The downside is that there's a lot of abilities in the game that don't really see any use because by the time all the necessary abilities have been picked, there's no space left for nice-to-have abilities. Take Magnet for instance. It's a good spell for crowd control because it pulls enemies together for easy AoE annihilation. Sadly, large groups of enemies are actually quite rare which makes it a dead ability in most encounters. The speed up in large group encounters isn't that dramatic either, so it just doesn't see use. I didn't find myself using AoE physical attacks too much either, nor did I really use single target magic attacks. Internal imbalance between abilities is of course a very common problem in RPGs but the slot limitation really makes sure that none of situational abilities get used.

There's also a UI problem that really discourages switching ability configurations. The game does allow the player to create reserve schemata and swap them easily. However this feature is pretty much useless because each garb, weapon, shield, accessory and ability can only be equipped on one schema, be it active or inactive. This means that it's only useful for creating completely different schemata and that is almost never the case. It would be far more useful to be able to store variations. This could easily be done by being able to save schemata setups - much like in FFXIII-2 where the player was able to save three different paradigm setups. A lot of the garbs are also highly situational which makes them tiresome to use because of the work involved in editing schemata. It's just more convenient to have a general purpose setup and only switch a few abilities based on which area you're in.

The system is at its best when preparing for bosses. There is no single boss setup that would be good for all of them. Here the limitations actually create an interesting planning exercise because builds can have a lot of impact. Being able to squeeze in one or two extra abilities or even sub-abilities can make a big difference. It also can matter a lot on which schema each ability is placed. For me at least shuffling garbs, weapons, accessories trying to find a solid setup for a boss was fun. This is vastly helped by the fact that there are bosses that are not pushovers. Overall, with a more friendly UI this system would be great. Now it's mostly interesting for bosses only.

4. Active Time Battle - The Game

ATB economy is another factor that heavily influences all schemata choices. Each individual schema has three ATB-related components: maximum ATB, initial ATB and ATB recovery. Each ability costs a certain amount of ATB to use, with stronger abilities costing more. Maximum ATB defines how many abilities the player can cast with the schema. Initial ATB is mostly relevant in short encounters. Having a low initial ATB makes it difficult to fight because the player cannot cast a full combo of spells at the start of battle. It's usually fine to have low initial ATB on one schema and use it to finish off enemies. ATB recovery dictates how quickly the schema will come back online after spending ATB. Some recovery happens when a schema is active, but the recovery rate of inactive schemata is much higher. The basic principle is therefore to spam abilities from one schema until it runs out of ATB and then switch.

This make the system somewhat equivalent to having three characters that take turns. Somewhat, because it really depends on things like ATB recovery. This means that, for example, if you really need to dish out a lot of physical damage continuously, having physical attacks on only one schema doesn't make sense. Kind of throws a wrench into the simple approach of having one magical attack schema and one physical attack schema. Guarding also consumes ATB which means there should at all times be some ATB in reserve on a schema with a guard ability equipped. The overall ATB economy of schemata is really important in the game because running out of ATB often means the player is in deep trouble. In all honesty it mostly just means a fight takes a longer time but... yeah, running out of ATB is annoying. If you remember how stagger works in the previous installments of the trilogy, you probably know why.

The stagger system is mostly the same. While in XIII/-2 stagger power and maintenance depended on roles, in LR each ability has both of these as stats. Generally speaking, abilities with high stagger power have shit maintenance and the other way around. Having to maintain stagger is usually inefficient and I found it better to use abilities with high stagger power almost exclusively. However, when maintenance is very low, running out of ATB before the enemy is staggered pretty much forces the meter back to zero. Likewise, enemies don't stay in stagger state for very long usually, which means having no ATB available for dishing out damage when that happens is also kind of annoying. Having no ATB available for guarding of course gets beyond being annoying to being outright lethal. All in all, ATB economy is a highly important part of the game, especially when planning schemata.

There are some other changes in the stagger system too. Enemies now have varying stagger conditions which is a welcome change. The effects of staggering also vary. Some enemies are disabled for a while, whereas others simply get some bonus debuffs that increase damage taken etc. Staggering also does not seem to be so strongly connected to attack damage. Because the fighting pattern is still the same (i.e. stagger an enemy, then max DPS), it generally makes sense to tune one or two schemata towards staggering power instead of high damage. My usual setup was to have one schema for magic damage/stagger, another devoted to really fast staggering using physical attacks and a third for guarding, physical DPS and debuffing. Most of the fighting is done in the first two schemata and the third one is visited briefly to cast debuffs, guard and finish off staggered enemies. Physical attacks are in general better for pure damage because their animation is shorter.

There are a bunch of other variables that affect ATB economy. Certain subabilities have conditional ATB recovery. For instance one of the most useful garbs in the game boosts the recovery rate of inactive schemata even further. Finally, if you use Overclock (a massive slow for a short time, almost a freeze), you instantly recover full ATB for the Overclock duration and also after it ends. This makes it insanely good for building stagger or dishing out some serious damage. Basically you can spam a full ATB's worth from one schema, then OC for more attacks and then spam another full ATB's worth again. OC costs EP however, and EP is also used for healing - so it needs to be used sparingly. Note that HP is not recovered after battles and Light actually has a very limited inventory for healing items.

Limited availability of healing is indeed another important factor in this game. Long runs without shopping in between have the risk of running out of healing. This is somewhat alleviated by the game's structure as it generally doesn't have long dungeons. I am a fan of limited healing inventory, because it means the threat of damage in every battle is more real.

5. Lightning develops

Character development has taken some interesting turns. Aside from the garb system that was already discussed quite a bit, there definitely are changes. There are no levels or experience points in the game at all. Instead you get stats directly as quest rewards. This is fine, though I have to say that stat changes are rather invisible. The difference will be noticed over a long time, but the impact of a single stat point increase is not noticeable at all. This is pretty usual in JRPGs because the stat range is generally huge and stat math is not transparent. So basically the player just goes with the assumption that more is better. Because all quests can be completed in every run, there are no real choices in raising Light's stats. The more interesting powering up system is ability synthesis.

In a way this system is a watered down version of what we had in Crisis Core - the player collects tons of abilities and can then fuse them together. The fundamental difference is that the process doesn't result in new abilities - instead, the fusion result is a slightly stronger version of the ability. The system is also really simple, because abilities can only by fused with the same ability of the same level. Abilities can only be leveled up with special items, and leveling beyond 3 is limited to NG+. Basically fusing abilities mostly increases damage while leveling up decreases ATB cost on top of increasing damage. The system is grindy as hell, because in order to level up, you first have to fuse an ability to the current level's maximum. Fortunately, abilities always retain the best value in each stat when fused. All in all fusion rules are incredibly simple, and the formula for the ultimate version of an ability is straightforward.

Subabilities add a minor complication on top of the system. Each ability has a range of possible subabilities. The subability of the ability selected first is always preserved, so the inheritance rules are really simple. Although the possibilities of the system are rather lackluster, one thing I like about the ability system is its transparency. This could be the first game in the entire series where damage can actually be calculated from information offered by the game, because each ability's damage value is presented as a multiplier. Which means you just multiply either attack or magic by that, and there's your average damage. Some experimentation is still required to figure out how good animations each attack has though. The biggest problem with the system is the huge amount of abilities the player has to obtain and carry in their limited ability inventory.

There's also a way to level up weapons, shields and accessories but only in NG+. All in all, individual development systems are rather underwhelming in their simplicity. The appeal as we discussed is in constructing schemata. But why garbs cannot be also leveled up?

6. Garbs - or garbage?

The final topic that I feel needs to be addressed is the game's garb design. If we look back at the previous FF game that had characters changing dresses, the visual design was honestly not that great. Like if you compare FFX-2 dresses to actual main dresses of characters in the series, it's fairly obvious not nearly as much effort has been put into them. It's pretty safe to say the same goes for Ligthtning Returns really. Although there are like a hundred or whatever of garbs, most of them are constructed of non-unique parts. It makes the visual design a bit repetitive. It's nice that the player can color customize their garbs, but it's not so nice that the ability to do so is rather inconsistent. Some garbs only allow customization of minor details, way more often than it's justified. I feel that full color customization would have been better, because some of the color schemes are effing disgusting.

However the big question really is: how tasteful are the designs. The answer is: it really varies. Most of the stuff is in the middle ground - not really impressive, but not bad either. There are very few really cool designs, ones that actually fit Light's character well, and then you have your skimpy fan service garbs that are just way out of character. There's also the assortment of highly impractical garbs like full blown gowns, some of which do look good. Impracticality is not much of a bother for me because it's just the way things are in Japanese hero fiction in general. As for skimpiness, in this case it does disturb me because I really feel like Light is a character and I don't think dressing up in fetish catalog inventory is her preference. I mean she's a do-shit type, and I'd expect her to dress in do-shit garbs. This is more or less in line with my previous thoughts.

So there's a bunch of garbs in the game that I look at and go "yeah, I'm not gonna have Light wear that". The upside is, I don't have to because there's enough garbs in the game to choose from. Of course it will be a bit more problematic if the fetish catalog garbs had some highly desirable abilities. For whatever odd reason they actually very rarely do. Another alleviating factor is that of the three garbs in a schemata, only one is used outside battle; and during battle, there's really not much time to be bothered by how Light looks - unless you win a fight with a garb, then it's shown in the victory screen. Most importantly, only one of the garbs is shown in cutscenes. It means that as long as one out of three schemata looks decent enough, it's easy enough to just not really care all that much.

We can of course argue how sexist it is to give the player the power to dress Light up in questionable outfits. I am mostly indifferent to this, although of course I would prefer if all garbs would be a better fit for Light's personality. Of course, my personal interpretation of Light's character is unlikely to match that of other players, who may have different ideas what can be considered a suitable garb. The amount of blatant fetish garbs is actually pretty low, and the rest, I feel, are more up for interpretation. This is something I find a bit tricky in the entire female character clothing debate. Like in this case most outfits look like someone could easily wear them in public. The thing with game characters is that we really don't often know their clothing preferences because - let's be honest here - wardrobe talk is not exactly common in games. This means inappropriateness criticism - outside blatant cases - is always based on an interpretation.

In a way I think the fact that it's a single protagonist game makes things different in the sense that it's more of a roleplaying experience - in contrast, in a typical JRPG the player observes a group of characters. But here, Light is not just Light as she has been written. Instead, the Light on the screen is a mesh of "Light as written" and "me as Light" - this effect is generally stronger in games where the player gets to create their own character, but even with a premade character I still do roleplay that character to an extent. Therefore when choosing outfits for Light, it's not just about what's pleasing to my eye - it's about what I'd feel comfortable wearing if I was Light. So for me personally the ability to choose what she wears is not about objectifying her. Rather, it enhances my ability to get invested in being Light as if she was a character I created. It's also good in the sense that I'm not forced to agree with tasteless clothing choices.

All in all, it is clear that there a certain portion of garbs are pure fan service. At the same time I would argue that majority of garbs are decent in the sense that they're not objectifying. I don't really like most of the garbs, but they don't throw me off either. So yes, the designers do deserve some flak for their decisions, but anything beyond that feels a bit stretching.

Bonus: Final Fantasy XIII the trilogy. 

Spoilers!

I have two lines of though about the entire trilogy. One concerns its story as a whole while the other is more about these games as, well, games. Back when we only had FFXIII it felt a bit odd that Lightning was highlighted as the main protagonist. Sure, she is in the game and does play a role. If you played the game though, it seems to be more about Fang and Vanille. Moreover, in the second game, Light is hardly present. Of course the third game is all her. Another thing about the entire trilogy is that the stories are heavily disconnected - especially the first game. The link between the events of Cocoon and what unravels in FFXIII-2 is extremely weak. All in all the storylines in all games are really pretty weak. In a way there's no storyline for the third game to conclude unless we actually accept that the entire trilogy is all about Lightning.

This actually makes a lot of sense. It's not just that the third game is all Light. It also establishes Light's story as a link between all the games. The reason we feel Light is not really a factor in the first game despite clearly being there, is because of the role she has taken upon herself. She's there to fight, and fight only. In the second game, she does more of the same, for another cause. Who cares about gods, the third game to me is all about Light becoming a person. So in terms of what actually happens in the game, it's pretty underwhelming as a conclusion. As a conclusion to Light's growth story though, I loved it - mostly because I love Light. Somehow the most important story content in the entire game is found on loading screens where Light reflects about her own life. These screens tell a lot more about her than the three games combined.

There's a weird pattern in FF games: the ones with good story have kinda meh mechanics, and then the other way around. FFXIII trilogy is definitely of the "other way around" pattern. I think the biggest problem with the entire trilogy is the fact that the first game didn't please fans. If that game had been done with the design philosophy of Lightning Returns, the entire trilogy could be in a very different shape. I think the poor reception echoes in the sequels. It shows that the money just is not there, especially in LR. Many things in the game scream "budget solution". Likewise, both sequels have incredibly short story content. It's impossible to tell whether better reception would have had an impact, but the fact that the first game botched is pretty damn obvious. So while FFXIII-2 and especially LR provide what people wanted from FFXIII, it's way too late.

Well, I'm one of the people who are happy that, at least, the sequels didn't get cancelled.As far as modern JRPGs go, this trilogy for me is among the better ones. It all really comes back to eclipsing popularity of the entire genre, and the ever-increasing development costs for living room consoles.

Conclusion

Whew. We're finally done here. Lightning Returns leaves a lot to desire for, but overall I'm still happy with the game as it is. The same really goes for the entire trilogy. I feel a lot of good design decisions were made, and I hope SE is not discouraged, and will keep trying out new mechanics when it comes to FFXV.

Bioshock Infinite

Alright, time for this. I was really interested in this game from its initial hype although I cannot exactly remember why. I know for certain though that one reason was the introduction of Elizabeth because I'm always into character-driven games. As a game it's not mechanically that different from previous Bioshocks. There are however some things I didn't really write about earlier, and then there's of course the whole issue of Infinite's story - which is something that definitely needs to be discussed. For the record, I once again forfeited getting this game for a long time and then got it as PS+ freebie. I'm such a bad gamer, never getting games for their full price tag (that's not *entirely* true, but close).

1. Battle Arena Infinite

This is the thing I really want to get out of the way first. It felt like Infinite is structured differently (either that, or my memory of Bioshock 2 is not as sharp as I think). Splicers were present in small bunches almost everywhere across Rapture and could often be picked off without attracting the attention of an entire army. Not so in Infinite's Columbia. The player is fighting more organized forces - Columbia's security forces - and because of this each encounter feels more like an arena battle. I actually didn't like this at all because it creates an unwelcome bipolarity - battles are almost completely separated from rest of the gameplay. I wasn't able to pinpoint this earlier, but now that I think about this kind of bothered me in The Last of Us too. However in Infinite the problem seems to escalate just a whole lot more, culminating in the game's horrible final battle.

It's like every encounter in the game is deliberately designed shooter puzzle whereas in Bioshock 2 it felt more like just encountering splicers in their natural habitats. Sure, the fact the player is fighting organized troops does make this kind of design more plausible. Still it feels like no one's really guarding anything in Columbia - everyone is just waiting in position for the player to come along and be entertained. But I wasn't entertained. I tried to follow the game's plot but the game kept constantly interrupting me with these long-ass fights. Encountering an enemy here and there keeps exploration more interesting, but being interrupted by an arena battle at every turn feels like an obstacle course. Some may find this weird coming from a JRPG buff like myself; however, typical JRPG battles are short (and they're kind of the game's main content anyway). Battles in Infinite just seem to take forever.

The fact that Infinite takes place in the living city of Columbia instead of a dead one like Rapture sounded good on paper. However, turns out it means that most enemies will be ordinary soldiers with their ordinary weapons, and suddenly we realize that this right here is a problem. There are a few enemies that use Vigors (the game's magic powers) instead of guns, but there's literally just two types of them. Add another two special enemies: one a walking war machine and another a mechanical hulk... and that's pretty much everything. Variance has never been a strong point of Bioshock enemies, and Infinite only seems to make it worse. Arenas contain all sorts of tricks that try to make things more interesting. Skylines allow fast movement around the battlefield, and for the player to instantly pick off enemy soldiers with skyline attacks. On top of that, Elizabeth can pull things like weapon caches, friendly turrets and additional covers into reality.

Oh, and what's up with the weapons in this game? I have not seen weapons this incredibly boring since... well, I actually cannot remember. The fact that, yes, we do get awesome magic powers, is no excuse to use zero imagination with weapons. It should really be the opposite because there already is some pretty strange technology in the game. We literally get nothing beyond the standard pistol-shotgun-machinegun-rifle-rpg combination (ok, we get a grenade launcher-y thingy) and holy shit these weapons do fuck-all damage (at least on hard, not sure why I even chose that difficulty). We even get two different versions of each basic weapon and they are almost similar to use. What the hell? The biggest plus in this entire system is the fact that while the player can carry ammunition for all types of weapons, only two actual weapons can be carried at a time which at least kinda forces the player to try out most weapons.

The superpowers are pretty cool honestly, although even they felt a bit watered down from Bioshock 2. You can't really fight with just them though because the availability of salt (read: mana) is pretty low at times - so I just ended up using the most cost-efficient powers most of the time. Just overall I did not like fighting in Infinite as much as I did when playing Bioshock 2. I probably make it sound a lot worse than it actually is but you have to remember that the positives from my previous write-up apply. As a side effect of the way weapon carrying capacity is limited, the game actually doesn't suffer as much from the reverse difficulty curve problem. Indeed, the player cannot carry much of anything except ammunition and money. The last battle was actually the most difficult, although perhaps not for reasons I would have liked it to be.

It's worth notice that the battle arena format in itself is not necessarily bad design. It works just fine in many games that emphasize combat above things like progressing the plot and exploration. A couple of very recent examples would be Remember Me and Devil May Cry, or Vanquish if you'd rather compare Infinite to another shooter. Bioshock Infinite just isn't a combat-first game. At least I didn't want it to be and - looking at the amount of effort put into the game's world, plot and Elizabeth - I think neither did the devs. The (excessive) arena battle structure simply doesn't feel right for this game. It's actually something that's really common in games at the moment, and I fear after Infinite it's going to bother me a lot more than it did previously.

2. The balance of exploration

This is another topic that I could have written about a while ago, but it hasn't really occurred to me. It's a Bioshock tradition (inhereted from System Shock) that every corner shall be explored. Every desk, every trash can etc. can be opened and looted for various rewards. Recording devices make it extra worthy to explore because they give more information about the background story and its central characters. This is honestly just fine - I don't mind exploring when I get rewarded. It doesn't even feel too weird, because especially the first two Bioshocks lean into the survival direction and there is no rush to get anywhere. So yes, it does make sense to look around for money, ammunition and other resources. It's a bit of a different story for Infinite because the game is more about getting out of Columbia fast. Anyway it's not that relevant a topic.

I have been wondering about the design considering exploration. Exploration is in a way an interesting concept because at the same time it adds to the game's value through making it longer. Then again, at the same time it does to a certain extent detract from the game's value by making future encounters easier because the time went exploring generally translates into bigger resources. The ratio of this time-to-resources exchange depends heavily on the game as does the actual value of additional resources. The interesting question about this whole exploration dynamic is its balance point. When designing challenges of the game, what's the expected amount of exploration? If the game has a clear "main path", then it would kind of make sense to use resources along that path as a reference. But yeah, I'm just throwing this out there as a question: how designers generally approach this exploration-resource-challenge triangle?

3. Elizabeth

Spoiler alert!

It's hard to not write about Elizabeth. Her role in the game was hyped a lot by the developers and she does indeed play a pivotal role in the game's narrative. Once again I don't exactly remember what we were promised but it is very clear that Elizabeth's role in the game is getting heavy emphasis. She's this weird kind of a mix. In one way she's a fairy tale princess: she has unique powers, and she longs for freedom in the tower she's being held prisoner. In another way she's a self-reliant rogue-like character who can stay out of trouble in fights and scavenge her surroundings for resources. Even stereotypical helpless female characters come with some powers of their own these days as an attempt to make them contribute something beyond tits and ass. In Elizabeth's case clearly more thought has been put into the attempt but she still has the sidekick-y vibe.

The devs have gone perhaps a bit too try-hard though. They really want the player to care about Elizabeth. She gets put into scenes that show off how sweet and innocent she is; she provides her share of witty banter; and... boy does she get captured often. Towards end of the game there's a particularly cheap scene where she is basically tortured in captivity which I just felt was a bit unnecessary. I mean by that time it has been clearly established that Comstock is a twisted fuck, there's no need to underline it further. It's a common problem with game plots - everything needs to be taken into the extreme and stressed to death. I also don't really agree with the decision to make Elizabeth's head bigger than the other characters'. They did so to make her emotions more visible but to me it just made her feel a bit creepy. Besides, it's a shooter, and therefore perhaps 90% or more of Elizabeth's presence in the game is audio.

Basically the devs pull all sorts of tricks when all they would have really needed to do was to leave good enough alone. As a traveling companion I really did like Elizabeth. She has her own personality and pride, and her presence in the game brings it much-needed life. Columbia in itself simply isn't as interesting as Rapture, so the fact that there's a companion really helps. It's sad that she has to become a plot object in many cases.

4. The plot

Spoilers possible.

The game does have an ambitious plot and I think it's kind of the central piece, even more important than Elizabeth. I did like the plot itself. Admittedly I'm easy to entertain when it comes to plots. I don't really actively look for inconsistencies or stuff like that and usually don't give a shit about realism either. There are a lot of game plots that are so obviously stupid they bother even me, but I guess I'm willing to overlook more than the average game critic. So when a game like Infinite starts playing around with alternate dimensions I get in to the positive wtf set of mind, like I do when watching David Lynch movies. Infinite is curious in the sense that it handles its theme and plot with great care but at the same time botches horribly. The biggest problem is the really slow build-up - for most of the game hints are very subtle. Then the game goes and does the worst thing possible: it explains itself in one swift motion, at the end of the game. Although the plot is clever, it's disappointing when it's just laid out like that.

Other than that, the theme is handled well. Even some of the game mechanics are tied to the plot, most remarkably respawning when Elizabeth is not around to revive Booker. Windows to alternate dimensions also explain certain technological advances that are otherwise out of place, as do they explain certain similarities to Rapture. Elizabeth's powers also make use of the alternate dimensions theme and eventually we get to jump between timelines. The amount of dimensional travel is a bit of a letdown because there aren't that many jumps. Most of the game time is spent in one timeline. Likewise, the timeline where we spend the latter half of the game seems to be there just so even more enemies can be thrown at the player. It's not like we take a trip to witness a darker side of Columbia, it's a one-way ticket to a battlefield. The way a huge portion of the back story is told through audio logs is fine as it rewards exploration. At the same time, the fact they are not obtained automatically makes them more special to the player.

All being said, I did find this twine parody of the game incredibly funny (obvious major spoiler alert).

Conclusion

I could describe Infinite as a nice attempt. It's very promising in many respects, but also falls short with most of them. Like the plot which to me was perfectly fine, but then is kinda ruined with horrible storytelling. Another issue is that the game simply isn't structured to portray the story all that well, largely because so much time is spent fighting arena battles. The whole game is actually a bit like that: any progress is constantly halted with distractions. So I guess it's too game-y for its own good while at the same time not being that great as a game. This article was a bit rushed because I really want to move on to writing about Lightning Returns...