Dragon Age: Origins - Part 2

It's finally time to continue where we left off some months ago. After bashing Dragon Age from several angles, we were wondering why on earth I chose to plow my way through the game. This post answers that question. Once again a lot of the things I'm going to say could be said of Mass Effect. I will be talking about my character a lot. Cath was a female city elf rogue. I wanted to play a rogue as it has been a while since I have played one; I wanted to play as an elf because for me it's always either elf or human, and once again it had been a while; I chose the city background to give my character a bit of cynical and practical flavor; finally, I chose female because that's my usual preference when choosing a virtual identity.

1. The roleplaying appeal

This is pretty much the main talking point of this post. I want to use an interesting description by James Paul Gee about the relationship "real person as a virtual character", or in this case, "me as Cath", as the basis of this discussion. The key point is that this relationship has three identities, not two. The first two are relatively straightforward: obviously there is myself as the player, and there is Cath as the character - we both bring possibilities and limitations to the gameplay experience. For myself, this means my mechanical and cognitive ability to play the game; for Cath this means her stats and other things that describe her in the game world. It's the third identity - the projective identity - that makes roleplaying games interesting. This projective identity is my interpretation of Cath's personality. It is not simply me, nor it is simply Cath - it's more like me making decisions for Cath based on what I know about Cath. If that doesn't make all too much sense, worry not - just read on.

This is bread and butter for those with experience in tabletop roleplaying games. You play as a character and in most cases it's not yourself. However, neither is she or he completely fictional - the end product is a combination of both the player and the character. The same can be said of acting. What you see on the screen is not the actor nor is it the character - it's always the actor's projection of the character. A different actor would portray the character differently - within the freedom they have been given. This freedom to interpret is also highly important when we talk about digital games. In tabletop RPGs the degree of freedom with which players interpret their characters is huge and they also typically have more agency in writing their character. The game master typically sets certain limits that are necessary for his campaign to work but beyond that, characters are created by the players themselves. When the game master and all the other players are replaced by bytes of code, upholding the illusion is much more difficult.

The ability to uphold a strong sense of roleplaying is BioWare's strength. This sense is particularly strong in Dragon Age, much more so than it was in Mass Effect. What I mean by that is, the game inspires me to think about things from Cath's perspective by providing me the freedom to do so. One important part of this is the way choices are framed - or rather, the way they are not. All kinds of value judgments about the choices are left to the player. Cath's companions did often chime in with their opinion, and that is fine - more than fine actually, because they *are* people, and people have opinions. What's important is that the game itself did not. Mass Effect has this problem with its bipolar morality scale - the game is disrupting my roleplay by explicitly telling me which actions are "good" and which are "bad". Note, again, that games definitely can tell things like this, but they have to do so implicitly, by showing consequences.

When choices are framed in one way or another, the decision-making drifts away from the projective identity to the player identity. This happens because the game is telling the player something the character cannot know. The extra information can cause conflicts that break immersion, especially if there are explicit game-mechanical consequences involved. For instance, if I - based on the projective identity - make a choice that I (the projective identity) deem "good", and then the game explicitly tells me that it was actually "bad", and punishes me for it (by moving my character to the wrong direction in a morality scale), it is severely inhibiting my ability to roleplay. The conflict here is that my character thinks the choice was "good", but me as the player is given information that it was "bad" and as a result my character is also now more "bad" by a bit even though I had her projected as "good". As you can see, this is a huge problem that comes with explicit morality scales.

On the other hand if choices aren't explicitly labeled and outcomes are only revealed later through consequences, it just becomes another opportunity for reflecting upon the projective identity when things end up going south. Choices can also inhibit roleplaying if they are too limited. This is the more difficult thing to avoid in digital games, because you would need one hell of an AI to truly abide to all sorts of projective identities. The general problem is that if none of the offered choices feel satisfactory to the projective identity, the player's agency in constructing that identity is taken away and put into the hands of the game's writers. Dragon Age generally upheld the illusion that I was able to make choices that seemed sensible to Cath. At the same time, choices made during the game - especially choices concerning companions - contributed to the growth of Cath as a character. This is no small achievement for a digital game. It is, indeed, more than enough reason to enjoy the game despite its shortcomings.

It is worth noting that while being able to create Cath myself (partly anyway - her background had to be chosen from a limited number of options), it is not necessary to have free character creation to provide a strong roleplaying experience. Even if the protagonist is pre-written, a game that supports roleplaying still easily allows the player to develop a strong projective identity. Case in point: The Witcher - especially the first one. Although the character is Geralt of Rivia with predetermined background and abilities, what I experience is my interpretation of Geralt of Rivia, and the game allows me to make choices based on that identity. In a way, even if you can freely create your character at the start of the game, the game itself still dictates a lot about what your character can become - in this sense, starting with a predetermined character is not actually all that different. In fact - to my knowledge - it's actually very common to have pre-written characters in live action roleplaying games. It's not unheard of in tabletop RPGs either.

2. Virtual relatedness 

We already know that I place a lot of emphasis on character writing in games. I know it's a bit silly, but I don't have that high expectations so it kind of works out. However, when we're talking about roleplaying, the importance of other characters in the game rises even further. A lot of choices in BioWare games concern how the player's character interacts with other people. To put it another way, the player's capability to express their projective identity is heavily influenced by other characters in the game. This, in turn, puts a lot of emphasis on a) how well these characters have been written and b) how well interaction with them is presented in the game. Creating interesting characters has been a strong point for BioWare for the longest of times - and Dragon Age is definitely not an exception. Indeed, without a strong illusion of virtual relatedness I would not have bothered with the game for long.

There is one clear sign that Dragon Age succeeds in creating this sense of virtual relatedness: I had very different opinions of companions when I thought about them as myself, as opposed to when I thought about  them as Cath. It is, I think, the best indication that Dragon Age succeeds first and foremost as a roleplaying game. Whereas I find Morrigan's antics amusing, for Cath - whose life depends on her companions - they made Morrigan seem incredibly untrustworthy. While Leliana might have been naive and even childish for me, for Cath she was the most comfortable person to be around. One more: I liked Alistair from the get-go almost, but it took almost the entire game for Cath to be able to truly consider a human male as a friend. All these companions had a huge role in building Cath. Her choices became influenced most by those she held closest, and she became skeptical of anything Morrigan seemed to approve of.

The sense of relatedness is created by making companions (and other NPCs) feel as much like people as is feasible in a digital game. They have their opinions, and they make observations in the environment. They also talk to each other when traveling with the player. Dialogue with them is written well, and it's delivered with very solid voice acting. In short, they make you want to talk to them, even become excited about being able to visit the camp between dungeons. This may in fact have been one reason why I felt the dungeons were so effing long - they kept Cath from having chats with her companions. Indeed, in contrast to camp conversations, the dungeons offered nothing to Cath's personality growth. They were merely obstacles between me and the content I actually liked experiencing. For the record, Mass Effect largely failed to create similar feelings in me because of one important difference.

In Mass Effect, while characters certainly are conceptually sound and interesting, they are portrayed rather horribly. The effort to make them feel like people has been either misguided or simply lacking. Having a conversation with anyone in ME felt a lot like reading an autobiography. That's a fancy way of saying that characters almost exclusively talk about their background. Some banter exists when they are taken with Shepard to missions and space stations, but not enough. I never truly formed any sense of relatedness towards Shepard's companions in ME because they did not feel like people. Even Garrus, probably my favorite character in the series, felt a lot like an audio book. In comparison, characters in Dragon Age feel more real, and thus more relatable - even though they also do talk a lot about their past. The key difference is that they talk about other things more.

Sense of relatedness is not strictly tied to roleplaying. I see it as a facilitator. Relatable characters aid the player in constructing their projective identity by putting the character in social situations - something that for us as social creatures is massively important in defining who we are. That is to say, it's not impossible to roleplay in an empty world. It's simply easier to construct a personality for your character if you can reflect upon that personality through interactions with other people. You know you're there when empathy replaces instrumentality as the player's basis of making choices (this is something I want to expand in another post). Likewise, relatedness is important in all games, not just roleplaying games. This is hardly surprising, as it is just as important when consuming other forms of fiction - be it books or movies. Narratives tend to work rather poorly if it's enacted by unrelatable characters - we need to care.

3. There is no freedom in a group

Although we have now concluded that characters in Dragon Age are quite relatable as people, there is one thing they are not - and that's a group. It did not bother me as much this time around, but it certainly bothered me when I was playing Mass Effects. A lot of dialogue occurs between the protagonist and her companions, but the companions themselves speak very little with each other. There are no group events in the camp - basically all dialogue between companions takes place when they are in the active party. While well written and somewhat frequent, it isn't enough to provide a sense of group. The relations between companions are superficial at best and while their antics are amusing, they don't develop into anything. In this respect, the game is heavily centered on the protagonist. This is actually a very common trait in roleplaying games of Western origin - it's also a cultural thing.

Culture or no, conveying a sense of group in a game with relatively high degree of freedom is far from trivial. By limiting most interactions to one-on-one, the developers have saved a lot of resources. Whereas one-on-one conversations only need to branch based on player choices and a few flags, group conversation branching is likely to get out of hand quickly unless certain limits are placed - and DA is just not placing them, opting for more freedom instead. This is fine, and supports what makes it good as a roleplaying game. It does however also mean that it would be almost impossible to convey a sense of group by having many-to-many interactions. First of all, simply accounting for the fact that there is no telling which characters will actually be present would require a ton of branching. On top of that, they would also have to take into account all kinds of status flags about the protagonist's relationship with each character etc.

I am somewhat curious whether this aspect has been developed further in, say, Inquisition and its war council. Meanwhile, a close comparison can be found from the Persona series, where the sense of group is immensely strong - especially in P4. However, the game is practically linear and while the player character can have different relationships with his companions through social links, these relationships are in no way reflected as branching in group events. It makes the entire group more relatable, but at the cost of player freedom and their ability to roleplay. In this scenario, writers are always guaranteed that certain characters will always be available for the group event, and there are not status flags to worry about. Even player choices during events are there almost exclusively for flavor, so there is no branching whatsoever. This is a common trait in Japanese RPGs and they play out much more like a TV series in this sense.

It may not be impossible to get the best of both worlds but I'd imagine it would be incredibly resource-intensive. With very careful writing, it could be possible to make conversations modular enough that you could simply omit and/or replace single lines without changing the entire discussion at each branch. However, doing this while still attempting to make the dialogue interesting and the characters relatable sounds like a massively tall order. In the future problems like this could be maybe addressed with AI when they learn to produce text in a credible fashion while staying true to the speaker's personality - but again, that sounds far off. Until a game comes along and proves otherwise, I am going to consider the lack of group sense in DA as a cost that comes from giving the player freedom. Therefore, limiting the game to one-on-one interactions has likely been a conscious choice rather than an oversight.

Conclusion

Last time Dragon Age: Origins took a serious bashing from me; this time we have come back to explore its redeeming qualities. What the game lacked in, well, being a game, it took back in being a roleplaying experience. The real story in the game for me was following Cath's growth. Being able to immerse myself in the game world through my projective identity as Cath was far more important than any game mechanical aspects. This, to me, is an appeal that is generally more common in Western roleplaying games but even among them, strong experiences that get close to what tabletop RPGs offer are few and far between. Getting so much out of other aspects of the game most likely made the dungeon parts even more frustrating though. While companions feel like more relatable than they did in Mass Effect, they still do talk a bit too much about their past and a bit too little about other things.

Finally, there is no sense of truly forming a group of people in the game as most interactions happen between the main character and a single companion at a time. It would seem like a necessary amendment that is required to provide the desired degree of freedom to the player.

Because of the gameplay shortcomings I am a bit skeptical about Dragon Age 2, given that it has been generally decreed inferior to Origins. For some reason I still feel bad about skipping a game should I move straight to Inquisition. There was also another consequence after playing DA. Since I really enjoyed the drama and basically everything except dungeons, I decided to finally look into Telltale's storytelling games and also to play other purely story-based games (although, I actually just stopped playing any games at all* for a while after finishing Walking Dead season 1). My next post will probably be about Persona 4 Golden though. I will still write about some story-based games in the future.

* Dota 2 is not a game - it's a lifestyle.

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.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

This game swallowed up must of my autumn. As of now, I haven't touched it for a month, my subscription has expired and I have no real desire to go back anyway. Therefore it's a good time to make a writeup about the first and (probably) last MMORPG (just MMO from now on) I have played. First one I have played properly anyway; I did play one and half starting areas of World of Warcraft, mostly for the same reason I started this game - it was easier for me to justify starting an MMO when I did with a friend or two. On the one hand, playing an MMO alone is not that much fun at all. On the other hand, limiting playing time to playing with friends helps against sinking too much time to the game (that's wishful thinking, just so you know). This post is likely to be a long one because I want to go through some game mechanics (and dynamics) and talk about my own experiences, including the reason I quit playing.

1. FFXIV - the game

As an MMO, this game's pretty traditional. Game mechanics wise it follows in the footsteps of World of Warcraft and as such I'm not going to delve too deeply into the basics. It's a Final Fantasy game, clearly made for fans of the series - it has everything people expect to see in FF. For me personally the biggest deciding factor in choosing to play this over other MMOs was entirely technical: it was released for the PS3. On top of my office work and my daily Dota 2 dose, I really cannot sit in front of a computer much more. Not that sitting on a couch with a pad is super healthy, but the ergonomy is just way better. Anyway, the combat mechanics are cooldown-based with some abilities on shared cooldown (called global cooldown) while others on their individual cooldowns (these abilities are referred to as cooldowns... because that's not confusing at all). 

All in all, the mechanics are pretty slow-paced and not challenging in the least to execute. Gameplay decisions revolve more around positioning, rotations (the order in which different abilities are used) and timing of cooldowns. It's honestly not that interesting, which is why I always find it weird when single player RPGs choose to adopt similar mechanics (e.g. Xenoblade). Based on what I heard from people who have played other games, positioning matters slightly more in FFXIV - at least with some classes - because certain abilities have different effects when they hit the enemy from the side or behind. It makes melee damage dealers (DD) more interesting to play - or at least there's a bit more to do than just walk next to the enemy and start pushing buttons in a predetermined order. When playing solo, combat is still pretty damn static. Basically solo playing goes back to easy fun, a topic I brought up in my post about Amalur. 

The overall game concept is very familiar. The game progresses through a long series of plot-related quests, and of course includes an insane amount of sidequests. I'm not a big fan because the vast majority of these quests are not interesting in the least - another point I brought up when writing about Amalur (which just goes to show how accurate it is to describe Amalur as a single player MMO). Could we have an MMO with less sidequests? I'll write a separate section about the plot, so let's move on. Equipment is also very standard and for me the biggest disappointment - or would be if I had expected anything more. All you ever get is more numbers and typically the next piece of equipment is only very marginally better than the last. So although new stuff is gotten fairly often, it doesn't really seem to do anything. In a way the biggest win is when you get rid of an ugly piece of gear. 

As a game, the one thing FFXIV has going for it is its class system. Unlike most MMOs, there's no need for alts (alternative characters) because characters can freely change their class by changing their primary weapon (or tool) anytime outside of combat. Each class is leveled independently and any class lower than your highest gets an experience bonus (so they level up a bit faster). Not that remarkable in itself, but in true FF style classes can borrow skills from other classes. Honestly though it sounds cooler on paper because each class only has a few skills that others can borrow. Furthermore, advanced classes (jobs) are even more limited because they can only borrow from two predefined classes. The usefulness of this system depends on which job you're playing - playing paladin I found absolutely no reason to level up other classes for skills. 

Crafting is a bit different from what I've heard about other games. Crafts are full classes with their own skills and mechanics. They're divided into disciplines of the hand (DOH) and disciplines of the land (DOL). DOH mechanics are the most interesting and for them, it actually makes a lot of sense to level up other crafts to get more skills. Crafting rotations are a bit different from combat rotations, because they depend on several factors: primarily what is being crafted and how many crafting points (CP) the character has. Each skill costs either CP or durability (or both). Durability is basically an indicator for how many operations can be done to the item being crafted. Generally speaking operations raise either progress or quality. Progress defines whether the crafting succeeds (inability to fill the progress bar leads to failure) while quality defines the odds of getting a high quality item. DOL mechanics are mostly about playing around with odds of getting items and hq items from nodes. 

2. Fail

There are a couple of pretty big faults. One is more specific to FFXIV while the other feels like it applies more broadly. Let's talk about the main plot. As such the plot is pretty standard Final Fantasy (or any RPG), - nothing really special to it really. If plots are salvaged at all, it usually happens through interesting characters. Herein comes a bit of a problem because in MMOs, the player's character has no personality - and in FFXIV at least they don't even have any lines. This feels a bit off, because the player is supposed to control the central character in the story, it doesn't really feel like it at any point because the only slivers of personality have been granted to NPCs. I guess the intention is for the player to fill in the blanks inside their head but it just doesn't work at all (it works in Persona 3/4 though). The fact that story quests are almost indistinguishable from sidequests doesn't help. 

All in all, it feels like the player's role is to be a task-completing robot. A lot of these tasks also feel like they're there only to make the experience longer - which is understandable from the business point of view what with FFXIV being a subscription game and all. Every time you go to see someone to get a piece of equipment or information, you can bet they send you on an errand or ten before allowing you to proceed with the actual story. The story just drowns in a sea of errands. It also bothers me that MMOs basically just ask you to look away from the fact that there are thousands of characters doing the exactly same plot... which kind of retracts from the idea of being the "only hope" or whatever. There's a very half-assed attempt to explain all the other player characters but it doesn't really work. Could we get an MMO that actually takes this into account? 

It's painstakingly clear that the story is there just to give you something to do on your way to level 50 and the endgame. Leveling up is the other sore point in FFXIV, and here's why: quests aside, the hands down best way to get experience is to do Fates (well, FATEs really but I don't even remember what the acronym was for). These are events (read: fights) that pop on the map periodically, and they can involve any number of players. They give much higher experience rewards than killing enemies or doing dungeons. What this means is that the best way to level up other classes (and at some points your main too) is to go to an area that has a lot of fates for roughly your level, then just wait for one to appear, go do it and... rinse and repeat. The waiting part is already annoying, as is doing the same fates all over again but that's not the biggest problem. 

The biggest problem with fates is lazy-ass programming and lag. Because popular fate areas contain a lot of players, each fate has a ridiculous amount of players trying to get enough contribution for the highest rank. That causes a ton of lag, and at times makes the game entirely unplayable because for some reason the programmers decided to prioritize loading of other players above loading monsters. Because you cannot target unloaded objects and almost every attack in the game is unit target... good luck trying to do some damage. The contribution mechanics are also bonkers because whoever hits a monster first gets full credit for killing it even if that's the only attack they contribute while others have to do significant percentage of the total damage to get credit. Which means people are just spamming aoe attacks to "claim" enemies as fast as possible, then leave them for someone else to kill. 

I was actually quite happy I didn't need any high level skills from other classes because leveling up in this game sucks balls so hard. Even in the main quest there are moments where you are asked to grind a couple of levels before proceeding. Wow. Such design. Very grind. Leveling up crafts is actually a lot faster (or at least it was, they nerfed it a bit after I stopped playing). I actually found it quite fun to level up my crafts alongside my main class because it allowed me to create my own equipment, primarily because leveling up crafts wasn't nowhere near the insane grind that adventuring classes needed. The game also has a bunch of minor issues here and there like non-sortable inventory (dafuq?), but these two things are the major issues.  

3. Dungeons and... more dungeons

FFXIV uses the standard paradigm for its dungeons. A basic party consists of one tank, one healer and two damage dealers with each of these having its own distinctive role. It ain't broken so there's no real need to fix it. Guild Wars 2 tried to break the paradigm but it only resulted in dungeons being more boring than ever (they basically gave every class a heal etc. so anyone could do any role). I started the game with a DD, but when my friends stopped playing I switched to tank. The reason for the swap was simple enough: most players want to play DD which puts tanks and healers in higher demand. Each role has its own challenges so I think in general all should be interesting to play. In addition to keeping enemies agroed to themselves, tanks are also expected to lead - which includes choosing and prioritizing targets. I enjoyed that part, because it allowed me to be an active player in dungeons. 

Dungeons can be roughly divided into mob and boss phases. For tanks, mobs are often the more challenging part - keeping multiple enemies targeting you is harder than keeping just one. For damage dealers bosses are often more interesting because they usually need to take care of adds (reinforcements) and other smaller details, while the tank just sits there toe-to-toe with the boss. This varies from boss to boss, and some designs are clearly better than others. Worst designs are pretty much slugfests while best ones require active participation from everyone (e.g. tanks need to kite the boss around instead of tanking in one spot). Mostly these bosses are not that hard. Before the endgame there are only very few show-stoppers. There's nothing particularly hard about mobs in dungeons as long as the tank doesn't pull (engage) too many at once. Of course, later on, speedrun tactics involve pulling quite a bit more than standard runners are used to.  

Dungeons and other party instances feel like the essence of MMOs. Even with random people they are way more fun than solo gameplay - with friends they are of course even better. FFXIV is rare in one respect considering dungeons: the main story includes most of the game's dungeons as mandatory stops. I actually like this decision because it gets all players involved with dungeoneering way before the endgame - after all, playing in a party is the only thing in the entire game that is actually challenging. To make things easier for players, the game contains the dreaded Duty Finder (DF), which is the equivalent of matchmaking for multiplayer games. Instead of trying to get parties by shouting in area chat, players just register to DF alone or with friends, and DF forms complete parties and sends them off to the dungeon. Because DDs are rather abundant, it takes a while for them to find a party. I was usually DFing with one friend who played healer, so we basically got parties instantly. 

DF is honestly just fine until harder dungeons and instances start to appear. After that, well, you get to deal with the usual matchmaking problems: some people are undergeared while others don't seem to have any idea about how to play. Considering how easy and intuitive I found most of the things in this game, I can only wonder how people cannot grasp the basic concepts... oh well. I didn't experience many problems at all, probably because I was always queueing as a tank and usually had my own healer too. Most of the time poor DDs only make things slower, not impossible. Some bosses in the game do require a healthy pace from DDs at which point those with poor gear or rotations become a hindrance. One of the biggest show-stoppers in the game is especially obnoxious for DF because it always creates parties with the same 1:1:2 formula. For this particular boss, there is absolutely no use for a second tank, and there's a phase that is highly dependent on damage output where a fifth DD would really help. 

For the record I didn't make it through that one particular boss because - DF issues aside - it's fricking hard. Therefore I also haven't experienced any of the endgame raids but it's pretty safe to assume they are still mostly like any other dungeon. The endgame in general is mostly about speedrunning dungeons - the faster the better - and although it's pretty damn repetitive in the long run, I found it quite fun to try and shave off minutes from completion times. For the record, the difference between DF parties and premade parties is pretty staggering here. 

4. Reasons to play

I guess I covered the game itself to as much detail as I had planned. As a game, it really is not that great. Most single player RPGs - even ones that suffer from the MMO syndrome - are better as games. But playing an MMO is not like playing other games really. It's more like a project. A project where success is pretty much guaranteed if you put enough time into it. Likewise, it's much easier to pick up than any real project. It's easy to see how this makes these games highly attractive - and addictive. Like I said, I started off with a couple of friends but they didn't last very long. I had however already put significant amount of time into the game and felt like at least playing through the main story. At that time I had plenty of things to do besides progressing in the story: I enjoyed gathering, crafting and playing the market (i.e. capitalism). In short, the project was already well underway, and every day I reached a milestone or few. 

There's also the social aspect. It got me into the game in the first place. Although my friends quit, I discovered a linkshell (kind of a chat channel) for Finnish players which helped me actually stay in the game. Being able to chat (or follow one) while doing whatever seemingly boring task turns the game into a fine passtime. Occasionally, especially in the endgame, we would also form full parties to speedrun and tackle some of the hardest bosses, usually as a favor to newer players in the linkshell. I always enjoy helping people out in games, so although there wasn't anything for me to gain (other than good karma I guess) these were fun times. It's once again a bit like any actual project - being involved with people makes it so much easier to make it through one. Although dungeons were mostly fun from a pure gameplay perspective, I feel it's the project angle that really keeps players like myself in these games.

Come to think of it, I seem to like my games (even) more when they become projects. For RPGs this happens after beating the game, when I start to tackle all the post-game content (optional dungeons, bosses, achievements and such). After beating the game, I'm armed with much more knowledge about it not just because I have been playing it for 30+ hours, but also because I allow myself to look at guides at this point to see what I've missed. I never use any additional information while playing the game because I want to surprise me and I don't want to know about any possible overpowered skills, weapons and such beforehand. It is half the fun to tackle the game with what you manage to find. However after it is done, that's when the other kind of fun - the project fun - begins. 

5. Reasons to quit

I did stop playing FFXIV before completing the project largely because it no longer felt worth doing - at least considering the time investment it would have required. For the last four weeks I was more or less just doing one thing: speedrunning the same two dungeons over and over again to farm tomes (needed for endgame gear). What had happened was that I had leveled up all the crafts I wanted and I didn't feel like leveling up another adventuring class (for reasons mentioned earlier). There was literally nothing left except two things: the speedrun, and waiting for an opportunity to tackle hard mode Titan in order to proceed to the final endgame stage. The latter never happened because although I was interacting with a lot of people, getting a Titan party together was pretty rare.

I didn't really feel like getting into an FC that would focus the endgame content. I don't really feel like having social obligations in my games - especially not weekly. Still it seemed like the only real way of getting anywhere with the endgame. I was pretty much playing on my own, unable to schedule anything so I was just reliant on being in the game when someone started to put together a party for a speedrun or Titan. I only logged in to do my weekly speedruns anyway so I didn't spend too much time in the game for the last couple of weeks. Christmas holidays came around and it was then when I decided to take a break from the game and see if I would feel like getting back to it come new year. I started to play other games (Remember Me and Valkyrie Profile 2 at the time) and didn't feel like getting back into the time sink.

There was another thing that really bothered me about the endgame. Unless you have a full party of friends who want to tackle unknown challenges, it is pretty much mandatory to look up boss strategies etc. beforehand. For me figuring out strategies is the reason to play games in general so it felt really lame. I wasn't really looking forward to the final endgame phase for this reason. Even if I got there, I would still be just repeating someone else's strats more or less. MMOs like this one don't really have that much challenge in executing a strategy, at least not on individual level. It's really more like a communication effort. That's fine and all, but really only works with a group of people you know.

Conclusion

The big question considering the entire experience is: was it worth the three months I spent on it? From a pure gameplay perspective... probably not. Although I clearly enjoyed playing the game, something about it definitely rubbed me the wrong way in the long run. I don't think it was FFXIV specifically was the problem either - while the game had its flaws, I honestly don't think any other MMO would have made much of a difference. However as a game dev and as a researcher I think it was valuable to really get into an MMO to see what's it all about. It was also nice to notice that this genre works just fine with a pad. The only real difficulty is with typing - it's ridiculously slow. I did bear with it for like two months but I eventually got a bluetooth keyboard for my PS3 just to type.

The game was already remade once, and I think Square-Enix still has some work to do with it - mainly fix the braindead loading priority and lag issues. There's not much wrong in the game compared to the competition (based on hearsay). From a thematic perspective it definitely feels like a Final Fantasy game, but the gameplay is very standard MMO stuff - sure, the class system brings some FF spice into the mix, but it doesn't do quite as much as it could. The crafting system is probably the biggest distinguishing factor, but its impact is ultimately a bit too small. Whether the game is worth trying really depends on what you're looking for. There is one thing it does superbly though: it's the best MMO you can play on a PS3 (FYI: the PC version also supports pad, and some people seemed to prefer it to ye olde keyboard+mouse combo).

I'm glad I played it, I'm glad I quit it, and - unless a really game-changing MMO comes around - now I can safely say "never again". 

Android: Netrunner

Back from the dead...

As has been said, I am currently playing one really long game (Agarest) which means no video game analyses for a while. Especially since on top of that I started another - very likely even longer - game, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Agarest is actually on a break now, so... Not to worry, there's more to gaming than digital games. Analog games have not received any mention in this blog since ancient times; now it is time for them to make a comeback. The game I want to talk about is Android: Netrunner, a game I have been getting into lately.

1. A quick introduction

This game right here would be a perfect topic for an entire article or two of its own. It's basically a rerun of an old collectible card game by Richard Garfield, resurrected by Fantasy Flight Games as a living card game. We already know that LCG is one clever concept, and Netrunner is perhaps the most clever of them all. Being strictly a two player game, it pits one lonely hacker against a massive mega corporation. The setting may sound a bit asymmetrical and this is no coincidence, because that is exactly what the game is. The corporation is building servers to advance its agendas while the hacker is constantly trying to breach through security and grab those agendas for themselves. The first player to score seven points from agendas is the winner. The corporation can also win by killing the hacker either through net damage or by more direct means of physical damage while the hacker wins if the corporation runs out of cards to draw.

The asymmetrical setting alone makes Netrunner stand out, but it's just icing on the cake. The cake is a lie - or rather a massive web of deceit. The corporation plays all its cards face-down and only has to pay for them when they are revealed (or rezzed as the game's hacker lingo likes to call it). Cards installed on servers can be rezzed at any time if their conditions are met but protective cards (ICE) can only be rezzed when they are encountered by the hacker. Most of the time the only way for the hacker to find out what's what is to run head first into it. What is the corporation hiding behind three pieces of ICE - and what kind of ICE are those anyway? In short, the corporation's job is to deceive the hacker into wasting resources on wild goose chases while tha hacker tries to figure out what risks are worth taking. Running into really aggravating ICE can literally end the hacker's life and even if all ICE is breached, there might be a trap waiting on the server. It really doesn't help that traps look a lot like agendas. 

There are two factors that drive the game forward: the corporation must draw one card every turn, and in addition to servers, agendas can be stolen from the corporate player's hand, top of their deck and from their discard pile. It is impossible to protect everything, and once agendas start piling up on the corporate player's hand, they have to do something with them - but the means to get those agendas scored are up to the player and their deck's design. Some players may favor stacking ICE after ICE to create the ultimate server to guard their agendas while others may choose to play agendas on unprotected servers - only these "agendas" are as often traps as they are the real thing. What looks like an agenda? Cards that can be advanced while face-down. Advancing costs time and money, both of which are limited, and it is mostly impossible to fully advance an agenda on the same turn it is played. Once advancement tokens start to pile up on it, the hacker knows something is up. 

2. Tricks and deceit

All in all, the game is far more dependent on player skill and turn-to-turn decision making than other popular deck construction games. This is especially true when playing against a deck you have never played against - for instance in a tournament. Although there are some hard counters in the game, most solid decks should be okay against the majority of decks and games are often pretty close. The corp-plays-hidden nature of the game makes it so that cards can have surprising uses and the winner is more often the player who makes the best use of their cards rather than the player who has the better deck. Some cards still feel like garbage but that just happens with every game. Sometimes it matters more what the card looks like than what it actually is. Let's take a quick example.

Most of the traps in game do nothing if they have not been advanced. This means that it is usually more safe for the runner to go for cards that have not been advanced if they feel like they could be facing traps. I do this a lot, especially if it is not too costly to check out a card before it has been advanced. One game I was having some issues and could not afford to play and advance a card on the same turn. I had traps that would win me the game if the runner hit them while they were advanced, but I simply did not have the resources to do that. Instead, I just put one out on a somewhat protected server with no advancement. Against my deck, it is 100% safe to check cards that have not been advanced, so the runner went for it, burning some resources (time and money) on my ICE. Effectively I just bought a lot of time with a useless card. The runner had to check it because if it had been an agenda, I could have very probably scored it on my next turn.

I actually repeated the trick a few turns later and bought more time, and I eventually won the game - on a play with a card I was unable to use properly. All kinds of plays can be made, and the game affords huge swings and comebacks. This basically happens because of the resource system: there are very few resource cards that provide constant benefit (like lands in MtG). Most economy cards are good for limited time, or require the player to spend precious time to get credits. Time can always be exchanged for credits (it's an action) but the economy cards make the ratio more efficient. This makes it much harder to snowball because a few misplays can quickly even the economic scales. If a player is able to buy enough time, they can recover from pretty dire situations.  

3. Factions

The game has factions on each side: three runner types and four corporations, each with their own characteristics. Criminal runners are basically massive dicks who have pretty straightforward gameplay. They can go with early aggression and lay a lot of waste on the corporation's resources. Shapers on the other hand rely more on finesse and table development, eventually coming up with cards to cover every situation and then just go from there. Anarchists are my current favorite - they go for less orthodox tactics, trying to disrupt the game with viruses and other cards that really mess things up. Playing with and against each of these runner factions is a pretty different experience. It sets the premise for the matchup and gives away a bit about what can be expected.

On the corporation side there are two that rely more on having a heavy economy and two that rely more on being crafty. Haas-Bioroid is ideal for players who just want to build an impregnable fortress and eventually win from within its walls. Wayland has brutally efficient economy, but it often comes at the cost of bad publicity which makes it generally easier to run against them - they also have a lot of means to outright kill the runner with meat damage. Jinteki decks often go poor, but they specialize in traps and other sorts of mind games - and often win games through massive net damage from their traps, ICE and other cards. NBN is another corporation that doesn't swim in money, but they have means to score agendas rapidly and control the game by tagging the runner (if the runner is tagged, the corporation can obliterate their resources pretty easily and do other nasty things).

The factions alone give twelve different matchups but on top of that each faction has multiple identities to choose from. Each identity has a special power, and the identity also defines the minimum deck size for the player. It also defines how many influence points the player gets to spend - these points are used in deck-building to include cards from other factions. The influence system means that although you know the identity and faction of your opponent, there will always be cards that are atypical to their faction in the mix. This can cause a ton of nasty surprises which can turn the game around. Of course the effect is gone after playing against the same deck a couple of times but even then you still have to deal with everything.

All in all, there's plenty to choose from, and factions don't have just one playstyle. It is entirely possible to play a more conservative Jinteki deck for instance, protecting cards with ICE like normal people - or you can just go loose and play with a deck that's based on gambit after gambit. It just really depends on what's your cup of tea. I like NBN and Jinteki because they give more room to crafty plays - perhaps with higher risk, but also higher reward. Both factions can easily win in a single turn if the runner makes a mistake - and naturally they have the means to bait out that mistake. Most of the time it leads to wildly unpredictable games which I think is always fun. Sure games of Netrunner are by average pretty unpredictable already, but with these two corporations it just gets way more so.

4. Dynamics and stuff

When all the pieces come together, the design is simply brilliant. The fact that one side plays with hidden information is what truly defines the game for what it is, and it is supplemented by the nature of economy. The basic resource everything comes down to is time, because time can be converted into anything but players can influence the ratio. Cards and credits are pretty straightforward derivatives, but one resource in the game is much harder to evaluate: information. This sits very well with the game's theme: ultimately it's about information being taken from the corporation by the runner. Sometimes risks must be taken simply in order to reveal a few cards. The more knowledge the runner has, the better they can plan the use of their resources.

On the corporation side, the player has to worry about different vectors of attack. It is usually important to protect your R&D (draw deck) because that's the most unpredictable element in the game for the corporation. A lucky runner can win in one turn if they get free access to R&D. Then there's HQ (hand of cards) to worry about, especially if it contains agendas. The corporation should also be able to protect at least one remote server to have at least one place to play agendas. It doesn't help that some runner decks are insanely harrowing to play against because they seem to have ways to deal with everything - these ways will exhaust eventually, but surviving that long can be quite a challenge. In a way the corporation has somewhat more control over the game. It is much easier for corporations to only take risks they can afford while at the same time being able to force the runner to take huge risks.

A lot of times optimal plays also depend on the opponent. Corporations can play pretty balls-y moves against risk-averse runners, like dropping agendas on servers with little or no protection. A card with no protection and no advancement tokens pretty much reeks of waste of time or even a trap. However if it is just left there and it's an agenda that requires three advancement, the corporation can outright score it on their next turn. On the other hand if you are playing against a less timid or downright aggressive runner (that would be me), there's just no way you're getting away with plays like this. As the runner you have to evaluate how huge balls the corp player really has. Misjudgements to either direction can be pretty damn costly.

With all this going on, the game is just really dynamic. Although decks are typically built around one strategy, players should always be prepared to adapt their play style on a game-to-game basis. Both sides can make it impossible for their opponent to play their strategy, but this usually opens up other opportunities. Recognizing and capitalizing these opportunities is an important skill.

Conclusion

Android: Netrunner is not your typical deck construction game. Its asymmetrical nature, reliance on hidden information and resource system keep the game interesting to play - as opposed to some other games where the real game is deck-building and actually playing the game is just a formality (a bit polarized view admittedly, but the difference between e.g. MtG and Netrunner is just huge honestly). As a game it simply allows way more opportunities for the player to shine. All the mind games and unpredictability mean that games are almost never over before the end conditions have been met. It can literally take just one mistake to make or break a game - and not taking risks can be a mistake in itself.  

I have not yet played enough to really tell how balanced the game is. There are some runner cards that do feel pretty overpowered and playing against them is really frustrating. They are still manageable but do put quite a strain on corporation deck-building. A definite con is the price. Although I guess it is possible to not buy every single expansion, I'd still say it's not the cheapest game to play. I think at the moment it's my second or third most expensive game, but I do have all or most of the expansions (the leader is by far Lord of the Rings living card game).

So, play it if you get the chance. 

The Last of Us

Every once in a while even I play hyped titles. It comes down to quite random things, and in this case I largely picked The Last of Us up because of two things: it felt like a game that will be discussed so I had to get it early to dodge spoilers; I just happened to have an empty spot in my gaming schedule since I had drastically decreased my Dota 2 playing. Despite being a horrorish game, it actually felt like a decent summer game due to lots of well-lit environments. I would have probably jumped on this game even harder had it not been for the zombies. Goddamn zombies. I'm not a big fan of post-apo either, but at least The Last of Us is the better kind of post-apo - i.e. not that frigging boring-as-a-brick-wall desert shit. Yeah, there's some things in gaming I *really* don't like.

1. Realism is overrated... again

In a way, The Last of Us is a spot-on example of how Ian Bogost described the persuasive power of games in his book Persuasive Games. In the book he defines the concept of procedural rhetoric: whereas verbal rhetoric appeals to us through logic and compelling writing, games persuade through modeling processes. Through the model, the player can experience the circumstances and interact with them. For instance, Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus teaches asthma management through simulating it - the player controls a dinosaur with asthma. The model can be based on reality, but typically is not realistic as such. So it is with The Last of Us - its gameplay is a compelling model of scarcity. The model is not compelling because of realism - rather, it is compelling despite its lack of realism. Allow me to explain.

The Last of Us uses several different mechanics to simulate scarcity. Since it has a post-apocalyptic setting, guns are expected as is scarce ammunition. Survival games in general use this mechanic to create suspense and force the player to seek alternative ways to defeat enemies. Generally the next best thing would be melee weapons, and they too have been made scarce. A typical melee weapon is only good for a few hits and the most effective melee weapon is the shiv - a single use stabbing weapon. The shiv is especially important because it is the only way to silently kill clickers, a type of enemy that detects the player based on sound. Normal enemies can also be taken down silently by surprise with unarmed attacks, but it takes time. Generally going stealth is the only option when the player has no ammunition left and usually shooting is plan b in any case.

Of course none of this makes sense from the perspective of realism. After a firefight with even a handful of enemies, the protagonist would have weapons and ammunition to last a small lifetime (at least considering how carelessly the enemies fire their weapons - which means they must have no worries about running out). A good melee weapon lasts almost forever with proper maintenance and shivs are just poor replacements for knives, which are clearly ubiquitous in the game world. Thing is, had the developers considered the realism of each game situation, encounters would be rather dull - in order to avoid giving the player too much equipment, they would be facing unarmed opponents for the entire game or only zombies. Simply put, there would be so much less variety. Instead the developers have chosen to model the economy of scarcity through artificial resource limitations - and it works phenomenally well.

The same goes for the game's crafting system. It is very simple with only six or seven items that can be crafted, but it serves an important purpose. First of all, it adds to the survival theme: useful items are very hard to come by, but materials to make them are slightly more available. Second, it does force the player to make some choices about what to do with their resources. The system is simple enough to not get in the way - at the same time it is not too simple to the point it would be redundant. Is it even remotely realistic? Not likely. Instead it's a functional subsystem in the game's repertoire of mechanics. Resources are also scarce enough to make scavenging always worthwhile, which adds value to exploring corners of the world. It also does not feel out of place, because it is consistent with the game's story - unlike excessive looting in certain other genres!

Games often don't follow the WYSIWYG paradigm when it comes to loot. Although it is from time to time called out as unrealistic, it is important to understand that realism would actually make things very though. Anyone who has tried to run a tabletop campaign where scarcity of resources is an important element has likely run into this problem. In tabletop RPGs players are much more likely to play the realism card if they cannot loot stuff enemies were using. Some settings allow for workarounds with varying credibility but others do not. It can become a major challenge for the game master to prevent their players from gaining too much power while still creating challenging combat situations. It helps that mechanics in tabletop RPGs are less rigid - in videogames the designers cannot adapt on the fly.

Finally, let's talk about stealth. Often when sneaking around, at least one other party member is following you. It seems a bit out of character at first, because they are actually entirely invisible to enemies as long as the protagonist has not been detected. Sure, the AI does its best to make it look like they're also sneaking, but very often they end up running around - even bumping into enemies - while the player is trying to sneak as quietly as possible. It sounds pretty awful, but ultimately didn't retract much from the experiene at all. Imagine if, instead, they had made it so that allies can also trigger enemy awareness. The sheer amount of frustration would have caused a massive outcry as yet another stealth attempt fails because the AI-controlled characters accidentally revealed themselves. Considering that stealth in the game is quite demanding, I don't think it would have been possible to implement an AI that could navigate the situations well enough.

In general it is far more important to consider what is the aesthetic experienced by the player than it is to consider its realism. Likewise the actions taken by the player are more important than how they look. Thus Dark Souls can incorporate a lot of the mentality of actual fencing even though it looks completely different. Likewise, The Last of Us incorporates the dynamics of surviving in a world of scarce resources without taking into account the realism of scarcity. The most compelling games do not impart their message through narrative or graphics - they do so through gameplay. This is essentially Bogost's message in his book. Instead of considering realism, designers should consider whether the game's dynamics are able to model the process they want the player to explore. Making sense is voluntary.

2. About segment lengths

I basically have only one complaint about The Last of Us, and it is one that applies to a bunch of other titles too. I guess I just truly pinpointed the problem while playing this game. In a nutshell, a single segment in the game is way too long. Several times it feels like it is ending and the game is about to move forward, only to start yet another thread that prolongs the experience. Although it is only a single segment, it can have far-reaching consequences to the gameplay experience. The player only needs to get bored once. After one segment that drags, I started to be far more critical towards the game and the length of its segments. Fortunately the problem was not repeated but its shadow still retracted from my enjoyment. I recall this happening in other games too; a single long segment severely affects my playing mentality. The entire games feels more boring only because one segment lasted too long.

I would like to say I know a psychological basis for why this happens, but I actually cannot recall having read anything directly similar. However, since I like to do some guesswork, it might have something to do with how expectations affect our actual experience of something. The same phenomenon that makes wine taste better from a finer glass is just as likely to affect a gameplay experiene. For instance, if I consider a game worth preordering, chances are I will like it more just because I had high enough expectations to opt not to wait. Expectations during gameplay are a living thing. Players usually arrive with some expectations, and will build upon them after experiencing the game itself. A single instance of bad experience can then set the (possibly false) expectation that similar instanced might occur in the future. The player will become suspicious of the game in a way - e.g. Is this turn in the plot another ruse to get me into a long gameplay segment?

The sad reality is that players are more likely to base their expectations on a single bad experience than to a positive experience. That's why you can read fans complaining about the smallest things. Although the things themselves feel small, it might have happened that they have changed the player's expectations and in doing so in fact ruined the entire experience for them. Although this is just my (educated) guesswork, it definitely is something to think about. I have no doubt that The Last of Us's lack of realism has been a turn-off for some players.

3. About stealth, again

I keep going on about this topic - and that's a good thing since I keep re-evaluating my feelings about stealth games. This is the essence of this blog: coming to understand why certain solutions work for me while others do not. I am doing so because I believe it will help as a player (to pick games better) and as a developer (obviously). The Last of Us is a game where I both loved and hated stealth mechanics, and thus it is a good ground for me to explore my relationship with this subgenre. The biggest differentiating factor between stealth scenes I liked and the ones I did not was their setting: I consistently liked outdoor encounters and disliked indoor encounters. Being indoors or outdoors is not the actual explanation though. Rather, it is indeed the degree of freedom which simply happens to be larger in outdoor environments - especially in The Last of Us.

This preference also explains why I consider Dishonored my absolute favorite game in this genre - not only does it take place in quite open environments, it also gives the player superpowers that open up even more possibilities. The more closed the environment, the more stealth starts to feel like a puzzle. This happens because the solution space for a given problem shrinks. Turns out I don't like this one bit. While I have nothing against puzzles, if I want to solve puzzles, I'd rather play puzzle games. There's often a sort of uncertainty in stealth puzzles, and I really don't like that largely because there are too many variables that are hidden from the player. The control of the situation slips from the player's hands because instead of being able to make their way through the encounter, they are playing a guessing game to figure out the one solution that actually works.

Free saving is another feature that highly affects my stealth experience. I don't mind redoing boss-fights in arcade games, because the challenge remains interesting even after defeating the boss for the first time. Likewise, I love strict time attacks in racing games - driving the same track, perfecting one corner at a time, great times. However, I really really hate redoing stealth segments. It is fun to stalk an enemy for the first time, especially if it ends in their death - it's not fun to do the same thing all over again. The difference here is that the "mechanic" involved in stalking is often *waiting*. So while I don't mind playing through a challenging segment again because it will improve my skills, waiting is not really a skill - it's just a colossal waste of time. The more the stealth segment is like a puzzle, the worse it gets because I will just be doing the exact same things every time. I always succeed because I already figured out how to do it.

Coincidentally, Dishonored has free saving while The Last of Us did not. A lot of games are better off without free saving, but seriously, that feature is absolutely necessary in stealth games. Moving very slowly and waiting simply are not fun game "mechanics" - the real challenge was in scouting the situation and figuring out a way through it - and since that knowledge is not lost when the player dies, all they have left to do is to repeat the same steps. I guess we can coin a term for this: retry value (related to replay value, obviously). If repeating a segment poses no challenge to the player, its retry value is very low whereas if it remains challenging every time, its retry value is high. Games with high retry value can actually benefit from not having free saving whereas games with low retry value absolutely must have free saving or very frequent checkpoints.

Conclusion

The Last of Us is worth the hype, and calling it PlayStation 3's last big game might very well be appropriate. It is impressive in so many ways - it's beautiful to look at, runs smooth and has a solid story to boot. Most importantly though, it has so much elegant design. It is one of those games that really make the player feel like the world has ended. It accomplishes this not through realism, but game mechanics that give rise to compelling model of scarcity. Yet another strength that went unmentioned is that the game achieves a lot in segments where nothing at all happens. As opposed to what might be expected of a videogame, The Last of Us actually has rather lenghty parts where no fighting is going on and the player is simply wandering through scenery - and somehow these feel like the strongest moments in the game. Part of their allure is built by conversation. There's a lot of that, and most of the game's dialogue takes place in-game rather than cutscenes.

Although the game is beautifully designed, its mechanics are not ultimately *that* interesting on their own. The beauty is in the atmosphere - the final aesthetic - of the game. In this sense it is the paragon of modern games where everything from technology to writing to game mechanics come together to support an enchanting player experience. It is also a game that uses the strengths of the medium to create something powerful that simply could not work in any other media. I do think it's required playing before putting your PS3 to rest - whether you like zombies or not.

Catherine

Yet another game I intended to play way earlier. I think there is actually a reason why I rather consistently fail to play any of these more experimental games in any decent time. My gaming is generally directed with various cravings and - here is the reason - these cravings are towards certain types of game mechanics. Experimental games on the other hand are often unfamiliar in this sense - can't crave for something you don't even know to exist. This means that these games get pushed into some unknown future time when I am free of my frequent craving gaming streaks and often when that happens, I start from cheapest games on the list. After all I often don't have any particular preference for any of these unfamiliar games over another, so might as well use availability as a metric.

Enough with the self-reflection though. Catherine was a PS+ freebie last month so I guess it was definitely the cheapest unfamiliar game at the moment. A weird game from the creators of Persona, to me that pretty much makes it a necessity to play. Especially the first trailers raised a lot of questions, but primarily this: what's with all the sheep? If the game would have been less explanatory with what was going on, it could have as well been written by David Lynch. I mean the weird stuff in Lynch's films is usually a metaphoric way to process what is going on in the characters' heads or between them. In many ways, Catherine is like that too, and the weirdness factor is definitely in Lynch category as well. Because of the game's nature, I will once again delve into the story for a bit. So here is your general spoiler warning. 

1.Persona?

First let's take a look at Catherine as a game. I would draw comparisons to games like Heavy Rain for a couple of reasons: first, both deal with more mature issues that games typically do; second, for different reasons, the both raise the question whether they should be really called games or not. In Catherine this results from the high contrast between the game's two interactive modes. The game mechanic is in a way isolated from rest of the game to the point that it could be anything - although the tower climbing mechanic is a successful metaphor to overcoming personal challenges. This part could be a game in itself so it is definitely interactive.

However the rest of the game is highly non-interactive. A lot of time is spent watching cut-scenes, and hanging in the bar has less gameplay than social links in Persona 3/4. Not that it really matters, a lot of games have their gameplay disconnected from storytelling and I wrote about it earlier. Although Catherine is a puzzle game with heavy storytelling components, it is actually very comparable to Persona. I would go as far as to claim that despite all their differences, Catherine is a Persona with smaller scale. I'll do the comparison to P4. In both, there are two very different modes of gameplay: the nightmare and the bar in Catherine, the TV world and the real world in P4. Both games also have two story layers: one of personal growth, and one of what actually happens.

One big difference is how these two layers interact: in Catherine, the nightmare builds Vincent's values, and they affect what choices he makes during the day. They don't directly affect what the player can do in the bar though - the bar actually serves the same purpose because that section also includes choices that affect Vincent's values. Nothing done during the day affects the gameplay in the nightmare. On the other hand in Persona 4, actions taken in the real world have impact in the TV world, because social links literally strenghten the protagonist. In this sense, the disconnection between the two layers is stronger in Catherine because they do not affect each other in terms of game mechanics. On the other hand though, in Catherine the player's choices affect the story whereas P4 only has one story.

Another aspect that these games also share with Devil Survivor is the protagonist's role as a paragon. In Catherine however Vincent does not really have any special powers, whereas in P4 the protagonist is unique with his ability to use multiple personas. What they have in common however is that throughout their story, they both become a source of inspiration for people they meet. Their influence inspires other people to solve their problems and find their inner strength. Both games also deal with mundane issues, in the real world. Just like in the real world, ultimately even the hero cannot solve others' problems for them because they cannot be solved with any standard issue heroics. Vincent in particular inspires others through his own growth and progress.

Personal growth in both games is heavily related to the other world. In P4, each of the protagonist's allies has to quite literally face themselves. The TV world makes them painfully aware of their darker sides that ultimately manifest as dungeon bosses. In Catherine, Vincent and other men initially don't know why they have been trapped in the nightmare but as they are chased by manifestations of their worst fears, and as they learn the nature of their plight, it becomes a possibility for them to grow. Conquering the deadly tower of blocks becomes a symbol of conquering their own doubts. Through their struggles they come to reflect their life situation, and finally get their life on the right track.In both cases it's both a very literal fight for their lives, and also a fight to gain control of their lives.

If we look at Catherine purely as an artifact of game design, it's not very good. Stripped of everything, you are ultimately solving puzzles to be rewarded with cutscenes and while the story-as-reward is a common trope in Japanese RPGs, it is not a particularly laudable game dynamic. Catherine demands us to look beyond though, because reducing it in this way is a disservice to its true strength.

2. Storytelling

Catherine is all about the glue. Not the kind you sniff, but the kind that keeps different parts of the game together. The glue in Catherine is the way it has been directed. The game builds suspense with the best of them, and it is a very gripping experience. There are a lot of individual effects I can name, and one of them is the iconic clock that ticks between cutscenes. The audiovisual design of that simple screen is magnificient, and it always feels as if it is foreshadowing something nasty. Of course, the player will quickly make this association because what follows often is nasty. Especially the mornings after Vincent awakens from his nightmare became some of the most dreaded moments. What was the cause of this dread? The fact that Vincent found himself waking up next to a pretty woman. I swear, monsters in games are very rarely this dreadful.

The player bears witness to Vincent struggling in his life, trying to resolve his situation. However it is not quite similar to watching a movie. The fact that player choices affect how Vincent tries to deal with his problems creates a sense of responsibility - is everything going to hell because of my choices? There is never a direct choice involved in the situation itself, the player can only influence Vincent's values by making choices in the nightmare and in the bar. I would probably bash the hell out of this idea if this was any other game, but the concept fits Catherine exceptionally well. The story deals with emotions, where causality is very hard to predict or even see afterwards in the real world, so it is fitting that we cannot predict how Vincent will act either.

It's hard to put a finger to the exact reasons why the game's directing is so powerful. You just know it when your heart leaps every time Vincent gets a text message at the bar, and how hard it is to write replies even though there are not that many options. Otherwise the bar is the most relaxing portion of the game because the player and Vincent can take a break from the nightmare and from the two women who are at the heart of the conflict. Scenes with either of the women on the other hand are sharp like knives and I have very rarely been this anxious while following a fictituous conversation. It helps that all dialogue in the game is written really well, and voice acting is quite solid. Of course, I would not have expected anything less from the developers.

The nightmare is also masterfully directed. Although I do not agree with all the gameplay decisions (more on that soon) concerning it, audiovisually it is very successful. The boss levels in particular are very distressing, with the boss often almost literally breathing down at Vincent's neck as the player tries to find a route upwards in panic. The normal levels are more relaxed, but audiovisually they too are quite disturbing. Even the fact that the nightmare world is populated by sheep somehow adds to the atmosphere. Even tutorials have been perfectly integrated into the game's fiction. Vincent exchanges climbing techniques with other men trapped in the nightmare, which is a convenient time to also show those techniques to the player. Coincidentally the player might just need some of those in the next level...

I personally think of Catherine in much the same way I think of Heavy Rain: I will probably never play it again. It is one of those games that I just play through without expecting any particular outcome. I will take whatever the outcome is, and label the story as my individual experience of the game. I think another run through the game would just break many illusions. I might find out how little the game changes with different choices, and ultimately it would not be able to give me anything that even closely resembles the first playthrough. Although I know there are other endings, I have no real desire to experience them because I kind of what to think of the one ending I got as the "true" ending of the game. I don't even want to go back to try and change things.

3. Dat difficulty

Catherine was notorious by the time of its release. Why? Well, the game was freaking difficult is why! They added an easy difficulty later to alleviate the problem. These days I normally play my games on hard difficulty but after hearing how "well" my friends had fared in Catherine, I chose to start on normal. After a couple of nightmares I switched to easy, which is the first time I've done so in a very long time. I did find the block puzzles quite fun, but the challenge rubbed me the wrong way. It's not that the difficulty itself is the problem, it's the mechanisms that create it. While I liked the time limits in boss levels, they felt a bit artificial in the rest. In a way I understand that having the blocks fall off under Vincent's feet if I take my sweet time does make the atmosphere in the game stronger, but it made the game more frustrating.

One thing in puzzle games I don't like is redoing sections I have already done, because it is nothing more than punishment to do the same work again. The levels have checkpoints, but from time to time they are a bit too few and far between. What makes it even more frustrating is the fact that for some god-awful reason I'd rather not know, there are limited retries. Sure they are given out quite generously but if you ever run out, it's back to the last save point - that's the start of the level, unless you forgot to save. It was actually this that made me switch to easy. Well that, and the fact that the controls are very annoying from time to time. For instance, you can move behind the blocks, but cannot rotate the camera enough to actually see what is there. Dafuq? Oh and when you are behind a block, the controls are reversed. Why?

My final gripe with the controls was one button. It is used for grabbing blocks for pushing/pulling, but for some reason it also causes Vincent to let go of a block when he is hanging. There is also a separate button for letting go, so why on earth another button also does that? Finally, although the audiovisuals were very successful in creating the nightmarish feeling, sometimes camera drives and visual effects made it very hard to see what the hell was going on. This mostly happened in boss levels. Since the game already has an undo button that allows you to take back moves far into move history, the same button could have been used to just return you to wherever you fell off. At least in the normal levels I would have really appreciated this.

4. Chickening out

This here is the major spoiler warning. You will ruin the game for yourself if you read this before playing. 

Catherine is a game about problematic romantic relationships. All the men caught in the nightmare with Vincent have one thing in common: they are dealing with emotional damage from their past or current relationships, and somehow that is what brings them to the dream. Vincent himself is dealing with two problems at the same time: his girlfriend is talking about getting serious, while at the same time he finds himself cheating with another woman. We never truly learn how Vincent ended up cheating because that information is kept from us - and Vincent too, because he seems to never remember what happened. He just wakes up next to the other woman morning after morning. The situation is uncomfortable to say the least, because both of the women are emotionally attached to their relationship with Vincent.

Catherine is a compelling human drama with a hint of supernatural. I always find stories involving cheating quite uncomfortable, because I just know that the women (in this case) will eventually find out about each other while the man is lying through his teeth to both. It is uncomfortable because from the start it is clear that at least one heart will be broken, and possibly all three. I cannot speak from experience, but it feels like Catherine does portray the difficulty of such a situation in a very vivid fashion. As I mentioned one part in this is the player's almost involuntary involvement in the drama. The really "funny" thing? At first even I was not able to decide which woman I wanted Vincent to prefer. It is quite common in games with romantic relationships to not know from start which one to go with, but Catherine forces the player into a situation where they are already involved with both.

The last few hours of the game feel a bit cheap though. Up until then, everything supernatural has felt much like the weird stuff in David Lynch movies - a metaphor to stress the gravity of the situation. Towards the end though, we learn that there is actually quite a bit of supernatural going on. The other woman is not real, and was purposefully sent to seduce Vincent because he seemed unwilling to commit to his girlfriend. He was also put into the nightmare to die with the other men. This lifts a massive burden off Vincent's shoulders, and also the player's because they are no longer (fully) responsible of the conflict. Instead we have a divine power - not evil, just twisted - and finally something for the player to fight and defeat to resolve the drama once and for all. Although this turn of events doesn't surprise me, and is actually very well written, it feels cheap.

The reason it doesn't surprise me is that it's actually very consistent with stories in other Atlus games - especially Persona. There is always some higher power that is the root cause of all problems in the game, and defeating its manifestation releases the heroes from their strife. But in Persona it feels much more symbolic - in P4 for instance, what the players defeat is a manifestation of people's desire to hide their selves behind masks so that they never need to face their weaknesses. In Catherine the antagonist is a more direct actor in the events which makes it all the more easier to pin everything on him. His word becomes proof that Vincent did not really cheat on his girlfriend, which dissolves the problem quite a bit and makes it easier for his girlfriend to forgive. This is what happened in my ending anyway, I don't know how things will turn out if Vincent goes with the other woman (or neither!).

Some of the moments during these final scenes were some of the best in the entire game, but I still have mixed feelings about this. Are we still not adult enough to make a game about problematic relationships without having some monster as the cause? At least in this game Vincent not relieved of all burden (after all, he did fail to fes up early).

5. The players

In closing, I want to make some observations that might be entirely inaccurate. The game presents a bunch of questions to the player and afterwards they can see a pie chart of how other players answered on their first playthrough. Although I have no way of knowing why players chose what they chose, there is a very clear preference for the girlfriend on first playthroughs - I think it was about 75 to 80% of players. I can come up with two different explanations as to why it is more likely to choose the girlfriend on the first playthrough. First is the fact that, although they might not have intended it so, ending up with her seems like the "good" path through this game. Even though the choices affect Vincent's preference between order and chaos, visual cues do suggest that going with order is the "good" path.

I don't have statistics, but I'd put my money on "good" paths being generally preferred on first playthroughs. This is in part due to bad design of "evil" paths, which makes the "good" path seem the experience players were intended to have. Many games with alternative paths or endings often do include one that is implied to be canon. As players we often aim for the optimal experience, and because of this history of choices, it is a general assumption that the "good" path is the one we are intended to take. Furthermore, if the player is a completionist and wants to get all eight endings, they have to answer in certain ways throughout the game. You can get three endings in one full playthrough (by altering the final choices), but to do so Vincent's values need to be fully order, fully chaos or fully neutral. Which means you would choose every answer accordingly.

The latter doesn't explain why most players chose to prefer the girlfriend, but it does explain why they would answer consistently after making up their mind. On the other hand, it is also possible players answered based on their personal preferences instead of intentionally trying to stay on the "good" path. If that is the case, it kinda looks like gamers make pretty good lifetime partners because they prefer stability over excitement. I would not be surprised if this was the case actually. Of course it's a bit far-fetched to draw this conclusion from game statistics but it's kinda consistent with real life observations. Enough with the guesswork though, let's wrap this thing up.

Conclusion

This post was a bit weird because there is not that much game design in Catherine to analyse. I have probably written stuff I'd like to take back one day. For the record, I didn't intentionally read any analysis about Catherine before playing it or writing this piece because I didn't want my observations to be affected by someone else's. Which means I may have just written the exact same thing that someone has already written. I think Catherine is a strong argument to throw at anyone who claims that games are not for telling stories. Catherine tells a very powerful story and uses the medium's strengths to its advantage. Catherine the movie would never be as powerful. The game succeeds in involving the player in its drama in a rather clever way, and the entire experience feels very personal.

I am done here.