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Vidja Gaym Stories

For many games, a story helps to define the direction of the game. Some games are quite memorable because of finely crafted stories, amongst other reasons. Some games are equally memorable for having little to no story, having banked on the gameplay mechanics to give players a memorable time.

A game that focuses more on the story side of things is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. I might harp on a bit about Hellblade, but that is because I think it is good, even great, in some respects. Others it doesn’t do so well at, such as the fairly limited combat. That’s not the focus here. The story in Hellblade follows the titular character Senua through her journey of the norse underworld, as she imagines it to be. The story mostly revolves around the mental illness of Senua and her struggle to accept it. It’s an interesting story at the very least and a very peculiar subject to portray right, as it could easily slip into caricatures of the mentally ill. Ninja Theory, the developers behind Hellblade, chose to do research and interviews with people afflicted by various mental illnesses so as to not fall into this trap and actually had those people playtest their product before they went ahead with releasing it. This in turn has made the story more compelling in my opinion. Some of the situations can seem extremely bizarre or inexplicable, but at the same time I found myself wanting to go further to see how Senua’s story ended. I could also see the entire journey being quite distressing, given that Senua is put through situations that should and do break her. The fact that she gets back up each time found me wanting to go through to the end, though even that was quite a tear jerker to try and do. The ending had me in some amount of tears, though with the advent of a second Hellblade game in production I am curious and worried about whether or not the story can be carried through with a similar effect.

A game that mostly does away with story is RimWorld. In this game, you hold the survival of a group of people (or what is usually a group) in your hands. However, there isn’t much story to speak of within the game. RimWorld uses this lack of story to its advantage. With little story to speak of, it leaves it up to the Storyteller and yourself to create one out of the colonists, tribespeople and pirates that share a planet together. The Storyteller is a part of the game that dictates events such as other factions raiding your colony, weather events and mad animals hunting down your unfortunates. In one of my games, I had three colonists crash land in escape pods onto the planet’s surface in some mountains. They survived mostly by growing crops, although they would go on to tame numerous animals whom I would later cull because they kept eating the crops. A botched taming attempt saw an emu take down two of my colonists at a time I had five, which lost me valuable skills including my only miner. I deleted the save after a five man raid saw me attempting to call pretty well all my colonists into a doomed fight. Despite that loss, I decided I’d load up a new game which included a mod for vampires. Yes. Space vampires.

I’ve seen two ends of the spectrum in playing games when it comes around to story, and I believe both methods of storytelling can work. A linear game may not be very interactive, but it tells a good story. On other other hand, leaving it up to the player, using minimal or no story, may be tricky, but it can be done, as I’ve seen in a rage inducing delete of a save in RimWorld.

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Boss battles in (some) games

Boss battles in video games are generally milestone worthy affairs, meant to provide a player with a memorable challenge. They usually intend to test the player’s knowledge of the game up to that point and provide a break from the usual gameplay up to that point. These fights are usually built up to, to give the player that the boss is not simply another opponent that they will have an easy time. They can also aid in progressing a story along at certain major points. Here are some examples of games with bosses that I have played.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has bosses that are mainly of old Norse gods and Norse mythology. These fights are built up to using various puzzles and smaller fights with minions, which is shown easily with the first two bosses, Valravn and Surtr. In both cases, the prelude consists of showing what the two bosses are all about, as you light sacrificial pyres on the approach to Surtr and attempt to defeat Valravn’s myriad illusions that he uses to try and trick you. It’s not just about the build up to a boss battle in Hellblade that makes them great, however. The battles themselves aren’t particularly difficult, but they nevertheless test the player in using the skills they have acquired, one of note to me being an attack by Valravn that when parried causes him to suffer damage instead. These battles are supplemented by awesome music, which is definitely recognisable and attributable to each individual boss. I would bet that I could place each boss’ track given how much they stand out to me. Darkest Dungeon’s bosses are region specific, but have additional difficulty in that they often cannot be tackled with heroes that are too high a level to face them. These battles are reached by first completing various quests within a specific region before the encounter is available. I’ve not yet played through all of the game, but I have encountered a couple of bosses with somewhat interesting playstyles. The first one I encountered was a necromancer capable of dropping rocks from the ceiling, which is essentially an attack on two random positions of your party that deals significant damage. Another boss was based on sirens that lured ships to their deaths. This time around, however, the siren has the ability to charm one of your own party into fighting for her for a short duration. That short duration can be quite painful if your frontline bruiser or your healer is converted, as then you’re either taking damage that you can’t otherwise recover or being dealt it in amounts that are unlikely to be healed anyway. A third boss I’ve so far encountered is a cannon manned by thieves and brigands. Unlike most of the other enemies in the game the cannon is incapable of attacking your party directly. It will incessantly summon reinforcements which include a man with a matchstick capable of lighting the cannon’s fuse. As I played this fight out, I didn’t need to be shown or told what damage the cannon would be capable of, such is the way the game teaches you how to play. These boss fights have been notable because they are usually a break from fighting the minions while also stepping up the difficulty in an achievable way. Having said that, this wasn’t played on the hardest difficulty of the game and I shudder to think what it’s like on that level. Case study three is Code Vein, a game similar to Dark Souls in how it approaches boss battles. You’ll know when you’re approaching one because the arena is generally a large open area that is usually devoid of much cover or any features. The bosses in Code Vein are an interesting bunch, as they seem somewhat unrelated to the story, at least for me. They are, however, generally a right kick in the ass to deal with on a first try, as they often use large sweeping attacks or blisteringly quick combos that can be hard to time a dodge to, which, in absence of a good story is their main reason to be sought out. Beating one of these bosses is a reason to breathe a sigh of relief, as you won’t have to deal with that one anymore. Even so, losing to a particular boss (or in my case, most of them) multiple times does mean the triumph is so much more rewarding. That said, I wouldn’t call any of the bosses in Code Vein extremely memorable. None of them taunt you in any real way, save for beating you into submission multiple times. They just happen to be pretty hard to fight against, which I suppose is a good target to set for a boss fight.

There’s a lot of components to a boss fight that need to be considered, in the end, for it to be memorable or even just to work properly. There has to be build up to the fight itself, that marks out the boss as a particularly important or dangerous foe, yet too much build up is a detriment. The fight itself also needs to be a step up or a break from the standard gameplay, intended to test and reward the player for having learnt through the game. I would also consider good music to be part of a memorable, if not functional, boss fight. I still think to this day that the track Surtr is quite a good song and can picture the fight in Hellblade with fire giant endlessly when I listen to it.