#i watched a playthrough of the game and when he brought down all the statues ?? like damn ok... 😳 who said that.

[kind-of-a-shitty-wizard]

HI @mjrdm HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! im always shy posting my art buut i hope u enjoy these butlers :] ty for introducing me to the homicidal manservant ever

[iaintyourbro]

Imo Tifa is Cloud’s real catalyst. Some people say it’s Aerith... yeah sure... she is in some way, but only on soldier Cloud in OG. Like, in the first place he wanted to be someone strong hence why he became soldier, cuz of Tifa. She saved & brought real Cloud back in the lifestream. She vented and knocked some sense into him to bring him out of his misery. Why does everybody sleeps on Tifa’s efforts like 🤷🏻‍♀️

Hey anon.

I honestly have a very difficult time comprehending it myself. Generally when I play these games the first time, I take them at face value. I think most people do that. From a logical standpoint, the first time a person plays OG, they probably do think that Aerith is meant to be the love interest because she’s pink and cute and a white mage type of character. 

This is the fun thing with stereotypes... Whether or not there’s any romantic interaction between Cloud and Aerith, people automatically assumed the moment he wakes up in that church that she’s the love interest. I think this was also done on purpose to further the whole illusion thing. It used people’s preconceived ideas about romance against them.

In Remake, they make it much more obvious that Cloud has an issue with his memories and personality, and that his subconscious is heavily attached to Tifa. He stares at her constantly.  

Aerith then dies. In real life we do not continue to pursue dead people that we knew for a very short amount of time. That seems... ridiculous. They also don’t really dwell on it in game. After her death, she’s not mentioned again until they’re trying to figure out what to do with meteor. This is well past her death. 

You first go snowboarding and through all of the Icicle Area, then up to the Northern Crater where you’re slammed with the line from Cloud that Tifa’s opinion is the only one that matters to him, then Cloud falls into the Lifestream. Then we get Tifa who is very upset about everything, almost gets executed, has to slap a bitch a few times, gets back on the Highwind, and her number one priority is to save Cloud. You get him back and go on some more Huge Materia missions, can do side quests, and then when you actually start to go down the what to do with Meteor path, is when she’s brought up because of Holy. 

But for the whole Lifestream thing...

Tifa is mostly selfless throughout the game. She puts others before herself constantly. I honestly thought her turning to what she felt and what she wanted was a good character building moment. I think her one desire to find Cloud was the most selfish thing she did during the entire game, and it was about her feelings. And about Cloud. She knew nobody else was going to look for Cloud - she didn’t want him alone. 

When they do find him, she’s done. She’s staying there no matter what. At this point I think she’s already lost everything else, and finding Cloud somewhat alive, the last thing she really has from her past, she’s not letting it go. She sticks by him. She helps him find himself. She continues to stick by him. 

She almost dies sticking by him. She saves him from himself by helping him rebuild who he truly is. All is revealed, it’s obvious he has feelings for her that go way back, and that’s that. At this point, I think most people who played the game with no preconceived ideas realize what’s mostly going on. I do think FFVII requires multiple playthroughs to get everything, but the jist of things is there. 

So most people don’t question this - Cloud loves Tifa, okay - let’s mosey. 

The ending I think is where people start to argue, even though it’s not supposed to be romantic, I don’t think. He says the line “I think I can meet her there” which people take as he’s going to meet Aerith there. Tifa doesn’t react badly to this. This is after the Lifestrem, after the Highwind, and then suddenly he’s just gonna drop her? No. This is about them realizing they’re probably going to die. 

Some people couldn’t accept she died, they can’t accept what happens after that, so they shit on Tifa. They know she’s the catalyst for him, she’s the reason he wanted to join SOLDIER (he tells us this himself), she’s the reason he finally snapped at Sephiroth in Nibelheim (after everything else), she’s the reason he comes out of his first bout of severe mako poisoning, and ultimately she’s the reason he survives the second bout. 

After all the shit that happened, after almost killing their friend twice, ultimately causing Meteor to get summoned, after it all, she still stuck by him.

Then we get AC. Now AC is interesting because people think Cloud acted like he did in AC the entire two years after FFVII ends. He doesn’t. He’s happy - the devs came out and made sure people knew that he was very happy with Tifa and the children. He runs from Tifa for a week or two. People think he took off for months. He runs off due to getting Geostigma, and can’t bear to have Tifa and the children watch him die. He knows what happens to Tifa when people close to her die - she starts doing really stupid, drastic things. So you have Denzel dying already and now Cloud has the same problem. He ran, but it wasn’t to go find Aerith or get away from Tifa because he didn’t love her - he ran because he did love her, and in his mind.. well... he couldn’t deal with the fact that he was going to ultimately hurt her. Badly. 

Cloud realizing Tifa is injured and knocked out in the church shows how much he cares about her. The second Tifa that he yells is fully of emotion. Geostigma also acts up when he has high anxiety or an emotional event. Right after this, he has a major Geostigma episode and passes out. You can’t say he doesn’t care - deeply - about Tifa. He’s scared out of his mind here. He thinks she’s going to die. And he blames himself because she came to the church looking for him.

Cloud sees Tifa is alive in the simulation here.

After he thinks she dies.

A lot of people think that Tifa is attached to Cloud and useless without him, but I think it’s the other way around. Tifa could live a normal life without Cloud. Cloud wouldn’t be able to live a normal life without Tifa with the story of the game. You can’t say what if he didn’t get experimented on, because he does get experimented on, he’s injected with Jenova cells, and has severe mako poisoning. Which she can at least get him out of to function. Tifa was literally created for Cloud so he actually has a shot at life and doesn’t die in the gutter of the Sector 7 train station.

FFVII had a main theme of life and death and learning to live after death.

And that learning to live wasn’t just about Cloud.

It was about Barret who lost his wife, hometown, and ultimately ends up losing his best friend when he thinks he found him. He deals with his loses by channeling his passion for revenge. He vows to care for Dyne’s daughter. He does blame himself partially for the entire thing even happening, since he agreed with Shinra, but ultimately doesn’t let it consume him. He goes back during AC to help rebuilt Corel to make amends.

Tifa also learns to live after heavy loss. Tifa loses her mother as a young child. Her entire hometown is burned down, her father killed, she’s almost killed. In both cases of her parent’s death, she makes very irrational decisions to cope with it. She thinks going up Mt Nibel will allow her to see her mother. She thinks she can take on Sephiroth after he kills her father. She also does this after she thinks Cloud dies. She decides she can go to a brothel and question a crime lord to give her info... Not a good choice. I’m sure at this point, most of the folks reading this have had to deal with somebody they loved dying. The first few days really is bizarre. You’re in a daze. Your decision making skills are shit. You’re tired. Tifa ignores the fact that she’s in a daze and makes decisions anyway to cope with it. But she lives. She rebuilds her life in Midgar, she has a job, has a place to live, and then decides to go the Barret route and get revenge.

Vincent is the most similar to Cloud in how he deals with loss and guilt. He sleeps. For 20 years. Vincent goes from Turk Viincent to Eternal Sin Vincent. He blames himself for all that happened to Lucretcia. He’s alone. Sleeping. For 20 years. This probably would be a good example of what would have happened to Cloud if Tifa wasn’t there. He would have spiraled in to guilt and - ultimately - would have died. Vincent couldn’t die, so sleep it was.

As for Tifa and Cloud, specifically. Cloud probably wouldn’t have joined the military if Tifa never fell down Mt. Nibel. He probably would have stayed in Nibelheim (or followed her wherever she went, he did have it pretty bad for her) and then they all would have perished. It’s to be assumed that Sephiroth would have still come to Nibelheim and burned it down. Cloud and Tifa had nothing to do with him doing that. All of the catalysts for that were from before those two were even born, so nothing was going to stop that. 

Without Tifa, Cloud probably would have died at the Sector 7 train station. I think the flashback with Zack in the OG (even though its optional) is to show how bad of shape he was in. The guards say to leave him because he’s pretty much done for. Somehow he does make it to Midgar, but I don’t think he would have lasted much longer. Zack got him 90% of the way back. Tifa did the rest and ultimately brought him back to “human status” even though it wasn’t really him at this point. 

People start to shit on Tifa because she doesn’t come out and tell Cloud right away that somethings wrong with him. She doesn’t correct him about the flashback in Kalm. She keeps it going. The thing is, she admits this was wrong. That it’s a character flaw. Literally right after Cloud falls in to the Lifestream after giving Sephiroth the Black Materia, she tells the story of finding Cloud at the Sector 7 train station, and how she’s always been this way... She’s non-confrontational. She didn’t want to upset him. I think she thought that something bad really would have happened to him. 

And ultimately, she saves him again. 

Nobody else could have helped Cloud rebuild himself. Nobody.

Tifa is the only person in the world at this point that knew Cloud prior to the events of the Nibelheim Incident. She is the only one that could guide him. She’s one of the only survivors from the Nibelheim incident. Nobody else could have done it. Cloud’s subconscious is almost entirely made up of things about Tifa. The Promise, Tifa’s mother’s death and the Mt. Nibel incident, the reactor and how he hid from her because he was ashamed he didn’t make First Class SOLDIER. Every piece of his subconscious has to do with Tifa somehow. 

[ruthlesslistener]

B, H, T, U?

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

-You got me into Grimm/Herrah and now that pairing has been lurking in the back of my mind ever since because holy S H I T they would vibe so well. Both of them are scary powerful creatures with tiny little demon children that they love dearly and Herrah already has experience with, er, handling gods, so she’d adapt pretty quickly to Grimm’s antics, I think. Plus the idea of PK somehow hearing that his one ‘living’ child got adopted by the clown vulture because he hooked up with Herrah the Beast is HILARIOUS

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

-Oh jeez. I’d say that books, games, and anime are my current best sources rn?? In that order, too. Books are the easiest to justify having and I’m a super quick reader, I tend to watch game playthroughs before ever getting them and youtube is easy to watch on breaks, and then anime is usually broken up into manageable chunks. TV is inconvenient even when I’m allowed to watch it, movies are too long, and I don’t think I’ve ever watched any western animated shows that I actually really liked, so those are out of my books (granted, I’ve barely watched any at all, so bear that in mind)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

-YES and it is that Hollow is a sweetheart, Grimm is Good actually (y’all just assume gods of death are naturally evil), Herrah was a great mom in the time that she had, PK and WL were never intentionally cruel, just Out Of It and desperate, and Lurien was actually important to the city in some way shape or form (bc why the fuck else would he have a tower?? To paint??? Unless ‘Watcher’ always was a duty of sorts and he inherited it, but I feel like we’d have heard about his predecessors in the lore somewhere, at least via statues or something) 

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

-Ough time to use ones other than Hollow Knight for once

The Silmarillion: Maedhros. Hands down Maedhros. Dude’s a classic example of ‘the road to hell was paved with good intentions’, and his story man,,,his story fucks me UP. He’s so goddamned tragic and it’s so devestating to see someone who was such a good person and princeling turn into a desperate mess forced to run a young mother off of a cliff because of an oath his father made him take in a moment of anger and grief. Falls from grace are amazing, but fuck, they h u r t

Bloodborne: Lady Maria. Not only is she really fuckin hot, she’s also a terrifying, capable fighter with a strong sense of morality and guilt at her war crimes, which is even sexier than her killing you with her flaming blood magic. Pair that with her being one of the first hunters, having a tragic failed redemption arc, and being essentially a vampire on top of it all, and whooo boy no one else in Bloodborne takes the cake. Her fight gave me legit goosebumps and is my favorite in the game with how much it feels like an honorable dance between two hunters; I just wish that we could have given her a kinder release than another death. Like knowing that she didn’t have to guard the clocktower from us and her failing in protecting the Orphan of Kos allowed the Nightmare to finally find peace, letting her fade away knowing that the damage she unknowingly brought to so many hunters was finally being undone.

Wings of Fire: Darkstalker. Tossup between him and Winter, really, but I think Darkstalker won out bc more people dislike him than they do with Winter. I think Darkstalker was a really interesting, fascinating character whose fall into becoming an antagonist primarily swung about due to him stubbornly refusing to get better coping mechanisms. He was an exceptionally powerful kid placed in a bad home who got no help until it was too late, and I really feel for him on that one. I do wish he got the chance to redeem himself with all the messy feelings and bitterness that came along with it, and I do think that people blew his crimes out of proportion (which. He did awful shit like mind-controlling but before it all went to hell, he was being used as a war weapon, so what do you expect), but he was also a delightfully intelligent dragon and I feel like he could have actually been a good king, if he was never trained to see total control over people as the only way to get things done

[imthepunchlord]

For all the new things, I kinda wished they showed all of this before SwSh was released, now it's a bit more pricey and I feel like it's kinda rushed. Also for the Mystery Dungeon, I'm excited for that bit I really hope that include all the starters and non starters as well in the final.

I wish they went ahead and pushed back SaS so it’d be released 2020, with this expansion back already included, and the new places we go to can be unlocked during our adventure or as postgame. I would’ve fine waiting and would’ve preferred it, especially to give them a chance to do more with the main story which is pretty weak and made little sense, and Rose was a very forced in villain. Also made no sense in the story climax. Watching playthroughs and seeing the climax of SaS I’m just... 

Its also frustrating that you get to hear about things happening and not actually witness or help. Like, its nice having adults acknowledge that you’re a kid, don’t worry about it we’ll handle it, but at the same time, that’s a chunk of story we have a right to see, and we’re kids in this game, we don’t always do what adults say we should follow and see what’s going on. That could’ve been something optional. Go to event to see what’s happening or skip it to go to the next gym. 

And this is turning into a rant so I’m going to put this below. For those that just want to read my comments on Mystery Dungeon, scroll down till you get to the Pikachu gif, I’ll talk about it below. 

Also there could’ve been improvements with the rivals. Marnie is suuuuper intriguing and I love her, Bede I also like though that’s more me missing mean rivals and man, he’s a brat and I say that with affection. But in the grand scheme of things, they felt pointless. More could’ve been done to include them. And Hop. God, Hop. I know people like him, but from what I’ve seen, he seems like the most annoying “friend rival” made to date. He does not know what personal space is. He waits for you in front of gyms. He waits for you on new routes. He has to comment on almost every move you make in your fights with him. 

I don’t even own the games but just from the playthroughs I’ve watched I’m just... go away. Leave the lead alone. Everywhere you turn, he’s there, waiting for you. It also feels like he only got endorsed because he’s Leon’s younger brother. There’s nothing about him that I like. And, I don’t know why he gets the other wolf legendary? What makes him worthy?What makes him want to be a Professor in the future? That’s out of nowhere. 

Something more could’ve been done with Hop, maybe an arc of him resenting you a little because every match you beat him, and he’s the Champion’s younger brother and you just seem to stay ahead. Maybe let us have more scene of him talking with Sonia since he’s going to be her future assistant. If he’s going to be constantly stalking us and waiting for us, then yeah, let’s at least better build up where his character will go. 

Then there’s the issue of pokemon. With it pretty much confirmed they just reused models from gen 7, yeah, there’s no reason to not include more pokemon. If not the National Dex, which wouldn’t bother me too much, then go ahead and add about half. At most, I’d love pokemon included that would make the most sense. Like, lion is a big symbol throughout all of Europe. There should be a lion in Galar, either Litleo or Shinx returning if not a new lion pokemon. And with the expansion packs, yeah, they’re already adding 200 each pack. 

And a lot of this dlc should already be in the game. If 400 pokemon are going to be added in, they should already be there. The new Giga forms should already be there and we should’ve seen the Giga Venusaur and Blastoise the same time as Charizard. 

I’m also salty that there’s no going to Kalos. Maybe it’ll be a future expansion, and that’s a dlc I wouldn’t mind, but those are two very linked countries they’re based on. And Galar truly isn’t a big region. The Wild Area isn’t as big as it could be. Like, it doesn’t have to be BotW big, but it could’ve been bigger than what we got. And if not expanding the Wild Area, we could’ve had Kalos as a new region to go to, and more gyms for us to do. 

ALSO.

I am not a fan of you refacing the gyms and having them act as your “Elite Four”. 

They’ve already been fought. Aside from the first two, you’ve already fought all the star Giga forms they have. Its a really lazy decision. At least, you can have the two first gym leaders come in since you didn’t fight their star Giga forms, and include the other two version exclusive gym leaders as the other two. Just for some freshness in this final challenge. 

I know they’re not big on voice acting, but, they should’ve put some form of VA into these games. Its a little awkward to get animated cutscenes and there’s no voices coming forth. And its at its worst when you get to Piers and you see him singing away, I presume loudly, into his mic and its just awkward cause there’s no voice and you can hear him tapping his foot to the music and its just so off putting to watch cause something is missing: a voice! And you know what’s the kicker? Pokemon has included voice acting before. 

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There is no reason to not do something similar, at least for Piers’ intro so its not so awkward to watch. 

And then post game... the official post game... I, I honestly can’t say what is even going on? Those two blonde bimbos, those designs, who agreed to pass them? For sword guy, I don’t know whether I should be laughing or uncomfortable. Its like, an in between especially when his hair flops around. Also, their reasoning, they’re causing chaos in Galar because they didn’t like a book Sonia wrote??? 

The villains in these games are just so dumb.

Like, Rose had a good motive but, he is still forced in. And he activates the climax for no reason. He was promised by Leon that he would help with Eternatus, all he had to do was wait through one match. One match that would’ve been 30 minutes at most, roughly. Yet he couldn’t wait for one match and went ahead and woke up Eternatus, does a video asking for help, and when you arrive, stops you for a battle that doesn’t make sense to have cause he asked for help why is he holding you up with a battle?? 

And Team Yell. Supposed to be like, a 2nd Team Skull and these guys could dream to live up to Team Skull. They can’t. They’re not funny or enjoyable at all. And my friend brought up a good point on the issue of having Team Yell based on punks when they’re supposed to be the “villainous” team. Punks, historically, were rebelling against an unfair system, they were progressive and revolutionary. They stood up for LBGT rights, they stood for having individual freedom, and just wanted to break the restrictions society wanted to place on people, let people express themselves and be who they want to be. 

If you want Team Yell to be a 2nd Skull and play around with punks as their theme, then they should’ve been set up to be red herrings as well. Be wary at first and then later find that they have hearts of gold, and mean well, even if they can be a tad extreme sometimes. And maybe they can help build up the danger of Rose, who in turn wants to paint them in with a bad image since they’re going against him and what’s normal in society. 

Anyway... Sword and Shield honestly should’ve been pushed back. They should’ve been saved for 2020, or even 2021, or however how much time they need. I would’ve been fine waiting. A lot of fans would be. But what we got wasn’t worth the $60 it was being sold at, and definitely not worth the $90 its being sold at with the expansion packs, and as far as I know, these are very, very small areas to explore. Cause as we’ve seen with SaS, they built it up to be big and grand and, well, the Wild Area was smaller than expected and the whole was far shorter than expected. You could beat it in 20 hours roughly. 

I even have mixed feelings on there being no enhanced version, cause these games do have potential, they just needed more time and polish, and then it could’ve worth the $60 price. But also thankful that there’s not another 2nd version and we may be getting a few expansion packs instead. 

Though I do think a lot they’re bringing in should already be in the game. 

Anyway, enough ranting about Sas, onto Mystery Dungeon!

Demo I think could’ve been a little longer, they stop you before you go on the Skarmory mission, I think it could’ve been a better placement to end after the Skarmory mission. 

Anyway, I like the changes so far. I love you can choose a different pokemon if you don’t like what you got from the test. I love that you have an updated move pool, though I feel kinda OP but you also kinda need it for these games cause I remember them being so hard and as a starter that can’t evolve till like, post game, yeah you’re going to need that help. I love that you get to wear a little scarf. Design wise, a little weird at first but it grew on me. Kinda reminds me of Okami. 

By trailer, for sure they’re adding more pokemon in. Lucario is seen in the team, when before, you only saw Lucario as a statue in Red Blue, I believe? Its been a long time. But they only had Gen 1-3 in RB, and Lucario is there so I would think they’d add in a lot more pokemon. 

For starters, I’m hopeful that beating the game, if you replay, you’ll get more options for the starters to play as and have as your partner. I’d loooove to have a chance to play as Popplio. Mega Evolution is confirmed, I wonder if regional forms would also be playable, like if we could evolve into Alolan Marowak or be one of the other two regional Meowths. Otherwise, everyone you could be in the old game is there, with no gender restriction! You can be a female Cubone! A male Eevee! A female Cyndaquil! I’m so happy about that since as a kid, I wanted to play Cyndaquil but never got it in the test and had to look it up and was bummed that it was male only and I wanted to be a girl. 

My biggest hope though is that with this, we’ll have a chance to play two player, since you have a team of two usually, and your friend or sibling or SO can play your partner. 

I am pleasantly surprised with it so far, though I will be holding off when its released in a few months, just going to listen to all reviews once they beat the game and if its very positive, cause SaS had a strong start and then went down hill with Gamefreak rushing it and cutting corners. I’m hopeful for this remake but cautious still. 

[7classyantiquestores]

Mass Effect Series TPK

One of my recent playthroughs of Mass Effect was dedicated to the goal of “kill as many teammates as possible while still making it to the end of ME3 and still technically winning the game”. I used the Genesis DLC to kill Wrex and the Virmire casualty Kaiden, as well as a combo of skipping every possible side quest and a surprisingly complex strategy to kill all but two teammates in ME2, allowing Shepard to live to ME3. In this case I left Thane and Miranda alive. In addition to the loss of those characters who can die in the last game (Thane, Miranda, and the Virmire survivor Ashley), I’ve found a lot of really interesting tidbits by having the majority of the major side characters gone. 

ME3 Results

Unsurprisingly, the overall story dynamic is a lot less for having over two-thirds of the cast removed. Side missions lack the additional motivations, and scenes normally filled by reminiscing or long-standing character interaction are replaced with cut and dry, down to business cut-scenes. 

Surprisingly, almost no dialogue references the staggering losses from the last game. The occasional comment is made by other squad mates who knew them, but not much from Shepard. 

This is a great way to really appreciate and love the cast. You never know what a good thing you have until they’re all dead. I cheered out loud when the normal team lineup came up on my other file. You’ll be surprised, you even miss the boring or annoying ones. 

Team composition is much more challenging, with only EDI, James, and Liara available as squad mates. These three can only be killed with low enough EMS on the final run, and EDI in the Destroy ending also.

In Priority: Palavan, no replacement is given for Garrus, and no squad mate is sent back to the Normandy when it experiences trouble. Some of Garrus’ dialogue in the first half of the mission is given to the Turian general. Additionally, Liara will comment wondering where Garrus would be if he were here...probably in the thick of it. 

In Grissom Academy: Emergency Evacuation, Jack is replaced as the students’ leader by Jason Prangley, who proves himself to be a surprisingly capable biotic and leader. Making it all the sadder when he is shot after saving Rodriguez at the end of the mission. You also are able to hear additional dialogue. Rodriguez, having just killed for the first time, will ask a hard question of Shepard when you first encounter the students in Orion Hall. 

In Priority: Sur’Kesh, Wreav remains as the Wrex stand-in, creating a slightly more hostile, slightly less controlled environment for the talks. On Sur’Kesh itself, STG agent Paddok Wiks takes Mordin’s place quite completely, having been the spy, helping Shepard evacuate Bakara, and coming aboard to work on the genophage cure. Interesting that Mordin wasn’t the only Salarian motivated enough to make a change in the Krogan situation. Wiks also has his own take on why helping the Krogan is the right choice and some altered dialogue due to his surprisingly different character. 

In Attican Traverse: Krogan Team, Grunt is replaced by Urdnot Dagg. Dagg is an older Krogan, chosen for his post as a feared and respected soldier, and shows himself an enthusiastic fighter, even jealous of Shepard for earning the Reapers’ attention as enemies. Actually a great one-off character. Unlike Grunt, however, he is impossible to save, overcome by Ravagers while buying Shepard time to escape. 

In Priority: Tuchanka, most of the story will proceed the same. Paddok Wiks successfully synthesizes a cure and discovers the sabotage if you don’t tell him. Apparently someone else wouldn’t have gotten it wrong. That said, without Maelon’s data, Eve dies. Lacking both Eve and Wrex, it makes more sense not to cure the genophage, since all fingers then point to a Krogan revenge streak. Paddok is relatively easy to persuade to that end, and the conversation about it provides an interesting point of view on the subject as well. 

In Priority: Citadel II, Thane still saved the Salarian councilor, since he was one of my two survivors of ME2 (as he dies here). However, after skipping most of the side quests and interactions, you can be forced into killing the Virmire survivor in the facedown at the end of the mission. This unlocks some new dialogue with both Liara and with Joker and EDI, reminiscing and questioning over the loss. 

In Gellix: Science Lab (the ex-Cerberus scientists), Dr. Webber drags the injured scientist out at the beginning, and it’s a little harder for you to convince Brynn you’re not Cerberus. A mix between Brynn and random scientists pick up Jacob’s important lines and actions. Same events besides. Pretty dry overall. 

In Lesuss: Monastery (Ardat-Yakshi), it proceeds mostly the same, just excluding Samara’s scenes. Difference being a line from Falere referencing her death, and different dialogue with the same at the mission end, though Falere still ends up staying at the Monastery and Rila still ends up dying. 

In Priority: Geth Dreadnought, Admiral Xen will accompany you in Tali’s place. This leads to some altered dialogue and points of view on the proceedings, and Xen is actually quite funny. Legion is replaced by “Geth VI”, who is a disappointingly exact copy of Legion in every way except lacking the experiences with Shepard and company. The Geth Fighter Squadron mission is also the same, just lacking the one clip with Legion meeting Shepard. 

In Priority: Rannoch, the first part goes as usual until the final scene. Having conveniently crash-landed on Rannoch, Admiral Raan replaces Tali in the Geth-Quarian showdown. Without Tali or Legion present, it is impossible to call off the Quarian forces after allowing the Geth upgrade, leading to the destruction of the Quarian fleet. Raan also shoots herself. It kinda sucks. 

Priority: Thessia is, surprisingly, no different. Guess they really know how to protect plot important characters. 

In Priority: Horizon, most proceeds the same until the end. A non-ME2-loyal, unwarned, unaided Miranda will be mortally injured by Kai Leng and ultimately die after the confrontation with her father. However, Oriana is still able to be freed, and shares a touching farewell with her sister prior to Miranda’s death. Miranda then entrusts her safety to Shepard. There’s also a sad conversation with Joker afterwards where he lists many of the friends you’ve had die so far, asking how long before it’s just “you and me against the whole Reaper fleet?” Not long, Joker, not long. 

The Citadel DLC felt the losses more than anything else so far, but the core crew (unkillable to this point) means the story is just the same. It’s still funny and charming, although it’s painfully obvious that it was written for a much larger crew. Sadly, although not unexpectedly considering it’s a DLC, no references are made to lost teammates through the entire run. 

In the first leg of Citadel missions, Liara comes in as the first companion, taking the “nice outfit” line, James shows up to grenade launcher the enemy shuttle instead of Wrex (and later is smugly proud at his chance to rescue Shep), and EDI is the only extra squadmate Joker brings in. In the casino follow-on, I brought James, triggering an amusing scene where he and Brooks flirt and walk in arm-in-arm, making Shepard third wheel.

In Citadel Archives, we see a sad attempt to keep all three teams, with my chosen two squadmates in Team Shepard, Brooks and the third squadmate in Team Mako, and in Team Hammerhead comes...Cortez (granted, decked in some sick battle armor) along with some random marine lady???, who only appears in the background from time to time to convince you Cortez isn’t alone, but doesn’t appear in cutscenes. They really stretched so they didn’t have to have new dialogue for less teams. 

In Citadel: Party, I did energetic/quiet/quiet. Luckily with James, Cortez, Joker, EDI, Traynor, and Liara, the even numbers mean there’s always someone for each person to talk to. First part is much the same conversations as with a full group, just thinner crowd and less dialogue. The second part you can see Joker and Traynor jokingly argue over EDI, after which they agree to never speak of it again, while Cortez unsuccessfully offers to make EDI a drink, and Liara and James have the obligatory SR-1 vs SR-2 talk downstairs. In the final part, Traynor tries to temper EDI and Glyph’s attempt to make curry, Cortez and Joker argue over who’s the better pilot, and James and Liara play poker. The photo is funny, since they could definitely have all fit on the couch, but game mechanics mean you get Cortez and James awkwardly standing in the back alone while the others sit down. At the end, since my Shep was unromanced, Joker delivers the farewell and “good ride” speech, which is sweet. 

In Priority: Cerberus Headquarters, a unit called Legion Assassin appears, since I handed Legion over to Cerberus in ME2, but he’s easy to fight, and everything is the same besides. 

And finally, we get to Priority: Earth. 

For the most part, the story proceeds as intended. Like all other major missions before, all the vital characters for this mission live until this point. But here’s the breakdown on how it went:

Corez dies, having not talked with him. Victus and Wreav make their appearances for their respective peoples, and a Geth Prime is present in the war room to brief on the Geth status, lacking Tali or Legion. No one sounds particularly optimistic. Without Eve, Wreav sounds like he’s already making preparations for war on the galaxy, but also drops hints that the Genophage cure isn’t working. The three remaining companions can be engaged as usual, with no additional lines. 

When the time comes for the final push, James and Liara are knocked out by the truck while dashing for the beam, and then Shepard can only watch horrified as a direct hit from Harbinger takes them out. Climbing up to the Citadel and using the Destroy ending removes EDI, the Geth, and the Reapers. The low EMS rating means that most all life is vaporized from the surface of Earth, the Normandy catches fire and is severely damaged when the Crucible wave hits it, and no one is seen exiting it after it crashes. 

Hackett’s speech at the end, while admitting the victory, also shows multiple scenes of the destruction, and expresses some concerns about the future of the galaxy.

“We knew this war would test us. We knew the chances of victory were slim at best. But we are victorious. The Reapers are defeated. We deployed every strategy, fought every battle, sent every soldier and hero to the brink. We held nothing back. Now, it's up to the survivors to rebuild, to start again. I only hope the lessons learned in this war don't die along with those of us who fought to win it.”

Our final death tally:

Wrex and Kaiden killed in Mass Effect. 

All companions except for Miranda and Thane, as well as Dr. Chakwas and Kelley killed in Mass Effect 2. 

In Mass Effect 3...

Lost Eve and faked the Genophage cure, ensuring the failure of the Krogan people.

Thane killed, Miranda killed, and kill Ashley.

Sided with the Geth, causing the obliteration of the Quarian people.

Lost Cortez, Liara, and James at the end. 

Destroy ending kicked the Geth and EDI.

Low EMS vaporized most of Earth and left the rest of the Normandy crew ostensibly dead.

And last but not least, Shepard down.

Complete TPK.

My review: 

All in all, fun and surprisingly challenging to achieve, and resulted in many interesting differences from the typical route. On the impressive side, the game can self-correct solidly enough to carry the same story after losing nearly the entire cast. On the disappointing side, with only one or two exceptions, the story self-corrects so well that it hardly acknowledges your many losses. But overall, worth a playthrough! And, most importantly, I succeeded at the world’s most depressing Citadel party. 

My work here is done. 

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games: Unreal (Epic Megagames, 1998)

Unreal Tournament 2004 is my favorite videogame ever.  It's always a close match between it and the first Unreal Tournament, but 2k4 always manages to win out, if just barely.  However, I am of the firm, unyielding belief that UT2004, when played with both the ‘No Adrenaline’ and ‘UT Classic’ mutators, is far and away the best multiplayer fps experience anyone could ever ask for.  We'll get into that a bit later, because it's time for a bit of an explanation.

Unreal Tournament 2004 turns 15 this year, and I wanted to do something special to celebrate the release of a game I have such an unreasonably high appreciation for.  Up until the day of its official release 15 years ago, I'm going to be putting out one of my infrequent essays on the games in the series I have experience with, starting now with 1998’s Unreal.  I'll warn you, this one gets a bit rambly, but if you reach the end and still want more, take a look at the cooperative non-coop playthrough I did with a friend, where we each played a singleplayer campaign while discussing our experiences and thoughts on all aspects of the game.

But first, a little background.

I was born in 1992.  Wolfenstein 3D, the game commonly attributed as the progenitor of the entire FPS genre (yes I know about Maze and Battlezone and all the various first-person dungeon crawlers) was released three months later.  This makes me just barely older than the modern first -person shooter.  

My dad has worked in the business end of the tech industry since the 80s.  As a result, he was always very close to the then-rising PC gaming scene, and even dabbled in game dev for a few years.  His position in various companies made him a very early adopter of the ‘home pc,’ something still rare up until like the mid 90s, seriously.  He had free reign to take old hardware his workplace was replacing or to buy it for cheap, and by the time I was old enough to start forming memories that actually stuck around, there were two computers in the house.  

In 1994, id Software released Doom 2, and my dad bought a copy.  Thus began the long tradition of young me standing behind his chair to watch whatever he was playing, starting with Doom 2 LAN deathmatch with my older brother, progressing to his playthrough of Quake 1 and 2, and the first stop in this extended flashback, Quake 2’s online deathmatch.

Young me knew what a marvel online deathmatch was, because my dad told me.  It's also just kind of a hard concept for a 5 year old to grasp, especially back then before the internet was in the public consciousness.  Nowadays I doubt there's any lack of understanding, and that's cool.  

(And yes, I know Q1 had online play but I never managed to catch any of it.  Both my dad and brother liked its singleplayer more.)

So where does Unreal come in?  Actually, not until about 2009.  Bear with me.

In 2000, when I was 8 years old, my dad and brother had gone to spend the day at a local tech trade show.  This was a common enough occurrence since we lived less than an hour away from Philly and that attracted a lot of businessy types.  They'd usually come back with a new game or two, and I'd have something new to watch over one of their shoulders.

That day, my brother brought this home.

And said to me, “Hey, you should try this one out.  It's from Epic.”

Or at least something to that effect.

Now, at this point in my life, I wasn't as avid a videogame connoisseur.  The first game I ever truly felt grab me was Starcraft, which I played way more than I probably should have.  But also at that time was a growing collection of titles from Epic Megagames.  Epic Pinball is one of the first things I remember playing by myself, followed by Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and One Must Fall: 2097.

So I'd been with Epic for a while at that point.

So, Unreal Tournament.  Spoilers for the next post, but I loved it, and I still love it.  It capped off my experiences with shooters from the mid to late 90s with the first taste I was allowed myself, no longer stolen from over a shoulder while hoping my mother wouldn't choose then to come down the stairs and yell at me for watching and at my dad for letting me.  It gave me a love for arena shooters, for the chunky, harshly and gaudily lit 3d graphics, for imaginative weapons, for tightly designed maps, and for a special sort of way to deliver a story buried in map and item descriptions…

But I'd never played Unreal.

Once, at a thrift store, I found a big-box copy of Unreal Gold, still in the shrink wrap, for five bucks.  “Oh, I think your dad has that one,” my mother said, turning me away from it.

He did not.

So in 2009, I finally bought Unreal for myself off Steam and promptly returned to the chunky 3d I had probably just been seeing a day prior because I put UT99 on my school laptop.  

Enough digressions, let's finally move into it.

Unreal is a strange game, and more than a little unlike its contemporaries.  See, from 1993 to 1998, shooters were kind of a one-note experience.  You, bad guys, big maps, many guns.  From Doom to Quake to Heretic to Blood to Rise of the Triad to Shadow Warrior to Duke Nukem to Dark Forces to anything else you could find in a magazine for mail-order, the shooter was a pretty standard experience.  Sure, this or that game had this or that thing that set it apart, some were more advanced than others for the time, but the general idea never really wavered:  Click on men from point A to B until you find all the keys and reach the exit.

That gameplay loop made the genre successful, and it's not exactly different now.  Keys could be anything, of course.  They were literal keys, sometimes they were gas for a generator, now they're mostly cutscene triggers, but the point is that you must locate them to progress.  Along the way, there wasn't much other than bloody slaughter to distract you, and that was fine.

It was fine.  For those 5 years.

Then, in 1998, a very special sort of game came out that changed the way not just shooters but videogames in general were presented.  A game that made expectations higher, products examined more critically.  I'm talking, of course, about Half-Life.

On November 19, 1998, Half-Life released and literally changed the course of game development.  It offered players a brilliantly constructed narrative delivered naturally by characters speaking in the moment rather than the then-common blocks of text before or after a level.  The setting, the Black Mesa research facility, was a meticulously planned space made to feel like a real location and not a jumble of corridors whose first concerns were how many monsters could fit in them.  Structured plot points replaced red and blue keycards, well-designed enemy encounters replaced rooms full of cannon fodder, and a new mentality replaced the old.

Which is a shame, because Unreal did something different, too.

Released earlier the same year on May 22, Unreal was the end result of a project always too ambitious for the four years it bounced around development.  Conceived first as a medieval RPG of sorts, Unreal eventually morphed into a sci-fi shooter set amid echoes of that original idea.  

In Unreal, there is no opening cutscene.  There is no opening text crawl or long train ride to prepare you.  The title screen is a looping fly-through of a location in the game made to show off various engine effects like reflective surfaces, particle emitters, real-time colored lighting, animated skyboxes, and volumetric fog.  Selecting New Game sends you to a loading screen where you quickly fade in from black, staring at the wrecked interior of . . . somewhere.  You start low on health and walled in on three sides.  As you step forward towards the only path available, a pleasant, computery voice calls out “Prisoner 849 escaping.”

You are Prisoner 849, you are on a prison ship, and it has crashed.  This is all evident within the first few seconds of the game.  As you progress through the first level, you can see half-broken displays showing the sudden path the ship took, read status logs of engines and ship components, and even get a little taste of some daily life among the prisoners and crew alike.  Yes, Unreal has text logs, but they're the good kind, used to inform the world rather than exposit at the player.  

Very quickly you learn that something else is aboard the ship.  Growls and snarls appear in the distance and screams of terror can be heard through the walls.  Every so often, the same calm robot voice calls out another number, another prisoner escaping.  This all tells us a good deal of the game’s primary theme.  You're just someone.

You are Prisoner 849.  You are not the captain of the ship, you are not the high profile super prisoner, you are not a space marine guarding the ship.  You are Prisoner 849, one of many to board the Vortex Rikers, and one of many to leave.

There are no friendly human NPCs in the game.  Two crewmembers aboard the ship live long enough for you to get close, but one bleeds out as you approach him and the other is slaughtered behind a door stuck partway open so that you can only see a mysterious pair of legs sprint away amid a shower of gore.  Shortly after, you catch a fleeting glimpse of a strange figure at the other end of a ventilation shaft, obscured by fog.

Unreal slowrolls its opening.  It's reminiscent of Quake 2’s opening level, though with no combat.  You're free to wander the small area of the ship, reading various inconsequential text logs and looking at various readouts.  Words like “unknown moon” and “sudden course alterations” pop up, telling - but not explicitly - that coming to wherever this is was unintended.

Eventually you leave, exiting through an emergency hatch somewhere on the side of the ship.  A few steps forward brings you to a somewhat common looking grass expanse, not too unheard of at the time.  You're closer to the ship’s bow, and a short walk around it and through the furrow it plowed in the ground leads to a small rise that still obscures the level until depositing you at just the right angle.

You stand close to the lip of a tall cliff overlooking a shimmering lake.  On the other side, a waterfall crashes over the cliff.  Trees dot the landscape, birds fly overhead, and small critters scurry away from you.

In truth, it looks more than a bit quaint today, but in 1998 it was without equal.  Unreal is a game that put an intense focus on its world, Na Pali.  This is a world inhabited for centuries or even millennia by the Nali, a race of four-armed pacifist aliens with a little bit of magic to their claim.  Some unknown time before you begin playing, another race known as the Skaarj arrive to exploit the planet for a resource called Tarydium, enslaving the Nali in the process.  

Here's where another game might set you up as the Big Badass Hero.  You, the lone survivor of this crash; them, the downtrodden alien race; the other them, the evil tyrants.  But Unreal never does that, because you're just someone.

Remember hearing those other prisoners escaping?  More did even before you woke up.  There's a small collection of Nali huts not far from the crash site where you can find the corpses of a few other prisoners and crewmembers from the Rikers next to some healing pickups - the Nali tried to care for them.  Small bits of visual storytelling like that appear all throughout the game coupled with its smart use of text logs, and it starts strong and stays strong.  A quick swim through a lake infested with carnivorous fish can lead you to a small secret where two dead escapees can be found next to a half-eaten fish.  Further in, a dead human sits in a corner of a room, a dead Nali in the center, a flak cannon pickup on top of the latter showing their frantic last stand as the Nali abandons its pacifistic ways to protect its companion.  Much later, you’re in a Skaarj warehouse where you can see stacks of boxes bearing the same logo from the Vortex Rikers - as you’ve been doing your thing, the Skaarj have gone back and started looting the ship.  

Unreal is a game where things have been happening before you the player show up, and continue to happen while you the player are playing.  The plot does not start with you and it does not wait for you.  You’re just someone who’s been thrown into this whole situation as it unfolds, from a centuries-old conflict on Na Pali itself to the more immediate conflict of the crashed Vortex Rikers and what happened to its crew.  Around almost every corner is another story just like yours, and the fact that we’re playing Prisoner 849 and not Prisoner 521 or Ensign Burt Masterson or whoever else feels like a roll of the dice.  

Half-Life gets a lot of praise for finally putting the player behind just a regular guy.  Gordon Freeman has been made to become something of videogaming’s first everyman in the way that John McClane of Die Hard ushered in the everyman action hero.  But honestly, Half-Life wouldn’t happen without Gordon.  A scientist tells you right away that they’ve been waiting for you so they could start the test.  Without Gordon Freeman, the plot would never have progressed, and that makes it distinct from Unreal.  Half-Life’s various expansions actually do this better; Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay all put you in control of someone who is distinctly more Just Someone than Gordon Freeman.

But Unreal, man, Unreal just does it so well.  Occupied Na Pali is a world that does not care about you as a singular entity.  The Skaarj don’t turn and attack you because you’re The Player On A Mission, they attack you because you’re some dumb human who goes places they’re not supposed to and shoots all their friends (yes, Skaarj have friends, read the text logs).  Hell, your mission isn’t even anything particularly grand!  From the beginning, nobody tells you to do anything, you just wander out of the ship and start trying to find a way to leave.  Obviously from a game standpoint, there’s always going to be a level start and a level end, and you will go towards the end because it’s a videogame, but in the context of that game, the story is “just find a way out.”

There is a thread you pick up on early, though it might be a bit strange and requires some minor explaining here real quick:  in Unreal, you have the option when starting a new game to choose your player model.  You can see yourself a few times throughout the game - Unreal has reflective surfaces in a few spots - so it’s not totally useless.  By default, Prisoner 849 is a woman.  Canonically, Prisoner 849 is a woman.  

Early on, past the first level, you enter an ancient Nali temple, ruined and defaced by the Skaarj over the years, but not without its still-devout followers.  It’s here that you get the first hints of what seems like it might be a story more appropriate for a 90s shooter.  You see a carving on a wall that talks about “the Princess from the Stars” coming to deliver retribution to “the Demons from the Sky.”  Now, if you’ve changed your player model to male, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  But obviously the intent is to key you the player into the mentality that “oh, I’m some prophesied Chosen One, right?”  Yes and no.  We'll get back to it.

See, about a third of the way into the game you come across another crashed human ship, the ISV Kran.  The Kran, gameplay-wise, is a mixed bag of levels ranging from good to meh, the worst of it stemming from symmetrical layouts and a lack of texture variety.  But in the narrative as it unfolds, the Kran is very important.  

So far, you've passed through a dozen unique and varied environments ranging from the cliffs at the start to the ancient temple, to a Tarydium mine near a small village, a high-tech processing plant nearby, and even an old coliseum or sports arena converted by the Skaarj into a torture chamber.  The Kran is your first look at anything human-built since leaving the Rikers.

I'm not going to go through the game bit by bit, but the leadup to the Kran is important.  Throughout that first third of the game, you find escaped crew and prisoners from the Vortex Rikers fairly frequently.  The events of the game are happening without you, and things aren't going well.  

Once inside the Kran, things change a little.  Amid the text logs of status readouts and final words before the Skaarj broke in, there's a tiny narrative being constructed about a crewmember by the name of Kira.  Kira had managed to do much of what you have - she's armed herself and set off in search of a way off Na Pali with a small group of other crew, some of who you find, once again already dead.  One of Unreal’s longest maps comes in around this point, and Kira is a large focus.  She was captured, made contact with a group of Nali also held prisoner in the temple (lots of temples in Unreal, the Nali are very religious), mounted her escape, and had to leave her last remaining crewmember behind, his final log suggesting she headed for something she heard was held in the nearby belltower…

This small aside is a brilliant piece of the game, it really is.  When I said there was another game or another story behind every corner, I meant it.  Kira’s journey from the Kran to Bluff Eversmoking is a full story on its own, and it lends some interesting insight towards a lot of the various prophecies and Nali beliefs you've run into along the way.  From the Kran to the Bluff, you find more mentions of the Messiah, of the Sky Princess.  You, right?  Right?

Or was it Kira?  

Kira followed the same path you did.  Less of it, sure, but she fought the Skaarj infesting sacred Nali temples.  She, an alien warrior, cleansed their holy places of demons who had enslaved them.  A small group of Nali risked their own lives to break her out when she was captured, based only on their horror that she would be executed.  

This is why keeping 849 as the default lady playermodel is important.  The text logs were written with that in mind in order to muddle things.  Are you the Messiah?  Is Kira?  Presumably both of you just want to go home, and maybe falling into a vaguely defined prophecy with incredibly generous qualifications (not Nali or Skaarj, girl, can kill Skaarj) was just an accident.

It certainly seems that way, because when you finally find Kira, she's dead.  Your hopes of finding another living human, the Nali’s hopes in an alien warrior, lie dead on the ground with an empty pistol beside her.  

Unreal, and Na Pali within it, does not care about Prisoner 849.  The story does not revolve around you nor does it even stop to make room for you.  Any one of those human bodies you pass throughout the entire game was another escapee.  Between the Vortex Rikers and the Kran, you follow a trail of bodies almost up until the end of the game.  Except for a very small stretch at the end, someone has beaten you to where you are.  But you go further.  You encounter things no human has.  You escape Na Pali.

Eventually.

If it sounds like I'm taking Unreal a bit too seriously, it's because I most likely am.  I admit that.  But Unreal just creates such a unique atmosphere among games that I can't help it.  Videogames are inherently power fantasies, and most facilitate this by making you play as someone obviously powerful.  BJ Blazinsky.  Doomguy.  Lo Wang.  Duke Nukem.  A jedi.  Even in Call of Duty, where you often just play as some grunt, you get to be the special grunt who sees all the coolest stuff first.  And yes, again, even Half-Life doesn't start without you.  Gordon becomes mythologized even in the first game, to say nothing of Half-Life 2.  In Unreal, there's nobody to put you on a pedestal.  Na Pali has its own problems and you're just plopped down in the middle of them while trying to solve your own.  It isn't your fault that they intersect.

So it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that one of my other favorite games ever is another hero-by-random-circumstance romp through an uncaring world, Dark Souls.  If you like the narrative themes Dark Souls has going on, you'll like Unreal, end of story.

Wait, no, not end of story, because all I did was wax philosophical about the theme for like 8 pages.  I gotta talk about design now, ‘cause hot damn does my love of Unreal not stop with flowery prose.

The Skaarj are the primary antagonistic force in the game, but they're some kind of powerful empire with other races on their payroll.  After escaping the Vortex Rikers, gaping in awe at the waterfall, and spending some time chasing harmless wildlife around the field, the first actual enemy you fight is a Brute.  

Brutes are big lumps of meat with two rocket pistols and a permanent scowl.  They move slow, they turn slow, and they fire slow.  The first one you fight is really close to the exit of an indoor area.  What Epic have done here is create an excellent enemy encounter.

Nothing in Unreal has hitscan weapons.  Ignore Legend Entertainment’s Return to Na Pali, I'm gonna.  That means that everything coming your way can be dodged.  Two rocket pistols sounds scary, but you're in an open area and you have the ability to strafe.  If you're somehow not comfortable doing that while shooting, that's why the Brute’s so big, he's hard to miss.  

From there, you get exposed to the tentacle and the Razorfly.  The Tentacle is essentially a stationary, ceiling-mounted autoturret that fires a single projectile at you every half second or so, and the Razorfly is a big bug that hits you with melee attacks.  Neither are particularly challenging, but all three so far get you ready for your first encounter with a Skaarj.

You're in a small facility and have just shut off a force field.  Coming back through the hallway, bars suddenly slam out from the wall, blocking your progress.  The music fades out.  And one by one, the lights turn off until you're sitting in pure darkness.  You get a few seconds to sweat before the music kicks back in, the wall beside you slides open, flashing red emergency lights appear, and a large shape leaps out at you.

The first encounter with a Skaarj is cramped and claustrophobic, and intended to have you miss a lot of its capabilities.  It runs around, does a forward leaping melee attack, and can shoot little bolts of energy at you.  At the time, you only have two weapons: the Automag, a hitscan pistol with a decent fire rate, and the Dispersion Pistol, a projectile energy weapon you can charge up that acts in the same capacity as Doom’s fist or Quake’s axe as a holdout weapon.  You'll most likely take out the Skaarj with the Automag because there isn't a way to run out of ammo with it unless you try, so you most likely won't see how this type of enemy reacts to projectiles.

Because, see, Unreal has very smart AI, and the people who made these enemies took great advantage of that fact.  The Brutes and Razorflies of the level so far are pretty simple cannon fodder type stuff, they amble around and attack towards you.  Once you're away from that first encounter, the Skaarj enemies have a few tricks.

A Skaarj will try to circlestrafe you.  If you're using a projectile weapon, a Skaarj will dodge your attacks with a pretty damn high success rate (deviously, the very next weapon you get after the Automag is the Tarydium Stinger, a projectile-based minigun, and you start seeing Skaarj commonly around the same time).  If a Skaarj is getting near death and has allies close by, it'll try to run away towards them.  Sometimes a Skaarj will fake its death to try to catch you by surprise.  It won't ever get back up while you're looking or within a certain range, and you can take the time to see if flies start buzzing around the supposed corpse or just gib it to make sure.  A Skaarj will intuitively use cover, as well, thanks to a dead-simple pathfinding mechanism inside the level editor.

A Skaarj is a really cool enemy today, let alone in 1998, half a year before everyone lost their shit over Half-Life’s stilted Marine encounters.

Unreal keeps a pretty steady flow of enemy varieties coming your way, as well.  Various types of Skaarj show up, often with ranks padded out by the Krall, another race they employ or enslave, and they have plenty of variety among them as well.  

But Na Pali isn't just a collection of levels stuffed full of bad guys to click on.  Most levels actually don't have all that many enemies to them, instead relying on strong encounter design over sheer overwhelming odds.  . . . Most.

No, Na Pali is a world, and Unreal wants you to believe that.  The game bounces you between open outdoor areas and various structures at a healthy pace, and it always manages to give it all a fresh coat of paint.  Harmless critters hop around or soar high above, schools of fish scatter when you explore a lake, beasts of burden grumble at you as you charge past their pens, flak cannon in hand.  And better yet, enemies aren't often just waiting around for you to show up.  They have things to do or time to waste, and may very well be doing that when you come across them.  In areas controlled by the Skaarj, you can often see them tapping away at computers or just staring out a window before you alert them, and Krall mercenaries are fond of drinking or playing dice.  Brutes amble around on patrol patterns, stopping every now and then to scratch themselves.  The more feral Slith enemies found near water tend to just be swimming around until they're alerted.

These tiny details make Na Pali feel like a place, and the levels you play through are no different.  From the wrecked Vortex Rikers to the various Nali temples to the Kran and even up to the final levels set on the Skaarj mothership, the levels make room for details like bedrooms, kitchens, and even bathrooms in a way that shooters just sort of didn't usually do at that point.  Sure, you'd have a bathroom in another game every so often, but it was usually there for a gag or some sort of reference.  Unreal makes a concentrated effort to really sell you on these levels, and it works.  There's so much variety in the maps that not a lot has a chance to get boring, though sometimes, as I mentioned before, things can get a bit muddy.  The map Terraniux and the middle levels of the Kran are a bit less navigationally-friendly than they could have been, but there's nothing as egregious as the later levels of Doom or any of the other maps from various games that are mazes first and gameplay sections second.  There are no out-of-place platforming sections or agonizing breaks for switch puzzles.  There's just a world as you might find it in real life.

Another strength of Unreal’s level design is that sometimes it just lets you take a break.  You might go minutes without seeing an enemy, leaving you free to explore your surroundings.  There's even a level that has an entire segment dedicated to calmly floating down a river on a small boat, with no combat at all.  It comes after a challenging combat section and acts as a nice little breather with great visuals and fantastic music.

Oh man, Unreal’s music.  Never before or again have I heard a more distinct soundtrack in a game.  Unreal has its fair share of late-90s electronic tracks, but the majority of its music is a very chill mix of unusual instruments.  I know next to nothing about music, so let me just drop some links real quick.

Dusk Horizon

Nali Chant

War Gate

Surfacing

It's such an intriguing mix of styles, and it's all perfectly suited for the environments you hear them in.  All of the levels are colored very deliberately, and the music matches the mood that texturing and lighting creates.  Coupled with how each track has an ambient and battle section and how it seamlessly slides between them as you enter and leave combat, the levels in Unreal are all a treat to explore, and I really do urge people to look up the soundtrack because it's really just that good.

The music in this game created a precedent of quality that the series kept up easily, and is just more evidence of how committed Epic at the time were to making as immersive and vibrant a world as they could.  It's just another part of a beautifully crafted experience that created a game so unlike any other at the time or since.  

Unreal is a game that is still incredibly playable today.  On a technical level, it's the Unreal Engine so you can pop it onto anything and get it working without any real trouble.  The unofficial OldUnreal patch is easy to find, and is just a single .dll file that gets dropped in the system folder.  But that's not the only thing playable means.  Design philosophies and public reception to various systems and elements of gameplay change over time, and it renders a large number of games either too obtuse or too clunky to really get into.  But there are always games that are timeless.  Doom is still a treat because the only thing in it is shooting, there's nothing particularly experimental to have been done better over repeated iterations.  Unreal is simple in that way, too.  Its weapons are varied, unique, and famous.  Man, I didn't even get into the weapons, but I'll save that for the Unreal Tournament essay.  

My point is, Unreal did a lot, and it did it very well.  It and every other game from 1998 was overshadowed by Half-Life, unfortunately, and that became the game to beat.  Half-Life isn't the reason we never saw another Unreal in the same vein as the first, but I do think that a desire to be the next Half-Life is why the industry moved to such a narratively-focused philosophy.  There was another game three years later that also focused on sprawling outdoor areas mixed with indoor structures, but it didn't have the same lonesome exploration, living world, or details that suggested hundreds of years of mythology.  This game would go on to affect the industry just as much or even more than Half-Life, and was in fact Bungie’s Halo.  

Halo had cutscenes and voiced NPCs and all the things Half-Life made people want.  Halo is another beast, but its success was all but the final nail in the coffin for any hope Unreal had of spawning any imitators.  The era of frantic slaughterfests in key-locked mazes was over, and Unreal’s attempt at carving out a spot for contemplative exploration in living worlds was ignored.  

That style of game would come back, but not in shooter form.  Both Dark Souls and Shadow of Colossus have similar feels to them, and I'm sure there are others out there.  Other Team ICO titles, Journey, there have to be others, there are too many videogames for there not to be.  But as it stands, Unreal is all but alone, and even now, in this wave of 90s revival indie shooters, they aim more for Doom and Quake.  Even Epic would step away from Unreal’s distinctive style with its very next release.

See, Unreal was popular, but at the time, released into an audience high off of Quake 2,  those same people wanted to dive into its multiplayer.  And when it worked, it was incredible.  But it often didn't work.  Epic set to fervent work patching it to fix poor netcode and a variety of other issues, but that project turned into something far, far larger, prompting them to release an entirely new game running on an updated version of the Unreal engine.  New maps, optimized and redone versions of existing maps, remodeled and rebalanced weapons, new music, new gamemodes, everything.  

Unreal Tournament would come out a year later, setting the industry alight in its own ways.  We'll take a look at that next month, so until then, take a day or two to play through Unreal.  I played it and loved it a decade after its release, and another decade won't have changed much.  

[carcinoaquarium]

alright kk, don't say i didn't warn you lmao: Dearest Karkat, I am the anon whom you blessed with that dragon age tangent and i was bettered for it bc that tangent was great. When I played da:i I knew jack-all about the characters and literally only chose to be an elven female bc she had the most romantic options and I was going in thinking 'hell yeah imma romance the first available qunari of the series, you kidding me?' (1/7)

And then i chatted w solas and the literal first 'flirt' option w him is to tell him you aren't going to harass him for being an apostate and that was so /sad/ to think about, like he's so...lonely? Not to mention his greatest fear is dying alone?? Also he was hella intelligent and had interesting conversations and was suave as fuck, and I ended up being like "iron bull who?" and got my hEART RIPPED FROM MY CHEST, OW because solas has gotta be one of my fave villains in media to date. (2/7)

Also loghain, whom I didn't really appreciate until after I'd beheaded him. Whoops. Actually, I'd love to keep talking to you about dragon age?? i haven't been able to chat w a new(ish) fan in ages and these games have such depth. (also, dorian was absolutely my inquisitor's moirail, too, tbh. Although that's technically a romantic relationship, and Dorian is gay...? They're def BFFLs, tho, once Dorian was less racist against elves. Everyone in dai was kinda racist against elves.) (3/7)

Actually, elf Inquisitors kind of got a really fucking short stick in da:i. Not only did all of thedas hate them for being an elf, but there wasn't a single elf in that party that didn't challenge and beat on their religion (which is worse if they weren't already questioning it, as my inquisitor was), and even the people you can date don't seem to comfort you once your entire understanding of the world comes crashing down around your eyes. (4/7) (shit, i might hit the ask limit)

To a lesser extent this happens to the dwarves, too! Like, idk if you played the Descent dlc, but spoiler-free the dwarven religion is kind of picked apart and in the Tresspasser sequel we find out the ancient elves did a lot of shitty subjugating of the dwarven race, and not to mention the qunari are implied to be a race made through scientific genetic SPLICING of human and/or elven genes with fucking /dragons/, and it's like?? Man, give these fantasy races a break. (5/7)

Humans were the only ones who weren't really fucked with, they just kinda showed up from the north and invaded thedas while all that other political stuff was going on. But playing as a human's always seemed so boring to me, lmao. Did you play DA:O and DA2, too? (6/7) I feel like 200% nerd power right now,but the amount of effort and heart bioware put into these games is fascinating and i can't help but love dissecting it. Feel free to respond in private if u don't wanna clog ur blog w DA. (7/7)

--

YES. LET’S DO THIS. PROBABLY GOING TO BE A LONG REPLY SO I’LL READ MORE THIS SHIT.

ALTHOUGH I ONLY PERSONALLY PLAYED THROUGH ONE ROMANCE I OF COURSE HAD TO WATCH ALL OF THE COMPILATIONS ON YOUTUBE BECAUSE THAT’S JUST THE KIND OF GLUTTON I AM. SO YEAH. I AM FAMILIAR WITH SOLAS’ ROMANCE ARC. AND MAN I HAVE TO SAY YOU HAD TO BE MASOCHISTIC AS HELL TO RIDE THAT ONE OUT AND ENDURE THE MOST HEARTBREAKING OUTCOME OF THEM ALL. BLACKWALL WAS BAD ENOUGH, BUT AT LEAST, YOU KNOW, IT GETS BETTER IF YOU CHOOSE IT TO. 

DON’T GET ME WRONG, IT PLAYED OUT BEAUTIFULLY. BUT SADFPSDHFHSDF I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE SEE THAT THROUGH. 

AND I SERIOUSLY DID NOT SEE SOLAS’ TURN COMING. IT WAS AMAZING. HE WAS SO CONVINCING THE ENTIRE TIME. JUST THE BOOKISH APOSTATE ELF WHO LIKED TO PAINT MURALS AND FANBOY OVER THE FADE IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER. FUCKING. IAMBIC. PENTAMETER. THAT WAS PRETTY AMAZING. ERIDAN APPRECIATED THAT. ALTHOUGH IT WAS HARD NOT TO THINK OF SOLLUX WHEN WE SAID HIS NAME. ESPECIALLY ERIDAN. 

fuckin sol

BUT HOLY SHIT. I NEVER SAW IT COMING. AND YET WHEN YOU PLAYTHROUGH A SECOND TIME YOU SEE ALL THE LITTLE HINTS. MY SECOND PLAYTHROUGH WAS FULL OF ME SCREAMING AT THE SCREEN 

“OOOOOH, SUUUUUUURE. TELL ME YOUR VAGUE ASS REASON FOR BEING HERE AGAIN, YOU LYING PIECE OF SHIT.”

“I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, DREAD WOLF. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE.”

“YOU KNOW WHAT? THE FADE IS BORING. SPIRITS ARE BORING.”

“MAYBE I SHOULD SKIP THESE ELVEN PUZZLES THIS TIME, EGGSPONGE. OR MAYBE PISS IN THIS WELL. OR FIGHT THE IMMORTAL ELF DUDE. HMMMM??"

“I’M RUBBING MY BULGE AAAAALLL OVER THIS FEN’HAREL STATUE. YEAH. THAT’S RIGHT. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT??”

“WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO GIVE YOU A *HAND* WITH THAT QUEST??? OH I BET YOU WOULD.”

SERIOUSLY THOUGH I THOUGHT THE WAY SOLAS’ CHARACTER ARC UNROLLED WAS MASTERFUL. THE WAY HE PULLS THE INQUISITOR ASIDE NEAR THE END OF THE MAIN GAME TO TELL THEM THAT THEY EXCEEDED HIS EXPECTATIONS AND THAT HE TRULY VALUES THEM AS A FRIEND... I DON’T THINK I’LL EVER REALLY KNOW IF HE MEANT IT BUT I LIKE TO THINK HE DID. AND THAT IT GENUINELY SURPRISED HIM THAT THE PERSON HE WAS OUT TO MANIPULATE NEARLY CHANGED HIS WORLD VIEW IN THE END. THAT’S HOW YOU WRITE A THREE DIMENSIONAL ANTAGONIST.

FFFF. THE RACE SHENANIGANS. DRAGON AGE AND SKYRIM REALLY LIKE TO PLAY UP THE DISCRIMINATION AND OUTRIGHT PERSECUTION OF ELVES, WHICH STANDS IN SHARP CONTRAST TO THE TOLKIENIAN LORE IT ALL STEMS FROM WHERE ELVES ARE (MOSTLY) POWERFUL AND RESPECTED AMONG HUMANS. I LIKE IT THOUGH. IT’S AN INTERESTING SPIN. THE DWARF HATE TOO. I FUCKING LOVED THE WAY THE ORLEASIAN COURT NOT-SO-COVERTLY THREW SHADE AT YOU IN THE WINTER PALACE FOR BEING A DIRTY LOWBLOOD INFERIOR RACE. IT MADE PUTTING THEM ALL IN THEIR PLACE A WHOLE LOT SWEETER. AGAIN. WISH FULFILLMENT.

I HAVE TO AGREE THOUGH THAT THE GAME SOMETIMES KIND OF DID A SHITTY JOB OF ACKNOWLEDGING THE ELF AND DWARF INQUISITORS’ PERSONAL STRUGGLES WITH THEIR RACE, AND I GUESS THAT COMES DOWN TO THE SHIPLOAD OF DIALOGUE CUSTOMIZATION THE DEVS ALREADY HAD ON THEIR PLATE. I REMEMBER BEING ESPECIALLY PISSED OFF TALKING TO DAGNA WHERE SHE FUCKING SEEMED TO FORGET NELLIE WAS *ALSO* A DWARF HALF THE FUCKING TIME. 

AND THEN OTHER TIMES THE GAME WAS RANDOMLY REALLY GOOD IN THAT REGARD. IT WAS HIT AND MISS. ERIDAN DID AN ELF PLAYTHROUGH THAT I SAT IN ON AND I REMEMBER HOW COOL IT WAS BEING ABLE TO INTERACT WITH THE DALISH CLAN IN THAT INSIDER KIND OF WAY. BUT IT’S TRUE THAT PRETTY MUCH NONE OF THE ROMANTIC INTERESTS GIVE YOUR RACE MORE THAN *ONE* PASSING MENTION. CULLEN’S ROMANCE WITH A MAGE PLAYS WAY MORE HEAVILY INTO THINGS THAN SAY THE FACT THAT MALE LAVELLAN CAN DATE A GODDAMN *TEVINTER* ALTUS AND THE SLAVE THING IS BROUGHT UP A GRAND TOTAL OF ONCE.   

AND AS A SIDENOTE THE FACT THAT IF YOU CHOOSE THE NECROMANCER MAGE SPECIALIZATION, DORIAN-THE-GOD-DAMN-NECROMANCER HAS FUCK ALL TO SAY ABOUT IT. EVEN IF YOU ROMANCE HIM. WHICH AMPORA DID. AND HE WAS PISSED. 

SPEAKING OF AMPORA, HE ACTUALLY DID ROLL A HUMAN AT FIRST, BUT FIVE MINUTES IN HE WAS SO BORED WITH HIS CHARACTER HE ALMOST GAVE UP THE GAME FOR GOOD. SO YEAH. I FEEL YOU THERE. 

BUT YEAH. THE SUGAR COATING ON THE CONFECTIONERY ITEM IS DEFINITELY THE FACT THAT THE GAME HINGES ON BASICALLY SOLAS DESTROYING DALISH LEGITIMACY. AND AS A DALISH INQUISITOR IT’S LIKE. OH. OK. SURE. MY LIFE WAS A LIE. NO BIG DEAL. NOW WHO’S READY FOR A VACATION IN TEVINTER BECAUSE BOY HOWDY ME AND MY QUNARI FRIEND ARE DOWN FOR SOME FIRST CLASS NORTHERN HOSPITALITY.

AS MUCH AS I CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT A LOT OF IT I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I NEVER PLAYED THE PREVIOUS GAMES BUT I ABSORBED THE DRAGON AGE WIKI AND I THINK I HAVE A PRETTY GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT WENT DOWN. I HAVE DA:O AND I DO PLAN ON PLAYING IT SOME TIME.

THE SADDEST PART IS THAT IT SEEMS PRETTY CERTAIN THAT THE SERIES IS PERMA-DEAD. AND I ACTUALLY WAS REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO WHERE THEY SEEMED TO BE TAKING IT. IT’S A FUCKING SHAME.

[nyrator]

current KH pro-whoa everything is bright and dark blue at the same time

but yeah current KH3 progress: four worlds done, level 24 and just hit the 15 hour mark on Proud

more opinion stuffs so far under the cut~ but overall enjoying it more than I thought I would

goddddd

it feels so weird to have a game I’ve been waiting for for over a decade, actually come out, and actually be enjoyable. Especially since the handheld games left an ehh taste in my mouth (CoM>re:coded>BbS/3D>Days by the way), and 0.2 didn’t ease any fears.

but mannn, I was going to replay KH2 and finally play the FM+ portions of it before this game came out but never did, and I’m glad because I feel that if I tried to compare the two I’d not focus on enjoying the game probably (however I remember replaying KH1 last year and loving it so hmm, KH1>KH2 back for kid me and I’m still curious to see how it’s different, plus I really really want to fight Zexion someday since my copy of RE:CoM with the memory card were both borrowed or stolen and never seen again after getting partway through Riku’s story)

but anyway yeah will probably replay KH2 after KH3 eventually

also for starters, I went with the Magic option (King Mickey pose), because heck yeah Magic, but then they shown me the promise with Namine for the second option and I instinctively just chose that because I don’t care, THANK NAMINE SORA. But yeah, looks to be “get defense stuff quicker”, which for Proud mode is nice, probably would’ve done that anyway honestly

goddd this game though, it’s huge. I was amazed at how long it took me just to beat the Hercules world, and mannn. They were heavy on tutorials, but just because there’s just so much freaking content. An overwhelming amount, a lot of it I end up not using or forgetting about, but there’s something for everyone and none of it is really necessary which is nice (other than whacking things with Keyblade I guess)

Once you get past all those early tutorials (I’m still getting some though), it becomes a lot more comfortable I think. Definitely eases you in more than 0.2 did I feel, or at least it works more comfortably. It kind of feels like Saints Row 3 mechanics in 4, in a way. I mean, yeah, you can use the basic Keyblade combos and ignore the flashy stuff, but why would you drive a car when you can fly.

though I still mostly use Keyblade and ignore a lot of the commands since I like leaving the animations on in case anything new shows up, but thankfully there is the option to speed up the animations in the menu which I should probably turn on

it’s a lot of flash but it’s basically a long wind up for a big AOE attack, some of which might miss the target if they walk out of the way during the animation

but mann, still fun to play. Usually I’m a Kingdom Key exclusive kind of person (mainly because I like seeing it in cutscenes), then they’re like “oh man three Keyblades”, so I started using that one Magic Keyblade from Twilight Town and I love it too much, it’s like Wisdom form on KH3 crack and it’s fun. The other Keyblades haven’t clicked with me much yet, though want to learn the Rapunzel Keyblade a bit because Magic

some minor issues I have with this game:

Lock-on is pretty bad for me. Enemy basically has to already be in my sights to lock on, even if its the only enemy left, and even then it’s finicky. The Focus lock on thing is so finnicky to use to teleport, and heck anything flowmotion besides the super jump after bouncing feels very uncooperative. I still feel like I’m doing something with the dash-off-walls thing wrong, it seems almost pointless.

A lot of prompts in general are a bit finicky, especially the Moogle. I love you Moogle please let me Triangle you and not accidentally start some fancy boat attraction attack

The maps are freaking huge, like it’s nice and looks pretty, but mannn, is it easy to get lost and make secret-finding a complete pain. I used to be able to find most of the treasure chests and stuff on my own in one playthrough, usually one or two missing a world, but mannnn. It’s mostly the whole “the more realistic it looks the less iconic things pop out against it” or something. I did however use a guide like a scrub after I beat the fourth world to be like “okay let’s find these missing chests and lucky marks because I have spent an hour wandering around Hercules’ world and have found three gold statues and am missing a bunch of chests and marks”

“Hope we find some ingredients around here”

random but my PS4 shut down after the intro cutscene and I think it’s because I sat there watching the intro cutscenes for like 20 minutes and then my PS4′s like “yeah no one’s playing this, turn it off” as soon as I got into the dive-into-the-heart part

but those are all minor gripes and overall it’s been good

really nice touches, a lot of things from FFXV I feel carried over in a good way:

The way Sora can bump into his partners and do an animation to slide past them

Switching between weapons on the fly for different combos

The casual dialogue as you go through the game (all of it is good except for those ingredient lines man, you could have at least recorded multiple takes instead of playing the same SDG lines over and over and over again)

The cooking minigame, camera, and even fishing if you count jumping into the ocean and pressing triangle on animated water

freaking Verum Rex

there’s probably more but yeah

also

freaking Verum Rex

the Toy Story intro was so unexpected and I found it hilarious, thank you Nomura. The Toy Story world in general is so good, I loved it so much as someone who isn’t too big a fan of Toy Story. Woody sounded off but what can you do when making due with voice actors (Herc and Mickey also sounded off and I could also hear James Woods’ age in Hades) Also man, Phil being so noticeably quiet was so weird like mannn, I’m guessing his Japanese voice passed away, but it’s still weird especially since Vexen has a speaking role (he and Marluxia also sound kind of different but maybe it’s just been so long since RE:CoM)

but mannn the actors from the movie definitely knocked it out of the park, shout outs to Hamm and Rex

which brings me to the point that I love the writing in this game, it really feels more like a Disney product than any of the other KH games and I love it, and I love how they’re integrating the story so well with the Disney (FREAKING WOODY TELLING XEHANORT OFF MANNNN HECK YEAH WOODY)

freaking Xigbar I love Xigbar and godddd that cut off with that scene of him watching Maleficient, Xigbar’s got plans and I’m so excited I’ve been waiting to see what he’d do and godddd that hard cut man (there has to be some connection with him and the Master of Masters I mean come on, similar personalities, Master has an eye, Xigbar needs an eye, mannn)

Marluxia doesn’t seem like he’ll have much effect on things which makes me all the more curious as to what he’s up to in KHUX

and the Xehanorts just love being vague for the sake of being vague, but mannnnn, I love the whole replica thing being brought back, heck yeah

I don’t know man so many things be making younger me happy with how they’re doing them and I’m excited to beat this game so I can have some kind of closure even if they continue it

all I need now is my boy Demyx, give me his reason for being here, give me that Demyx/Ienzo scene

[postgamecontent]

Quintet Spotlight: ActRaiser

Original Release Date: December 16, 1990 (JPN)

Original Hardware: Nintendo Super Famicom

Quintet's first game, the Super NES title ActRaiser, is also by far their most famous. Part of that is likely down to timing. The game came soon after the system's launch in both Japan and North America, trailing the respective launches by a matter of months, placing it right around the time that players who had quenched their Super Mario World thirst would be on the look-out for something new and substantial. Another part of its success is probably due to its creative design. ActRaiser is both a side-scrolling action game and a god simulator, which isn't exactly a natural combination. Finally, it's well-remembered because it deserves to be. ActRaiser has its rough edges but in some ways it's the most well-rounded of all of Quintet's games. Only Terranigma is better, in my opinion, and that game didn't get a release in North America, essentially ensuring it would be forgotten by most.

ActRaiser presents us with a world teetering on the brink of destruction. Civilization is in ruins, monsters relentlessly attack the surviving humans, and the hearts of the people have turned to evil. This is the work of the devilish Tanzra, who defeated the world's creator, The Master, with the help of his six lieutenants several hundred years ago. The Master retreated to his Sky Palace to recover, and in doing so, fell into a deep sleep. This has given Tanzra and his minions full freedom to run amok, bringing the world to the precipitous state that it finds itself in. Fortunately, The Master has finally awakened, and with the help of his Angel assistant, he means to overthrow Tanzra once and for all. To do that, he'll need to reconnect with humanity through prayer, help them solve their problems, and rebuild civilization so that they can give The Master greater strength through their worship.

Even in its localized American form, ActRaiser isn't very subtle. The Japanese version drops all pretenses, referring to The Master as God and Tanzra as Satan. It's no coincidence, I think, that all of the bosses found in the game take after mythological creatures and deities of non-Christian religions, either. God is back, and he's ready to stick a literal sword through the heart of heathens everywhere. Even with the changed names and edited graphics, it's kind of impressive that Enix was able to slip this one by in North America. Mind you, we never actually see The Master, and I suppose if anything it carries a message that might appeal to those who might have taken umbrage. In the end, when you've finally set everything right again, you'll find all of your temples across the world are empty of their usual worshipers. Your Angel assistant sadly notes that people only seem to want to pray to The Master when they need something. No atheists in foxholes, as they say. I suppose if a near-endless stream of demons, dragons, and giant bats were belching forth from glowing symbols on the ground, I might find religion, too.

There are two basic types of gameplay in ActRaiser. You'll start your entry into each of the game's several areas by inhabiting a warrior statue and battling through a side-scrolling action stage. The controls are a little slow and clunky here, but given this is an animated statue, I guess I can forgive that. There are plenty of enemies to slice through with your sword, and the occasional platforming sequence will keep you on your toes. The level culminates in a battle with a boss, usually a fairly large creature that shows off the Super NES's graphical muscle in some way. These levels can be a little tricky early on when your level is low. You can only take a few hits and the warrior never seems to be as agile as you'd like him to be. The key is to avoid taking damage while letting the enemies come to you. You can often hit them before they even look like they're in range, so keeping your distance is a solid strategy.

After beating that initial stage, you'll be thrown into the game's other mode. You'll have an overhead view of the land, and a temple will be established along with a pair of worshipers. In these sections, you'll control your Angel assistant directly. You have a few jobs here. First and foremost, you need to direct the construction of the city. Getting in the way of that job are seemingly endless waves of monsters that spawn from lairs strewn about the map. If you guide your followers to those lairs, they'll permanently close them, just in case you were getting any anxiety about how to build your city. As lairs are closed, the level of your civilization will improve, bringing more advanced buildings, a higher population, and more offerings. As the population of the world increases, so too does The Master's level, granting more health and magic points to help you survive the next challenge. Until those lairs are closed, you'll need to use your Angel assistant to protect the people by firing arrows at the little beasties before they can cause damage.

The people will occasionally come to you with a problem of some sort. You'll have to solve these problems in one of a few different ways. You might have to use a miracle, such as causing lightning to strike or making it rain. Sometimes, you'll need to seek out something from another land and bring it back. At other times, you'll need to direct the city's construction towards some sort of landmark or object. You'll earn lots of useful items by solving these problems, some of which can be used in the sim portion and others in the action stages. The most important goodies you'll earn are the magic spells that allow you to deal heavy damage during the action stages. Once you've got the second spell, most of the boss fights in ActRaiser become trivial. A second action stage serves as the book-end to each land before you head on your merry way.

The sim portion of the game does a good job of making it feel like a lot of different things are going on while still keeping things relatively simple. You can't choose what the people will build, only a general direction of where they'll build it. That's probably for the best, though. Particularly in the overseas versions of the game, you'll be so busy keeping the monsters at bay that you probably wouldn't have enough energy to handle anything deeper than that. The pace of the Japanese version is positively relaxed by comparison, suggesting that the localizers were worried Western players would get bored if they didn't have something to shoot every second or two. The simulation aspects of ActRaiser are considerably more difficult all-around in the American version. It's very tough to reach the maximum level for The Master as a result.

That ends up being less of a problem than it could have been, since the other major change in the game involved making the action stages significantly easier. The original versions of each stage can still be found in the US version, but only after clearing the game once and starting over on Professional Mode. On your first playthrough, you can get away with spamming magic to take out most bosses, and even when you're out of magic, simply swinging your sword like a maniac gets you a lot farther than it really should. It's hard to come up with a reasonable explanation for these seemingly contradictory tweaks to the game's challenge. It doesn't matter too much, though. The game is still tough enough to keep you from getting bored, and a lot of fun to romp through when you've gotten used to its mechanics.

On careful examination, neither the action stages nor the simulation parts are really strong enough to stand on their own if they had to. But the fusion of the two is interesting and meaningful for the themes the game is trying to express, and there's assuredly some value to be found in variety. The core structure of the game makes it easy to step away between the different lands, but the flip-side of that coin is that it's almost impossible to put the controller down until you've brought peace and prosperity to a particular area. ActRaiser presents a great balance between stop and go, push and pull, create and destroy, and any number of other dichotomies. That is the strength it leans on, and that strength does not fail to support it.

I've already touched on the game being something of a visual showcase for the then-new Super NES, but it's also an impressive display of that hardware's audio prowess. The soundtrack was composed by the legendary Yuzo Koshiro, and he uses the hardware's sampling capabilities skillfully to create rich themes that are both inspiring and memorable. Koshiro tends to be more famous for his FM synth-style soundtracks, but ActRaiser proves he can handle himself just as well with a different kind of instrument. The soundtrack is regal when it needs to be, oppressive where it must be, and even manages serenity quite nicely. The range demonstrated by Koshiro’s compositions couldn’t have been easy to pull off with the cohesiveness found here.

But here I am, glossing over the game’s graphical achievements. ActRaiser is an awfully pretty game for its place in the Super NES’s lifespan. It’s a little flashy with the Mode 7 effects in a way that many launch titles tended to be, but it never feels gratuitous. Zooming in on each stage’s landing point from your heavenly perch makes sense, as The Master is descending into his earth-bound avatar. The overhead map proves particularly enjoyable as you watch each of your cities go from nothingness to an accurate, albeit low-detail, representation of your progress in that area. Of course, the game saves most of its graphical flourishes for the side-scrolling stages. Sprites are relatively large with lots of fine details, and the backgrounds are lush with colors. 

ActRaiser makes use of the Super NES’s hardware features to create some interesting background effects at times, reminiscent of the sort of tricks that Konami was quite fond of. The main showpieces are the bosses, though. They’re often large and even more impressively detailed than the rest of the visuals. One of my favorite fights in the game isn’t with one of the large bosses, however. It’s a battle with a regular-sized sorcerer who, halfway through the battle, transforms into a werewolf. It’s an unexpected trick, though likely a familiar one these days for Castlevania fans. It was quite the surprise at the time, at least.

There’s a wide variety of settings among the game’s stages, with deserts, forests, pyramids, castles, snowy fields, and more. No stage looks quite like any other. By contrast, the simulation parts of the game aren’t quite as showy. Plenty of colors, of course, but the overall level of detail is lower. Fascinatingly, while the action stages take a serious approach to the designs, the characters and monsters in the simulation mode are almost cute. It’s just another way the game creates an interesting texture by mixing two very different elements. 

That’s essentially how ActRaiser distinguishes itself in general. Besides its presentation, it tends to be serviceable rather than great. But in matching flavors that aren’t usually combined, Quintet came up with a compelling recipe all of its own. Even today, there aren’t really any other games like ActRaiser. Experiencing its unique flavor makes it quite worthwhile putting up with its foibles. I certainly recommend giving it a go if you haven’t tried it before. There’s even a relatively easy means of doing so, since this is the only Quintet game to be re-released on Nintendo’s Virtual Console service. It’s only available on the Wii Virtual Console, though, so you might have to go shuffling through the closet. At this point, it seems unlikely Square Enix will go to the trouble of releasing it again, so that might be your only official option. 

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